Trump🇷🇺Russia🇺🇦Ukraine
With Tweets, Retweets, links to articles and excerpts, I’ve tried to document this national soap opera/tragedy we’re living through. The resources at the beginning are a mixed bag of timelines and documents and I provide a clickable cast of characters (Russians, mostly).
What does this have to do with The Blacklist? A lot, actually. Russian mob figures, spies and apparatchiks. Semion Mogilevich, the Smart Don, reminds me of Red, though Red is a lot nicer and much better-looking.
Featured are drawings (she calls them “maps”) by @Jzikah, and “Mueller, She Wrote” is the best podcast I’ve ever come across. The three women who do it are comedians, though they’re all super smart and A.J. (the lead) has a PhD and is a Veteran.
Caution: You may enjoy this feature a bit more if you’re of the liberal persuasion. This is the single place on this blog where *there are politics* though I tend to stick with MSM, specialized sources (ex-Intel Community, altGov, and reputable sleuths) and other people I’ve learned to trust.
🇷🇺 Press Here For Recent Articles and Discussion
🇷🇺 Press Here For Index to all Trump/Ukraine/Russia Files
💽Recommended⋙ Mueller She Wrote Podcast ⋙ http://bit.ly/2PgTKWs or Press ⇊ ⇊
Other Podcasts:
The Asset (Center for American Progress) 🌟
The Dworkin Report (Scott Dworkin)
Gaslit Nation (Sarah Kendzior, Andrea Chalupa)
The Lawfare Podcast (Benjamin Wittes, Brookings)
The Josh Marshall Podcast (TPM)
The Mother Jones Podcast (David Corn)
Mueller Time (Eric Leval, Chris Carey)
The Oath (Chuck Rosenberg, MSNBC)
The Report (Lawfare)
On Topic (Renato Mariotti)
Skullduggery (Michael Isikoff, Yahoo)
Trump Inc (ProPublica)
Trumpcast (Slate)
🔊 PlayerFM: Best Trump Russia Investigation Podcasts (2019) http://bit.ly/2MKbtV8
Twitter List: INVESTIGATORS: https://twitter.com/Auriandra/lists/investigators
// Investigative reporters, Trump-Russia sleuths, Intelligence Community, Legislators, “alt-gov,” and Targets
Russian Intelligence Services:
Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR) – The Foreign Intelligence Service reports directly to the President of Russia.
GRU – Main Intelligence Directorate of the Russian Armed Forces.
Federal Security Service (FSB) – The Federal Security Service is responsible for counter-intelligence, state security and anti-terrorist operations
🔄 ECFR , Mark Galeotti [EU] (2016): Introduction: Putin’s hydra: Inside Russia’s intelligence services http://bit.ly/2NZWN1h
// 5/11/2016, Intro
⋙ 📒 ECFR, Mark Galeotti [EU] (2016): Report: Putin’s Hydra: Inside Russia’s Intelligence Services [pdf] http://bit.ly/2NYjG5b 20p
// May 2016, Full report
Key People: Roman Abramovich, Aras Agalarov, Emin Agalarov, Rinat Akhmetov, Rinat Akhmetshin, Yulya Alferova, Anatoly Antonov, Andrii Artemenko, Arron Banks, Andrey Baronov, Vitaly Bespalov, Leonid “Len” Blavatnik, Anna Bogacheva, David Bogatin, Victor Boyarkin, Wm Browder, Mariia Butina, Carole Cadwalladr, Michael Caputo, Yuri Chaika, Igor Chekunov, Michael Cohen, George Cottrell, Oleg Deripaska, Andrii Derkach, Igor Divyekin, Kirill Dmitriev, Oleksandr Dubinsky, Aleksandr Dugin, Arkady Dvorkovich, Paul Erickson, Oleg Erovinkin, Nigel Farage, Dmitri Firtash, John Fotiadis, Gene (Evgeny) Friedman, Igor Fruman, Daniel Gelbinovich, Rob Goldstone, Sergei Gorkov, Henry Greenberg, Andrew Intrater, Bidzina Ivanishvili, Brittany Kaiser, Mikhail Kalugin, Vladimir Kara-Murza, Saak Karapetyan, Eugene Kaspersky (Kaspersky Lab), Denis Katsyv, Irakly (“Ike”) Kaveladze, Michael Khodarkovsky, Konstantin Kilimnik, Sergey Kislyak, Artem Klyushin, Ihor Kolomoyskyi, Konstantin Kosachev, Aleksandra Krylova, Elena Khusyaynova, Simon Kukes, Kostiantyn Kulyk, Alexander Litvinenko, Howard Lorber, Yuriy Lutsenko, Simona Mangiante, Alexander Mashkevich, Viktor Medvedchek, Josef Mifsud, Semion Mogilevich (Don Semyon), Konstantin Molofeev, George Nader, Valentyn Nalyvaichenko, Alexei Navalny, Eduard Nektalov, Konstantin Nikolaev, Vyacheslav Nikonov, Yevgeniy Nikulin, Alexander Nix, Isabel Oakeshoff, Mykhaylo Okhendovsky, George Papadopoulos, Lev Parnas, Sam Patten, Alexander Perepilichnyy, Dmitry Peskov, Igor Pisarsky, Petro Poroshenko, Yevgeny Prigozhin, Vladimir Putin, George Ramishvili, Dmitry Rogozin, Alexander Rovt, Giorgi Rtskhiladze, Dmitry Rybolovlev, Konstantin Rykov, Mikheil Saakashvili, Felix Sater, Igor Sechin, Anastasia Shevchenko, Viktor Shokin, Oleg Solodukhin, Christopher Steele, Ruslan Stoyanov, Oleg Solodukhin, Peter Strzok, Taiwanchik (aka Alimzhan Tokhtakhunov), Andriy Telizhenko, Alimzhan Tokhtakhunov (aka Taiwanchik), Aleksandr Torshin, Vyacheslav Trubnikov, Yulia Tymoshenko, Anastasia Vashukevich (aka Nastya Rybka), Viktor Vekselberg, Natalia Veselnitskaya, Vyacheslav Volodin, Curt Weldon, Andy Wigmore, Alexander Yakovenko, Viktor Yanukovych, Ivan Yermakov, Viktor Yushchenko, Aleksandr Zakharchenko, Maria Zakharova, Joel Zamel, Volodymyr Zelensky, Mykola Zlochevsky
Bios w links (Wikipedia unless otherwise noted): Roman Abramovich, Aras Agalarov, Emin Agalarov, Rinat Akhmetov, Rinat Akhmetshin, Yulya Alferova (National Compass), Anatoly Antonov, Andrii Artemenko, Arron Banks, Andrey Baranov (Bloomberg), Vitaly Bespalov (NBC), Leonid “Len” Blavatnik, Anna Bogacheva (NYT), David Bogatin (NYT), Victor Boyarkin (TrumpRussia), William Browder, Mariia Butina, Carole Cadwalladr, Michael Caputo, Yuri Chaika, Igor Chekunov, Michael Cohen, George Cottrell, Oleg Deripaska, Andrii Derkach, Igor Divyekin, Kirill Dmitriev, Oleksandr Dubinsky (NBC), Aleksandr Dugin, Arkady Dvorkovich, Paul Erickson, Oleg Erovinkin, Nigel Farage, Dmitri Firtash, John Fotiadis (Archinect), Gene (Evgeny) Friedman, Igor Fruman, Daniel Gelbinovich (Daily Beast), Rob Goldstone, Sergei Gorkov, Henry Greenberg (Miami Herald), Andrew Intrater, Bidzina Ivanishvili, Brittany Kaiser (Cambridge Analytica), Mikhail Kalugin, Vladimir Kara-Murza, Saak Karapetyan, Eugene Kaspersky (Kaspersky Lab), Denis Katsyv, Irakly Kaveladze, Michael Khodarkovsky, Elena Khusyaynova, Konstantin Kilimnik, Sergey Kislyak, Artem Klyushin (National Compass), Ihor Kolomoyskyi, Konstantin Kosachev, Aleksandra Krylova (NYT), Simon Kukes, Kostiantyn Kulyk (NBC), Alexander Litvinenko, Howard Lorber, Yuriy Lutsenko, Konstantin Malofeev, Simona Mangiante (Papadopoulos), Alexander Mashkevich, Viktor Medvedchek, Josef Mifsud, Semion Mogilevich (Don Semyon) …
Cover: KyivPost (10/18/2019): <bShady Cast of Characters: Engineers of Trump-Ukraine Scandal http://bit.ly/2MZCilW
Valentyn Nalyvaichenko, Alexei Navalny, Eduard Nektalov (NYMag), Konstantin Nikolaev, Yevgeniy Nikulin, Vyacheslav Nikonov, Alexander Nix, Isabel Oakeshoff, Mykhaylo Okhendovsky, George Papadopoulos, Lev Parnas ,Sam Patten, Alexander Perepilichny, Dmitry Peskov, Igor Pisarsky (RIM), Petro Poroshenko, Yevgeny Prigozhin, Vladimir Putin, George Ramishvili (Bloomberg), Dmitry Rogozin, Alexander Rovt, Giorgi Rtskhiladze (CNBC), Nastya Rybka (aka Anastasia Vashukevich) (WaPo), Dmitry Rybolovlev, Konstantin Rykov, Mikheil Saakashvili, Felix Sater, Igor Sechin, Anastasia Shevchenko (Amnesty Intl), Viktor Shokin, Oleg Solodukhin, Christopher Steele, Ruslan Stoyanov, Peter Strzok, Taiwanchik (aka Alimzhan Tokhtakhunov), Andriy Telizhenko (BuzzFeedNews), Alimzhan Tokhtakhunov (aka Taiwanchik), Aleksandr Torshin, Vyacheslav Trubnikov, Yulia Tymoshenko, Anastasia Vashukevich (aka Nastya Rybka) (WaPo), Viktor Vekselberg, Natalia Veselnitskaya, Vyacheslav Volodin, Curt Weldon, Andy Wigmore, Alexander Yakovenko, Viktor Yanukovych, Ivan Yermakov (Moscow Proj), Viktor Yushchenko, Aleksandr Zakharchenko, Maria Zakharova, Joel Zamel, Volodymyr Zelensky, Mykola Zlochevsky
By @WendySiegelman
Key Documents
🔆 This❗️⋙ 💙💙🔄 LawfareBlog: Litigation Documents Related to the Mueller Investigation http://bit.ly/2OVch6n
// new November 2018, to be continually updated
🔆 This❗️⋙ 💙💙🔄 JustSecurity: Public Document Clearinghouse: UKRAINE Impeachment Inquiry http://bit.ly/2CEsQ2F ‼️ Links to ALL documents ‼️
🔆 This❗️⋙ 💙💙🔄 AmericanOversight: Trump-Ukraine Key Figures and Documents http://bit.ly/2C24bES
AmericanOversight: The Trump Administration’s Contacts with Ukraine http://bit.ly/2BYSY89 from FOIA requests
🔆 This❗️⋙ 💙💙🔄 JustSecurity, Andy Wright: Just Security Launches the Russia Investigation Congressional Clearinghouse http://bit.ly/2L21uHz
// 8/22/2019
🔆 This❗️⋙ 💙💙🔄 Lawfare: Full Text of the Mueller Report’s Executive Summaries http://bit.ly/2IFLewq
// 4/18/2019
🔆 This❗️⋙ 💙💙🔄 Lawfare: Document: The Mueller Report http://bit.ly/2vcgNpN
// 4/18/2019
🔆 This❗️⋙ 💙💙🔄≣ NYT: The Whistle-Blower Complaint: Read the Document [Interactive] http://nyti.ms/2nq4FAD
// 9/26/2019
🔆 This❗️⋙ 💙💙🔄 WaPo: Trump impeachment inquiry: Latest news and updates http://wapo.st/2P09WuE [Continually updated]
🔆 This❗️⋙ 💙💙🔄 WaPo, Kate Rabinowitz and Kevin Schaul: Who’s involved in the Trump impeachment inquiry http://wapo.st/2W673dg
// orig published 10/21/2019
~~~~~~~~~~
⋙ 💙💙🔄 📔 Court Filing (1/17/2019): Civil Action No. 1:18-cv-03501 [pdf] http://cnn.it/2CBddZy (111p) Democratic National Committee v.: Russian Federation, DJ Trump For President, Inc (and others)
// 1/17/2019
⋙ 💙💙🔄 TheAtlantic, Yoni Appelbaum: Impeach Donald Trump http://bit.ly/2FykFIP
//March 2019 cover story
⋙ 💙💙🔄 Politico Mag, Darren Samuelsohn: The Only Impeachment Guide You’ll Ever Need http://politi.co/2QHcJGi
// 1/11/2019, As talk of the I-word heats up, here’s POLITICO Magazine’s soup-to-nuts answers to all your questions about the politics—and the practical realities—of removing a president.
⋙ 💙💙🔄 WaPo, Max Boot: Here are 18 reasons Trump could be a Russian asset http://wapo.st/2D7IJQ9
// 1/13/2019
By @jzikah has a new book! Cartoon President http://amzn.to/2QUeZhk
⋙ 💙💙🔄 TheAtlantic, Jeffrey Goldberg (Editor): UNTHINKABLE: 50 Moments That Define an Improbable Presidency http://bit.ly/2RvDFOn
// Jan 2019; Donald Trump’s 50 Most Unthinkable Moments ~ 50 Articles
⋙ 💙💙🔄 Wikipedia: Timeline of investigations into Trump and Russia (2018) http://bit.ly/2Bh12jP
⋙ 💙💙🔄 Axios: Timeline: Every big move in the Mueller investigation http://bit.ly/2Euh3H9
// 12/12/2018
By @Jzikah
⋙ 💙💙🔄 Moyers&Co: Interactive Timeline: Everything We Know About Russia and President Trump http://bit.ly/2uVHc9j
// continually updated
⋙ 💙💙🔄📒 DocumentCloud: Steele Dossier [pdf] http://bit.ly/2y5ZhnF 35p
⋙ 💙💙🔄📒 FBIRecordsVault: Records Between FBI and Christopher Steele http://bit.ly/2KqLoF1
⋙ 💙💙🔄≣ AP: Mueller Investigation documents http://bit.ly/2ihbK0l
⋙ 💙💙🔄≣ CitJourno: Trump/Russian Mob Connections http://www.citjourno.org
By @Jzikah
⋙ 💙💙🔄≣ CNN, Marshall Cohen, Tal Yellen & Liz Stark: Tracking the Russia investigations (documents) http://cnn.it/2hVCpU5
⋙ 💙💙🔄≣ NYT: Russian Hacking and Influence in the U.S. Election http://nyti.ms/2NqFXeY
⋙ 💙💙🔄≣ BrennanCenter: Trump-Russia Investigations http://bit.ly/2yRKcu6
⋙ 💙💙🔄≣ Politico: The people connected to the Russia probes [ Interactive ] http://politi.co/2FUDhz2 //➔ Democrats, Prosecutors, Law Enforcement/Lobbyists/Media,Team Trump, Foreign Nationals
⋙ 💙💙🔄 TheMoscowProject: Trump’s Russia Cover-Up By the Numbers http://bit.ly/2ycY959
// Center for American Progress; 80+ contacts with Russia-linked operatives https://themoscowproject.org/about/ http://bit.ly/2ycY959
By @Jzikah
⋙ 💙💙🔄≣ NBCNews: Russia timeline: Key players, meetings and investigation details http://nbcnews.to/2vtR3YW
⋙ 💙💙🔄≣ DailyBeast: Democrats Release the Fusion GPS Testimony on Trump and Russia http://thebea.st/2qMmH1d w attachment [pdf] ⋙ via Dianne Feinstein http://bit.ly/2FjtlPP
⋙ 💙💙🔄≣ NYT: Justice Department Gives Congress Comey’s Memos on Trump http://nyti.ms/2HdLe2Z
// 4/19/2018 ➔ DocumentCloud: http://bit.ly/2HOGC4z
⋙ 💙💙🔄≣ DOJ: Indictment of Internet Research Agency LLC et al … [PDF] http://bit.ly/2CqdHzD 37p //➔ Mueller Investigation
// 2/16/2018
By @Jzikah
⋙ 💙💙🔄≣ Amy Siskind: The Weekly List ~ “This is How Democracy Ends” https://theweeklylist.org
⋙ 💙💙🔄≣ NYT: Mueller Has List of Questions for Trump http://nyti.ms/2rfDuqK + http://nyti.ms/2HExEKi
// 4/30/2018, Majority Relate to if Trump Obstructed Inquiry on Russia
⋙ 💙💙🔄≣ NYT: The Trump Lawyers’ Confidential Memo to Mueller, Explained [ Document ] http://nyti.ms/2kKPgq9
// 6/2/2018, NYT article about document: http://nyti.ms/2swIZSc
By @Jzikah
⋙ 💙💙🔄≣ TIME: The Arguments President Trump Has Made Against the Mueller Investigation http://ti.me/2MdeARX
// 6/8/2018
⋙ 💙💙🔄≣ TIME: Wikipedia: Links between Trump associates and Russian officials http://bit.ly/2K42VDF
⋙ 💙💙🔄≣ WaPo: Who has been charged in the Russia probe and why http://wapo.st/2toNwH2
// continually updated; WaPo Russia page
⋙ 💙💙🔄≣ ForeignAffairs Anthology: A New Cold War? Russia and America, Then and Now 1947- http://fam.ag/2KEA4dF
By @Jzikah
⋙ 💙💙🔄≣ Justice.gov: Mueller Indictment of 12 Russians in the GRU for Election Hacking [pdf] http://bit.ly/2NbphV6 29p
// 7/13/2018
⋙ 💙💙🔄≣ FactCheck.org: Timeline of Russia Investigation http://bit.ly/2KZ4qaQ
// posted 6/7/2018, updated 7/13/2018; Key moments in the FBI probe of Russia’s efforts to influence the 2016 presidential election; Readable
⋙ 💙💙🔄≣ Legal Process Server: DNC Lawsuit vs Russia, Wikileaks, et al http://bit.ly/2KIOhBq
⋙ 💙💙🔄≣ NYT, Linda Qiu: Truth-Testing Trump’s 250-Plus Attacks on the Russia Inquiry http://nyti.ms/2MY609E
// 8/18/2018
By @Jzikah
⋙ 💙💙🔄≣ Justice.gov: Manafort Plea Agreement [pdf] http://bit.ly/2CZiVb7 17p
// 9/14/2018
⋙ 💙💙🔄💽 NYT: Opinion | Operation Infektion: A three-part video series on Russian disinformation http://nyti.ms/2OHqSSV
// 11/12/2018
⋙ 💙💙🔄≣ PasteMag, Jacob Weindling: A Year of Trump and Russia: The 75 Stories That Defined the Mueller Investigation in 2018 http://bit.ly/2QWN1SU
// 12/28/2018
⋙ 💙💙🔄≣ LawFareBlog: Document: Indictment of Roger Stone [pdf] http://bit.ly/2UdQgmj 24p
// 1/25/2019
By @Jzikah
⋙ 💙💙🔄📋 NYT: Trump and His Associates Had More Than 100 Contacts With Russians Before the Inauguration [Interactive] http://nyti.ms/2MAZCps
// 1/26/2019
⋙ 💙💙🔄 BuzzFeedNews: These Secret Files Show How The Trump Moscow Talks Unfolded While Trump Heaped Praise On Putin http://bit.ly/2DWQ2ed
// 2/5/2019; ⏳TIMELINE ⌛️
⋙ 💙💙🔄 WaPo: What we learned about Trumpworld outreach to Russia since Mueller’s investigation began http://wapo.st/2twkXYE
// 2/19/2019, And what we still don’t know.
⋙ 💙💙🔄 ◕📋 NYT, Larry Buchanan and Karen Yourish: Trump Has Publicly Attacked the Russia Investigation More Than 1,100 Times http://nyti.ms/2T2HSsN
// 2/19/2019
By @Jzikah
;
⋙ 💙💙🔄 ◕📋 WaPo, Philip Bump: The 81 people and organizations just looped into the Trump probe — and why they were included http://wapo.st/2SJrw41
// 3/4/2019
⋙ 💙💙🔄≣ NYT: Full Document: Trump’s Call With the Ukrainian President [Interactive] http://nyti.ms/2lfBkbC (Annotated)
// 9/25/2019″
⋙ 💙💙🔄≣ NYT: The Whistle-Blower Complaint: Read the Document [Interactive] http://nyti.ms/2nq4FAD
// 9/26/2019
⋙ 💙💙🔄≣ NYT: Ukraine Top Diplomat William B. Taylor Jr.‘s Statement to the Impeachment Inquiry http://nyti.ms/2P80Yvn
// 10/22/2019
By @Jzikah
📔 🔄 🔆 This❗️⋙ HouseIntelCommittee (HPSCI): Committees Release Testimony of Yovanovich and McKinley as Part of New Public Phase of Impeachment Inquiry http://bit.ly/36vgIPr
// 11/4/2014
● Yovanovich: Key Excerpts: http://bit.ly/2PTqCnM ; Transcript: http://bit.ly/2PQOete ; CSPAN: http://cs.pn/343IO2g
● McKinley: Key Excerpts: http://bit.ly/32cHgRT ; Transcript: http://bit.ly/2NJkdZE
📔 🔄 🔆 This❗️⋙ HouseIntelCommittee (HPSCI): Committees Release Sondland and Volker Transcripts as Part of Impeachment Inquiry http://bit.ly/2WKuedv
// 11/5/2019; New Text Messages Also Released
● Sondland: Key Excerpts: http://bit.ly/33nkqsq ; Transcript: http://bit.ly/2NjiXxC ; CSPAN: http://cs.pn/2sb6uUA
● Volker: Key Excerpts: http://bit.ly/34A7mQE ; Transcript: http://bit.ly/2WOhnXE ; CSPAN: http://cs.pn/2qxGWjQ
● Volker texts: Key Excerpts: http://bit.ly/2qtbhju ; Transcript: http://bit.ly/30QhpPi
By @Jzikah
📔 🔄 🔆 This❗️⋙ HouseIntelCommittee (HPSCI): Committees Release Ambassador Bill Taylor’s Deposition Transcript as Part of Impeachment Inquiry http://bit.ly/2JWZiRS http://bit.ly/2WKuedv
// 11/6/2016
● Taylor: Key Excerpts: http://bit.ly/2rhMrDn ; Transcript: http://bit.ly/2WQCys7 ; CSPAN: http://cs.pn/2KjMcya
📔 🔄 🔆 This❗️⋙ HouseIntelCommittee (HPSCI): Committees Release Ambassador George Kent’s Deposition Transcript as Part of Impeachment Inquiry http://bit.ly/2JWZiRS http://bit.ly/2pQjH4j
// 11/7/2016
● Kent: Key Excerpts: http://bit.ly/2CjYwud ; Transcript: http://bit.ly/2WRwZK5 ; CSPAN: http://cs.pn/2KjMcya
📔 🔄 🔆 This❗️⋙ HouseIntelCommittee (HPSCI): Committees Release Vindman and Hill Transcripts as Part of Impeachment Inquiry http://bit.ly/34JUlEa
// 11/8/2019
● Vindman: Key Excerpts: http://bit.ly/2NSQEoL ; Transcript: http://bit.ly/32sSKRt ; CSPAN: http://cs.pn/2QA1h2Q
● Fiona Hill: Key Excerpts: http://bit.ly/32xLow2 ; Transcript: http://bit.ly/2X12TDN ; CSPAN: http://cs.pn/349Dnix
By @Jzikah
📔 🔄 🔆 This❗️⋙ HouseIntelCommittee (HPSCI): Committees Release Laura Cooper’s Transcript as Part of Impeachment Inquiry http://bit.ly/34SP3pT
// 11/11/2019
● Cooper: Key Excerpts: http://bit.ly/34VAZvT ; Transcript: http://bit.ly/2NAN0kv CSPAN: http://cs.pn/2QNBTqj
📔 🔄 🔆 This❗️⋙ HouseIntelCommittee (HPSCI): Committees Release Croft and Anderson Transcripts as Part ofImpeachment Inquiry http://bit.ly/2Q5m4ep
// 11/14/2019
● Croft: Key Excerpts: http://bit.ly/2O7AszY ; Transcript: http://bit.ly/2qN1BQF
● Anderson: Key Excerpts: http://bit.ly/2qGPlRU ; Transcript: http://bit.ly/2qN1Knb
By @Jzikah
📔 🔄 🔆 This❗️⋙ HouseIntelCommittee (HPSCI):: Committees Release Morrison and Williams Transcripts as Part of Impeachment Inquiry http://bit.ly/2Q5m4ep
// 11/16/2019
● Morrison: Key Excerpts: http://bit.ly/2KqPAYg ; Transcript: http://bit.ly/2KtPsHn; CSPAN: http://cs.pn/2qxGWjQ
● Williams: Key Excerpts: http://bit.ly/2CSjMra ; Transcript: http://bit.ly/37hpNM ; CSPAN: http://cs.pn/2QA1h2Q
📔 🔄 🔆 This❗️⋙ HouseIntelCommittee (HPSCI):: Committees Release Holmes and Hale Transcripts as Part of Impeachment Inquiry http://bit.ly/2KxG2Lh
// 11/18/2019
● Holmes: Key Excerpts: http://bit.ly/2XyrQa8 ; Transcript: http://bit.ly/2Xsy7nq ; CSPAN: http://cs.pn/349Dnix
● Hale: Key Excerpts: http://bit.ly/2Kw91if ; Transcript: http://bit.ly/2r4jB9D ; CSPAN: http://cs.pn/2QNBTqj
By @Jzikah
📔 🔄 🔆 This❗️⋙ HouseIntelCommittee (HPSCI):: Committees Release Sandy, Reeker and Other Transcripts As Part of Impeachment Inquiry http://bit.ly/2OMsL2D
// 11/26/2019
● Sandy: Key Excerpts: http://bit.ly/2KWbgfe ; Transcript: http://bit.ly/37DQ1sc
● Reeker: Key Excerpts: http://bit.ly/2XRsFLq ; Transcript: http://bit.ly/2ruKyTQ
By @Jzikah
⋙ 💙💙🔄 📔 This❗️⋙ HPSCI: Trump-Ukraine impeachment inquiry report http://bit.ly/2LlnJsX
// 12/3/2019; House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence
⋙ 💙💙🔄 📔 This❗️⋙ Report: House Judiciary Committee report on their articles of impeachment against President Donald John Trump http://bit.ly/2Ek2rIa 658p
// 10/15/2019
⏳WaPo: The full Trump-Ukraine impeachment timeline http://wapo.st/35odsUl
@jzikah has a book! Cartoon President http://amzn.to/2QUeZhk
🐣 RT @thedailybeast Farewell, 2019. As we toast to more hard-hitting journalism in 2020 (supported by our dedicated members), let’s look back at our biggest hits of the last 365 days. From Epstein to the whistleblowers, stay tuned as we countdown the top 25 articles of the year. 📌 https://twitter.com/thedailybeast/status/1212195370580750336?s=20
Politico, Eric Edelman and Franklin Miller: Russia Is Beefing Up Its Nuclear Arsenal. Here’s What the U.S. Needs to Do. http://politi.co/37q0yq2
// The two-sided debate over New START misses a third, more realistic approach.
🐣 RT @ThePlumLineGS My latest: The awful irony at the core of Trump’s disinformation against the Bidens is that Joe Biden *actually did* combat corruption in Ukraine, while Trump used it as a cover story to advance *his own* corrupt personal and political ends:
⋙ WaPo, Greg Sargent: Trump is openly calling for his trial to be as corrupt as possible http://wapo.st/37qAfQA
🐣 RT @RichardHaass So after 3 years of no international crises, @realDonaldTrump is facing one w Iran b/c he has rejected diplomacy & another w N Korea b/c he has asked too much of diplomacy. He will face both w little allied backing, less interagency process, & amidst impeachment. Happy New Year.
WaPo, Jennifer Rubin: The jig is up: Bolton and Mulvaney have no excuse for not testifying http://wapo.st/2SF17s1
🐣 RT @ EsperDoD At the direction of the Commander in Chief @POTUS, I have authorized the deployment of an infantry battalion from the Immediate Response Force (IRF) of the @82ndABNDiv to the @CENTCOM area of operations in response to recent events in Iraq. 📌 https://twitter.com/EsperDoD/status/1212167794160263169?s=20
🐣 RT @RNicholasBurns I had thought originally Trump should consider attending the 75th anniversary end of WWII in Moscow. But not now after Putin’s lies about #Poland, rehabilitation of Stalin and denial of Soviet collusion with Hitler. Poland and the Baltic States were their victims.
⋙ 🐣 RT @IlvesToomas After all the freaky, outlandish, horrifying and boorish claims from Russia about Poland, not Germany or the USSR starting WWII, indeed blaming the war on Poland, how could anyone go to Moscow this May 9th. Ask your heads of state and government how on earth they could go there?
🐣 RT @glennkirschner2 Can we do a quick conflict-of-interest refresher? Giuliani just said he’d be willing to “prosecute” the Senate trial in which he represents the president who is . . . wait for it . . . the defendant! Maybe he just wants to prosecute a case so strong that even HE could win it?
CNN, Elie Honig: The Trump cover-up is unfolding before our eyes http://cnn.it/2sEGEZz
NYT: Impeachment Trial Looming, Chief Justice Reflects on Judicial Independence http://nyti.ms/2Qd0h3V
// Chief Justice John Roberts’s year-end report on the judiciary praised civics education, but it was not hard to detect a timely subtext that appeared to be addressed to President Trump.
“We should reflect on our duty to judge without fear or favor, deciding each matter with humility, integrity and dispatch,” he wrote in the report. “As the new year begins, and we turn to the tasks before us, we should each resolve to do our best to maintain the public’s trust that we are faithfully discharging our solemn obligation to equal justice under law.”
[John] Jay and his colleagues, Chief Justice Roberts wrote, “ultimately succeeded in convincing the public of the virtues of the principles embodied in the Constitution.”
“Those principles leave no place for mob violence,” the chief justice wrote. “But in the ensuing years, we have come to take democracy for granted, and civic education has fallen by the wayside. In our age, when social media can instantly spread rumor and false information on a grand scale, the public’s need to understand our government, and the protections it provides, is ever more vital. The judiciary has an important role to play in civic education.”
The report seemed to continue a conversation with Mr. Trump about the role of the courts.
In 2018, the two men had a sharp exchange, with Mr. Trump suggesting that federal judges carry out the wishes of the presidents who appointed them and Chief Justice Roberts defending the independence and integrity of the judicial branch.
The exchange started when Mr. Trump called a judge who had ruled against his administration’s asylum policy “an Obama judge.” In response, the chief justice said the president had misunderstood the role of the federal courts in the constitutional system.
“We do not have Obama judges or Trump judges, Bush judges or Clinton judges,” Chief Justice Roberts said in a statement. “What we have is an extraordinary group of dedicated judges doing their level best to do equal right to those appearing before them. That independent judiciary is something we should all be thankful for.”
Mr. Trump took issue with the chief justice’s statement on Twitter. “Sorry Chief Justice John Roberts, but you do indeed have ‘Obama judges,’” Mr. Trump wrote, “and they have a much different point of view than the people who are charged with the safety of our country.”
On Tuesday, the chief justice returned to his theme. “We should celebrate our strong and independent judiciary, a key source of national unity and stability,” he wrote. “But we should also remember that justice is not inevitable.” …
The chief justice singled out, but did not name, a colleague, praising his exemplary educational work. “As just one example,” Chief Justice Roberts wrote, “the current chief judge of the District of Columbia Circuit has, over the past two decades, quietly volunteered as a tutor at a local elementary school, inspiring his court colleagues to join in the effort.”
That judge is Merrick B. Garland, who was nominated to the Supreme Court by President Barack Obama in 2016 but denied a hearing by Senate Republicans. Mr. Trump appointed Justice Neil M. Gorsuch to fill the vacancy.
⭕ 30 Dec 2019
💽 MSNBC, LastWord: Lawrence: All the president’s men must testify in Senate impeachment trial http://on.msnbc.com/2MIXHRj
// The New York Times has a stunning report that sheds new light on the Ukraine aid freeze, including the attempt of Mike Pompeo, John Bolton, and Mark Esper to get Trump to release the military aid. Lawrence O’Donnell says that those men must now testify in the Senate impeachment trial in order for the proceedings to be fair.
RawStory: Here’s how Nancy Pelosi can psychologically wreck Trump by stalling impeachment for 36 days http://bit.ly/2Qe0d4a
⋙ 🐣 RT @RosenzweigP I think I may have figured out why @SpeakerPelosi is holding the articles of impeachment (or at least part of the reason): She wants to make sure that when POTUS gives the SOTU on Feb 4, he is still under impeachment. /1
⋙ 🐣 RT @RosenzweigP Imagine what it would be like if he got to give the SOTU having been cleared by the Senate — it would be a full-blown triumphal rant. But if the impeachment is still pending, it might, instead, be an unhinged narcissistic screed of almost unimaginable insanity. /2
⋙ 🐣 RT @RosenzweigP Just think of how painful it would be for 53 Republican Senators to sit in the halls of Congress, watching a live meltdown on national TV. That, alone, would be worth the price of admission. Maybe I’m wrong and this hasn’t crossed her mind — but I love the idea. /fin
WaPo, Michael Gerson: It’s up to voters to prevent four more years of institutional vandalism http://wapo.st/2F7ZJWY
NYT, Jesse Drucker and Jim Tankersley: How Big Companies Won New Tax Breaks From the Trump Administration http://nyti.ms/2SGRFo6
// As the Treasury Department prepared to enact the 2017 Republican tax overhaul, corporate lobbyists swarmed — and won big.
WaPo, Joe Scarborough: Trump’s threat to democracy http://wapo.st/2SGEDa6 “Adm. William McRaven — the man who oversaw the raid that killed Osama bin Laden — believes Donald Trump is the greatest threat facing American democracy.”
🐣 RT @DeadlineWH “I tend to lean towards… that Bolton is biding his time and he’s building up political coverage so that when he finally goes to testify, he looks as though he’s been forced… He’s covering his bases” – @Elise_Jordan w/ @NicolleDWallace 💽 https://twitter.com/DeadlineWH/status/1211779842611589120?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @maggieNYT Mulvaney and Blair’s exchange on June 27 makes clear they saw the freeze of the Ukraine military aid as a potential political problem. With the whistleblower complaint, it moved to a question of whether it was a legal problem. 📌 https://twitter.com/maggieNYT/status/1211845024608063488?s=20
NYT: Judge Dismisses Lawsuit by Ex-Trump Aide Subpoenaed in Impeachment Inquiry http://nyti.ms/37pbvs4
// Judge Richard J. Leon acted after the House dropped its subpoena to Charles Kupperman and mooted the case, which had been closely watched for its implications about whether John Bolton would testify about President Trump’s pressuring Ukraine.
NBCNews: ‘Game changer’: Top Democrats say bombshell report shows need for witnesses in Senate impeachment trial http://nbcnews.to/39ux4ZR
// Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, then-national security adviser John Bolton and Defense Secretary Mark Esper urged Trump to release the aid, with Bolton saying it was “in America’s interest,” the report said.
🐣 RT @maggieNYT Trump reiterated his desire to keep the hold as “officials at the Office of Management and Budget — which had embraced the role of finding ways to make Mr. Trump’s policy demands a reality — searched for a legal justification to maintain the freeze.”
⋙ NYT: Schumer Demands Witnesses Be Called at Senate Impeachment Trial http://nyti.ms/2SDCN9S
// Senator Chuck Schumer was responding to an article that detailed how a number of White House advisers dealt with the president’s order to freeze military aid for Ukraine.
🐣 The NYT article about Pompeo, Bolton & Esper [ http://nyti.ms/39nzidE ] is important, but so is this article about the GOP Senate and WH officials shunning Giuliani [ http://bit.ly/2EZEypV ]. Will Lindsey go ahead with his invite for Rudy to testify to Senate Judiciary? Or is he now radioactive and we’ll be spared that circus?
🐣 RT @ChrisCoons Wise, urgent, and important words from @SenDougJones that everyone should take a moment to read. ¤ The Senate impeachment trial must be fair, it must include relevant witnesses and documents, and it must be focused on one simple thing: the truth.
⋙ 🐣 RT @washingtonpost Opinion: “Every trial is a pursuit of truth,” writes Alabama Sen. Doug Jones for The Post. ¤ “Will my colleagues in the Senate uphold that?”
⋙⋙ WaPo, Doug Jones: Every trial is a pursuit of truth. Will my colleagues in the Senate uphold that? http://wapo.st/3544CuA
🐣 RT @NoahSchachtman NEW: Parnas is begging the court to let him spill to Schiff & co.
⋙ DailyBeast, Betsy Swan: Parnas Pushes to Share His Info With House Intel http://bit.ly/39nwSM2
// The ex-Giuliani associate asked for permission to send the contents of an iPhone to Hill investigators.
Law&Crime: Bolton Has No Excuse, ‘Must Testify’ Now That Judge Has Dismissed Kupperman’s Lawsuit: Legal Experts http://bit.ly/2F3ucFo
Salon, Amanda Marcotte: Mick Mulvaney can run, but he can’t hide: White House chief tries to duck Ukraine responsibility http://bit.ly/2tdwDCG
// White House chief of staff tries CYA maneuver — too late! He already confessed to his role in Ukraine scandal
🐣 RT @brianstelter By @sbg1: “Even now, three years into the Trump Presidency, there is no language to fully capture the madness of all this, though many of my journalistic colleagues have gone to great lengths to record & codify just how disturbingly nutty 2019 has been…”
⋙ NewYorker, Susan Glasser: Our Year of Trumpschmerz http://bit.ly/2tjTCfy
Lawfare, Jacob Schultz: Federal Judge Dismisses Kupperman Subpoena Suit http://bit.ly/36c8HhI
🐣 RT @neal_katyal See below. Now that Judge Leon has dismissed the Kupperman/Bolton case, Judge Jackson’s ruling is the definitive word. Bolton must testify.
⋙ 🐣 RT @jgeltzer 2 takeaways from this obviously correct dismissal of Kupperman case:
– The definitive word on Trump’s absolute immunity claim remains that it’s bogus.
– Given that & now given yesterday’s new Ukraine reporting, Bolton’s refusal to testify is utterly unjustified & unjustifiable.
⋙⋙ 🔆 This❗️⋙ 🐣 RT @kyledcheney BREAKING: Judge dismisses the lawsuit regarding Ukraine testimony from Bolton deputy Charles Kupperman, declares case moot. https://twitter.com/jgeltzer/status/1211772565133414400?s=20/photo/1
Newsweek: Trump’s Alleged Abuses Of Power Make 2019 One of the Most Corrupt Years In History, Former Federal Prosecutor Says http://bit.ly/2ZChgjj
🐣 RT @ Trump considering adding some of his staunchest defenders from House Judiciary & Intel committees (think Jordan, Collins, Ratcliffe) to Senate trial team. McCarthy floated the idea earlier this month. [link] via @WSJ
⋙ WSJ: White House Counsel Drives Aggressive Trump Impeachment Defense http://on.wsj.com/2MFFS5i
// Pat Cipollone and deputies have a key role but internal White House tensions persist
WaPo, Aaron Blake: Rudy Giuliani, Venezuela and the Logan Act http://wapo.st/35cnY0s Analysis: Giuliani’s maneuvering in Venezuela sounds a lot like Ukraine
WaPo: Trump’s lawyer and the Venezuelan president: How Giuliani got involved in back-channel talks with Maduro http://wapo.st/36cVPYx
WaPo, Philip Bump: Giuliani’s Ukraine efforts are a formalization of the rumor-to-Trump pipeline http://wapo.st/2F4djug
Politico, Natasha Bertrand: Peter Strzok accuses the federal government of violating his rights http://politi.co/2Qxn4GF
// In a new court filing, the former FBI agent says the FBI and DOJ abrogated his right to privacy.
WaPo, James Comey: This is what it is like to be attacked by the president http://wapo.st/2SG1bb0
WaPo, Greg Sargent: Explosive new revelations just weakened Trump’s impeachment defenses http://wapo.st/2tjwxJW
🌎 DemcastUSA: Want to be Healthier, Wealthier, and Wise? Live in a Blue State http://bit.ly/39q8MjE https://twitter.com/DemCastUSA/status/1211658795597881346?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @GeorgeTakei The mad emperor Caligula, whose appetite for women including his own relatives was infamous, was convinced of his own god-like status and spent treasury funds extravagantly on his residences and personal leisure. He also silenced the Senate when it would not bow down to him.
🐣 RT @earvland Gee, I wonder why Pompeo and Esper went to Mar-a-Lago today? Coordinating with potential witnesses much, @realDonaldTrump?
⋙ 🐣 RT @burnshark1 I gather that we are ramping up our war with Iran. Our government no longer informs of when we make major military moves.
⋙⋙ 🐣 hopefully it’s “only” witness-tampering
🐣 RT @DutyToWarn Trump’s rate of lying is literally off the charts even for prodigious liars. “The most stunning way Trump’s lies differed from our participants’, though, was in their cruelty. An astonishing 50 percent of Trump’s lies were hurtful or disparaging.”
⋙ ChicagoTrib, Bella DePaulo (2017): I study liars. I’ve never seen one like Donald Trump. http://bit.ly/2F5TH9i
// 12/8/2017
🐣 Trump thinks he IS the country.
⋙ 🐣 RT @itsreallyalexb Exactly. “L’etat c’est-moi”, the most infamous quote of an equally bad leader, Louis XIV of France.
⋙⋙ 🐣 Back then, sovereignty was thought to be embodied in the king. Now it’s not. That was what was so radical about our Declaration, and what is so retrograde about Trump.
NYT, Ed Simon: Why We Will Need Walt Whitman in 2020 http://nyti.ms/35afA1J //➔ “Leaves of Grass” (especially in its purest form in the first edition) is a beautiful celebration of American democracy
// With our democracy in crisis, the poet and prophet of the American ideal should be our guide.
🐣 RT @OMGno2trump They are cowards and worse. Refusing to testify about Trump’s crimes is what co-conspirators do. These are not patriots or men of honor. They are charlatans and traitors who are betraying their oaths to the constitution. They belong in jail with Trump.
⋙ 🐣 RT @ This man on the left [Bolton], ever ready to send our troops into harms way, can’t even find the courage to testify and tell the truth about Trump. Seems to be cut from the same cloth as the man on the right [Graham]. Cowards, I mean full on cowards.
🐣 RT @McFaul The destruction of the liberal international order– i.e. break up of NATO, EU, WTO, etc — and weakening of democracies. He’d love to go back to the 19th century with Russia as a major power in a multipolar word in which values do not play a prominent role in int affairs.
⋙ 🐣 RT @illmatic808 Michael, what would you say Putin’s ultimate goal is?
🔄 💙💙 UnhackTheVote: Downloads http://bit.ly/36cUwc0
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⭕ 29 Dec 2019
🐣 RT @tribelaw This is just devastating. No wonder Trump would rather be caught obstructing Congress (Article II) than have these details (Article I) get out.
⋙ YahooNews, Ya’han Jones: New Report Details Unrest Among Trump Officials As Trump Withheld Ukraine Aid http://yhoo.it/2QcSjYN
🐣 RT @mccaffreyr3 As far as I know… never in our history have we had a more intemperate and boorish political leader than Trump. His language and example are coarsening American public life.
🐣 RT @McFaul I agree. Tragically, Putin has the power and will to annex territory, intervene militarily to prop up autocratic allies, and even meddle in US elections. Few other countries in world (US, China?) have that same capability. Maybe no leader in the world has that same will.
⋙ 🐣 RT @NarangVipin Russia’s overall power metrics may make it a middle power, but it is simply too nuclear, too cyber, and too asymmetrically aggressive to treat it as such imho.
🐣 RT @glennkirschner2 Come Jan. 2021, there will need to be a commission established to investigate & prosecute Trump, his co-conspirators & those who covered-up his crimes (including elected officials who declared Trump committed no crime KNOWING FULL WELL Trump committed crimes against the US … 📌 https://twitter.com/glennkirschner2/status/1211425078535184392?s=20
⋙⋙ 🐣 RT @robreiner We now know that Trump was told it was illegal to withhold aid to Ukraine. Like the career Criminal he is, he didn’t give a shit. Advice to Pompeo, Mulvaney, Bolton: Save your asses-Testify. Per Rick Wilson: “Everything Trump touches Dies”
⋙ 🐣 RT @glennkirschner2 See 18 USC sec. 3, Accessory After the Fact. Also, judicial confirmation hearings – Kavanaugh first among them – will need to be investigated for perjury and judges (esp. those rated “unqualified”) referred to DOJ for prosecution and to Congress for impeachment.
⋙ 🐣 RT @glennkirschner2 No turning the other cheek this time. The critics and ideologies will cry foul, claiming it’s political vindictiveness. But it’s not – it’s holding criminals accountable at the first available opportunity – when our country once again has a law-abiding president …
⋙ 🐣 RT @glennkirschner2 and a law-enforcing Attorney General. 2021 will be the year of the #TrumpCrimesCommission #TCC #JusticeIsComin
NakedCapitalism, Richard Smith (2014): R. Hunter Biden Should Declare Who Really Owns His New Ukrainian Employer, Burisma Holdings http://bit.ly/2Qur6jd
// 5/21/2014; deep dive with conspiratorial overtones; some notes more recent
⋙ MediaBias/Fact-check for NakedCapitalism: “LEFT-CENTER BIAS These media sources have a slight to moderate liberal bias. They often publish factual information that utilizes loaded words (wording that attempts to […]”
🐣 RT @sandibachom I’m a New York journalist. I was in the Deutsche Bank hearings, Lev Parnas bail hearing and 3 days in court with Jeffrey Epstein and 2 days after his death. TRUST me there is some really bad stuff coming down involving Trump, ALL these cases come back to Trump watch SDNY 📌 https://twitter.com/sandibachom/status/1207722890495496193?s=20
🐣 RT @TheDemCoalition “She is going to go down in history as one of the three strongest speakers in the United States.” ¤ Call your Senators at (202) 224-3121 and tell them why they should vote to #RemoveTrump here: http://bit.ly/SenateTrial
💽 MSNBC, AMJoy: Nancy Pelosi praised for successful Trump impeachment http://on.msnbc.com/37i8E3W
// Nancy Pelosi is praised for presiding over the Donald Trump impeachment process successfully, and is hailed as one of the most powerful House speakers of all time. Joy Reid and her panel discuss why in Joy’s view House Speaker Nancy Pelosi ‘Won the Year’ in 2019 politics.
🐣 RT @RepJohnLewis Do not get lost in a sea of despair. Be hopeful, be optimistic. Our struggle is not the struggle of a day, a week, a month, or a year, it is the struggle of a lifetime. Never, ever be afraid to make some noise and get in good trouble, necessary trouble. #goodtrouble
// 6/17/2018
💙 ABCNews (June 13): ‘I think I’d take it’: In exclusive interview, Trump says he would listen if foreigners offered dirt on opponents http://abcn.ws/2IdTd3b
// by Lucien Bruggeman: President Trump made the remark during an exclusive interview with ABC News. [Trump talked to Stephanopoulos over two days]
🐣 RT @JohnJHarwood outstanding reporting that raises the question: who could possibly have persuaded Trump to so doggedly withhold military aid to the country at war with Vladimir Putin’s Russia?
🐣 RT @BillKristol Secrecy.
Secrecy on the aid freeze.
Secrecy on asking for dirt on Biden.
Secrecy on the whistleblower complaint.
Secrecy as Trump withholds documents and witnesses.
Why?
No national security reason.
Secrecy because they knew it was all rotten to the core.
🐣 RT @RepValDemings In this new reporting, additional confirmation that:
The President’s goals in Ukraine were personal political gain, not U.S. policy.
There was a quid pro quo.
He only gave up because he got caught.
This is why we impeached. This is why the Senate must hold a REAL trial.
🐣 RT @neal_katyal Drip…drip…drip ¤ “Trump’s demands sent shock waves through the White House& Pentagon,created deep rifts within the senior ranks of his administration…and ended only after Trump learned of a damning whistleblower report” ¤ Senate should have witnesses
🐣 [To @parrhizzia] […] Giuliani has been exposed for the drooling fool he is and this NYT story can’t be ignored.
🐣 [To @parrhizzia] I sense a tipping point, but I’m an optimist. Lindsey G saying Rudy needs to clear his Ukraine “dirt” with the Intel Community is huge. The NYT piece piles on that Pompeo and Bolton were alarmed. We’ll see
🐣 RT @JohnWDean A “smoking gun” conversation. Just one of many. Any DOJ with an honest and uncorrupted Attorney General would be investigating what certainly appears to be a criminal conspiracy — and it is ongoing!
🐣 RT @JoyceWhiteVance Buried in this story-Trump had executive branch lawyers working on a theory that he could override Congressional funding decisions because he was POTUS. Every Republican lawmaker must be asked if they support this destruction of checks & balances.
⋙ 🐣 If this were to be argued on the merits, Trump’s best defense seems to be that he he really, REALLY believed Ukraine was corrupt and is generally suspicious of foreign aid. But not covered in this article: the changes demanded to the proposed announcement for Zelensky to use.
🐣 RT @eliehonig Other than Trump’s conversation with Zelensky, this is the most important piece of evidence in the case. Pompeo and Bolton know what happened – and yet they remain in hiding. They need to testify about what happened in that room, whoever it may help or hurt.
🐣 RT @TheRickWilson Now you know why he doesn’t want them to testify
⋙ 🐣 RT @JoyceWhiteVance I’ve said this so many times it’s going to end up on my tombstone. No one keeps a witness who can exonerate them from testifying. No one.
⋙⋙ 🐣 RT @swavedave1 Nancy Pelosi has another bomb in her arsenal yet . There is no way she’d send this to the Senate without more devastating stuff that’s only known to a few at this point . This isn’t it ,it will be far worse and may take him out . Shes playing for keeps.
⋙ 🐣 RT @forbestonow Trump does not want his senior staff to testify because he is allergic to the truth. It makes him break out in tweets.
🐣 RT @TheRickWilson This is a rather significant development and demonstrates just how deep the White House commitment to preventing testimony is, and why.
🐣 RT @pithywidow It’s almost as if the Speaker of the House is smart
⋙ 🐣 RT @PhilippeReines You know what would be happening now had @SpeakerPelosi sent the Articles of Impeachment to the Senate the day the House passed them? ¤ Nothing. Mitch McConnell would be doing nothing. ¤ By holding them Pelosi can leverage this devastating new evidence.
🐣 RT @RadioFreeTom I argued with @JRubinBlogger and others that Pelosi shouldn’t hold up the impeachment articles for very long, if at all. I didn’t think it would matter. ¤ This makes clear that I was wrong and Pelosi and everyone else was right.
🐣 RT @dcherring People like Pompeo & Bolton + knew this Trump/Rudy stuff was bad- this is yet more proof. ¤ I wonder how many Senate R’s would defect if they (forthrightly) testify?
🐣 RT @emptywheel This is actually not right. ¤ The NYT downplays bipartisan congressional pressure, and as a result makes this a Dem v GOP issue, falsely.
🐣 RT @nedprice Extraordinary that this extortive plot — which mortgaged our national security for Trump’s interests — went on for nearly 3 months with little notice until the whistleblower came forward. Chilling to think what else may be happening behind the scenes.
🐣 RT @RepAdamSchiff Despite the President’s obstruction, additional damning evidence of his abuse of power continues to come to light. ¤ The question is whether the Senate will demand to see these and other emails and hear from those who were involved. ¤ Their constitutional duty demands it.
⋙ 🐣 RT @kyledcheney NYT reports that Pompeo, Bolton, Esper met with Trump in late August to plead with him to release military aid. He rebuffed their effort.
🐣 RT @DrGJackBrown The exposure of these crucial facts reported in today’s NYTimes further validates Speaker Pelosi’s strategy of a speedy impeachment — followed by withholding the delivery of The Articles of Impeachment to the Senate for trial. With each day/week, Pelosi moves closer to checkmate.
🔆 This❗️⋙ 💙💙 NYT: Behind the Ukraine Aid Freeze: 84 Days of Conflict and Confusion http://nyti.ms/39nzidE “‘Expect Congress to become unhinged’”
// The inside story of President Trump’s demand to halt military assistance to an ally shows the price he was willing to pay to carry out his agenda.
NYDailyNews, Rick Wilson: A decade of loss: What slipped away in America in the 2010s http://bit.ly/3535jEx
🐣 RT @nycsouthpaw Newly unsealed papers held at Yale reveal how David Rockefeller and his staff at Chase Bank arranged the Shah’s admission to the US, causing the embassy takeover in Tehran, and then worked to prolong the hostage crisis in order to aid Reagan’s campaign.
⋙ NYT: How a Chase Bank Chairman Helped the Deposed Shah of Iran Enter the U.S. http://nyti.ms/37gyp4L
// The fateful decision in 1979 to admit Mohammed Reza Pahlavi prompted the seizure of the American Embassy in Tehran and helped doom the Carter presidency.
CNN, Nathan Hodge: It’s been a banner year for authoritarian leaders. Especially Vladimir Putin http://cnn.it/2SCPt0O
Crooks&Liars: Stalker-in-Chief Trump Can’t Deal With Nancy Pelosi Ignoring Him http://bit.ly/362SeMF
🐣 So … Lindsey Graham is distancing himself from Giuliani and Ivanka Trump is distancing herself from her father.
Hmmm … ⋙ Sputnik: Putin Thanks Trump for Sharing Information That Helped Prevent Terrorist Acts in Russia http://bit.ly/2Zz2R7l “A set of issues of mutual interest was discussed.” ⋙ (Asylum?)
🐣 Looks like some GOP Senators took the time to read about the disinfo Rudy has been collecting and are distancing themselves from him, even Lindsey who had prev invited him to testify to Senate Judiciary. This in spite of Trump’s refrain “talk to Rudy” http://bit.ly/2EZEypV
🐣 RT @swin24 “Giuliani has not briefed any Republican Senate leaders, including Senator Mitch McConnell (R-KY), according to two individuals with knowledge of the Senate leaders’ schedules” despite Trump’s apparent recommendation to Rudy that he brief gop senators on his eurotrip, docs, Biden
⋙ 🐣 RT @swin24 “Another top aide in a different Republican office said their senator had informed staff that they had “no interest at all” in meeting with Giuliani on this, fearing it would amount to a “waste of time,” if not something worse.”
🐣 RT @MsMariaT So @LindseyGrahamSC and @GOP know that the president’s personal lawyer is spreading Russian propaganda. Why don’t they get in front of cameras and come out and say it? Why don’t they tell @realDonaldTrump?
🐣 RT @DailyBeast In the weeks leading up to their impeachment trial, senators on Capitol Hill are actively avoiding meeting with Rudy Giuliani—partly because they fear he might try to pass off Russian conspiracy theories as fact
⋙ 💙💙 DailyBeast, Erin Banco and Asawin Suebsaeng: Graham: Rudy Should Scrub Evidence for Russian Propaganda http://bit.ly/2EZEypV
// “I wouldn’t trust Rudy to represent me in a parking dispute so I’d say avoid,” one senior GOP Senate aide said when asked about any plans for a Ukraine briefing.
“He has not shared any of that information with me,” said Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) about the information Giuliani obtained overseas. “My advice to Giuliani would be to share what he got from Ukraine with the IC [intelligence community] to make sure it’s not Russia propaganda. I’m very suspicious of what the Russians are up to all over the world.”
When asked about Sen. Graham’s recommendation to approach the intelligence community with his materials, and if he agreed that he should do so as due diligence, Giuliani would only reply to The Daily Beast, “It’s not Russian propaganda.”
🐣 RT @Axios Sen. Lindsey Graham warned Rudy Giuliani in an interview with The Daily Beast to make sure that the information he has gathered about Trump’s opponents in Ukraine isn’t Russian propaganda.
⋙ Axios: Lindsey Graham warns Giuliani to make sure Ukraine dirt isn’t Russian propaganda http://bit.ly/355hNLU
🐣 RT @robreiner Democracy is in the fight of its life. The President of the United States has allied himself with and is taking directions from Vladimir Putin. Make no mistake, if he is not removed through Impeachment or voted out, America will continue to slide into Autocracy.
🐣 RT @BillKristol What if McConnell has privately signaled Murkowski et al that he’s fine with a little rebellion that would “force” him to accede to witnesses and a real trial, which could then accomplish McConnell’s true goal of getting rid of Trump while seeming to have been loyal to Trump?
⋙ 🐣 Now, don’t YOU get delusional!
🐣 RT @MichaelJMorrell This is a big deal. It is hard to imagine that Iranian proxies were not behind this attack. If so, it crosses a US redline for responding to Iranian provocations, which include attacks on ships, the shoot down of a US drone, & an attack on oil facilities.
⋙ WSJ: Rocket Attack in Iraq Kills U.S. Contractor, Wounds Four U.S. Troops http://on.wsj.com/2tagcac
// 12/28/2019; U.S. hasn’t assigned blame but is focusing on militia backed by Iran
🐣📊 RT @MSNBC A new ad campaign targets GOP senators such as Sen. Collins, calling for them break with Sen. McConnell and advocate for witnesses in the Trump impeachment trial. The ad campaign was paid for by a Republican advocacy group. https://twitter.com/MSNBC/status/1211188118956716033?s=20/photo/1
// WaPo/ABC Poll: Should Trump allow his aides to testify? Yes 71%, No 22%, DK 7% (12/10-15/2019)
⋙ 💽 MSNBC, RachelMaddow: Advocates for fair Senate impeachment trial press Collins, others http://on.msnbc.com/2sj7MgN
// Senator Susan Collins is among several senators targeted by a new ad campaign paid for by Republicans who want to see a real impeachment trial with witnesses and evidence in the Senate, and hope to convince a few senators to resist Mitch McConnell’s plan to coordinate with the Trump White House.
⭕ 28 Dec 2019
🐣 RT @songlibah https://twitter.com/songlibah/status/1211039372952379393?s=20/photo/1
// tags: fake followers Trump fake followers; fake Trump followers 70.2% per SparkToro which uses a different methodology than TwitterAudit; (I have 2% w TwitterAudit, but 7% w SparkToro, mostly because SparkToro counts anyone who hasn’t tweeted for 90 days as “fake”)
DailyBeast, Margaret Carlson: McConnell’s Big Mistake Defending Trump? Listening to Him. http://bit.ly/37r0zdt
// The president’s calling the shots for the majority leader now, and it’s not going well.
🐣 RT @joekennedy The President of the United States spent last night amplifying far right accounts, disinformation, memes, and videos to millions of online followers across the world. ¤ This is not how the leader of the free world should behave. This is not normal. This is not ok.
🐣 RT @conspirator0 We started digging into the tweets and #MAGA accounts Trump retweeted last night (2019-12-27.) Due to suspensions/shadowbans, we missed a few. Unsurprisingly, Trump’s involvement sharply increased the traffic to the tweets he retweeted. cc: @ZellaQuixote 📌 https://twitter.com/conspirator0/status/1211163937133215744?s=20
🐣 RT @HotlineJosh “He is a president with the mind of a gangster, and as long as he is in office, he will head a gangster White House.”
⋙ TheAtlantic, David Frum: A Gangster in the White House http://bit.ly/
// The president tweeted the name of the presumed whistle-blower in the Ukraine scandal—demonstrating that he is unrepentant and determined to break the law again.
🐣 RT @robreiner Giuliani, Pompeo, Mulvaney & Bolton all know what happened. The American people need to know what happened. And when they do, the most Criminally Corrupt President in our Nation’s history will be history.
🐣 RT @BarbMcQuade Biggest political story of the decade is not Trump or impeachment, but GOP’s willingness to destroy the rule of law for political expediency. My grandfather would not recognize his Republican party. It’s like a star that flames bright red just before it dies.
🚫🐣 RT @visionsurreal Evidence suggests it’s more likely than not PSY-GROUP, the ISRAELI social media manipulation firm headed by JOEL ZAMEL, interfered in the 2016 US election. ¤ This comprehensive timeline tells the story of all-things “Psy-Group,” making reference to 21 articles on the subject. /1 📌 https://twitter.com/visionsurreal/status/1146598079312867329?s=20/photo/1
⋙ Threadreader version: http://bit.ly/2F0Ff29
🐣 RT @NatSecLisa There was no insurance policy. ¤ #2019in5words
🐣 RT @SethAbramson BREAKING NEWS: Trump has now, as of 11:34PM EST, retweeted the alleged name of the whistleblower directly in his feed (I won’t retweet/screenshot it). We need to hear from media now about this; it’s his *third* attempted outing (an act of felony witness intimidation) in 72 hours.
🐣 RT @treasonstickers A history of economies by President:
🔴 Bush: destroyed the economy
🔵 Clinton: fixed the economy
🔴 George W: destroyed the economy
🔵 Obama: fixed the economy
🔴 Trump: destroying the economy
It’s almost as if there’s a pattern. 🤔
🐣 RT @harrylitman The right play is to leave it to House Managers to move to quash on ground subpoena calls for irrelevant testimony, as it plainly does under FRE 402, which parties agree applies as background. If 51 vote, show up and answer. And House Rs move for Mulvaney Bolton etc
⋙ 🐣 RT @eliehonig Maybe Biden’s testimony is completely irrelevant. There’s a good argument that it is irrelevant. So then he needs to challenge a subpoena (if he gets one) – “move to quash,” in legalese – and if the court agrees, he’s off the hook. A unilateral refusal is contrary to rule of law.
⋙⋙⋙ 🐣 RT @tedbrogan6901 It’s worse than that. Senate publicly grilling Biden is essentially giving Trump the political investigation he was initially extorting Ukraine for. There is no legitimate basis to call Biden.
⋙⋙ 🐣 RT @Chrisbrodber Indeed. An appearance by Biden only facilitates the ‘Russian narrative’ and disinformation. #QuashTheNotion
⋙⋙ 🐣 RT @LauraKY06 You’ve jumped right into playing their game – smear Biden.
⋙⋙ 🐣 RT @HusarenH Even if Biden or his son did something wrong, that doesn’t get Trump off the hook. It’s Trump who is on trial here. First thing first.
⋙⋙ 🐣 RT @JustAddWine_ I agree he should comply, but it is completely irrelevant. I don’t care if Biden is the criminally of all criminals that ever crimed- it doesn’t change the facts that Trump was wrong to extort a foreign country for his personal benefit.
WaPo, Heather Long: Trump’s stock market rally is very good, but still lags Obama and Clinton http://wapo.st/2tSi1ZF ● https://twitter.com/Auriandra/status/1211024579818393604?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @JoeBiden I want to clarify something I said yesterday. In my 40 years in public life, I have always complied with a lawful order and in my eight years as VP, my office — unlike Donald Trump and Mike Pence — cooperated with legitimate congressional oversight requests.
⋙ 🐣 RT @JoeBiden But I am just not going to pretend that there is any legal basis for Republican subpoenas for my testimony in the impeachment trial. That is the point I was making yesterday and I reiterate: this impeachment is about Trump’s conduct, not mine.
⋙ 🐣 RT @JoeBiden The subpoenas should go to witnesses with testimony to offer to Trump’s shaking down the Ukraine government — they should go to the White House.
↥ ↧
🐣 We’ve spent all this time complaining about people defying Congressional subpoenas and then Biden says he won’t? Sorry, but I’m confused.
🐣 RT @AlexKokcharov #Russia’s goal in #Ukraine is not annexation of Donetsk & Luhansk but using them as tools of keeping all of Ukraine anchored in the Russian sphere of influence, stopping Kyiv’s drift to EU & NATO: analysis by @Stanovaya
⋙ ForeignPolicy, Tatiana Stanovaya (12/5): What the West Gets Wrong About Russia’s Intentions in Ukraine http://bit.ly/2t6sOzg
// 12/5/2019; Moscow never wanted an annexation—it just wanted a bargaining chip. Understanding that is the key to settling the conflict once and for all.
🐣 RT @SkinnerPm As a former CIA officer, I’d like to say:
One, who says ‘intelligence warriors’ and ‘bad guys?’ Stop it with your cartoonishly childish understanding.
Two: torture, which the agency did and called enhanced interrogation, is wrong and we should say that.
🐣 RT @SkinnerPm
Three: you literally smear your own employees and cravenly participate in the demeaning of government service.
Four: agency officials are not butlers and gofers for your family.
Five: seriously, ‘intelligence warriors’?
⋙ 🐣 RT @SecPompeo I watched “The Report.” Fiction. To be clear: the bad guys are not our intelligence warriors. The bad guys are the terrorists. To my former colleagues and all of the patriots at @CIA who have kept us safe since 9/11: America supports you, defends you and has your back. So do I.
⭕ 27 Dec 2019
TheHill: Turkey convicts, gives prison sentences to journalists who criticized Erdoğan http://bit.ly/2F0N2gu
💙💙 NYT: Ten years of scammers, conspiracy theories and fake news. http://nyti.ms/2Qx5suD
// alternative facts
🐣 RT @normative Trump is just “Triumph” with a couple letters shaved off. 💽 https://twitter.com/normative/status/1210776611097694208?s=20/photo/1
// “Triumph the Insult Dog”
TheHill: Blumenthal: Five to 10 Republicans have ‘severe misgivings’ about McConnell strategy http://bit.ly/2MBg76u
NYT: Joe Biden Says He’d Defy Subpoena to Testify in Trump’s Senate Trial http://nyti.ms/37i6eT2 “There is no evidence that the elder Mr. Biden, while serving as vice president, improperly intervened in Ukraine to benefit his son.”
// Mr. Biden said Republican demands that he testify were an effort to shift attention away from the president’s own actions.
🐣 RT @gtconway3d There’s pretty much a pre-existing unified field theory for @realDonaldTrump’s presidency. ¤ It’s the DSM-5’s diagnostic criteria for Narcissistic Personality Disorder and Antisocial Personality Disorder. #IMPOTUS https://twitter.com/gtconway3d/status/1210784280642641921?s=20/photo/1-2
⋙ 🐣 RT @SpiroAgnewGhost https://twitter.com/ImperialwizardT/status/1210796787021148167?s=20/photo/1
// Malignant Narcissism
Newsweek: Ex-WH Ethics Lawyer Slams McConnell, Says Senator Thinks He’s ‘A Judge Impaneling An All-White Jury for a Klansman Trial’ http://bit.ly/39mO6cg Ex-Ethics lawyer under Bush 43, Richard Painter
↥ ↧
🐣 RT @RPWUSA The Constitution requires an oath. Any senator who will not take the oath approved of by the majority of the senate— the oath to do impartial justice— should be excused from the impeachment trial by the Chief Justice. ¤ Any senator who lies under oath should be expelled.
💽 MSNBC, AllInWithChris: Chicago shooting incidents down sharply http://on.msnbc.com/2ZuMCIF
// Shooting incidents in Chicago are down 40% from three years ago – a major untold story.
KyivPost: Decade In Review http://bit.ly/2F68UH3
// Editor’s Note: The decade started with Viktor Yanukovych and ended with Volodymyr Zelensky. In between came revolution, war and the joy of visa-free travel to Europe. The Kyiv Post highlights the main events of the decade that is coming to an end on Dec. 31.
2019: A new political era dawns as TV comedian comes to power
2018: Russia imprisons sailors as murder of Kherson activist sparks outrage
2017: Visa-free travel, stalled reforms highlight events
2016: Yatsenyuk out, Trump in; banking woes mount; Sheremet murdered
2015: Ukraine defends Donetsk airport, loses Debaltseve
2014: Victorious revolution triggers Russia’s war
2013: Ukraine ignites in revolution to seize control of its future
2012: Euro 2012 provides bright spot in an otherwise very grim year
2011: Yanukovych’s kleptocracy is brazen, with no one to stop him
2010: Yanukovych takes revenge, sells out Ukraine’s interests
💙💙 NYT, Michiko Kakutani: The 2010s Were the End of Normal http://nyti.ms/2rygiba //➔ The decade, pretty much summed up #longread
// How social media, the Great Recession and Donald Trump combined to bring out the ‘indigenous American berserk.’
In his wise and astonishingly prescient “Farewell Address,” from 1796, George Washington spoke of the dangers he saw the young new nation facing in the future. He warned against “the insidious wiles of foreign influence,” “the impostures of pretended patriotism,” and, most insistently, of “the baneful effects of the spirit of party” — imploring his fellow citizens not to let partisan or geographic differences plant seeds of mistrust among those who “ought to be bound together by fraternal affection.”
Every portion of the country, he wrote, should remember: “You have in a common cause fought and triumphed together; the independence and liberty you possess are the work of joint counsels, and joint efforts of common dangers, sufferings, and successes.” Citizens, he urged, must indignantly frown “upon the first dawning of every attempt to alienate any portion of our country from the rest, or to enfeeble the sacred ties which now link together the various parts.”
In this Series:
The 2010s Were the End of Normal
By MICHIKO KAKUTANIMy Decade in Google Searches
By VAUHINI VARASmall Is the New Big Thing
By RUCHIR SHARMATwitter Made Us Better
By SARAH J. JACKSONMilestones in Mistrust
By EVE PEYSER and FRANK AUGUGLIAROThe Cultural Canon Is Better Than Ever
By AISHA HARRISWe Learned to Write the Way We Talk
By GRETCHEN McCULLOCHI Can’t Even Trust Myself Anymore
By MONICA HEISEYWhat Will the World Look Like in 2030?
By THE EDITORS
🐣 RT @StevenBeschloss This photo, and the press conference in Helsinki that followed, remains the moment for me—and I think anyone with eyes and ears—Trump made explicit he was beholden to Russia, would abandon America intelligence and betray the nation. https://twitter.com/StevenBeschloss/status/1210732405608157185?s=20/photo/1
// photo of Trump and Putin exiting meeting
🐣💙 RT @SpeakerPelosi The facts are clear and every witness told the same story, despite the President’s attempts to cover it up. President Trump abused his power for his own personal gain. #DefendOurDemocracy 💽 https://twitter.com/SpeakerPelosi/status/1210586483767332864?s=20/photo/1
// video: Two Weeks of Testimony, One Story of Betrayal (2:39)
Politico: Intel probe puts CIA’s Haspel in a bind http://politi.co/2ZvgXXk
// The review led by U.S. Attorney John Durham is making life uncomfortable for America’s cautious spy chief.
🐣 RT @RonaldKlain Thank you @JoyceWhiteVance for explaining how trials work. One side doesn’t get to call enemies just for kicks. Only witnesses with relevant evidence testify.
⋙ 🐣 RT @JoyceWhiteVance Here’s how trials work: Only relevant witness testimony is admissible. Biden has no relevant testimony to offer on Trump’s attempted bribery of Ukraines’s President & Trump’s obstruction of Congress by refusing to comply with subpoenas for testimony & documents.
⋙⋙ 🐣 RT @jonallendc Biden preemptively rejecting a subpoena has the effect of providing air cover for the White House.
⋙⋙⋙ 🐣 RT @HoarseWisperer “Add Biden to the list…” ¤ No, Biden rejecting the political charade of a Republican Senate looking to provide air cover for Trump does not put him on the same list as parties involved in already impeached conduct.
NYT Editorial: A Stirring of Conscience in the Senate http://nyti.ms/2ryWnch
// At least one Republican, Lisa Murkowski, wants the Trump impeachment trial to be more than a test of party loyalty. Others should follow.
WaPo, Ian Bateson: What Rudy Giuliani’s version of reality looks like from Ukraine http://wapo.st/2Ztq6Qi “For journalists like me who have lived and worked in Ukraine for years, these claims were comical.”
WaPo Frida Ghitis: 2019 was a turning point in the global battle for democracy http://wapo.st/2MxtPae “The 2020 election will determine whether the nation that has been an icon of global freedom will shift to a democratic path or continue on the rutted road to authoritarianism”
BusinessInsider, Eliza Relman: Trump just retweeted a ‘QAnon’ conspiracy-theory hashtag to his 68 million followers http://bit.ly/37dC2Z3
● President Donald Trump retweeted a video message on Friday morning with a hashtag referencing a fringe pro-Trump conspiracy theory known as QAnon.
● The tweet included a video of a woman praising Trump’s approach to urban poverty and included the hashtag #WWG1WGA, which stands for the QAnon slogan “Where we go one, we go all.”
● Followers of the conspiracy believe that, among other things, the world is run by a satanic cabal of elites and pedophiles led by Hillary Clinton and the so-called deep state who Trump will eventually expose and defeat.
● Trump has promoted dozens of QAnon conspiracy accounts, and followers of the conspiracy have shown up at his campaign rallies and appeared in his ads.
🐣 RT @robreiner Each day that ticks by, more damning evidence of the most Criminal President in our Nation’s history is revealed. By the time he goes on trial even the consciously blind Republican cult might be forced to open an eye. Democracy cautiously awaits.
TheAtlantic, Yascha Mounk: Why Trump’s Second Term Will Be Worse http://bit.ly/2EXynm3
// Narendra Modi has been emboldened by reelection. The American president could be too.
🐣 RT @DefenseOne One thing we learned: “[U.S.] politicians think there’s more than one version of the truth, and that they can all have their own truths; and that really speaks to the way Russia has changed the way we think about information,” said @selectedwisdom.
TheBulwark, Philip Rotner: Where’s Rudy? http://bit.ly/2Q2BjUU
// The House managers should call him to testify, no matter what.
CNN, Stephen Collinson: Trump obsesses over Pelosi as sting of impeachment spoils his holiday break http://cnn.it/39hPHAi
🚫🐣 RT @SethAbramson What percentage of Trumpists—or Americans generally—do you think know the following: that everyone agrees, *including the Trump camp*, that on the night Steele’s dossier says Trump was with prostitutes at the Ritz Moscow, his Moscow pals did indeed offer to send him prostitutes? 📌 https://twitter.com/SethAbramson/status/1210633333987782663?s=20
🐣 RT @mccaffreyr3 Totally agree. Turkey a bad partner for NATO. Erdogan essentially a quasi dictator. Closer to the Russians than NATO. They should be cut off from Alliance intelligence and funding. We need to get our NUKES and our bases out of Turkey.
⋙ 🐣 RT @RichardHaass It is not all that much of a quandary. US and NATO should accept that Erdogan’s Turkey is no partner (even if it remains a formal ally) and should reduce their reliance on its bases along with any sharing of sensitive intell/sales of advanced technologies.
⋙⋙ WSJ: NATO Faces a Fresh Quandary as Turkey Tips Toward Russia http://on.wsj.com/2Zy2o5t
// 12/25/2019; Alliance strains to resolve tensions with President Erdogan, who has threatened to evict U.S. bases if Trump administration imposes new sanctions
⭕ 26 Dec 2019
WashingtonMonthly, Nancy LeTourneau: Republicans Try to Re-Write History With Lies http://bit.ly/2Q3xIpx “the modern-day Republican Party poses a threat to our democracy”
🚫 WaPo, Eric Wemple: Rachel Maddow rooted for the Steele dossier to be true. Then it fell apart. http://wapo.st/2SycD8k
// Comment ⋙ This whole series is beating a dead horse. Steele was alarmed by what he was finding and shared a set of raw intelligence notes that he estimated was perhaps 70% accurate. Turns out an investigation had already been opened. The dossier provided possible leads. I’m glad to know Steele cared enough about our country to share what he had collected.
MiamiHerald: Dave Barry’s Year in Review: 2019 was an ‘eventful’ – bad – year http://hrld.us/2EVE2ZW
Newsweek, Jeffery Martin: Ex-Giuliani Adviser Admits Giuliani is Deteriorating, More ‘Sloppy’ But Says It’s ‘All Part of a Calculated Plan’ http://bit.ly/2t6or78 “Rudy has said his goal is to disrupt the world and he’s doing that.”
TPM, Kate Riga: Officials Who Spoke Out Against Trump Continue To Pay The Price http://bit.ly/37h5Cx1
Trump likely won’t pardon anyone involved in Russia/Ukraine until the end of this term, if he loses, or the beginning of his next one, if he wins.
🐣 RT @SethAbramson With Russia, everyone thought the big day was June 9, 2016; it was really August 3, 2016. With Ukraine, everyone thinks July 25, 2019 is it, but it may be May 7, 2019: Zelensky, Yermak, Kobolyev, Bogdan and Hochstein meet secretly to discuss Trump’s plot.
⋙ CNN: Ukrainian President and advisers discussed pressure from Trump weeks before taking office http://cnn.it/362GcCX
// 10/22/2019
💙💙 📌 https://twitter.com/SethAbramson/status/1210266703185223680?s=20
⋙ 🐣 3/ … Zelensky *knew* that Trump’s plot to steal the 2020 presidential election also involved a plot by his allies to take over Ukraine’s state-owned gas company via Kremlin agent Dmytro Firtash.
⋙ 🐣 6/ Giuliani, diGenova, Toensing, Parnas, Fruman, and Perry were working together, *with Trump’s blessing*, to restore Naftogaz to indirect Kremlin control by overthrowing Kobolyev and returning the Russian mafia-connected Firtash to a position of power in Ukraine’s energy market.
🐣 RT @aliasvaughn In a new poll, 41% of Germans named Trump as the most dangerous world leader for world peace, compared to Kim Jong Un at 17%, Iran’s Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and Russian President Vladimir Putin at 8% and China’s Xi Jinping at 7%.
⋙ Newsweek: Donald Trump Is ‘Greatest Threat to World Peace,’ Ahead of Putin and Kim Jong Un, Germans Say in New Poll http://bit.ly/2St94QN
🐣🌎 RT @stuartgary mapsontheweb: Corruption around the world, 2018. https://twitter.com/stuartgary/status/1210370430994993153?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @kasparov68 This was my message to the media going into 2020. Your responsibility is to the truth, not to “giving both sides” when one side is lies. And you cannot expose lies without spreading them. So repeat the facts.
⋙ 🐣 RT @brianstelter “Just keep repeating the facts. Stop giving equal times to lies.” ¤ @Kasparov63 argues that an “outdated sense of fairness is killing our democracy.” 💽 https://twitter.com/brianstelter/status/1210268371725324288?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @sfpelosi Like many moms, mine is a master multi-tasker who can be many places at once. For instance, this Christmas she is cuddling with her youngest granddaughter in beautiful California – while apparently living rent-free in someone’s rage-tweeting head. #HappyHolidays
Axios: The insane news cycles of 2019 http://bit.ly/2MqnwW3 ● https://twitter.com/Auriandra/status/1210266948044492801?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @Amy_Siskind From #MoscowMitch’s home state paper: ¤ “We Kentuckians know that our word is our bond. Oaths are the most solemn of promises, and their breach results in serious reputational — and sometimes legal — consequences.”
⋙ CourierJournal, Kent Greenfield: Opinion: Donald Trump has violated his oath. Mitch McConnell is about to violate 2 http://bit.ly/2MwhW4r
Every senator has a constitutional obligation of impartiality. But McConnell’s role as Senate leader makes his obligation even more important and crucial to the constitutional framework. This is not a time for political cynicism or constitutional faithlessness. McConnell’s loyalty to Trump should not overwhelm his loyalty to the Constitution. If he fails in this, he is not only violating his Article I oath but his Article VI oath.
🐣 RT @Isakoff The plans @nakashimae reports U.S. Cybercom is developing to counter Russian attacks in 2020 echo the options drafted by Obama cyber chief Michael Daniel in 2016– until, as reported by @DavidCornDC and me in Russian Roulette, he was told to “stand down.”
⋙ YahooNews: ‘Stand down’: How the Obama team blew the response to Russian meddling http://yhoo.it/2EQSMcD
// 3/9/2018
⋙⋙ [Go to] WaPo: US Cybercom … http://wapo.st/34VfdId
// 12/25/2019
🐣 RT @neal_katyal They did. You blocked the witnesses and documents.
⋙ 🐣 RT @real “Look, the House is supposed to do all of this work on witnesses and documents BEFORE they send the articles over to the Senate, not to call in new witnesses, go through new documents – that work is supposed to be done in the House.” @KatiePavlich @foxandfriends
🐣 RT @JedGarren IMO: ¤ Firtash has done ALL of this, his attack on the 2016 Presidential election cycle, this attack on Joe Biden, all of it, on the orders of his boss, in the Russian mob,Semyon Mogilevich.
IMO: ¤ Firtash is simply a proxy for Semyon Mogilevich,The Russian mob wants to takeover Naftogas
⋙ 💙 🐣 RT @anders_aslund I think this is just right: Firtash colluded with Giuliani & other Trump figures to try to take over Naftogaz, so that he could steal more billions from the Ukrainian gas sector. At least Giuliani, Parnas & Fruman should be prosecuted in the US for this under FCPA. Also Perry?
⋙⋙ 🐣 RT @ChrisLeeMaza the gist of this story is that the Parnas, Fruman, Giuliani operation in Ukraine was a Firtash-funded (i.e. Putin backed) effort to take over Naftogaz.
⋙⋙⋙ AP (12/23): Giuliani pals leveraged GOP access to seek Ukraine gas deal http://bit.ly/34VoLmF
🐣 RT @CFR_org In the past two years, far-right extremists were responsible for 15 out of 17 terrorist attacks. @hoffman_bruce says the trend is likely to continue in 2020. ¤ Track this trend and 6 others CFR experts are watching: https://on.cfr.org/2SreOL1 https://twitter.com/CFR_org/status/1210202068096602114?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @glennkirschner2 History is barreling down on Senate Republicans. Their vote on the impeachment trial will forever define their public life. Will they be remembered for voting in favor of McConnell/Graham’s no-witness rigged trial? Or will history record them as standing for fairness & justice?
WaPo: How Ukraine put Trump and Biden on a collision course http://wapo.st/3780bAg
MMFA: Fox contributor and Giuliani collaborator John Solomon is the 2019 Misinformer of the Year http://bit.ly/2QhgAvs
⭕ 🎅🏼 25 Dec 2019 🎅🏼
🐣 RT @Leshchenkos My new op-ed for @KyivPost. Giuliani’s interlocutors in Ukraine are not trustworthy. Most of them have long had contacts with Moscow, which seeks to shift responsibility for interference in the 2016 U.S. elections from Russia to Ukraine.
⋙ KyivPost, Sergii Leshchenko: By helping Giuliani, Ukrainian politicians help Russia http://bit.ly/398QlQB
WaPo, Max Boot: ‘Downton Abbey’ reminds us what ‘conservatism’ really means http://wapo.st/2ZAmigp ‘A movement devoted to conserving the best of America is tearing down the rule of law and tearing the country apart to protect a crude and cruel demagogue.’
💙 WaPo, Greg Miller and Greg Jaffe: In aftermath of Ukraine crisis, a climate of mistrust and threats http://wapo.st/2ZnJLB8
NYT: G.O.P. Senator ‘Disturbed’ by McConnell’s ‘Total Coordination’ with White House http://nyti.ms/2Mvz22t
// Senator Lisa Murkowski of Alaska revealed the first public qualms with Mitch McConnell’s vow to coordinate with the White House on a quick impeachment trial for President Trump.
WaPo: U.S. Cybercom contemplates information warfare to counter Russian interference in 2020 election http://wapo.st/34VfdId
⭕ ✨ 24 Dec 2019 ✨
Newsweek: Former Federal Prosecutor Says Mitch McConnell and Lindsey Graham Are ‘Mocking’ Juror Oath To Do ‘Fair And Impartial Justice’ http://bit.ly/2Q2mjGo
// Glenn Kirschner
Forbes, Mark Joyella: How Brian Williams Made 11 P.M. The Hottest Hour In Cable News http://bit.ly/2StQA2B
[I]t’s an achievement for any show that doesn’t air on Fox News to consistently take first place in the ratings, but 11th Hour has been unusually consistent, finishing #1 at 11 p.m. for three years in a row—a record run for an MSNBC show—and gaining the respect of viewers and critics alike.
“At this moment when journalism and a free flow of reliable information are under continual attack from the Trump administration and its many media allies,” wrote The Baltimore Sun’s David Zurawik back in August. “Our democracy is made stronger by having Williams and (The 11th Hour) at the end of each weeknight to offer perspective on the political and cultural warfare that now dominates the conversation of our nation’s civic life.”
Zurawik called The 11th Hour “the most important hour of the cable news night,” comparing Williams’ show to ABC’s Nightline in the hands of its iconic anchor Ted Koppel. Zurawik argued that Williams is serving an essential role in a time of chaos, putting the news of the day in its proper perspective—for today and for history—and preparing viewers for what comes next. …
Finally, I ask Brian Williams if he’s happy. ¤ “I think we’ve done an extraordinary job. We’re handed a moment in history, an administration that changed everyone’s life here. But there’s no great joy in this work. This is a wearing process because we all love our country. And no matter what side of this you’re on, if you’re right or left, it’s a troubling time for our country. So we’re always mindful that that’s what we’re chronicling here.”
🐣 RT @UROCKlive1 The body language in this photo says so much. I think it will be one of the most iconic moments of the Trump era.
⋙ 🐣 RT @glennkirschner2 And, notwithstanding the FACT that he had been told by the US intelligence community that Russia attacked our election, Trump stood up moments later and said, “Putin denied it” and “I don’t see why it would be” Russia. What does this picture tell us? https://twitter.com/glennkirschner2/status/1209620441268142081?s=20/photo/1
WaPo, Jennifer Rubin: Maybe this will impact Senate Republicans http://wapo.st/35Y0q0O “McConnell might … take up some of those “275 bipartisan bills” that have passed the House but still await consideration by the Senate.”
WaPo Editorial: The true meaning of Christmas http://wapo.st/2tKpPg0 “Christmas is the tale of a family driven from place to place by imperial decrees and the irrational fears of an unsettled ruler”
🐣 RT @tribelaw Art. I, Sec.2, Cl.5 of the Constitution gives the House the “sole Power of Impeachment,” and House Rules Ch. 27, Sec.8, expressly states: “The respondent in an impeachment proceeding IS IMPEACHED by the adoption of the House of articles of impeachment.” Q.E.D.
🐣 RT @BillBrowder I guess Putin’s plan to merge Russia with Belarus and become the head of the new merged country for the next 21 years is not going to be as easy as planned
⋙ 🐣 RT @AlexKokcharov Belarusian president Alexander Lukashenka speaking about #Russian designs on #Belarus: “If there will be breach of sovereignty, there will be war” https://nn.by/?c=ar&i=243407
🐣 RT @owenawhaley Recent administrations with the MOST criminal indictments:
Trump (Republican) – 215
Nixon (Republican) – 76
Reagan (Republican) – 26
Recent administrations with the LEAST criminal indictments:
Obama (Democrat) – 0
Carter (Democrat) – 1
Clinton (Democrat) – 2
Notice a pattern?
WorldWarZero.com ~ Climate action (John Kerry)
🐣 RT @kyledcheney From this Dear Colleague letter sent Saturday (made public today): https://twitter.com/kyledcheney/status/1209623978173747200?s=20/photo/1-2
// Nancy Pelosi
🐣 RT @glennkirschner2 And, notwithstanding the FACT that he had been told by the US intelligence community that Russia attacked our election, Trump stood up moments later and said, “Putin denied it” and “I don’t see why it would be” Russia. What does this picture tell us?
⋙ 🐣 RT @DrGJackBrown THREAD: Body Language Analysis No.4323: Trump Putin Helsinki Summit Press Conference • 📌 https://twitter.com/DrGJackBrown/status/1019012358365048833?s=20
// 7/20/2019
🐣💙 RT @BillKristol “Let the children have their night of fun and laughter…Let us grown-ups [be] resolved that, by our sacrifice and daring, these same children shall not be robbed of their inheritance or denied their right to live in a free and decent world.” — Churchill, Christmas Eve, 1941
DailyKos, Hunter: Rudy Giuliani claims George Soros ‘controls’ ambassadors and FBI agents, decries plots against him http://bit.ly/2ZjnTqH
DailyBeast: Giuliani Falsely Claims He Was U.S. Attorney General on Facebook Profile http://bit.ly/2rm7ODU
NBCNews, Suzanne Garment: Trump vs. Nixon: The difference between 2019’s impeachment and Watergate is shame http://nbcnews.to/2rqeuRD Suzanne Garment is the author of “Scandal: The Culture of Mistrust in American Politics”
// Nixon, a canny political analyst, knew the jig was up. But Trump will do almost anything to avoid acknowledging defeat.
WaPo, Jennifer Rubin: Some gifts I would like to give Trump, Republicans and others http://wapo.st/35UeisV My favorite: “Sen. Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.): A life-size cutout of late senator John McCain”
🐣 RT @NicholsUprising In a closed-door session with top Republicans, a senior aide to Trump’s campaign discussed voter suppression and outlined voter intimidation schemes for battleground states like Wisconsin. They have done the math: they know they can’t win a fair election.
⋙ TheNation, John Nichols: A Trump Reelection Aide Just Said the Quiet Part Out Loud http://bit.ly/35VQTqT
// “Traditionally it’s always been Republicans suppressing votes,” he said. State attorneys general must investigate the GOP’s voter suppression tactics.
🐣 RT @JustSchmeltzer Pelosi has a really easy answer for Trump and McConnell: ¤ We agree to your witnesses (Hunter Biden, Chalupa, the whistleblower, if his identity is protected). ¤ Agree to ours (Bolton, Mulvaney, Pompeo, Giuliani) and we send over the articles in 2 minutes.
⋙ 💙 NBCNews, Eric Schmelzer: As Trump’s impeachment heads to the Senate, Democrats should push for witnesses (including Hunter Biden) http://nbcnews.to/2EPCe4Q
// (Eric Schmeltzer is a political consultant and former press secretary for Rep. Jerrold Nadler); Schumer and Senate Democrats should agree to the witnesses that Trump claims he wants. There is no real downside, but the payoff could be huge.
🐣 RT @ThePlumLineGS Yes, also this thread. What Trump and McConnell really have going for them is that many media figures refuse to describe the situation accurately, because it’s impossible to neutrally describe it in terms that aren’t deeply incriminating to them:
⋙ WaPo (12/19): Why doesn’t McConnell want witnesses at Trump’s trial? Because he’s guilty. http://wapo.st/3647c5f
⋙ 🐣 RT @brianbeutler There’s a lot of playing dumb going on about this. Pelosi isn’t going to toss the articles in the fire, she’s holding on to them for some period of time to draw attention to the fact that vulnerable Senate Republicans might team up with McConnell to complete a cover-up.
⋙ ⋙ 🐣 RT @brianbeutler Those Republicans may do that anyhow. But just because it’s widely known within the national press corps that Republicans are deeply cynical doesn’t mean efforts to shine a light on the cynicism are inscrutable or pointless.
⋙⋙ 🐣 RT @brianbeutler This is a good start, would say it’d be wise to increase the ominousness of the message if and as these Republicans fall into line. ¤ They may think that a quick coverup vote will put this all behind them. In fact, it will be very much in front of them.
⋙⋙⋙ TPM, Josh Marshall (12/19): A Modest Proposal http://bit.ly/371229S
Not that anyone is asking but if I were one of the Democratic leaders I would be saying something like this.
“Sen McConnell has made it clear he wants a phony trial, a trial with no evidence and no witnesses and maybe no jurors. But there are a handful of Senators who say they’re moderates and who’ve said they want a fair trail. They want to do their job as jurors. Sens Gardner, McSally, Collins, Tillis, Romney and a few others. So we’re going to take a deep breath and see if they can use the holidays to make their voices heard with Sen McConnell and maybe the White House. Because there should be a fair process like they said they wanted.”
🐣 RT @MSNBC .@HeidiNBC on Speaker Pelosi’s strategy of withholding articles of impeachment from the Senate: “She’s drawing it out so that the public knows full well that these witnesses are being blocked.”
⋙ 💽 MSNBC, Hardball: Heidi Przybyla: Most Americans want witnesses to testify in impeachment trial http://on.msnbc.com/2PRVJQe
// NBC News Reporter Heidi Przbyla cites a recent poll that shows most Americans want witnesses to testify in the Senate impeachment trial.
🐣🌎 RT @franakviacorka Population losses during World War II [map:] https://twitter.com/franakviacorka/status/1209409873919782913?s=20/photo/1
⭕ 23 Dec 2019
CNN, Zachary Wolf: 15 things you need to know about how Senate impeachment trials work http://cnn.it/2rnRGlv
1. The rules were first written for the Senate trial of Andrew Johnson
2. The sessions are choreographed in a very specific way
3. Senators take an oath to “do impartial justice”
4. Any of the rules can be changed● Rule XI says the Senate picks a committee to take testimony and issue orders on the Senate’s behalf. Unless otherwise ordered. Indeed, a 1974 report on the Senate rules, updated for a possible Nixon impeachment, makes clear such a committee should not be formed for a presidential impeachment. (Remember, the Senate also handles other impeachments, including of judges.)
● Normal Senate procedure governs the special impeachment committee. Unless otherwise ordered.
● The trial convenes each day at high noon. Unless otherwise ordered.
● Opening statements are delivered by one person and closing statements can be made by two people. Unless otherwise ordered.
● And so on.5. John Roberts’ power is limited
6. It takes a majority to call a witness
7. There are restrictions on who the TV cameras can focus on
8. If senators want to ask witnesses a question, it must be put in writing.
9. A lot of the discussion might be behind closed doors
10. If there are witnesses, they may be deposed in private or on video
11. The accusers get the first and last word
12. It only takes 34 senators to acquit
13. A senator could respond “present” and help Trump stay in office
14. There is no filibuster
15. Senators stand and vote from their seats
Newsweek: Legal Experts Slam Attorney General Barr Over Impeachment: He’s ‘Up To His Eyeballs’ in Corruption http://bit.ly/2s9UJ18
🐣 RT @Basia745 Strengthening authoritarian regimes and abandoning allies everywhere – that’s the Trump administration. Fight alongside us and able to prove it? A target for genocide thanks to POTUS‘ self interest? Yeah – we still won’t let you immigrate here.
⋙ DailyBeast, Betsy Swan: Trump Admin Fights Bill Punishing Turkey for Its Russian Deal http://bit.ly/34ZIAt2
// The State Department laid out the administration’s opposition to sanctions on Turkey in a seven-page memo sent to the Senate, and obtained by The Daily Beast.
🐣 RT @brianklaas “I never understood wind. You know, I know windmills very much… Gases are spewing into the atmosphere. You know we have a world, right? So the world is tiny compared to the universe. So tremendous, tremendous amount of fumes.” ¤ —A man with sole control of nuclear weapons
CAP, Sam Berger and Max Bergmann: Senators Must Be Briefed on Russian Disinformation Before the Impeachment Trial http://ampr.gs/2MryeeP
🐣 RT @MSNBC “We have a president who’s far more concerned with how things look than about how things really are.”@FrankFigliuzzi1 on fmr. national security adviser Bolton suggesting that the Trump admin. is bluffing about stopping North Korea’s nuclear ambitions.
⋙ 💽 MSNBC, DeadlineWH: When it comes to North Korea, John Bolton says the Trump administration may have to do something it rarely does: admit it was wrong http://on.msnbc.com/2MqDlMq
// In a new interview, former national security adviser John Bolton says he doesn’t think the Trump administration “really means it” when it comes to stopping Kim Jong Un from further developing nuclear weapons
🐣 RT @forwardarc Giuliani Calls Prosecutors ‘Assholes,’ ‘Idiots’ Who Are Motivated by ‘Jealousy,’ Says ‘My Attitude About My Legacy Is F*** It’, in an interview where he showed up with his fly unzipped, dribbled saliva onto his his sweater, gesturing unnaturally & wildly.
⋙ Newsweek, Jeffery Martin: Giuliani Calls NY Prosecutors ‘Assholes,’ ‘Idiots’ Who Are Motivated by ‘Jealousy,’ Says ‘My Attitude About My Legacy Is F*** It’ http://bit.ly/34YldQA
🐣 RT @JuliaDavisNews Trump’s decisions and statements reveal a hair-raising pattern of compromising U.S. national security to advance Russia’s interests. [Text Block]: https://twitter.com/JuliaDavisNews/status/1209299722294480899?s=20/photo/1
⋙ DefenseOne, Sarah Chayes: Russia Is Waging Asymmetric Warfare Against the US — And We’re Letting Them Win http://bit.ly/2MoMnJS
// 12/18/2019; We must do more to harden against these attacks on our economy, institutions, and the public.
💽 MSNBC, 11thHour: Language expert: Trump is a truly inferior person to be leading a nation http://on.msnbc.com/2QemDRA ⋙ fascinating!
// Scholar and linguist John McWhorter joins to discuss what we can learn from all the President’s words.
🐣 RT @AnnRiceAuthor Christianity Today’s support of impeachment has far greater influence, I think, than critics suppose. The editorial is now a part of history — a distinguished & respected part of a vital ongoing commentary on the Trump crisis.
⋙ 🐣 RT @madrid_mike Christianity Today calls for impeachment. National Review calls for impeachment. Polling shows majority support for impeachment. Polling shows steep decline among white evangelical voters….. @ProjectLincoln launches.
⋙⋙ 🐣 RT @scottlay This is the one that shocked me. I don’t expect editorials from conservative mainstream papers calling for impeachment soon, but an open, comprehensive, and fair trial should be called for in editorials. NatRev: http://bit.ly/2tHTfeF
RawStory, Bob Brigham: Mitch McConnell ripped for wanting ‘Soviet justice’ for Trump: ‘In this country we have real trials’ http://bit.ly/2MoMxB4 intvw Neal Katyal; sources: WaPo, MSNBC
🐣 RT @MsMariaT Parnas & Fruman assoc David Correia allegedly told friends via text he was in Vienna w/ Firtash for a week over the summer 2019 (had returned to US by mid 8/19), and that he was in Dubai w/ Firtash’s Dubai-based atty to “close a deal w/Firtash” on 10/7/19. 📌 https://twitter.com/MsMariaT/status/1209337048898736128?s=20
⋙ 💙 CNN, Vicky Ward: The invisible man: Text messages reveal former golfer’s role in Ukraine scandal http://cnn.it/3913VoW
🐾
⋙ ABCNews: For Ukraine help, Giuliani turned to unlikely Florida fixers http://abcn.ws/2MmNMAo
// 9/28/2019
WaPo: Impasse over Senate impeachment trial likely to last weeks as both sides dig in http://wapo.st/3940pdH
🐣 RT @mmpadellan FUN FACT: The law that trump broke by holding up Ukraine funds is the Impoundment Control Act of 1974. ¤ The law restricts how a president can suspend congressionally approved funds…and was signed by Nixon, months before he resigned.
🐣 RT @RepAdamSchiff Impeachment of a president is a serious undertaking.
The Senate’s role is to act as an impartial jury and provide a fair trial.
Fair to the President and to the American people.
That means seeing all the evidence, documents and witnesses.
What is McConnell afraid of?
CNN, Zachary Wolf: 15 things you need to know about how Senate impeachment trials work http://cnn.it/2rnRGlv
🐣 RT @glennkirschner2 If you agree with the contention that Putin owns Trump then so much of what Trump says & does makes sense (or at least his motives can be understood, as he rarely “makes sense”). If you disagree with the contention that Putin owns Trump that little of what Trump does makes sense.
🐣 RT @BillKristol “So who told Duffey to send the email? How fully did they explain the link between the email he was to send and the call between Trump and Zelensky?…And what did Duffey tell others…? Senators need witnesses who will be able to tell the truth.”
⋙ WaPo, Neal Katyal and Joshua Geltzer: New evidence for impeachment keeps turning up. That’s why we need witnesses. http://wapo.st/2EMclCC
// The Senate can’t judge the president without all the facts.
NBCNews: Giuliani says he’s ‘more of a Jew’ than Holocaust survivor George Soros http://nbcnews.to/2Qdj0eG
// Asked if the comments were made in jest, Giuliani told NBC News, “I’m more Jewish than half my friends.”
🐣 RT @FBI FBI trivia was on @Jeopardy tonight, but we’re not stumped. The #ClueCrew visited the FBI to film prompts for the “FBI Headquarters” category, and now the #BuCrew is here to give you more facts. #TodayonJ. 📌 https://twitter.com/FBI/status/1209281969990897664?s=20
⋙ 🐣 RT @FBI Some artifacts from famous #FBI cases like Watergate are on public display for the first time at The FBI Experience. Interactive exhibits allow you to gather evidence, search for hidden cameras & immerse yourself in our mission. Visit http://ow.ly/U39U30q4uHQ to schedule a tour.
🐣 RT @BarbMcQuade Kind of like a superseding indictment to add new charges when additional crimes are discovered before trial. Works for me.
⋙ 🐣 RT @JoyceWhiteVance Nothing in the Constitution prevents this
⋙⋙ Politico: House counsel suggests Trump could be impeached again http://politi.co/39hgPiW
// The comment came in a filing with federal court that argues Democrats still need testimony from former White House counsel Don McGahn.
NYT: Fresh Evidence in Hand, Schumer Demands More Emails and Documents http://nyti.ms/34Qys5x
// Senator Chuck Schumer, the minority leader, laid out a long list of records Democrats would like to see as the House pressed for testimony from a former White House counsel.
🐣 RT @ThePubliusUSA McConnell + Graham should be disqualified given their admission that they will not be impartial. Such a concession is troubling and antithetical to the principles on which our republic was founded. So too should every Senator who has received Kremlin-tied donations (e.g., Scott).
WaPo, Joe Scarborough: Trump has made courage scarce. But there are still brave leaders out there. http://wapo.st/2rmfuWO
WaPo: House Democrats say in court filings new impeachment charges possible http://wapo.st/36ZgSO8
WaPo, Philip Bump: New emails help peel back the layers of pressure surrounding Trump’s July 25 call with Zelensky http://wapo.st/35Rosul
🐣 RT @xtrixcylclex Putin is only formidable to the extent his oligarchs can bribe and his intelligence services can extort foreign heads of state. Isolate Kremlin money and stop criming to get it and Russia is a large irradiated land mass with aging broken nukes and GDP smaller than California.
🐣 RT @MSNBC Historian Jelani Cobb discusses the 6-page letter that Pres. Trump sent to Speaker Pelosi on the eve if impeachment, saying, “This was mean spirited, it was petty. It was in full sentences, but it was somehow still Twitter-rific.”
⋙ 💽 MSNBC, AMJoy: Trump’s impeachment and legacy weighed by historian http://on.msnbc.com/2ZfVe5O
// Donald Trump wrote a letter to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi on the eve of his impeachment that many found rambling and abusive, while the president apparently intended it to be taken up as an important document for posterity. Historian and Journalist Jelani Cobb joins Joy Reid to discuss this, plus comparisons between Trump’s impeachment and Richard Nixon’s near-impeachment.
🐣 RT @SteveBeschloss On my wish list: A secure election system, in which results are reliable, foreign adversaries can’t interfere, neither presidents nor candidates seek help from Russians w/o going to jail, president children can’t acquire voting machine trademarks & the GOP won’t turn a blind eye.
🐣 RT @DirkSchwenk Rudy Ghouliani just confirmed some of the biggest points in my Rudy thread last week. The article also has some fantastic writing, so cheers to Olivia Nuzzi. https://twitter.com/DirkSchwenk/status/1209208918163042305?s=20
⋙ 🐣 RT @DirkSchwenk (12/17) The bell tolls for Rudy. A “it’s about to get hairy” thread. 📌 https://twitter.com/DirkSchwenk/status/1207058009014358018?s=20
🐣 RT @DevinCow Unzipped fly, tooth stuck to the olives in his Bloody Mary, ran into a wall in the restaurant, is more Jewish than a Jewish man, uses Google translate since Lev was arrested, generally doesn’t do business with people convicted of a crime….there’s more. This is gorgeous 🐮
🐣 RT @MollyJongFast The presidents free lawyer has some amazingly horrific quotes in this.
⋙ 🐣 RT @maggieNYT Giuliani informed @Olivianuzzi he’s tightening his circle and doesn’t trust anyone anymore as he proceeded to unfurl himself over cocktails after his Ukraine trip.
⋙⋙💙💙 NYMag, Victoria Nuzzi: A Conversation With Rudy Giuliani Over Bloody Marys at the Mark Hotel http://nym.ag/2SnhPM7
🐣 RT @ScottMStedman It’s fine to laugh at Giuliani but he’s literally being paid – by extension – by the Russian mafia. He spreads disinformation originated by Russian intelligence and he got a great Ambassador fired. He’s not a joke.
🐣 RT @davidaxelrod This electoral map with @realDonaldTrump approval ratings overlaid reflects why @realDonaldTrump must utterly disqualify and destroy his opponent. Even in a strong macroeconomy, he can’t win a referendum on himself. ¤ It’s what drove him to commit impeachable acts w/Urkraine
⋙⋙ 🐣 RT @politidope Here is Trump’s approval ratings in all 50 states converted into Electoral College format, per @Civiqs’ daily tracking data. http://bit.ly/2YOgSBi https://twitter.com/Politidope/status/1209164916776742912?s=20/photo/1
💙💙 NBCNews, Josh Lederman: Inside Giuliani’s new push to flip the script on Trump’s impeachment http://nbcnews.to/35QHMI9
// President Donald Trump’s personal attorney continues to move ahead with new allegations against Democrats on Ukraine but his evidence is vague at best.
[D]ocuments obtained by NBC News, interviews with people familiar with Giuliani’s activities and a review of his public comments show he’s relying almost entirely on assertions by Ukrainians whose credibility is questionable at best. In some cases, the allegations have already been thoroughly debunked.
Giuliani’s allegations have found a receptive audience in Trump, who says Giuliani will “make a report” to Attorney General William Barr about his “good information.” In the Senate, Judiciary Committee Chairman Lindsey Graham and two other Republican chairmen are seeking interviews with Ukrainians and Americans with purported knowledge about what Giuliani alleges.
That has created the prospect that even as the Senate holds a trial on whether to remove Trump from office, Senate Republicans could counter-program the trial by carrying out their own publicized probe into Biden and his son Hunter and alleged Ukrainian meddling in 2016.
● former Ukrainian Prosecutor General Yuriy Lutsenko
● former journalist Oleksandr Dubinsky
● former Prosecutor General Viktor Shokin
● Ukrainian lawmaker Andriy Derkach
● Mykola Zlochevsky, the Ukrainian oligarch who founded Burisma
● Andriy Telizhenko, the former Ukrainian diplomat who says he witnessed the Ukrainian Embassy in Washington collude with the Democratic National Committee in 2016
● Mykhaylo Okhendovsky, who chaired Ukraine’s Central Election Commission until the Parliament fired him last year
● Kostiantyn Kulyk, a former prosecutor who compiled a dossier about Hunter Biden
TIME, Joyce White Vance: Trump May Be Acquitted in a Senate Impeachment Trial. That’s Not the Same as Being Exonerated http://bit.ly/2s5lq7a
🐣💙≣ RT @SenSchumer Here are the specific documents we will need to ensure a fair Senate impeachment trial. ¤ The email from Michael Duffey shows why it is so important for the White House to produce the requested documents and let witnesses testify under oath. https://twitter.com/SenSchumer/status/1209147896089731072?s=20/photo/1-4
WaPo: McConnell, Pelosi dig in on impasse over Trump’s Senate trial http://wapo.st/39asxfg
AP:💙 Giuliani pals leveraged GOP access to seek Ukraine gas deal http://bit.ly/34VoLmF
// Lev and Igor
🐣 RT @glennkirschner2 Now why would @GOPLeader Kevin McCarthy lie about the findings of the IG Report – findings concluding that the Russian interference investigation was PROPERLY opened. Well, he was taking money from Lev Parnas . . . https://twitter.com/glennkirschner2/status/1209097101759651841?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @SpeakerPelosi The House cannot choose our impeachment managers until we know what sort of trial the Senate will conduct. ¤ President Trump blocked his own witnesses and documents from the House, and from the American people, on phony complaints about the House process. What is his excuse now?
DailyBeast, Michael Tomasky: Are Republicans Crazies or Cowards? http://bit.ly/34MYeb2
// The evidence against Trump just keeps piling up, not that it matters.
NYT, Patrick Leahy: What the Senate Does Now Will Cast a Long Shadow http://nyti.ms/2MmLxgq
// Mitch McConnell and the other 99 senators must serve the institution and the Constitution that established it, not President Trump.
NYT, Andrew Higgins: Russia Is a Mess. Why Is Putin Such a Formidable Enemy? http://nyti.ms/34MQyoX
// Its economy is sputtering and its young people are frustrated, but with America and Europe in tumult, Russia and its leader of two decades are on a roll.
NYT: Durham Surprises Even Allies With Statement on F.B.I.’s Trump Case http://nyti.ms/35QsrqJ
// The federal prosecutor leading a review of the origins of the Russia inquiry has a reputation for keeping his mouth shut. At a sensitive moment, he didn’t.
⭕ 22 Dec 2019
🐣 RT @owenawhaley
Democrats won the popular vote in:
2016
2012
2008
2000
1996
1992
Republicans won the popular vote in:
2004
It’s been over 15 YEARS since a Republican presidential candidate won the popular vote.
Tell me again which party represents the American people.
🐣📋RT @DavidCayJ Next time a Trumper brings up his 63 million votes note that 74 million voted against him. ¤ HRC got 66 million while Johnson, McMullin, Stein, etc. got more than 8 million. ¤ Trump got just 46% with 54% against him. [FEC:] http://bit.ly/34L2yYg
// Link: 2016 FEC presidential vote totals by state and candidate
Dkos, Jon Perr: The impeachment letter Trump could have sent to Nancy Pelosi http://bit.ly/2ShUN9H
↥ ↧ // Trump’s letter
🐣 RT @TheRickWilson This is SO good: ¤ ‘Translation’ of Donald Trump’s December 17, 2019, letter to Nancy Pelosi by Bandy X. Lee
⋙ 💙💙 Medium Bandy X Lee (12/18): “Translation” of Donald Trump’s December 17, 2019, letter to Nancy Pelosi http://bit.ly/2sB94DF (Forensic psychiatrist, violence expert, president of the World Mental Health Coalition (dangerouscase.org), and editor of “The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump.”)
// 12/18/2019
↥ ↧
⋙ 💽 MSNBC, AMJoy: Trump’s impeachment and legacy weighed by historian http://on.msnbc.com/2ZfVe5O
// 12/21/2019; Donald Trump wrote a letter to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi on the eve of his impeachment that many found rambling and abusive, while the president apparently intended it to be taken up as an important document for posterity. Historian and Journalist Jelani Cobb joins Joy Reid to discuss this, plus comparisons between Trump’s impeachment and Richard Nixon’s near-impeachment.
NYT: Democrats, Citing White House Emails, Renew Calls for Impeachment Witnesses http://nyti.ms/2sXKzAs ‘The White House asked officials to keep quiet over the suspension of military aid to Ukraine just 90 minutes after Mr. Trump leaned on Zelensky to investigate Biden’
// With lawmakers at odds over a trial’s format, impeachment proceedings are in limbo.
WaPo Editorial: How a Putin ally is aiding Giuliani in Ukraine http://wapo.st/34Rfr2Z “Mr. Firtash’s motives might seem obvious: to escape U.S. prosecution and take revenge on Mr. Biden. But he also has an interest in … restoring the pro-Russian regime under which he profited.”
🐣 RT @PalmerReport Trump’s twelve days of Christmas:
12 stupid tweets
11 lies a day
10 calls to Putin
9 slurred words
8 hours of Fox News
7 advisers arrested
6 bankruptcies
5 golden showers
4 Big Macs
3 ring circus
2 articles of impeachment
And he’s going to prison for treason
🐣 RT @kasparov63 As I always say, Larry, I believe in coincidences, but I also believe in the KGB! This entire Ukraine extortion project came from the Kremlin, tying it to shifting blame for 2016 interference and getting sanctions lifted.
⋙ 🐣 RT @tribelaw Pence’s Chief if Staff Mark Short says it was just “coincidence” that OMB’s Michael Duffy emailed DOD to hold the $391M just 2 hours after Trump’s July 25 shakedown call with Ukraine’s president Zelensky. How gullible do these dudes think we are? Duffy must testify in the Senate
💙💙 🔄 Spend a few minutes to call/email for A FAIR TRIAL: (1/3)
Lamar Alexander 202-224-4944 http://bit.ly/35OedH7
Mike Braun 202-224-4814 http://bit.ly/2PMXONl
Richard Burr 202-224-3154 http://bit.ly/2MmVjiN
Shelly Moore Capito 202-224-6472 http://bit.ly/35NHl1f ¤
↥ ↧
Spend a few minutes to call/email for A FAIR TRIAL: (2/3)
Susan Collins 202-224-2523 http://bit.ly/2kdVOAu
Joni Ernst 202-224-3254 http://bit.ly/2Sd9VFg
Cory Gardner 202-224-5941 http://bit.ly/39365EG
Martha McSally 202-224- 2235 http://bit.ly/2ripjVI ¤
↥ ↧
Spend a few minutes to call/email for A FAIR TRIAL: (3/3)
Lisa Murkowski 202-224-6665 http://bit.ly/371125G
Mitt Romney 202-224-5251 http://bit.ly/35LQKq4
John Thune 202-224-2321 http://bit.ly/2EVUcmh
Thom Tillis 202-224-6342 http://bit.ly/2rj25Pf ¤
⭕ 21 Dec 2019
🐣 RT @Strandjunker The word “trumpery” appeared in the 15th century with the meanings “deceit” or “fraud”. 100 years later, it was being applied to objects of little or no value. Then in the 1900’s, it came to mean “showy but worthless”. ¤ Our universe has a damn morbid sense of humor.
WaPo: Trump touts Putin speaking out against his impeachment http://wapo.st/2EFQlcI whut⁉️
NBCNews: Newly released emails provide details in White House pause of Ukraine aid http://nbcnews.to/34MBCHm
// “Given the sensitive nature of the request,” an official wrote hours after Trump’s call with Ukraine’s president. “I appreciate your keeping that information closely held to those who need to know to execute direction.”
🐣 RT @SpeakerPelosi This was a historic week in the House of Representatives. Here are a few moments that stand out:
⋙ Medium, Speaker Pelosi: Madam Speaker: A Behind-the-Scenes Look at the U.S. Speaker of the House (Dec 14 — Dec 20, 2019) http://bit.ly/2tClKKM
🐣 RT @StevenBeschloss The White House also wants to argue he’s 185 pounds, he’s not orange, he already released his tax returns, his call was perfect, he gave Zelensky a parade down 5th Avenue, he really cares about rule of law, no one’s ever done more for NATO and he’s not beholden to Vladimir Putin.
⋙ 🐣 RT @CBSNews White House considers arguing that Trump wasn’t impeached https://cbsn.ws/2EK2Hkc
CNN: Newly released emails offer more details in timeline of pause to Ukraine aid http://cnn.it/2SgQafO
⋙ 🐣💙💙 RT @SenSchumer This email from Michael Duffey—approximately 90 minutes after President Trump’s call with the president of Ukraine—is all the more reason why we need Duffey and others to testify in a Senate trial. ¤ The “sensitive nature”? What is that about? [letter:] https://twitter.com/SenSchumer/status/1208483207013978114?s=20/photo/1
DailyBeast, Julia Davis: Russian State TV Backs Trump’s Wild Impeachment Attacks http://bit.ly/35Nh5nF (@JuliaDavisNews © monitors Russian State TV so we don’t have)
// State television praised Trump’s letter to House Speaker Pelosi, calling him a “highly educated” writer of “multiple bestsellers” who wrote the letter “for future generations.”
🐣 RT @maggieNYT During the impeachment inquiry, there was a steady disappearance of comments from GOP lawmakers saying his call w Zelensky was problematic after some said so early on. POTUS made clear he wanted people to say call was fine.
⋙ NYT: Fear and Loyalty: How Donald Trump Took Over the Republican Party http://nyti.ms/34JSnTU by Jonathan Martin and Maggie Haberman
// The president demands complete fealty, and as the impeachment hearings showed, he has largely attained it. To cross him is to risk a future in G.O.P. politics.
🐣💙 RT @zacharyfb Here’s the first copy of the email. “Given the sensitive nature of the request, I appreciate your keeping that information closely held to those who need to know to execute direction.” https://twitter.com/ZachFB/status/1208261040217247744?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @GovHowardDean Viola the smoking gun!!
🐣 RT @AshaRangappa_ In the FBI, this is what we called “a clue.”🕵🏽♀️
🐣 RT @ChrisMurphyCT 🚨This is breaking news and it’s important. New documents show:
1. Ukraine aid was held just hours after the Trump/Zelensky “do us a favor” call
2. Internal notes show Trump’s direct involvement
3. Staff knew it was wrong, kept it secret
🐣 RT @gtconway3d It was of a “sensitive nature” because it could get someone impeached. #IMPOTUS
🐣 RT @Delavegalaw Among many damning facts explicit within these docs, and implied by multiple redactions, are those that tell a chilling story of public servants campaigning internally, struggling mightily to get the Trump Admin NOT to break the law. We must hear from these witnesses.
⋙ 🐣 RT @JoyceWhiteVance This administration provided these documents only after a court battle over FOIA with a watchdog group. Note that Michael Duffy, who authored the July 25 emails halting aid to Ukraine is one of the 4 witnesses @SenSchumer has asked for at the impeachment trial.
⋙⋙💙 🐣 RT @dabeard Just-released documents show the White House moved to stop vital military aid to #Ukraine less than two hours after his July 25 call with Ukraine’s President https://publicintegrity.org/national-security/digging-ukrainedocs-omb-foia/… Here’s a White House memo to the Pentagon: #UkraineDocs https://twitter.com/JoyceWhiteVance/status/1208401040246280193?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @rgoodlaw Exquisite observation by former FBI General Counsel and Mueller lieutenant, Andrew Weissmann👇¤ It sure looks like Pres. Trump is unwilling to state under oath or in submission to Congress that there was no quid pro quo with Ukraine. ¤ Jewel of an insight parsing letter to Pelosi. 💽 https://twitter.com/rgoodlaw/status/1208453525564469256?s=20/photo/1
DailyBeast, Center for Public Integrity: Trump Administration Officials Worried Halt to Ukraine Aid Violated Spending Law http://bit.ly/2Q6Mv1K
// But key details of what they said to one another are again blacked out in documents released to the Center for Public Integrity under court order.
🐣 RT @glennkirschner2 Think about this – in his call to Pres. Zelensky, Trump NAMED BILL BARR AS ONE OF HIS CO-CONSPIRATORS. Trump has been impeached for a dirty deal that Trump expressly said included Bill Barr. The next AG will need to investigate and, if the evidence dictates, prosecute Bill Barr.
⋙ 🐣 RT @RepHankJohnson .@TheJusticeDept A message for Attorney General Barr: resign. [letter:] https://twitter.com/RepHankJohnson/status/1207767044369899520?s=20/photo/1-3
⭕ 20 Dec 2019
Salon, Chauncey Devega (12/20): Mental health professionals read Trump’s letter: A study in “the psychotic mind” at work http://bit.ly/358qxkt
// Bandy Lee, Justin Frank, Lance Dodes, David Reiss and others unpack a “venomous and vitriolic” historic document
RollingStone, Peter Wade: How Disinformation Spreads, According to Chuck Todd http://bit.ly/2Q0y1Bw
// Chuck Todd has had a front-row seat for the spread of disinformation. Here’s how he sees it happening and the media’s role in it
NYT, Jamelle Bouie: Impeachment Hurts, and Trump Knows It http://nyti.ms/34IRhYw
// The idea that the president thinks it will help him politically is wrong. Just listen to what he is saying.
NBCNews, Dean Obeidallah: Nancy Pelosi was right about Trump’s impeachment (and Democrats were wrong) http://nbcnews.to/35MTuDB
// Pelosi’s skills as speaker and her ability to stand her ground have paid dividends.
Snopes (Oct): EXCLUSIVE: Expanding Pro-Trump Outlet ‘The BL’ Is Closely Linked to The Epoch Times http://bit.ly/2Q8v0hu
// 10/11/2019; Both The Epoch Times and The BL deny any connection whatsoever. Our report makes that a challenging argument to defend.
🐣 RT @MSNBC “The Republicans are right in a way – that it was always kind of predetermined, it was fated, that Trump would be impeached. But that is because of Trump’s nature, and his character.” – @chrislhayes
⋙ 💽 MSNBC, AllIn: Chris Hayes: Trump warned us about who he was http://on.msnbc.com/34L8oca
// Chris Hayes: Trump is well aware of what being impeachment means for his legacy.
MotherJones, Tim Murphy: Trump’s Not Richard Nixon. He’s Andrew Johnson. http://bit.ly/2QciWeW
// J-F 2020 issue; Betrayal. Paranoia. Cowardice. We’ve been here before.
🐣 RT @amandarivkin The genius of #QAnon is that it feeds human curiosity and serves as a catch all for various and divergent conspiracy theories. Rather than an intelligence operation though, I would classify it as a psyop for it tries to regulate behavior, information, thoughts and emotions.
🐣 RT @amandarivkin The CIA studied these techniques and for good reason: our adversaries were using them on hostile foreign regimes that threatened US national security. But once you open a Pandora’s box it can be hard not to fall in and so many such movements including likely Q have intel ties. https://twitter.com/amandarivkin/status/1208305601903808513?s=20
🐣 RT @amandarivkin I have a very good idea who is behind #QAnon and fully anticipate this will be the response. However, I want to give reporters I have given this to the time to do their work. Already I have trolled him so viciously he has doubled down in support of the #QAnon cult. https://twitter.com/amandarivkin/status/1208296918302044162?s=20
⋙ 🐣 RT @ghoulbuns Q anon isn’t a cult. Cults don’t tell you to do your own research. Cults have visible leaders. Q anon is an intelligence operation, that’s it.
⋙⋙ 🐣 RT @amandarivkin However, it is very much built on intelligence work on mind control tactics. It artfully deploys the techniques shared by all destructive mind control cults going back to Chinese CP in the 50s. ¤ http://youtu.be/-_FO84Y8F-k [or pdf:] http://bit.ly/35KkovN
🐣 RT @rjsmithcpi Here’s what we learned from new Ukraine documents given to us this evening by the Pentagon and OMB under a court order. None were provided to Congress before we got them. Thread to follow: 📌 https://twitter.com/rjsmithcpi/status/1208256373865226240?s=20
⋙ PublicIntegrity (CPI): Trump Administration officials worried Ukraine aid halt violated spending law http://bit.ly/392caB6
💙 TheBulwark, William Kristol and Jeffrey Tulis: America’s Mitch McConnell Problem http://bit.ly/2PH0PyS
// The Senate majority leader is a danger to the Constitution.
🐣 RT @MSNBC Meet the “squishy Republicans.” Here’s the role they could play in the 2020 elections. https://twitter.com/MSNBC/status/1208221076498657280?s=20/photo/1
⋙ MSNBC, MTPdaily: ‘Squishy Republicans:’ New NBC News/WSJ poll identifies potential 2020 swing voters http://on.msnbc.com/2s7O0of
// A look at potential 2020 swing voters and what they mean for both Republicans and Democrats.
// 📊 NBC/WSJ Poll (12/14-17/2019); 34% Certain to vote for Trump; 48% Certain to vote against Trump, 18% “Squishy Republicans”
🐣 RT @JohnWDean This is playing out so far like I dreamed it could, and it can get better if the House Democrats continue to sit on the articles. This is Trump’s nightmare because more can and will come out on his guilt. Mitch’s nightmare too, notwithstanding his pretending otherwise.
⋙ 🐣 RT @MaxBoot Like I said, “Trump would dearly love to be acquitted by the Senate, and he will not be happy if McConnell denies him what he desires…. This suggests that Democrats have a strong hand to play if they don’t fold prematurely.” In @PostOpinions: https://
⋙⋙ 🐣 RT @kaitlincollins Sen. Graham tells @BretBaier that President Trump is “mad as hell” tonight over the possible impeachment trial delay. “I just met with the president, and he is demanding his day in court.”
🐣 RT @DeadlineWH “Imagine the meeting inside the Kremlin when Russian intelligence agencies are briefing Putin on their plan… Putin says… I’m gonna tell Trump directly myself… What that essentially makes the president is a co-conspirator with Putin” – Jeremy Bash w/ @NicolleDWallace
TheAtlantic, Quinta Jurecic and Benjamin Wittes: The Remedy for Mitch McConnell http://bit.ly/35IzqC5
// The Senate majority leader seems uninterested in fulfilling his constitutional duties.
🔆 This❗️⋙ WaPo, Phillip Bump: How Trump’s conversations with Putin overlapped with his emerging Ukraine conspiracy theories http://wapo.st/34Hgt1p
🐣💙💙 RT @storygrrl If you want to see a fair trial in the Senate, Call these Senators:
Lamar Alexander 202-224-4944 http://bit.ly/35OedH7
Mike Braun 202-224-4814 http://bit.ly/2PMXONl
Richard Burr 202-224-3154 http://bit.ly/2MmVjiN
Shelly Moore Capito 202-224-6472 http://bit.ly/35NHl1f
Susan Collins 202-224-2523 http://bit.ly/2kdVOAu
Joni Ernst 202-224-3254 http://bit.ly/2Sd9VFg
Cory Gardner 202-224-5941 http://bit.ly/39365EG
Martha McSally 202-224- 2235 http://bit.ly/2ripjVI
Lisa Murkowski 202-224-6665 http://bit.ly/371125G
Mitt Romney 202-224-5251 http://bit.ly/35LQKq4
John Thune 202-224-2321 http://bit.ly/2EVUcmh
Thom Tillis 202-224-6342 http://bit.ly/2rj25Pf
// email list
MotherJones, David Corn: The Inevitability of Donald Trump’s Impeachment http://bit.ly/2PHjnio
// His decades-long record of misdeeds and wrongdoing made this moment inescapable.
🐣 RT @CNNSitRoom “The President is raging because for the very first time in his life he’s being held accountable for his actions,” says Democratic Rep. Jim Himes about President Trump’s continued attacks on House Speaker Nancy Pelosi amid his impeachment. https://cnn.it/35DBrQ2 💽 https://twitter.com/CNNSitRoom/status/1208169008580612096?s=20/photo/1
WaPo, Jeff Flake: The president is on trial. So are my Senate Republican colleagues. http://wapo.st/2s793Y4 “My colleagues, the danger of an untruthful president is compounded when the coequal branch follows that president off the cliff, into the abyss of unreality and untruth.”
Call it the founders’ blind spot: They simply could not have envisioned the Article I branch abetting and enabling such dangerous behavior in the Article II branch. And when we are complicit, we cede our constitutional responsibilities, we forever redefine the relationship between Congress and the White House and we set the most dangerous of precedents.
But what is indefensible is echoing House Republicans who say that the president has not done anything wrong. He has. ¤ The willingness of House Republicans to bend to the president’s will by attempting to shift blame with the promotion of bizarre and debunked conspiracy theories has been an appalling spectacle. It will have long-term ramifications for the country and the party, to say nothing of individual reputations.
Nearly all of you condemned the president’s behavior during the 2016 campaign. Nearly all of you refused to campaign with him. You knew then that doing so would be wrong — would be a stain on your reputation and the standing of the Republican Party, and would do lasting damage to the conservative cause.
Ask yourself today: Has the president changed his behavior? Has he grown in office? Has the mantle of the presidency altered his conduct? The answer is obvious. In fact, if the president’s political rally in Michigan on Wednesday is any measure, his language has only become more vulgar, his performance cruder, his behavior more boorish and unstable.
Next, ask yourself: If the president’s conduct hasn’t changed, has mine? Before President Trump came on the scene, would I have stood at a rally and cheered while supporters shouted “lock her up” or “send them back”? …
As I said above, I don’t envy you. You’re on a big stage now. Please don’t accept an alternate reality that would have us believe in things that obviously are not true, in the service of executive behavior that we never would have encouraged and a theory of executive power that we have always found abhorrent.
If there ever was a time to put country over party, it is now. And by putting country over party, you might just save the Grand Old Party before it’s too late.
AP (Madison, WI): Trump adviser: Expect more aggressive poll watching in 2020 http://bit.ly/34HZfkr
WaPo, Catherine Rampell: Two years later, every promise made about the GOP tax cuts has been broken http://wapo.st/2PHkgaQ
WaPo: Trump administration demanded Democrats strip Ukraine aid language from spending package http://wapo.st/2PJAiAW
// The language would have required the White House to release Ukraine defense aid quickly.
Politico: ‘I’m never afraid and I’m rarely surprised’: Pelosi emboldened http://politi.co/2ScyvpN
// The speaker reflects on Trump and a tumultuous year back in the majority in an interview with POLITICO.
🐣 “Nearly all men can stand adversity, but if you want to test a man’s character, give him power.” ~ Lincoln
🐣 RT @mccaffreyr3 STRANGE. Sec State fires US Charge to Ukraine. Says he’ll avoid any meetings in US Embassy Kiev. He views our professional Country Team with its security as a bastion of the DEEP STATE? Pompeo has disappeared as a rational public servant.
⋙ 🐣 RT @MarkHertling A Secretary of State avoiding a US Embassy – where one gets updates from the country team most informed on current events in the country – to hold meetings in a hotel that has no compartmented intel facility. Yup, totes secure, totes normal.
⋙⋙ 🐣 RT @KatiePhang Pompeo is now scheduled to arrive in Kyiv on Jan. 3. Pompeo “wanted to visit the country after Taylor’s departure”. Taylor has been instructed to step aside before Pompeo’s trip. ¤ “Pompeo said he wanted to avoid the embassy altogether and would hold meetings in his hotel.”
🐣 RT @CNNnewsroom “The American people should have assurances that there’s going to be a fair trial and the outcome is not going to be rigged,” says @RepSwalwell about Speaker Pelosi’s refusal to immediately send the articles of impeachment passed by the House to the Senate https://cnn.it/35I3lKP 💽 https://twitter.com/CNNnewsroom/status/1208038880156377091?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @JRubinBlogger who would anonymously say that Trump was a Putin puppet but refuse to come forward to provide testimony well before we even got to an impeachment proceeding? Not a patriot
⋙ WaPo, Jennifer Rubin: The latest Russia bombshell bolsters Democrats’ demand for evidence http://wapo.st/35HIYx7 “we’ve had more confirmation … of what’s been long suspected, that our president’s national security briefings come from Putin, not our own [IC].”
RawStory/Salon, Chauncey Delavega: ‘Unhinged, paranoid and manic’: Psychiatrists agree Trump’s bizarre anti-impeachment letter shows he is mentally compromised http://bit.ly/36T73Bj “the letter is a treasure trove for psychiatric residents who want to study the psychotic mind”
🐣 RT @MCJalonick ”He just got impeached. He’ll be impeached forever. No matter what the Senate does. He’s impeached forever because he violated our Constitution,” Pelosi said in an interview with The Associated Press. From AP’s @LisaMascaro
⋙ AP, Lisa Mascaro: Pelosi: Power of gavel means Trump is ‘impeached forever’ http://bit.ly/2Q8JIFd
🐣 RT @DeanObeidallah Trump now trashes good Christians who speak out- this is a warning to all Christians that Trump is not your friend. Remember John 3:20: “Everyone who does evil hates the light, and will not come into the light for fear that their deeds will be exposed.” This is Trump.
DailyBeast, Erin Banco: Trump Pulled Plug on Pompeo’s November Ukraine Trip Over Impeachment Heat http://bit.ly/2PEqI2d
// The secretary of state will visit Kyiv in January. But he was supposed to make a trip there in November—until the plans were abruptly canceled.
🐣 RT @tribelaw Memo to @senatemajldr McConnell: A huge risk you run if you keep guys like Bolton & Mulvaney from testifying at trial: when they finally DO go public — and they will — it’ll be clear to everyone exactly what you were hiding. That time bomb is bound to explode eventually.
⭕ 19 Dec 2019
JustSecurity, Conor Shaw (12/19): The Senate Must Conduct an Impeachment Trial That Is Serious and Fair http://bit.ly/2SAuVpF
AlFranken: It’s in Roberts’ Court http://bit.ly/36YuaKP “Mitch McConnell has already told us that he will violate the oath. Actually, violating the oath is itself grounds for impeaching a U.S. Senator”
The impeachment trial of a president brings together all three branches of the federal government for this solemn process. So solemn that there is a special oath for members of the Senate who (I swear to God) will swear to God that they “will do impartial justice according to the Constitution and laws.” ¤ Mitch McConnell has already told us that he will violate the oath. Actually, violating the oath is itself grounds for impeaching a U.S. Senator.
In a poll released this week, 71% of Americans want Trump Administration officials like acting White House chief of staff, Mick “Get Used to It” Mulvaney and former national security advisor John “Drug Deal” Bolton to testify during the Senate trial. That number includes 64% of Republicans and 72% of independents!
WaPo, Jennifer Rubin: Republicans are outmatched, outwitted and outclassed http://wapo.st/34P5CCt
🐣 RT @neal_katyal I’ve always felt the case for impeachment and removal is just as conservative as it is liberal. This fabulous analysis by @rameshponnuru explains why. Four Tests for Impeachment | National Review
⋙ NationalReview, Ramesh Ponnoru: Four Tests for Impeachment http://bit.ly/2Zd4fwp
// And how the president meets them
WaPo, George Conway III: Republican senators run the risk of being shamed by Trump himself http://wapo.st/2ZcJrVK
🐣 RT @MaddowBlog “He is the third president to be impeached in United States history — and the first from Queens.” http://bit.ly/2sOBFp7
WaPo, Aaron Blake: This is who should testify in Trump’s Senate impeachment trial http://wapo.st/2PJr08c ● Rudolph W. Giuliani, ● John Bolton, ● Mick Mulvaney, ● Joe Biden, ● Ron Johnson, ● Andriy Yermak
// In an ideal world
TheAtlantic, Emma Green: How Trump Lost an Evangelical Stalwart http://bit.ly/2PEY1lQ
// The editor in chief of Christianity Today explains his scathing editorial about the president’s behavior—and the damage he argues his fellow Christians are doing to the Gospel.
WaPo, Dana Milbank: Trump’s impeachment provokes a deeper descent into demagoguery http://wapo.st/2Q7g9DQ
DailyBeast, Anna Nemtsova: Putin Can Teach Trump a Lot About Hanging on to Power http://bit.ly/2SafHHx
// At his Thursday press conference, Putin defended Trump and celebrated 20 years in power and counting. Trump’s listening. The rest of us should be, too.
NYT Editorial: President Trump Deserves a Real Trial http://nyti.ms/2SaNNeD
// Mitch McConnell’s plan to rush to an acquittal is an affront to the Constitution and a disservice to the nation.
NYT, Paul Krugman: Democrats May Save Us Yet http://nyti.ms/2s3QzHO
// America’s defenders of democracy take a stand.
TheIntercept, Mehdi Hassan: The A to Z of Things Trump Could and Should Have Been Impeached For http://bit.ly/2Q3ZBN3
🐣 RT @NormOrnstein I am hoping @SpeakerPelosi can delay sending over the impeachment accounts until the Lev Parnas/ Rudy Giuliani situation plays out. It could be a bombshell
⋙ 🐣 It already should be:
💰 Russia/Putin ➔ Firtash ➔ Parnas ➔ Giuliani ➔ Trump
Trump has not declared “gift” of free services from Rudy on his financial disclosure forms.
🐣 RT @IAmSophiaNelson This picture taken yesterday in the House of Representatives has stuck with me all night. It’s the #Republican Caucus sitting on the floor during the #IMPEACHMENTVOTE a picture is worth a thousand words. This is the 2019 party of Lincoln: White. Male. Hopping mad! https://twitter.com/IAmSophiaNelson/status/1207659420320194560?s=20/photo/1
DailyBeast, Matt Lewis: I Was a Lifelong Republican. The GOP Is Now the Evil Party. http://bit.ly/38Y8DUD
// When I was coming of age, the Democrats were the moral relativists and the victims and the purveyors of sacrilege. Now, it’s the Republicans. It’s sickening to watch.
🐣 RT @DeadlineWH “It’s unbelievably historic… Here you have seeking foreign assistance in an election and there can be no question that Donald Trump knew at the time he did this, that that was illegal… It was very conscious” – Andrew Weissmann w/ @NicolleDWallace 💽 https://twitter.com/DeadlineWH/status/1207824000321302528?s=20/photo/1
⋙ 🐣 Weissmann was one of Mueller’s lead prosecutors. I’m glad he is finally vindicated.
NYT, Spencer Bokat-Lindell: Nixon at His Worst Wouldn’t Do That’ http://nyti.ms/2Q3xs8R
// A Watergate-era Republican on Trump and impeachment, then and now.
WaPo (10/23): Tom Daschle and Trent Lott: The Senate can hold a fair impeachment trial. We did it in 1999. http://wapo.st/2ZbKKnR
// 10/23/2019
🐣 RT @ProudResistor
— 15,413 lies & misleading claims
— 5,400 children separated
— 4,600 dead in Puerto Rico
— 215 criminal indictments
— 26 Russians indicted
— 25 sexual assault allegations
— 6 Trump advisors guilty
— 2 articles of impeachment
— 1 Impeached President
⋙ 🐣 On the first day post impeachment #IMPOTUS gave to me … @gtconway3d
VanderbiltU (Feb): Grassley, Klobuchar most effective senators of 115th Congress, according to study http://bit.ly/2BXCkpL
// 2/28/2019
🐣 RT @HillaryClinton The president has abused his power—using his office to further not the nation’s objectives but his own personal, political objectives—and, together, we are holding him accountable. Feel proud. Keep going.
🐣 RT @gtconway3d I agree that the president deserves a full and fair trial with lots of live witnesses who have relevant testimony
⋙ 🐣 RT @Acyn Lindsey Graham: I just left President Trump, he’s mad as hell that they would do this to him and now deny him his day in court 💽 https://twitter.com/gtconway3d/status/1207846427835154432?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @Axios Biden: “If anyone has reason to be angry with the Republicans and not want to cooperate it’s me, the way they’ve attacked me, my son, my family. I have no love. But the fact is we have to be able to get things done and when we can’t convince them, we go out and beat them.” 💽 https://twitter.com/axios/status/1207840009086210048?s=20/photo/1
💙💙 🔆 This❗️⋙ NYT: How 2 Soviet Émigrés Fueled the Trump Impeachment Flames http://nyti.ms/2Q2ceZ8
// “Lev and Igor” were obscure businessmen who became fixtures of the Republican donor set. Then they played an unlikely role in the proceedings gripping the nation.
WaPo Editorial (9/5): Trump tries to force Ukraine to meddle in the 2020 election http://wapo.st/2lCfNcO
// 9/5/2019; discussed on @Maddow
🐣💙 RT @Libericks
A Congressman gave a depiction
Of Donald’s impeachment affliction
As treatment less fair
Than Christ had to bear,
Which, fact-wise, is pure (cruci-)fiction.
⋙ DailyBeast: GOP Congressman Compares Trump to Jesus: Pontius Pilate Was Fairer Than Democrats http://bit.ly/34DGCyd
“During that sham trial, Pontius Pilate afforded more rights to Jesus than Democrats afforded this president in this process,” he concluded.
🐣 RT @maggieNYT POTUS lawyers are looking at various options for proceeding if House doesn’t send articles of impeachment to the Senate. POTUS doesn’t want it to be left hanging that he was impeached and nothing was done by Republicans to defend him in the Senate.
🐣 RT @EvanMcMullin Does anyone expect Trump not to have Russian backing again in 2020? Maybe the Saudis or others will join them. We need our law enforcement and intel service to monitor, assess and thwart these attacks. Trump, Barr and Durham are attempting to prevent that. It’s very dangerous.
CNN: Washington Post: Trump said he believes Ukraine interfered in 2016 election because ‘Putin told me’ http://cnn.it/35FKMa7
🐣 RT @michaeldweiss Yeah, sure, why not.
⋙ TheIndependent: Putin says rule limiting him to two consecutive terms as president ‘can be abolished’ http://bit.ly/3913FGL
// Russian president raised the prospect of dropping clause restricting ”two consecutive terms” – though confusion remained as to what exactly he meant by it.
🐣 RT @TheTweetOfJohn “Until we can get some assurances from the majority leader that he is going to allow for a fair and impartial trial to take place, we would be crazy to walk in there knowing he set up a kangaroo court.”
⋙ NBCNews: McConnell declares ‘impasse’ in talks with Democrats over Trump trial in Senate http://nbcnews.to/35HDUcd
// A trial of the president can’t begin in the Senate until it receives the abuse of power and obstruction measures passed by the House on Wednesday.
🐣 RT @EvanMcMullin Durham now pursuing the call records & emails of ex-CIA Director John Brennan, all to undermine the US intel assessment of the obvious: Putin backed Trump in 2016. This will chill investigations into future foreign backing of Trump. That’s the point.
⋙ NYT: Durham Is Scrutinizing Ex-C.I.A. Director’s Role in Russian Interference Findings http://nyti.ms/34FnxMb
// The federal prosecutor investigating the origins of the Russia inquiry is examining testimony by the former C.I.A. director John Brennan and seeking his communications records.
🐣 RT @tribelaw There are no options. Trump desperately needs a Senate trial that acquits him. The irony is that the Potemkin pseudo-trial McConnell is offering him can’t deliver anything but an OJ pseudo-acquittal.
⋙ 🐣 RT @maggieNYT POTUS lawyers are looking at various options for proceeding if House doesn’t send articles of impeachment to the Senate. POTUS doesn’t want it to be left hanging that he was impeached and nothing was done by Republicans to defend him in the Senate.
🐣 RT @SpeakerPelosi When our Founders wrote the Constitution, they suspected we might one day have a rogue president. I doubt they thought we would have a rogue president and a rogue leader of the Senate at the same time. #DefendOurDemocracy
🐣 RT @McFaul I didn’t have time to watch entire proceedings yesterday. Did any Republican argue that Trump has the right to use American taxpayer money to pressure a foreign government to help his reelection campaign?
⋙ 🐣 No! They all argued process or else ‘You just hate Trump’ or ‘You hate Trump supporters.’ Oh, and one guy compared impeachment to Pearl Harbor and another to the trial of Jesus Christ.
🐣 RT @DeadlineWH “After making Donald Trump the third president in American history to be impeached… Nancy Pelosi now says she will wait to transmit the articles of impeachment for some guarantees that the Senate trial will be fair…Throwing the timing… into limbo” – @NicolleDWallace 💽 https://twitter.com/DeadlineWH/status/1207771611585286172?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @caitlincollins Bolton: “There’s obviously a lot swirling around in that department, including some litigation that could affect my status. Although I have a lot to say on the subject, the prudent course for me is just to decline to comment.”
⋙ 🐣 RT @MorningEdition @AmbJohnBolton has avoided interviews since President Trump fired him as national security adviser — just before the impeachment inquiry began. Now Bolton exclusively tells @NPRinskeep he has “a lot to say on the subject.”
🐣 RT @BillMcKibbon An important moment: Christianity Today, the key evangelical magazine founded by Billy Graham, calls for Trump’s impeachment, describing him as “a near perfect example of a human being who is morally lost and confused.”
🐣 RT @nealrogers This is big: Christianity Today calls for Trump’s impeachment. ¤ “It’s time to call a spade a spade, to say that no matter how many hands we win in this political poker game, we are playing with a stacked deck of gross immorality and ethical incompetence.”
🐣💙 RT @gtconway3d “The typical [Christianity Today] approach is to stay above the fray and allow Christians with different political convictions to make their arguments in the public square …. We want CT to be a place that welcomes Christians from across the political spectrum ….” 📌 https://twitter.com/gtconway3d/status/1207826217119956992?s=20
🐣 RT @acosta Christianity Today: “The president of the United States attempted to use his political power to coerce a foreign leader to harass and discredit one of the president’s political opponents… it is profoundly immoral.”
⋙ 💙💙 ChristianityToday, Mark Galli: Trump Should Be Removed from Office http://bit.ly/2Z7eIJH
// It’s time to say what we said 20 years ago when a president’s character was revealed for what it was.
🐣 RT @AshleyParker It is impeachment, and it is for life. It’s historical and it’s constitutional. It’s not something Trump can squirm his way out of, or cut a hush money check to make disappear. My latest on the indelible stain of impeachment that forever marks Trump—>
⋙ WaPo, Ashley Parker: ‘It’s a horrible thing they did’: Trump now bears the indelible mark of impeachment http://wapo.st/2EyxOis
// The Debrief: An occasional series offering a reporter’s insights
WaPo, Greg Sargent and Paul Waldman: Why doesn’t McConnell want witnesses at Trump’s trial? Because he’s guilty. http://wapo.st/2SgKP8B
🐣 RT @MaxBoot .@WhipClyburn said Dems will wait “as long as it takes” to send over impeachment. “It looks like the prosecutors are getting cold feet,” McConnell said. To the contrary, the prosecutors are getting smart: They realize there is no need to play a rigged game.
⋙ WaPo, Max Boot: Democrats can prevent a sham trial in the Senate if they hang tough http://wapo.st/35FkTr3
NYT: Trump Impeachment Trial in Doubt as Democrats Weigh Withholding Articles http://nyti.ms/2PFGVEh
// Speaker Nancy Pelosi said she would wait to see what the trial in the Senate would look like before sending the two articles of impeachment there, leaving the timing in doubt.
🐣 RT @mitchellreports Potential game changer: Emerging democratic strategy voiced by @RepBlumenauer in the debate has @SpeakerPelosi delaying sending #impeachment articles to Senate until @senatemajldr agrees to better trial terms with @SenSchumer as suggested by Harvard Law Prof Larry Tribe
⭕ 18 Dec 2019 ‼️ Impeachment ‼️
NBCNews: What Russia’s tactics teach us about disinformation in U.S. politics http://nbcnews.to/3657F73
// Masha Gessen, Staff Writer for The New Yorker, and Former U.S. Ambassador to Russia, Michael McFaul, join Meet The Press for a special edition, to discuss the Russian disinformation playbook and evidence it’s being used in American politics and media.
💙 TheIndependent, Bandy X Lee (12/18): I’m a forensic psychiatrist at Yale. I took a look at Trump’s letter to Nancy Pelosi — and it left me very worried http://bit.ly/2QpVgnH
// I feared we would enter a stage of shared psychosis, and here we are
No healthy human being — not even a Republican who loves Donald Trump — can read his letter to Nancy Pelosi and feel comfortable. The letter is a very obvious demonstration of a troubled state of mind. This occurs in the wake of more than 800 mental health professionals eventually signing onto a petition that the House Judiciary Committee consider mental health aspects.
The assertions Trump makes in the letter should alarm not only those who believe that the president of the United States and the commander of the most powerful military on earth should be mentally sound, but also those who are concerned about such a compromised individual’s influence on society. …
Reading Trump’s letter to Pelosi without arming oneself with the right interpretation ends up playing into the hands of pathology and helping it. In the most extreme cases, the dynamics contribute to what is called “shared psychosis.” Shared psychosis is a phenomenon that happens commonly in households where a severely ill individual goes untreated: rather than the sick person growing healthy, healthy family members often take on symptoms of the sick person. I have seen some of the most intelligent and otherwise high-functioning persons succumb to the most bizarre delusions from close contact with someone whose mental state is not normal. Shared psychosis can also happen on a national scale, as renowned mental health experts such as Erich Fromm have noted.
The president is quite conscious of his ability to generate this mass hysteria, which is the purpose of his letter. He engenders it unconsciously, through what he refers to as his “gut”. He correctly recognizes that primitive “abilities” strengthen when higher functions are compromised or bypassed.
According to neuroscientists, the unconscious mind accounts for about 98 per cent of mental activity. Delusions form when a person has extreme difficulty tolerating reality and must create an alternative reality to get by. The emotional drive behind this is so strong, it “infects” others more effectively than would conscious lies or strategy. The sheer influence on all those who are exposed, as well as the destructiveness, shows that it is a disease process. Meanwhile, that person also exhausts those who do not adopt his symptoms.
The book I edited — The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump – contained three warnings: that the president was more dangerous than people suspected; that he would grow more dangerous with time; and that ultimately he would become uncontainable. We are entering the “uncontainable” stage, and that’s because of shared psychosis.
While attempting to convince the public the exact opposite of the truth through his letter, the president inadvertently gives away his innermost thoughts and fears — and also his own, very clear recognition of reality. With the signs of pathology he reveals, he should submit to a mental health examination or, if he refuses, remove himself from office.
Some are afraid that bringing up mental impairment would exonerate Trump, but mental incapacity to do a job is not the same as incapacity to stand trial or to be criminally responsible. In fact, criminal-mindedness combined with mental incapacity is the most dangerous situation of all.
In order to do its duty to the American people, Congress should resolve, through whatever means at its disposal, this public health emergency.
Bandy X Lee, MD, MDiv., is a forensic psychiatrist at Yale School of Medicine, president of the World Mental Health Coalition, and author
NYRB, Michael Weiss: The Long, Dark History of Russia’s Murder, Inc. http://bit.ly/2MuGMBO
// GRU
DefenseOne, Sarah Chayes: Russia Is Waging Asymmetric Warfare Against the US — And We’re Letting Them Win http://bit.ly/2MoMnJS
// 12/18/2019; We must do more to harden against these attacks on our economy, institutions, and the public.
MotherJones, David Corn: The Inevitability of Donald Trump’s Impeachment http://bit.ly/2PHjnio
// His decades-long record of misdeeds and wrongdoing made this moment inescapable.
Politico, John Harris: Impeachment and the crack up of the conservative mind http://politi.co/38ZFKr9
// The Trump years have knocked conservatives off a high horse they’d been riding since the Reagan era.
💙 ≣ BaltimoreSun: Transcript of U.S. Rep. Steny Hoyer’s speech on the articles of impeachment against President Donald Trump http://bit.ly/2Q1Xycw
The pages of our history are filled with Americans who had the courage to choose country over party or personality. But, as President Kennedy wrote: ‘The stories of past courage …can teach, they can offer hope, they can provide inspiration. But they cannot supply courage itself. For this each man must look into his own soul.’
I urge my colleagues in the House and in the Senate: look into your soul. Summon the courage to vote for our Constitution and our democracy. To do less betrays our oath and that of our Founders, who pledged their lives, their fortunes, and their sacred honor. Let us neither turn away from the evidence, which is so clear, nor from our good conscience, which compels us to do what in our hearts we know to be right. Let us not allow the rule of law to end or for tyranny to find its toehold.
🐣 RT @jimsciutto Consider this gravely: WH officials feared the Russian president successfully influenced the US president to plant a conspiracy theory & exonerate Russia.
🐣 RT @DavidCornDC This article shows how @realDonaldTrump and his Republican defenders have been useful idiots for Putin. It could be grounds for impeachment or the 25A. Every American who gives a damn about the country should read this.
🐣 RT @john_sipher What gets me about this is how the people who work most closely with Trump realize he’s unhinged and dense. They worry about something crazy “getting stuck in his head”. They know he can’t process information or discern truth from fiction.
⋙ 💙💙 WaPo: Former White House officials say they feared Putin influenced the president’s views on Ukraine and 2016 campaign http://wapo.st/2rceHYz
NYT Editorial: Trump Has Been Impeached. Republicans Are Following Him Down. http://nyti.ms/38Vdndn
// Ignoring facts and trashing the impeachment process is no way to protect democracy.
🐣 RT @PoliticoEurope ICYMI: Trump is the first US president impeached for abuse of power
⋙ Politico: Trump impeached in historic rebuke http://politi.co/35BhMAp
// For only the third time ever, US House of Representatives recommends a president’s removal from office.
CNN, Paul Begala: Trump’s letter to Pelosi isn’t ‘sick,’ it’s evil http://cnn.it/2PCselC
🐣 RT @sfpelosi Donald Trump wanted to smear Joe Biden both as a rebuke to Barack Obama and to eliminate a threat for the 2020 election. He could have sought “dirt” anywhere – but the #TrumpGiulianiScheme chose Ukraine in order to please Russia. #AllRoadsLeadToPutin #Impeachment
🐣 RT @MSNBC “You are not asleep. This is not a dream, this is really happening, this is your life, this is our country and our time. It is Wednesday, the 18th of December in the year 2019, and President Donald Trump is impeached.” – @Maddow
⋙ MSNBC, Maddow: Donald Trump impeached; Congress passes both articles http://on.msnbc.com/36Ui31h
// Rachel Maddow announces the result of the vote in Congress minutes earlier on two articles of impeachment against Donald Trump, with both articles passing, making Trump only the third president in U.S. history to be impeached.
🐣 RT @KeeganHBrown I’m sorry, but Billy Long literally having cash sticking out of his pocket during the #TrumpImpeachment debate is beyond parody. https://twitter.com/KeeganHBrown/status/1207423416623681536?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @EvanMcMullin I think it’s the other way around. Trump is guilty of abuses that prior presidents wouldn’t have even contemplated. To the contrary, this impeachment increases the chances that future presidents will not be so stupid and craven as to behave similarly and require impeachment.
⋙ 🐣 RT @Reince From here on out, most Presidents will now get impeached when the opposite party holds the House. This is a new political game that will play out for decades to come.
DailyBeast, Jonathan Alter: The People Speak: President Trump Is No King http://bit.ly/2Z1Xa1C
// In a very real constitutional sense, the people declared Wednesday that it’s not OK for a president to solicit a foreign power to smear a political rival.
WaPo Editorial: Why the House’s impeachment of Trump was proper and necessary http://wapo.st/34DdneG
🐣 RT @tribelaw Read this and think about all the ways in which it’s an understatement. All the ways someone willing to do what Trump has done can injure you as an ordinary citizen. Think of cyber attacks he can orchestrate with foreign help. The prospects are limitless.
⋙ NYT, Bret Stephens: The Conservative Case for Impeachment — and Removal http://nyti.ms/2PBAFh6
‘The most heinous act in which a democratic government can engage is to use its law enforcement machinery for political ends.’
NYT: Timing of Trump Impeachment Trial in Limbo as Pelosi Holds Out for Assurances http://nyti.ms/2ShNUFt
// In declining to say when she might send the articles of impeachment to the Senate, Speaker Nancy Pelosi suggested she might keep them as leverage for negotiations on the rules for a trial.
🐣 RT @JohnDingell (Dec 2018) We’ve had presidents of almost every stripe, but this one will be remembered as the smallest and most vile. A petty man with no interest in a greater good for us all. All I want for Christmas is January 20th, 2021.
// 12/24/2018
🐣 RT @fbajak If you had to choose one photo for 2019 … maybe Feb. 5 by Andrew Harnik/AP https://twitter.com/fbajak/status/1207508220975230976?s=20/photo/1
// Nancy Pelosi clapping at Trump
🐣 RT @gregpmiller Consider how hard Trump had to work to be impeached. Pelosi spent 2 yrs fending off impeachment demands from her D members. Trump survived mortal danger of Mueller report. Russia “cloud” was gone. Then picks up phone and asks for a “favor, though.”
🐣 RT @RadioFreeTom Stepping back from the damage Trump has done to the Constitution, it’s amazing the damage he did today to the GOP. As recently as five years ago, I thought the Republicans were going to stay a solid majority for a long time. Trump destroyed that and saved the Dems. /1 📌 https://twitter.com/RadioFreeTom/status/1207491358598021120?s=20
🐣 Doug Collins is what happens when an auctioneer screws a turkey.
🐣📊 RT @geoffgarin NO TRUMP RECOVERY: New NBC/Wall Street Journal survey shows that nearly half of all voters say they are certain to vote against Donald Trump next year. Trump’s base* remains at just 34%. https://twitter.com/geoffgarin/status/1207429663599026178?s=20/photo/1
// *“certain to vote against’ 34%; certain to vote against 48%; depends on nominee 18%
🐣 RT @billkuchman 📰 Here’s tomorrow’s impeachment @politico front page. https://twitter.com/billkuchman/status/1207490771026358272?s=20/photo/1
TPM, Josh Kovensky: I Watched OAN’s Unhinged Ukraine Impeachment Special So You Don’t Have To http://bit.ly/2Ey2kZL
Politico: Pelosi threatens to delay Senate impeachment trial http://politi.co/2s0LZKy
// Some legal scholars have suggested she could consider refusing to transmit articles of impeachment to the Senate.
🐣 RT @Amy_Siskind [To @real] World’s biggest loser – RESIGN! https://twitter.com/Amy_Siskind/status/1207507675833143297?s=20/photo/1-2
// NYT and WaPo cover pages (paper)
🐣 RT @tribelaw You may’ve missed the import of @SpeakerPelosi’s magnificent statement that the two Impeachment Articles do more than merely refer charges for Senate trial. They state as “established fact” this president’s “high Crimes and Misdemeanors” in abusing power and obstructing Congress.
🐣 RT @JoyceWhiteVance Mitch McConnell has made it clear he’s the WH’s man at the impeachment trial. Sen Graham says he doesn’t need to hear the evidence to acquit. Americans want a fair trial, so thank God for Nancy Pelosi. Acquittal at a rigged trial won’t exonerate Trump, no matter what he claims.
⋙ 🐣 RT @tribelaw Growing support for the idea of impeaching today but withholding the articles from the Senate until a meaningful trial can be conducted:
⋙⋙ WaPo: Pelosi says House may withhold impeachment articles, delaying Senate trial http://wapo.st/35NRpqI
HollywoodReporter: Stephen Colbert and Trevor Noah React to Trump’s Reaction to Impeachment Vote http://bit.ly/2PC2Lc3
🐣 RT @B52Malmet We would not have seen history made this evening if it wasn’t for these courageous women. Let’s hear it for the brave patriots who bucked Trump’s tirades and testified. There are others. But I want to highlight Prof Karlan, Dr. Hill, Laura Cooper and Ambasssor Yovonavitch. https://twitter.com/B52Malmet/status/1207492493748498434?s=20/photo/1-4
🐣 RT @tedlieu Senate Rules for Impeachment require senators to take this oath: “I solemnly swear that in all things appertaining to the trial of the impeachment of [the person being impeached], now pending, I will do impartial justice according to the Constitution and laws: So help me God.”
⋙ 🐣 RT @DavidJollyFL Mitch McConnell: ‘I’m not an impartial juror’ ahead of Senate impeachment trial
⋙⋙ CNN: Mitch McConnell: ‘I’m not an impartial juror’ ahead of Senate impeachment trial http://cnn.it/2r5tKTG
🐣 RT @amyklobuchar The Founding Fathers included impeachment provisions in the Constitution because they feared that a President could betray the trust of the American people to a foreign power. ¤ Today, the House is fulfilling their constitutional obligation. ¤ No one is above the law.
🐣 RT @neal_katyal McConnell wants zero witnesses. An attempted complete cover up by someone scared of the truth coming out.
🐣 RT @rgoodlaw Sounds like Professor @tribelaw’s proposal to me. ¤ “We’ll make our decision as to when we’re going to send it when we see what they’re doing on the Senate side.” ¤ @SpeakerPelosi (in response to @mkraju) 💽 https://twitter.com/rgoodlaw/status/1207501767157661697?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @tribelaw Senate rules requiring the House to “immediately” present its articles of impeachment to the Senate clearly violate the constitutional clause in Article I giving each house the sole power to make its own rules. It’s up to the House when and how to prosecute its case in the Senate
CNN: House of Representatives impeaches President Donald Trump http://cnn.it/38VhaHA
🐣 RT @pbump https://twitter.com/pbump/status/1207496109817565190?s=20/photo/1
// WaPo cover (paper)
🐣 RT @StandUpAmerica No one is above the law. https://twitter.com/StandUpAmerica/status/1207499359421698048?s=20/photo/1
// NYT cover (paper)
🐣 RT @shirlsadams .@Pelosi, dressed in all black, and wearing a golden brooch that was a tiny replica of the Mace of the Republic — a ceremonial staff that represents the power of the House of Representatives…” #TeamPelosi #StrongDemocratWomen
⋙ NYT: Nancy Pelosi Went Dark for the House Debates. Her Pin Shined. http://nyti.ms/2PyhaFU https://twitter.com/ShirlsAdams/status/1207440958746431489?s=20/photo/1
// As she opened the impeachment debate in the House of Representatives, her black suit and shining brooch made a statement.
🐣 RT @JoeBiden President Trump abused his power, violated his oath of office, and betrayed our nation. This is a solemn moment for our country. But in the United States of America, no one is above the law — not even the President.
🐣 RT @kasparov63 If I wanted to hear morally bankrupt cowards deny reality and praise the dear leader in identical talking points I’d have stayed in Russia. The GOP has sealed its fate as the party of Trump and Trumpism, and nothing else.
🐣 RT @ChrisLHayes I don’t believe that demographics are destiny – all kinds of people can have all kinds of politics, – yet my god the difference in the diversity of the two major coalitions in this country is just so so so stark. Feels very much, watching this, that it’s the core of the thing. 📌 https://twitter.com/chrislhayes/status/1207450741994086400?s=20
🐣 RT @RepDebDingell The times have found us. Thank you for strong leadership and an empathetic hand @SpeakerPelosi https://twitter.com/RepDebDingell/status/1207378358482456581?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @briantylercohen Justin Amash: “I rise today in support of these articles of impeachment. I come to this floor not as a Democrat, not as a Republican but as an American.” ¤ Take note, GOP. This is what putting country over party looks like.
🐣 RT @DanRather Just seeing the headline, PRESIDENT TRUMP IMPEACHED … the import of the moment struck me as those three words became etched into the annals of our history. A perilous and surreal moment.
🐣 RT @SenJeffMerkley THREAD: Our founders created the process of impeachment b/c they were deeply concerned about two significant dangers: first, foreign influence that might corrupt American democracy; and second, abuse of power by a president tempted to use his powers to become more like a king. 📌 https://twitter.com/SenJeffMerkley/status/1207480881155395586?s=20
🐣 RT @ananavarro Trump won’t be removed by spineless Republicans in Senate.
It’s also true that he has been impeached.
It’ll be in his obituary and history books.
Future generations of Americans will read about the unfit, unethical, criminal 45th President.
It is his shameful lasting legacy.
🐣 RT @NBCNews “We did all we could, Elijah,” Speaker Pelosi says, taking a moment to recognize the late Rep. Elijah Cummings. “We passed the two articles of impeachment. The president is impeached.” https://twitter.com/NBCNews/status/1207487606705053697?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @kyledcheney NEW: The House voted to impeach Donald Trump Wednesday on charges of abusing his power and obstructing congressional investigations, a historic rebuke in a political era that has threatened to upend the nation’s constitutional order. W/ @AndrewDesiderio
⋙ Politico: Trump impeached in historic rebuke http://politi.co/35BhMAp
// For only the third time ever, the House recommends a president’s removal from office.
🐣 RT @JohnJHarwood has asymmetric polarization produced a qualitative difference in temperament, values and intellectual integrity between the Democratic and Republican parties? ¤ you decide:
Schiff—->Nunes
Nadler—->Collins
Cummings—->Jordan
Pelosi—->McCarthy
Obama—->Trump
🐣 WashingtonPost Cover https://twitter.com/Auriandra/status/1207482945742749699?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @RepAdamSchiff After hours of debate, one thing is clear: ¤ My Republican colleagues don’t want to defend the President’s conduct. They haven’t argued that he did, in fact, uphold his oath of office. ¤ Because President Donald J. Trump’s abuse of power and obstruction of Congress is indefensible.
🐣 RT @gtconway3d It’s incredible. How did it get this bad?
⋙ 🐣 RT @JRubinBlogger The gap in character and intellect between the two parties is stunning
🐣 Covers: Online NYT and WaPo https://twitter.com/Auriandra/status/1207479574809993217?s=20/photo/1-2
🐣 RT @JRubinBlogger No letter, no tweet, no Fox News spin can repair the reputations of Trump enablers. The right-wing media that cheered them on will, like outlets that rooted for Jim Crow and demonized Freedom Riders, be shunned by decent, freedom-loving people
⋙ WaPo, Jennifer Rubin: Trump is impeached and joins the ‘losers’ of presidential history http://wapo.st/2M8Goc0
🐣 RT @ NEWS: Acting amb to Ukraine Bill Taylor was instructed by a top Pompeo aide to hand over responsibilities for his post just days before Pompeo planned to visit Kyiv, allow Pompeo to avoid meeting or being photographed with him. @mgordonwsj @georgikantchev
⋙ WSJ: U.S. Envoy to Ukraine Was Asked to Step Aside Ahead of Pompeo Visit http://on.wsj.com/38LL6WG
// Timing counters earlier suggestions that Acting U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine Bill Taylor’s precise departure date was predetermined
🐣 RT @RepValDemings “The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.” – Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. #DefendOurDemocracy
⋘ (nap) ⋙
🐣 RT @RepJerryNadler These two articles charge that President Trump placed his private, political interests above our national security, above our elections, and above our system of checks and balances. 💽 https://twitter.com/RepJerryNadler/status/1207357450879418369?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @BrettBruen “In an age when everything has become so hyper-partisan, their testimony was a refreshing reminder of the common values we are all supposed to share. At a time when courage is in short supply, they gave us reason to hold out hope for principles & purpose.”
⋙ BusinessInsider: The impeachment hearings could have a lasting positive effect on America’s diplomatic corps http://bit.ly/2M8sfeQ
🐣 RT @RighteousBabe4 Collins. 💽 https://twitter.com/RighteousBabe4/status/1207410511916220418?s=20/photo/1
// Backwoods banjo kid from Deliverance
🐣 RT CAPActiom “Three consecutive days in July tell so much of the story.”
July 24: Mueller testifies, Trump thinks he’s clear.
July 25: Trump to Ukraine “I would like you to do us a favor though.”
July 26: Trump call w/ Sondland “so he’s going to do the investigation.”
— @RepAdamSchiff 💽 https://twitter.com/CAPAction/status/1207410551745331201?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @BillKristol “And it would require that the State Department and the Intelligence Community report to Congress every 90 days on whether or not the Kremlin is meddling in U.S. elections. That last provision drew pointed criticism from the Trump administration…”
⋙ DailyBeast, Betsy Swan: Trump Administration Battles New Sanctions on Russia http://bit.ly/2rZiQzn
// On Tuesday, President Trump claimed he was tougher on Russia than his predecessor. At the same time, his subordinates strongly opposed a bill imposing new sanctions on Moscow.
NBCNews: Live Blog / Live updates: House votes on impeachment of President Trump http://nbcnews.to/35DFf3Y
// The latest from the historic vote in Congress, a day after Trump derided the process as a Democratic “crusade.”
🐣💙💙 RT @jentaub 🧵 Live-thread. Impeachment of Donald John Trump. December 18, 2019. The House is voting now on a Republican motion to adjourn in protest of impeachment. Vote will take around fifteen minutes. ¤ 1/ 📌 https://twitter.com/jentaub/status/1207303012651327489?s=20
🐣 RT @girlsreallyrule Adam Schiff uses a predicting quote from Alexander Hamilton to describe Trump: a man “unprincipled in private life, desperate in his fortune, bold in his temper, [who would] throw things into confusion [and] may ride the storm and direct the whirlwind..” 💽 https://twitter.com/girlsreallyrule/status/1207407122016813063?s=20/photo/1
// George Washington quote
🐣💙💙 RT @moscow_project .@RepJerryNadler: “After months of investigation, there can be no serious debate about the evidence at hand:” Trump demanded Ukraine investigate his political opponents, and withheld military aid and a White House meeting to force them to comply. 📌 Thread of highlights https://twitter.com/moscow_project/status/1207352346403131393?s=20
🐣 RT @kylegriffin1 Chairman Nadler: “We do not hate President Trump. But we do know that President Trump will continue to threaten the nation’s security, democracy and constitutional system if he is allowed to remain in office.” Via CBS 💽 https://twitter.com/kylegriffin1/status/1207390062528253953?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @CNN “There is one simple question that can clarify this impeachment. … Do you think American presidents should ask foreign powers to investigate domestic political rivals?” |@JohnAvlon writes for @CNNOpinion
⋙ CNN: The one question to ask yourself about impeachment http://cnn.it/36O6lp1
WaPo: Some House Democrats push Pelosi to withhold impeachment articles, delay Senate trial http://wapo.st/34BYzwU
WaPo, Jennifer Rubin: Myths exploded on impeachment day http://wapo.st/2PyH2Se
1. He did not mention former vice president Joe Biden in the July 25 call. In fact, he and his son were mentioned multiple times.
2. He cared about corruption. He never raised the topic, concealed the reason that aid was held up, dispensed his personal lawyer Rudolph W. Giuliani to get smears solely about Biden and Burisma from corrupt Ukrainians, and released aid before any anti-corruption measures were taken. The entire national security team understood this was about Burisma, and Burisma meant the Bidens.
3. The aid was eventually released. Not before more Ukrainians were killed and only after Trump was caught.
4. Biden did something wrong. No, the Obama administration and the West more generally wanted prosecutor Viktor Shokin fired because he was not investigating corruption. And no, there was no ongoing investigation of Hunter Biden.
5. The impeachment process was unfair. Trump could have participated but did not. He was afforded every right prior impeached presidents received.
🐣 RT @mmpadellan Anyone who compares trump to Jesus, as Rep. Loudermilk did today, is obscenely deranged and probably needs to turn in their Christian card. ¤ So sayeth us all. ¤ Amen. https://twitter.com/mmpadellan/status/1207400544257683457?s=20/photo/1
// compares Jesus to Trump
🐣 RT @CAPAction “Each generation has fought for the preservation of our democracy, and that is what brings us to the House floor today…Congress has done its due diligence. Today, we send a clear message—we will not tolerate abuses of power from the president of the United States” —@RepPressley 💽 https://twitter.com/CAPAction/status/1207394348633075712?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @HouseJudiciary Rep. Cohen: “From our founding, the Untied States has been a special nation. A city upon a hill… In the United States we don’t have a king. We choose our leaders. We vote.” 💽 https://twitter.com/HouseJudiciary/status/1207372708310331392?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @BillKristol Thanks to Donald Trump, we can say Merry Impeachmas again
🐣 RT @CNN Rep. @tedlieu: “Whether Donald Trump leaves in one month, one year or five years, this impeachment is permanent, it will follow him around for the rest of his life and history books will record it. … It’s all very simple: No one is above the law” https://cnn.it/35BoE0C
🐣 RT @leahmcelrath Trump obtained the office of the presidency with the illegitimate assistance of a foreign power. ¤ Trump is trying to retain the office of the presidency with the illegitimate assistance of a foreign power. ¤ Trump is a threat to national security and must be impeached and removed.
🐣 RT @brianklaas Why do Trump, Giuliani, and their clownish sycophants on TV constantly spread lies and disinformation? Because it works. Here’s why it works, and how journalists can do a better job pushing back. My column:
🐣 RT @brianklaas “The role of journalists is to be objective, not “balanced.” If a Trumpian commentator trots out a well-worn lie, the host needs to correct it immediately. And if they trot out lies over and over, that person should not be a guest again.” My latest:
⋙ WaPo, Brian Klaas: Unfortunately, Trump’s lies in the media work. Here’s why. http://wapo.st/2EvgkUj
// depressing
🐣 RT @SimonWDC Mueller investigation was initiated by a Trump appointee and carried out by a lifelong Republican. ¤ Ukraine investigation was initiated by a Trump appointee (IG IC), and everyone who testified either worked for or works now for the President. ¤ Ds have had little to do w/either.
⋙ 🐣 RT @Michelleinbklyn Years ago some of us naively hoped that someday the fever would break and a few Republicans would stand up for the republic against a grotesque demagogue. Instead here’s one suggesting Trump is more of a martyr than Jesus Christ.
⋙⋙ 🐣 RT @joshtpm Rep. Loudermilk: “When Jesus was falsely accused of treason, Pontius Pilate gave Jesus the opportunity to face his accusers.” 💽 https://twitter.com/michelleinbklyn/status/1207381382550474752?s=20/photo/1
WashingtonTimes, Andrew Napolitano: Trump impeachment: Undisputed evidence that he abused his power http://bit.ly/2M8w5Ey
🐣 RT @EvanMcMullin Will not a single House Republican rise in defense of the Constitution and the rule of law?
🐣 RT @dgordon52 Let’s debunk the GOP’s talking points on impeachment using their own words. ¤ It’s all on video. Follow thread for clips. ¤ (1 of 7) 💽 https://twitter.com/dgordon52/status/1204436181989101570?s=20/photo/1
TheAtlantic, David Graham: The Stain of Impeachment Will Last Forever http://bit.ly/38PUA3e
// The House is poised to indelibly alter Trump’s legacy.
🐣 RT @ HouseJudiciary Rep. Johnson: “It’s not just that our elections were attacked, our elections are under attack right now. The very day the Judiciary Committee voted out Articles of Impeachment, President Trump welcomed Rudy Giuliani back to the White House.” 💽 https://twitter.com/HouseJudiciary/status/1207370191811821577?s=20/photo/1
WaPo, Paul Waldman: Trump is getting the one kind of accountability he fears http://wapo.st/2PX28J2 “Nothing has ever mattered more to him than image, the view of him in the eyes of others.”
🐣 RT @RepRaskin In my one-minute speech on the Articles of Impeachment, I tried to distill the principles at stake in this moment to their essence. 💽 https://twitter.com/RepRaskin/status/1207366887371419649?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @SpeakerPelosi It is tragic that the President’s reckless actions make impeachment necessary. He gave us no choice. It is a matter of fact that the President is an ongoing threat to our national security and the integrity of our elections, the basis of our democracy. #DefendOurDemocracy 💽 https://twitter.com/SpeakerPelosi/status/1207374048310833154?s=20/photo/1
NYT: Steering Impeachment With an Iron Grip, Pelosi Forges a Legacy She Never Sought http://nyti.ms/2Q0QHQm
// Speaker Nancy Pelosi wants to be remembered for her legislative accomplishments, like passing the Affordable Care Act. But her legacy is now tied to the impeachment of the 45th president.
🐣 RT @MittRomney Russia consistently opposes the best interests of not just the US, but entire regions of the world. Russia has interfered in our elections and those of our allies, conducts malicious cyberattacks, and imprisons and assassinates political dissidents.
DailyBeast, Dean Obeidallah: If the Senate Won’t Hold a Fair Trial, the House Should Refuse to Send Over the Articles http://bit.ly/2YZduQM
// Under the rules, the House can apparently just sit on the articles—not refer them to the Senate, not appoint managers. And that’s exactly what House Dems should do.
DailyBeast, Erin Banco and Anna Nemtsova: Rudy Giuliani—and Russia—Pay Close Attention to This Ukrainian Conspiracy-Peddler http://bit.ly/2Q0k8SC
// Ukrainian lawmaker Andriy Derkach’s wild theories are easily disproved—but that hasn’t stopped them from gaining traction with the top tiers of U.S. government and Trump’s lawyer.
🐣 RT @EJDionne The most disingenuous Republican argument is that this #impeachment is “partisan,” and that this is the Democrats’ fault. ¤ No. ¤ It’s partisan because no Republican has the guts to say that #Trump’s effort to get a foreign power to smear a domestic political opponent is despotism
🐣 RT @stuartpstevens I’ve spent a lot of my life around politicians. Most have large egos – which I don’t consider a negative, so do great artists & athletes – & most care about their image. What baffles me is R inability to grasp history will not be written by Fox & Friends. They will look shameful.
🐣 RT @glennkirschner2 Here’s the thing: the Republicans COULD say, “Mr. President, it’s dead wrong to enlist or extort foreign assistance/interference in our election. It’s dead wrong to attach personal conditions to congressionally appropriate money – conditions designed to help you politically. 📌 https://twitter.com/glennkirschner2/status/1207311531010068480?s=20
WaPo, Jennifer Rubin: How to run against Republican toadies and flip the Senate http://wapo.st/35zlZEJ
🐣 RT @AriMelber New: Congress has now begun floor proceedings to impeach Donald Trump today — he would be the *first* elected President ever impeached in his first term.
🐣 RT @SimonWDC 1/GOP not winning Impeachment argument:
22% no witnesses
24% ok to solicit foreign help in election
37% Trump didn’t commit bribery
38% Trump didn’t abuse his office
38% House acted unfairly
39% Trump didn’t improperly pressure Ukraine
50%/49% Remove
Fox News, ABC/WaPo. 📌 https://twitter.com/SimonWDC/status/1207282137705136129?s=20
✅ WaPo Factchecker, Glenn Kessler: Fact-checking President Trump’s impeachment letter to Pelosi http://wapo.st/2YZme9u
WaPo: ‘Dump Trump!’ Protesters across the nation rally for impeachment http://wapo.st/2PYDKqo
🐣 RT @TheRickWilson It’s a permanent stain, Donnie.
🐣 RT @JoyceWhiteVance Let Mulvaney, his chief of staff, Bolton & Michael Duffy at OMB testify. No one prevents witnesses who exonerate them from testifying. While you’re at it, declassify material about Pence’s call with Zelensky, let McGahn testify, tell us who’s paying Rudy & release your taxes.
⋙ 🐣 RT @real Can you believe that I will be impeached today by the Radical Left, Do Nothing Democrats, AND I DID NOTHING WRONG! A terrible Thing. Read the Transcripts. This should never happen to another President again. Say a PRAYER!
⋙⋙ [ @JoeNBC on @Morning_Joe Nancy Pelosi already did. ]
DailyBeast, Michael Tomasky: Trump Deserves Impeachment. The Trumpists Will Fight for a Generation to Deny That. http://bit.ly/35BC5NQ
// This won’t end in the Senate. We’re going to keep having this fight over this impeachment, and Trumpism generally, for a generation as Trump’s defenders fight history’s verdict.
🐣 RT @MSNBC Rep. Schiff: “Whatever the Senate does, there is merit in what we do today to tell the rest of the world that we are a functioning democracy. We do hold our president accountable even at this point if it is only in one House and not in the other.”
⋙ MSNBC, MorningJoe: Rep. Adam Schiff: Timing on impeachment driven by urgency http://on.msnbc.com/35xxRXO
// Intel Chair, Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., says explains the timing for the articles of impeachment against the president.
🐣 RT @tribelaw Who is to blame for the absence of even one Republican in the House endorsing either Article of Impeachment and thus the lack of bipartisan support for this outcome? Not the Democrats, for sure.
⇈ ⇊ ⋙ (written statement the same time, in response to same speaker)
🐣 The reason there is not bipartisan support for impeachment is not the fault of the Democrats. Republicans have sold their souls to Trump. They have forsaken the Founding Fathers, the Constitution and the Enlightenment and its faith in reason, truth and rule by law not by a king.
🐣 RT @TheRickWilson This is SO good: ¤ ‘Translation’ of Donald Trump’s December 17, 2019, letter to Nancy Pelosi by Bandy X. Lee
⋙ 💙💙 Medium Bandy X Lee: “Translation” of Donald Trump’s December 17, 2019, letter to Nancy Pelosi http://bit.ly/2sB94DF (Forensic psychiatrist, violence expert, president of the World Mental Health Coalition (dangerouscase.org), and editor of “The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump.”)
🐣 RT @SenBobCasey Let me get this straight: The Secretary of State is pushing out a distinguished public servant because the President of the United States won’t like seeing him in pictures?
⋙ NBCNews: Top U.S. diplomat in Ukraine to leave post at end of year http://nbcnews.to/38Rh2sG
// Bill Taylor testified at the House Intelligence Committee’s inquiry into President Donald Trump’s hold on military aid to Ukraine.
🐣 RT @Righteousbabe I’m just a bill. Only just a stack of bills. Stuck in a 🐢 shell on Capitol Hill ⋙ 🐣 RT @SenWhitehouse This is the pile of House-passed bills, 90% bipartisan, dead on Mitch McConnell’s desk in the Senate #LegislativeGraveyard https://twitter.com/SenWhitehouse/status/1207312222441136128?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @RepValDemings “The interests of the nation must always come before any personal considerations.” ¤ – Richard Nixon, Resignation Speech #DefendOurDemocracy
“The interests of the nation must always come before any personal considerations.”
– Richard Nixon, Resignation Speech #DefendOurDemocracy pic.twitter.com/QGDKuYmblf
— Former Congresswoman Val Demings (@RepValDemings) December 18, 2019
🐣 RT @real “It’s sad. Here’s a gentleman who came to the White House and all they had was never to let him have an easy breath. All they wanted to do is impeach him. They started the day after he was elected, even the day after he was sworn in. But this President came to Washington and….
⋙ 🐣 RT @jentaub Sir, for years, you’ve done a lot wrong. Fake university racketeering. Money laundering casino. Tax evasion. Campaign finance fraud. Charity abuse. Now you got caught cheating on the election by shaking down a desperate nation that Russia attacked. Impeachment is forever. Enjoy!
⋙⋙ 🐣 MT @jentaub Sir, it’s sad. Trump was very dirty before and never cleaned up as President.
● Dirty university: http://n.pr/38OWDEI
● Dirty casino: [FinCen] http://bit.ly/38RkSlK
● Dirty taxes: http://nyti.ms 2DPWUvz
● Dirty campaign: http://nyti.ms/2YZD4VK
● Dirty charity: http://nyti.ms/2PW92hz
🐣 RT @AssetPodcast The House votes today on whether to impeach President Donald Trump. ¤ This season on #TheAsset, we explained how Trump’s corrupt and criminal behavior brought the country to this historic moment:
⋙ 🔊 AssetPodcast: Season 2, Episode 4: Impeaching http://bit.ly/34uI1qR
DailyBeast, Asawin Suebsaeng and Erin Banco: Trump Tells Rudy to Keep Pushing the Biden Conspiracies Even though it’s the reason why he’s getting impeached. http://bit.ly/38OUKYE
⋙ [Asawin Suensaeng:]
⋙⋙ DailyBeast, Betsy Swan, Asawin Suebsaeng and Spencer Ackerman (Oct): How Rudy Giuliani’s Bid to Discredit Mueller Played Into Impeachment Probe http://bit.ly/2Ez9UmM
// 10/5/2019; The former New York mayor dug around Ukraine to undermine Robert Mueller’s investigation. He may have hamstrung his client’s presidency instead.
🐣 RT @DavidRothkopf Attention @WhiteHouse: You were asking yesterday about power moves?
⋙ 🐣 RT @JesseRodriguez NBC News: Speaker Pelosi will preside over both votes on the articles of impeachment.
⋙⋙ 🐣 RT @JesseRodriguez NBC News: Speaker Pelosi will speak at the opening of general debate.
🐣 RT @StevenBeschloss Firtash funds Parnas. Parnas funds Giuliani. Giuliani works for Trump for free=Firtash funds Trump.
⋙ 🐣 RT @Mimirocah1 Think about how crazy this is: Putin-linked Oligarch indicted by US Justice Dept with attacking the 2016 election is now funding the President’s team to interfere in the 2020 election.
⋙⋙ 🐣 RT @Tom_Winter NBC News: Federal prosecutors say that an attorney for indicted Ukranian Oligarch Dmytro Firtash (and Paul Manafort associate) is behind the $1 Million loan to Lev Parnas. ¤ Further, they raise questions as to whether this really was a loan or a loan disguised as a payment.
🐣 RT @adamcancryn A defining impeachment day must-read from @heatherscope @BresPolitico @sarahnferris on Nancy Pelosi, “the one person in Washington who can beat Trump at his own game, though she never wanted to play it”
⋙ Politico: ‘In a class by herself’: Pelosi has roared back in the Trump era http://politi.co/2EvTsE2
// The speaker’s return to power and legacy will be linked forever to her battles with the norm-busting president.
🐣 RT @RFERL A U.S. Senate committee will debate the Defending American Security from Kremlin Aggression Act, which has been described as the “sanctions bill from hell.”
⋙ RFE/RL: U.S. Lawmakers To Discuss Russia Sanctions Bill ‘From Hell’ http://bit.ly/2sAkLdD
🐣 RT @npfandos A little history to start your day from @AlMitc @peterbakernyt @eilperin on Dec. 19, 1998
⋙ NYT: IMPEACHMENT: THE OVERVIEW — CLINTON IMPEACHED; HE FACES A SENATE TRIAL, 2D IN HISTORY; VOWS TO DO JOB TILL TERM’S ‘LAST HOUR’ http://nyti.ms/2Et0WHJ https://twitter.com/npfandos/status/1207299376676249600?s=20/photo/1
⭕ 17 Dec 2019
🐣 RT @DirkSchwenk (12/17) The bell tolls for Rudy. A “it’s about to get hairy” thread. 📌 https://twitter.com/DirkSchwenk/status/1207058009014358018?s=20
WaPo: Russian disinformation network is said to have helped spread smear of U.S. ambassador to Ukraine http://wapo.st/35zDFQx
// The web analysis firm Graphika has linked posts to a known Russian operation.
🐣 RT @MSNBC “If the Democrats pick the right candidate next year, by that I mean the candidate whose character and conduct contrasts most powerfully with what we’ve seen and heard from Donald Trump, he or she will take him down.” – @HardballChris
⋙ MSNBC, Hardball: Chris Matthews: If Democrats pick the right candidate, they’ll take down Trump in 2020 http://on.msnbc.com/2EvFou9
// Chris is hedging his bets on this: “If the Democrats pick the right candidate next year, by that I mean the candidate whose character and conduct contrasts most powerfully with what we’ve seen and heard from Donald Trump, he or she will take him down.”
🐣 RT @Strandjunker Rick Gates: Convicted.
Paul Manafort: Convicted.
George Papadopoulos: Convicted.
Mike Flynn: Convicted.
Michael Cohen: Convicted.
Roger Stone: Convicted.
Donald Trump: #ImpeachmentEve.
Hillary Clinton: Enjoys nice walks in the woods.
🐣 RT @TheHill Question: “Your reaction to the president’s letter?”
Speaker Pelosi: “I don’t have a reaction. It’s ridiculous.”
Question: “You have no reaction — why not?”
Pelosi: “I mean, I haven’t fully read it. We’ve been working. I’ve seen the essence of it though and it’s really sick.”
WaPo, Jennifer Rubin: Project Lincoln: Can patriotic Republicans save the country? http://wapo.st/2PynqO8
🐣 RT @ justinamash Conservatives will someday face the horrible truth that the Republican Party fought so hard to justify and excuse an amoral and self-serving president, and what he gave them in return was bigger government and erosion of the principles and values they once claimed to cherish.
🐣 RT @JohnWDean Trump’s pathetic letter embodies all the reasons he should not be President and why he is in the mess he has created for himself. As always others will fix it (here Senate GOP) so he can do even worse next time. Real solution, resign Donald, you’re unfit!
🐣◕ RT @j2dumfounded Let’s see if this works ¤ Oh all that is missing is that Rudy works for Trump for FREE https://twitter.com/j2dumfounded/status/1207176904295370752?s=20/photo/1
// Relationship chart org chart
🐣 RT @sfpelosi Thank you to the resisters who joined in a prayer for America tonight in San Francisco as we prepared for #Impeachment and the inevitable Trump backlash at the most vulnerable among us. We are here for each other and will #DefendOurDemocracy
🐣 RT @glennkirschner2 Giuliani falsely calls Ambassador Yovanovitch “corrupt” and Secretary of State Pompeo fails to speak up, fails to push back, fails to support his State Department employee. Pompeo is a coward and the exact opposite of a “leader.” What a shameful “man.
⋙ NBCNews: Giuliani boasts, then backtracks on some details of engineering Yovanovitch ouster http://nbcnews.to/36QbwVF
// “She was going to make the investigations difficult for everybody,” Giuliani told The New Yorker of the ousted U.S. ambassador to Ukraine.
🐣 RT @SteveSchmidtSES “We are not enemies but friends. We must not be enemies. Though passion may have strained it must not break our bonds of affection. The mystic chords of memory will swell when again touched, as surely they will be by the better angels of our nature“A. Lincoln @ProjectLincoln
🐣 RT @neeratanden Tomorrow I’ll speak at the Capitol at a gathering at 9 am. This is a moment history will record. Our grandchildren will ask us what side we were on. I will be able to say I stood with the Constitution. ¤ I am looking forward to tomorrow. Please come out and support the rule of law
🐣 RT @HotlinJosh “A lawyer for Ukrainian oligarch Dmitry Firtash was the source of $1 million that was deposited into a family bank account of Lev Parnas, an associate of Rudy Giuliani, the U.S. said.”
⋙ Bloomberg: Giuliani Ally Got $1 Million From Ukraine Oligarch’s Lawyer http://bloom.bg/2Q306am
● U.S. prosecutor makes disclosure at Lev Parnas’s bail hearing
● Funds from Russia went to account of Parnas wife in September
DailyBeast, Rick Wilson: Trump Will Be Impeached but Trumpism Will Fuck Us Forever http://bit.ly/34sv9kU
// The stain will be on Trump’s record, but the Republicans abased themselves, and the Democrats couldn’t stop him. Nice republic while we had it.
There is no Hallmark movie ending in this story, where the low-stakes Holiday Bakeoff in Mistletoe Falls leads to a chaste kiss between star-crossed lovers on Christmas Eve. Instead, Washington is teetering over an abyss from which it will likely never emerge. The Republican Senate, led by Mitch McConnell, is now flagrantly, overtly telling America to fuck itself, hard. Oh well. It was a nice republic while we had it.
This isn’t merely some partisan skirmish where either the guys with the red flags or the guys with the blue flags win a round and everyone has a beer after. This is the real, raw test of a corrupt and lawless executive our Founders feared, and we are as a country failing that test. Impeachment, the most consequential and serious check on executive power in our constitutional system, has been reduced to a partisan joke by the Senate Republicans. …
It isn’t simply that Trump’s actions in Ukraine are impeachable and justify removal from office.
Oh, no. It’s so much worse than that. It’s that the impeachment articles omit a broader constellation of other illegalities that richly deserve the ultimate political sanction. It’s that the GOP has developed an immune system that renders it impervious to the shame of defending the indefensible.
The Republicans lack the moral center to do the right thing, and the Democrats seemingly lack the political will and the skills to hold them to account.
Sadly, there was no other scenario here, ever. The inevitable, malignant progress of Trumpism is to consume everything: its host party, the balance of powers, the law, the Constitution, and the truth.
There is no bottom, there is no limit, and there are no rules in the new game of Trump partisanship. Republicans know the truth, and choose the lie. They know the right course, and choose lawlessness. They know they are in service to a man with no moral center, no love of anything beyond his own ego, and no regard for the law, but pretend their defense of him is just ordinary partisanship.
Democrats know what they should be doing, but just can’t seem to get there. At a moment when we need the disciplined party to have a conscience and the conscientious party to have discipline—we have neither.
🐣 RT @MollyMcKew Today is probably a good time to remind it isn’t just crazy tweets: POTUS has targeted and removed experienced US counterintelligence personnel who understand Russia, and is targeting and dismantling institutions we need to defend our national security.
DailyBeast, Betsy Swan: Senate Republicans Push Ahead With Probe of ‘Ukraine Collusion,’ Despite Warnings It’s a Kremlin Operation http://bit.ly/34wGMar
// It’s a move that will frustrate national security, law enforcement, and intelligence officials.
MSNBC, Hardball: 41 out of 44 Dems in competitive districts will vote on articles of impeachment http://on.msnbc.com/2M9tvyq
// According to an NBC news tally, 41 Democrats in competitive districts, out of 44, say they will vote for both articles of impeachment.
🐣 RT @StandUpAmerica
📍New York City, New York
📍Denver, Colorado
📍Detroit, Michigan
📍San Antonio, Texas
This is a nationwide movement. ¤ #ImpeachmentEve
📍New York City, New York
📍Denver, Colorado
📍Detroit, Michigan
📍San Antonio, TexasThis is a nationwide movement.#ImpeachmentEve pic.twitter.com/8sQMM7nOOM
— Stand Up America (@StandUpAmerica) December 18, 2019
// great photos
WaPo, Dana Milbank: On impeachment eve, Trump repeats the crime http://wapo.st/35KeeLW
🐣 RT @SenSchumer It is not lost on Senators that the White House has made a choice to block witnesses from testifying under oath and has refused to provide documents in evidence. ¤ Anyone in America watching this would draw the same logical conclusion, that President Trump has something to hide.
🐣 RT @TheAtlantic “Throughout the Trump presidency, his reluctant allies have asked the public to imagine that there are effectively two Trumps … [but] the idea has always been a thin fiction, and the letter to Pelosi rips through it like tissue,” argues @GrahamDavidA:
⋙ TheAtlantic: An Angry Letter Reveals the Fiction of the Two Trumps http://bit.ly/2Ezzrw9
// The president’s allies have long asked the public to distinguish between the president’s tweets and his official acts.
🐣 RT @danbbaer If you read the President’s insane letter from earlier today, please also read @SpeakerPelosi’s letter from today which is an eloquent expression of patriotic grace.
🐣 RT @JoyceWhiteVance Pelosi’s letter to House Democrats is everything Trump’s letter to her is not. She reminds them that they are all, by virtue of their oaths, guardians of the Constitution.
⋙ 💙 🐣 ≣ RT @Phil_Mattingly .@SpeakerPelosi sends letter to Democratic Caucus on eve of impeachment vote: https://twitter.com/Phil_Mattingly/status/1207069717300744192?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @Natasha edtrand Sens. Feinstein, Wyden, and Peters asked Sens. Grassley, Graham, and Johnson in a letter today for “any evidence” they have that supports an investigation into Ukrainian interference in the 2016 election, an allegation that they note is part of a Russian disinformation campaign [letter:] https://twitter.com/NatashaBertrand/status/1207069924339986433?s=20/photo/1
🐣✅ RT @ddale8 Trump’s anti-impeachment letter to Pelosi is littered with lies, misleading claims and claims lacking key context — on his dealings with Ukraine, on Biden, on impeachment, on his professed accomplishments, on the…Salem witch trials. ¤ A fact check:
⋙ CNN, Daniel Dale and Tara Subramaniam: Fact check: Trump’s wild letter to Pelosi is filled with false and misleading claims http://cnn.it/2YYS5al
🔆 This❗️⋙ 🐣≣ RT @EricLiptonNYT Full copy of rule H. Res. 755 https://twitter.com/EricLiptonNYT/status/1207137277819924486?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @JakeSherman AND THERE IT IS … tomorrow in the House. https://twitter.com/JakeSherman/status/1207126405781360645?s=20/photo/1
// House Floor Schedule for tomorrow
💽 MSNBC, Hardball: David Jolly says Trump ‘tearing at the fabric of Article 1’ of constitution http://on.msnbc.com/38NtvxD
As the House of Representatives prepares to vote on two articles against President Trump, he is raging at his accusers.
WaPo: Schiff says Pence’s office may have purposefully misled panel about contents of his Zelensky call http://wapo.st/2Ev2v8g
WaPo, Jennifer Rubin: It is hard to capture how bizarre and frightening Trump’s letter to Pelosi is http://wapo.st/35t3YYx
🐣💙 RT @ericuman So prosecutors have just said Rudy co-worker Lev Parnas got a $1 mil from oligarch Dmitry Firtash. ¤ Now you know what you should listen to? ¤ The TRUMP INC WE HAD LAST MONTH ALL ABOUT FIRTASH.
⋙ 🔊 ProPublica: Follow the Money in the Ukraine Scandal http://bit.ly/2qbC6IV
// 11/13/2019; On this week’s “Trump, Inc.” podcast, we’re looking at what happened in Ukraine from a different vantage point: not the politics but the finances.
🐣 RT @kyledcheney NEWS: Democrats propose 6 hours of debate on articles of impeachment.
🐣 RT @JohnJHarwood impeachment appears to distress the president quite a bit
🐣 RT @brianbeutler The most important dynamic in politics.
⋙ 🐣📊 RT @Civiqs Opposition to Trump is much firmer than support. New poll:
– Support Trump, almost nothing could change that: 30%
– Support Trump, open to changing mind: 14%
– Oppose Trump, open to changing mind: 5%
– Oppose Trump, almost nothing could change that: 48%
http://bit.ly/2EpOKYm
⋙ 🐣📊 🐣 RT @Civiqs Among Republicans, 67% say they support President Trump, and there’s almost nothing that could change that. ¤ But, 22% of Republicans say that although they support Trump right now, they are open to changing their mind if things change later.
🚫🐣 RT @MikeDelMoro Giuliani goes further via text to NBC News, connecting Yovanovitch’s “obstruction” explicitly to the Bidens saying she tried to prevent testimony “about Ukrainian collusion with DNC, Biden bribery and Biden and Yanukovitch-Poroshenko massive money laundering with US institutions”
🚫 ⋙ 🐣 RT @RudyGiuliani Yovanovitch needed to be removed for many reasons most critical she was denying visas to Ukrainians who wanted to come to US and explain Dem corruption in Ukraine. She was OBSTRUCTING JUSTICE and that’s not the only thing she was doing. She at minimum enabled Ukrainian collusion.
🐣 RT @pbump Me: This Trump letter to Pelosi is just a big thread of his tweets. ¤ Also me: Here is a thread of Trump’s tweets that together constitute the claims he makes in the letter.
⋙ WaPo: Trump makes his closing argument, cobbling together his greatest Twitter hits http://wapo.st/2rZtEgN
NYT: Trump Denounces ‘Partisan Impeachment Crusade’ on Eve of House Vote http://nyti.ms/2Z0iwfZ
// In an irate, six-page letter to Speaker Nancy Pelosi, President Trump denounced the impeachment inquiry in scathing terms, asserting that he had done nothing wrong and that Democrats would pay a political price in 2020.
🐣 RT @JRubinBlogger Look on the bright side: 1. Brave Dems taking votes against self-interest to defend the Const. 2. Van Drew blew himself up 3. R’s have 70% of country against them for refusing witnesses 4. Trump’s insane letter covered as an insane letter 5. Project Lincoln up and running
🐣 RT @Amy_Siskind Since the impeachment probe, Trump has taken all sorts of stops not to ensure he doesn’t make the same mistake again, but rather to enable him to continue to do so: cutting NSC & # of folks on his calls w/foreign leaders & # who see readouts, dismissing non-loyalist diplomats.
Law.com, C.Ryan Barber: Judge Amy Berman Jackson’s Had a Front Row Seat for Mueller Cases http://bit.ly/2S2LPwN
// Judge Jackson’s courtroom in Washington has been the central venue for various Mueller-related cases, giving the judge a unique outlet to express views on the Russia investigation—and the defendants.
🐣 RT @michaeldweiss See how this works? Republicans spent months saying Ukrainian officials interfered in the 2016 election all while they were soliciting disgraced Ukrainians to help interfere in the 2020 election. It’s all very Soviet: accuse your enemy of doing what you yourself are guilty of.
⋙ 🐣 RT @Tom_Winter NBC News: Federal prosecutors say that an attorney for indicted Ukranian Oligarch Dmytro Firtash (and Paul Manafort associate) is behind the $1 Million loan to Lev Parnas. ¤ Further, they raise questions as to whether this really was a loan or a loan disguised as a payment. 📌 https://twitter.com/Tom_Winter/status/1207009450651004928?s=20
🐣 RT @DeadlineWH “I think Donald Trump makes his mental fitness a part of the issue every single day… You read that letter that he sent today to the House and it’s just six pages of pure crazy, weapons-grade nuts…” – @TheRickWilson w/ @NicolleDWallace 💽 https://twitter.com/DeadlineWH/status/1207078759876177920?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @jenmercieca Trump’s letter is a tu quoque–an appeal to hypocrisy. Trump claims that Democrats are violating the rule of law and the Constitution when they claim to be upholding the rule of law and the Constitution. ¤ That’s exactly what I said he’d say. 📌 https://twitter.com/jenmercieca/status/1207048230426550273?s=20
// Dr Jennifer Mercieca is a professor of rhetoric
🐣 RT @emptywheel ABJ (Amy Berman Jackson), who has seen more of Mueller’s work close up than Billy Barr, pushes back against his claims that it’s bogus.
⋙ 🐣 RT @joshgerstein The judge used her moment in the spotlight, or at least the news, to push back against the AG Barr claim of ‘completely bogus narrative’ driving Trump-Russia probe. She said there was ‘ample’ basis to investigate. 📌 https://twitter.com/joshgerstein/status/1207105324781584384?s=20
🐣 RT @juliaioffe When not even a looming impeachment will induce the president to change his behavior.
⋙ CNN: Giuliani says Trump still supports his dirt-digging in Ukraine http://cnn.it/34Awxln
🐣 RT @BarbMcQuade If Trump weren’t already facing impeachment, this letter would do it. Pelosi should send it back with a note that says, “It appears some prankster got ahold of your letterhead.”
⋙ 💙✅ NYT: Read Trump’s Letter to Pelosi Protesting Impeachment http://nyti.ms/34taQnn [interactive, annotated]
// We fact-checked President Trump’s rambling and angry letter to Speaker Nancy Pelosi in which he expressed his “most powerful protest” against the impeachment process. The House is expected to vote on two articles of impeachment against Mr. Trump on Wednesday.
WaPo: Foiled in 2016, ‘Never Trump’ Republicans launch new super PAC in effort to oust Trump in 2020 http://wapo.st/2Pybk7F
[Humor]: How the Gringrich Stole Christmas http://stanford.io/2S9CnYm
// Gingrinch, Gingrich 😅
NYT, Frank Bruni: ’Twas the Eve of Impeachment ~ Finding verse in this curse. http://nyti.ms/2rO5ki6 Impeachment poem
’Twas the eve of impeachment, when all through the House
No Republicans wavered, each last one a louse.The articles were drafted by Democrats with care
In hopes that a conscience would soon bloom there.We pundits were tossing all steamed in our beds,
While Trump’s certain acquittal danced in our heads.And I in frustration, feeling all solemn,
Wished I could capture my woe in a column,When out on the web there arose such a clatter,
I signed in to Twitter to see what was the matter.And there I beheld him, the master of lies,
Weaving fresh falsehoods, to no one’s surprise.He savaged the Bidens, he smeared Adam Schiff,
And cycled through villains in a furious jiff,Not to mention distractions, like the teeth of the Speaker.
Could a “leader” be cruder, could his morals be weaker?So now he’s a dentist, in his all-knowing ways?
I prayed for deliverance one of these days.When what to my cynical eyes did appear
But a raft of excuses pulled by mangy reindeer,With a weasel-eyed driver, so meek and so zany,
I knew in a moment he must be Mulvaney.More shameless than con men, the sycophants came,
And Trump gloated, so bloated, and called them by name:“Now, Rudy! Now, Jared! Now, Lindsey and Mitch!
Please fly this democracy into a ditch!It is how you will save me. It is how I prevail.
Or else I will join poor Paul in the jail.That’s the toll of a presidency ended too soon,
So you must sing along to my favorite tune:‘It’s a witch hunt! A hoax!’ Those are lyrics for me.
That’s the verse, that’s the chorus, for eternity.”He was dressed in a necktie, from his jowls to his soles.
He had tanned beyond tanning. Imagine the moles.His hair, how it swirled! His legs, how they splayed!
On such fishy foundations was his confidence laid.And we couldn’t stop looking — not his fans, not his foes.
That was what he was after: the show of all shows.Its plot strained belief. Its appeal tested reason.
Still it was soaring toward a second season.The economy roared. The Democrats whimpered.
Vladimir chortled. Emmanuel simpered.In the bag that Trump carried, he had goodies galore:
Lower taxes, the Dow, right-wing judges and more.They weren’t for the many, they favored the few,
But that was obscured by the smoke that he blew.All was fog, all was mist, all was boast, all was fiction,
As he hid his true airs with bad diet and diction.He could do as he wanted and never know fear,
For an elf — and a savior! — named Barr hovered near.And then there was Tucker and of course Hannity
To put an extra-fine gloss on insanity.What great luck to discover a country so riven
You could smash it and rule it if suitably driven.You could summon the Russians, you could bully Ukraine,
Just as long as you made “It’s fake news!” your refrain.I cringed as I watched him and cried for us all,
Our values, our futures hijacked by his gall.A last bid to preserve them was cause to impeach
But his party’s corruption put him beyond reach.So then why all his thrashing? His howls of dejection?
It was just a performance for the next election.It brought more donations. It rallied the base.
You could see, if you looked, a clear smirk on his face.If you listened, you heard it: a lilt in his voice.
In drama like this, he would always rejoice.So as history scarred him, he could nonetheless yell,
“Merry TrumpMas to all! I’m the king of this hell.”
🐣 RT @GlennKesslerWP OMG, this Trump letter to Pelosi is filled with so many falsehoods, all documented in our claims database. It’s like written version of a Trump rally. http://bit.ly/36VDdwn 📌 https://twitter.com/GlennKesslerWP/status/1207021321152061441?s=20
⋙ 🐣✅ RT @GlennKesslerWP The Biden stuff is especially egregious. We’ev fact checked that repeatedly, such as here: WaPo: A quick guide to Trump’s false claims about Ukraine and the Bidens http://wapo.st/36In1ye
// 9/27/2019
🐣 RT @pbump Me: This Trump letter to Pelosi is just a big thread of his tweets. ¤ Also me: Here is a thread of Trump’s tweets that together constitute the claims he makes in the letter.
⋙ WaPo: Trump makes his closing argument, cobbling together his greatest Twitter hits http://wapo.st/2M4LqWU
↥ ↧
🐣 RT @MollyJongFast The president doesn’t want to be impeached
⋙ ≣ 🐣 RT @AndrewFeinberg NEW: @realDonaldTrump send[s] angry letter to @SpeakerPelosi protesting impeachment. https://twitter.com/AndrewFeinberg/status/1207018176686505986?s=20/photo/1-4
⋙ 🐣 RT @ More https://twitter.com/AndrewFeinberg/status/1207018182671785985?s=20/photo/1-2
🐣 RT @MollyMcKew Oh what, you mean POTUS was totally full of sh*t when he proclaimed THE OIL IS OURS and yes indeed, Syria had given sole rights to all its oil production to the Kremlin? No way.
⋙ Reuters: Syria hands oil exploration contracts to two Russian firms http://reut.rs/
🐣 RT @DavidCornDC The oligarch has been indicted by US & is fighting extradition. So @RudyGiuliani used a paid associate of a mob-linked Ukrainian oligarch to do a favor for Trump (get dirt on Biden) while this oligarch (repped by diGenova/Toensig) was trying to get a break from US DOJ. #Swamp!
⋙ 🐣 RT @JohnJHarwood Giuliani associate received $1 million payment from Ukrainian oligarch’s lawyer ¤ Justice Dept prosecutors say the oligarch has high-level ties to the Russian mob
🐣 RT @JuliaDavisNews U.S. prosecutors said in court on Tuesday that Lev Parnas, an associate of U.S. President Donald Trump’s personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani, received a $1 million payment from a lawyer for Ukrainian oligarch Dmytro Firtash.
⋙ Reuters: Giuliani associate received $1 million payment from Ukrainian oligarch’s lawyer: prosecutor http://reut.rs/34rv2WF
U.S. prosecutors said in court on Tuesday that Lev Parnas, an associate of U.S. President Donald Trump’s personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani, received a $1 million payment from a lawyer for Ukrainian oligarch Dmytro Firtash.
Prosecutors said that Parnas, who has been charged with campaign finance violations, should have his bail revoked because he concealed the payment from them, but U.S. District Judge Paul Oetken in New York ruled at Tuesday’s hearing that Parnas may remain under house arrest in Florida.
Firtash, one of Ukraine’s wealthiest businessman, is fighting extradition by U.S. authorities on bribery charges from Vienna, where he has lived for five years.
[Comments, for context:]
⋙ 🐣 RT @jake_mcq Lev Parnas worked as an interpreter for Toensing & DiGenova who defend Dmitry Firtash. ¤ Toensing & DiGenova were able to get a meeting with William Barr, who declined to intercede. ¤ The couple also represent John Solomon who worked with Parnas on the interview with Lutsenko.
⋙ 🐣 RT @JF991 Reminder, Firtash is on Putin’s payroll, not normal Ukrainian. He is paid to destabilize Ukraine for Putin.
⋙ 🐣◕ RT @nikstift Just in case anyone needs context into who is referenced here: https://twitter.com/nikstift/status/1207024970892603392?s=20/photo/1,3
⋙ 🐣 RT @GEliseMenendez He’s a bad dude. And Hannity was in Vienna when he was nabbed.
⋙ 🐣 RT @TonyVMiami So does this mean Mr. Giuliani has been paid – possibly indirectly – literally by Putin? And he’s working for the President of the United States? Umm….anyone else see a problem with this?
⋙ 🐣 RT @[Cyrillic] Firtash is a well know FSB operative with close ties to Kremlin
⋙ 🐣 RT @ksush73 Here is some history on Firtash to refresh our memory.
⋙⋙ Reuters: Putin’s allies channelled billions to Ukraine oligarch http://reut.rs/34uZjE4
⋙ 🐣 RT @whatchalooking I can’t believe how long it’s taking for people to start saying this. Of *course* Dmytro Firtash is paying for all this. That’s been clear from your reporting for a long time now.
⋙ 🐣 RT @JFVega4 With Trump and the GOP, “all roads will ultimately lead to Putin.”
🐣 RT @ChrisMurphyCT My guess is that Republicans are trying to rush through a trial with no fact finding because the facts they would find would make their defense of the president’s actions even more unsustainable (which is hard).
🐣 RT @aaronblake Raskin suggests Trump could be prosecuted for bribery, extortion or honest services fraud at a later date (once out of office, of course).
🐣 RT @gtconway3d “TV channel Rossiya 1 aired a segment entitled ‘Puppet Master and ‘Agent’—How to Understand Lavrov’s Meeting With Trump
🐣 RT @MarshallCohen Former Trump campaign official Rick Gates gets 45 days in jail, which he’ll serve on weekends, for his role in the Manafort-led illegal lobbying and tax fraud schemes. Judge praised Gates for telling Mueller about Trump-Russia contacts, an issue of “grave national importance.”
🐣 RT @ThePlumLineGS .@SenSchumer, responding to McConnell just now: ¤ “I did not hear a single argument as to why the witnesses I suggested should not give testimony….Why is the President so afraid to have these witnesses come testify?” ¤ It’s plainly obvious that the GOP argument is untenable:
⋙ 🐣 RT @ThePlumLineGS The spectacularly absurd new process arguments from @SenatorCollins and @SenJoniErnst show just how weak the Trump defense has become. ¤ Now that 71% support hearing from witnesses at Trump’s trial, it’s clear this epic gaslighting is failing. ¤ New piece:
⋙ WaPo, Greg Sargent: Susan Collins and Joni Ernst reveal weakness of Trump defense http://wapo.st/2swSowV
🐣 RT @SykesCharlie “And with every passing scandal since then, the cumulative weight of these sunk costs has made independence from Trump less, not more, likely. Because while the doctrine of sunk costs is a fallacy for economic actors, it’s very real for political actors.”
⋙ TheBulwark, Jonathan Last: Trump Is Forever http://bit.ly/35s2ayW
// The four reasons why Republicans won’t turn on Trump, no matter what.
🐣 RT @JoyceWhiteVance Who is paying for Rudy’s time & travel? Critically important question. Still unanswered.
⋙ 🐣 RT @NatashaBertrand Rudy Giuliani is talking again, this time to @kwelkernbc. Says he will present his “findings” to DOJ re: Yovanovitch and Biden “all in good time.”
⋙ 🐣 “All in good time, my pretty. All in good time” – Wicked Witch of the West @NatashaBertrand
🐣 RT @SenSchumer Americans want a fair trial for President Trump. ¤ 7 in 10 say his top aides should testify. ¤ The witnesses we proposed have direct knowledge of why the aid to Ukraine was delayed. ¤ We must hear from them, and we must see the documents we requested.
🐣◕ RT @Politidope Mitch McConnell is on the wrong side of history & the present in trying to block witnesses from testifying in the impeachment trial. https://twitter.com/Politidope/status/1206957707858731008?s=20/photo/1
⋙ 📊 ABCNews: Most expect fair trial for Trump; 7 in 10 say let aides testify (POLL) http://abcn.ws/36Cb7Ga
// Seven in 10 say Trump should let his aides testify in a Senate trial.
HuffPo: Guess Which Of Trump’s Fibs Won Him PolitiFact’s ‘Lie Of The Year’ Award http://bit.ly/2sySpjW
// A Donald Trump lie has won the title for a third year. He’s the only person to ever win it more than once.
Since the Sept. 26 release of the whistleblower complaint, the president has claimed more than 80 times that the complaint is “fake, fraudulent, incorrect, ‘total fiction,’ ‘made up,’ and ‘sooo wrong,’” PolitiFact reported.
Despite the president’s repeated insistence that the report was filled with lies, the anonymous whistleblower actually got the call “almost completely” right, the fact-checking site’s managing editor, Katie Sanders, wrote.
NYT: We Are Republicans, and We Want Trump Defeated http://nyti.ms/2YX3Spt By George T. Conway III, Steve Schmidt, John Weaver and Rick Wilson
// Lincoln Project; The president and his enablers have replaced conservatism with an empty faith led by a bogus prophet;
George T. Conway III is an attorney in New York. Steve Schmidt is a Republican political strategist who worked for President George W. Bush, Senator John McCain and Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger. John Weaver is a Republican strategist who worked for President George H.W. Bush, Senator John McCain and Gov. John Kasich. Rick Wilson is a Republican media consultant and author of “Everything Trump Touches Dies” and the forthcoming “Running Against the Devil: A Plot to Save America From Trump and Democrats From Themselves.” ~
… Another Union general, Winfield Scott Hancock, had only minutes to reinforce the line. America, the nation, the ideal, hung in the balance. Amid the fury of battle, he found the First Minnesota Volunteers.
They charged, and many of them fell, suffering a staggeringly high casualty rate. They held the line. They saved the Union. Four months later, Lincoln stood on that field of slaughter and said, “It is for us, the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced.”
We look to Lincoln as our guide and inspiration. He understood the necessity of not just saving the Union, but also of knitting the nation back together spiritually as well as politically. But those wounds can be bound up only once the threat has been defeated. So, too, will our country have to knit itself back together after the scourge of Trumpism has been overcome.
🐣 RT @jimsciutto We’re seeing foreign election interference play out before our eyes: the president’s personal attorney seeking damaging information on political opponents from foreign sources of questionable credibility. The lesson of Mueller & impeachment appears to be: this is now acceptable.
🐣 RT @glennkirschner2 She should consider suing. Rudy is lying about her. Saying he “forced her out” because she was corrupt is like Rudy saying he had to rob the bank because the bank president was corrupt. His arguments are pure nonsense. Rudy’s smears of Ambassador Yovanovitch are actionable.
⋙ 🚫 🐣 RT @RudyGiuliani Yovanovitch needed to be removed for many reasons most critical she was denying visas to Ukrainians who wanted to come to US and explain Dem corruption in Ukraine. She was OBSTRUCTING JUSTICE and that’s not the only thing she was doing. She at minimum enabled Ukrainian collusion.
🐣 RT @davidaxelrod Does anyone believe that if Mulvaney and Bolton had exculpatory testimony, that the WH would withhold it?
📊 WaPo: Americans locked in partisan stalemate on removing Trump from office, Post-ABC poll finds http://wapo.st/2PXmfqa
⋙ Crosstabs: http://wapo.st/2M5CKzD 71% want Trump to produce witnesses
⭕ 16 Dec 2019
🐣 RT @TheAtlantic Under Donald Trump, America has become a “known unknown,” increasing the risk of crises from the Middle East to East Asia to Central America, says a new survey. @UriLF has the rundown:
⋙ TheAtlantic, Uri Friedman: America Is Making the World More Unstable http://bit.ly/2Z3JAus
// The country is now a known unknown, increasing the risk of crises from the Middle East to East Asia to Central America, a new survey suggests.
CNN: Rudy Giuliani said he needed US ambassador to Ukraine ‘out of the way’ http://cnn.it/2PuKn4D
🐣 RT @NewYorker Regardless of whether he is removed from office, Trump will always be a President who was impeached, and the two articles describing his offenses will be scrutinized in textbooks.
⋙ NewYorker, Amy Davidson-Sorkin: Trump’s Impeachment Timeline and the 2020 Election http://bit.ly/2Ptotic
🐣 RT @JohnWDean ABSOLUTELY! Indeed, if the House cannot get a fair trial, the Articles should not go to the Senate, and the investigation of Trump must continue! If rules for a fair trial are not agreed upon make it a campaign issue everywhere!
⋙ 🐣 RT @tribelaw BREAKING NEWS: Schumer’s proposal to McConnell. If he rejects these reasonable ground rules & insists on a non-trial, the House should consider treating that as a breach of the Senate’s oath & withholding the Articles until the Senate reconsiders
WWaPo, Lawrence Tribe: Don’t let Mitch McConnell conduct a Potemkin impeachment trial http://wapo.st/34teOfZ
🐣 RT @ZevShalev This story seems to have broken through.
⋙ 🐣 RT @ZevShalev I went back to the show and cut a short clip from when I first reported about the events of Summer 2018 when Parnas funnelled almost $500,000 into the GOP and another $500,000 to Rudy Giuliani. A $1M hit on a U.S. Amb by a foreign agent. #ImpeachmentHearings @narativlive 💽 https://twitter.com/ZevShalev/status/1206792863943712769?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @dailybeanspod Tuesday’s @dailybeanspod is now live for our Patrons ✨¤ We discuss Chuck Schumer’s letter to Mitch McConnel, Dems push for Justin Amash as house manager, Flynn gets an earful, and Russia airing Giuliani’s OANN interview. [‼️]
🐣 RT @Terri_Kanefield (Thread) Over the Cliff Notes* ¤ *name suggested by clever Twitter Peeps. ¤ I read the Impeachment Report to Accompany H. Res. 775 http://bit.ly/34oGKl7
Ready for some nerdy fun?🤓 Let’s dive in. Spoiler: Yup, Trump committed “multiple federal crimes.” 📌 https://twitter.com/Teri_Kanefield/status/1206746867934982145?s=20
// one of Terri Kanefield’s awesome threads
🐣 RT @JeffreyGoldberg “There’s more support for impeaching Trump now than there was at the equivalent stage in the Watergate scandal— right after articles of impeachment were approved by the House Judiciary Committee. Rather than face impeachment, Nixon resigned.”
⋙ TheAtlantic, David Graham: The Big Untold Story of Impeachment? It’s Incredibly Popular. http://bit.ly/2Eob44D
// Referring to FoxPoll, apparently; The overlooked story of the past three months is that support for removing the president has remained strong.
🐣💙💙 RT @HeidiNBC What’s our duty — as the media — at this pivotal moment in our history and what does it mean to be fair and impartial? ¤ To tell people the truth, not both sides version of it. ¤ That is all.
🐣 RT @JakeTapper Former Gov Tom Ridge (R): “I am disappointed and troubled” that Trump would “ask a foreign leader of a troubled country who’s been besieged by an enemy of the United States, to do him a political favor. As far as I’m concerned, it is abuse of power.”
⋙ PittsburgPostGazette: Former Pa. Gov. Tom Ridge says Trump asking a foreign leader for a political favor is an ‘abuse of power’ http://bit.ly/2tswviZ
RawStory, Travis Getty: Here are 5 key takeaways from the House Judiciary Committee’s impeachment report http://bit.ly/36H672X
1. “President Trump’s abuse of power encompassed both the constitutional offense of ‘Bribery’ and multiple federal crimes,” the report states. “He has betrayed the national interest, the people of this Nation, and should not be permitted to be above the law. It is therefore all the more vital that he be removed from office.”
2. The report found that Trump acted directly and indirectly to “corruptly” solicit Ukraine’s government to announce investigations into Joe Biden and “discredited theory promoted by Russia” that Ukraine, rather than Kremlin agents, had interfered in the 2016 election.
3. “Taken together, the articles charge that President Trump has placed his personal, political interests above our national security, our free and fair elections and our systems of checks and balances,” the report says.
4. The report also alleges that Trump engaged in further wrongdoing even as the impeachment inquiry was presented in public hearings. “President Trump also attempted to muzzle witnesses, threatening to damage their careers if they agreed to testify, and even attacked one witness during her live testimony before Congress,” the report notes.
5. “While there is no need for a crime to be proven in order for impeachment to be warranted,” the report adds, “here, President Trump’s scheme or course of conduct also encompassed other offenses, both constitutional and criminal in character, and it is appropriate for the Committee to recognize such offenses in assessing the question of impeachment.”
🚫🐣 RT @ChanelRion Watch ALL THREE of @OANN’s EXCLUSIVE Investigation w @RudyGiuliani + Ukrainian Witnesses. ¤ [link below] Firsthand Testimony, Documents, Affidavits, Bank Statements, Ukrainian Parliament, Latvian Money Laundering Division… ¤ We’ve only just begun.
🚫⋙ OANN: OAN Investigates http://bit.ly/2RYy95W
// EXCLUSIVE: Watch the unraveling of the biggest political scandal in US history. Travel with OAN’s Chanel Rion and Rudy Giuliani to Budapest and Kiev to capture explosive first-hand interviews with key Ukrainian officials highlighting DNC collaborated foreign interference into the 2016 presidential election. Hear the shocking first hand testimony of former Prosecutor General Viktor Shokin on why he was fired and what corruption he uncovered. ¤ Watch all 3 parts FREE below.
// disinfo
🐣 RT @ScottMStedman This is an American disgrace.
⋙ 🐣 RT @ShimonPro More Rudy Giuliani. This to The NY Times. Mr. Giuliani, the president’s personal lawyer, described how he passed along to Mr. Trump “a couple of times” accounts about how the ambassador, Marie L. Yovanovitch, had frustrated efforts that could be politically helpful to Mr. Trump.
⋙⋙ 🐣 RT @kenvogel NEW: @RudyGiuliani early this year briefed TRUMP on claims that YOVANOVITCH was impeding investigations into the BIDENS & 2016. ¤ @POTUS then connected GIULIANI with @SecPompeo to discuss. ¤ The interactions likely led to Yovanovitch’s ouster, Giuliani says.
⋙⋙ 🐣 RT @kenvogel GIULIANI has briefed several members of Congress on the findings of his interviews in Europe with Ukrainian prosecutors about the BIDENS, 2016, etc. ¤ He predicted that the info. could constitute “a perfect defense” for TRUMP in a Senate impeachment trial.
⋙⋙⋙ 🐣 Way to breathless. I hope you have read Adam Entous in The New Yorker. Rudy’s been cavorting with opportunists and fabulists, all of them.
⋙⋙⋙ NYT, Kenneth Vogel: Giuliani Provides Details of What Trump Knew About Ambassador’s Removal http://nyti.ms/2PsgBxl
// Rudolph Giuliani said in an interview that he briefed the president “a couple of times” about Marie Yovanovitch, the envoy to Ukraine, setting her recall in motion.
Tumblr, TessaTheorist: Blacklist Timeline http://bit.ly/2RYjCY3
// updated 6/20/(2019?)
🐣 RT @RepSwalwell This week the House will vote on the impeachment of @realDonaldTrump. Our case is powerful and uncontradicted. But most remarkable, it was built with ZERO documents provided by the @WhiteHouse. Just imagine what else we would know if Trump didn’t obstruct. #WhatIsTrumpHiding
🐣 RT @anders_aslund When you think that Giuliani cannot fall lower in moral degradation, he succeeds in being ever worse. How can this blatant criminal accuse the US Embassy of refusing visas for his blatant criminals? Is he completely dement on top of his criminality?
🐣 RT @BradMossEsq Even Ingraham isn’t buying this
⋙ 🐣 RT @Acyn Rudy Giuliani on Yovanovitch: I didn’t need her out of the way, I forced her out because she’s corrupt 💽 https://twitter.com/BradMossEsq/status/1206780625530900481?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @VeraMBergen NEW: Ukraine’s state-owned energy company Naftogaz has filed a lawsuit seeking to overturn a deal in which a US company co-owned by a former donor to Rick Perry got the rights to develop a huge complex of oil and gas fields while he was Energy Secretary 📌 https://twitter.com/VeraMBergen/status/1206756359569629184?s=20
⋙ 🐣 RT @VeraMBergen In a draft of the complaint obtained by TIME, Naftogaz alleges that the Ukrainian govt acted illegally and with bias when it granted the oil and gas fields to the company owned by one of Rick Perry’s longtime allies and financial backers, @shustry reports
⋙ TIME: Exclusive: Lawsuit Raises Questions About Rick Perry’s Role in Ukraine’s Energy Sector http://bit.ly/35t9lab
Vox, Sean Collins: Giuliani returns from Ukraine with new, very questionable “evidence” that the Bidens committed “multiple crimes” http://bit.ly/2M2OyT1
// As Trump faces impeachment, Giuliani returns to television to expound upon the conspiracy theories that lead to the impeachment inquiry.
🐣 RT @Hardball On Senate Republicans mulling a speedy impeachment trial, Leon Panetta says “I think what history will say is that this is the most depressing moment in the history of the United States Senate if they allow that to take place.”
⋙ 💽 MSNBC, Hardball: Leon Panetta: ‘Most depressing’ moment in Senate history if impeachment trial dies quickly http://on.msnbc.com/2r3DP3G
// On Senate Republicans mulling a speedy impeachment trial, Leon Panetta says “I think what history will say is that this is the most depressing moment in the history of the United States Senate if they allow that to take place.”
TheBulwark, AB Stoddard: Why Is Mitch McConnell Afraid of This Man? http://bit.ly/35uqMar The rush to be done with impeachment before any more news connects Russian money to President Trump
NYT: Moderate Democrats Line Up Behind Impeachment as House Prepares to Vote http://nyti.ms/2sxPMyZ
// Several vulnerable freshmen who had expressed reservations about the effort said they would vote to impeach President Trump, despite the political risks.
RawStory: McConnell trashed by former solicitor general: He is ‘scared silly’ of the trial introducing new facts http://bit.ly/2qXg9h9 Neal Katyal
🐣 RT @EricBoehlert 76% paying attention. doesn’t really fit common media narrative that impeachment is a nonstarter and Dems have failed
⋙ 🐣 RT @BrianStelter Per CNN’s new poll: How closely have you been following the impeachment proceedings against Trump?
Very closely: 42%
Somewhat closely: 34%
Not too closely: 12%
Not closely at all: 11%
🐣 “Support for impeachment” includes people who think Trump committed impeachable offenses, but we are getting close to an election so they oppose. The polls that ask about wrongdoing are more informative.
WaPo Editorial: Will any Republicans show respect for the Constitution? http://wapo.st/2sxJuiR
NYT, Michelle Goldberg: On Tuesday, March for Impeachment http://nyti.ms/35ooHwB
// The anti-Trump majority needs to make itself seen.
🐣 RT @HeidiNBC “Trump’s numerous and flagrant abuses of power are precisely what the Framers had in mind as grounds for impeaching and removing a president.”
⋙ ⋙ 🐣 RT @HeidiNBC “his dereliction in protecting … the 2020 election from Russian disinformation and renewed interference, arouse once again the Framers’ most profound fears that powerful members of govt would become, in Hamilton’s words, “the mercenary instruments of foreign corruption.”
⋙ NYT: Hundreds of Historians Speak Out on Impeachment http://nyti.ms/36GRT1Z
// Over 750 historians — including Robert Caro and Ken Burns — signed onto a statement condemning President Trump’s ‘numerous and flagrant abuses of power.’
WaPo, Eugene Robinson: Nixon was bad. Trump is much worse. http://wapo.st/35uzmWu
🐣 RT @NatashaBertrand Russian commentators are also drawing parallels between Trump and ousted Ukrainian president Yanukovych, who fled to Rostov-on-Don in Russia upon his ouster in 2014. “Should we get another apartment in Rostov ready?” joked one, per @JuliaDavisNews..
⋙ DailyBeast, Julia Davis: Russia’s State TV Calls Trump Their ‘Agent’ http://bit.ly/2qZAkez
// Russian commentators note, rightly, that “sooner or later, the Democrats will come back into power,” and they’re already joking about offering Trump asylum.
● “Russia’s state television uses every opportunity to demoralize the Ukrainians with talking points based on Trump’s distaste for their beleaguered country.”
● “Putin has expressed undisguised delight with the crusade led by Trump and Giuliani to whitewash Moscow’s interference in the U.S. elections.”
WaPo, David Ignatius: Rudy Inc. http://wapo.st/2M2UN9o
// How Giuliani’s far-flung business interests have intertwined with his role as Trump’s global fixer
CBSNews: Schumer sends letter to McConnell to set framework for Senate impeachment trial http://cbsn.ws/2qWrhuI
≣ CNN: READ: Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer’s letter requesting witnesses in Senate impeachment trial http://cnn.it/2tp27py
// Senate Minority Leader Schumer wrote a letter to Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell Sunday evening, calling for at least four witnesses to testify in a Senate impeachment trial. Those witnesses include: acting White House chief of staff Mick Mulvaney, former national security adviser John Bolton, senior adviser to the acting White House chief of staff Robert Blair and Office of Management and Budget official Michael Duffey.
WaPo: Michael Flynn’s sentencing set for Jan. 28 after judge rejects his attacks on the FBI, Justice Department http://wapo.st/38JViza
🐣 RT @2dumfounded Whoa. This New Yorker story by Adam Entous about Lutsenko naturally touches on Shokin and I would suggest it is a MUST READ for anyone who wants to better understand Rudy’s shenigans.
⋙ 🐣 RT @jaysbookman This is a great story, probably the definitive story on the Burisma/Biden/Giuliani controversy. It doesn’t reflect well on Hunter Biden, who clearly traded on his dad’s name, nor on the ex-VP, who apparently chose not to know. But there’s no evidence of criminality. Also …. 📌 https://twitter.com/jaysbookman/status/1206590608699248646?s=20
⋙⋙ 🐣 RT @jaysbookman … it depicts Giulliani as a crazed house cat chasing a laser beam, pouncing wherever shady Ukrainians aimed it and always coming up empty, without ever understanding why. He gets played for a fool, because he IS a fool….
⋙⋙ 🐣 RT @jaysbookman … He keeps pressuring the US Justice Department to investigate his “evidence” against Biden and the Clintons, and he keeps failing because his “evidence” is transparent bullshit. If even Bill Barr won’t touch it, you know how groundless it must be….
⋙⋙ 🐣 RT @jaysbookman … At one point, Rudy even tells the New Yorker reporter it might have been Joe Biden, not Russia, who hacked the DNC computers, and that Biden arranged $40 million in illegal donations from Ukrainian oligarchs to Hillary. (I bet Trump is hearing the same shit, but believes it.)
⋙⋙ 🐣 RT @jaysbookman … It also tells you a lot that having failed to interest Trump’s DOJ, failed to interest Senate Republicans, and failed to interest even Fox News, Rudy is reduced to peddling his nutso conspiracies via OAN, which is Breitbart for people too stupid to read.
🐣 RT @adamentous Giuliani promised Lutsenko a meeting with Attorney General Barr. When Giuliani realized that setting up the meeting could get him in trouble, he decided instead to launch a smear campaign using pro-Trump media to pressure DoJ/FBI to investigate the Bidens
🐣 RT @ShimonPro !!!! The quote below from Giuliani is a stunning admission. ¤ “I believed that I needed Yovanovitch out of the way,” he said. “She was going to make the investigations difficult for everybody.”
⋙💙💙 🔆 This❗️⋙ NewYorker, Adam Entous: The Ukrainian Prosecutor Behind Trump’s Impeachment http://bit.ly/2PpXmoi All the background on Ukraine, Bidens and Giuliani ~ great journalism @adamentous
// 12/23/2019; print issue; How the efforts of Yuriy Lutsenko and Rudy Giuliani to smear Joe Biden led to a Presidential crisis.
⋙ See under Entire Articles: NYr Entous Lutsenko 12-16-2019
NYT, Ben Casselman and Karl Russell: There Are Economic Warning Signs for Trump in the Midwest http://nyti.ms/35o86Jg
💙💙 JustSecurity: Federal Criminal Offenses and the Impeachment of Donald J. Trump http://bit.ly/2RX9kqZ by Andrew Weissmann, Sam Berger, Randall Eliason, Barbara McQuade, Paul Seamus Ryan, Susan Simpson, Gary Stein and Michael Stern
🔆 This❗️⋙ WaPo, Greg Sargent: Democrats just made a strong case that Trump committed crimes. Now what? http://wapo.st/38HEEQw Bribery. Honest services fraud. Wire fraud.
The case the report makes is as follows. Federal statute makes “bribery” a crime if a public official “demands” or “seeks” anything “of value personally,” in return for performing “an official act,” and all of this has been done “corruptly.”
The report notes that Trump’s plot fits all these criteria. Trump sought announcements of investigations that would smear a political rival and help absolve Russia of 2016 electoral sabotage on his behalf. Trump directly pressured Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to do this, and numerous texts show U.S. ambassadors negotiating with Ukraine for a statement announcing it, which was confirmed by testimony from ringleader Gordon Sondland and others.
Those were “things of value” to Trump. His own lawyer Rudolph Giuliani openly said they would be “very helpful” to Trump himself. And we know from those texts and from extensive testimony that Trump conditioned two official acts — a White House meeting and the granting of military aid — on getting those things of value.
Trump did all this “corruptly” — he subverted our foreign policy to his personal and political ends. The talking point that Trump cared about “corruption” is laughable: Trump, Giuliani and Sondland sought only investigations that would help him politically; the Pentagon had recommended releasing the aid; and there is zero evidence that any of this amounted to a policy judgment on Trump’s part in any meaningful sense.
The report also argues Trump committed related crimes: “Honest services fraud,” because he defrauded the American people of honest service as a public official, and a subsidiary of that, “wire fraud,” because he communicated his corrupt scheme over a phone line.
Randall Eliason, a professor of white-collar criminal law at George Washington University who has just posted an extensive new analysis at the Just Security website about the relevance of bribery statutes to Trump’s misdeeds, told me the House report is correct as a matter of law.
Meanwhile, former federal prosecutor Barbara McQuade has just posted a separate case that Trump committed honest services fraud.
All of this has numerous implications, none of them particularly good.
First, this should prompt us to revisit the Justice Department’s failure to launch a criminal investigation of the whistleblower complaint laying out much of this corrupt scheme. Remember, the CIA’s general counsel made a criminal referral to the Justice Department, which declined to investigate.A full reckoning with this scandal must also get to the bottom of that decision, particularly now that Trump’s attorney general, William Barr, is working overtime to discredit the Russia investigation, just as Trump pressured Ukraine to help him do.
Presumably McConnell would not argue that his own Senate’s trial is also illegitimate, so that excuse is now out the window. So if Senate Republicans refuse to hear from these witnesses, after Trump corruptly blocked them, good luck defending the proceedings in the court of public opinion.
And if they do go through with that, but Trump wins reelection anyway, good luck to the rest of us.
WaPo, Jonathan Capehart: The deplorable hypocrisy of Lindsey Graham and the Republican Party http://wapo.st/2swRtMW
🐣 RT @RepMarkMeadows I find it amazing for Chairman Schiff to claim he didn’t know of FISA abuse evidence. The whole Nunes memo laid it out. Schiff saw the same evidence we did. He chose to ignore it and scoff at it, and many in the media elevated him and took his side. They were wrong.
⋙ 🐣 The FISA abuse dealt exclusively with Carter Page after he left the campaign. The FBI investigation was based on a statement Papadopoulos made to an Australian diplomat. Mueller was appointed by a GOP DAG after Trump fired the FBI Director.
🐣 RT @ZevShalev #MoscowMitch is in a pickle courtesy of Chuck Schumer These witnesses and their lack of testimony are a big part of Article 2. If he doesn’t call Bolton et al, McConnell will be aiding and abetting, if not conspiring with, the President in obstructing congress. @NarativLive
⋙ 🐣 RT @ZevShalev Schumer wants Bolton and Mulvaney to testify in the senate trial as Dems threaten to hold back the articles of impeachment from the Senate unless they can guarantee a fair trial. @Narativlive [letter:] https://twitter.com/ZevShalev/status/1206507198932750336?s=20/photo/1-3
🐣 RT @tribelaw That’s my point exactly: Vote for the Articles of Impeachment in the House, then hold them like a Sword of Damocles over Trump and McConnell until he agrees to abide by his oath and hold a fair trial in the Senate, not a Trumpian whitewash. @ianbassin & @JRubinBlogger are right.
⋙ 🐣 RT @ianbassin There’s a growing view that unless McConnell agrees to hold a fair trial, the House should vote to impeach but not send the articles to the Senate. If the Senate won’t do its job honestly, they shouldn’t be allowed to do it dishonestly.
WaPo FactChecker: President Trump has made 15,413 false or misleading claims over 1,055 days http://wapo.st/34ti0Ie 🍄🍄🍄🍄 ¤ 🍄🍄🍄🍄 ¤ 🍄🍄🍄🍄
🐣 RT @KenDilanianNBC It’s hard to overstate how much Webster is respected, even revered, in the national security community. His criticisms of Barr here will reverberate. “I Headed the F.B.I. and C.I.A. There’s a Dire Threat to the Country I Love.”
🐣 RT @ChrisAlbertoLaw This Is An Extraordinary Alarm! ¤ William Webster, a former federal judge, director of the FBI from 1978 to 1987, & the CIA from 1987 to 1991 issues a serious warning: ¤ Trump, AG Barr & Giuliani are engaged in efforts that will destroy our democratic institutions & the U.S.
⋙ 🐣 RT @ChrisAlbertoLaw Former Director of FBI & CIA: ¤ Trump’s & AG Barr’s unrelenting lies & baseless vilification against the FBI, CIA, & DOJ IG is a lethal threat to our constitutional republic. ¤ “This is about the rule of law.” GOP & Dems “should defend it above all else.”
🐣 RT @DanRather We know what is happening is wrong, very wrong. It is incumbent on those who have positions of credibility to speak. Here William Webster with its impeccable credentials pulls no punches. A must read, and share…
🐣 RT @Mimirocah1 This is patriotism. William Webster – former judge, only person to serve as head of CIA & FBI (under Dems & Repubs), & a friend of Barr & Giuliani, speaks out. Thank you.
⋙ 💙 NYT, William Webster: The F.B.I. Is Not Broken http://nyti.ms/38KWtyg Mr. Webster is a former federal judge and the former director of both the F.B.I. and the C.I.A.
// And President Trump and William P. Barr are wrong to say that it is.
⭕ 15 Dec 2019
🚫🐣 RT @RudyGiuliani Budapest | Kiev | Vienna ¤ After hundreds of hours & months of research, I have garnered witnesses & documents which reveal the truth behind this impeachment, which includes NO wrongdoing by @realDonaldTrump. ¤ These threads only touch the surface. Read & watch all. More to come. 📌 https://twitter.com/RudyGiuliani/status/1206290547360579587?s=20
// disinfo
🐣 RT @tribelaw BREAKING NEWS: Schumer’s proposal to McConnell. If he rejects these reasonable ground rules & insists on a non-trial, the House should consider treating that as a breach of the Senate’s oath & withholding the Articles until the Senate reconsiders
🐣 RT @NormOrnstein Perfect that Trump would pick as his advocate the corrupt Florida AG who took an illegal $25,000 effective bribe to shut off the investigation of Trump University
// Pam Bondi
🐣 RT @neal_katyal It’s not just @justinamash’s politics in not being a democrat. It’s that he has demonstrated a serious and smart understanding of the Constitution and Trump’s wrongdoing. I hope this happens.
⋙ 🐣 RT @rachaelmbade SCOOP: 30 freshman House Democrats are trying 2 draft Rep. @JustinAmash (I) as an impeachment manager 4 the Senate trial of Trump ¤ Pelosi makes the call, but these Dems want a bipartisan showing & Amash is among the most conservative members in the House
⋙⋙ WaPo: Freshman Democrats push for Amash as impeachment manager http://wapo.st/2EmCacq
📊 FiveThirtyEight: Democratic Primary Race (just now) http://53eig.ht/38FTcQF
● https://twitter.com/Auriandra/status/1206463238029955076?s=20/photo/1
// Biden 26.4, Sanders 17.3, Warren 14.8, Buttigieg 9.4
🐣 RT @CraigCaplan House Judiciary Committee 658-page report on their articles of impeachment against President Donald John Trump resolution was filed in the House. http://bit.ly/ https://twitter.com/CraigCaplan/status/1206447686985175047?s=20/photo/1
⋙ 💙💙 📔 Report: House Judiciary Committee report on their articles of impeachment against President Donald John Trump http://bit.ly/2Ek2rIa 658p
Conclusion (Obstruction): As the Investigating Committees concluded, “it would be hard to imagine a stronger or more complete case of obstruction than that demonstrated by the President since the [impeachment] inquiry began.” [Footnote:] 941 In the history of our Republic, no President has obstructed Congress like President Trump. If President Nixon’s obstruction of Congress raised a slippery slope concern, we now find ourselves at the bottom of the slope, surveying the damage to our Constitution.
That damage is extraordinary. As explained above, and as set forth in Article II, President Trump has “sought to arrogate to himself the right to determine the propriety, scope, and nature of an impeachment inquiry into his own conduct, as well as the unilateral prerogative to deny any and all information to the House of Representatives in the exercise of its ‘sole Power of Impeachment.’”942 This abuse of the Presidential office, moreover, “served to cover up the President’s own repeated misconduct and to seize and control the power of impeachment—and thus to nullify a vital constitutional safeguard vested solely in the House of Representatives.”943 If President Trump is left unchecked, we will send an alarming message to future Presidents.
In word and deed, President Trump has sought to write the Impeachment Clause out of the Constitution. If his excuses for that conduct are accepted, then every future President can choose to ignore House subpoenas, and a bulwark against tyranny will be undone. This time, courageous and patriotic public servants defied the President’s direction and offered testimony about his corrupt solicitation and inducement of foreign interference in our elections. Next time, we may not be so fortunate, and a President may perpetrate abuses that remain unknown or unprovable. That is exactly what the Framers feared most as they designed the Office of the President. It is what they warned against in their deliberations, and what they sought to prevent by authorizing impeachments. We are the inheritors of that legacy—of a Republic, if we can keep it.
🐣 RT @RBReich What do these newspapers have in common?
NY Times
Washington Post
USA Today
LA Times
Salt Lake Tribune
Tampa Bay Times
Orlando Sentinel
Boston Globe
NY Daily News
Chicago Sun-Times
Philadelphia Inquirer
SF Chronicle
Their editorial boards have all called for impeachment.
Newsweek: Rudy Giuliani Shares His Ukraine Findings in Series of Tweets http://bit.ly/2EjVlUd
↥ ↧
🚫 🐣 RT @RudyGiuliani Budapest | Kiev | Vienna
After hundreds of hours & months of research, I have garnered witnesses & documents which reveal the truth behind this impeachment, which includes NO wrongdoing by @realDonaldTrump. ¤ These threads only touch the surface. Read & watch all. More to come.
📌 https://twitter.com/RudyGiuliani/status/1206290349422981120?s=20
🐣 RT @Jacksaurus3 God I love Robert De Niro – ¤ “The president is supposed to set an example of trying to do the right thing. Not be a nasty little bitch. Because that’s what he is. He’s a petulant little punk. There’s not one thing that I see in him or his family, not any redeeming qualities.”
⋙ TheHill: Robert De Niro blasts Trump as a “nasty little bitch,” says he would never play the president http://hill.cm/nhSpJe6 http://bit.ly/
🐣 RT @stuartstevens What Republican Senators need to realize is that just because others are breaking their oath of office doesn’t change the reality that the responsibility to uphold oath is still individual. Each took the oath. There’s no out clause based on group failure.
⋙ FoxNewsSunday Chris Wallace asks Pam Bondi how the Senate can do impartial justice when Senator McConnell is taking cues from the White House: “We should be working hand-in-hand with them.” #FNS #FoxNews #Impeachment 💽 https://twitter.com/stuartpstevens/status/1206262994960818176?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @SenWhitehouse If Republicans aren’t “even trying to pretend” to be fair jurors on impeachment, does that mean they won’t take the oath?
⋙ CNN: ‘I’m not trying to pretend to be a fair juror here’: Graham predicts Trump impeachment will ‘die quickly’ in Senate http://cnn.it/2YPL3Vi
✅ WaPo FactChecker, Glenn Kessler: 🍄🍄 The biggest Pinocchios of 2019 🍄🍄 http://wapo.st/2EjDrki Trump is closing in on 15,000 falsehoods
WaPo: Schumer calls for testimony from Mulvaney, Bolton in proposal to GOP on parameters for Trump impeachment trial http://wapo.st/36BqXAJ
🐣📊 54% favoring impeachment is more than favored Nixon’s when he resigned. As for it being more partisan now, I don’t think so. There were liberals & conservatives in both parties. Remember the Southern Democrats? Nixon’s “Southern Strategy” had begun, but took years to play out. ● https://twitter.com/Auriandra/status/1206388298425552896?s=20/photo/1
● horizontal https://twitter.com/Auriandra/status/1206402433779453952?s=20/photo/1
⇈ ⇊
🐣◕ RT @Rschooley Bizarre that approval Trump’s removal is polling similarly at the start of the process as Nixon’s was at the end and yet it’s still presented as if Democrats are the ones overplaying their hand. https://twitter.com/Rschooley/status/1206330979075256321?s=20/photo/1
// Nixon approval Trump approval
WaPo, Max Boot: The only principle Republicans have left is partisanship http://wapo.st/2Pr2SHk
🐣📊 RT @FoxNewsSunday Fox News Poll: Has the President abused power? Obstructed Congress? Committed bribery?#FNS #FoxNews #Polls #Impeachment https://twitter.com/FoxNewsSunday/status/1206222424590704640?s=20/photo/1
Yes/No: Abused His Power 53/38; Obstructed Congress 48/34; Committed Bribery 45/37
↥ ↧
🐣📊 RT @FoxNewsSunday FOX News Sunday debuted brand news exclusive polls on impeachment. 50% of registered voters support impeaching the President. #FNS #FoxNews #Polls #Impeachment https://twitter.com/FoxNewsSunday/status/1206222350506692609?s=20/photo/1
// Impeach and Remove 50%; Impeach, Don’t Remove 4%; Not Impeach 41%
WaPo: Senate GOP accused of violating oath to be impartial jurors http://wapo.st/36BqXAJ
// inside title: Senate GOP defends Trump, despite oath to be impartial impeachment jurors
⭕ 14 Dec 2019
🐣 RT @brianklaas [To @RudyGiuliani] I study coups. The impeachment process is the opposite of a coup in just about every way imaginable. And if you think this is a coup, then you are—I can’t stress this enough—an idiot. If you’d like to educate yourself and stop being an idiot, read this:
⋙ WaPo, Brian Klaas (10/30): I study coups. This is not a coup, Mr. President. http://wapo.st/2PKJCn0
// 10/30/2019
🐣 RT @lawrencehurley Justice Scalia’s writing partner:
⋙ 🐣 RT @BryanAGarner I’ve always called myself Republican. I keep my Twitter feed generally apolitical & will continue to do so. Generally. But as of today, I’m switching parties. Over impeachment. The Republican positions aren’t consonant with intellectual honesty. As of today, I’m an Independent.
🐣 RT @kurteichenwald 1. Based on rules of impeachment trials, Chief Justice Roberts, who will preside over any impeachment trial of Trump, must exclude both @senatemajldr McConnell and @LindseyGrahamSC from playing any role in the proceedings. Or demolish the credibility of @Scotus forever… 📌 https://twitter.com/kurteichenwald/status/1206026186243092480?s=20
⋙ 🐣 RT @kurteichenwald 2…this is not even a close call. The only way any other decision can be made is to, once again, indulge the @GOP’s consistent abandonment of constitutional principles, permit perjurious oaths, accept lies, and once again treat the Constitution as an array of loopholes….
⋙ 🐣 RT @kurteichenwald 3…Roberts must administer an oath to every Senator. The oath’s words are,”I solemnly swear (or affirm) that in all things appertaining to the trial of the impeachment of, now pending, I will do impartial justice according to the Constitution and laws: so help me God.”…
🐣 RT @JeffMerkley I am. Mitch McConnell made very clear that his allegiance is to Donald Trump and not to country, rule of law, or the Constitution. The Senate owes the American people a serious trial that shows that nobody, not even a president, is above the law.
⋙ 🐣 RT @ThePlumLineGS Why isn’t every Senate Democrat out there *right now* denouncing this in the most forceful terms possible?
⋙⋙ 🐣 RT @ThePlumLineGS McConnell just confirmed to Sean Hannity that the trial will be shaped 100% in accord with Trump’s political needs. ¤ This Hannity interview is a horror. It belongs in a time capsule for future generations studying the Trump-era destruction of our system:
⋙⋙⋙ WaPo, Greg Sargent: McConnell’s awful Hannity interview shows power of Fox News’s disinformation http://wapo.st/36F2bzY
🐣 RT @kurteichenwald What I do not get: The Senate could acquit Trump. They have the power, they have the Constitutional authority. But instead, they throw away the Constitution, admit they will lie in taking their oaths, just to say “We will not listen, we will not convict, we are not objective.”
⋙ 🐣 Their message: Our Constitution is a joke. An Oath to be impartial is a joke. Our form of Government is a joke.
DailyBeast, Margaret Carlson: This Is the Week Trump’s Crimes Finally Started to Catch Up With Him http://bit.ly/2PmofJx
// The impeachment hearings have confirmed that the executive and legislative branches are dead to us. All that’s left is the judiciary, and it could be Trump’s undoing.
DailyBeast, Will Sommer: Lindsey Graham Invites Rudy Giuliani to Push Biden-Ukraine Conspiracy Theories in Senate Committee http://bit.ly/2PJL3lH
// “Rudy, if you want to come and tell us what you found, I’ll be glad to talk to you,” Graham says, adding, “I don’t know what he was up to when he was in the Ukraine.”
🐣 RT @joncoopertweets GOPers in purple districts who will vote NO to impeach:
Don Bacon
Mike Bost
Steve Chabot
Rodney Davis
Mario Diaz-Balart
Brian Fitzpatrick
Jim Hagedorn ✅ ~ Ours
Jaime Herrera Beutler
David Joyce
John Katko
Brian Mast
Pete Stauber
Elise Stefanik
Bryan Steil
Mike Turner
Fred Upton
Lee Zeldin
🐣 RT @HeidiNBC THREAD: (Pls read and RT) ¤ Facts behind Trump’s main defense he was withholding aid to Ukraine to address “corruption:”
1.Trump approved same aid in ’17 and ‘18
2.In spring of 2019, Zelensky won on “ANTI-CORRUPTION” platform.
📌 https://twitter.com/HeidiNBC/status/1205853592432922624?s=20
NYT Editorial: Impeach. http://nyti.ms/2PmgkMr
IN THE END, the story told by the two articles of impeachment approved on Friday morning by the House Judiciary Committee is short, simple and damning: President Donald Trump abused the power of his office by strong-arming Ukraine, a vulnerable ally, holding up hundreds of millions of dollars in military aid until it agreed to help him influence the 2020 election by digging up dirt on a political rival.
… He made it impossible for Congress to carry out fully its constitutionally mandated oversight role, and, in doing so, he violated the separation of powers, a safeguard of the American republic.
To resist the pull of partisanship, Republicans and Democrats alike ought to ask themselves the same question: Would they put up with a Democratic president using the power of the White House this way? Then they should consider the facts, the architecture and aspirations of the Constitution and the call of history. In that light, there can be only one responsible judgment: to cast a vote to impeach, to send a message not only to this president but to future ones.
… Mr. Trump has been committing arguably impeachable offenses since the moment he entered the Oval Office, including his acceptance of foreign money at his many businesses; his violations of campaign-finance law in paying hush money to a woman who claimed to have had a sexual affair with him; and, of course, his obstructions of justice in the Russia investigation, which were documented extensively by the special counsel, Robert Mueller.
… [What] changed in September [was] when a whistle-blower’s complaint, initially suppressed by the Justice Department, revealed the outline of Mr. Trump’s Ukraine scheme. That made it impossible to ignore the president’s lawlessness because it sounded an alarm that he was seeking to subvert the next election, depriving the voters of their right to check his behavior.
⭕ 13 Dec 2019
🐣 Being a “Lieutenant Colonel” sure beats being an “Impeached President”
WaPo, Hannah Knowles: ‘We’ve seen enough’: Editorial boards weigh in on impeachment http://wapo.st/35q0kyK
🐣 RT @JoyceWhiteVance They let you do it when you’re above the law. You can do anything.
⋙ 🐣 RT @nytimes Rudy Giuliani has provided free personal legal advice to President Trump for the past 20 months. But his work was not included on the president’s annual financial disclosure filed in May that requires such gifts to be publicly listed. https://nyti.ms/2PJUeSV
WaPo, Dana Milbank: Impeachment is rare. Republicans’ histrionics are historic. http://wapo.st/2EjCdpw
WaPo, Isaac Stanley-Becker: Fact-based impeachment can’t penetrate the pro-Trump Web http://wapo.st/2tiduQ6
WaPo, Paul Waldman: The entire Republican Party is becoming a Russian asset http://wapo.st/36u0Tr6 //➔ very depressing that a country with a GDP the size of NY State could, with a small investment in Active Measures, capture the leading parties of the US and UK
🐣 RT @NicolleDWallace The gop performance yesterday should put to rest any doubts among Democrats that Joe Biden is a lethal threat to Trumps re-election prospects. Here’s why: conspiracy theories are gop version of bringing out the China for special guests – we don’t do it for just anyone.
🐣 RT @JoyceWhiteVance Pam Bondi, the Florida AG who Trump’s now defunct charitable trust made a highly questionable political donation to, will play a lead role in his impeachment defense. She’s also a registered agent for Qatar.
⋙ MSNBC, Steve Benen: Despite earlier controversy, Pam Bondi joining Team Trump http://on.msnbc.com/2PkHgMy
🐣 RT @Mimirocah1 This is going to be Russian propoganda from Pro-Russian, anti-Ukraine sources who are only interested in tearing our democracy apart. As with any reporting, I am sure good reporters will consider the source.
🐣 RT @rebeccaballhaus New: When Giuliani returned from Kyiv on Sat, Trump called him as his plane was still taxiing & asked: “What did you get?” Giuliani replied: “More than you can imagine.” W/@bykowicz@tggrove on Giuliani doubling down, even as friends urged him to lay low:
⋙ WSJ: ‘Just Having Fun’: Giuliani Doubles Down on Ukraine Probes http://on.wsj.com/35hNUZG
// Trump’s personal attorney escalates his push for investigations—the effort that helped spark impeachment inquiry
🐣 RT @mikememoli .@RepValDemings calls for @senatemajldr to recuse himself. ¤ “The moment Senator McConnell takes the oath of impartiality required by the Constitution, he will be in violation of that oath. He has effectively promised to let President Trump manage his own impeachment trial.”
🐣 RT @MitchellReports .@JohnBrennan: “We’re sending a signal to the world that all those things the United States said for so many years about the importance of following the rule of law, the importance of not having corrupt government officials, that has been laid to waste.” #AMRstaff
◕ MSNBC, MorningJoe (Sep): Numbers contradict President Trump’s reason for withholding aid from Ukraine http://on.msnbc.com/2sqBjEI
● https://twitter.com/Auriandra/status/1205539711198076928?s=20/photo/1
// 9/25/2019; aid to Ukraine; Willie Geist breaks down how President Trump has shifted his explanation on withholding Ukraine aid. European institutions have funded $425.2 million in gross overseas development assistance for Ukraine, while the U.S. has contributed $204.4 million, according to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development.
FiveThirtyEight: Trump Popularity ~ just now http://53eig.ht/2MJpIt2 ● https://twitter.com/Auriandra/status/1205537204711436288?s=20/photo/1
WaPo: House Judiciary panel passes two articles of impeachment against Trump http://wapo.st/2Ph65sI
NYT, Peter Baker and Maggie Haberman: For Trump, Impeachment May Be a Political Plus but Also a Personal Humiliation http://nyti.ms/34jiKQe
// As the House moves toward what even he says is an inevitable vote to impeach him for high crimes and misdemeanors, President Trump toggles between self-pity and combativeness.
WaPo, Aaron Blake: McConnell indicates he’ll let Trump’s lawyers dictate Trump’s impeachment trial http://wapo.st/2so0IyW
↥ ↧
🐣 RT @nedmiller In “How Democracies Die,” Professors describe how, in failing democracies, “the referees of the democratic game were brought over to the government’s side, providing the incumbent with both a shield against constitutional challenges and a powerful & ‘legal’ weapon…”
NYT, Michelle Goldberg: Democracy Grief Is Real http://nyti.ms/2PlIyqR
// Seeing what Trump is doing to America, many find it hard to fight off despair.
WaPo, Greg Sargent: McConnell’s awful Hannity interview shows power of Fox News’s disinformation http://wapo.st/35mGWSY
⭕ 12 Dec 2019
WaPo, Jennifer Rubin: Nothing could be more conclusive proof of Trump’s guilt http://wapo.st/2YJ1Jh0
🐣 RT @Susan_Hennessey And a reminder that when the head of the National Security Division saw the transcript he independently made a referral to the Criminal Division.
⋙ 🐣 RT @K8brannen A reminder: The CIA General Counsel made a CRIMINAL REFERRAL to the Justice Department based on the whistleblower complaint and the details of the July 25 phone call.
⋙⋙ NBCNews (Oct): CIA’s top lawyer made ‘criminal referral’ on complaint about Trump Ukraine call http://nbcnews.to/2sobtRI
// 10/4/2019; Experts are raising questions about why the Justice Department did not open an investigation.
🐣 RT @donwinslow And the list is growing:
The Washington Post: Impeach
Los Angeles Times: Impeach
Boston Globe: Impeach
Orlando Sentinel: Impeach
Philadelphia Inquirer: Impeach
USA Today: Impeach
🐣 RT @justinamash You don’t impeach a president for ordinary crimes and misdemeanors. You impeach a president for high crimes and misdemeanors. ¤ You don’t look to statutes. You look to whether his behavior involves abusing power, violating the public trust, or using his office for personal gain.
🐣 RT @ EvanMcMullin I’m quite tired of listening to House Republicans complain disingenuously about process. If our processes were so important to them, they’d demand that the president comply with congressional subpoenas, and that our elections be protected.
MSNBC, RachelMaddow: Impeachment report moves newspapers, triggers wave of editorials http://on.msnbc.com/2Pgipt8
// Rachel Maddow shares highlights from editorials in major American newspapers calling for the impeachment of Donald Trump, including from some papers that were discouraging of impeachment until the House published its impeachment report.
🐣 RT @Acyn “What we’ve now seen is the foreman of the jury fixing the outcome of the trial with the defendant’s lawyer” 💽 https://twitter.com/Acyn/status/1205358301795385345?s=20/photo/1 [Joyce Vance ]
WaPo: Impeachment exposes the widening gap between Republicans and the truth http://wapo.st/38BcQ0g
🐣 RT @carolecadwalla This is not the worst. Worst is yet to come. But a story: 2 months ago, I hit deep low. Realised: journalism had failed. Authorities had failed. Politics had failed. But..now I think: fuck that shit. The EUref was illegally conducted. That’s just fact. And one day, it will matter
🐣 [To @CaroleCadwalla] But, for what little it’s worth, you have shined 🕯
// as Boris Johnson wins in UK; tag: Brexit
🐣 RT @Acyn Swalwell goes after Collins 💽 https://twitter.com/Acyn/status/1205301369483087872?s=20/photo/1
⋙ 🐣 RT @Acyn Collins goes after Swalwell 💽 https://twitter.com/Acyn/status/1205302822532612096?s=20/photo/1
🐣💙💙 RT @BarbMcQuade Here are the GOP defenses I have heard so far to articles of impeachment, along with the knee-jerk responses I have been shouting at my television. 📌 https://twitter.com/BarbMcQuade/status/1205353357180833792?s=20
🐣 RT @chrislhayes The expectation going into the day that markup was going to end at 6pm. Pretty clear GOP wanted to have the vote be “in the dead of night” so they could use that as a talking point.
🐣 RT @bret_mcgurk Quick thread / update on the still unfolding consequences of Trump’s appeasing Erdogan while asking for absolutely nothing in return. Two weeks ago, recall, Trump feted Erdogan at the WH for no apparent reason. Since then, what’s happened? 📌 https://twitter.com/brett_mcgurk/status/1205192707288625152?s=20/photo/1
🐣 💙◕ RT @CmCristy53 [chart cartoon timeline of Ukraine Affair ] https://twitter.com/CmCristy53/status/1205348403514761218?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @tribelaw Is it a “trial” if the defendant runs the proceedings? What about the ancient principle that nobody can be the judge of his own case?
⋙ 🐣 Can Roberts declare a mistrial?
🐣 RT @ronreiner Moscow Mitch has just announced he will conduct the Senate trial in coordination with the WH. So much for Fairness & Impartiality. So much for Checks & Balances. So much for our 243 year Democratic Experiment.
🐣 RT @tribelaw I’m at a loss for words
🐣 RT @rgoodlaw The fix is in. And it’s in your face explicit.
🐣 RT @moscow_project Trump’s chief accomplice Mitch McConnell says the quiet part out loud: The jury is already rigged.
🐣 RT @benjaminwittes It’s very hard to reconcile this statement by McConnell with the special oath senators are required to take in impeachment trials under the rules.
🐣 RT @TheRickWilson Many jobs for Kentuckystan oblast!
⋙ 🐣 RT @MollyMcKew “What Senate? There is no Senate. There is only the erosion of constitutional powers that I have happily overseen because now my corruption can be out in the open. Come visit me in Kentucky’s new Russian aluminum mill!”
⋙ 🐣 RT @JoyceWhiteVance Mitch McConnell rejects the founding fathers’ creation of a system of checks & balances to keep any one branch of gov’t from becoming too powerful & engaging in corruption/abuse of power.
⋙ ⋙ 🐣 RT @Acyn Mitch McConnell: Everything I do during this, I’m coordinating with White House Counsel. There will be no difference between the President’s position and our position as to how to handle this 💽 [Fox] https://twitter.com/MollyMcKew/status/1205345168448196608?s=20/photo/1
CNN: McConnell and White House counsel agree to coordinate impeachment trial plans http://cnn.it/34dQazx
🐣 RT @GrantStern To recap: The House Judiciary Committee just spent 14 hours on an #ImpeachmentDebate, but Doug Collins is furious that the Chairman thinks every member of the committee should make their fateful vote in the morning after a night of rest. […]
🐣◕ RT @pbump Trump tweets at times of conflict. This conflict, impeachment, is the biggest he’s seen yet. https://wapo.st/38xuIsY https://twitter.com/pbump/status/1205214598913232896?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @MSNBC .@jmeacham says today’s impeachment hearing shows “a debate about historic issues in an unhistoric fashion.”
💙 ⋙ 💽 MSNBC, MitchellReports: Meacham: We’re having a historic debate in unhistoric fashion http://on.msnbc.com/2M4GFwH
// Historian Jon Meacham reacts to the House Judiciary Committee hearing to vote on articles of impeachment. Meacham says the committee is having a historic debate in an unhistoric fashion.
🐣 RT @CREWcrew SOLICITING FOREIGN CAMPAIGN CONTRIBUTION (52 U.S.C. §§ 30109, 30121)—The FECA prohibits foreign nationals from making contributions or donations. It is a felony punishable by up to five years’ imprisonment if the amount exceeds $25,000.
🐣 RT @CREWcrew BRIBERY (18 U.S.C. § 201)—It is a felony offense for a public official to corruptly seek anything of value in return for taking an official action. Offenders can be fined, imprisoned for up to 15 years, and disqualified from holding future public office.
🐣 RT @CREWcrew MISAPPROPRIATION OF FEDERAL FUNDS (18 U.S.C. § 641)—It is a felony to knowingly take for one’s own use property that belongs to the federal government (like money allocated for foreign aid). Offenders can be fined, imprisoned for up to 10 years in prison, or both.
‼️ 🐣 RT @GovMikeHuckabee I’ll be on @seanhannity 2nite @FoxNews at 9pm ET and will explain how @realDonaldTrump will be eligible for a 3rd term due to the illegal attempts by Comey, Dems, and media , et al attempting to oust him as @POTUS so that’s why I was named to head up the 2024 re-election.
⋙ 🐣 A joke, right?
🐣 RT @JimTaePark
Democrats:
Facts. Facts. Facts. Abuse of power.
Facts. Facts. Facts. Obstruction of Congress.
Facts. Facts. Facts. Save Democracy.
GOP:
Lies. Lies. Lies. Are you distracted yet?
Lies. Lies. Lies. Are you confused yet?
Lies. Lies. Lies. Dems don’t like Trump?
#impeachmentDebate
NYT, Paul Krugman: The Party That Ruined the Planet http://nyti.ms/2tefCs3
// Republican climate denial is even scarier than Trumpism.
🐣 RT @EvanMcMullin .@jonathanchait: “Rudy has worked as Trump’s lawyer for “free,” but Parnas paid him half a million dollars for his work. If Parnas himself was being paid by Russian sources, this means the Russians were essentially subsidizing Trump…”
⋙ 💙 NYMag, Jonathan Chait: Report: Trump’s Ukraine Extortion Scheme Was Financed by Russians http://bit.ly/2EcqMjh
What did Russia get in return? Quite a bit. Trump attempted to hold up military aid that had been passed by Congress by margins Trump couldn’t block. He has continued to withhold a desperately sought meeting with Volodymyr Zelensky, which the Ukrainian president believed would serve as a signal of American support, and give Ukraine leverage against Russia. Instead, Trump met this week in the White House with Russian foreign minister Sergey V. Lavrov, sending the opposite of the signal Ukraine wanted. Andrew Weiss, a Russia expert at the Carnegie Institute for International Peace, tells the New York Times, “The Russians surely arranged the Lavrov visit to capitalize on all of this and to send a message to the Ukrainians that they’re basically on their own now and need to cut the best deal they can since the U.S. backstop is largely inoperative.”
That’s not all. A large part of Russia’s agenda in Ukraine is to influence that country’s internal politics. Ukraine is ground zero of Russia’s overseas political operations. Moscow has financed a series of corrupt officials who pursue pro-Russian policies. (Russia then turns around and uses Ukraine’s corruption as a reason for other countries to shun it.) Before he managed Trump’s 2016 campaign, Paul Manafort was paid by Russian oligarchs to represent the pro-Russian Party of Regions.
The revolution that deposed Manafort’s candidate and the recent election of reformist president Zelensky have threatened Russia’s internal influence in Ukraine. Giuliani’s work there has essentially picked up where Manafort left off. He has tried to vindicate Manafort by digging up evidence that Ukrainians framed him as a criminal through the “black ledger” listing his illegal payments. On his trip to Ukraine, Giuliani huddled with a number of notoriously corrupt pro-Russian officials, including veterans of the Party of Regions. (Philip Bump has a good rundown of the rogues’ gallery of Giuliani partners.) He is openly working to promote the cast of characters Russia wants to run Ukraine.
Update: I want to emphasize that the fact that Parnas was paid by Russia suggests, but does not prove, government intent. The structure of Russia’s economy and political system links its oligarchs to the political agenda of the government. (Craig Unger’s reporting has a lot of detail as to how this dynamic works.) In particular, Russia’s organized crime kingpins, to which Parnas has links, operate in conjunction with the state. It would be out of character for them to finance an operation that has such important implications in a theater in which Moscow is so deeply invested. However, prosecutors have not identified the motivation of Parnas’s financiers. As noted before, they were also engaged in a money-making scheme, so it’s possible (albeit unlikely) that the clearly pro-Russian outcomes of the work by Giuliani, Parnas and Fruman was incidental from the point of view of their financiers.
NYT, Caroline Fredrickson: In Bill Barr, Trump Has a Roy Cohn Upgrade http://nyti.ms/2Pjqe1v
The attorney general has acted more like a henchman than the leader of an agency charged with exercising independent judgment.
🐣 RT @mayawiley On @mitchellreports John Meachum just said it! “The Republicans have basically become” a party of Monarchy and “Trump is their king”! #impeachmentDebate
🐣 RT @kylegriffin1 Speaker Pelosi: “The articles [of impeachment] are what they are. They’re very powerful, they’re very strong, and they are a continuation of a pattern of misbehavior on the part of the president.” Via CBS 💽 https://twitter.com/kylegriffin1/status/1205164297543995392?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @RepValDemings Getting caught in the act doesn’t make you innocent. #DefendOurDemocracy
⋙ 🐣 RT @jonallendc Jim Jordan’s argument is like saying a murder for hire agreement isn’t a crime if the cops apprehend the hitman before the killing — No one got paid, No one got killed, No crime.
🐣 Can a man without a conscience ever have “corrupt intent”?
🐣 RT @RepSwalwell There is no higher crime than for the president to use the power of his office to corrupt our elections. Period. ¤ #DefendOurDemocracy
💽 https://twitter.com/RepSwalwell/status/1205149658831560704?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @awprokop At the impeachment hearing, Rep. Eric Swalwell just tried to introduce this article by me on all the indictments and guilty pleas Mueller got. ¤ (Doug Collins objected)
⋙ Vox, Andrew Prokop: All of Robert Mueller’s indictments and plea deals in the Russia investigation http://bit.ly/2Dzgydg
// The investigation is now complete.
WSJ (2018): Comey Tells House Panel He Suspected Giuliani Was Leaking FBI Information to Media http://on.wsj.com/2PCApx0
// 12/8/2018; Giuliani has previously denied getting information from the bureau’s New York field office
🐣 RT @Amy_Siskind Trump is spending the historic morning of the House Judiciary Committee voting on articles of impeachment against him alone in his residence watching cable TV and sending nearly 100 tweets and retweets, including airing grievances that he is not TIME’s person of the year.
CNN: FBI agents warn of ‘chilling effect’ from Trump and Barr attacks http://cnn.it/2tdBSCr “ … leaving them wondering whether federal agents could be less aggressive the next time they have to pursue a sensitive investigation”
💙 TheAtlantic, Anne Applebaum: The False Romance of Russia http://bit.ly/2PcqNKe
// American conservatives who find themselves identifying with Putin’s regime refuse to see the country for what it actually is.
🐣 RT @ HardballChris Trump became president because of the politics of grievance. It’s the heart of Trumpism. Today we’re seeing Republicans demonstrate that. All they want to do is distract.
NBCNews, Kurt Bardella: House Republicans’ Trump impeachment strategy was simple: Distract, deceive and yell http://nbcnews.to/2qLjhwF
// GOP lawmakers have treated the hearings like Fox New segments, delivering loud, rambling monologues in a deliberate attempt to wear down participants and viewers.
⭕ 11 Dec 2019
DailyBeast, Michael Tomasky: Michael Horowitz Will Not Save Us. Only We Can Save Us. http://bit.ly/34hbt3p
// The moral truth of our situation is obvious. The President of the United States is a gangster, a liar, a pimpernel, a gonef, a shyster, a sociopath.
McClatchy: Pompeo is being sued for records of Trump’s meetings with Putin. A judge will hear the case. http://bit.ly/2rtpe1L
🐣 RT @MSNBC Amid concerns that Pres. Trump could suddenly pull out of NATO, there’s a bipartisan bill that would require Congressional approval to exit the alliance.
⋙ 💽 MSNBC, Rachel Maddow: Senators move to protect NATO from Trump’s destructive whims http://on.msnbc.com/2RMegiy
// Senator Tim Kaine talks with Rachel Maddow about a new bipartisan bill from the Senator Foreign Relations Committee that would require a president to seek the advice and consent of the Senate before being allowed to pull the United States out of the NATO alliance, preempting a potential rash move by Donald Trump.
USAToday: USA TODAY’s Editorial Board: Impeach President Trump http://bit.ly/35hsLP0
// The president’s Ukraine shakedown and stonewalling are too serious for the House to ignore: Our view
NYT, Charles Blow: Impeachment in the House Is the Victory http://nyti.ms/2YDVyuS
// Donald Trump and his supporters need to know that you can be punished for your actions.
WaPo, EJ Dionne: Our country is accepting the unacceptable http://wapo.st/38z7xy7 “We thought we had a consensus about basic norms that protect freedom and self-government. That consensus has been swept away by Republican partisans”
🐣 RT @brianklaas Confidence in US leadership, change from Obama to Trump:
↓76% Germany
↓75% France
↓58% Canada
↓52% Australia
↓51% UK
↓48% Japan
↓44% South Korea
↓43% Mexico
↑8% Russia
(Pew 2018).
⋙ 🐣 RT @TheHill President @realDonaldTrump: “This country is so respected and we were not respected four years ago. We were laughed at.” #TrumpRallyHershey 💽 https://twitter.com/thehill/status/1204561748436631552?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @ChrisLutolf “My people came to me. Dan Coats came to me, and some others. They said they think it’s Russia. I have President Putin. He just said it’s not Russia. I will say this: I don’t see any reason why it would be.”#TraitorTrump, Helsinki, 7/16/2018 @jennycohn1 sets forth the facts. ⬇️
⋙ 🐣 RT @JennyCohn Before the 2016 election, Russia:
* Breached VR Systems, which had remote access to voter lists in NC (a swing state)
* Accessed voter registrations in FL (a swing state)
* Accessed voter registrations in IL
* Breached 2 more election vendors that were never identified 1/
📌 https://twitter.com/jennycohn1/status/1204923207087575040?s=20
NYT Editorial: Ukraine’s President Stands Alone Against Russia http://nyti.ms/2RKMMKe
// The lack of American interest was clear as the two nations’ presidents met in Paris.
WaPo Editorial: The real problems the inspector general found http://wapo.st/2LKfgzC
… The review of the department’s investigation of President Trump’s 2016 campaign and Russian election meddling found that the probe was properly launched and that there was no indication of political bias. It also found that the FBI breached protocol in the secretive Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) process. That deserves further discussion — but not, as Attorney General William P. Barr has done, to dignify the president’s “deep state” conspiracy theories.
Almost simultaneously with the report’s release Monday, Mr. Barr dismissed and minimized Mr. Horowitz’s findings — or, at least, the ones that failed to paint the FBI as a rogue agency nursing an anti-Trump agenda. “The FBI launched an intrusive investigation of a U.S. presidential campaign on the thinnest of suspicions that, in my view, were insufficient to justify the steps taken,” he said. The next day he raised “the possibility that there was bad faith.”
U.S. Attorney John Durham, whom Mr. Barr handpicked to conduct yet another investigation of the Russia probe, piled on, saying that “we do not agree with some of the report’s conclusions as to predication and how the FBI case was opened” and implied that he had uncovered new evidence that might shift the picture. This was the statement that surprised Mr. Horowitz. Its innuendo left unanswered whether Mr. Durham has turned up something new.
The responses suggest a warped view of what is significant. The FBI opened its investigation into the Trump campaign after receiving a credible report that a Trump aide had said the Russians had obtained Hillary Clinton’s emails, just as federal officials were seeing Russian attempts to interfere with the 2016 presidential election. Mr. Barr on Tuesday called these alarming facts a “flimsy” basis on which to launch an investigation. In reality, the FBI had an obligation to determine, on the fly and in unprecedented circumstances, whether there was collusion.
The inspector general explained Wednesday that Mr. Durham told him a preliminary, rather than full, investigation was warranted, even though, in either case, the FBI could have taken investigative steps similar to those it pursued. If this is the issue, it is a flimsy one on which to hang a public rebuke of Mr. Horowitz, particularly when doing so plays into Mr. Trump’s raging about the “scum” at the FBI who dared investigate him. …
WaPo, Greg Sargent: William Barr’s deceptions are more dangerous than you think. Here’s the latest. http://wapo.st/2PAASjm
🔊 ApplePodcasts, Lawfare: Michael Horowitz vs. the Committee with No Bull from The Lawfare Podcast on Apple Podcasts http://apple.co/2seSfOx
🐣 RT @MSNBC “The attorney general, once again, is trying to take the findings, this time of the inspector general, and mislead the American public about what happens at the FBI, and he’s attacking his own department as he does it.” – Fmr. DOJ spokesman Matthew Miller
⋙ 💽 MSNBC, DeadlineWH: Former DOJ official: The attorney general is trying to mislead the American people http://on.msnbc.com/35fgACz
// Breaking down how DOJ Inspector General Michael Horowitz revealed in his testimony that the pushback his report received from U.S. attorney John Durham, who is running another investigation into the Russia probe, was not exactly what it seemed at first
🐣📊 RT @Poliitidope NEW via @Reuters: Trump is at 32 approve, 62% disapprove among Independents. ¤ Strong disapproval among Independents nearly TRIPLES strong approval: 38% strong disapprove, 14% strong approve. http://bit.ly/2slgI4E
https://twitter.com/Politidope/status/1204937391888371717?s=20/photo/1
⋙ 🐣 Plus STRONG Disapproval is 20% higher than STRONG Approval among Registered Voters
Politico, Josh Gerstein: Feds seek to revoke bail of Giuliani associate Lev Parnas http://politi.co/2sixBx7
// Prosecutors said in a court filing that Parnas lied about his finances and should be jailed because he’s a flight risk.
🐣 RT @BarbMcQuade Former AG Eric Holder explains how AG William Barr’s blind loyalty to Trump breaches his duty to serve the people and the Constitution:
🐣 RT @kylegriffin1 “The American people deserve an attorney general who … can be entrusted to pursue the facts and the law, even — and especially — when they are … inconsistent with the personal interests of the president who appointed him. William Barr has proved he is incapable.”
⋙ WaPo, Eric Holder: William Barr is unfit to be attorney general http://wapo.st/36sHneS
🐣 RT @jonlemire At a Senate GOP luncheon this week, McConnell warned his colleagues against calling witnesses. ¤ “Mutually assured destruction,” he said
⋙ WaPo: Senate Republicans look to hold short impeachment trial despite Trump’s desire for an aggressive defense http://wapo.st/
🐣 RT @KyleGriffin1 Rep. Karen Bass calls out Republicans: “This is not a coup.” ¤ “It is irresponsible to label a constitutional process a coup.”
🐣 RT @RCdeWinter Let us not forget the words of @senatemajldr, @RepKenBuck, who after@BarackObama was elected. said, “The single most important thing we want to achieve is for President Obama to be a one-term president.” #Hypocrites
🐣 RT @duty2warn He’s a malignant narcissist. Being impeached makes him fearful, being self-obsessed makes him traitorous. His core pathology makes him the sworn enemy of truth. But his need to peddle debunked conspiracy theories to avoid admitting wrongdoing could be where pathology traps him.
Politico, Renatto Mariotti: Impeachment Articles’ Simplicity Is Their Strength http://politi.co/2LNusfo
// Congressional Democrats have the Constitution on their side as they argue for Trump’s removal.
🐣 RT @JohnWDean You have to be a glutton for pain to listen to the Republicans SHOUT how their president is being unfairly impeached for nothing, just insisting Ukraine help him fix the 2020 election, just destroying our democracy. The GOP is pathetic. For shame, Republicans. Go home!
🐣 RT @kylegriffin1 Prosecutors have asked a judge to return Giuliani associate Lev Parnas to jail for lying about his income and concealing a $1 million payment he got from Russia in September, a month before he was charged. ¤ “Parnas poses an extreme risk of flight.”
⋙ Bloomberg: Giuliani Associate Parnas Got $1 Million From Russia, U.S. Says http://bloom.bg/2sgNYdq
● Prosecutors ask judge to revoke Parnas’ bail, send him to jail
● Russia payment raises questions about nature of Parnas’ work
🐣 RT @gtconway3d Indeed. He always wants to present himself as the best at everything, and so it’s only right that he should be impeached for his very best high crimes and misdemeanors.
⋙ 🐣 RT @Delavegalaw If the president would like to itemize additional abuses of power that he thinks are more deserving of impeachment, he should get that list out there asap. We would love to see it.
⋙⋙ 🐣 RT @gtconway3d Makes you wonder if he’s done something even worse that we don’t know about.
⋙⋙⋙ 🐣 RT @gtconway3d “[A] Trump adviser said … the President has appeared somewhat taken aback that his actions toward Ukraine are ultimately what led to his likely impeachment[:] ‘Frankly, I think he’s a little surprised it’s the Ukraine thing that’s done it.’”
McClatchy: Pompeo is being sued for records of Trump’s meetings with Putin. A judge will hear the case. http://bit.ly2rtpe1L
🐣 RT @ HouseJudiciary The two articles charge President Trump with [1] placing his private, political interests above our national security, above our free and fair elections, and [2] above our ability to hold public officials accountable.
💽 https://twitter.com/HouseJudiciary/status/1204920249767858176?s=20/photo/1
6:00pmCT Markup of Articles of Impeachment ⇈ ⇈
🐣 RT @Politico A federal judge on Wednesday rejected the Trump administration’s attempt to toss out a lawsuit over missing notes documenting President Trump’s face-to-face meetings with President Vladimir Putin of Russia
⋙ Politico: Judge rejects government’s motion to toss suit over missing Trump-Putin meeting notes http://politi.co/2Pzqkkt
// Two watchdog groups charge that Secretary of State Mike Pompeo violated the Federal Records Act.
WaPo, Josh Rogin: The United States is about to sanction Assad, Russia and Iran for Syrian war crimes http://wapo.st/2PCXWxD
WSJ: Republicans Condemn FBI’s Use of Surveillance Powers They Long Supported http://on.wsj.com/2t4MKSR Democrat’s are the national security party now
// Self-described security hawks now say they see major problems in surveillance law
🐣 RT @ChrisMurphyCT Joe Biden’s video hitting Trump for becoming a global laughingstock has been viewed online 12 million times. ¤ It’s proof of concept – there’s a market to take it to Trump on national security. The issue is a traditional strength for the GOP, but it doesn’t have to be in 2020.
🐣 RT @DeadlineWH “The Russian Foreign Minister is more credible about what happened in that meeting than the President of the United States and the press secretary… I have to take Lavrov’s word… You can’t believe a word that the president says” – @Eugene_Robinson w/ @NicolleDWallace 💽 https://twitter.com/DeadlineWH/status/1204902729853874176?s=20/photo/1
🐣 This impeachment is not about “cleansing the office.” It’s about saving the Republic. @LindseyGrahamSC
TheHill: Horowitz did not find evidence Obama asked for probe of Trump http://bit.ly/2LJyLsa
🐣 The shorter trial the better for Dems. A trial railroaded through will be an obvious miscarriage of justice. Plus it would be done without the Rudy bs, which will be ineffective outside of a trial. Fact is, the GOP is terrified of the kind of trial Trump wants.
TheBulwark, Charlie Sykes: Two Cheers for the Articles of Impeachment http://bit.ly/2RJLDCC
🐣 No aspect of Mueller Report depended on the Steele dossier or on surveilling Carter Page, per @benjaminwittes on @MTPDaily
🐣 It was good to get Horowitz saying, under oath, that his disagreement with Durham over predication didn’t have to do with whether a counterintelligence investigation should be opened, but what kind: full or preliminary. 1/2
⋙ 🐣 And, in the end, they didn’t use any methods that required a full investigation, per @FrankFigliuzzi1 on @DeadlineWH 2/2
🐣 What I learned in school today (but GOP, I guess, didn’t): ¤ The Trump campaign investigation was not started because of Carter Page ((or the dossier). It was started because of Papadopoulos.
EmptyWheel, Marcy Wheeler: American Democracy Needs Better Reporters than Pete Williams http://bit.ly/2RHMZ0w
🐣 RT @moscow_project Trump’s pressure campaign has sent its signal: Ukrainian officials have been monitoring Trump’s Twitter in hopes he’ll voice support for them in their talks with Russia. ¤ Instead, he posted an all-smiles picture with Russia’s foreign minister.
⋙ DailyBeast: Ukrainians: Trump Just Sent Us ‘a Terrible Signal’ http://bit.ly/36ty1zc
// Kyiv officials were hoping for a statement of support from Trump in advance of Ukraine’s big summit with Russia. Instead, the president hosted Putin’s main man.
🐣 What I learned in school today (but GOP, I guess, didn’t): ¤ The Trump campaign investigation was not started because of Carter Page ((or the dossier). It was started because of Papadopoulos.
WaPo: Inspector general says Barr’s handpicked prosecutor failed to convince him FBI was wrong to open Trump campaign investigation http://wapo.st/35dJjHJ “we stand by our findings”
WaPo, Jennifer Rubin: DOJ inspector general sheds further doubt on the Trump team’s tactics http://wapo.st/35et39B
🐣 RT @MollyMcKew And let’s remember again: ¤ People who spent their careers pursuing Russian organized crime and conducting counterintelligence operations against Russia in the US have been systematically targeted, discredited, smeared, and fired by POTUS.
WaPo, Aaron Blake: 6 takeaways from the Michael Horowitz hearing http://wapo.st/2RLKOsP
1. Durham’s objection ‘surprised’ Horowitz
2. Horowitz won’t bite on ‘spying’
3. No vindication for Comey
4. The Rudy Giuliani/leaks probe continues
5. A moment of reckoning for FISA process
6. Graham’s sympathy for Carter Page and ‘this poor guy’ George Papadopoulos
TheIndependent [UK]: Trump appears to threaten FBI director for not repeating debunked conspiracy theory http://bit.ly/2Pbzt3H
// He ‘will never be able to fix the FBI’, Mr Trump says
🐣 If @msnbc hadn’t cut in on Lindsey, I would have turned it off. (My brain can’t keep up with all the distortions.) Good call. @AriMelber
🐣 RT @EricHolder To the men and women of DOJ/FBI: stay strong, keep the faith, be true to the oath you have sworn, be secure in the knowledge that you have the support of the American people. The era of Trump and Barr will pass-their slander, insults and lies will end. We respect & believe in you
CNN, Stephen Collinson: Trump assaults facts to survive impeachment http://cnn.it/2E9kZuI
🐣 “This was not a politically-motivated investigation. There is no ‘deep state’” – @SenFeinstein
🐣 Lo! A sane person speaks. Thank you, @SenFeinstein
🐣 RT @Leah McElrath There appears to have been a glitch in Graham’s revised programming today and he’s back to being a hawk on Russia, briefly at least:
⋙ 🐣 RT @kylegriffin1 Lindsey Graham: “It was the Russians, ladies and gentleman, who stole the Democratic National Committee emails, Podesta’s emails, and screwed around with Hillary Clinton. It wasn’t the Ukrainians. it was the Russians. And they’re coming after us again.”
🐣 @costareports says Lindsey Graham met with Barr to go over IG report
🐣 RT @MollyMcKew Lindsey Graham himself is a lie, and everyone in Washington knows it, and frankly I’m surprised it hasn’t becoming more of an issue as he has become a clown puppet.
⋙ 🐣 RT @atrupar Lindsey Graham begins the Horowitz hearing by claiming the FBI was “able to stop” the Russian interference campaign against the Clinton campaign. That’s a lie. ¤
📌 https://twitter.com/atrupar/status/1204781054533537798?s=20
🐣 RT @ECMcLaughlin Gonna be really candid that if Trump isn’t removed, resigns or if he wins re-election, I’m gonna have a hard time raising my kids in America. ¤ The EO from yesterday, and his pre-genocidal comments from last night on migrants, are a signal of what’s to come. ¤ It’s deadly serious.
🐣 RT @vermontgmg This week has made clear that Fox News’ lies have morphed into a legitimate national security threat to the United States and the functioning of a democracy. My latest:
⋙ WIRED, Garrett Graf: Fox News Is Now a Threat to National Security http://bit.ly/2seuy94
// The network’s furthering of lies from foreign adversaries and flagrant disregard for the truth have gotten downright dangerous.
🐣 RT @carlbildt It should now be clear that bilateral Moscow-Kyiv talks will not break the Donbas logjam. With the US out of the picture the EU should do some serious work and put a detailed Minsk implementation plan on the table. It’s perfectly doable. Nothing else is likely to bring process.
🐣 RT @carlbildt Today is a black day for our global multilateral trading system as the US effectively shuts down the dispute settlement mechanism of the WTO. It wants the language of power, rather than the language of rules, to govern
⭕ 10 Dec 2019
🐣 RT @waltshaub As Attorney General, Barr is a threat to democracy. He has distorted facts and misled the public. He appointed Durham to run a concurrent investigation because he knew the Inspector General would debunk his conspiracy theories, and he needed someone he could control. /1 📌 https://twitter.com/waltshaub/status/1204601743415369732?s=20
NYT, Frank Bruni: The Perverse Servility of Bill Barr http://nyti.ms/2Pavlkd
// How does Trump’s attorney general keep a straight face?
🐣 RT @CNN “The attorney general of the United States is a Fox News bot,” says Jeffrey Toobin, adding, “[He] keeps demanding investigation after investigation until he gets the results that he wants? That’s something that happens in the Soviet Union, not in the [US]” http://cnn.it/36ml36p 💽 https://twitter.com/CNN/status/1204591965364531200?s=20/photo/1
Newsweek: Conservative Attorney Group Slams Trump’s AG: ‘Bill Barr Has Grossly Mischaracterized and Subverted’ IG Findings http://bit.ly/2t22VjS
NYT: Trump ‘Ignored and Injured’ the National Interest, Democrats Charge in Impeachment Articles http://nyti.ms/2rAbUZk
// Democratic leaders unveiled articles of impeachment charging President Trump with abuse of power and obstruction of Congress.
NYT: Trump and Barr Escalate Attacks on F.B.I. Over Report on Russia Inquiry http://nyti.ms/38rfxBt
The president suggested he lacked confidence in his own F.B.I. director, who did not share his negative view of a long-awaited inspector general report.
Crooks&Liars: Rep. Steve Cohen Smacks MSNBC For Airing GOP Russia Propaganda http://bit.ly/2YEKcqd //➔ The 11:00amET hour on @msnbc is its weakest and with Geoff Bennett standing in it was worse than usual; I turned it off
TheAtlantic, Adam Serwer: The ‘Russia Hoax’ Is a Hoax http://bit.ly/2Pe4rbv
// A report by the Department of Justice inspector general debunks the claims that the investigation into political interference by the Kremlin was a left-wing conspiracy to depose the president.
MSNBC, Hardball: Michael McFaul: ‘No reason’ for Trump’s meeting with Russia FM Lavrov http://on.msnbc.com/2LJmnbJ
// On the same day House Democrats announced articles of impeachment against President Trump for his actions withholding anti-Russian military aid to our ally Ukraine, Trump met with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov in the Oval Office.
🐣 RT @harrylitman The out-of-line comments by Durham and Barr enable Trump to go steps further and call the FBI “thugs,” and the vilification will get worse. And Trump now has the talking point that Durham will be dropping another shoe, which is just as valuable for him as an actual finding.
⋙ 🐣 RT @Hardball At a rally, Trump called the FBI ‘scum’ amid the release of an IG report on the FBI’s investigation of the 2016 Trump campaign. The IG report debunked his claim that the investigation was launched by biased individuals within the intel community.
⋙⋙ MSNBC, Hardball: Trump calls FBI ‘scum’ at rally http://on.msnbc.com/36sA1bf
At a rally in Pennsylvania, Trump called the FBI ‘scum’ amid the release of an IG report on the FBI’s investigation of the 2016 Trump campaign. The IG report debunked the president’s claim that the investigation into his campaign was launched by biased individuals within the intelligence community looking to undermine his presidency.
WaPo, Dan Balz and Philip Rucker: A day of history accentuates America’s divide and the distortions of truth in the Trump era http://wapo.st/38tnMwI
🐣 RT @PaulaChertok OMFG Barr’s on a propaganda blitz to discredit the #IGReport! He just said “there was no evidence of collusion,” presidential campaigns “often” have foreign contacts AND money ¤ , FBI spied, Russia investigation launched on “very flimsy” evidence & in “bad faith” @msnbc 📌 https://twitter.com/PaulaChertok/status/1204456364161916928?s=20
⋙ … 🐣 RT @PaulaChertok Putin’s sweetest success was propping a guy so bad, Republicans must sink lower & lower to defend him. Barr’s remarks are so Orwellian, given *Putin’s outcome—Trump—succeeded. The entire GOP has turned reality on its head, burning down America day by day to deny that awful truth.
⋙⋙ 🐣 RT @alex_mallin Wow. AG Barr says “greatest danger to our free system” is the Obama admin used “the law enforcement agencies and the intelligence agencies, both to spy on political opponents, but also to use them in a way that could affect the outcome of the election.”
💙💙 🔆 This❗️⋙ NYT, Thomas Friedman: Impeach Trump. Save America. http://nyti.ms/2RDRyJi
// It is the only thing to do if our country’s democracy is to survive.
If we say, as Republicans do, that what Trump did is not an impeachable offense, we are telling ourselves and every future president that — in direct contradiction of what the founders wrote in the Constitution — it is O.K. to enlist a foreign power to tilt the election your way. Can you imagine how much money candidates could raise from Saudi Arabia or China to tilt a future election their way, or how many cyberwarriors they could enlist from Russia or Iran to create fake news, suppress voting or spur outrage?
The integrity of our elections would be shattered, and we would never again have a legitimate president — a president, who, whether or not you liked him or her, was at least seen as legitimately elected. That would be a prescription for permanent political chaos, as no future presidents’ authority would be respected if they were elected on the basis of foreign interference.
But that is what Republicans are courting by blindly defending Trump’s indefensible enlistment of Ukraine’s help to take down Biden and by echoing Trump’s conspiracy theory — originated by Russian agents — that it was Ukraine that hacked the Democratic National Committee’s emails in 2016, not Russia. They also argue that the D.N.C.’s server was shipped off to Ukraine before the F.B.I. could look at it. ¤ This is right out of “The Twilight Zone.”
Folks, can you imagine what Russia’s President Putin is saying to himself today? “I can’t believe my luck! I not only got Trump to parrot my conspiracy theories, I got his whole party to do it! And for free! Who ever thought Americans would so easily sell out their own Constitution for one man? My God, I have Russian lawmakers in my own Parliament who’d quit before doing that. But it proves my point: America is no different from Russia, so spare me the lectures.”
If Congress were to do what Republicans demand — forgo impeaching this president for enlisting a foreign power to get him elected, after he refused to hand over any of the documents that Congress had requested and blocked all of his key aides who knew what happened from testifying — we would be saying that a president is henceforth above the law.
We would be saying that we no longer have three coequal branches of government. We would be saying that we no longer have a separation of powers. ¤ We would be saying that our president is now a king.
🐣 RT @HillaryClinton We must defend our democracy, and the painful truth is that the occupant of the Oval Office is waging war against it.
⋙ 🐣 RT @CAPAction “The president’s misconduct goes to the heart of whether we can conduct a free and fair election in 2020…Despite everything we have uncovered, the president’s misconduct continues to this day, unapologetically and right now.” —@RepAdamSchiff #ArticlesOfImpeachment 📌 https://twitter.com/HillaryClinton/status/1204432457740759040?s=20
🐣 RT @LauraLitvan Bloomberg headline at 5:02 pm:
*TRUMP WARNED LAVROV AGAINST ELECTION MEDDLING, WHITE HOUSE SAYS
Headline at 5:35 pm:
*LAVROV SAYS HE DIDN’T DISCUSS U.S. ELECTIONS WITH TRUMP
⋙ 🐣 RT @ Latest at 5:47 p.m.
*LAVROV SAYS HE HASN’T SEEN WHITE HOUSE READOUT OF TRUMP MEETING
(Lavrov is speaking outside the Russian embassy after his meeting with President Trump.)
USAToday: Trump, Russia and Ukraine: Five presidential conspiracy theories debunked http://bit.ly/2LJwGfP
🐣 RT @Mimirocah1 Please read this whole thread by @waltshaub about what exactly Barr is doing & why he’s such a threat. But if nothing else please pay attention to this last part:
⋙💙💙 🐣 RT @waltshaub As Attorney General, Barr is a threat to democracy. He has distorted facts and misled the public. He appointed Durham to run a concurrent investigation because he knew the Inspector General would debunk his conspiracy theories, and he needed someone he could control. /1 📌 https://twitter.com/waltshaub/status/1204601743415369732?s=20
WaPo: Attorney general sharpens attacks on FBI’s Russia probe, dismaying some in his own department http://wapo.st/2qJZgGM
🐣 RT @NormOrnstein The Barr interview today is even more frightening than many Americans imagine. It seems clear that he will do or enable anything to keep Trump in office. And Trump will do anything to stay there. Suspension of the election, negation of the results, declaration of martial law
⋙ 🐣 RT @NormOrnstein are not simply fanciful, alarmist or crazy things to throw out there or to contemplate. Members of Congress, governors and state legislators,leaders in civil society, lawyers, law enforcement figures and the military need to be thinking now about how they might respond.
⋙ 🐣 RT @NormOrnstein And we need to find ways to double down on preventing Russia and others from fixing the elections to benefit Trump and their own national interests. The Lavrov meetings today underscore the danger.
🐣 RT @EvanMcMullin Lavrov’s visit, photo with Trump, and appearance with enfeebled Pompeo send a clear signal: the Trump Administration is doing away with any remaining pretenses about its alignment with Moscow. They’re going to normalize this treacherous relationship for shared corrupt purposes. https://twitter.com/EvanMcMullin/status/1204596127452020736?s=20
MotherJones: William Barr’s War on Reality, Truth, and the Law http://bit.ly/2P8r6pA
// Trump’s AG is brazenly assailing the IG report with lies.
💙 🐣 RT @MarshallCohen 1) Trump claimed the Russia probe was an “illegal witch hunt” and that it was “an investigation that should have never happened.” TRUMP WAS WRONG. The IG said the FBI had “sufficient” evidence, and an “articulable factual basis,” to launch the Russia investigation In July 2016. 📌 https://twitter.com/MarshallCohen/status/1204593794676613120?s=20
// debunking of Trump falsehoods
🐣 RT @DeadlineWH “There’s never been anything like this… Up through before President Trump was elected, presidents stayed out of IG reports and Attorneys General, generally reacted in the same way that Director Wray reacted” – @mrbromwich w/ @NicolleDWallace
💽 https://twitter.com/DeadlineWH/status/1204541480389562370?s=20/photo/1
WaPo: The Arctic may have crossed key threshold, emitting billions of tons of carbon into the air, in a long-dreaded climate feedback http://wapo.st/2P9kNBZ
WaPo: Federal judge blocks Trump plan to spend $3.6 billion in military funds on border wall http://wapo.st/2skBMIv
DailyBeast, Betsy Swan and Asawin Suebsaeng: Pro-Trump Network OAN Tried to Get This Ukrainian Millionaire a Visa Before His Arrest http://bit.ly/35b4CtA
The Trumpiest of TV channels tried to bring a peddler of Biden dirt to America. The Ukrainian went to jail instead.
🐣 RT @selectedwisdom Why would we have any diplomatic contact at all with Russia after election 2016? Why are we allowing a Russian foreign minister to stand in the US and publicly spout these lies and call us liars on our own soil? https://twitter.com/selectedwisdom/status/1204515316203769856?s=20
🐣 RT @JoshTPM Reading through that interview transcript, Bill Barr is one dark, malicious downright evil lying dude. Hard to imagine a more dangerous figure to have running the Justice Department.
✅ USNews: AP FACT CHECK: How Trump’s Russia Claims Line up With Report http://bit.ly/2LIUErI
// President Donald Trump has railed for years against the FBI’s investigation into his campaign with often incendiary allegations.
CNN (Sep): Exclusive: US extracted top spy from inside Russia in 2017 http://cnn.it/2lGEdSu
// 9/9/2019
🐣 RT @KateStarbird Disinformation isn’t simply false information. Instead it builds false narratives by layering true & false, selecting/omitting info, *misleading* for strategic intent. And it often works specifically by creating doubt—in this case, doubt in our investigative/legal institutions.
⋙ 🐣 RT @KenDilanianNBC In an exclusive interview with NBC News’ Pete Williams, Barr dismissed the findings of the Justice Department’s inspector general that there was no evidence of political bias in the launching of the Russia probe, saying that his hand-picked prosecutor will have the last word.
📊 PoliticusUSA: Quinnipiac Poll: Majority Of Americans Say They’ll Support Any Of The Top Dems Over Trump In 2020 http://bit.ly/349W9FR Biden 51/42, Sanders 51/43, Warren 50/43, Bloomberg 48/42, Buttigieg 48/43, Klobuchar 47/43
⋙ Crosstabs: http://bit.ly/2Pa9zgE
🐣 RT @AdamSerwer If Barr were consistent, he would argue Obama using the FBI to interfere with the election (didn’t happen) is fine just like Trump extorting Ukraine is fine, because the president can do what he wants. That’s not his position. His position is *Trump* can do whatever he wants.
WaPo: Giuliani says Trump asked him to brief Justice Dept. and GOP senators on his Ukraine findings http://wapo.st/2PxINhd
🐣 RT @SenSchumer It is not lost on us that the White House has made a choice to block witnesses from testifying and has refused to provide documents ¤ It has left many in America and those in the Senate—who could soon be judges and jurors in a trial—to believe President Trump has something to hide 💽 https://twitter.com/SenSchumer/status/1204516935448350720?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @Poliitidope Trump publicly threatening to fire another FBI Director for not selling Russian talking points in the middle of his impeachment for helping Russia in their war w/ Ukraine on the day he meets with the Russian Foreign Minister at the WH is exactly why he needs to be impeached.
🐣 RT @neal_katyal I agree w Joyce on this. Very nicely done.
⋙ 🐣 RT @JoyceWhiteVance I read this portion of Article II as a reference that permits House managers to introduce evidence of the obstruction of justice set forth in the Mueller Report during the impeachment trial. https://twitter.com/neal_katyal/status/1204549860059422721?s=20/photo/1
⋙⋙ 🐣 RT @JoyceWhiteVance Since this Article concludes the President remains a threat to the Constitution, pattern of obstructing investigations into his own conduct matters. The rules for impeachment aren’t clear yet, but prior sworn statements are typically admissible where witnesses are “unavailable”
💙💙 🐣 RT @DeadlineWH “It’s okay to be contradicted if you’re speaking the truth. What Director Wray did, was speak the truth… If you’re uncomfortable because someone’s attacking you for telling the truth. Guess what? You told the truth.” – Chuck Rosenberg w/ @NicolleDWallace
🐣 RT @PaulChertok Barr also said foreign money in campaigns is normal. And conveniently left out the key context—Trump campaign’s foreign contacts occurred DURING Russia’s attack—which Barr continues to downplay by FALSELY calling it “attempted” interference. That’s what this theater is all about.
⋙ 🐣 RT @PaulChertok OMFG Barr’s on a propaganda blitz to discredit the #IGReport! He just said “there was no evidence of collusion,” presidential campaigns “often” have foreign contacts AND money, FBI spied, Russia investigation launched on “very flimsy” evidence & in “bad faith” @msnbc 📌 https://twitter.com/PaulaChertok/status/1204456364161916928?s=20
💙 WaPo Editorial: The case for impeachment http://wapo.st/345OKqL
// There is abundant evidence of the president’s abuse of power on Ukraine.
🐣 RT @AriMelber Remember, the IG audit *is* the legally authorized review of DOJ actions. Under law. And it’s done. ¤ Barr is adding his own process, saying he appointed a prosecutor to separately investigate the investigation, but a US Atty probe would typically be for crimes, not a DOJ audit.
🐣 RT @atrupar Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov: “We have highlighted once again that all speculation about our alleged interference in domestic processes in the US are baseless. There are no facts that would support that …no one has given us this proof because it simply does not exist”
⋙ 🐣 RT @atrupar Pompeo kinda-sorta pushes back on Lavrov: “We think we’ve shared plenty of facts to show what happened in the 2016 election with our Russian counterparts. We don’t think there’s any mistake about what really transpired there.”
🐣 RT @StacyJannis This is a shadow military op directed by the Kremlin against the US. Their tools are political and corporate bribery, donations, blackmail, extortion, disinformation, and strategic investments in candidates, groups, PACs, etc. Playing out in plain view and people don’t get it.
🐣 RT @AlexMalin Wow. AG Barr says “greatest danger to our free system” is the Obama admin used “the law enforcement agencies and the intelligence agencies, both to spy on political opponents, but also to use them in a way that could affect the outcome of the election.”
🐣 RT @WajahatAli Bill Barr will abuse his role as AG and attack any Democratic candidate leading up to 2020. Expect investigations and shame conspiracies. He is not just a disgrace but one of the most dangerous partisan hacks in America. They will burn it all for Trump.
🐣 RT @KenDilanian In an exclusive interview with NBC News’ Pete Williams, Barr dismissed the findings of the Justice Department’s inspector general that there was no evidence of political bias in the launching of the Russia probe, saying that his hand-picked prosecutor will have the last word.
WaPo: As Democrats unveil impeachment articles, Trump signals corruption will continue http://wapo.st/36eYDEe 🕺🕺🕺 he just keeps on criming
Let’s be clear: The sin that Wray committed is that he refused to use his office to validate Trump’s years-long disinformation campaign to make a foreign attack on our democracy, and his own efforts to benefit from it, disappear.
Trump’s primary argument for years has been that the investigation was illegitimate and was driven by a “deep state” plot to rig the election against him.
And the inspector general report completely debunked this notion, finding that the investigation was lawfully predicated and was not motivated by any political effort to stop Trump. Any both-sidesing that confuses what Trump’s core argument has long been, and how thoroughly it has been debunked, is just misleading people.
It is a telling fact that even as this both-sidesing is in process, Trump continues to state that the investigation was illegitimate and that the inspector general confirmed this. Trump claimed the inspector general demonstrated an “attempted overthrow” of the government, when it concluded precisely the opposite.
The problem is that any media coverage that implies Trump secured some sort of vindication creates a favorable climate for Trump to engage in this even more absurd set of lies.
After all, the fact that Trump’s FBI director was absolutely clear on this — that there was no vindication — is precisely why Trump is now threatening him. Trump probably won’t go through with any firing, but what’s beyond doubt is that Trump still feels absolutely unconstrained, and will keep pressuring law enforcement to validate his ongoing effort to make Russian sabotage of our 2016 election vanish.
This is precisely what Trump is counting on Attorney General William Barr to do: Use his office to cast doubt on the inspector general’s conclusions, and further the narrative that the original investigation was illegitimate. …
After all, Trump is continuing to do that right at this moment: In pressuring Wray, he is continuing that very same coverup effort. And he is openly declaring that he expects Barr to carry that forward as well: He said that “I look forward” to Barr’s own review of the Russia probe, which will contain “its own information.”
That is, it will reach the conclusion Trump wants it to.
An article for attempting to obstruct the investigation into Russian interference and his own campaign’s efforts to reap the benefits would establish a pattern. Not just with regard to Trump’s effort to extort Ukraine for the same purpose, but also with regard to Trump’s ongoing manipulation of government to cover up his willingness to conspire with and benefit from the corruption of our election last time.
After all, Trump just told us that those efforts will continue as clearly as we could possibly expect him to.
💙 WaPo, Sergio Peçanha: The Trump impeachment inquiry, told with maps and dancing Rudys http://wapo.st/2ryavT4
WaPo: Pelosi warns against the arrival of a ‘president-king’ http://wapo.st/345EheX
If House Democrats do not pursue the impeachment of Trump, they risk saying “goodbye to the republic” and “hello to the president-king,” Pelosi said during a public appearance early Tuesday afternoon.
“It’s a very sad day actually, a solemn day,” Pelosi said during a moderated conversation at Politico’s Women Rule Summit in Washington.
Pelosi argued that lawmakers are honoring their oaths of office and would be “delinquent” if they did not seek to impeach Trump.
“I wish it were not necessary. I wish the president’s actions did not make it necessary,” she said.
🐣 RT @shimonPro Barr: “I think our nation was turned on its head for three years based on a completely bogus narrative that was largely fanned and hyped by a completely irresponsible press,” Barr said. “I think there were gross abuses…and inexplicable behavior that is intolerable in the FBI.” — [ and more ]
WaPo, Aaron Blake: Christopher Wray, basically: Don’t listen to Trump’s Ukraine conspiracy theories http://wapo.st/2YCleYU
🐣 RT @GarrettHaake Pelosi and Democrats argue the USMCA deal they’re announcing today is so different from the one they got a year ago, they see it as a win & template for future trade agreements Dems can support
🐣 RT @RFERL No perceptible progress on the thorniest issues stoking the war in eastern Ukraine, but a Paris summit produced an agreement on a prisoner swap and a renewed commitment to adhere to a frequently violated cease-fire.
⋙ RFE/RL, Todd Prince and Steve Gutterman: ‘Low Hanging Fruit’ And The Politics Of Perception: Five Takeaways From The Paris Summit On The War In Ukraine http://bit.ly/2PAnn3b
🐣 RT @tribelaw .@benjaminwittes says Congress’s failure to impeach for obstructing justice shows Congress won’t go nuclear over interference with criminal justice, only over defiance of its own process. Not so. It shows the House wants to limit its charges to the clearest constitutional crimes.
🐣 RT @jameshohmann The president’s broadside against Chris Wray this morning highlights just how deeply in the tank Bill Barr is for Trump at this point.
⋙ WaPo, James Hohmann: FBI director shows independence from Trump and Barr in responding to IG report on Russia probe http://wapo.st/
🐣 RT @SenatorBurr Inspector Horowitz’s report is long and detailed, and I’m reviewing it carefully. I look forward to releasing the Senate Intelligence Committee’s counterintelligence report, which will have more to say on these topics.
// “I”
🐣 RT @JakeTapper “Current” FBI Director Wray’s adherence to facts is getting him in trouble with the boss. ¤ Wray told ABC news it was “important that the inspector general found that, in this particular instance, the investigation was opened with appropriate predication and authorization.” 1/ 📌 https://twitter.com/jaketapper/status/1204389559016054784?s=20/photo/1
⋙ 🐣 RT @real I don’t know what report current Director of the FBI Christopher Wray was reading, but it sure wasn’t the one given to me. With that kind of attitude, he will never be able to fix the FBI, which is badly broken despite having some of the greatest men & women working there!
WaPo: Impeachment live updates: House Democrats unveil two articles of impeachment against Trump; White House predicts ‘full exoneration’ in GOP-led Senate http://wapo.st/2P7mhfY
🐣 RT @SpeakerPelosi The President used the power of his office against a foreign country to corrupt our upcoming elections. He is a continuing threat to our democracy and national security. At 9 am ET, the House will announce our intent to #DefendOurDemocracy. https://facebook.com/NancyPelosi/
🐣 RT @harrylitman Articles to be unveiled this morning. You really have to hand it to the Dems over these last several weeks: fast, focused, thorough, strategic, cohesive. That’s not at all the norm in Congress and Amer politics, and it was by no means to be counted on when they embarked.
⭕ 9 Dec 2019
TheAtlantic, Franklin Foer: Rudy Giuliani Is Living the Dream http://bit.ly/2PqDL7t “Behavior that terrified the Founders seems to be the very core of Giuliani’s business model.”
// Don’t let his butt-dials distract from his cunning.
NewYorker, David Remnick: This Is William Cohen’s Third Impeachment http://bit.ly/36NXlAv
WaPo: Putin, Zelensky, Merkel join Macron in Paris for talks to end Ukraine war http://wapo.st/2LDaGmX
🐣 RT @tribelaw “There is no need to grant Barr even the slightest presumption of good faith this time around.” On the contrary, Barr has shown that he is now a partisan hack and a lackey for Trump and thus for Putin.
🐣 RT @JimSciutto FBI’s Wray vs. AG Barr on IG report is night and day. ¤ Wray: “I think it’s important that the Inspector General found that in this particular instance the investigation was opened with appropriate predication and authorization.”
🐣 RT @ABCNews NEW: Asked about Pres. Trump’s desire for Ukraine to investigate debunked conspiracy theory pushed by Rudy Giuliani and others, FBI Dir. Chris Wray tells @PierreTABC, “we have no information” supporting the theory. http://abcn.ws/2YuIyYr
💽 https://twitter.com/ABC/status/1204163289145589760?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @GrantStern BREAKING: FBI Dir. Chris Wray “The inspector general did not find political bias or improper motivations impacting the opening” of Russia probe, “or the decision to use certain investigative tools.” ¤ @PierreTABC: “Included FISA?” ¤ Wray: “Including FISA.” https://abcn.ws/33YwGPu 💽 https://twitter.com/grantstern/status/1204163136565207041?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @BrianStelter FBI director Christopher Wray: “It’s important for the American people to be thoughtful consumers of information, to think about the sources of it and to think about the support and predication for what they hear.”
⋙ ABCNews: FBI director pushes back on debunked conspiracy theory about 2016 election interference http://abcn.ws/357SJEL
// “We have no information that indicates that Ukraine interfered,” Wray said
WaPo: Democrats make a powerful, concise case for impeachment http://wapo.st/2RybHAu
WaPo, John Sipher: Trump’s phone habits and private diplomacy are helping Russia http://wapo.st/2E1c9z0
// The president and his amateur advisers are giving the Kremlin ammunition to use against the U.S.
🐣 RT @leonidragozin Perhaps the most dramatic moment at the Normandy 4 presser was when Putin said Ukraine should talk directly to Donetsk and Luhansk, to which Zelensky retorted that millions of people who fled occupied areas to Ukraine proper represent them as much as the separatists.
🐣 RT @brianklaas A key insight @peterpomeranzev has about how the Kremlin works is that in Russia, there’s not “news” so much as there are soap opera “information events.” House Republicans’ behavior makes sense when you realize they are trying to get into Hannity’s nightly “information events.”
WSJ, John Solomon: Schiff Threatens Press Freedom http://on.wsj.com/36lvfwa //➔ Solomon takes exception to how the House Intel Committee got access to his phone metadata and made it public
// When the surveillance state exposes a journalist and his sources, there’s an instant chilling effect.
🔊 Apple Podcasts, Lawfare: The House Intelligence Committee vs. the House Judiciary Committee with No Bull http://apple.co/2E4gfqk
DailyBeast: Bill Barr Remains a Menace to Society Even if the Horowitz Report Falls Flat http://bit.ly/2LFK4S9
// The question is what Democrats intend to do about the attorney general.
BBC: Ukraine and Russia agree to implement ceasefire http://bbc.in/34c7IMM
🐣 RT @TheLastWord .@JamesStewartNYT tells @Lawrence that the Justice Department Inspector General report has “debunked every sensational claim that President Trump has made about a deep state out to get him.” https://on.msnbc.com/2t2Hors
🐣 RT @eliehonig Ordinarily if an AG publicly announced during a pending investigation that his own FBI had improperly spied for political purposes, and then that turned out to be false, the AG would resign because he would have zero remaining credibility or moral leadership ability.
🐣 RT @gregolear “In the end the Party would announce that two and two made five, and you would have to believe it. It was inevitable that they should make that claim sooner or later: the logic of their position demanded it….The heresy of heresies was common sense.” ~Orwell, 1984
CNN: Russia banned from 2020 Olympics and 2022 World Cup over doping scandal http://cnn.it/2PsmQAd
🐣 RT @AshaRangappa_ .@JeffreyToobin makes point on @CNN that is THE point and obliterates any GOP defense: The goal wasn’t an investigation, it was an *announcement*. Trump wanted propaganda to weaponize against his political opponent, as I explained here
⋙ Medium, Asha Rangappa (Oct): Running Covert Propaganda Against Americans Is Illegal. Trump Tried It Anyway. http://bit.ly/2YzIuXl
// 10/7/2019; The whistleblower stopped a covert psychological operation against the American public dead in its tracks
🐣 MT @HeidiNBC [Thread ] The impeachment of @realDonaldTrump is unique in the 243-year history of the U.S. experiment & Barry Berke explains why: ¤ He abused his power “in the ways the founders feared the most.”
1. Abuse of power: the biggest violation? Serving his interests over the nation’s. (Direct quote from Trump: “I have an Article II and I can do whatever I want.”)
2. Betrayal of the nation: of the nation in a way that hurts our national security interests.
3. Corruption. The worst case scenario? Foreign powers corrupting our elections.These are the ABC’s of impeachment that @NBCNews reported on previously. ¤ Trump, according to House Judiciary Democrats and legal experts, has violated ALL 3. ¤ THAT, is unique in U.S. history.
MSNBC, DeadlineWH: Comey: Trump warps people around him, wraps them in a ‘cocoon of falsehoods’ http://on.msnbc.com/341daSo
// Fmr. FBI Director James Comey joins Nicolle Wallace for his first interview since the IG report on the origins of the FBI investigation of Russian interference during the 2016 campaign was released by the Department of Justice.
🐣 RT @nowthisnews The Trump impeachment case can be boiled down to 4 key takeaways:
– Trump pressured Ukraine to help him in 2020
– He used his office and power to do it
– Everyone was in the loop
– He’s still doing it
MSNBC, Hardball: DOJ IG report says Russia probe was not politically motivated http://on.msnbc.com/2rz5HN4
// After years of President Trump accusing the intelligence community of “spying” on him, the Dept. of Justice’s Inspector General, Michael Horowitz, found no evidence of “political bias or improper motivation” in an investigation of President Trump’s campaign. President Trump responded today, saying he was looking forward to seeing the findings of a partisan investigation by U.S. Attorney John Durham, under the direction of AG Barr.
🐣 RT @kylegriffin1 Chris Wallace on Fox News on the DOJ IG report: “The headline is that they didn’t find the things that Bill Barr and Donald Trump alleged.” 💽 https://twitter.com/kylegriffin1/status/1204114821685358592?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @PaulaChertok Here’s what Trump may be up to meeting Lavrov in a “closed press” Oval meeting tomorrow, the day after Putin met Zelensky at #NormandySummit to resolve Russia-Ukraine war. It’s always been about sanctions, which entails absolving Russia of election attack, rehab’ing pariah Putin.
⋙ 🐣 RT @PaulaChertok [12/7] Giuliani’s not going rogue. He’s doing exactly what Trump & Putin want. Next week Putin meets Zelensky AND Lavrov comes to America. They’re still working on the sanctions-lifting “grand bargain” Manafort hustled: a pro-Russia peace deal to screw Ukraine. And keep puppet in power.
⋙ 🐣 RT @PaulaChertok [12/7] Republicans aren’t complaining about Giuliani meeting pro-Russia stooges. They openly push Putin’s propaganda! Pence, Pompeo, Barr—ALL OF THEM—want a “grand bargain” to lift sanctions. They’ll screw Ukraine AND America, hail Trump & Putin as peacemakers in 2020. ☭Mark my words☭
WaPo: Those who resist congressional subpoenas should be careful. They could be risking jail time. http://wapo.st/2qAFRrC
NYT: Democrats Signal Abuse of Power and Obstruction of Congress Charges Against Trump http://nyti.ms/36nSbKX
// Democrats have narrowed their focus to two articles of impeachment against President Trump, expected to be unveiled on Tuesday, after lawyers labeled his conduct a “clear and present danger” to fair elections and national security.
NYT, David Marchese: Robert De Niro Thinks Donald Trump Is Worse Than Any Gangster He’s Played http://nyti.ms/342oBct
WIRED, Garrett Graff: So Much for the Deep State Plot Against Donald Trump http://bit.ly/38jTQ69
// Inspector general Michael Horowitz’s report shows that the FBI’s investigation of ties between Russia and the Trump campaign was both justified and without political bias.
NYT, Jesse Wegman: With Trump, All Roads Lead to Moscow http://nyti.ms/2P4uGkk
// Monday’s congressional hearing and the inspector general’s report tell a similar story.
On Monday morning, lawyers for the Democrats on the House Judiciary and Intelligence committees presented the clearest and most comprehensive narrative yet of President Trump’s monthslong shakedown of the new Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelensky, for Mr. Trump’s personal political benefit. They explained in methodical detail how the president withheld a White House meeting and hundreds of millions of dollars in crucial, congressionally authorized military aid to Ukraine, all in an effort to get Mr. Zelensky to announce two investigations — one into Mr. Trump’s political rival, Joe Biden, and his son, Hunter, and another into Ukraine’s supposed interference in the 2016 election.
🐣 RT @FBI Director Christopher Wray’s Response to Inspector General Report
⋙ FBI.gov: FBI Director Christopher Wray’s Response to Inspector General Report http://bit.ly/2LHsTQm “The Report concludes that the FBI’s Crossfire Hurricane investigation and related investigations of certain individuals were opened in 2016 for an authorized purpose and with adequate factual predication.”
🐣 RT @Mimirocah1 This is so wildly inappropriate for Barr to say. This is his political spin – which is not his job- not findings of fact or conclusions of a trustworthy investigation.
⋙ 🐣 RT @ShimonPro This AG Barr statement: ¤ “The Inspector General’s report now makes clear that the FBI launched an intrusive investigation of a U.S. presidential campaign on the thinnest of suspicions that, in my view, were insufficient to justify the steps taken.”
// He lies
📔 Department of Justice Inspector General (DOJ OIG): Report: Review of Four FISA Applications and Other Aspects of the FBI’s Crossfire Hurricane Investigation http://bit.ly/2RB0WNS 476p [Title page: ] ● https://twitter.com/Auriandra/status/1204180723097374722?s=20
🐣 RT @sfpelosi [Nancy’s daughter] All are terrified of being primaried by Trumpers and some are terrified that the Russians who hacked them will reveal their dirty laundry. ¤ As it goes with Donald Trump so it goes with his party: ¤ #AllRoadsLeadToPutin
⋙ 🐣 RT @JoyceWhiteVance What is it that Republicans are willing to burn this country down for? Destroy the rule of law over? Is it for Trump? Is that the kind of future they want for our country?
🐣 RT @JohnBrennen The damage being inflicted by @realDonaldTrump on our national conscience & our government is tragic. ¤ Members of Congress & staffers who defend & misrepresent his indefensible actions are telling Americans it’s ok to be dishonest, unethical, & corrupt. ¤ How far we have fallen.
NYT: Trump’s Abuse of Power Was ‘Brazen’ and ‘Clear,’ Democrats Argue in Impeachment Case http://nyti.ms/36nSbKX
Democratic and Republican lawyers presented competing arguments to the House Judiciary Committee about President Trump’s dealings with Ukraine, as Democrats prepare articles of impeachment against him.
🐣 RT @tribelaw Durham and Barr are sliming IG Horowitz now that Horowitz trashed Trump’s 2-year long effort to slime the origins of the Mueller probe. If Durham doesn’t end up agreeing with Trump, just watch Trump and Barr turn on Durham. Comey is right to predict as much. What a horror show!
🐣 RT @JohnJHarwood Justice Dept inspector general: “Steele’s report played NO ROLE” in opening investigation of Russian election meddling in 2016
🐣 RT @ChristopherJM Black ledger was made public before Manafort’s name surfaced in it. Point was to expose Yanukovych regime corruption. Ledger wasn’t made public b/c of Manafort. And no, an op-ed calling out a candidate whose stance on Crimea goes against longstanding US policy isn’t interference.
⋙ 🐣 RT @EliLake Sure. Making public the black ledger, forced Manafort to resign (with good reason, should have never been hired). Castor also acknowledges explicitly that saying some Ukrainian officials interfered does not mean Russia did not. That was my point about the reality based position.
WaPo: The inspector general report just blew up Trump’s lies. So Barr is rushing to the rescue. http://wapo.st/2Ryl6b4
NYT: Barr and Durham Publicly Disagree With Horowitz Report on Russia Inquiry http://nyti.ms/2DZ5Mwg
// The attorney general reprised his role as a vocal defender of President Trump.
🐣 RT @JoyceWhiteVance Barr started an investigation that essentially duplicated the IG’s mission months ago, almost as though he knew the facts & knew the IG’s report wouldn’t support the Trump narrative & needed to have something he could pull out to try and save Trump.
⋙ WaPo: James Comey: The truth is finally out. The FBI fulfilled its mission. http://wapo.st/346Wbhq
WaPo, Aaron Blake: Trump’s favorite conspiracy theory deteriorates — courtesy of two men he hailed http://wapo.st/348Y3Gp
🐣 RT @rickklein Asked whether he thought the FBI unfairly targeted the Trump campaign, Wray offered a terse reply: “I do not.”
🐣 RT @JuliaDavisNews FBI Director Christopher Wray: “We have no information that indicates that Ukraine interfered with the 2016 presidential election… as far as the [2020] election itself goes, we think Russia represents the most significant threat.”
🐣 RT @rebeccaballhouse Chris Wray, the FBI director nominated by Trump, tells @ABC: “We have no information that indicates that Ukraine interfered with the 2016 election.”
⋙ ABCNews: FBI Director Chris Wray reacts to DOJ watchdog report on Russia investigation: Exclusive http://abcn.ws/2E0zpx9
FBI Director Christopher Wray offered mixed reactions to a Justice Department watchdog report that uncovered “serious performance failures” on the part of agents involved in the Russia investigation but ultimately determined the bureau was justified in launching its probe.
In an exclusive broadcast interview with ABC News, Wray lamented “actions described in this report that [he] considered unacceptable and unrepresentative of who we are as an institution.” But, he said it was “important that the inspector general found that, in this particular instance, the investigation was opened with appropriate predication and authorization.”
🐣 RT @DeanObeidallah Bill Barr literally just attacked the #InspectorGeneral report and doesn’t believe its conclusions. This is the same Bill Barr who lied about the Mueller report exonerating Trump. Barr is the perfect Attorney General for Trump since both are liars who don’t care about US Const.
🐣 RT @markknoller From Atty Gen Barr on I.G. report on FBI probe of Trump Campaign and Russia: He says it “now makes clear that the FBI launched an intrusive investigation of a U.S. presidential campaign on the thinnest of suspicions that, in my view, were insufficient to justify the steps taken.”
// Again, Barr misrepresents report findings
🐣 RT @rgoodlaw Dear #MAGA, ¤ President Trump is lying to YOU. ¤ Truth: Chris Wallace: “The headline is that they didn’t find the things that Bill Barr and Donald Trump alleged. … The headline here is that he basically found the FBI conducted the investigation … on a proper legal basis.”
🐣 RT @MollyJongFast So he didn’t read the report
⋙ 🐣 RT @atrupar Trump on the IG report: “It is incredible. Far worse than I ever would’ve thought possible. It’s an embarrassment to our country, it’s dishonest. It’s everything that a lot of people thought it would be, except far worse.”
NYT: Inspector General Report on F.B.I. Russia Inquiry Finds Serious Errors But Debunks Anti-Trump Plot http://nyti.ms/2RxGLAl
// A long-awaited report by the Justice Department’s inspector general delivers a scathing critique of the F.B.I.’s handling of a wiretap application but also punctures many conspiracy theories.
WaPo, Brian Klaas: America’s allies despise Trump — and that’s a threat to NATO http://wapo.st/38lit2v
WaPo: Lawyer for Democrats calls Trump ‘a clear and present danger’ as he argues case for removal http://wapo.st/2E2BNDA
WaPo: Impeachment hearings live updates: Judiciary Committee begins hearing cases for and against Trump’s removal http://wapo.st/2E2BNDA
🐣 RT @ThisWeekABC Majority counsel Barry Berke: “This scheme by Pres. Trump was so brazen, so clear…that it’s hard to imagine that anybody could dispute those acts, let alone argue that that conduct does not constitute an impeachable offense or offenses.” http://abcn.ws/2RwYEPA https://twitter.com/ThisWeekABC/status/1204054168408858635?s=20/photo/1
🐣 Today: 1. Impeachment Report to Judiciary
⋘ but also ⋙
2. IG Horowitz report on Mueller investigation origins
3. Zelensky and Putin meet to initiate peace talks
⭕ 8 Dec 2019
NYT, David Leonhardt: The Eight Counts of Impeachment That Trump Deserves http://nyti.ms/2Yw1gPj
// The lessons from Nixon and Clinton.
JustSecurity, Susan Simpson: Seven Outright Falsehoods in GOP Staff Report on Impeachment http://bit.ly/2LCX0bo
Politico: How Giuliani and Barr set out to defend Trump http://politi.co/2LCX0bo
// One lawyer took the outside lane and embroiled his client in scandal. The other played a different game entirely.
NYT: The Indispensable Man: How Giuliani Led Trump to the Brink of Impeachment http://nyti.ms/2Ru9TbL
🐣 RT @Russian_Starr You’ve inspired me to write my own thread on Rudy Giuliani and how he has conspired with discredited (ex) Ukrainian officials to convince Trump supporters that the Dems’ impeachment process is a shame and confuse the public. 📌 https://twitter.com/Russian_Starr/status/1203855341139775490?s=20
WaPo: Inside Giuliani’s dual roles: Power-broker-for-hire and shadow foreign policy adviser http://wapo.st/2Pslk0P
🐣📊RT @Politidope 60% of Americans between the ages of 18-29 believe Trump should be removed from office. ¤ Only 22% believe he should not be removed.
⋙ 🐣 RT @Politidope NEW via @TheEconomist: Women believe Trump should be removed from office by 14 points : 50% to 36% https://twitter.com/Politidope/status/1203764824573972485?s=20
NYT, Anu Partanen and Trevor Corson: Finland Is a Capitalist Paradise http://nyti.ms/2E001yk
// Can high taxes be good for business? You bet.
🐣 RT @RepJerryNadler Watch my @MeetThePress interview. The evidence the American people have seen is overwhelming: President Trump put himself before his country. 💽 https://twitter.com/RepJerryNadler/status/1203730173767626752?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @RepAdamSchiff This is precisely the conduct the Founders were most concerned about when they provided the remedy of impeachment: ¤ A President abusing his power to seek foreign interference in our elections, ¤ And doing so in a way that poses a clear and present danger to our national security. 💽 [FaceTheNation] https://twitter.com/RepAdamSchiff/status/1203711309017206786?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @CREWcrew Trump cares exactly this much about corruption: [stats] https://twitter.com/CREWcrew/status/1203834181631000576?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @AshaRangappa_ Remember that Mueller and Ukraine aren’t separate; they are mutually reinforcing. Trump fired Comey and tried to stop Mueller to prevent Americans from finding out what Russia did. Having failed in that attempt, he tried to undermine what Mueller uncovered by blaming Ukraine 1/ 📌 https://twitter.com/AshaRangappa_/status/1203834026605318145?s=20
NBCNews: Democrats split on whether to include Mueller obstruction in articles of impeachment http://nbcnews.to/36h3bd6
// House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerrold Nadler, D-N.Y., on Sunday would not commit to including evidence of obstruction contained in that report in the articles of impeachment.
🐣 RT @robreiner We have to stop being surprised when Trump sides with Putin or MBS. He’s allied with them. Whether it’s personal financial interests or Kompromat or both, he’s rejecting our Democratic allies and shredding our Constitution to make US part of an Axis of Autocracy.
🐣 RT @davidaxelrod The most disturbing thing about this whole Ukraine discussion is the alacrity with which the president’s supporters have adjusted their values to suit the moment, justifying a brazen, stealthy act of extortion of a critical ally.
🐣 RT @qjurecic Adam Schiff had a problem: how do you counter Republican disinformation on Ukraine without amplifying it further? His committee’s report adopts strategies recommended by disinformation researchers and social scientists.
⋙ Lawfare, Quinta Jurecic: How the Schiff Report Deals with Disinformation http://bit.ly/36pWoOD
2017 GDP Russia $1.58Tr
2017 GDP NY State $1.5Tr (8% of US total)
DailyBeast, Allison Quinn: The Worst Thing About Rudy Giuliani’s Trip to Ukraine http://bit.ly/36iLB8S
// Just by visiting Kyiv on the eve of talks, Giuliani has planted the seed of doubt in a public that already fears Zelensky will be compelled to make concessions to Putin.
🐣 RT @nytimesworld The International Monetary Fund has agreed to lend $5.5 billion to Ukraine, a move viewed as a stamp of approval for President Volodymyr Zelensky’s anticorruption and economic policies
⋙ NYT: I.M.F., Endorsing Zelensky, Approves Loan for Ukraine http://nyti.ms/358kzko
The International Monetary Fund, in conditionally agreeing to lend the country $5.5 billion over three years, cited “impressive progress” under President Volodymyr Zelensky.
🐣 RT @kylegriffin1 “Where the President uses his foreign affairs power in ways that betray the national interest for his own benefit, or harm national security for equally corrupt reasons, he is subject to impeachment by the House,” Democrats wrote.
⋙ NBCNews/AP: House impeachment report looks at abuse, bribery, corruption http://nbcnews.to/2P117QD
// It argues the Constitution created the process as a “safety valve” so Americans would not have to wait for the next election to remove a president.
DailyBeast, Jonathan Brunson: Ukraine’s Fate Hangs in the Balance at Paris Peace Talks: What You Have to Know http://bit.ly/38ho7m1
// As talks to end the war in eastern Ukraine begin in Paris on Monday, President Zelensky will be fighting the impression that he’s surrendering to Putin. Does he have a choice?
⭕ 7 Dec 2019
NewsCorpse: Do Not Believe THEM! That is Trump’s Order His Faithful Cult Followers About the Media http://bit.ly/353KB8i
🐣 RT @Hardball “He’s a joke now … he sort of earned that role. Let’s face it, he doesn’t want to be a member of NATO, he doesn’t want to be an ally of anybody, the only friends he has are world monsters.” ¤ @HardballChris on Trump.
⋙ 💽 MSNBC, Hardball (11/4): Chris Matthews on world leaders laughing at Trump: He’s a joke now http://on.msnbc.com/
// At a Buckingham Palace reception on Tuesday night, the leaders of Canada, France and Britain could be heard talking informally among themselves about the president. Chris says …
🐣 RT @brianklaas Remember: when Biden pushed to fire Ukraine’s corrupt prosecutor, Viktor Shokin, he was backed at the time not just by the IMF, EU, and key allies, but also by *Republicans.* Senate Republicans signed a letter supporting it. They supported what they’re now attacking him for doing
🐣 RT @kylegriffin1 “Republicans in Congress,” Ex-Republican Rep. David Jolly said, are now “tearing at the fabric of the Constitution every bit as much as Donald Trump” and “undermining the institution of Congress every bit as much as Trump.”
⋙ Vox: A former Republican Congress member explains what happened to his party http://bit.ly/2s4nyvu
// And why it belongs to Trump now.
🐣 RT @davidfrum The RT-Fox News convergence is paying big dividends for Putin
⋙ 🐣 RT @elizabethbraw The new nexus: infowar and the armed forces. 46% of US service personnel now see Russia as an ally, a trend “predominantly driven by Republicans who have responded to positive cues from President Trump about Russia,” @RonaldReagan Institute reports. Average US pop: 28%.
NYT: Judiciary Committee Report Offers Legal Rationale for Impeaching Trump http://nyti.ms/2sVYpn6
// The report, which echoes one released in 1974 as the House debated impeaching President Richard M. Nixon, comes two days before the committee will formally receive the evidence against President Trump.
⋙ 📔 Report http://bit.ly/2YtPbu8
🐣 RT @DanRather Russia attacked our democracy, and their insidious reach is being abetted by those who parrot their propaganda. A sobering read on an angle that requires more attention by the press and Congress.
⋙ VOA: Pentagon Concerned Russia Cultivating Sympathy Among US Troops http://bit.ly/3422brI
🐣 RT @Mimirocah1 And if Bill Barr opens an investigation based on this junk, when he declined to investigate the Trump-Zelensky call, the Trump-DOJ takeover will be complete.
⋙ 🐣 RT @peterbakernyt Trump on Giuliani’s latest visit to Ukraine: “He’s going to make a report, I think to the attorney general and to Congress. He says he has a lot of good information.”
🐣 RT @EvanMcMullin The Trump/Giuliani disinformation campaign that they’re calling an “investigation into Biden” works almost however media covers it as long as it does. Trump and Giuliani are happy to commit outrageous, potentially illegal acts to bait the media into boosting their disinformation.
🐣 RT @steven_pifer Predict @StateDept’s new policy on no #Trump critics as speakers will have 2 impacts:1) Greatly reduced pool of speakers.2) Big drop in interest on part of foreign audiences when speakers seen simply as shills for Administration policy.What a way to destroy speakers program https://twitter.com/steven_pifer/status/1203467482599550976?s=20
DailyBeast, Anna Nemtsova: Rudy Giuliani’s Ukraine ‘Investigation’ Stars Some of Kyiv’s Most Dubious Characters http://bit.ly/38gwXRc
The president’s lawyer went to Ukraine to discredit impeachment with a parallel narrative, but corruption fighters know his “witnesses” have little or no credibility.
NYT: Judiciary Committee Report Offers Legal Rationale for Impeaching Trump http://nyti.ms/2sVYpn6
// The report, which echoes one released in 1974 as the House debated impeaching President Richard M. Nixon, comes two days before the committee will formally receive the evidence against President Trump.
💙 WaPo: Giuliani returns to Ukraine, signals apparent disregard for inquiry http://wapo.st/2YnQLxi
// Inside title: As impeachment tide swirls around Trump, Giuliani drops anchor in Ukraine
Subtitle: from front: Current and former officials in Washington expressed astonishment at how President Trump’s private attorney seemed to be mocking investigators.
Even as the House of Representatives began drafting charges against President Trump this week, his private attorney, who many believe is partly responsible for leading Trump on the path to his likely impeachment, made an audacious trip to the country at the center of the scandal.
Rudolph W. Giuliani departed Kyiv after meeting with a range of Ukrainians who have been feeding him unproven allegations against former vice president Joe Biden and helping construct a counternarrative that is taking hold in the Republican Party. The latter story line asserts that Ukraine interfered in the 2016 election, including with the baseless theory that Ukraine, rather than Russia, was behind the hacking of the Democratic National Committee.
Giuliani’s travel also appeared designed to send a broader and more brazen signal of the disregard that he and Trump have for the unfolding impeachment process.
… Giuliani used his Twitter account while on the trip to describe the impeachment hearings as a “witch hunt,” attack the former U.S. ambassador whom he helped oust earlier this year, and assert that Trump’s demands for politically beneficial investigations by Ukraine’s government were appropriate.
Current and former officials in Washington expressed astonishment at how Giuliani — apparently on behalf of the president — seemed to be mocking impeachment investigators, if not the very idea that either he or his client should answer any articles of impeachment.
“It’s unbelievable to me the open way in which the administration and Giuliani are still pursuing this,” said Jeffrey Edmonds, who served as Russia director at the White House National Security Council under both Barack Obama and Trump. “It is a way of . . . asserting that everything that we’re doing is perfectly normal, perfectly fine and we’re going to keep doing it.”
Giuliani’s trip also represented an affront to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, whose government was welcoming a high-level State Department diplomat at the same time and hoping to return relations with the United States to normal after more than two months at the center of an American political maelstrom.
Zelensky, who didn’t meet with Giuliani, is preparing for a high-stakes summit on Monday in Paris, where he is scheduled to meet Russian President Vladimir Putin alongside the leaders of Germany and France in a renewed attempt to bring an end to the war between Russia-backed proxies and Ukrainian forces in the nation’s east. More than 13,000 people have died in the conflict.
The disruption in U.S.-Ukraine relations caused by Giuliani’s activities and the resulting impeachment inquiry have led some Ukrainians to fear that Zelensky, who promised an end to the conflict during his campaign, will cut a bad deal with Putin, owing partly to a growing sentiment in Kyiv that Ukraine can no longer count on support from the United States.
Such concerns appeared to be far from Giuliani’s mind.
During his trip, he sat down with a mustachioed Ukrainian lawmaker who has promoted Russian interests in Ukraine and once studied at a KGB academy in Moscow.
He was accompanied by a former Ukrainian diplomat who has won renown in U.S. right-wing circles by alleging Ukraine colluded with the DNC to undermine Trump in 2016.He received a bon voyage message from a former Ukrainian parliamentarian, who once sent a peace proposal to the White House that would have lifted sanctions on Russia and recognized the Kremlin’s annexation of Crimea.
The trip also served a practical purpose ahead of a likely Senate trial of his client. Giuliani brought a correspondent from the right-wing One America News to interview many of the Ukrainians he has interacted with in the past year — people who are willing to make allegations against Biden and the Democrats.
The footage will help inject the theories Giuliani has gathered over the past year even further into the American public discourse, as the Senate prepares to embark on a trial that some Republican lawmakers want to make as much about Biden as it is about the president.
Giuliani has alleged that Biden pushed for the 2016 firing of Ukraine’s top prosecutor to help his son, Hunter Biden, who at the time was a board member of a Ukrainian gas company whose owner was under investigation in Ukraine. Apart from a claim by the top prosecutor in question that Biden had him fired for that reason, no evidence has surfaced to show that is why Biden sought his removal. European Union leaders also wanted the prosecutor removed.
During the trip, Giuliani said on Twitter that until the matter is resolved, the issue “will be a major obstacle to the U.S. assisting Ukraine with its anti-corruption efforts.”
In Kyiv, Giuliani met with two members of Ukraine’s parliament, Andriy Derkach and Oleksandr Dubinsky, who have called for a joint U.S.-Ukrainian parliamentary investigation into the gas company. The One America News correspondent traveling with Giuliani posted photos of them interviewing former Ukrainian Prosecutor General Yuri Lutsenko in Budapest, where they stopped before traveling on to Ukraine.
On Capitol Hill, Democrats were shocked by Giuliani’s nerve.
“It’s a brazen move,” said Rep. Raja Krishnamoorthi (D-Ill.), a member of the House Intelligence Committee, which led the impeachment inquiry. “This is emblematic of this White House: When they are in the wrong, they double down. And in this case, they are tripling down.”
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) called the trip an indication of “the arrogance of it all” in comments at a CNN Town Hall on Thursday night.
Some Republicans were left scratching their heads. …Privately, however, two officials involved in the White House’s impeachment response said Trump aides were not told Giuliani was traveling to Ukraine and do not view it as helpful.
Some House Republicans have sought to create distance between Trump and Giuliani, but the president has not yet signaled a willingness to support such a move, the two officials said. On Friday, Gidley said that as a far as he was aware, Giuliani remained Trump’s personal attorney.
⭕ 6 Dec 2019
TheBulwark, Richard Patterson: Trump’s Personal Pathology Is America’s Foreign Policy http://bit.ly/35ZQ1ld
// The world is hostage to an unwell president.
NewYorker, Joshua Yaffa: How Donald Trump Is Making It Harder to End the War in Ukraine http://bit.ly/2DZtYi8
🐣 RT @DrGJackBrown Pat Cipollone’s 6 Dec. 2019 letter translated:
“Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain! Trump is the great and powerful Oz!”
(signed in thick sharpie to impress the boss)
#PatCipollone #ImpeachAndRemoveTrump #Impeachment
Pat Cipollone's 6 Dec. 2019 letter translated:
"Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain! Trump is the great and powerful Oz!"(signed in thick sharpie to impress the boss) #PatCipollone #ImpeachAndRemoveTrump #Impeachment pic.twitter.com/6mVzAT25fo
— DrJackBrown 🌊 (@DrGJackBrown) December 7, 2019
🐣 RT @MuellerSheWrote WE WANT A FLOOR VOTE!
ok we had a floor vote
WE WANT PUBLIC HEARINGS!
ok here’s public hearings
BUT WE WEREN’T INVITED!
ok you’re invited
WE DON’T WANNA COME!
ok well we’re gonna draft articles
BUT IT’S CHRISTMAS!
happy holidays
#BadFaithNegotiations
💽 MSNBC, All In: Chris Hayes on what’s ‘phenomenally dangerous’ about this political moment http://on.msnbc.com/2RuWEHE
// Hayes: “There is an entire ecosystem built around this alternate reality that is untethered from fact.”
TheAtlantic, Soren Schmidt: The Most Dangerous Form of Bribery http://bit.ly/2relh0K
// Election corruption can’t be solved by corrupt elections, so the Founders devised a special solution: impeachment.
DailyBeast, Lachlan Markay and Asawin Suebsaeng: Giuliani Cronies Planned ‘Fraud Guarantee’ Infomercials Starring Rudy http://bit.ly/2YnIvNQ
// The former New York City mayor was nearly even more of a cable news fixture.
🐣 RT @JuliaDavisNews The disruption in US-Ukraine relations caused by Giuliani’s activities and the resulting impeachment inquiry have led to fears that Zelensky will cut a bad deal with Putin, due to a growing sentiment that Ukraine can no longer count on support from the US. 📌 https://twitter.com/JuliaDavisNews/status/1203104219575836672?s=20
🐣 RT @crampell signs you may not be hiring the best attorneys
1) they send formal legal letters in Comic Sans
2) they sign formal legal letters with a Sharpie
3) you aren’t paying them, but a company called “Fraud Guarantee” is
4) they’re in prison
🐣 RT @MaddowBlog ‘The committee, still investigating the impeachment scandal, in this letter, is warning Vice President Pence explicitly tonight: By the way, remember you can’t declare something to be classified just to keep it from being exposed as a crime. 💽 https://twitter.com/MaddowBlog/status/1203141940503621632?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @AmySiskind Of course he is. In the midst of impeachment. ¤ “All roads lead to Putin.”
⋙ WaPo: Top Russian diplomat to visit Washington in first visit since 2017 Oval Office controversy, officials say http://wapo.st/
🐣 RT @mhmck The fear that Zelenskyy will capitulate to Putin at the “Normandy Four” talks is well-grounded. The Ukrainian president has already humbled himself to the Muscovite vozhd by signing the Lavrov Formula (a.k.a. the Steinmeier Formula) and surrendering Ukrainian territory in Donbas.
WaPo: As impeachment tide swirls around Trump, Giuliani drops anchor in Ukraine http://wapo.st/2YnQLxi
WaPo, Dana Milbank: How we know exactly what Jefferson, Hamilton and Madison think of Trump http://wapo.st/34YShbU
🐣 RT @RepAdamSchiff The White House said they wanted open hearings, not closed, and then they didn’t want those either. ¤ Then they said they wanted to participate in the proceedings, and now they say they don’t. ¤ All they really want is to hide the President’s serious misconduct. ¤ It’s not working.
⋙ NYT: White House Signals Trump Won’t Mount House Impeachment Defense http://nyti.ms/34UgsrQ
// In a sharply worded letter, the White House counsel denounced the impeachment inquiry and called on Democrats to end it, or get it over with quickly so it could proceed to a Senate trial.
Politico: Schiff: Pence aide provided new impeachment evidence — but VP’s office classified it http://politi.co/368tPVB
💙 🐣 RT @JuliaDavisNews “The fact that Giuliani is back in Ukraine is like a murder suspect returning to the crime scene to live-stream themselves moon dancing… It’s brazen on a galactic level.”
⋙ 🐣 RT @JuliaDavisNews Giuliani received a bon voyage message from a former Ukrainian parliamentarian, who once sent a peace proposal to the White House that would have lifted sanctions on Russia and recognized the Kremlin’s annexation of Crimea.
⋙ Giuliani sat down with a Ukrainian lawmaker who has promoted Russian interests in Ukraine & once studied at a KGB academy in Moscow. He was accompanied by a former Ukrainian diplomat who alleged that Ukraine colluded with the DNC to undermine Trump in 2016
⋙ The disruption in US-Ukraine relations caused by Giuliani’s activities and the resulting impeachment inquiry have led to fears that Zelensky will cut a bad deal with Putin, due to a growing sentiment that Ukraine can no longer count on support from the US.
⋙ The latter story line asserts that Ukraine interfered in the 2016 election, including with the baseless, debunked conspiracy theory that Ukraine, rather than Russia, was behind the hacking of the Democratic National Committee.
⋙ Giuliani departed Kyiv after meeting with a range of Ukrainians who have been feeding him unproven allegations against former vice president Joe Biden and helping construct a counternarrative that is taking hold in the Republican Party.
⋙ As impeachment tide swirls around Trump, Giuliani drops anchor in Ukraine.
⋙⋙ WaPo: As impeachment tide swirls around Trump, Giuliani drops anchor in Ukraine http://wapo.st/2YnQLxi
💙 🐣 RT @DeadlineWH “This is the most grave offense you could imagine from the standpoint of our Constitution imaginable, trying to cheat… on your next election. And not just with anyone, but with a foreign government” – @neal_katyal w/ @NicolleDWallace 💽 https://twitter.com/DeadlineWH/status/1203083649765330947?s=20/photo/1
🐣 🐣 RT @DeadlineWH “The reporting now is not so much about that the president is blowing off secure communications devices but rather, why he’s doing it. He’s doing it because he doesn’t like the fact that it creates a permanent record” – @FrankFigliuzzi1 w/ @NicolleDWallace 💽 https://twitter.com/DeadlineWH/status/1203082481844527105?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @DeadlineWH “The House impeachment inquiry has rattled this White House and revealed an irrefutable trail of evidence that Trump conditioned military aid for a nation at war on a commitment to investigate the Bidens and a debunked conspiracy theory” – @NicolleDWallace 💽 https://twitter.com/DeadlineWH/status/1203060108680450049?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @TheLeadCNN .@PreetBharara: Giuliani’s actions in Ukraine put himself in jeopardy https://cnn.it/38dbHLX
🐣 RT @DeadlineWH “What is going to happen at the end of January when… [Trump] is acquitted in the Senate… Donald Trump is gonna go and look for foreign interference again, I guarantee it. He’s going to try and solicit foreign interference in the 2020 elections” – @jheil w/ @NicolleDWallace 💽 https://twitter.com/DeadlineWH/status/1203084206206803969?s=20/photo/1
WaPo, Max Boot: To GOP hypocrites: I never want to hear about Hillary Clinton’s emails again http://wapo.st/36f3KEb
🐣 RT @RadioFreeTom I’ve been making the argument that dragging out impeachment for “more evidence” is politically pointless, but Schiff made the best argument: You don’t want until an election is imminent to deal with a president trying to cheat in an election.
⋙ 🐣 RT @ The thing that has always separated this impeachment from previous ones is that it is geared more toward prevention than punishment. ¤ The crime is ongoing, and by not engaging impeachment seriously, Republicans in Congress are complicit. https://twitter.com/pastpunditry/status/1203067872102236163?s=20
🐣 RT @JoyceWhiteVance Defendants in criminal cases would like to say this to prosecutors. But they can’t, because in our system of government, they’re not above the law. Neither is Trump.
⋙ WaPo: White House tells House Democrats to end impeachment inquiry, less than an hour before deadline for Trump to agree to participate http://wapo.st/34ZOoTZ
WashingtonMonthly, Nancy LeTourneau: How John Solomon Undermined Journalism http://bit.ly//33Zdq4a
WaPo: More than 500 law professors say Trump committed ‘impeachable conduct’ http://wapo.st/2s1uSrK
🐣 RT @JustinAmash This should be unanimous, not partisan. Impeachment in the House is not a conviction. The trial happens in the Senate. All the House does is charge impeachable conduct. All we need is probable cause. That threshold is easily met with the existing evidence.
⋙ 🐣 RT @CNN Rep. Justin Amash, a Michigan independent who left the Republican Party this summer after he backed formal impeachment proceedings, said he would back three articles of impeachment: obstruction of Congress, obstruction of justice and abuse of power
⋙⋙ CNN: Independent lawmaker says he’s ready to vote to impeach Trump http://cnn.it/33VIAtr
🐣 RT @anders_aslund Giuliani in Kyiv sees crooks no honest person would go near:
Oleksandr Dubinsky – oligarch Kolomoisky’s top person in parliament;
Andrei Derkach, graduate from KGB’s Higher School in Moscow, allegedly now paid by eloped oligarch Firtash. ¤ Cultivating Kolomoisky & Firtash?
NewYorker, Susan Glasser: Adam Schiff on Donald Trump, Impeachment, and What’s Next http://bit.ly/2DSMWXz
DailyBeast, Asawin Suebsaeng and Erin Banco: Rudy’s New Ukraine Jaunt Is Freaking Out Trump’s Lieutenants—and He Doesn’t Care http://bit.ly/2qrrBRX
// Top administration officials have been tracking Giuliani’s venture through Europe, wondering if he’s going to cause yet another major headache for the president.
🐣 RT @mimirocah1 I’m surprised he didn’t get a burner phone.
⋙ 🐣 RT @JuliaDavisNews John Kelly and intelligence officials attempted to get Trump to use secure White House line, but when he realized that this enabled them to compile daily logs of his calls & the identities of those he was speaking to, Trump reverted to using his cellphone.
⋙⋙ 🐣 RT @JuliaDavisNews Phone logs in impeachment report renew concern about security of Trump communications: “It’s absolutely a security issue” that foreign intelligence agencies could be listening in on the president’s unsecured calls with Giuliani. “It’s a bonanza for them.”
⋙⋙⋙ WaPo: Phone logs in impeachment report renew concern about security of Trump communications http://wapo.st/2OV5m02
🐣 RT @kylegriffin1 Willie Geist: “Have you spoken to a single GOP colleague in the Senate who’s even considering voting for impeachment?”
Sen. Chris Murphy: “Yes.”
Geist: “You have?”
Murphy: “Yes.”
DailyBeast, Betsy Ssan and Adam Rawnsley: Ukrainian Fugitive Who Claimed to Have Dirt on Biden Firm Is Arrested http://bit.ly/38aiupP
// Oleksandr Onyshchenko publicly claimed to have inside information about Hunter Biden just as the impeachment proceedings got underway.
⭕ 5 Dec 2019
ForeignPolicy, Tatiana Stanovaya (12/5): What the West Gets Wrong About Russia’s Intentions in Ukraine http://bit.ly/2t6sOzg
// 12/5/2019; Moscow never wanted an annexation—it just wanted a bargaining chip. Understanding that is the key to settling the conflict once and for all.
🐣 RT @JuliaDavisNews Senate GOP leaders have blocked action on the two bipartisan bills targeting Russia, the DETER Act and the broader Defending American Security From Kremlin Aggression Act.
⋙ TheAtlantic, Ronald Brownstein: The Russification of the Republican Party http://bit.ly/2s72GDA
// GOP lawmakers used to oppose the president’s embrace of Putin and the Kremlin. Not anymore.
WaPo: Phone logs in impeachment report renew concern about security of Trump communications http://wapo.st/2OV5m02
🐣 RT @PaulSonne NEW: Trump regularly talked to Giuliani and others on un-secure lines and gave foreign leaders including Johnson, Erdogan and Macron his cell number, creating an op-sec nightmare aides tried & failed to curb. W/ @jdawsey1@nakashimaem@gregpmiller:
⋙ 🐣 RT @JaveedAJamali “#impeachment is not about Trump’s policies, nor does it seek to nullify the election. Rather, it is about whether a president who abuses his position for personal gain should be removed from office.”
⋙⋙ Newsweek: Pelosi Is Right. Impeaching Trump Has Nothing to Do With ‘Hate’ http://bit.ly/2DRxZoz
🐣 RT @AndrewDesiderio MORE FRIDAY NEWS: House Intel Chairman Adam Schiff just sent this letter to VP Pence asking the admin to declassify Jennifer Williams’ supplemental testimony to impeachment investigators. https://twitter.com/AndrewDesiderio/status/1203092162759532544?s=20/photo/1-4
⋙ 🐣 RT @AndrewDesiderio A House Intel officials says “declassification of this supplemental testimony will allow the Congress to see further corroborative evidence as it considers articles of impeachment, and provide the public further understanding of the events in question.”
⋙ 🐣 RT @ In his letter to Pence, Schiff says Williams’ supplemental testimony is about the VP’s Sept. 18 call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. ¤ Schiff says there’s “no legitimate basis” for this info to be classified.
Politico, Josh Lederman: How a conspiracy theory about George Soros is fueling allegations of Ukraine collusion http://politi.co/388xepj
// The billionaire philanthropist has long been the target of conspiracy theorists about Jews controlling the world.
MSNBC, Hardball: Laurence Tribe: Trump dismantling checks and balances http://on.msnbc.com/2YqAXKm
// In a somber six minute address to the nation, Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi announced that the House of Representatives would begin drafting impeachment articles against the President of the United States because he violated his oath of office, and compromised US national security.
DailyBeast, Adam Rawnsley and Betsy Swan: Trumpworld Lawyers’ Contracts to Dig Dirt on Biden http://bit.ly/2YlZK2d
// The agreements add context to the activities in Ukraine—in particular the ties between Giuliani, Toensing, and diGenova, and the powerful Ukrainians with whom they were in contact.
KyivPost, Matthew Kupfer and Oksana Grytsenko: The strange and meteoric rise of Giuliani’s favorite Ukrainian ‘whistleblower’ http://bit.ly/388oE9Y
NYT Mag, Josh Owens: I Worked for Alex Jones. I Regret It. http://nyti.ms/2Rl6T1g
// I dropped out of film school to edit video for the conspiracy theorist because I believed in his worldview. Then I saw what it did to people.
🐣 RT @IlvesToomas Since names like Babakov mean nothing in the US, read this thread. You will find out for example that he was the one whose bank loaned 9M € to the far right Marine Le Pen. In other words, Putin’s conduit to influence the French presidential election.
⋙ 🐣 RT @JackLaurenson [KyivPost] Kyiv, #Ukraine. At midnight, they are in lounge bar of the Premier Palace Hotel, owned by close Putin ally, Russian oligarch Alexander Babakov. Hotel known as den for Kremlin agents & Babakov is alleged Russian intel himself. 📌 https://twitter.com/JackLaurenson/status/1202727340889067521?s=20
⋙⋙ 🐣 RT @AndriyUkraineTe With America’s Mayor @RudyGiuliani prepping for tomorrow another hard working day in meetings with Mr. Shokin and Mr. Lutcenko. To all conspiracy theorist there is no secret on what we are doing.The TRUTH will come out. God Bless Ukraine and God Bless the United States of America
WaPo, Neal Katyal and Sam Koppelman: The transcript Trump released is still the only evidence needed to impeach him http://wapo.st/2rjcVVt
// Don’t get distracted by procedural details or new revelations.
WaPo, Dana Milbank: This moment was made for Nancy Pelosi http://wapo.st/367x2of
WaPo: Pelosi announces intent to impeach Trump as constitutional clash intensifies http://wapo.st/2sRm2NB
🐣💙💙 RT @DefendDemocracy “Our democracy is at stake. The president leaves us no choice but to act. Because he is trying to corrupt, once again, the election for his own benefit.. ¤ Today, I am asking our Chairman to proceed with articles of impeachment.” ¤ #DefendOurDemocracy 💽 https://twitter.com/DefendDemocracy/status/1202666848493490177?s=20/photo/1
// Speaker Nancy Pelosi ♡
Vice, Cameron Joseph: Senate Republicans Have Already Debunked Trump’s Ukraine Conspiracy Theory – but They’re Pushing It Anyway http://bit.ly/2sSNDOB
// The GOP investigated the Ukraine election-meddling conspiracy theory and found … nothing.
🐣 Bringing in Turley as a witness was an odd choice. He didn’t vote for Trump. He LOST his last impeachment defense decisively. He didn’t even say Trump shouldn’t be impeached, just that the process should be slower.
🚫🐣 RT @mhmck Russian agent and American traitor Rudy Giuliani is in Kyiv meeting with Russian agents and Ukrainian traitors. Notable is Andriy Artemenko, a co-conspirator in the “surrender Crimea” plot (along with Felix Sater, Michael Cohen, Michael Flynn, and Trump). #RussiaInvadedUkraine
// I don’t think Rudy is a Russian “agent” or a traitor, just a dupe, but his meeting w Artemenko is noteworthy
🐣 RT @Teri_Kanefield (Thread) Who Has The Power? ¤ Mostly an analysis of Turley’s testimony (yesterday’s Republican witness) ¤ Bonus: This thread will help prepare you for the Constitutional Law portion of the Twitter Bar Exam. 📌 https://twitter.com/Teri_Kanefield/status/1202633889564377088?s=20
WaPo, Jennifer Rubin: Three conclusions from Pelosi’s impeachment address http://wapo.st/2RqfqQu
The framers of the Constitution, she correctly stated, were worried about a president who would abuse his powers, specifically the risk of corruption by foreign powers and misuse of his office to get himself reelected. The remedy is impeachment.
● First, Trump will join a select group of only three other presidents who faced articles of impeachment. In Trump’s case, the facts, as Pelosi noted, are largely undisputed, and the gravity of the offenses is undeniable.
● Second, Trump on Thursday yet again demanded a quick vote on impeachment. Without merely being oppositional, the House should consider adopting a deliberate pace, both to give Americans time to absorb the facts and to allow a short amount of time to see whether additional witnesses can be pried loose.
● Third, one cannot help but notice the difference in tone between the two sides. Pelosi was somber, “prayerful” as she put it. The witnesses called by the Democrats are, as she noted, serious and impressive public servants, diplomats and scholars. The Intelligence Committee report is a tightly drafted and fact-filled document. By contrast, Republican lawmakers and the president engage in nonstop histrionics. They peddle in lies and debunked conspiracy theories.
WaPo, Greg Sargent: New revelations about Barr and Giuliani strengthen case against Trump http://wapo.st/388ScnZ
Two new investigative reports demonstrate that Barr and Giuliani are, in effect, continuing to carry out elements of the very same corrupt scheme for which Trump is currently getting impeached. Their activities have been described as “brazen,” but the truth is worse: They demonstrate with great clarity that Trump’s efforts to corrupt our political system will continue — a reminder of why he’s being impeached in the first place.
Michael Horowitz, the Justice Department inspector general, privately asked Connecticut U.S. Attorney John Durham, who’s executing Barr’s review of the origins of that investigation, to validate a key element of Trumpworld’s “theory” of those origins — and he did not. … [T]he bottom line is Horowitz is expected to conclude that the investigation’s basis was legitimate, and while we don’t know what Durham will conclude, it seems clear he’s finding little to validate Trumpworld’s wild theories.
This is terribly inconvenient for Barr — and Trump and his propagandists. They hope such a review will allow them to cast the whole Russia investigation — and its findings of Russian sabotage and extensive efforts by Trump to coordinate with and benefit from it — as illegitimate.
The key point here is that Barr, who is gearing up to cast doubt on Horowitz’s conclusions, is continuing to use the levers of government to carry out Trump’s overall corrupt project — which Trump is actively cheering on. Barr is trying to undercut the legitimacy of the Russia investigation’s conclusions — which would help make Russia’s criminal attack on our political system and Trump’s nefarious reaping of its gains disappear.
That’s exactly what Trump tried to extort Ukraine into helping him do, by announcing an “investigation” into the lie that Ukraine, not Russia, interfered, thus validating that lie — part of the corrupt plot for which he’s being impeached.
Giuliani is doing the same as we speak. The New York Times reports that Giuliani has traveled to Budapest and Kyiv, where he’s meeting with shadowy Ukrainian figures to keep building the case that Joe Biden and his son Hunter acted corruptly in Ukraine.
This line of nonsense has been thoroughly debunked, but Giuliani met with one of its key proponents, and is participating in the filming of a fake “documentary” that’s designed to make that narrative seem true.
In other words, Giuliani — who was the ringleader of the scheme to pressure Ukraine to announce investigations that would also make that narrative seem true — has continued to try to achieve the same goals that drove the corrupt plot for which Trump is being impeached.
WaPo: A look inside Trump’s anti-impeachment spin factory http://wapo.st/369MMaf
CNN: Garry Kasparov: I lived in the post-truth Soviet world and I hear its echoes in Trump’s America http://cnn.it/33N2PJz
⭕ 4 Dec 2019
✅ PolitiFact: Fact-checking House Republicans’ impeachment report defending Trump on Ukraine http://bit.ly/351fme0
RollingStone, Rick Wilson: The Traitors Among Us http://bit.ly/2RuB5a8
// Donald Trump likes to call his opponents traitors — but if he’s looking for treasonous behavior, he should look within his own party
… America is in the midst of a treason boom right now, and more than a few people in Trump’s immediate orbit — and Trump himself — richly and actually deserve the title of traitor, and the treason inherent in their acts and words is apparent.
As the impeachment hearings have worn on and as evidence of the complete moral collapse of the Republican Party has become more and more evident, it has become quite obvious there really are traitors among us. There are elected officials who have made the decision to protect a corrupt president by embracing conspiracy theories, refusing to acknowledge sworn testimony of career foreign-service officials, and piling on to Trump’s attack of democratic institutions.
The traitors are the ones who, when this is all done and dusted, will sit in the dock at some new Nuremberg trial and claim their innocence of the worst charges and penalties not by claiming their actions were “just following orders” but that they were “just following Trump.”
🐣 RT @Leshchenkos To dig the dirt on opponents and support narrative of @DevinNunes, @RudyGiuliani united efforts with bunch of Ukrainian oligarchs and their crooked former prosecutors. My op-ed. Please retweet!
⋙ KyivPost, Sergii Leshchenko: How Kolomoisky’s prosecutor fueled Giuliani’s conspiracies http://bit.ly/369JF25
PolitiFact (2017): Trump and Russia, Clinton and Ukraine: How do they compare? http://bit.ly/2rYlxRv Three types of Ukrainian efforts: 1) OpEds/social media objections to Trump, 2) Chalupa research on Manafort, 3) “Crowdstrike” is a Russia-based conspiracy theory)
● https://twitter.com/Auriandra/status/1202691461541744651?s=20/photo/1
// 12/7/2017
Ukrainian “Meddling” is Pretty Thin Gruel:
1. OpEds/social media objections to Trump, mostly for Trump’s pro-Russia views on Crimea
2. Alexandra Chalupa – Her research into Manafort was not directed by the DNC, though she shared findings; the Ukrainian embassy officials were helpful but professional. The release of the “black ledger” record of payments to Manafort came from a Ukrainian investigation, not from her research
3. “Crowdstrike” – A Russia promoted conspiracy theory which is technologically silly
“Russia’s effort was personally directed by Russian President Vladimir Putin (and) involved the country’s military and foreign intelligence services,” the article said. “There’s little evidence of such a top-down effort by Ukraine.”
So, according to American intelligence agencies, the Kremlin shaped and directed the email hacking of Democrats and subsequent distribution. In contrast, a variety of actors on the Ukrainian side responded to American queries and provided public documents.
Which leads to the other big distinction: The Russians got their materials through cyber-attacks, while the only telling document revealed by a Ukrainian lawmaker was the product of an official investigation.
“There’s a difference between dealing with the embassy and dealing with a covert intelligence operation,” Wittes said. “Are you dealing with government records, or are you dealing in stolen dirt?”
To be clear, we do not know if the hacked emails had any ties to contacts the Trump campaign did or didn’t have with Russians. But hacked emails are different from the results of a public investigation.
Taking that difference one step further, there was nothing inherently illegal in the quest for information on Manafort and how that might link Donald Trump to Russia. Wittes noted that from a research perspective, since Manafort’s work took place in Ukraine, “you pretty much have to go to the Ukrainians to get that.”
Other details also separate the two narratives.
Ukraine is seen as an ally to the United States, while Russia is at best a competitor and often called an enemy.
🐣 RT @ An official in Zelensky’s office tells BuzzFeed News that the president was caught off guard by Rudy Giuliani’s arrival in Kyiv this week, learning about it from the media. Equally shocked by his arrival was the U.S. Embassy, according to a US diplomat.
⋙ BuzzfeedNews, Christopher Miller: Rudy Giuliani Made A Surprise Visit To Kyiv And Nobody There Is Happy About It http://bit.ly/2OTWzf9
// Ukrainian and American officials in Kyiv told BuzzFeed News they had no advanced warning of Giuliani’s arrival and only learned about it from media reports.
🐣 RT @sfpelosi [Christine Pelosi] DON’T MESS WITH MAMA! ¤ “I don’t hate anybody…As a Catholic, I resent your using the word hate in a sentence that addresses me. I don’t hate anyone…So, don’t mess with me when it comes to words like that.” @SpeakerPelosi
NYT, Peter Baker: Mocked Abroad and Assailed at Home, Trump Returns to Face Impeachment http://nyti.ms/363Qfau
// Two days in London on the world stage provided him no respite.
WSJ: Ukraine President Holds Back on Probe Linked to Impeachment Inquiry http://on.wsj.com/2YjetuA
// Politicians, officials say Volodymyr Zelensky wants to avoid getting country more caught up in U.S. politics
RawStory: Fox News analyst Andrew Napolitano says he would vote to impeach Trump: ‘Reasonable minds cannot disagree’ http://bit.ly/2OO4bQa
💽 CSPAN: Hearing on Constitutional Framework for Impeachment http://cs.pn/2PfS0KN
// The House Judiciary Committee held a hearing with legal experts to discuss the constitutional framework for potentially drawing up articles of impeachment against President Trump.
DailyBeast, Will Sommer: Rudy Giuliani Teams Up With a Seth Rich Conspiracy Theorist to Save Trump http://bit.ly/2PcgwN7
// The president’s attorney has traveled to some odd places and sought the help of some colorful characters to defend his client. But Chanel Rion might be the strangest of all.
WaPo, Greg Sargent: Stop calling Trump a ‘Russian dupe.’ The truth is much worse. http://wapo.st/2LpkjFx
As Democratic strategist Simon Rosenberg suggested to me, party leaders must argue that the GOP’s “embrace of the Ukraine fiction” is not merely a matter of domestic political expediency. Rather, it’s time to ask whether we’re seeing the beginnings of a “realignment” with this global right wing movement against the values and even the interests of “the United States and the West.”
WaPo, Dana Milbank: No wonder Jonathan Turley’s dog is mad http://wapo.st/2DYC4aV
WaPo, EJ Dionne: The moral imperative of impeachment http://wapo.st/2DN7LUh
🐣 RT @tribelaw So what? @AlanDersh is defending a red herring. Nobody proposes impeaching Trump or any president for seeking judicial review of Congressional subpoenas. @JonathanTurley was making a stupid straw man argument. Ordering defiance of all subpoenas is altogether different.
⋙ 🐣 RT @AlanDersh Professor Turley is correct that impeaching a president for demanding judicial review of Congressional subpoenas would undercut our system of checks and balances.
🐣 People shouldn’t act like it’s Dems’ fault if impeachment is a party-line vote. It’s the GOP’s fault. Or, as I like to think of it, it’s the goats separating from the sheep.
NYT: Trump Blocked Key Impeachment Witnesses. Should Congress Wait? http://nyti.ms/2DOzfJo
// At the first House Judiciary Committee impeachment hearing, Republicans’ witness said lawmakers were rushing the process and should instead let court fights over access to witnesses play out.
WaPo, Jennifer Rubin: Republican squawking can’t distract from Democrats’ key points in hearing http://wapo.st/2Lq6Kpr
🐣 RT @glennkirschner2 Which part of, “we will provide you your military aid if you do us a favor and announce an investigation into the Bidens” did you miss?
⋙ 🐣 RT @atrupar 7hTURLEY: “If you prove a quid pro quo, you might have an impeachable offense.” ¤ Who wants to tell him?
WaPo: Impeachment goes to college http://wapo.st/2OPitzQ
🐣 RT @EvanRosenfeld Pres. Trump “hit the trifecta of impeachable offenses because he sought foreign interference, he abused the office for personal power, and then he covered it all up by refusing to acknowledge the power of Congress to investigate it,” @glennkirschner2 says. 💽 [Msnbc] https://twitter.com/Evan_Rosenfeld/status/1202390858621845504?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @CBSNews Feldman on why the Framers supported impeaching a corrupt president instead of waiting for an election: “They knew a president would have a great motive to corrupt the electoral process to get reelected”
⋙ CBSNews: 3 experts testify Trump committed impeachable offenses http://cbsn.ws/2OPCQNz
🐣 #NeverTrumper Republicans (all 1000 of you) should just give up and join the Dems. Start a new Neoliberal caucus or something. The GOP has gone full Putinist/Trumpist.
@BillKristol @gtconway3d @RadioFreeTom
HuffPo: Trump’s Actions ‘Worse Than Misconduct Of Any Prior President,’ Law Prof Testifies http://bit.ly/36e6YYX
// “If Congress fails to impeach here, then the impeachment process has lost all meaning,” UNC law professor Michael Gerhardt told Congress.
🐣 RT @kylegriffin1 Breaking via WaPo: The prosecutor handpicked by Barr to scrutinize how U.S. agencies investigated Trump’s 2016 campaign said he could not offer evidence to the DOJ inspector general to support the right-wing theory that the case was a setup by U.S. intel.
🔆 This❗️⋙ WaPo: Barr’s handpicked prosecutor tells inspector general he can’t back right-wing theory that Russia case was U.S. intelligence setup http://wapo.st/3680Dhh //➔ turns out Horowitz contacted Durham, who concurred with him
🐣 RT @McFaul As we rightly dig into legal definitions today, please keep in mind the serious national security implications of Trump misconduct. He pressured a foreign government to intervene in our elections. He withheld military assistance to a country at war to do so.
WaPo, Max Boot: The Republicans have become the party of Russia. This makes me sick. http://wapo.st/2DNiLkw
🐣 RT @JuliaDavisNews “It’s time to ask whether we’re seeing the beginnings of a “realignment” with this global right wing movement against the values and even the interests of the United States and the West.”
⋙ 🐣 RT @JuliaDavisNews “Trump, his administration and the GOP have made a conscious choice to align themselves with Putinism. It is not unwitting.”
⋙⋙ 🐣 RT @JuliaDavisNews The lie about Ukrainian interference has been a mainstay of self-absolving Russian propaganda for years. But Trump hasn’t been “duped” into spreading it. He explicitly recognizes an alliance of his own interests with those of Russia in doing so.
🐣 RT @ColinKahl Many of the debunked Republican claims on Ukraine rely on “reporting” by John Solomon. He’s been a hack for a while. And now it is official: Solomon is doing press for the GOP.
⋙ WaPo, Eric Wemple: John Solomon is now doing press for congressional Republicans http://wapo.st/2RlxlIc
🐣 RT @glennkirschner2 I agree that the House should slow down and await the testimony of McGahn, Bolton, Mulvaney, Pompeo and others. As Prof. Turley has said, we don’t want to move too quickly or investigate too narrowly. ALL of Trump’s crimes and abuses should be investigated and exposed.
⋙ 🐣 RT @JohnWDean Let’s impeach him now and NOT send it to the Senate rather keep investigating in the House, and add such supplemental articles as needed! Just let it hang over his head. If the worst happens and he is re-elected, send it to the Senate. But keep investigating!!
⋙⋙ 🐣 RT @gtconway In the spirit of compromise, which I think is missing from this age, may I suggest this: Let’s impeach him now but keep investigating, and if we find more evidence, impeach him again.
⋙⋙⋙ 🐣 RT @PhillipeReines Republicans: Professor Turley, you’re our witness. We called you. Should trump should be impeached?
Turley: We haven’t investigated trump long enough. We need to investigate trump longer.
Republicans: 👀
🐣 RT @JuliaDavisNews Giuliani is in Kyiv seeking to meet with former Ukrainian prosecutors, whose claims and conspiracy theories have been embraced by Republicans, including Viktor Shokin and Kostiantyn H. Kulyk, who have faced allegations of corruption.
⋙ 🐣 RT @JuliaDavisNews Giuliani, Facing Scrutiny, Travels to Europe to Interview Ukrainians: ¤ President Trump’s personal lawyer has been in Budapest and is now in Kyiv to talk with former Ukrainian prosecutors.
🐣 RT @tribelaw Rudy’s back at it in Ukraine TODAY! If anybody wants proof that this gang is so brazen it’ll keep its crime spree going and keep corrupting our elections until we kick them out, here you have it.
⋙ NYT: Giuliani, Facing Scrutiny, Travels to Europe to Interview Ukrainians http://nyti.ms/2OMUqSj
// President Trump’s personal lawyer has been in Budapest and Kyiv this week to talk with former Ukrainian prosecutors for a documentary series intended to debunk the impeachment case.
🐣 RT @Susan_Hennessey Here is Turley’s 1998 opening statement from the Clinton impeachment hearings. It’s a bit different than the opening statement he is giving today:
⋙ JonathanTurley: Clinton Impeachment Testimony: House Judiciary Committee http://bit.ly/2LnEWSv
// 11/9/1998
🔊 GaslitNation: “Trump is the Frankenstein’s monster of the GOP; he was their endgame. But the GOP is now in service to Trump, and Trump is in service to Putin. The GOP now exists as a propaganda weapon to further Kremlin interests.” — @AndreaChalupa on @gaslitnation
📌 https://twitter.com/sarahkendzior/status/1202211726122455041?s=20
TaxFoundation: Tracking the Economic Impact of U.S. Tariffs and Retaliatory Actions http://bit.ly/34VjM6g
// 10/18/2019
≣ Lawfare: Livestream and Witness Statements: Dec. 4 House Judiciary Impeachment Hearing http://bit.ly/2DMUHy9 Dems will call Noah Feldman, Harvard Law; Pamela Karlan, Stanford; and Michael Gerhardt, University of North Carolina; GOP will call Jonathan Turley of GWU
// House Judiciary
🐣 Jonathan Turley supported Clinton’s impeachment, per @AriMelber
🐣 RT @CNNpolitics Four law professors will testify at today’s impeachment hearing before the House Judiciary Committee. ¤ Here’s a look at some of the key lines from their opening statements
⋙ CNN: Next phase in Trump impeachment inquiry begins https://cnn.it/2OMT0r0
⭕ 3 Dec 2019
🐣 RT @ Garry Wills: “The founders did not fear government in general. They feared the presidency.”
🐣 RT @michikokikuchani Garry Wills on the Founders and the Constitution: “McConnell backs up the president’s weird claim that Article II gives him the power to do anything he wants; this can be so only if the Senate abrogates its own, vastly superior powers under Article I.”
NYRB, Gary Wills: The Framers’ Answers to Three Myths About Impeachment http://bit.ly/2Lt4rC7
🐣 RT @mattklewis The key here isn’t just that this is a good ad. But the fact that Biden came out with this ad makes you believe he could actually wage a good campaign against Trump. That’s the key.
⋙ 🐣 RT @JoeBiden The world is laughing at President Trump. They see him for what he really is: dangerously incompetent and incapable of world leadership. ¤ We cannot give him four more years as commander in chief. 💽 https://twitter.com/JoeBiden/status/1202401954644865024?s=20/photo/1
💙💙 ✅ PolitiFact: What we know about the Politico story at the heart of a Ukraine conspiracy theory http://bit.ly/2LojVr3
// Vogel, Shapiro
NYT: A Mysterious ‘-1’ and Other Call Records Show How Giuliani Pressured Ukraine http://nyti.ms/2YhGFy6
// House Democrats’ impeachment report showed the president’s personal lawyer executing an irregular foreign policy.
🔊 ApplePodcasts, Rachel Maddow Show: Numerous potential articles of impeachment sketched out in report http://apple.co/2Ydy3Zm
WaPo Editorial: Democrats should not give up the fight to hear from more witnesses http://wapo.st/2RkoIgH
NYT Editorial: Of All the Efforts to Defend Trump, This Conspiracy Theory Is the Worst http://nyti.ms/2Ll4YWO
// Crowdstrike and opeds; The president grasps at a debunked claim of election interference as impeachment looms.
WSJ: Report Reveals Call Records Between Giuliani, White House and Nunes http://on.wsj.com/35UwIcq
// Draft impeachment report shows president’s lawyer and top Republican lawmaker in frequent contact
DailyBeast, Rick Wilson: Trump’s GOP Sheds Its Dignity, and Chugs His Kool-Aid http://bit.ly/2YdV6Dj
// The impeachment decision in the Senate is foregone because the Republicans there have joined Trump’s suicide cult.
🐣 RT @EvanMcMullin I’m glad @LindseyGrahamSC is speaking truth on Russia at the moment, but no one in Congress has done more to create a culture of Trumpian lies in the GOP than him. He helped set the conditions for his fellow Republican members to shamelessly push Trump’s lies about Ukraine
⋙ 🐣 RT @CNN Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham says he is “1,000% confident” that Russia, not Ukraine, meddled in the 2016 US presidential election, breaking from President Trump and others in his party who hav
GQ, Julia Ioffe: Trump Is Waging War on America’s Diplomats http://bit.ly/34Il2tb
// And the impeachment inquiry is only making things worse. With new figures and fresh horror stories, Julia Ioffe reports on how the president is politicizing our embassies, alienating our allies, and decimating the ranks of the foreign service.
TheAtlantic, Franklin Foer: The Betrayal of Volodymyr Zelensky http://bit.ly/2OMOyIU
// The surreal story of how a comedian who played the Ukrainian president on TV became the president in real life—then found himself at the center of an American political scandal
🐣 RT @EvanMcMullin I desperately want to be optimistic for the GOP because the nation needs it to be healthy and thriving, but looking at it now, it’s hard to see it as anything other than unsalvageable. Worse, it’s truly become a menace to liberty in America.
⋙ 🐣 RT @ @CheriJacobus I agree. And even if you won’t admit it, you know that many of our NeverTrump brethren are way too willing to embrace and “forgive” Trump enablers, to the point of denying they ever were enabling Trump. The “new” post-Trump GOP will be the same as the old — but re-branded.
CNN, Zachary B. Wolf and Sean O’Key: The Trump-Ukraine impeachment inquiry report, annotated http://cnn.it/361RVkR
// House Intelligence Committee Democrats released a 300-page report outlining their months-long impeachment inquiry into the conduct of President Donald Trump. Based on weeks of dramatic public hearings and additional documents requested from the White House, it’s an indictment of Trump’s pressure on Ukraine and, they say, his threat to the US system of government. We’ve annotated their executive summary and linked to the full report.
🐣 RT @LovenTreasure The Cliff’s Notes by #Maddow (but the important thing is he deserves to be impeached): https://twitter.com/LovenTreasure/status/1202048074907914240?s=20/photo/1
NYT: Key Takeaways From House Intelligence Committee’s Impeachment Report http://nyti.ms/2Yekhp8
// The 300-page report lays out Democrats’ case that President Trump abused the power of his office to solicit political help from a foreign power and obstructed the inquiry into his actions.
🐣 RT @W7VOA Front pages of Wednesday @nytimes and @NYDailyNews. https://twitter.com/W7VOA/status/1202075704495616000?s=20/photo/1-2
🐣💽 RT @RepAdamSchiff Our report lays out overwhelming and uncontested evidence that Trump abused his power to coerce an ally into doing his political dirty work. ¤ For Congress, the question is not of fact, but of duty, responsibility and allegiance to our own oath of office. [CNN:] https://twitter.com/RepAdamSchiff/status/1202067900573597697?s=20/photo/1
CNN: Barr saying inspector general report won’t be the last word on FBI Russia probe http://cnn.it/2Rl0HpV
WaPo, Aaron Blake: 2 key Trump-Ukraine events we should be paying more attention to http://wapo.st/360TWO4 more arrangements with “strings attached”
🐣 RT @dcpoll “Roger Stone, who talked directly to Mr. Trump, received a call from a number listed only as ‘-1,’ the records from Roger Stone’s trial show.”
DailyBeast, Michael Tomasky: Think You’ve Seen Peak GOP Crazy? Watch This. http://bit.ly/381mWqQ
// Doug Collins is poised to make Devin Nunes look like Abraham Lincoln.
DailyBeast, Lachlan Markay: Impeachment Investigators Got Rudy Giuliani’s Phone Records—And They’re Quite Revealing http://bit.ly/2rNs6pP
// Trump’s lawyer was in talks with, among others, Devin Nunes and officials at OMB as the president pursued a political agenda in Ukraine.
🐣 💽 RT @ReigerReport HANNITY: Did you ever talk to this guy [Lev] Parnas or whoever his name is? ¤ NUNES: You know, it’s possible, but I haven’t gone through all my phone records. I don’t really recall that name. … But it seems very unlikely that I would be taking calls from random people. https://twitter.com/RiegerReport/status/1202057371557801986?s=20/photo/1
💙💙 NYT: Impeachment Report Says Trump Solicited Foreign Election Interference http://nyti.ms/2Rh1hVS involved: “Vice President Mike Pence; Secretary of State Mike Pompeo; Rick Perry, the energy secretary; and Mick Mulvaney, the acting chief of staff”
// “ … Vice President Mike Pence; Secretary of State Mike Pompeo; Rick Perry, the energy secretary; and Mick Mulvaney, the acting chief of staff — either knew of the president’s efforts or were deeply involved in carrying them out.”
NYT: Impeachment Report Says Trump Solicited Foreign Election Interference http://nyti.ms/2Rh1hVS
WaPo: GOP embraces a debunked Ukraine conspiracy to defend Trump from impeachment http://wapo.st/2qiGSVf
WaPo, Jennifer Rubin: The Intelligence Committee’s report is a triumph http://wapo.st/2LlAtzL
🔆 This❗️⋙ 📔 HPSCI: Trump-Ukraine impeachment inquiry report http://bit.ly/2LlnJsX
// 12/3/2019; House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence
SECTION I. THE PRESIDENT’S MISCONDUCT …………………………………………………………37
1. The President Forced Out the U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine …………………………………….38
2. The President Put Giuliani and the Three Amigos in Charge of Ukraine Issues …………..51
3. The President Froze Military Assistance to Ukraine…………………………………………………67
4. The President’s Meeting with the Ukrainian President Was Conditioned on An Announcement of Investigations ……………………………………………………………………………..83
5. The President Asked the Ukrainian President to Interfere in the 2020 U.S. Election by Investigating the Bidens and 2016 Election Interference……………………………………………..98
6. The President Wanted Ukraine to Announce the Investigations Publicly ………………….114
7. The President’s Conditioning of Military Assistance and a White House Meeting on Announcement of Investigations Raised Alarm…………………………………………………………126
8. The President’s Scheme Was Exposed………………………………………………………………..140
≣ HPSCI: Minority Report http://bit.ly/386qDeX
🔆 This❗️⋙ NYT: Impeachment Report Alleges Trump Solicited Foreign Election Interference http://nyti.ms/2Rh1hVS
// The House Intelligence Committee concluded that President Trump tried to “use the powers of his office to solicit foreign interference on his behalf in the 2020 election.”
🔆 This❗️⋙ WaPo: House panel’s report says Trump ‘compromised national security to advance his personal political interests’ http://wapo.st/33JMWDT
⭕ 2 Dec 2019
DailyBeast, Patricia Ravalgi (12/2): Once-Heroic Agents Have Helped Trump’s Effort to Divide and Conquer the FBI http://bit.ly/2MUCkwv
// 12/2/2019; I’ve watched as some of the FBI’s best agents drank the Trump Kool-Aid and turned against their former companions in the counterterror trenches. One reason: Clinton hatred.
💙💙 Politico, Natasha Bertrand: Senate panel look into Ukraine interference comes up short http://politi.co/2MfhIyD
// Some Republican senators recently questioned whether Kyiv tried to sabotage Donald Trump’s campaign in 2016. But the GOP-led Intelligence Committee looked into the theory, and found scant evidence to support it.
⋙ See under Entire Articles: Politico Bertrand Ukraine 12-2-2019
Salon, Igor Derysh: Prosecutor who aided Giuliani’s hunt for damaging details on Biden fired in anti-corruption purge http://bit.ly/2DV5lTM
// Kostiantyn Kulyk, one of Giuliani’s earliest contacts in Ukraine, was given a dismissal notice last week
📔 NYT: Read the House Republicans’ Report on the Impeachment Inquiry http://nyti.ms/35YJExV
🐣 RT @kylegriffin1 Chairman Schiff: The Judiciary Committee will be “looking at the Mueller report” and other reports from investigative committees to find additional evidence of impeachable conduct by Trump.
⋙ 💽 MSNBC, RachelMaddow: Public to see Trump impeachment report Tuesday; inquiry continues http://on.msnbc.com/33GjM8x
// Rep. Adam Schiff, chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, tells Rachel Maddow that the report on the Donald Trump impeachment inquiry will be released publicly on Tuesday, but the impeachment committees will continue to investigate, issue subpoenas, and hear new witnesses even after this initial report heads to the House Judiciary Committee.
CNN: House Republicans defend Trump’s actions in new report responding to impeachment inquiry http://cnn.it/34LMyWP
WaPo, Aaron Blake: The GOP’s impeachment report is a series of red herrings http://wapo.st/2r7ehT9
🐣 RT @EricColumbus Even if CrowdStrike were owned by a Ukrainian (it’s not)
Even if DNC server were in Ukraine (it isn’t)
Even if Trump could properly block aid until Ukraine investigated CrowdStrike (he couldn’t)
Trump’s theory amounts to “Ukraine hacked DNC to help Democrats.” ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
DailyBeast, Julia Arciga: Michael Cohen: Trump Attorney Told Me to Keep Quiet About Additional Russia Contacts in Moscow Tower Deal http://bit.ly/2qio9co
// Jay Sekulow; Cohen told federal investigators he knew about “more communications with Russia,” according to newly released documents from the Mueller probe.
🐣 RT @JohnJHarwood as Fiona Hill testified, the Ukraine “investigation” Trump sought was a Russian-intelligence driven effort. its goal, as with attempts to obstruct Mueller, was to absolve 2016 conduct of Russia and Trump
⋙ 🐣 RT @gtconway3d My own view is that Trump’s criminal obstruction of the Mueller investigation is of a piece with his criminal shakedown of Ukraine.
🐣 RT @McFaul What? @TuckerCarlson thinks it is ok for Russia to annex Ukrainian territory and then we should side with Russia ? Wow. Just wow. Missing Reagan. Missing real conservative Republicans. Missing Churchill. Scared of appeasers.
⋙ 🐣 RT @Acyn Tucker: I should say for the record that I’m totally opposed to these sanctions and I don’t think we should be at war with Russia and I think we should take the side of Russia if we have to choose between Russia and Ukraine 💽 https://twitter.com/Acyn/status/1201674758158352385?s=20/photo/1
NYT: White House Lifts Mysterious Hold on Military Aid to Lebanon http://nyti.ms/35OfWf8
// The Trump administration will allow the $105 million aid package to flow after freezing the funding without explanation.
WaPo: Democrats quietly debate expanding impeachment articles beyond Ukraine http://wapo.st/33EtWGJ //➔ if the world made sense, which it doesn’t, it would include all impeachable conduct
🐣 RT @JoyceWhiteVance This argument is dumb. I’m sure the Japanese, the Belgians & the Chileans has a favorite too. But none of them, nor Ukraine, had troll farms & hacked the DNC. All 17 agencies in our intel community concluded Russia interfered in our election.
⋙ 🐣 RT @frankthorp Senate Intel Committee Chairman @SenatorBurr: “Every elected official in the Ukraine was for Hillary Clinton. Is that very different than the Russians being for Donald Trump?”
WaPo, Dana Milbank: Pat Cipollone is the dog that caught the car http://wapo.st/2P7gupK
🐣 RT @matthewamiller Unreal. It is not uncommon for an AG to disagree with an IG finding because it is too tough on DOJ. I have never heard of an IG confirming the department did things correctly and an AG disputing it. Just shocking partisan behavior.
🐣 RT @glennkirschner2 Barr flat-out lied to the American people about the findings of the Mueller report. Now he apparently will dispute the findings of the DOJ Inspector General because those findings don’t help Trump. I hope Congress will soon turn its attention to Barr.
🐣 RT @selectedwisdom If true, This is absurd and does such damage to DoJ. Why would any citizen trust the DoJ when Barr behaves this way?”Barr disputes key inspector general finding about FBI’s Russia investigation”
🐣 RT @DwightEvansPA AG Barr is trying to muddy the waters around IG report all because it debunks his preferred finding. His opinion should not matter here and Barr must let the IG report stand on its own without further interference.
🐣 RT @eliehonig Barr is in no position to assess whether the FBI had enough evidence to open an investigation because he has never actually hands-on prosecuted or tried a criminal case. Oh and he’s a spineless political hack, as demonstrated once again here.
🔆 This❗️⋙ WaPo: Barr doesn’t accept key inspector general finding about FBI’s Russia investigation http://wapo.st/33GzgcS
🐣 RT @RepAdamSchiff The GOP report ignores voluminous evidence Trump used his office to press Ukraine into investigating Biden by withholding military aid and a White House meeting. ¤ They say this is just Trump’s “outside the beltway” thinking. It’s more accurately outside the law and Constitution.
↥ ↧
🐣 RT @kylegriffin1 Schiff: “The Minority’s rebuttal document … ignores voluminous evidence that the president used the power of his office to pressure Ukraine … the Minority dismisses this as just part of the President’s ‘outside the beltway’ thinking. It is more accurately, outside the law.”
Politico: House Judiciary reveals witnesses for first impeachment hearing http://politi.co/35Vig3V Democrats will call Noah Feldman, Harvard Law; Pamela Karlan, Stanford; and Michael Gerhardt, University of North Carolina; Republicans with call Jonathan Turley of GWU
// A quartet of constitutional scholars will kick off the panel’s impeachment proceedings on Wednesday.
NYT, Bob Bauer: Trump Is the Founders’ Worst Nightmare http://nyti.ms/2RcHl6l Mr. Bauer served as a White House counsel under President Barack Obama.
// Once in the Oval Office, a demagogue can easily stay there.
🐣 RT @glennkirschner2 Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson just denied DOJ’s motion for a stay of her order that McGahn must testify before Congress, as “further delay . . . causes grave harm . . . to the interests of the public.”(see full quote, below). The state of our judiciary remains STRONG! https://twitter.com/glennkirschner2/status/1201647787848413186?s=20/photo/1
💙 WaPo, Jennifer Rubin: Nadler calls Trump’s bluff http://wapo.st/2rb17of “There is no process that will meet Trump’s definition of “fairness,” because any limitation on his conduct and any criticism are by definition unfair in his narcissistic, self-deluded view.”
🐣 RT @PaulaChertok A federal court today ruled McGahn refusal to comply w/ congressional subpoena was unlawful, calling Trump’s arguments “disingenuous & unacceptable mischaracterization.” THAT’S how media must treat this admin of liars & propagandists who use illegitimate methods & in BAD FAITH.
‼️ 🐣 RT @joshgerstein BREAKING: Judge denies Trump admin request to stay order requiring McGahn to appear for testimony. Also flays DOJ, calling its arguments ‘disingenuous’ & ‘unacceptable mischaracterization’. Doc: https://twitter.com/joshgerstein/status/1201627676265435136?s=20/photo/1
WaPo, Philip Bump: This is what Ukraine’s ‘interference’ looked like, according to Republicans http://wapo.st/35Z5a5Y
🔆 This❗️⋙ NYT: Republican Impeachment Defense Claims Trump’s Ukraine Pressure Was Apolitical http://nyti.ms/33IfE7S
// In a report intended to counter Democrats’ impeachment case against President Trump, Republicans will argue his efforts to get Ukraine to investigate his rivals had nothing to do with politics.
NBCNews: The impeachment fight boils down to these four simple questions http://nbcnews.to/37YFyrG
1. One, did the president of the United States ask another country to interfere in the upcoming 2020 election — against possible Democratic rival Joe Biden?
2. Two, did Trump and his administration withhold military aid and a White House visit to compel Ukraine to start this investigation into Joe Biden and his son?
3. Three, were those actions — first the ask of interference, then the temporary withholding of military aid — an abuse of the president’s powers?
4. And four — and most importantly — do those actions amount to impeachable offenses?
🐣 RT @TheRickWilson Sadly, I’m starting to think everything we worked so hard to build was a lie.
⋙ 🐣 RT @stuartpstevens the strong, realistic party on foreign policy leads to only one conclusion: they never believed what they said. It was all a lie.
⋙⋙ 🐣 RT @MeetThePress . @ChuckTodd says Kennedy’s accusations about Ukraine sound like “an active propaganda campaign by Russia to get people like you to say these things.”
“You apparently were briefed about this [in the Senate]. … You didn’t attend that briefing?”
@SenJohnKennedy: “No.” #MTP
WaPo, Max Boot: Trump is continuing the ‘deconstruction of the administrative state’ http://wapo.st/2Rep7RN
🐣 RT @JRubinBlogger What to do about a senator who neglects his obligations to attend briefings, who perpetuates propaganda from an adversary and who deliberately misleads the public by conflating meddling/interference by an adversary and public criticism of a candidate?
WaPo, Jennifer Rubin: What to do about the Kremlin’s propagandists http://wapo.st/2YifB1T
… Kennedy responded, “I think both Russia and Ukraine meddled in the 2016 election. I think it’s been well documented in the Financial Times, in Politico, in the Economist, in the Washington Examiner, even on CBS, that the prime minister of Ukraine, the interior minister, the Ukrainian ambassador to the United States, the head of the Ukrainian Anti-Corruption League, all meddled in the election on social media and otherwise.” …
Kennedy is not alone in his obfuscation, but he is one of the most egregious examples. Frankly, it is for this reason — the need to set the public straight and to make a historical record — to proceed with impeachment.
WaPo: Valerie Plame, America’s most famous ex-spy, finds her new identity http://wapo.st/2YifB1T
TIME: ‘I Don’t Trust Anyone at All.’ Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky Speaks Out on Trump, Putin and a Divided Europe http://bit.ly/2OH4Gvg
Zelensky “pushed back on Trump’s recent claims about corruption in Ukraine, and questioned the fairness of Trump’s decision to freeze American aid. “Look, I never talked to the President from the position of a quid pro quo. That’s not my thing. … I don’t want us to look like beggars. But you have to understand. We’re at war. If you’re our strategic partner, then you can’t go blocking anything for us. I think that’s just about fairness. It’s not about a quid pro quo. It just goes without saying.”
🐣 .@GlennKesslerWP PLEASE check out all the claims Sen. John Kennedy made on @MeetThePress, including all the articles he cited. I think I’ve read most of them: Vogel, Isakoff etc, and the caveats regarding them, but it would be great to have them all addressed in one piece.
━━━━━━━▼ FACTCHECK Ukraine Meddling Hunter Biden Chalupa
💙💙 ✅🔄 PolitiFact’s Trump-Ukraine-Biden coverage in one place http://bit.ly/38gaZOb Dozens of articles, starting 5/7/2019; continuously updated
✅ PolitiFact: Fact-checking House Republicans’ impeachment report defending Trump on Ukraine http://bit.ly/351fme0
// 12/4/2019
✅ WaPo FactChecker, Glenn Kessler: GOP tries to connect dots on Biden and Ukraine, but comes up short http://wapo.st/361zKeX FOUR PINOCCHIOS 🍄🍄🍄🍄
// 12/4/2019
President Trump has falsely claimed that then-Vice President Joe Biden pressured the Ukrainian government to fire Shokin, the top Ukrainian prosecutor, because he was investigating Ukraine’s largest private gas company, Burisma, at a time when Hunter Biden was on the Burisma board. In fact, the opposite is true — Joe Biden was carrying out administration policy, coordinated with European allies, to press for the removal of Shokin because he was not investigating corruption. …
Republicans are clearly trying to connect some dots to give an impression of malfeasance by Biden. But they are looking at the wrong dots. Nothing significant appears to have happened in February 2016 except primarily the reinstatement of a previous court order. Instead, Zlochevsky’s assets had been seized a year earlier and were only briefly not under a court order because of a prosecutorial error.
In other words, there would have been no reason for Biden to raise the supposed raid of Zlochevsky’s home in his phone calls. Moreover, as we’ve shown, Biden’s aides at the time say that neither Burisma nor Zlochevsky was raised in the calls.
💙💙 ✅ PolitiFact: What we know about the Politico story at the heart of a Ukraine conspiracy theory http://bit.ly/2LojVr3
// 12/3/2019; Ken Vogel, Alexandra Chalupa
WaPo, Philip Bump: This is what Ukraine’s ‘interference’ looked like, according to Republicans http://wapo.st/35Z5a5Y
// 12/2/2019
🔆 This❗️⋙ NYT: Republican Impeachment Defense Claims Trump’s Ukraine Pressure Was Apolitical http://nyti.ms/33IfE7S
// // 12/2/2019; In a report intended to counter Democrats’ impeachment case against President Trump, Republicans will argue his efforts to get Ukraine to investigate his rivals had nothing to do with politics.
WaPo, Greg Sargent: The latest defense of Trump is a total scam. Republicans just confirmed it themselves. http://wapo.st/
// 12/2/2019; 1. Collins: Trump cares about corruption, 2. “Senator Kennedy’s laughable spin”
BusinessInsider: NBC’s Chuck Todd grills Sen. John Kennedy for echoing Putin’s talking points and doing Trump’s ‘dirty work’ http://bit.ly/33Ay5vm
// 12/1/2019
✅ PBS: AP Fact Check: Trump’s Ukraine defense collides with facts http://to.pbs.org/34IaXfF
// 11/30/2019
✅ Politifact: Fact-checking Trump’s falsehoods on Fox & Friends about Ukraine, impeachment and Mueller report http://bit.ly/2rHGaRR
// 11/22/2019
✅ Politifact: No, Ukraine didn’t indict Burisma on Wednesday http://bit.ly/33G8kKj
// 11/22/2019
✅ FactCheck.org: Trump Repeats False Ukraine Claims http://bit.ly/2sC2VXK
// 11/22/2019
WashingtonExaminer: Intelligence officials warned senators Russia tried to blame 2016 election interference on Ukraine http://washex.am/2Rar9m4
// 11/22/2019
💙 NYT: Charges of Ukrainian Meddling? A Russian Operation, U.S. Intelligence Says http://nyti.ms/2OFy4kl
// 11/22/2019; Moscow has run a yearslong operation to blame Ukraine for its own 2016 election interference. Republicans have used similar talking points to defend President Trump in impeachment proceedings.
Axios: Senators briefed that CrowdStrike theory is Russian-backed disinformation campaign http://bit.ly/33CJWcb
// 11/22/2019
CNN: Senators were briefed on Russian campaign to blame Ukraine for 2016 election meddling in the fall http://cnn.it/2Y6n18d
// 11/22/2019
✅ NBCNews: Does Ukraine have the DNC server like Trump says? We fact checked that. http://nbcnews.to/2P89VTG
// 11/22/2019; A day earlier, a key impeachment witness — Trump’s former Russia expert — called this conspiracy a “fictional narrative” that serves Moscow’s interests.
✅ Politifact: Fiona Hill and conspiracy theories about Ukraine and Russia: What you need to know http://bit.ly/35UYkOQ
// 11/22/2019
✅ AP FACT CHECK: Trump, GOP claims on Ukraine corruption http://bit.ly/2DzhSfm
// 11/21/2019
TheFederalist, Chrissy Clark: Media Acknowledged Ukrainian Meddling Until It Hurt Impeachment Efforts http://bit.ly/2Pad3ym
● Text Block: https://twitter.com/Auriandra/status/1201563217945911296?s=20/photo/1
// 11/21/2019; Apparently these sources were used by Sen John Kennedy (R-AL) as evidence Ukraine meddled in 2016 election. They were cited without links or even titles, but I found them based on media source, date and topic.
“As the endless impeachment hearings drag on, congressional Democrats and the mainstream media are pushing the narrative that Ukraine meddling in the 2016 election is a fictitious theory. But that’s not what they said just after President Trump won the election.
“‘It’s not just that [Trump] subverted U.S. policy for this fictitious theory about Ukrainian meddling in the election. Which, by the way, the absolute, unanimous conclusion is it was Russia, not Ukraine, is a conclusion based on fact.’ CNN’s Andy McCabe said.”
[ The article doesn’t provide links or article titles, just dates, but I looked them up: ]
● FinancialTimes, Roman Olearchyk: Ukraine’s leaders campaign against ‘pro-Putin’ Trump http://on.ft.com/2DDFM9B
// 8/26/2018; Fears over effect Republican’s victory would have on US policy towards Kiev● Politico, Ken Vogel and David Stern: Ukrainian efforts to sabotage Trump backfire http://politi.co/2XBjFcp
// 1/11/2017; Kiev officials are scrambling to make amends with the president-elect after quietly working to boost Clinton.● FinancialTimes, Demetri Sevastopulo and Courtney Weaver: Moscow’s cyber warriors in Ukraine linked to US election http://on.ft.com/34D2FG1
// 12/21/2016; Security firm accuses Russian intelligence’s ‘Fancy Bear’ hackers● Politico, Ken Vogel, David Stern and Josh Meyer: Manafort faced blackmail attempt, hacks suggest http://politi.co/2Y6Vq6G
// 2/23/2017; Stolen texts appear to show threats to expose relations among Russia-friendly forces, Trump and his former campaign chairman.● NYT, Andrew E Kramer: Ukraine Court Rules Manafort Disclosure Caused ‘Meddling’ in U.S. Election http://nyti.ms/2PbKjFM
// 12/12/2018; [this ruling was overturned]
✅ BBC: Trump impeachment inquiry: Three Republican claims fact-checked http://bbc.in/37XAyDt
// 11/19/2019
💙 ✅ WaPo FactChecker, Glenn Kessler (10/8/2019): The GOP theory that Ukraine ‘set up’ Trump http://wapo.st/2CPohCV
// 11/18/2019
≣ GaslitNation: Alexandra Chalupa Interview [Transcript] http://bit.ly/2XpKT68
// undated; 19p
✅ CNN, Daniel Dale: Fact check: A list of 45 ways Trump has been dishonest about Ukraine and impeachment http://cnn.it/2XlvzaR
// 11/16/2019
✅ NBCConnecticutt: AP Fact Check: GOP Presses Empty Ukraine Meddling Theory http://bit.ly/2YbXQBg
// 11/13/2019; The first public hearing in the impeachment inquiry against President Donald Trump was held Wednesday
✅ USAToday: Factcheck: Trump wrong on European aid to Ukraine http://bit.ly/33Gj5fi
// 11/13/2019
💙💙 BuzzFeedNews, Ryan Broderick (11/4): How A Viral Article On Facebook Convinced Trump’s Inner Circle They Had Found Their Very Own Ukrainian “Whistleblower” http://bit.ly/2YfgVCA
// 11/4/2019; Andriy Telizhenko has propelled himself from a minor functionary at the Ukrainian Embassy to a bespoke purveyor of conspiracy theories to Republican senators, Russian media, and Rudy Giuliani.
… Telizhenko possesses a key piece of currency that many of his peers don’t: a major Politico story that includes his name significantly. Since the piece’s publication, he’s been able to parlay the name-check into a political consultancy business and meetings with senators and the president’s personal lawyer.
Written by Ken Vogel and Ukraine-based reporter David Stern, the story is titled “Ukrainian Efforts to Sabotage Trump Backfire.” Vogel left Politico in June 2017 and joined the New York Times, where he has continued to cover Ukraine’s role in US politics, Stern has recently been doing the same for the Washington Post. Although it was largely forgotten in the mainstream discourse, the 2017 story caused a massive shockwave across the conservative fringe. It’s regularly posted to 4chan and Reddit as smoking gun proof of Democratic collusion. It was linked to by right-wing news site Daily Wire as recently as last month.
Telizhenko, then working for the Ukrainian Embassy in Washington, told Vogel and Stern that in March of 2016, Oksana Shulyar, a top aide for Ukrainian Ambassador to the US Valeriy Chaly, asked him to help Ukrainian American DNC contractor Alexandra Chalupa research connections between Trump, his campaign chair Paul Manafort, and the Russian government. …
Telizhenko presents himself as stumbling across the purported conspiracy inadvertently, claiming that Chalupa solicited the Ukrainian Embassy’s assistance to build a case against Manafort, who was later indicted and found guilty on eight counts and pleaded guilty to counts of conspiracy. …
… Telizhenko resurfaced in the summer of 2018 on the Ukrainian news site Strana.UA, whose editor fled Ukraine for Vienna amid threats to his life in 2018. Telizhenko repeated his story to the pro-Russian outlet — Chalupa tried to solicit help from the Ukrainian Embassy to do opposition research on Manafort. But in this story, he claimed that Poroshenko worked with Chalupa to discredit the Trump campaign. Telizhenko also mentions his appearance in the Politico story as a way of adding legitimacy to his story. …
The first original English interview with Telizhenko of the post-Spygate cycle was conducted by former Breitbart journalist Lee Stranahan, who left the hyperpartisan news site in April 2017 to join Russian state-run news site Sputnik News. Stranahan, following his move to Sputnik News in April 2017, told the Atlantic, “I’m on the Russian payroll now, when you work at Sputnik you’re being paid by the Russians. That’s what it is. I don’t have any qualms about it.”
Stranahan conducted the interview on Periscope, but it was soon embedded and written up by Sputnik News, which included a link to the 2017 Politico article as a way to validate the Stranahan conversation. “I spoke to Lee Stranahan because he was asking for an interview for a long time. And he promised it wouldn’t go on Sputnik, but it went on Sputnik. But he did it in a professional way. He said, ‘I am not pro-Russian,’” Telizhenko said. “That was the deal.”
Following Stranahan’s interview, Telizhenko started appearing more frequently in American far-right media. In November 2018, he appeared on the same Infowars radio show episode as Roger Stone. Gateway Pundit wrote multiple stories about him, the first in December 2018 and the second in March this year.
… On March 20, Telizhenko tweeted the Gateway Pundit article at far-right activist Jack Posobiec and Donald Trump Jr. The next day, he tweeted at John Solomon, a former opinion writer at the Hill, then at Fox News host Sean Hannity, and then at Solomon again.
“I wanted someone to look into my story,” Telizhenko said. “I effectively reached out to them because I figured they were also interested in something in Ukraine.”
On March 24, Telizhenko went on another Twitter self-promotion push, tweeting at Fox News contributor Sara Carter and host Sean Hannity, asking them to “look into DNC Ukraine collusion.” Then he tweeted at Dan Bongino, then at Hannity again, then at Bongino again, then Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton and President Trump, then finally at Republican Florida Rep. Matt Gaetz. Telizhenko’s tweetstorm began to wind down on March 25 with a tweet at Giuliani; then on March 27, Telizhenko tweeted the Politico article at Giuliani and Trump one last time.
None of the big names Telizhenko tweeted at publicly engaged with him, either via a reply, like, or retweet. None of them follow him either. But a month later, the tweets to Solomon paid off, when the Hill ran an interview with him. (Telizhenko told BuzzFeed News that Solomon reached out to him.) …
Solomon’s work has shaped much of the conservative news coverage around the Ukrainian–DNC collusion conspiracy theory. Solomon began reporting on possible Ukrainian collusion in April this year, publishing allegations made by Kostiantyn Kulyk, the deputy head of Ukraine’s prosecutor general’s International Legal Cooperation Department, which claimed Ukrainian law enforcement had evidence that Democrats attempted to interfere in the 2016 election.
Solomon’s first interview with Telizhenko, published on April 25, was the most-shared story featuring the Ukrainian since the Politico story. According to BuzzSumo, it received 68,000 engagements on Facebook and 34,000 shares on Twitter. According to social metrics site Crowdtangle, the two largest Facebook groups or pages that linked to it were the Hill’s main page (1.3 million followers) and “The Committee to Defend the President” (over 880,000 followers). Of the four Hill articles Telizhenko’s name has appeared in since last spring, Solomon, who did not return requests for comment, has written three.
Telizhenko also worked in Ukraine’s prosecutor general’s office, between June 2014 and November 2015, before Yuriy Lutsenko became prosecutor general, but overlapping with Ukraine’s special anti-corruption prosecutor, Nazar Kholodnytsky, whom Giuliani interviewed in 2019.
“We kept in touch. We talked for some time,” Telizhenko said of Kholodnytsky. “Last time I spoke with him was last year.”
It looks as if his efforts to curry favor with Trump’s inner circle by members of the Ukrainian prosecutor general’s office were actually part of a larger plan to oust Marie Yovanovitch, the US ambassador to Ukraine and a vocal anti-corruption critic. The Trump administration recalled Yovanovitch in May.
In a deposition given to congressional committees last month, she said that she was told that Trump had lost confidence in her and that there had been a concerted campaign against her and pressure from the president to remove her since the summer of 2018.
But Telizhenko denied that Ukrainian prosecutors coming forward had anything to do with the ousting of Yovanovitch. “They just wanted to protect what was going on in the prosecutor’s office from the interference from the liberal-sided state department officials,” he said. …
Although Telizhenko’s conservative media blitz may not have landed him on Fox News, it was successful enough to get him a seat at the table with Giuliani — literally. According to the joint US House committees’ investigation and confirmed by Telizhenko, Republican operative Victoria Toensing organized a meeting between him and Giuliani at the former mayor’s office in New York in May. (Toensing also currently represents Solomon.) …
A month after the interview with Giuliani, Telizhenko met with Republican Wisconsin Sen. Ron Johnson in Washington, DC. … Johnson has emerged as a central figure in the impeachment investigation, both as an investigator and a figure in the investigation. …
Throughout it all, the engine of Telizhenko’s rise from low-level embassy employee to alt-whistleblower is the Facebook traffic around the 2017 Politico story that names him. According to Crowdtangle, on Sept. 23 of this year, the story started to go viral on Facebook again — a day after President Trump acknowledged that he had discussed Hunter Biden and a missing DNC server in a phone call with Ukraine’s president. It began with a user from Flushing, New York, sharing it to a 3,000-person group called “YourVoice America Group.”
“While the Democrats and the lapdog media has been spending their time making up Trump Administration scandals, they’ve been ignoring the real political scandals coming out of Ukraine,” the user wrote.
Then that same user shared with the same copy-and-pasted the same text to three other groups, “Crowdsource the Truth,” “LIFT — Long Islanders for Trump,” and “ActivistsUnited for Transparent Democracy” in quick succession. The Politico link made its way through a network of fan groups for Fox News hosts like Jesse Watters, Laura Ingraham, and Tucker Carlson. It finally got its first surge of traffic on Oct. 1, when it was shared to “Bill O’Reilly fan group.” The next day, it was on Rush Limbaugh’s verified Facebook page where it was shared 700 times. Two weeks later, it was shared on the verified Facebook page for Mark Levin, a right-wing radio host, where it was shared 7,000 times.
And from the fan pages, Telizhenko finally made it to the mainstream of conservative media. His name appeared in Fox News article for the first time in September. He appeared on Glenn Beck’s YouTube show on Oct. 19. The episode was titled “Whistleblowing AGAINST the DNC.” Telizhenko also managed to snag a segment on One America News Network, being interviewed by Jack Posobiec.
Throughout everything, Telizhenko has vehemently denied working with Russian media. “I don’t like that [the Russian media] is using this. I’m against it. I’m getting calls from the Russians asking for an interview,” he said.
At the same time, though, when asked how he feels about the fact that what he’s doing could be used to disrupt the impeachment process or the 2020 US election, he’s wholly dismissive.
“I don’t think I have the weight to disrupt the elections for 2020 with a story that happened in 2016 — four years prior to today,” he said. “I saw that there’s a lot of other websites using my talks or interviews and they have their own narrative or story. I don’t have any action over that. I try not to get involved.”
✅ Bloomberg: On Bidens and Ukraine, Wild Claims With Little Basis http://bloom.bg/2Kf8m4W
// 10/9/2019
✅ PolitiFact: PolitiFact, Louis Jacobson: Donald Trump’s accusations about Hunter Biden and a payout from China: A closer look http://bit.ly/2OidDLW not illegal; HB was unpaid board member; company raised $4.2M (not $1.5B), Hunter invested $420K; no returns realized
// 10/2/2019
Vox, Matt Yglesias: Hunter Biden, the black sheep who might accidentally bring down Trump, explained http://bit.ly/2OrAIM3
// 10/1/2019; A troubled guy at the center of the fake scandal that became a real scandal.
✅ WaPo FactChecker, Glenn Kessler: A quick guide to Trump’s false claims about Ukraine and the Bidens http://wapo.st/2sKBVoS
// 9/27/2019
🐣 RT @NBCNews President Trump’s claims appear to be at the center of a scandal involving a phone call with Ukraine’s president, in which he reportedly pressed for a probe of his political rival.
⋙ NBCNews: There’s no evidence for Trump’s Biden-Ukraine accusations. What really happened? http://nbcnews.to/2mzVcGA
// Trump’s claims appear to be at the center of a scandal involving a phone call with Ukraine’s president, in which Trump reportedly pressed for a probe of his political rival.
// 9/25/2019
✅ NPR, Greg Myre: What Were The Bidens Doing In Ukraine? 5 Questions Answered http://n.pr/2kUuHuZ
// 9/24/2019
1. So what did Joe Biden do in Ukraine?
2. What role did Joe Biden’s son Hunter Biden play in Ukraine?
3. Is there any sign of wrongdoing by either Joe Biden or his son Hunter Biden?
4. How do Trump and his supporters see Joe Biden’s work?
5. What’s next?
DailyBeast, Anna Nemtsova: Ukraine Likely to Reopen Probe of Hunter Biden Firm: Sources http://bit.ly/2mwUXfi
// 9/24/2019; President Zelensky came to office vowing to fight corruption, and it looks like he’ll open a lot of cases shut by shady prosecutors. But the focus is on Ukraine, not the U.S.
AP, Stephen Braun and Lynn Berry: The story behind Biden’s son, Ukraine and Trump’s claims http://bit.ly/2kUQBOR
// 9/23/2019
🐣 RT @jennycohn1 It is important to understand that the Trump regime is LYING when it says that prosecutor Shokin—who Biden & the EU called out—wanted to investigate Burisma’s corruption. It was the opposite. Shokin enabled Burisma’s corruption by refusing to turn over evidence to the UK. 1/ 📌 https://twitter.com/jennycohn1/status/1176333122507440129?s=20
// 9/23/2019; Hunter Biden
MMFA, Courtney Hagle and Bobby Lewis: Debunking lies about Trump, Biden, Ukraine, and the whistleblower http://bit.ly/2l05I9O research contributed by Courtney Hagel and Eric Kleefeld
// 9/23/2019
✅ CNN, Daniel Dale: Fact check: What Trump has been getting wrong on Biden and Ukraine http://cnn.it/2mZxIef
// 9/23/2019; Hunter Biden
✅ PolitiFact, Louis Jacobson and John Kruzel: Trump’s Ukraine call, a whistleblower and the Bidens: What we know, what we don’t http://bit.ly/2mSDu14
// 9/23/2019; Hunter Biden
✅ WaPo FactChecker, Glenn Kessler and Salvador Rizzo: Fact-checking Trump’s latest claims on Biden and Ukraine http://wapo.st/2muacWl No there there.
// 9/23/2019; Hunter Biden
💙💙 🔆 WaPo, Philip Bump: Trump has been openly trying to leverage Ukraine to his political benefit for months http://wapo.st/2m6eRxr
// 9/20/2019
💙💙 🔆 DailyBeast, Anna Nemtsova: Ukrainian Official: Trump Wants Dirt ‘To Discredit Biden’ http://bit.ly/2mrtjR4
// 9/20/2019
✅ PolitiFact, Louis Jacobson: Fact-checking Joe Biden, Hunter Biden, and Ukraine http://bit.ly/2mqKylA
● Text Block: https://twitter.com/Auriandra/status/1176620172830023680?s=20/photo/1
// 9/24/2019; “Half-True”
The image gets individual pieces of this assertion right — Hunter Biden was a director of the company, and Joe Biden did leverage U.S. aid to fire a prosecutor. But it overreaches by assuming that Joe Biden acted to protect the company his son was affiliated with. In reality, there was widespread agreement in the West that the existing prosecutor had to go, and it’s not clear that the company would have benefited from his ouster anyway, given evidence that its cases had long been dormant.
✅ FactCheck.org, Eugene Kiely: Trump Twists Facts on Biden and Ukraine http://bit.ly/2liUTjn
// 9/24/2019; Hunter Biden
Politico: Biden wages war on Hunter-Ukraine reporting http://politi.co/2lx49jR
// 9/24/2019; ‘You saw what happened to Hillary in 2016 with all of the ridiculous coverage about her emails. That’s not going to happen with us. We learned.’
WashingtonExaminer, Joseph Simonson: Business efforts of Biden brother and son prompt new questions over influence peddling http://washex.am/
// 8/15/2019
Politico, Ben Schreckinger: Biden Inc. http://politi.co/2mGFxoQ
// Over his decades in office, ‘Middle-Class Joe’s’ family fortunes have closely tracked his political career.
// 8/2/2019
NewYorker, Adam Entous (7/1): Will Hunter Biden Jeopardize His Father’s Campaign? http://bit.ly/2kx7q28
// 7/1/2019, background
VanityFair, Rachel Dodes: Hunter Biden Is the Best Thing That Could Happen to Joe Biden http://bit.ly/2mHGsW0
// 6/27/2019; If Biden is in fact the Democratic nominee in 2020, his son’s messy personal life might actually be an advantage.
DailyBeast, Erin Banco and Asawin Suebsaeng: House Dems Ready to Investigate Giuliani’s Ukraine Shenanigans http://bit.ly/2WuuXCp
// 6/7/2019; The president’s lawyer says he welcomes the scrutiny and plans to turn it to his advantage.
DailyBeast, Lachlan Markay: Trumpworld Lobbyists Cut Check to Giuliani’s Ukraine ‘Investigator’ http://bit.ly/2QU9CN1
// 6/6/2019; A payment to Global Energy Producers’ Lev Parnas was revealed in federal court proceedings, in which a former partner is attempting to recoup money over a movie deal gone bad.
Bloomberg: Ukraine Prosecutor Says No Evidence of Wrongdoing by Bidens http://bloom.bg/2kJF6tz By Daryna Krasnolutska , Kateryna Choursina , and Stephanie Baker
// 5/16/2019
● Hunter Biden, Burisma not targets, despite Giuliani’s pleas
● Long-running investigation said to focus on another Ukrainian
Law&Crime, Jeremy Smith: Ukrainian Prosecutor Rains on Giuliani’s Parade, Says There’s No Evidence the Bidens Broke the Law http://bit.ly/2mFSpvK
// 5/16/2019
FreeBeacon, Brent Sched: Hunter Biden’s China Deal Partners Include Mobster Whitey Bulger’s Nephew, John Kerry’s Stepson http://bit.ly/2l6jJmn
// 5/13/2019
Vox, Gabriela Resto-Montero: Rudy Giuliani cancels Ukraine trip amid criticism he’s courting election interference http://bit.ly/31cQdeL
// 5/11/2019; The president’s lawyer wants Ukrainian officials to investigate a call Joe Biden made about corruption.
TheIntercept, Robert Mackey (May): A Republican Conspiracy Theory About a Biden-in-Ukraine Scandal Has Gone Mainstream. But It Is Not True. http://bit.ly/2muqizk
// 5/10/2019
Wonkette: Rudy Colludy Twisting Ukraine’s Arm To Investigate Joe Biden http://bit.ly/2XtXRiJ
// 5/10/2019
NYT, Kenneth Vogel: Rudy Giuliani Plans Ukraine Trip to Push for Inquiries That Could Help Trump http://nyti.ms/2VcNlKH
// 5/9/2019
TheAtlantic, Peter Nicholas: Trump’s Biden Plan? It Could Get Dirty. http://bit.ly/2l6doaz
// Should Biden remain atop the 2020 field, Donald Trump and his allies may attack the former vice president’s family.
// 5/2/2019
NYT, Kenneth Vogel and Iuliia: Biden Faces Conflict of Interest Questions That Are Being Promoted by Trump and Allies http://nyti.ms/2lsdSrL
// 5/1/2019
Vox, Murray Waas (2018): Exclusive: Paul Manafort advised White House on how to attack and discredit investigation of President Trump http://bit.ly/2PCPrRe
// 12/14/2018; We now have details as to how the indicted former campaign manager worked with the president to undermine federal law enforcement.
DailyBeast, Asawin Suebsaeng and Lachlan Markay (2017): Team Trump’s Gotcha on Ukraine-DNC ‘Collusion’ Is Total B.S. and Trump Aides Know It http://bit.ly/
// 7/13/2017; It’s like ‘trying to make the Lewinsky scandal about Bob Dole getting a blowjob.’
Politico, Kenneth Vogel (2017): Ukrainian efforts to sabotage Trump backfire http://politi.co/2XBjFcp
// 1/11/2017; Kiev officials are scrambling to make amends with the president-elect after quietly working to boost Clinton.
NakedCapitalism, Richard Smith (2014): R. Hunter Biden Should Declare Who Really Owns His New Ukrainian Employer, Burisma Holdings http://bit.ly/2Qur6jd
// 5/21/2014; deep dive with conspiratorial overtones; some notes more recent
⋙ MediaBias/Fact-check for NakedCapitalism: “LEFT-CENTER BIAS These media sources have a slight to moderate liberal bias. They often publish factual information that utilizes loaded words (wording that attempts to […]”
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⭕ 1 Dec 2019
🐣 RT @kylegriffin1 Lisa Page: “It’s particularly devastating to be betrayed by an organization I still care about so deeply. And it’s crushing to see the noble Justice Department … the place I grew up in, feel like it’s abandoned its principles of truth and independence.”
💙⋙ DailyBeast, Molly Jong-Fast: Lisa Page Speaks: ‘There’s No Fathomable Way I Have Committed Any Crime at All’ http://bit.ly/2P62fkK
// The former FBI lawyer and ongoing Trump target breaks two years of silence in this exclusive interview. And she has quite a lot to say.
WaPo: Trump’s counsel says president won’t participate in House Judiciary’s first impeachment panel, calling it unfair http://wapo.st/384XLUu
🐣 RT @McFaul But I want to stress, I will quickly change my mind when confronted with new data. Send me links to paper that show the negative effects of refuting politicians on twitter pushing disinformation in the media, and I’ll change my behavior. Eager to learn.
⋙ 🐣 RT @McFaul I don’t buy this amplification argument. You really think my followers are buying into Kennedy’s argument because of my critical tweet? By that logic, should we never criticize Trump lest we amplify his message? But Im willing to rethink, especially if data support the argument
⋙⋙ 🐣 The amplification argument is alarming. For children, it can be argued, it avoids confusion or even fear. But adults should be able to able to deal with information that conflicts with one’s preconceptions. I think Kennedy’s position is off-the-wall, but more of it’s coming.
✅ Axios: Sen. John Kennedy doubles down on claims of Ukrainian interference http://bit.ly/37VN7PL
// Sen. John Kennedy (R-La.) argued in a testy exchange on NBC’s “Meet the Press” that he believes “both Russia and Ukraine meddled in the 2016 election,” claiming without evidence that former Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko “actively worked” for Hillary Clinton.
The exchange:
KENNEDY: You should read the articles, Chuck, because they are well-documented. And I believe that a Ukrainian district court in December 2018 slapped down several Ukrainian officials for meddling in our elections as a violation of the Ukrainian law. Now, I did not report those facts, and reputable journalists reported those facts. Does that mean that the Ukrainian leaders were more aggressive than Russia? No. Russia was very aggressive and they’re much more sophisticated, but the fact that Russia was so aggressive does not exclude the fact that President Poroshenko actively worked for Secretary Clinton.
TODD: My goodness. Wait a minute. Senator Kennedy, you now have the president of Ukraine saying that he actively worked for the Democratic nominee for president. I mean come on. You realize that the only other person selling this argument outside of the United States is Vladimir Putin. … You have just accused the former president of Ukraine — You have done exactly what the Russian operation is trying to get American politicians to do. Are you at all concerned that you have been duped?
KENNEDY: No. Just read the articles.
The big picture: Last Sunday, Kennedy told Fox News’ Chris Wallace he believed a debunked conspiracy theory that Ukraine tried to hack the Democratic National Committee’s computers during the 2016 election. The next day, he told CNN’s Chris Cuomo he misheard the question and was wrong, stating, “I’ve seen no indication that Ukraine tried to do it.”
● The White House’s former top Russia expert Fiona Hill testified that the theory that Ukraine interfered in the election is “a fictional narrative that is being perpetrated and propagated by the Russian security services themselves.”
● The New York Times has also reported that intelligence officials briefed senators in recent weeks about Russia’s years-long campaign to frame Ukraine, but Kennedy told Todd that he did not attend the briefing.
Reality check: Many of the claims of interference that Kennedy cites relate to Ukrainian officials making disparaging remarks about Trump during the campaign, most notably after the then-candidate made comments about the U.S. possibly recognizing Crimea as Russian territory.
● These scattershot criticisms differ greatly from the top-down, large-scale interference operation that the U.S. intelligence community has concluded was ordered directly by Vladimir Putin.
● Kennedy also claims that a Ukrainian court ruled that Ukrainian officials had meddled in the U.S. elections by releasing damaging information about former Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort. However, an appeals court later canceled that ruling, according to the Kyiv Post.
Go deeper:
Vindman calls Ukrainian interference conspiracy theory a “Russian narrative” http://bit.ly/2qe5UEY
Trump repeats Ukraine conspiracy theory on 53-minute “Fox & Friends” call http://bit.ly/33EyFbi
Trump denies sending Giuliani to Ukraine to dig up dirt on political opponents http://bit.ly/2q8VkPp
🐣 RT @MaxBoot This is unprecedented: a foreign leader has to worry about angering the American president—by fighting corruption.
⋙ WaPo: Ukraine’s Zelensky is making headway against corruption. But the fight risks angering Trump. http://wapo.st/2Y2zYzU
🐣 RT @donwinslow According to my Justice Department sources @realDonaldTrump is blackmailing @LindseyGrahamSC ¤ I was a private investigator for 15 years before becoming a writer. Happy to get into depositions and discovery, Lindsey. ¤ You sold out your country. ¤ You disgraced John McCain’s memory
WaPo: GOP mounts campaign to delegitimize impeachment inquiry http://wapo.st/384XLUu
// alt: Republicans to mount aggressive campaign against impeachment as spotlight turns to Judiciary panel
🐣 RT @PaulHRosenberg Impeachment’s real stakes: Saving democracy from Trumpian pathocracy. What’s happening in US follows well-known pattern. Lessons are clear, @yourauntemma & @disorderedworld explain:
⋙ Salon, Paul Rosenberg: Impeachment as a struggle to save democracy — from the pathological cult of Donald Trump http://bit.ly/35R59Rh
// History shows how democracy can give way to “pathocracy” ruled by disordered individuals. Are we heading that way?
DailyBeast, Margaret Carlson: In Trumpland, Every Week Is a Horror Show—Yet Somehow, the Next Week Is Always Worse http://bit.ly/2rGQ8mm
// The courts have said he can’t even run his foundation–and yet, he still runs the country. And the servile Senate will do nothing about it.
DailyBeast, Patricia Ravalgi: Mueller, Barr, Giuliani, Comey and Kallstrom Once Fought Terror Together—Now Trump Has Them Fight Each Other http://bit.ly/2RctSeL
// This is the first in a three-part series, a first-hand look at men now known as Trump allies or
🐣 RT @JohnJHarwood Sen John Kennedy, Republican of Louisiana, is actively participating in the propaganda campaign fabricated by Russia to weaken the United States
⋙ DailyBeast: Chuck Todd to GOP Senator: You’re Selling the Same Argument as Putin! http://bit.ly/2Y36d1V
// Chuck Todd was left gobsmacked by Sen. John Kennedy (R-LA) when the GOP lawmaker said the ex-Ukrainian president “actively worked” for Hillary Clinton.
WaPo, Jennifer Rubin: Answers to these five questions will determine the path forward on impeachment http://wapo.st/2R9FP56
1. Can Schiff avoid the pitfalls of the Mueller report?
2. Will the appeals court and the Supreme Court affirm that ruling in a timely fashion, compelling potentially devastating witnesses to come forward?
3. Will Nunes, the chief Republican conspiratorialist, himself be toppled, thereby revealing House Republicans’ bad faith in concocting blatantly ridiculous defenses for Trump?
4. Does Sondland have some liability for false testimony under oath, and does the evisceration of this witness remove one of the few remaining lines of defense for Trump?
5. Will the impeachment go narrow or broad, and if the latter, is this going to drag well into 2020?
WaPo: Sen. Kennedy says both Ukraine and Russia interfered in 2016 election, despite intelligence community’s assessment http://wapo.st/35W6WV5
🐣 RT @djrothkopf It is important for our allies to know (and for Trump & Co. to be aware) that among the very first things any Democrat will do when elected will be to restore the NATO alliance, undo Trump’s cuts and actively seek to reduce the damage he has done on Putin’s behalf.
⋙ 🐣 RT @RoKhanna This is politics devoid of facts. Our nation’s obligation to NATO were less than .1% of our Pentagon budget. Trump must not get away with claiming that $150 million represents big savings while he has increased the US defense budget more than $100 billion!
⋙⋙ USAToday, David Jackson and John Fritze: Trump administration to reduce NATO aid days before European summit with allies http://bit.ly/2r4kGyj
// 11/27/2019
🐣 RT @RoKhanna This is politics devoid of facts. Our nation’s obligation to NATO were less than .1% of our Pentagon budget. Trump must not get away with claiming that $150 million represents big savings while he has increased the US defense budget more than $100 billion!
⋙ USAToday, David Jackson and John Fritze: Trump administration to reduce NATO aid days before European summit with allies http://bit.ly/2r4kGyj
// 11/27/2019
🐣 RT @MSNBC .@MichaelSteele on Pres. Trump’s use of profanity to lash out against impeachment at a rally, saying that if President Obama spoke that way, “Women would be fainting. Children would be running and hiding under beds. Grown men would be in tears.”
⋙ MSNBC, Craig Melvin: Former RNC chair on Trump’s language at Rally: It is un-becoming of the man in the office. http://on.msnbc.com/35Si1qu
// 11/27/2019; President Trump lashed out at impeachment at his Florida rally last night. Former RNC Chair Michael Steele, and Yahoo News White House Correspondent Hunter Walker join Craig Melvin to discuss.
🐣 RT @ForeignAffairs At first, it may seem surprising that Ukraine is suddenly at the turbulent center of American politics and foreign policy. But as Serhii Plokhy & @e_sarotte explain, U.S. policymakers have been running into trouble in Ukraine since the end of the Cold War.
⋙ ForeignAffairs, Serhii Plokhy and M. E. Sarotte: The Shoals of Ukraine http://fam.ag/37TWu2r
// 11/22/2019; Where American Illusions and Great-Power Politics Collide
💙 MotherJones, Tom Philpott: The Rise and Fall of Ukraine’s Fertilizer King http://bit.ly/2rIk81j
// The story of Dmitry Firtash illustrates the power of crony capitalism in shaping the economies of post-Soviet Russia and Ukraine.
Unian: Putin, Lukashenka agree on single parliament, govt – envoy http://bit.ly/34DuTAv
// By December 8, 2019, just a day before the Normandy Summit in Paris, the authorities of Belarus and Russia are expected to sign a new agreement on deepening integration.
🐣 RT @GrassrootsSpeak Does anyone else think Trumps playing games with the military? ¤ It’s as if he’s working to gain allegiance from the troops themselves (many who are part of his base)while he pisses off & alienates the top brass ¤ If the top brass were to order Trumps removal would the troops obey?
🐣 RT @mayawiley A must read, particularly with the heartfelt warning from @FrankFigliuzzi1. For any of us who have seen how authoritarian regimes form and fall, the military plays a pivotal role. And a militarybthat submits to rule of law and human rights is absolutely essential.
⋙ 🐣 RT @FrankFigliuzzi We’ve reached the dangerous place where the military and their Commander in Chief don’t trust each other:
⋙⋙ NYT: Trump’s Intervention in SEALs Case Tests Pentagon’s Tolerance http://nyti.ms/2OCN57z
Politico, Darren Samuelson: Justice’s election-year conundrum: How to probe team Trump http://politi.co/35RYQge
// Legal experts say DOJ is taking steps that could lead to a potential criminal probe of the president’s Ukraine scheme.
HoustonChronicle, Leonard Pitts Jr: Why is Trump not a national emergency? http://bit.ly/2Y55Pjj
// “[W]hy do the Russians have such a clear preference for Republicans? Why haven’t Republicans been challenged to explain that? And why don’t more of us seem to care? Why is this not a hair-on-fire, shouting-in-the-streets national emergency?”
⭕ 30 Nov 2019
NYT: Trump’s Intervention in SEALs Case Tests Pentagon’s Tolerance http://nyti.ms/2OCN57z
// Chief Petty Officer Edward Gallagher’s case pits a Pentagon hierarchy committed to enforcing longstanding rules of combat against a commander in chief with no military experience but a finely honed sense of grievance against authority.
WaPo: Committee to meet Tuesday to approve release of Ukraine report http://wapo.st/2DxTCKq
🐣 RT @john_sipher Reminder that Trump’s actions are not just a domestic political game. They hurt our allies and help our enemies.
⋙ WaPo Editorial: The damage done to Ukraine http://wapo.st/35M9Vzm
DailyBeast, Anna Nemtsova: What’s So Special About Crimea? Almost Everything. http://bit.ly/2P5LMx0
// “If you want to know why so much blood spilled on this land,” said the tourist guide, “just look at the map: if you control Crimea, you control the Black Sea.”
⭕ 29 Nov 2019
TheAtlantic, Peter Nicholas: Trump Needs Conspiracy Theories http://bit.ly/35SjZXW
// The president uses them for political and personal ends. The damage he’s wrought along the way won’t be easily repaired.
💙 NBCNews: Six degrees of Rudy: Giuliani’s web tangles three Trump controversies http://nbcnews.to/2R4wFGL
// Ukraine only skims the surface of the former mayor’s influence in the administration.
NYT, Michelle Cottle: Trump Has Made Civil Servants Sexy http://nyti.ms/2XZJKCQ
// Rarely have bureaucrats inspired such passion.
CNN: House GOP members are ‘absolutely disgusted and exhausted’ by Trump’s behavior, former GOP congressman Charlie Dent says http://cnn.it/2rHeNHe
JustSecurity, Susan Simpson: Here’s the Proof that Trump’s “No Quid Pro Quo” Call Never Happened http://bit.ly/2q2tUdZ
🐣◕ RT @wydmindfeersart The GOP evolved into a neo-fascist party. ¤ In order for us to overcome growing neo-fascism of our gov there MUST be a reckoning about it in American MSM. The Republican Party has evolved into an American version of Europe’s far-right neo-fascists. https://twitter.com/wydmindfeersart/status/1200472542353354752?s=20/photo/1
⋙ Dkos (Jun): The Republican Party has evolved into an American version of Europe’s far-right neo-fascists http://bit.ly/2rEDjJ4
// 6/26/2019; story/graphic based on NYT article
🐣 RT @glennkirschner2 Trump is trying to run out the impeachment clock so he can run out the statute of limitations clock so he can stay out of prison. Vote out. Indict. Convict. Imprison. Like it or not, Mr. President #JusticeIsComing
⋙ 🐣 RT @gaelbill There’s one reason, & one reason only that trump initiated the Ukraine extortion scheme: it was to use a foreign power, once again, to cheat his way to reelection. What do you say? @glennkirschner2
NYT: How Kamala Harris’s Campaign Unraveled http://nyti.ms/33wUlWM
// Ms. Harris is the only 2020 Democrat who has fallen hard out of the top tier of candidates. She has proved to be an uneven campaigner who changes her message and tactics to little effect and has a staff torn into factions.
🐣 RT @ulrichspeck When we discuss Russia these days we should not forget that it has attacked a peaceful neighbor without any legitimate reason, has annexed a part of its territory and occupies another. More than 13.000 have been killed in this war of aggression. 📌 https://twitter.com/ulrichspeck/status/1200305785454116864?s=20
// critical of Macron wanting to focus on terrorism in partnership with Russia
💙 TheAtlantic, Yoni Applebaum: How America Ends http://bit.ly/2CGO3ZG
// Dec issue; A tectonic demographic shift is under way. Can the country hold together?
⭕ 🦃 28 Nov 2019 🦃
🐣 RT @tribelaw Andrew Johnson and Donald Trump are both “authoritarian demagogues who threatened the world’s longest lasting experiment in democratic republicanism.”
⋙ NYT, Manisha Sinha: Donald Trump, Meet Your Precursor http://nyti.ms/2L4QqKF
// Andrew Johnson pioneered the recalcitrant racism and impeachment-worthy subterfuge the president is fond of.
🐣 RT @ulrichspeck Macron turns against Nato’s core mission: “Nato is an organisation of collective defense, against whom? … Is, as I hear sometimes, our enemy today Russia? Is it China? Is it the task of the Atlantic Alliance to designate them enemies? I don’t think so.”
WaPo, Aaron Blake: Trump’s big, ‘exonerating’ piece of Ukraine evidence takes a hit http://wapo.st/2Rae3FF
WaPo, Philip Bump: The complicated web of Ukraine-focused relationships that has Giuliani at its center http://wapo.st/33rOhiC
🐣 RT @GlennKirschner2 Trump will capitulate to Putin all day, every day. The only remaining question is – will the Republicans go so far as to let Trump surrender our nation to every Russian want and whim?
CNN: Trump administration to cut its financial contribution to NATO http://cnn.it/2DrhIqd
⭕ 27 Nov 2019
Reason: Fox’s Judge Napolitano: “Evidence of [Trump’s] Impeachable Behavior…Is Overwhelming” http://bit.ly/33IiQQY
// The libertarian analyst predicts Dems will bring as many as five articles of impeachment against President Trump.
VanityFair, Kevin Kruse (11/27): Trump’s Toadies Should Take Note: Watergate Says Everyone Goes Down http://bit.ly/2L9Q1GT
// The lesson Nixon imparts to today’s POTUS loyalists is that courts of law and of public opinion will judge them harshly.
NYT: The True Story of ‘The Irishman’: I Heard You Paint Tangled Tales http://nyti.ms/2q68zAq
// The movie hits Netflix on Wednesday. Here’s a guide to who’s who, which events are real and whether to believe its claim about Jimmy Hoffa’s disappearance.
🐣 RT @BarbMcQuade Trump’s claim to Bill O’Reilly, that he did not send Giuliani to Ukraine, directly contradicts his phone conversation with Ukrainian president on July 25. Consciousness of guilt much?
TPM, Josh Marshall: How Rudy Lost his Mind and (Probably) His Freedom http://bit.ly/33qKwKg “It’s simply hard to play in the domain he was operating in without committing lots of felonies.”
NewsCorpse: Fox News Ratings Continue to Sink During Month of Trump’s Impeachment Hearings http://bit.ly/35Jur3W
WaPo: Witness testimony and records raise questions about account of Trump’s ‘no quid pro quo’ call http://wapo.st/2XTAaRQ
💙💙 ForeignAffairs, Michael Carpenter: The Oligarchs Who Lost Ukraine and Won Washington http://fam.ag/37KTEfU
// How Kremlin-Backed Authoritarians Sought to Profit From Trump’s Presidency
🐣 RT @matthewamiller What a surprise. The nonsense conspiracy theory Rosenstein asked the IG to investigate in order to appease Trump is in fact nonsense. But he and Fox got to talk about this investigation for a year and a half and will now just ignore or misrepresent the results.
⋙ 🐣 RT @amyfiscus NEW: The DOJ inspector general is expected to undercut Trump’s accusations that the FBI spied on his campaign @adamgoldmanNYT
⋙⋙ NYT: Russia Inquiry Review Is Expected to Undercut Trump Claim of F.B.I. Spying http://nyti.ms/2XW1PSf
WaPo, Richard Spencer: I was fired as Navy secretary. Here’s what I’ve learned because of it. http://wapo.st/33ouaBS “We are effective overseas not because we have the best equipment but because we are professionals.”
NYT, Thomas Edsall: Liberals Do Not Want to Destroy the Family http://nyti.ms/37DKmCB
// Or society, for that matter. How did this preposterous idea leap to the forefront of conservative thinking?
RawStory: Will Trump’s America end in ‘firing squads’? Pulitzer winner David Cay Johnston issues a warning [ Interview ] http://bit.ly/2OsRYAj
NYT, Stacy Schiff: What a Witch Hunt Really Looks Like http://nyti.ms/2pTuwT8
// In 1692, in Salem, Mass., we also witnessed the courage required to stop one.
✅ Factcheck.org (9/26): Trump Wrong on European Aid to Ukraine http://bit.ly/2rrtNsR “European countries have contributed an estimated two-thirds of all of the aid to Ukraine since Russia annexed Crimea in 2014”
// 9/26/2019
NYT: Giuliani Pursued Business in Ukraine While Pushing for Inquiries for Trump http://nyti.ms/33qGq4T
// The president’s private lawyer explored agreements with Ukrainian officials for hundreds of thousands of dollars.
WaPo, Amber Phillips: 3 takeaways from Mark Sandy’s and Philip Reeker’s testimony on Ukraine http://wapo.st/2XQKc6l
WaPo, Greg Sargent: New revelations just wrecked Trump’s last remaining defenses http://wapo.st/2Dkb2Kr “the ‘I want nothing — no quid pro quo’ defense now lies in ruins”
🐣 RT @GlennKesslerWP “Mr. Giuliani is a highly respected man,” Trump said. “I will ask him to call you along with the Attorney General. Rudy very much knows what’s happening and he is a very capable guy.” –>
⋙ WaPo, Philip Bump: The unmitigated ludicrousness of Trump trying to distance himself from Giuliani’s work on Ukraine http://wapo.st/2R2BaBA //➔ ya can’t blame a guy for trying
🐣 RT @MSNBC The co-founders of Fusion GPS explain how the Steele Dossier was put together, and the recent evidence they’ve collected that Russian election interference in 2016 “really did happen, and it was really bad, and it’s about to happen again.”
⋙ 💽 MSNBC, AllIn: Fusion GPS co-founder: What happened in 2016 is about to happen again http://on.msnbc.com/34qoGb0
// The co-founders of Fusion GPS give Chris Hayes an inside look at the Steele Dossier.
⭕ 26 Nov 2019
🐣 RT @johnmclaughlinSAIS It’s hard to think of a more successful covert operation. Putin gets Trump’s allies to blame Ukraine for meddling in the US election rather than blaming him for invading Ukraine. Brilliant actually.
⋙ CNN (11/22): House GOP disregards expert warnings that debunked Ukraine theory helps Russia http://cnn.it/2Y43nJS
// 11/22/2019
🐣 RT @SethAbramson Now we know why Trump is obsessed with the whistleblower—even though his/her complaint has now been corroborated by innumerable witnesses testifying under oath on TV. It was *specifically* the whistleblower who foiled Trump’s plot to get Zelensky to announce a Biden probe on CNN. 📌 https://twitter.com/CNN/status/1199531352703602688?s=20
🐣 RT @WIRED CrowdStrike is not a Ukrainian company.
It never took physical possession of any DNC server.
The FBI confirmed it was involved.
The DOJ indicted the Russians who hacked the DNC.
Donald Trump’s Ukraine server conspiracy theory is a chair with no legs
⋙ WIRED, Brian Barrett: Trump’s Ukraine Server Delusion Is Spreading http://bit.ly/37DFVrv
// Even secretary of state Mike Pompeo has given credence to Trump’s demonstrably wrong theory that Ukraine hacked the DNC.
MoscowTimes: Young Russians’ Desire to Leave Hits 10-Year High – Poll http://bit.ly/2Oojz5t
🐣 RT @kelly2277 💥 Trump and his cronies “spoke in their own code, rarely directly ordering a lieutenant to do something illegal, but instead offering oblique instructions or expressing general wishes that their lieutenants simply knew how to translate into action.” 💥
⋙ NYT, Garrett Graff (Mar): How Giuliani Might Take Down Trump http://nyti.ms/
// 3/4/2019, The parallels between the Mafia and the Trump Organization are striking, and Giuliani perfected the template for prosecuting organized crime.
🐣 RT @rgoodlaw Mark #Sandy deposition reveals attorney at OMB resigned due in part to concern that hold on Ukraine aid violated Impoundment Act. ¤ Makes complete sense. ¤ The attorney was correct. ¤ Read former OMB official @SamBerger_DC’s analysis from this afternoon:
⋙ JustSecurity, Sam Berger: Trump’s Hold on Ukrainian Military Aid was Illegal http://bit.ly/34AgZ1O
DailyBeast, Matt Lewis: Why Testimony From Don McGahn Would Doom Trump http://bit.ly/37zfoLI
// A judge has just ruled that the former White House counsel must testify. If the ruling stands, he’ll be on national TV, under oath. And so will others, maybe. Dum da dum dum.
DailyBeast, Julia Arciga: Trump Denies Giuliani Acted on His Behalf in Ukraine: ‘Rudy Has Other Clients’ http://bit.ly/2DmeBA1
// “He’s done a lot of work in Ukraine over the years,” the president told former Fox News host Bill O’Reilly.
🐣 All the key people in the Trump Admin are implicated: Barr, Mulvaney, Pompeo, etc. They appear to think their only choice is to cling together and try to gaslight the country with Russian disinformation. Lord help us.
🐣 RT @JohnJHarwood Trump to O’Reilly about Giuliani’s work: “No, I didn’t direct him, but he is a warrior” ¤ Asked what Giuliani was doing in Ukraine, Trump said “you have to ask Rudy.” ¤ “Rudy has other clients than me. He’s done a lot of work in Ukraine over the years”
🐣 RT @matthewamiller Really the final piece of the puzzle. We basically know the entire story now, and every fact is as damning as could be.
⋙ 🐣 RT @nytmike NEW: Two weeks before Trump released the Ukraine aid, White House lawyers briefed him on whistle-blower’s complaint — a key detail about what Trump knew when he made a critical decision at the heart of impeachment investigation. @maggieNYT @julianbarnes
⋙⋙ NYT: Trump Knew of Whistle-Blower Complaint When He Released Aid to Ukraine http://nyti.ms/2QVrj0s
// White House lawyers briefed President Trump in late August about the complaint, people familiar with the matter said.
NBCNews: Former White House counsel Don McGahn must obey subpoena to testify before Congress, judge rules http://nbcnews.to/2R0eXV7 Federal District Court Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson
// The same question about White House immunity — this one related to the impeachment inquiry — is pending before another judge in Washington.
⋙ Ruling ⋙ http://bit.ly/34qNdge
Federal District Court Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson said McGahn must appear before Congress but retains the ability to “invoke executive privilege where appropriate” during his appearance.
“It is clear to this Court for the reasons explained above that, with respect to senior-level presidential aides, absolute immunity from compelled congressional process simply does not exist,” Jackson said in her ruling.
“Presidents are not kings,” she added. ¤ “This means that they do not have subjects, bound by loyalty or blood, whose destiny they are entitled to control,” Jackson said. “Rather, in this land of liberty, it is indisputable that current and former employees of the White House work for the people of the United States … ”
💙💙 🔆 This❗️⋙ HouseIntelCommittee (HPSCI): Committees Release Sandy, Reeker and Other Transcripts As Part of Impeachment Inquiry http://bit.ly/2OMsL2D
● Sandy: Key Excerpts: http://bit.ly/2KWbgfe ; Transcript: http://bit.ly/37DQ1sc
● Reeker: Key Excerpts: http://bit.ly/2XRsFLq ; Transcript: http://bit.ly/2ruKyTQ
“The testimonies from Ambassador Reeker and Mr. Sandy continue to paint a portrait of hand-picked political appointees corrupting the official levers of U.S. government power, including by withholding taxpayer funded military assistance to Ukraine, to further the President’s own personal political agenda.
“Mr. Sandy confirmed that he was told by the office of Mick Mulvaney, the Acting White House Chief of Staff, that the President himself had directed the hold on security assistance to Ukraine. However, he was provided no other reason or justification for the hold when he was directed to implement it. And in fact, after he raised concerns with OMB leadership and lawyers that the withholding of funding for Ukraine may violate the law, his authority for approving security assistance funding was revoked and given instead to a hand-picked Trump OMB political appointee.
“Finally, we learned from Mr. Sandy that he was first informed in early September—approximately two months after the hold was implemented—that the reason for the hold was due to concerns regarding European countries not paying their fair share of foreign assistance. Given other testimony and the public admission by Mr. Mulvaney that the aid was held to pressure Ukraine to conduct the investigations desired by the President, this constitutes powerful evidence that this justification was concocted as an after-the-fact rationalization to justify the hold.”
WaPo: Two OMB officials resigned voicing concerns over Ukraine aid hold, official testifies http://wapo.st/2qNdfvr
// Mark Sandy, a career official at the White House Office of Management and Budget, revealed the resignations in testimony to impeachment investigators
🐣 RT @TheLoyalO If Trump withheld aid out of concern with Ukraine corruption, then why did he:
•Fail to notify Congress about the hold as required by law?
•Fail to tell Ukraine about his reason for the hold?
•Ignore Pentagon officials who said the hold was illegal?
⋙ JustSecurity, Sam Berger: Trump’s Hold on Ukrainian Military Aid was Illegal http://bit.ly/34AgZ1O
📊 FiveThirtyEight: Impeachment Poll of Polls http://53eig.ht/2N5MJV2 A spate of new polls shows 5% swing toward impeachment since Saturday ● https://twitter.com/Auriandra/status/1199454182106894336?s=20/photo/1
11/26/2019 For: 49.0%, Against 43.5% ✛5.5%
11/23/2019 For: 46.3%, Against 45.6% ✛0.7
TheBulwark, Tim Miller: Fiona Hill: Impeachment Queen http://bit.ly/2OoC7CT
// She’s not the hero we deserve. She’s the hero we need.
WaPo: House panel alleges ‘pattern of abuse’ over Ukraine funds by White House Office of Management and Budget http://wapo.st/2OpFkCa
// Democratic-led committee says OMB abused the law and its own authority by holding up funds at center of Trump impeachment probe
WaPo, Paul Waldman: Trump keeps claiming he’s a king. The courts keep telling him he’s not. http://wapo.st/34o8Opv
💙💙≣ Lawfare: We Wrote a Starr Report! An Account of the Record in L’Affaire Ukrainienne http://bit.ly/2Dv42uF by Scott Anderson, Margaret Taylor and Benjamin Wittes
For present purposes, the relevant story—the one on which the House will necessarily focus—concerns how the president’s personal lawyer influenced Donald Trump’s views on Ukraine and how Trump put him in charge of pursuing the president’s personal and political goals in that country outside the regular channels of government. It is a story about how the institutions and actors within the U.S. government struggled to deal with the president’s pursuing his inappropriate objectives, fueled by phony disinformation they all rejected, through an outside actor. And it is a story about how this deviation from the normal policy process ultimately corrupted interactions with a foreign government, leading to extortionate demands of the Ukrainians that actors within the U.S. government regarded as highly inappropriate and actors in Congress correctly regard as impeachable.
The story these witnesses tell has countless details, many of them fascinating, but it has four major components relevant to assessing the president’s conduct.
First, the testimony shows how Rudy Giuliani pursued objectives in Ukraine for the benefit of his business partners as well as the political interests of his client, President Trump. These activities lead to the president being fed bad information over a long period of time and they ultimately result in the meritless dismissal of Amb. Marie Yovanovitch, as well as to a concerted attack on Deputy Secretary of State George Kent.
Second, against the backdrop of the election of a new president in Ukraine, the testimony shows the development of what Amb. William Taylor described as “an irregular channel” for achieving Trump’s objectives in that country—a channel that was not always playing by the usual rules of diplomacy or bureaucratic lines of communication. The witnesses describe the members of both the regular and irregular channels trying to figure out what was really going on and how to navigate the unprecedented situation of Giuliani’s influence on Trump, in order to help the new Ukrainian president solidify a relationship with the United States—a relationship that is crucial for Ukraine’s continued existence as a fully independent sovereign country.
Third, in this broader context, the witnesses tell a specific story of the development of conditionality regarding a White House meeting between Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. What began as a mere hostility on the part of Trump toward Ukraine, and an unsubstantiated conviction that the Ukrainians had interfered in the 2016 election, came to involve demands to investigate that theory. And it came as well to involve demands that the Ukrainians investigate Joe Biden’s son, Hunter Biden, and his connection to the Ukrainian natural gas company, Burisma, on whose board the younger Biden sat. Those demands, over the course of the summer, came to be linked to the desire of the new Ukrainian government for a White House meeting between Zelensky and Trump. In the live testimony, far more than in the depositions that preceded it, it becomes clear that the development of this conditionality was driven by Trump himself.
Finally, the witnesses tell a related story of how the provision of military assistance to Ukraine similarly came to be conditioned on U.S. demands—because what Ukraine ultimately needs is U.S. support in an ongoing military conflict with a more powerful neighbor that is occupying its territory. The narrative is ultimately one of how an irregular actor’s behavior—circumventing the normal policy process and feeding bad information and conspiracy theories to a president—led to that president’s demanding that an embattled, struggling democracy politically smear a possible 2020 opponent as a condition for U.S. support.
🐣 RT @EvanMcMullin When Republican intellectuals support Russian aggression, when Republican congressmen promote Russian disinformation, when Republican committees accept Russian money, and when the Republican Party deifies the president Russia backed, its alignment becomes self-evident.
🐣 RT @JohnJHarwood about public opinion on Trump never moving lol nothing matters, here’s new CNN poll:
impeach/remove now
50% yes, 43% no
impeach/remove, late April
37% yes, 59% no
NewYorker, Jane Mayer: The Inside Story of Christopher Steele’s Trump Dossier http://bit.ly/2OnbXQX
// In a new book, the founders of the firm that compiled it defend their work.
WaPo: In bleak report, U.N. says drastic action is only way to avoid worst effects of climate change http://wapo.st/2rqR3qT
// “We need to catch up on the years in which we procrastinated,” a top official says.
📊 Four post-hearing polls show uptick: FiveThirtyEight: http://53eig.ht/2N5MJV2 Once the written summary is out (w/o Jordan/Nunes distractions), it should go up more. ● https://twitter.com/Auriandra/status/1199307342455746560?s=20/photo/1
ForeignAffairs, Frank Bowman III: Foreign Policy Has Always Been at the Heart of Impeachment http://fam.ag/2OQjvue
// High Crimes From the Middle Ages to the Age of Trump
🐣 RT @eliehonig Before Trump inevitably tweets an attack on Judge Ketanji Brown-Jackson, let me say this. I’ve been before dozens of federal judges, and I was in the courtroom covering the McGahn hearing. I’ve rarely seen any judge as prepared, sharp, on-point, and fair as Judge Brown-Jackson.
🐣 If Trump is “the Chosen One,” you might as well throw the Ten Commandments AND the Sermon on the Mount out the window. If anything, he’s the Antichrist.
🐣 Published today:
● “Impeach” by Neal Katyal and
● “Crime in Progress” (Inside the Steele Dossier and the Fusion GPS Investigation of Donald Trump) by Glen Simpson and Peter Fritsch
🐣 📊 I was surprised at how downbeat Dems were after a single poll came out Friday showing a dip in support for impeachment. Many working people don’t have time to read til the weekend. Three polls came out Monday, showing +8, +9 and +3 FOR impeachment. http://53eig.ht/2N5MJV2 ● https://twitter.com/Auriandra/status/1199217341789351936?s=20/photo/1
⭕ 25 Nov 2019
🐣 RT @carolecadwalla ‘It takes only 2-5 years to destabilise a nation…The next stage is crisis. It may take only 6 weeks’ Listen to this ex KGB agent’s eerily prescient account of ‘active measures’ of how Russia seeks to destroy its enemies through chaos(C/o @brexit_sham
💽 https://twitter.com/carolecadwalla/status/1199121778058113026?s=20/photo/1
CNN: Democrats eye multiple articles of impeachment as some push to go beyond Ukraine scandal http://cnn.it/2DlvESM
NYT, Michelle Goldberg: Republicans’ Big Lie About Trump and Russia http://nyti.ms/2KVR11a “‘Crime in Progress’ is the best procedural yet written about the discovery of Trump’s Russia ties”
// Collusion wasn’t a hoax and Trump wasn’t exonerated.
WaPo, Greg Sargent: Trump’s impeachment trial will be awash in Russian propaganda. Here’s how to blow up his lies. http://wapo.st/35AkpBR
WaPo Editorial: Trump’s second act is rife with enablers of constitutional degradation http://wapo.st/35AZn6d
🐣 Even though air traffic was supposedly halted, on 9/12/2001 a Royal Saudi 747 swooped into tiny 2-runway Rochester MN airport to pick up unnamed Middle Eastern passengers. Hmmm
🐣 Want the inside scoop on #TrumpRussia, #Impeachment, #UkraineAffair?
Check out Twitter List “Investigators”:
(Intel Community; investigative journalists, bloggers & sleuths)
+1000 sources
https://mobile.twitter.com/Auriandra/lists/investigators
🐣 RT @AndrewDesiderio BREAKING: Federal judge orders former WH Counsel Don McGahn to testify, shattering the WH’s claims of “absolute immunity.” The long-awaited ruling from Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson hands Democrats a big win and pierces the White House’s long-standing blockade on witness testimony. 📌 https://twitter.com/AndrewDesiderio/status/1199098915955585026?s=20
🔆 This❗️⋙ NYT: Donald McGahn Must Testify to Congress, Judge Rules; Appeal Is Expected http://nyti.ms/2XKtpBG
// A judge rejected the Trump administration’s argument that senior White House officials are immune from congressional subpoenas.
AlFranken.com: Disingenuous, Stupid, and Jacketless is No Way to Go through an Impeachment Hearing, Son http://bit.ly/37E6XPe It’s time to call out the crap
NYT: Intelligence Panel to Release Impeachment Report Soon After Thanksgiving http://nyti.ms/35uvLqY
// Moving swiftly to escalate the case for impeaching President Trump, Democrats on the House Intelligence Committee plan to release a report detailing evidence against him soon after Thanksgiving.
NYT, Slade Gorton: My Fellow Republicans, Please Follow the Facts http://nyti.ms/2ONm2W4 Mr. Gorton is a former Republican senator from Washington
// It seems clear to me that the president of Ukraine was subjected to a shakedown.
🐣 RT @MaxBoot Trump hands followers one poisoned chalice after another. They get judicial appointments—but his lawbreaking undermines their claim to be defenders of the Constitution. They get tax cuts—but the resulting deficits undermine their claim to be budget hawks.
⋙ WaPo: For aiding Trump’s abuse of power, the GOP deserves to be voted out of existence http://wapo.st/2DeQpzp
🐣 RT @CarolLeonnig Big: Probe of Giuliani looking very serious. Destruction of documents, foreign nationals contributing to US campaigns are among the possible crimes being investigated. @devlinbarrett @thamburger @postroz @jdawsey1 ¤ Post Matching WSJ
WaPo: Investigators scrutinize Giuliani firm and donations to Trump super PAC as part of broad probe http://wapo.st/35zzUKk
WaPo: Investigators scrutinize Giuliani firm and donations to Trump super PAC as part of broad probe http://wapo.st/35zzUKk
🐣 RT @lrozen 1 person w/ knowledge of the investigation said there is a particular interest in interactions with 3 key figures in the saga of Giuliani’s pursuit of dirt on the Bidens from Ukraine: ex Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko & ex Ukrainian prosecutors Yuri Lutsenko & Viktor Shokin
⋙ 🔆 This❗️⋙ WSJ: Federal Subpoenas Seek Information on Giuliani’s Consulting Business http://on.wsj.com/2KSFEXO
// Subpoenas are issued for information on Giuliani’s associates, Lev Parnas and Igor Fruman
DailyBeast, Julia Davis: When It Comes to Ukraine, Why Are Republicans So Anxious to Play Putin’s Game? http://bit.ly/33pfLW8
// It’s one thing to support Trump, it’s another to embrace Putin’s disinformation. But even some of the savviest GOP Senators are jumping in bed with the Bear.
WaPo, Jason Pack: When it comes to Ukraine, Trump’s alleged misdeeds go beyond quid pro quos http://wapo.st/2KUhUmd “More than any other international hot spot, the future of Ukraine can fundamentally alter the power balance at the heart of the Eurasian landmass.”
// Understanding how important Ukraine is to U.S. security reveals how serious the president’s alleged high crimes were
🐣 RT @MollyMcKew “[Trolls] studied us. They understand how to harness our biases for their own purposes. They know what pressure points to push & how best to drive us to distrust our neighbors…They don’t go to social media for a fight; they go looking for new best friends. And they found them.”
DailyBeast, Margaret Carlson: Hello, John Bolton? This Is History Calling http://bit.ly/35yIxEY
// The former national security adviser will go down in history as the man who let Donald Trump get away with it—or the witness who exposed the president for what he is.
DailyBeast: The Chronicles of Nunes: How His Impeachment Speeches Created an Alternate Reality for GOP http://bit.ly/2XHAHq2
// Over the course of seven opening statements—totaling some 6,300 words—Nunes crafted a narrative that was often at odds with the facts.
WaPo, Sacha Baron Cohen: The ‘Silicon Six’ spread propaganda. It’s time to regulate social media sites. http://wapo.st/35v4HrM
// tags: Borat disinformation conspiracy theories micro-targeting political ads Facebook Twitter; A pluralistic democracy depends on shared truths.
🔆 This❗️⋙ NYT: Why Giuliani Singled Out 2 Ukrainian Oligarchs to Help Dig Up Dirt http://nyti.ms/2pNaOse
VIENNA — They were two Ukrainian oligarchs with American legal problems. One had been indicted on federal bribery charges. The other was embroiled in a vast banking scandal and was reported to be under investigation by the F.B.I.
And they had one more thing in common: Both had been singled out by Rudolph W. Giuliani and pressed to assist in his wide-ranging hunt for information damaging to one of President Trump’s leading political rivals, former Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr.
That effort culminated in the July 25 phone call between the American and Ukrainian presidents that has taken Mr. Trump to the brink of impeachment and inexorably brought Mr. Giuliani’s Ukrainian shadow campaign into the light.
In public hearings over the last two weeks, American diplomats and national-security officials have laid out in detail how Mr. Trump, at the instigation and with the help of Mr. Giuliani, conditioned nearly $400 million in direly needed military aid on Ukraine’s announcing investigations into Mr. Biden and his son, as well as a debunked conspiracy theory that Ukraine, not Russia, interfered in the 2016 presidential election.
But interviews with the two Ukrainian oligarchs — Dmitry Firtash and Ihor Kolomoisky — as well as with several other people with knowledge of Mr. Giuliani’s dealings, point to a new dimension in his exertions on behalf of his client, Mr. Trump. Taken together, they depict a strategy clearly aimed at leveraging information from politically powerful but legally vulnerable foreign citizens. …
⭕ 24 Nov 2019
🐣 RT @JohnJHarwood “Bondy also said a top aide to Nunes sometimes joined a group that met frequently in spring 2019 at the Trump Hotel to discuss the Biden matter. Convened by Giuliani, the group included Parnas, Fruman, John Solomon, Joe diGenova and Victoria Toensing”
⋙ WaPo: Top House Democrat says ethics probe of Nunes is likely over alleged meeting with Ukrainian about Bidens http://wapo.st/35tviWa
🐣 RT @RepAdamSchiff Trump has waged an unprecedented campaign of obstruction against our inquiry. ¤ Today we learned about more damning evidence that he is withholding from Congress. ¤ If we allow this to stand, Trump will do permanent damage to our system of checks and balances.
⋙ WaPo: White House review turns up emails showing extensive effort to justify Trump’s decision to block Ukraine military aid http://wapo.st/34jbJj7
🐣 RT @Santucci Material submitted includes audio, video & photos that include Giuliani & Trump. Unclear what the content depicts & committees began accessing material last week. Parnas attorney declined to confirm but said his client “has vociferously and publicly asserted his wish to comply”
⋙ ABCNews: House Intelligence Committee in possession of video, audio recordings from Giuliani associate Lev Parnas http://abcn.ws/37yvtkW
TPM, Josh Kavensky: EXCLUSIVE: Bud Cummins Tried To Interest U.S. Law Enforcement In Bogus Ukraine Dirt On Bidens In 2018 http://bit.ly/2OfsuGe
🐣 RT @DrGJackJones 1/ THREAD: The following Thought Experiment/Logic Tree regarding a profound National Security Risk first occurred to me about eighteen months ago. #ThreatAssesment #DonaldTrump #NationalSecurity #BodyLanguage #RiskAnalysis #BehaviorAnalysis 📌 https://twitter.com/DrGJackBrown/status/1198673052663287809?s=20
🐣 RT @robreiner America is being sucked into the mental illness of its President. Every Lie, every Corrupt Scheme, every Crime is his futile attempt to destroy feelings of worthlessness and illegitimacy. We can not let an empty soul destroy America.
NewYorker, Isaac Chotiner: Interview: Malcolm Nance on the Danger of Conspiracy Theories http://bit.ly/2s68ehJ
🐣 RT @ReliableSources CNN’s @jaketapper says disinformation and lying has become a key part of President Trump’s defense in the Ukraine scandal. ¤ “So much of this is designed, I think, just to confuse the American people and muddy the waters and cloud what the facts are.”
🐣 RT @SethAbramson (THREAD) BREAKING: A top Trump ally revealed Trump’s impeachment defense today—and it’s not what many expected. I break it down here using Ukraine-scandal reporting and my experience as a defense lawyer. I hope you’ll read this and RETWEET—as America needs to know what’s coming. 📌 https://twitter.com/SethAbramson/status/1198644095180255232?s=20
WaPo, Shane O’Sullivan: The real threat to Donald Trump from the impeachment hearings http://wapo.st/2XEI1CO
// Testimony could prompt new witnesses to come forward and new revelations.
🐣 RT @Mimirocah1 Fiona Hill “transcended politics, she transcended the moment. She was, simply, transcendent.”
⋙ WaPo, Monica Hesse: What does female authority sound like? Marie Yovanovitch and Fiona Hill just showed us. http://wapo.st/2XGCH1G
WaPo, Jennifer Rubin: Time to call out and remove Putin’s propagandists http://wapo.st/35ndcFk “Trump has been disloyal to the United States, not only in giving Russia a leg up in its war against Ukraine, but also in broadcasting his propaganda. … Republicans are just as guilty”
President Trump has been disloyal to the United States, not only in giving Russia a leg up in its war against Ukraine, but also in broadcasting his propaganda. And for that, Republicans are just as guilty.
The New York Times reports that “Fiona Hill, a respected Russia scholar and former senior White House official, added a harsh critique during testimony on Thursday. She told some of Mr. Trump’s fiercest defenders in Congress that they were repeating ‘a fictional narrative.’ She said that it likely came from a disinformation campaign by Russian security services, which also propagated it.” While that did not slow Republicans one bit, we now know that they are neither dupes nor Fox News pawns; they are deliberately assisting in a Russian propaganda operation …
In the case of Trump, he not only picks up the propaganda from domestic sources carrying Russian President Vladimir Putin’s water, which “worked its way into American information ecosystems, sloshing around until parts of it reached Mr. Trump”; he was duped right from the source speaking “with Mr. Putin about allegations of Ukrainian interference.” Whether the president is being blackmailed is unknown; what we do know is that he is a malleable puppet whose strings are pulled in the Kremlin.
The Post reports that a forthcoming inspector general’s report will affirm that the FISA application submitted for surveillance of Carter Page “had a proper legal and factual basis, and, more broadly, that FBI officials did not act improperly in opening the Russia investigation,” although a low-level employee “inappropriately altered a document that was used during the process” to renew a FISA warrant. In other words: Russia did it. Period.
Fortunately, Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.) has already called for a hearing on the report. Perfect. Let the committee members draw out from Justice Department inspector general Michael Horowitz, FBI Director Christopher A. Wray and any number of national security officials in Trump’s own administration the obvious conclusions: 1. Russia did it to help Trump; 2. Ukraine had no such plan to “interfere” in our election on behalf of Hillary Clinton or anyone else (“The accusations of a Ukrainian influence campaign center on actions by a handful of Ukrainians who openly criticized or sought to damage Mr. Trump’s candidacy in 2016. They were scattershot efforts that were far from a replica of Moscow’s interference”); 3. Intentionally repeating a falsehood, that Ukraine interfered with our election, is aiding and abetting a hostile power that attacked our election system in 2016.
Republicans must bear full responsibility for raising a specious defense of Trump that aids Russia, and the president should be held responsible for his inability to defend our national security by virtue of his susceptibility to Russian propaganda.
🐣 RT @JoyceWhiteVance Trump’s last stand: I did it but it’s not impeachable. “Now that the claim Trump never pressured Zelensky no longer holds, ‘the argument has got to be a ‘so what’…Barr’s argument that [Trump] did all these things, but this is what a president can do.’”
⋙ NYT: Barr’s Legal Views Come Under Fire From Conservative-Leaning Lawyers http://nyti.ms/2OgqWfi
// A speech by Mr. Barr last week, in which he argued that Mr. Trump had never overstepped his authority, so alarmed a group of lawyers [Checks & Balances] that they felt compelled to push back publicly.
⭕ 23 Nov 2019
WaPo, Harry Litman: Why a possible contempt count matters as much as the rest of the impeachment case http://wapo.st/2OIR41d
🐣 RT @JohnJHarwood Fiona Hill clarified what’s been going on the party of Reagan, from top to bottom, is helping Russian intelligence disseminate propaganda fabricated to harm the United States
⋙ NYT: New Documents Reveal Details of Pompeo’s Role in Ukraine Affair http://nyti.ms/2Ogy4YZ
// Emails and documents released by the State Department support testimony showing Secretary of State Mike Pompeo enabled the Ukrainian pressure campaign at the center of the impeachment proceedings.
WaPo: Top House Democrat says ethics probe of Nunes is likely over alleged meeting with Ukrainian about Bidens http://wapo.st/339Yfow ¤ great article
Parnas’s attorney, Joseph Bondy, told The Washington Post that Ukraine’s former top prosecutor, Viktor Shokin, informed Parnas that he had met with Nunes in Vienna in December 2018.
Bondy also said that a top aide to Nunes, Derek Harvey, sometimes joined a group that met frequently in spring 2019 at the Trump International Hotel in Washington, D.C., to discuss the Biden matter, among other topics. The group, according to Bondy, was convened by Giuliani, Trump’s personal attorney, and included Parnas, his business associate Igor Fruman, as well as journalist John Solomon and the husband-and-wife legal team of Joe diGenova and Victoria Toensing. …
Shokin is a key figure in Giuliani’s effort to press the Ukrainians to open an investigation into Biden. ¤ He was fired as Ukraine’s Prosecutor General in March 2016, after a pressure campaign from Ukraine’s western allies, led by Biden. Shokin has publicly accused Biden of engineering that effort to protect his son Hunter, who was serving on the board of the Ukrainian energy company Burisma.
📊 Polls on impeachment per FiveThirtyEight http://53eig.ht/2N5MJV2 are showing +7% support for the hearings but slightly dipping numbers for removal. I expect this in part reflects the fact that elections are nearing and people are factoring that it.
🐣 What is striking to me is Trump’s apparent inability to learn, or, perhaps worse, that there’s no one around him who can sit him down and tell him these ideas are disproven and crazy. He just repeats the same b.s. over and over.
🚫 NewYorker, Susan Glasser: The Awful Truth About Impeachment http://bit.ly/2OdIfgR
// depressing
WaPo: Trump tries to woo GOP lawmakers with Camp David getaways, sporting events http://wapo.st/2OeVfTN
// The excursions are part of a broad White House charm offensive, meant to hold House and Senate Republicans in line through a House impeachment vote and a trial in the Senate that appears all but inevitable
🐣 RT @girlsreallyrule Devin Nunes should no longer be on the Intel Committee or engaged in any way in this investigation as there is now proof of a direct conflict. #NunesResign
⋙ 🐣 RT @atrupar Devin Nunes does not look thrilled as Swalwell reads into the record a story about his ties with indicted Giuliani associate Lev Parnas 📌 💽 https://twitter.com/atrupar/status/1197607345414660098?s=20/photo/1
// thread includes videos of mostly Dem member comments
YahooNews: Biden: ‘Lindsey Graham Is About to Go Down in a Way’ He’ll ‘Regret His Whole Life’ http://yhoo.it/2OfQGbu
🐣 RT @MollyJongFast I’m starting to suspect this Nunes guy is kind of sketchy.
⋙ 🐣 RT @joshtpm Let’s not forget Nunes had to recuse himself from the original House Russia probe. Because he got caught doing a midnight ninja run to the White House to see the intel his old staffers had found to prove Mike Flynn was framed.
💙💙 CNN: Giuliani associate willing to tell Congress Nunes met with ex-Ukrainian official to get dirt on Biden http://cnn.it/33a5zjX “‘Mr. Parnas learned from former Ukrainian Prosecutor General Victor Shokin that Nunes had met with Shokin in Vienna last December,’ said Bondy”
✛ “Shokin was ousted from his position in 2016 after pressure from Western leaders, including then-vice president Biden, over concerns that Shokin was not pursuing corruption cases.”
💙💙 DailyBeast, Allison Quinn: Lev Parnas Says He Has Info on Devin Nunes’ Role in Trump’s Ukraine Dirt-Digging Mission http://bit.ly/37uYSfN
// Parnas has said he learned of a Vienna meeting between Nunes and the former Ukrainian official who Trump allies claim was unfairly ousted by Joe Biden.
CNN: White House helped arrange call between Giuliani and Pompeo after handover of Biden allegations http://cnn.it/2KOdjBT
⭕ 22 Nov 2019
🐣 RT @SenWhitehouse Best summary I’ve seen yet of the Ukraine scam Trump tried to pull, and why it’s so serious:
💙⋙ TheAtlantic, Adam Serwer: Trump’s Crime Against America http://bit.ly/35pzaaz
// The president’s offense is abusing his power to stay in office, not disputing Ukraine policy.
NYT, Maggie Haberman: A Senate Trial Could Put Trump’s Use of Aggressive Defense Tactics to Their Biggest Test http://nyti.ms/2XS1u2P
// The president’s campaign against the Mueller report and its author is a road map of what is likely to lie ahead.
TheBulwark, Chris Truax: There Was Also a Cover-Up http://bit.ly/2DeYvs0
// We know about the bribery and the quid pro quo. What we don’t know about yet is who initiated the cover-up.
TPM, Josh Kovensky (11/22): Grassley, Johnson Push Ukraine-DNC Conspiracy Theory With Doc Demand http://bit.ly/2Ohn65B
CNN: DOJ watchdog report expected to say FBI’s Russia probe launched properly but lower-level employees made mistakes http://cnn.it/2KOWI0R This is a big fucking deal
NYT: Charges of Ukrainian Meddling? A Russian Operation, U.S. Intelligence Says http://nyti.ms/2OFy4kl
// Moscow has run a yearslong operation to blame Ukraine for its own 2016 election interference. Republicans have used similar talking points to defend President Trump in impeachment proceedings.
In a briefing that closely aligned with Dr. Hill’s testimony, American intelligence officials informed senators and their aides in recent weeks that Russia had engaged in a yearslong campaign to essentially frame Ukraine as responsible for Moscow’s own hacking of the 2016 election, according to three American officials. The briefing came as Republicans stepped up their defenses of Mr. Trump in the Ukraine affair.
The revelations demonstrate Russia’s persistence in trying to sow discord among its adversaries — and show that the Kremlin apparently succeeded, as unfounded claims about Ukrainian interference seeped into Republican talking points. American intelligence agencies believe Moscow is likely to redouble its efforts as the 2020 presidential campaign intensifies. The classified briefing for senators also focused on Russia’s evolving influence tactics, including its growing ability to better disguise operations.
“The Russians have a particular vested interest in putting Ukraine, Ukrainian leaders in a very bad light,” she told lawmakers.
But the campaign by Russian intelligence in recent years has been even more complex as Moscow tries not only to undermine the government in Kyiv but also to use a disinformation campaign there to influence the American political debate.
… Russian intelligence operatives deployed a network of agents to blame Ukraine for its 2016 interference. Starting at least in 2017, the operatives peddled a mixture of now-debunked conspiracy theories along with established facts to leave an impression that the government in Kyiv, not Moscow, was responsible for the hackings of Democrats and its other interference efforts in 2016, senior intelligence officials said.
The Russian intelligence officers conveyed the information to prominent Russians and Ukrainians who then used a range of intermediaries, like oligarchs, businessmen and their associates, to pass the material to American political figures and even some journalists, who were likely unaware of its origin, the officials said.
That muddy brew worked its way into American information ecosystems, sloshing around until parts of it reached Mr. Trump, who has also spoken with Mr. Putin about allegations of Ukrainian interference. Mr. Trump also brought up the assertions of Ukrainian meddling in his July 25 call with President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine …
Republican[s] on the Democratic-led House Intelligence Committee, which is conducting the impeachment hearing, have also steered clear of the fringe notion that Mr. Trump mentioned to Mr. Zelensky, which is pushed by Russian intelligence: the so-called CrowdStrike server conspiracy theory, which falsely suggests Ukraine, not Russia, was behind the breach of Democratic operatives’ servers.
[But!] Mr. Trump repeated the baseless claim on Friday in an interview with “Fox & Friends,” laying out the narrative and doubling down after a host gently pressed him on whether he was sure of one aspect of the debunked theory, that the F.B.I. gave a Democratic server to what Mr. Trump had inaccurately described as a Ukrainian-owned company. ¤ “That is what the word is,” Mr. Trump replied.
NYT, Roger Cohen: Fiona Hill and the American Idea http://nyti.ms/2Ogz8wf
// A naturalized American exposes Trump’s attack on what America is and must be.
TheGuardian, Luke Harding: UK knew in 2016 of Trump’s ‘suspicious links’ to Russia, book claims http://bit.ly/34gPwCq
// No 10 did not ‘push matter’ to avoid offending US president, say commissioners of Steele dossier
TIME: Exclusive: CEO of Ukraine State Gas Firm Preparing to Testify in Giuliani Probe http://bit.ly/2QIh6Ev //➔ The real scandal is Giuliani/Perry/Naftogas not Bidens/Burisma
🐣 RT @john_sipher For what it’s worth, this turned out to be a routine FBI inspection. All Bureau inspections find some level of wrongdoing and mete out punishment to various employees. It is how they signal to employees to follows regulations to the letter, no matter what.
⋙ WaPo: Justice Dept. watchdog finds political bias did not taint top officials running the FBI’s Russia probe but documents errors http://wapo.st/2QU0Q3F
NYT: Trump Attacks Impeachment Inquiry and Accuses a Witness of Lying http://nyti.ms/2OBLazc
// Mr. Trump said a career diplomat made up a conversation between him and his ambassador to the European Union, dismissing sworn testimony in the impeachment inquiry.
WaPo, Rachel Sklar: Why it was so satisfying to watch Fiona Hill take charge http://wapo.st/2XGUplS
// Finally, a woman stepped in and reminded us how things are supposed to work.
WaPo Editorial: Yes, Congress should be talking about the president and bribery http://wapo.st/2OcmpKL
11:55pm DailyBeast, Allison Quinn: Lev Parnas Says He Has Info on Devin Nunes’ Role in Trump’s Ukraine Dirt-Digging Mission http://bit.ly/34d4w4j
// Parnas has said he learned of a Vienna meeting between Nunes and the former Ukrainian official who Trump allies claim was unfairly ousted by Joe Biden.
DailyBeast, Sam Stein: Trump’s Gatekeeper Put Rudy in Touch With Pompeo: Emails http://bit.ly/2s7Ygwl
// Newly released documents tie the president even further to the disinformation campaign his personal lawyer was spearheading.
NYT: Charges of Ukrainian Meddling? A Russian Operation, U.S. Intelligence Says http://nyti.ms/34djyad
// Moscow has run a yearslong operation to blame Ukraine for its own 2016 election interference. Republicans have used similar talking points to defend President Trump in impeachment proceedings.
WaPo, Tuluse Olorunnipa: In rollicking 53-minute conversation, Trump embraces conspiraoies, spreads falsehoods and insults opponents http://wapo.st/
// The Debrief: An occasional series offering a reporter’s insights
🐣 RT @atrupar Trump, to Fox & Friends, on Barr DOJ’s probe of Russia investigation: “What you’re going to see, I predict, will be perhaps the biggest scandal in the history of our country…I could get very much involved, but I don’t…I don’t have any obligation legally to [not get involved]” 📌 https://twitter.com/atrupar/status/1197884984356421632?s=20
🐣 RT @jonallendc To put this all in one place:
1) Trump is talking Crowdstrike.
2) That’s a pushback on Fiona Hill, a leading expert on Eastern Europe and a former Trump aide, who called bull— on the idea that Ukraine framed Russia for interfering in the 2016 election. 1/x 📌 https://twitter.com/jonallendc/status/1197988227388497922?s=20
🐣 RT @donwinslow [10/1] Have you wondered why @LindseyGrahamSC has been defending @realDonaldTrum like his life depended on it? A friend in federal law enforcement told me about a certain threat @realDonaldTrump has made to Graham. It’s personal. It’s awful. And it’s working very well.
// 10/1/2019
🐣 RT @SykesCharlie The more things change… https://twitter.com/SykesCharlie/status/1197244055530483715?s=20/photo/1-2
// Art Buchwald’s column
RawStory: Lindsey Graham is ‘about to go down’ — because Trump has something on him: Joe Biden http://bit.ly/33fdcWm
Biden explained that Graham is clearly being controlled by someone else. ¤ “They’re asking Lindsey Graham — they have him under their thumb right now,” Biden said. “They know he knows if he comes out against [President Donald] Trump he’s got a real tough road for re-election. Number one. I am disappointed, and quite frankly I’m angered by the fact that he knows me. He knows my son. He knows there’s nothing to this. Trump is now essentially holding power over him that even the Ukrainians wound yield to.”
NYT, Susan Rice: The Four Lessons of Impeachment http://nyti.ms/35lAc7w
// They are not all depressing.
DailyBeast, Erin Banco: Bolton Allies Cut Out ‘Three Amigos’ for Direct Line to Kyiv http://bit.ly/33dGk0i
// After a White House meeting that was thrown into chaos by Ambassador Gordon Sondland, senior National Security Council officials took matters into their own hands, sources say.
DailyBeast, Adam Rawnsley: Here’s How Republicans Are Trying to Distance Trump From Rudy http://bit.ly/34ckOuf
// House Republicans have sought to try suggest that Giuliani wasn’t pursuing Trump’s agenda in Ukraine, teeing up the president’s lawyer as a potential fall guy.
WaPo: ‘Impeachapalooza’: An irregular week for an outlandish presidency http://wapo.st/2KKdZs7
WaPo, Jennifer Rubin: We know what happened. Now it’s time to compel Republicans to refute it or condone it. http://wapo.st/33dRXUM
WaPo: How Trump keeps making it tougher for his GOP impeachment defenders http://wapo.st/2OdiTQz
🐣 RT @blakehounshell This sounds a bit less lurid than we have been led to believe [Textblock] https://twitter.com/blakehounshell/status/1197991246364585985?s=20/photo/1
🐣 This appears to explain the “animated” discussion (read: Trump meltdown) seen last week through the windows of the WH, a meeting said to be about the OIG report https://twitter.com/Auriandra/status/1198001725585670144?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @Anthony That big IG report that Trump was excited about. ¤ He’s not gonna be excited. ¤ Here’s what the IG found…
– Investigation wasn’t opened over Steele
– Carter Page FISA didn’t rely on Steele
– Carter Page FISA was legal
– Mifsud, who offered Clinton dirt, wasn’t FBI informant
🐣 RT @kylegriffin1 Breaking via NYT: The DOJ IG report “debunks a series of conspiracy theories and insinuations about the FBI that Mr. Trump and his allies have put forward.” IG Horowitz “made no finding of politically biased actions” by top Comey, McCabe and Strzok.
⋙ NYT: Russia Inquiry Review Is Said to Criticize F.B.I. but Rebuff Claims of Biased Acts http://nyti.ms/2D7cWOz
// A [CI IG]. watchdog report will portray the pursuit of a wiretap of an ex-Trump adviser as sloppy, but it also debunks some accusations by Trump allies of F.B.I. wrongdoing.
NYT: Charges of Ukrainian Meddling? A Russian Operation, U.S. Intelligence Says http://nyti.ms/337MLSl
// Moscow has run a yearslong operation to blame Ukraine for its own 2016 election interference. Republicans have used similar talking points to defend President Trump in impeachment proceedings.
🐣 RT @EricGarland First, remember that while the American political system is driving inexorably toward impeaching Trump, he is but a symptom of the real crisis – a coup against civilization by oligarchs around the world looking to rid themselves of liberal democracy.
TheAtlantic, Adam Serwer: Trump’s Crime Against America http://bit.ly/35pzaaz
// The president’s offense is abusing his power to stay in office, not disputing Ukraine policy.
NYT, Glenn R. Simpson and Peter Fritsch: The Double-Barreled Dream World of Trump and His Enablers http://nyti.ms/2XH7I5M Mr. Simpson and Mr. Fritsch are the founders of Fusion GPS.
// They wanted to take down Biden. But they also wanted to absolve Moscow of election meddling.
DailyBeast, Molly Jong-Fast: Fiona Hill and Her Unapologetic Anger Is What We All Need Right Now http://bit.ly/2rg3yp8
// She said a number of things about women in the world that should not be lost in the larger flow of testimony.
⭕ 21 Nov 2019 Impeachment Hearings
WaPo: Graham launches probe of Bidens, Burisma and Ukraine http://wapo.st/2rkWkQV
DailyBeast, Anna Nemtsova: Ukrainian Pols Are Playing Games With Impeachment Info http://bit.ly/2KOnZAt
// Members of Ukraine’s parliament said Biden-related ‘investigations’ have been opened. One said Ukraine interfered in the 2016 U.S. elections. Fake news. But music to Trump’s ears.
WSJ, Peggy Noonan: Trump’s Defenders Have No Defense http://on.wsj.com/2DbRUOI
// Witnesses were uneven, but even his closest allies don’t try to deny he did what he’s accused of doing.
🐣 RT @Zac_Petkanas You MUST watch @RepAdamSchiff’s powerful closing statement that sums up the entire #ImpeachmentHearing: ¤ “There is nothing more dangerous than an unethical president who believes they are above the law.” ¤ “We are better than that.”
💽 https://twitter.com/Zac_Petkanas/status/1197627910032637952?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @SteveSchmidtSES This is a true statement, except for the modern history part. He is the most corrupt President in American History- Period. The corruption is staggering, blatant and abetted by a phalanx of henchmen and women who are at war with the rule of law and the ideals of the country.
⋙ 🐣 RT @JoeBiden It’s clear that Donald Trump has abused the power of the presidency. Full stop. ¤ He is the most corrupt president in modern American history.
🐣 RT @JonahFisherBBC FACT CHECK: That court decision was overturned (Leschenko interference)… and the court in question is notorious for making dubious political motivated decisions.
⋙ 🐣 RT @RudyGiuliani Fiona Hill & her friends ignored blatant Dem corruption, even some proven to a Ukrainian Court. ¤ She is making false allegations against me. I have never met Firtash & had no policy agenda other than to defend my client. It will all be revealed very soon.
⏳WaPo: The full Trump-Ukraine impeachment timeline http://wapo.st/35odsUl
WaPo, Michael Gerson: Republicans’ motivations are all out in the open http://wapo.st/2s8pQJZ
🐣 RT @waltshaub Maybe it’s just because I’m sick today, but I find it gut-wrenching to see an entire party make clear that there is no level of corruption and criminality by their leader that they will ever oppose. They exist only to hold power, even if they must destroy the republic to keep it.
Data&Society, Whitney Phillips (2018): The Oxygen of Amplification http://bit.ly/2KQOZ3s
// 5/22/2018; Phillips uses journalists’ own words to propose a set of editorial “better practices” intended to reduce manipulation and harm.
The Oxygen of Amplification: Better Practices for Reporting on Extremists, Antagonists, and Manipulators Online draws on in-depth interviews by scholar Whitney Phillips to showcase how news media was hijacked from 2016 to 2018 to amplify the messages of hate groups.
Offering extremely candid comments from mainstream journalists, the report provides a snapshot of an industry caught between the pressure to deliver page views, the impulse to cover manipulators and “trolls,” and the disgust (expressed in interviewees’ own words) of accidentally propagating extremist ideology.
🐣 RT @brianklaas There are 58 countries that are more corrupt than Ukraine according to Transparency International’s 2019 Corruption Perceptions Index. Did Trump press *any* of them on corruption? C’mon.
⋙ 🐣 RT @PreetBharara Have reporters asked congressional Republicans this simple question: Do you sincerely believe Donald Trump cares about corruption generally? Seriously? Can you give an example not named Biden? Just one?
CNN, Kevin Liptak: Fiona Hill’s extraordinary answer distills what impeachment is about http://cnn.it/2qEukaT
🐣 RT @moscow_project According to his lawyers, Lev Parnas was at the meeting in Madrid a few days after Trump’s call with Zelensky where Giuliani pressured one of Zelensky’s aides to open an investigation into the Bidens.
⋙ DailyBeast, Betsy Swan: Parnas Attended Giuliani’s Madrid Meeting With Zelensky Aide http://bit.ly/2KMJm5k
// Parnas was at the table for a meeting where Giuliani pressured a senior Ukrainian official to investigate a company linked to the Bidens, the official told The Daily Beast.
🐣 RT @heidiNBC What Putin took away from GOP indifference to the #ImpeachmentHearing testimony: ¤ @FrankFigliuzzi1: Time for interference Part 2 ¤ Expect an “onslaught” of Russian bots, trolls and worse, w democracy & rule of law at stake. ¤ “The media has got to step up and call it out.”
NYT: Fiona Hill Testifies ‘Fictions’ on Ukraine Pushed by Trump Help Russia http://nyti.ms/2O8kBSY
// The former top White House aide denounced a theory that Ukraine interfered in the 2016 election, as she tied the president’s pressure campaign to Russian efforts to sow political divisions in America.
WaPo, Ruth Marcus: The impeachment witnesses are an antidote to Trump’s anti-immigrant worldview http://wapo.st/2QHaNkQ
WaPo, Dana Milbank: Republicans have a new enemy: Truth itself http://wapo.st/2OAwdxi
WaPo Editorial: Fiona Hill shreds the Republicans’ false narrative about Ukraine http://wapo.st/37t1dI8
WaPo: Justice Dept. inspector general draft report finds FBI lawyer altered document http://wapo.st/2O7LRRI “That conduct did not alter Horowitz’s finding that the surveillance application of former Trump campaign adviser Carter Page had a proper legal and factual basis”
WaPo: Impeachment witness Fiona Hill warns that conspiracy theories advance Russia’s agenda as they divide Americans http://wapo.st/2qzPEOJ
🐣 RT @real I never in my wildest dreams thought my name would in any way be associated with the ugly word, Impeachment! The calls (Transcripts) were PERFECT, there was NOTHING said that was wrong. No pressure on Ukraine. Great corruption & dishonesty by Schiff on the other side!
WaPo, Aaron Blake: 5 takeaways from Fiona Hill’s and David Holmes’s testimony http://wapo.st/34brGrw
💙💙 NewYorker, Jane Mayer (10/4): The Invention of the Conspiracy Theory on Biden and Ukraine http://bit.ly/2IqF0zz
// 10/4/2019; How a conservative dark-money group that targeted Hillary Clinton in 2016 spread the discredited story that may lead to Donald Trump’s impeachment.
🐣 RT @NicolleDWallace I spent much of my career in politics. I’ve never seen anyone like Fiona Hill.
🐣 RT @MollyJongFast This White House engages in Orwellian doublespeak every damn day.
⋙ 🐣 RT @ZekeJMiller White House: “Schiff and Congressional Democrats Are Playing Right into Russia’s Hands…Fiona Hill warned today that it is Russia’s goal to delegitimize the President of the United States. ”
WaPo: Fiona Hill tells impeachment inquiry about a ‘fictional narrative’ on Ukrainian interference http://wapo.st/35n4WoD
WaPo: Impeachment hearings live updates: Former White House official Fiona Hill to warn of ‘fictional narrative’ on Ukraine interference http://wapo.st/2Ovs9OR
DailyBeast, Betsy Swan: Fiona Hill Blasts GOP ‘Alternate Narrative’ on Ukraine http://bit.ly/2XJEByN
// The former top White House official handling Russia policy is set to needle Congressional Republicans in her impeachment testimony.
DailyBeast: Fiona Hill Wrote the Book on Putin’s ‘Protection Racket.’ Now She’s Testifying About Trump. http://bit.ly/2KEGnM2
// “Real decision making resides inside the inner circle, while Russia’s formal political institutions have… been emasculated.” Sound familiar?
⭕ 20 Nov 2019 Impeachment Hearings
🐣 RT @AmericanMystic Only Trump could have thought up this mad plot, but his crime (with the active assistance of senior officials) is much more than bribery: Trump’s goal was to rig the 2020 election in his favor. He cannot get away with it or the integrity of our democracy will be destroyed.
🐣 RT @mattklewis Again, the “exculpatory” evidence Trump apologists cite tend to all be events that occurred AFTER Trump realized the genie was out of the bottle…
⋙ 🐣 RT @mattklewis Per Elise Stefanik’s questioning, I would also add that (a) the aid was released only AFTER the IG report was sent to the House Intel Committee, & that (b) President Zelensky canceled his announcement of investigations into the Bidens only AFTER those events transpired..
💙💙 ⋙⋙ 🐣 RT @mattklewis It’s important to note the timing of Trump’s “I want nothing..I want no quid pro quo” statement to Sondland: It occurred on September 9, the exact same day the House Intel Committee received the whistleblower’s complaint….
🐣 RT @MimiRocah Scary: some at FBI felt Ukraine investigation was shut down (we know but interesting to hear some say it) & no one in FBI wanted to touch it b/c of Russia investigation which means Trump & co. tactics of intimidation is working.
⋙ YahooNews, Michael Isikoff and Zach Dorfman: FBI seeks interview with CIA whistleblower http://yhoo.it/37zQSdA
🐣 RT @tribelaw Sondland’s testimony establishes what the House needs to conclude in order to impeach Trump for the “high Crime” of crippling Congress’s lawful impeachment process by withholding the documents and witnesses demanded of the White House and the State Dept
⋙ YahooNews: Fox News Impeachment Expert Ken Starr Says Trump Is In Deep Trouble http://yhoo.it/35nVeCI
🐣 RT @ddale8 Rep. Devin Nunes’ opening statements have been the most objectively inaccurate segments of the impeachment inquiry hearings.
🐣 RT @ZevShaleb EXCLUSIVE. People in Ukraine definitely knew in July. A well-placed source in Kyiv told me minutes ago ‘Ukraine become toxic’ in late July, ‘American support became noticeably absent’. He can’t say it was directly connected to the call, but ‘what else could it be?’ @NarativLive
🐣 RT @ReigerReport Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense LAURA COOPER says there were two ways for the White House to legally withhold aid to Ukraine. ¤ Cooper says both would require congressional notice. ¤ No notice was given to Congress of the hold on Ukraine aid.
🐣 RT @EvanMcMullin Trump is an experienced crook. He deputizes thugs like Cohen and Giuliani to do his dirty work, directs everyone to work with them, and then feigns ignorance about the compromising details if anyone asks.
🐣 RT @SethAbramson The reason Trump wanted only the ANNOUNCEMENT of an investigation into Biden and the Democratic Party—but not the INVESTIGATION—is because he knew an actual INVESTIGATION would turn up nothing, whereas a mere ANNOUNCEMENT would tar Biden and the Democrats through November 2020.
✅ PolitiFact: Fact-checking the Gordon Sondland impeachment hearing about Trump, Ukraine http://bit.ly35wJmhR
TIME, David French: Trump’s Actions in Ukraine Weren’t Just Wrong, They Were Dangerous http://bit.ly/2QE7Zoz
💙 NYT Editorial: Sondland Has Implicated the President and His Top Men http://nyti.ms/2O7kPKo
// Congress now needs to hear from more witnesses before an impeachment vote.
WaPo Editorial: ‘Everyone was in the loop’: Gordon Sondland makes two stunning points http://wapo.st/2D5hfKo
… [T]he $1 million donor whom President Trump appointed as ambassador to the European Union, on Wednesday made two stunning points to the House Intelligence Committee: Yes, there was a quid pro quo between Mr. Trump and the president of Ukraine; and “everyone was in the loop” about it, including the vice president, the secretary of state and the White House acting chief of staff.
DailyBeast, Erin Banco and Sam Brodey: Sondland Scorches Trumpland: ‘Easy Come, Easy Go’ http://bit.ly/37oLlpT
// Ambassador to the EU Gordon Sondland named names and left few in the upper echelons of the federal government unscathed.
WaPo: Sondland’s bombshell testimony leaves Trump’s Republican allies scrambling http://wapo.st/2OxGbiP
DailyBeast, Adam Rawnsley: Here Are All the People Sondland Just Threw Under the Bus http://bit.ly/37mI2Qa
// Ambassador Sondland testified that Mike Pompeo and Vice President Mike Pence were more aware of the alleged Ukraine shakedown than previously thought.
🐣 RT @qjurecic The Trump-Zelensky phone call is at 9:03am on July 25 ¤ Cooper’s staff gets an email from the Ukrainian embassy asking what’s up with the aid at 2:31pm on July 25—five hours after the call
⋙ 🐣 RT @Susan_Hennessey Cooper says she has learned new information from her staff. Staff showed two unclassified email from State. One received July 25th at 2:31: “Ukrainian embassy are asking about security assistance.” Important to timeline.
DailyBeast, Erin Banco and Sam Brodey: Ambassador to the EU Gordon Sondland named names and left few in the upper echelons of the federal government unscathed. http://bit.ly/37oLlpT
// Ambassador to the EU Gordon Sondland named names and left few in the upper echelons of the federal government unscathed.
💙💙 DailyBeast, Matt Lewis: Gordon Sondland Provides the ‘John Dean Moment’ of Trump’s Impeachment http://bit.ly/37pAo7O
// Sondland was going to be the guy who bailed POTUS out. Not quite. And just think—if the Democrats had followed their original timid instincts, we’d never have known this.
WaPo: Philip Bump: Ukraine aid may have been stopped in early July — and Ukraine likely knew by the time of Trump’s call http://wapo.st/32ZP89W
// The timeline of the withholding of aid has been murky.
💙🐣 RT @matthewamiller Schiff and team have run the most effective Congressional probe in history. Informed of the WB complaint on Sep 9, and in a little over two months have broken WH obstruction, got docs & testimony, flipped reluctant witnesses, and revealed the entire plot. Seriously impressive.
DailyBeast, Betsy Swan: Lev Parnas Helped Rep. Devin Nunes’ Investigations http://bit.ly/2KFfzeI
// The indicted Giuliani associate helped arrange meetings and calls in Europe for the Republican congressman in 2018.
WaPo, Stacey Abrams: Republicans’ extreme positions open the door for Democrats in Georgia http://wapo.st/2QJeXbX
WaPo, Dan Balz: Sondland’s dramatic testimony shakes the impeachment debate and undercuts the president http://wapo.st/2pBrgM5
WaPo: Sondland acknowledges there was a ‘quid pro quo’ involving Ukraine http://wapo.st/2QGcJKb
🐣 RT @MollyMcKew Nunes is like 4chan mad libs ¤ WHISTLEBLOWER STEELE DOSSIER CLINTON CHALUPA LESHCHENKO BLACK DOSSIER SERVERS COLLUSION DEMOCRATIC OPERATIVES
🐣 RT @tomwatson Wow, Ken Starr making a strong case for obstruction and contempt of Congress charges on Fox right now. Cites Nixon. Says he’s changed his mind on these proceedings. “It’s over. There will be articles on impeachment.” 📌 https://twitter.com/tomwatson/status/1197186961229959168?s=20
🐣 RT @CAPAction “We now know that the president in fact committed the crime of bribery… ¤ I think articles of impeachment are being drawn up if they haven’t already been drawn up.” —Ken Starr 💽 https://twitter.com/CAPAction/status/1197187919737499648?s=20/photo/1
// clip from Fox
🐣 RT @RawStory Ken Starr suggests Sondland’s testimony could prompt GOP to ‘make a trip to the White House’ and ask Trump to resign 💽 https://twitter.com/RawStory/status/1197179321451982850?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @matthewamiller Sondland’s rebuttal of Taylor is interesting and damning. There weren’t two channels, regular and irregular. There was in fact one channel, directed by the president and known to everyone around him, ordering the quid pro quo.
🐣 RT @AriMelber Holy cow Gordon Sondland going full John Dean in opening statement:
Confirms his view the WH plot was “quid pro quo” bribery
Implicates Giuliani
Shows Pompeo in the loop with new evidence
Implicates Trump, testifies this was on his orders
Adds new emails and evidence
🐣 RT @CarolLeonnig Sondland: President Trump never told me that aid was conditioned on announcing an investigation, in those words…but I came to realize that it was…
🐣 RT @RNicholasBurns Ambassador Sondland’s testimony a bombshell. This scandal is far deeper and broader than Watergate ever was. An abuse of Presidential power and a damning indictment of the President and his associates.
🐣 RT @AriMelber The obvious background here:
Trump felt he won 2016 by casting Clinton as crooked and fixating on an (actual) investigation of her.
He planned for 2020 by going after Biden as crooked and *manufacturing* an investigation of him.
🐣 RT @moscow_project Two things were clear to everybody involved:
-Rudy Giuliani was speaking on behalf of Trump
-Trump and Rudy didn’t want investigations—they wanted a *public announcement* of investigations, which had obvious political benefits for Trump.
🐣 RT @samstein “If you could show me that, you know, Trump actually was engaging in a quid pro quo, outside the phone call, that would be very disturbing.” — Lindsey Graham to @jonathanvswan a month ago
🐣 RT @benjaminwittes I’m old enough to remember when a big part of the Trump defense was that all of the witnesses were passing on second- or third-hand hearsay.
🐣 RT @HouseIntel Ambassador Sondland testified:
➡️ There was quid pro quo in Trump’s Ukraine scheme.
➡️ Zelensky would need to announce investigations that would benefit Trump politically in order to lift the “logjam” of aid and a White House meeting.
➡️ Everyone was in the loop about it.
🐣 RT @K8brannen Sondland’s three big messages:
1.This was all done at the president’s orders.
2. Everyone was in the loop.
3. There was a quid pro quo: WH meeting/Security assistance ($$) for investigations into Biden/2016
🐣 RT @neal_katyal 17.Either way, Trump defense has entirely collapsed. It’s clear he committed a grave impeachable offense, even according to his own witnesses. As my book (released next week!) argues, there is no choice but to impeach and remove him.📌 https://twitter.com/neal_katyal/status/1197152631887728641?s=20
🐣 RT @sbg1 [Susan Glasser] Perhaps we should all give a big thanks to Roger Stone, who may have had a big influence in getting Gordon Sondland to, shall we say, update his testimony.
🐣 RT @JRubinBlogger just implicated Pence. Ruh-roh
🐣 RT @charlie_savage Sondland says he had repeated conversations with Pompeo whose premise was that any release by Trump of the military aid was contingent on Zelensky making a public announcement of investigations, and Pompeo never corrected him and said that premise was wrong.
🐣 RT @evanmcmullin Sondland says email informed multiple senior officials that Zelenskiy would assure Trump he intended to run “investigation.” ¤ “Everyone was in the loop. It was no secret. Everyone was informed…days before the presidential call.” https://abcn.ws/2KBuiXR #ImpeachmentHearings 💽 https://twitter.com/evanmcmurry/status/1197172349218377728?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @HallieJackson That includes not just Pompeo, Mulvaney, NSC staff, per Amb. Sondland – but also Pence: Sondland said he specifically told the VP he “had concerns that the delay in aid had become tied to the issue of investigations.”
⋙ 🐣 RT @jdawsey1 “Everyone was in the loop,” Gordon Sondland says. “It was no secret.”
🐣 RT @harrylitman We are all listening to the same testimony. And each and every R is going to vote against Articles of Impeachment. what exactly is going through their minds right now? what rationalizations can possibly support their making light of this assault on the constitution and US int?
🐣 RT @McFaul Sondland’s testimony is so damning to the president because he is telling the truth.
🐣 RT @sarahdwire “Everyone was in the loop,” Sondland said repeatedly.
People included in “everyone,” according to his testimony:
-President Trump
-VP Pence
-Acting WH Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney
-Sec of State Pompeo
-Rudy Giuliani
-Energy Sec Rick Perry
-Amb John Bolton
-Amb Kurt Volker
WaPo: Sondland: ‘Was there a quid pro quo? … The answer is yes’ http://wapo.st/2O2XKZc
Newsweek: Trump Regularly ‘Can’t Remember What He’s Said or Been Told,’ White House Insider Says http://bit.ly/2O1DK98
⭕ 19 Nov 2019 Impeachment Hearings
WaPo: Trump said his Ukraine call was ‘perfect.’ Impeachment witnesses testified otherwise. http://wapo.st/2XB11C3
DailyBeast, Sam Brodey, Erin Banco and Spencer Ackerman: Republican Witnesses Blow Massive Hole in GOP’s Defense of Trump http://bit.ly/2OrbxYo
// Kurt Volker’s testimony has complicated what was supposed to be an opportunity to amplify the GOP’s impeachment counter-narrative.
DailyBeast, Rick Wilson: Trumpists to Alexander Vindman: ‘Fuck You for Your Service’ http://bit.ly/2rTLD7Y
// Once the party stood for strength. Now, it’s the GOP mocking the testimony of a decorated military officer. Now, it’s the GOP in bed with the darkest forces in the world.
WaPo Editorial: Even Republicans’ preferred witnesses are implicating Trump http://wapo.st/2OwZnNC
NYT, Jesse Wegman: Colonel Vindman’s America http://nyti.ms/2QzHLU1
// It’s not a place that Donald Trump knows much about.
NYT: Officials Testify That Trump Requests on Ukraine Call Were Inappropriate http://nyti.ms/2KF0LwB
// mIn the second week of impeachment hearings, White House national security aides recalled their concerns after the president’s conversation with his Ukrainian counterpart.
WaPo, Jennifer Rubin: Republicans should have thought twice before calling Volker and Morrison http://wapo.st/2O4AF8v
Politico: This week’s impeachment hearing schedule http://politi.co/37nXGei
Tuesday
9 a.m.: Jennifer Williams, aide to Vice President Mike Pence, and Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman, director for European Affairs at the National Security Council, will go before the House Intelligence Committee. They will be the first people to testify who were on the July 25 phone call between Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.2:30 p.m.: Ambassador Kurt Volker, former envoy to Ukraine, and Tim Morrison, White House aide with the NSC, will testify before the House Intelligence Committee. Volker and Gordon Sondland, ambassador to the European Union, have previously testified in a closed door meeting with the committee with details supporting Democrats’ claim that Trump tried to execute a shadow foreign policy with Ukraine.
Wednesday
9 a.m.: Gordon Sondland will testify before the committee. This will be the first time Sondland publicly addresses claims that he was working closely with Trump in dealing with Ukraine and that he’d told the president that the Ukrainians were ready to comply with his demands.2:30 p.m.: Laura Cooper, deputy assistance secretary of Defense, and David Hale, undersecretary of State, will testify. Cooper previously described to the committee a state of frenzy within the administration after Trump ordered a freeze on military aid to Ukraine.
Thursday
9 a.m.: Fiona Hill, former senior director for Europe and Russia at the NSC, and David Holmes, political counselor at the U.S. Embassy in Kyiv will testify. Hill had previously told House investigators that then-National Security Adviser John Bolton instructed her to report her concerns about Rudy Giuliani and Trump’s dealings with Ukraine to NSC lawyers.
NYT, Jamelle Bouie: Republicans Are Following Trump to Nowhere http://nyti.ms/2KAiipz
// There’s an impeachment lesson hiding in the president’s failure to produce the political results he wants.
🐣 RT @ktumulty Via @MJGerson — “Fox News is no longer content to spout pro-Trump propaganda. It must destroy Trump’s opponents, even if they are honorable people. Especially if they are honorable people. “
⋙WaPo, Michael Gerson: Trump spurs a Wild West of continuously worsening political rhetoric http://wapo.st/3445srE
🐣 Trump may have inadvertently laid a trap for himself. Those who might defend him are most likely to not volunteer to testify if it means defying his claim of blanket executive privilege.
DailyBeast, Matt Lewis: Do You Want Your Kids to Grow Up to Be Like Alexander Vindman or Donald Trump? http://bit.ly/2qveBdY
// Trump and his lackeys say the “deep staters” are ruining the country. In fact, these are the very people who’ve been serving their nation with dignity for decades.
WaPo: Lt. Col. Vindman to describe his alarm over president’s call with Ukrainian leader, girding for Republican attack http://wapo.st/32UPEWE
DailyBeast, Erin Banco: Sondland to U.S. Diplomat: Trump Only Cares About ‘Big Stuff’ Like the Biden Investigation http://bit.ly/2XoAp7k
// David Holmes testified, “Ambassador Sondland agreed that the President did not give a shit about Ukraine.”
DailyBeast: Top Diplomat Testified Pompeo Called Hannity About Yovanovitch Smears http://bit.ly/37nNfr9
// “It did come up at some point with the secretary,” David Hale said. “I understood that he did call Sean Hannity.”
Hale further declared that no one within the State Department thought the allegations that were being spread about Yovanovitch had any credibility or validity. At the same time, he acknowledged that despite the belief there was no basis behind the smears, the word got back to Yovanovitch there would be no statement of support for her.
Hale’s testimony tracks with that of both Yovanovitch and senior State Department official George Kent, who both said it was their understanding that Pompeo or someone from State called the Fox host to see “what is going on” with coverage of the allegations.
Hannity, meanwhile, has repeatedly denied that Pompeo contacted him at the time, calling the testimony “fake news” and insisting that he barely covered Yovanovitch during the spring, claiming that he didn’t “know anything about this woman.” He has also threatened to file a lawsuit if officials didn’t “stop spreading bogus rumors and smears about” him.
⭕ 18 Nov 2019
NYT, Thomas Friedman: Mike Pompeo: Last in His Class at West Point in Integrity http://nyti.ms/35cVfsU
// The secretary of state’s behavior has been cowardly and self-serving.
Politico: The Hill vows to review Solomon’s Ukraine pieces http://politi.co/37luSTm
// The columnist’s attacks on a U.S. ambassador, which were hailed by Trump, have come under congressional scrutiny.
Wong told Speier that “there are a lot of dedicated reporters at The Hill who do not share John Solomon’s views.” Last year, some journalists at The Hill complained to management about Solomon’s work, which was later moved from the news side to the opinion section. Solomon departed The Hill in September and later joined Fox News as a contributor.
🐣 RT @HelenKennedy Yikes. Hale says the State Department wanted Yovanovitch to issue a public statement of loyalty to Trump – possibly on camera – in exchange for support from the department. https://twitter.com/HelenKennedy/status/1196604019206168576?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @nwadhams Tillerson fires back at Haley: “There’s so many people still trying to serve the country, so when people write books that quickly after leaving, my guess is there’s two motivations: They need the money and they need the political future.”
⋙ PBS, Candice Norwood: Tillerson says it’s ‘wrong’ to ask another country for personal favors http://to.pbs.org/37s6b86
💙💙 🔆 This❗️⋙ HouseIntelCommittee (HPSCI): Committees Release Holmes and Hale Transcripts as Part of Impeachment Inquiry http://bit.ly/2KxG2Lh
● Holmes: Key Excerpts: http://bit.ly/2XyrQa8 ; Transcript: http://bit.ly/2Xsy7nq
● Hale: Key Excerpts: http://bit.ly/2Kw91if ; Transcript: http://bit.ly/2r4jB9D
“Today, the Committees released the transcripts of depositions with Mr. David Holmes and Mr. David Hale, Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs.
“Mr. Holmes, a nonpartisan career Foreign Service officer, testified that he was present when Ambassador Gordon Sondland spoke directly with President Trump on July 26—the day after President Trump’s call with Ukrainian President Zelensky.
“Mr. Holmes overheard President Trump asking Ambassador Sondland whether President Zelensky committed to ‘do the investigation’ into the Bidens and the 2016 election, which Trump pressed Zelensky for in his call the previous day. Sondland responded to President Trump stating, ‘Oh yeah, he’s going to do it’ and added that President Zelensky will ‘do anything you ask him to.’ Following the conversation between President Trump and Ambassador Sondland, Mr. Holmes asked Sondland whether it was true that President Trump ‘did not give a [expletive] about Ukraine,’ to which Sondland agreed that Trump did not, and that he only cared about the ‘big stuff’ like ‘this Biden investigation that Giuliani is pushing.’
“Mr. Holmes testified that he felt obligated to come forward to rebut the unfounded claim by the President and his allies that ‘certain senior officials may have been acting without the President’s knowledge in their dealings with Ukraine.’
🐣 RT @mimirocah Yovanovitch’s testimony – and strength – hit a nerve for a lot of people, in part, because of echoes of Dr. Ford’s testimony. @pithywidow & I explain.
⋙ NBCNews, Mimi Rocah and Karen Schwartz: Trump’s smearing of ex-Ambassador Marie Yovanovitch echoes Christine Blasey Ford http://nbcnews.to/2XpyqPW
// In the same way that Ford came to symbolize a certain kind of strength, Yovanovitch symbolizes any woman who’s ever had a man try to undermine her, demote her or push her out.
CNN: DOJ inspector general scheduled to testify about Russia report http://cnn.it/35fyhRX before Senate Judiciary on Dec 11
The scheduled hearing is the strongest indication yet that the report’s release is imminent. Graham and other supporters of the President have led a steady drumbeat of anticipation over the Horowitz report in recent weeks, suggesting it will provide evidence of improper conduct by the FBI in the early stages of the investigation that undermines the credibility of the probe.
What the report says is still unknown. But some witnesses who have been interviewed by the inspector general say they expect that it will likely reveal some missteps, though none that should be interpreted as undermining a legitimate investigation.
The report, expected to be released with minimal redactions, is likely to land at the height of the unfolding House impeachment inquiry. It could be a boon for Republicans, who’ve accused law enforcement of abusing its power as it investigated Trump.
🐣 RT @DeadlineWH “It’s gonna be really interesting to see which way [Sondland’s] testimony breaks. He’s obviously been somebody who has been reluctant to totally rip the lid off this scandal… This is somebody who is very much on his heels…” – @AaronBlake w/ @NicolleDWallace 💽 https://twitter.com/DeadlineWH/status/1196583137238757377?s=20/photo/1
JustSecurity, Ryan Goodman: Chart: Side-by-Side Comparison of Kurt Volker’s vs Other Witnesses’ Testimony in Impeachment Inquiry http://bit.ly/32U1tMF Volker’s testimony is contradicted by statements of at least eleven other current or former officials
NYT: Impeachment Investigators Exploring Whether Trump Lied to Mueller http://nyti.ms/2qrlBbP “‘I do not recall discussing WikiLeaks with him,’ Mr. Trump … wrote of Mr. Stone.” Others have testified, under oath, that he did.
// As part of the Russia inquiry, President Trump had given written answers to questions from Robert S. Mueller III.
🐣 RT @AndrewDesiderio Pelosi in letter to colleagues just now: “The facts are uncontested: that the President abused his power for his own personal, political benefit, at the expense of our national security interests.” https://twitter.com/AndrewDesiderio/status/1196504226932953088?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @AndrewDesiderio Pelosi also doubles down on “bribery”: ¤ “The fact is, the aid was only released after the whistleblower exposed the truth of the President’s extortion and bribery, and the House launched a formal investigation.”
AP Exclusive: US officials knew of Ukraine’s Trump anxiety http://bit.ly/2XnHuVw ‘Despite his denials, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy was feeling pressure from the Trump Administration to investigate Biden before his July phone call with Trump’
🐣 RT @CharlesPPierce If this really is Attorney General William Barr’s final go-round as a servant to radical conservative power, and we can only pray to god that it is, he’s certainly going out with a bang. [Link] https://twitter.com/CharlesPPierce/status/1196445984538148876?s=20
⋙ 🐣 My guess is likely disingenuous, but I think the CI IG report may have turned up clean and Barr is trying to reestablish his cred w Trump. Perhaps too clever.
TIME, Ian Bremmer: The End of the American International Order: What Comes Next? http://bit.ly/2qcVRA5 text of a speech delivered by Ian Bremmer on November 18 at the 2019 GZERO Summit in Tokyo
🐣 RT @olgaNYC1211 Former prosecutor Lutsenko (involved in smear campaign of Amb Yovanovitch) gave an interview to a Ukrainian outlet revealing more details about his 3 day meet w @RudyGiuliani ¤ Most damning is the meet was arranged by a Kremlin backed prosecutor connected to oil business. Lukoil 📌 https://twitter.com/olgaNYC1211/status/1196423099400511488?s=20
🐣 RT @SeanEldridge “If ever a time should come, when vain and aspiring men shall possess the highest seats in Government, our country will stand in need of its experienced patriots to prevent its ruin.” -Samuel Adams
⋙ 🐣 RT @real The Crazed, Do Nothing Democrats are turning Impeachment into a routine partisan weapon. That is very bad for our Country, and not what the Founders had in mind!!!!
🐣 RT @TheRickWilson This week is going to be insane.
🐣 RT @JoyceWhiteVance Opinions seem to be moving rapidly. 51% favor impeachment. 70% believe what Trump did is wrong. Public hearings seem to be working with 20% saying they’re paying close attention now.
⋙ 📊 ABCNews: ABC/Ipsos Poll: 70% of Americans say Trump’s actions tied to Ukraine were wrong http://abcn.ws/2qorsPg 51% think he should be impeached and removed from office
In addition to the 51%, another 19% think that Trump’s actions were wrong, but that he should either be impeached by the House but not removed from office, or be neither impeached by the House nor convicted by the Senate. The survey also finds that 1 in 4 Americans, 25%, think that Trump did nothing wrong.
DailyBeast, Adam Rawnsley: GOP Pushes an Impeachment Conspiracy That the FBI Debunked Years Ago http://bit.ly/33YD3Dh
// Bank records cited by the FBI show that Manafort received some of the money that Ukraine’s “Black Ledger” alleged he was paid.
WaPo, Meg Kelly and Elyse Samuels: How Russia weaponized social media, got caught and escaped consequences http://wapo.st/2KygopH
NPR, Jessica Taylor: Fractured Into Factions? What The Founders Feared About Impeachment http://n.pr/37fCF5q They were “trying to avoid a repeat of the situation they had just fought a war to free themselves from — a ruler with unchecked power.”
💙 NBCNews: Trump’s impeachment ire turns on Pompeo amid diplomats’ starring roles http://nbcnews.to/2r4mEhO By Carol E. Lee, Courtney Kube and Andrea Mitchell
// Impeachment hearings have created a rift between the president and one of his staunchest allies in the administration.
✅ TheIntercept, Robert Mackey (May): A Republican Conspiracy Theory About a Biden-in-Ukraine Scandal Has Gone Mainstream. But It Is Not True. http://bit.ly/2muqizk
// 5/10/2019
💙 ✅ WaPo FactChecker, Glenn Kessler (10/8/2019): The GOP theory that Ukraine ‘set up’ Trump http://wapo.st/2CPohCV
≣ GaslitNation: Alexandra Chalupa Interview [Transcript] http://bit.ly/2XpKT68
// undated; 19p
⭕ 17 Nov 2019
WaPo, Harry Litman (11/17): Adam Schiff is bringing a prosecutor’s sensibility to impeachment hearings http://wapo.st/37FsEP0
● https://twitter.com/Auriandra/status/1199749988580020226?s=20/photo/1
Schiff seems clearly to have brought to this task of a lifetime a calm assessment of what he can hope to do and what he can’t. Some are worried that without more tub-thumping or fireworks, Schiff cannot hope to move the needle of public opinion. But Schiff’s calculation seems to be that if an unassailable factual demonstration of the president’s shakedown of Ukraine to serve his own political interests to the derogation of the country’s doesn’t bring the public around, nothing will.
And if it all comes to naught — not a single congressional Republican breaks rank while 90 percent of Republicans remain firmly behind President Trump — Schiff and the Democrats still will have set out clearly what Trump did and advanced a powerful argument that the abhorrent conduct was incompatible with the office of the presidency. Compared to other episodes in which Trump has been able to prevent the full truth from coming out, this alone would constitute a vital service to the country and to history.
💽 CNN, Fareed Zakaria: What in the World: The Crowdstrike Conspiracy Theory http://cnn.it/37gfW9f
// Disinformation Fellow at The Wilson Center, Nina Jankowicz tells Fareed that President Trump is trying to use the Crowdstrike conspiracy theory to detract from the unanimous conclusions of the Intelligence Community about Russian interference in the 2016 election.
Inquirer, Will Bunch: Marie Yovanovitch, impeachment, and America’s last stand for playing by the rules http://bit.ly/32TAIIb
🐣 RT @McFaul Elected politicians do not get to use their public office for private gain. That’s not “foreign policy.” That’s the definition of corruption.
⋙ 🐣 RT @LuvGrammyLife So… UNELECTED BUREAUCRATS DO NOT MAKE FOREIGN POLICY! Their attempts to override the POTUS is criminal!
💽 MSNBC, AMJoy: How conservative media is covering the impeachment hearings http://on.msnbc.com/2qlQ8I0
// The impeachment inquiry of Donald Trump public hearings have been characterized very differently on many Fox News shows, compared to other major news outlets, which instead often called out Republicans for allegedly parroting Kremlin propaganda. Joy Reid and her panel discuss.
💽 MSNBC, AlexWitt: Historian who predicted Trump’s election also predicted his impeachment http://on.msnbc.com/2pwk0RM
// Allan Lichtman has correctly predicted every presidential election since Ronald Reagan in 1984. But in his same 2016 prediction that Donald Trump would win, Lichtman also predicted he’d be just the third president ever to be impeached. The historian joins Alex Witt to discuss his prediction model and draw comparisons to Richard Nixon’s impeachment.
🐣 RT @TeamPelosi Trump is accelerating his attacks — his distractions and lies are getting worse. We must be laser-focused on protecting our Majority so we can keep fighting to defend our democracy and root corruption out of the White House.
ForeignAffairs, Michael McFaul (2018): Russia as It Is http://fam.ag/2pwiwXI
// 6/14/2018; A Grand Strategy for Confronting Putin
🔄 Teri Kanefield Blog: Musing about law, books, and politics http://bit.ly/35aN4xd
WaPo, Jennifer Rubin: The party of lying liars http://wapo.st/2Xsb2RV “Both Trump and his House enablers are unfit to serve since personal and political considerations obliterate their ability to detect the truth and thereby to uphold their public obligations.”
🐣 RT @JohnWDean One of many ways Trump’s bribery with Ukraine has been statutorily defined. And of course bribery is a named impeachable offense.
⋙ 🐣 RT @tribelaw “Whoever…being a public official…SEEKS..anything of value personally …in return for: being influenced in the performance of any official act..shall be fined …or imprisoned..or both.” 18 U.S.C. Sec. 201 (b) (2). So even in the federal code, soliciting a bribe is bribery.
WaPo, Max Boot: William Barr’s chilling defense of virtually unlimited presidential power http://wapo.st/32XoTB0
USAToday, Mimi Rocah and Jennifer Rodgers: Impeachment: Trump abuses power by harassing, intimidating witnesses like Yovanovitch http://bit.ly/32RMjI1
// Trump has a pattern of public witness tampering. Using his presidential platform this way may not be criminal but that is not relevant to impeachment.
DailyBeast: Chris Wallace Accuses Top Republican of ‘Very Badly’ Mischaracterizing Impeachment Testimony http://bit.ly/33UyQQQ
// “No, sir, they are career foreign service officers and these are people who worked in the Trump administration,” Wallace snapped back at Scalise.
🐣 RT @ericgarland Mr. Zakaria, you and Jeff Zucker are gliding over WHERE you’d be conducting Zelenskyy’s extorted interview: at Ukrainian oligarch Viktor PINCHUK’s YES conference. ¤ Let’s give people the true context.
⋙ CNN: [ Fareed Zakaria ]The @nytimes has reported that Ukrainian Pres. Zelensky was set to make a public announcement of the investigations sought by Pres. Trump on my @CNN program. So, I think I owe viewers my best understanding of what actually happened. My take: 💽 https://twitter.com/FareedZakaria/status/1196080871939293185?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @ericgarland Pinchuk most notoriously gave Trump $150,000 for a “speech” at this same YES Conference while Trump was running for office. ¤ And the US MSM has reported that Mueller was investigating it.
⋙ CNBC (2018): Mueller is reportedly investigating $150,000 a Ukrainian billionaire gave Trump’s foundation http://cnb.cx/2pqWzJp
// 4/9/2018
↥ ↧
TPM, Josh Marshall: A Bit More Detail on the ‘Deliverable’ That Never Was http://bit.ly/2COBE6i
I wanted to flag this brief account by Fareed Zakaria which comes after Matt Shuham’s report from last week about just how close Ukrainian President Zelensky came to delivering the “investigations” Trump demanded. As you’ve likely heard, the announcement was to come on Zakaria’s CNN show, Fareed Zakaria GPS. It got canceled only when the news of the whistleblower complaint was finally going public. It had seemed that the interview was likely scheduled for September 13th and canceled as late as the morning of that day. But according to Zakaria it was only canceled on the 18th or the 19th of September.
This isn’t just a matter of a few days difference. ¤ Zelensky’s team, it seems, did not rule out the announcement until as long as a week until after the aid was released. Zelensky or his staffers told Zakaria when they met for an off-camera chat on the September 13th that they knew the aid had finally been released.
WSJ: Sondland Kept Trump Administration Officials Apprised of Ukraine Push http://on.wsj.com/2XoZ77x
// Ambassador is set to testify Wednesday in second week of public impeachment hearings
DailyBeast, Erin Banco and Lachlan Markay: Gordon Sondland Stepped In ‘and Things Went Really Off the Rails’ http://bit.ly/2qZW6ys
// “Erratic,” “very emotional,” and “lots of yelling.” Those are some of the words used to describe Sondland’s performance in a White House meeting with top Ukrainian officials.
🐣 RT @Amy_Siskind Republican Senators by and large have been notably gone quiet this past week in defending Trump – save the lost sycophants like Graham, Paul and Johnson. This is telling.
🐣 RT @peterbakernyt The Republicans have three conflicting defenses for Trump, writes @gerardtbaker:
1. There was no quid pro quo
2. There was but it’s no big deal
3. There was, it was wrong, but voters should decide.
He thinks the last is the most viable.
⋙ WSJ, Gerard Baker: The GOP Has Three Defenses of Donald Trump. Only One Really Works. http://on.wsj.com/2QrlY0J
// He did it and shouldn’t have. But it should be left to the voters to decide.
🐣 RT @JeffreyGoldberg William J. Burns is the most highly regarded American diplomat of his generation. Here is his indictment of Mike Pompeo’s leadership of the State Department:
⋙ TheAtlantic, William Burns: I Fear the Weak State http://bit.ly/2QpDjqU
// The State Department that I once served is adrift, and its leadership is too often complicit in Trump’s worst tendencies.
🐣 RT @MollyMcKew The Donald J Trump for President campaign is running TV ads saying that a coup against POTUS is underway, led by the lawyer of the whistleblower. ¤ We’re sooooooooo far down the rabbithole.
DailyBeast, David Lurie: This Decision Could Be Bigger Than Impeachment http://bit.ly/37fGSFW
// The Supreme Court has avoided taking sides in what Bill Barr calls a “scorched earth, no-holds-barred war” between Congress and the president. That could end this week.
🐣 RT @Kkyahu fair enough. my edited quote tweet: thoughts and prayers that the doctors at walter reed convince him that resignation is in his best interests
🐣 RT @qjurecic For anyone counting, we’re now up to 3,504 pages of transcripts, or 2.86x the length of the first edition of War and Peace
⋙ 🐣 Feels like War and Peace ~ tons of colorful characters, lots of Russians, competing systems of governance, the fate of Europe in the balance
⭕ 16 Nov 2019
CNN (10/16): Barr slams Democrats and courts: Avalanche of subpoenas is designed to ‘incapacitate the executive branch’ http://cnn.it/2qgKirF “‘He is the president’s lawyer,’ Barr said of the [role of] attorney general. ‘He is the lawyer for the Cabinet’.”
DailyBeast, Julia Davis: Russia Loves the Impeachment Hearings Because GOP Is Parroting Kremlin Propaganda http://bit.ly/32WFHI8
// Vladimir Putin could not possibly envision a sweeter gift than Ukraine falling away from the West into the welcoming—albeit bloodied—hands of the Kremlin.
🐣 RT @JoyceWhiteVance Unless Pence was the only one who missed out on the code, this is damning: Pence told Zelensky he wanted an update on corruption reform efforts “that he could then convey back to” Trump. Williams gave Pence the 7/25 call memo, didn’t know if he read it
⋙ Politico: Pence aide testified that Trump’s efforts to pressure Ukraine were ‘inappropriate’ http://politi.co/2CPB48b
// Jennifer Williams told investigators that she took notes while she listened in on Trump’s July 25 phone call.
🐣 RT @TeamPelosi There is no time for fear. We must stand up and do the right thing for our country and hold Trump accountable for his abuses of power. – NP
DailyBeast, Michael Weiss and Casey Michel: The Alleged Russian Mobsters in Trump World’s Orbit: A Dirty Dozen http://bit.ly/2NWQspU
// The impeachment investigations will have as constant background Trump’s most important and long lasting connections to Russia—through alleged mobsters.
💙💙 🔆 This❗️⋙ HouseIntelCommittee (HPSCI): Committees Release Morrison and Williams Transcripts as Part of Impeachment Inquiry http://bit.ly/2Q5m4ep
● Morrison: Key Excerpts: http://bit.ly/2KqPAYg ; Transcript: http://bit.ly/2KtPsHn
● Williams: Key Excerpts: http://bit.ly/2CSjMra ; Transcript: http://bit.ly/37hpNMa
“The testimony released today shows that President Trump’s July 25 phone call with Ukrainian President Zelensky immediately set off alarm bells throughout the White House. Both witnesses provided the Committees with first-hand accounts after personally listening to the call in the White House Situation Room.
“Mr. Morrison confirmed Ambassador Taylor’s testimony to the Committees that the Ukrainians were told that U.S. military assistance, not just the White House meeting, was conditioned on their public announcement of political investigations that the President wanted. Additionally, following the September 1 meeting between President Zelensky and Vice President Pence, Mr. Morrison confirmed that Ambassador Sondland informed one of President Zelensky’s top aides that American military aid was conditioned on the investigations. Mr. Morrison informed John Bolton of the meeting and was told by Mr. Bolton to go see the lawyers, which he did.
“Ms. Williams testified that the President’s requests were ‘unusual and inappropriate’ and shed light on ‘possible other motivations behind a security assistance hold.’ She also confirmed, like Lt. Col. Vindman, that the Ukrainian President specifically mentioned ‘Burisma’ during the call, even though the White House call record does not reflect that. Importantly, Ms. Williams also testified that in mid-May, President Trump instructed Vice President Pence to cancel plans to attend President Zelensky’s inauguration before the date for the inauguration had been set.
🐣 RT @JuliaDavisNews At their introductory meeting in Germany in 2017, Putin urged Trump to recognize Russia’s claim of sovereignty over part of Ukraine, citing links dating to an 11th-century political federation located in modern-day Ukraine, Belarus, and part of Russia.
⋙ WSJ: Trump’s View of Ukraine as Corrupt Took Shape Early http://on.wsj.com/2QsYqbM
// President’s skepticism of Kyiv and sympathy for Moscow have colored U.S. engagement
🐣 RT @StevenBeschloss Trump betrayed our allies, the Kurds, paving the way for the Russians to take control in Northern Syria. While people die and lives are destroyed, Trump spends his time appeasing Erdogan and attacking US diplomats who’ve devoted their lives to public service & building stability.
⋙ 🐣 RT @RichardEngel Massive attacks underway against the kurds in northern syria. No ceasefire. Total nonsenses there is. US military officials tell me they are ashamed, “sickened.” It’s cold now outside. What about the families, and kids, out of their homes? @OARichardEngel #AmericanBetrayal
💙 WaPo: How a CIA analyst, alarmed by Trump’s shadow foreign policy, triggered an impeachment inquiry http://wapo.st/2CRds38
// nice chronology timeline
🐣 RT @JoyceWhiteVance Is it possible to have too many smoking guns?
🐣 RT @kylegriffin1 Schiff: “The most profound threat to democracy today is not from Russia … The most grave threat to the life and health of our democracy comes from within, from a president without ethical compass. Without an understanding of or devotion to our Constitution.” Via The Hill
✅ CNN, Daniel Dale: Fact check: A list of 45 ways Trump has been dishonest about Ukraine and impeachment http://cnn.it/2XlvzaR
🐣 RT @RichardEngel Spoke to a sr former justice dept official. He too worries Trump can’t get off, won’t get off, “dictator’s treadmill.” Once you’re on the ride is high, so you’ll do anything, and everything, to keep running and not to crash and burn. I’ve seen it all my life. Never ends well
🐣 RT @joshtpm You should go testify just to show them how bad it’s going.
⋙ 🐣 RT @RudyGiuliani After 3 witnesses no evidence has been presented of any offense. The first two permanent diplomats had no direct knowledge just overhearing things. The third one had no knowledge not even hearsay. This is a travesty.
🐣 RT @anders_asland Excellent article documenting how Ken Vogel has disinformed about the US in Ukraine in the NYT to the benefit of Giuliani & Trump. ¤ This is a great embarrassment for @nytimes.
💙💙 ⋙ WaPo: A New York Times reporter dug into Ukraine and the Democrats. Critics are still howling. http://wapo.st/2NUvoQU Ken Vogel
WaPo: New York Times reporter Ken Vogel dug into Ukraine and the Democrats. Critics are still howling. http://wapo.st/2NUvoQU l
🐣 RT @AngrierWHStaff It goes without saying, but the Secret Service doesn’t like taking POTUS anywhere without advanced warning — they only go somewhere unannounced if it’s an absolute necessity.
‼️ 🐣 RT @ShimonPro This is very mysterious today. President Trump’s trip to Walter Reed National Medical Center was previously unscheduled, a source familiar with the matter told CNN. ¤ The visit was not on the Saturday public schedule. It was also not on the internal schedule.
WaPo: Senior national security official ties key official more closely to Trump on Ukraine in impeachment inquiry http://wapo.st/32Vx4Oe Tim Morrison
WaPo: White House budget official says decision to delay aid to Ukraine was highly irregular http://wapo.st/2qZ3dXN Mark Sandy
💙💙 CNN: Exclusive: After private White House meeting, Giuliani associate Lev Parnas said he was on a ‘secret mission’ for Trump, sources say http://cnn.it/2qZG3As
Among the many guests who had their pictures taken with President Donald Trump at the White House’s annual Hanukkah party last year were two Soviet-born businessmen from Florida, Lev Parnas and Igor Fruman.
At one point during the party that night, Parnas and Fruman slipped out of a large reception room packed with hundreds of Trump donors to have a private meeting with the President and Giuliani, according to two acquaintances in whom Parnas confided right after the meeting.
Word of the encounter in the White House last December, which has not been previously reported, is further indication that Trump knew Parnas and Fruman, despite Trump publicly stating that he did not on the day after the two men were arrested at Dulles International Airport last month.
Eventually, according to what Parnas told his confidants, the topic turned to Ukraine that night. According to those two confidants, Parnas said that “the big guy,” as he sometimes referred to the President in conversation, talked about tasking him and Fruman with what Parnas described as “a secret mission” to pressure the Ukrainian government to investigate Joe Biden and his son Hunter.
DailyBeast, Spencer Ackerman and Sam Brodey: Republicans Thought Yovanovitch Would Be a Pushover. She Beat Them Up Instead http://bit.ly/35b8n1R
// The fired U.S. ambassador showed why Trump needed her out of the embassy in Kyiv before pressuring the Ukrainians for dirt on his political opponents.
⭕ 15 Nov 2019 Impeachment Hearings
🐣 RT @McFaul In impeachment hearing today, we heard how Putin practiced “narrative laundering” in blaming Ukraine for interfering in our 2016 election, a narrative that our president now believes. @noUpside @alexstamos & I explain how Russian intel does it:
⋙ WaPo: Here’s how Russia will attack the 2020 election. We’re still not ready. http://wapo.st/2qoKsNp by Michael McFaul and researchers from the Stanford Internet Observatory
WSJ: Federal Prosecutors Probe Giuliani’s Links to Ukrainian Energy Projects http://on.wsj.com/2CRciob
// Associates told others that Giuliani stood to profit from natural-gas project pitched alongside campaign for investigations of Joe Biden
🐣 RT @EvanMcMullin I pray that we don’t lose sight of Trump’s escalating abuses of power. Our self-government isn’t guaranteed. This is a moment of truth for the Republic, a time to fight for our freedoms or watch them slip through our fingers while imagining that they never could.
TheWeek: Trump and Attorney General Barr had an ‘animated’ talk, reportedly about the Horowitz report, in the Oval Office http://bit.ly37dROUx
💙 TheAtlantic, David Graham: We Still Don’t Know What Happened Between Trump and Russia http://bit.ly/2XmKCAX
// Roger Stone’s conviction for obstruction serves up some justice but underscores how effectively Trump aides have prevented a full reckoning.
🐣 RT @AndyOstroy Many people are saying @realDonaldTrump’s been holed up in the WH all day/night w/ lawyers ENRAGED at today’s DEVASTATING setbacks…& is having a colossal unhinged MELTDOWN. Screaming, throwing things, threatening to fire everyone. He’s TERRIFIED, PANICKED & DESPERATE… #Trump
💙💙≣ WaPo, Karen Olmsted: Watergate led to sweeping reforms. Here’s what we’ll need after Trump. http://wapo.st/35akAUg
// The laws that will protect elections, end corruption and fix the balance of power.
💙💙 NewYorker, Susan Glasser: In Trump’s Jaded Capital, Marie Yovanovitch’s Uncynical Outrage in the Impeachment Hearings http://bit.ly/2CN3vUl
// A fired Ambassador demonstrates that it is apparently still possible to be shocked by the President.
As with most truly memorable public moments, there was something raw and unexpected about Yovanovitch’s appearance on Friday; it cut through the rote posturing and partisanship to get at an essential fact. Yovanovitch reminded us that all of this is, in fact, amazing and shocking and outrageous. It is not normal. Trump is not on the brink of impeachment because of some arcane dispute over differing philosophies about anti-corruption policies in Ukraine. Yovanovitch, who spent her career fighting corruption in the former Soviet Union, was dumped because the President had allied himself with Ukrainians who wanted to stop America’s anti-corruption efforts. He personally ordered her fired. He spoke threateningly of her during a phone call with Ukraine’s new President and did it again, on Twitter, while she was testifying on Capitol Hill. No previous President—of either party—has ever acted in this way.
That is why Yovanovitch’s appearance was ultimately about what the hell the country is supposed to do with a President who is so manifestly unpresidential. Friday offered a chance to reflect on Trump’s conduct, to consider the extent of his boorishness, his poor judgment, his ignorance, his recklessness, and his callous disregard for anything other than his own personal interests. There will be many days and weeks to come in which to hash out what, if anything, in all this saga involving Ukraine, should be considered impeachable by Congress. But that is not the real import of Friday’s hearing, which was a rare opportunity for America to stop and take stock of Trump and what he has wrought. This was a day to contemplate the excesses of Donald John Trump. …
As Fiona Hill, Trump’s former senior Russia adviser at the National Security Council, told the committee in her deposition, Yovanovitch’s firing was “a real turning point,” the head-snapping moment when the handful of officials in charge of America’s Ukraine policy realized that something had gone terribly wrong and the President was going to war against the executors of his own Administration’s policy. Schiff identified its significance in his opening statement, pointing out that, while “the powers of the Presidency are immense, they are not absolute. And they cannot be used for corrupt purpose.” Those powers, he added, are meant to be used “in service of the nation, not to destroy others to advance his personal or political interests.” …
Several times, Yovanovitch was asked why it mattered that Trump had fired her, what his prerogative was, and why we should care about it. She reached back to the Truman era and to Arthur Vandenberg, the late Republican senator from Michigan, a prewar isolationist who became a pillar of the postwar internationalism that had been the hallmark of American foreign policy right up until Trump took office. “Partisan politics stops at the water’s edge,” Vandenberg was famous for saying, even if the two parties were never as bipartisan about foreign policy as his statement implied. At least the aspiration was there, even if the execution faltered. Yovanovitch still seemed to want to believe it. She insisted upon the idea that there remains an American national interest, as opposed to a Republican interest, a Democratic interest, or a Presidential interest. She was an Ambassador from our past, and maybe from our future. But not, sadly, from our present.
WaPo Editorial: Yovanovitch makes it clear: Trump put his personal interests above the U.S. http://wapo.st/32OfWKg
NYT Editorial: Donald Trump, Corruption Fighter? http://nyti.ms/37kv9Gq
// The impeachment inquiry revealed the absurdity of claims that he wanted to clean up Ukraine.
WaPo: Roger Stone guilty on all counts of lying to Congress, witness tampering http://wapo.st/2QqeaMG
WaPo: Yovanovitch makes it clear: Trump put his personal interests above the U.S. http://wapo.st/32OfWKg
WaPo: Impeachment witness provides firsthand account of hearing Trump demand ‘investigation’ of Bidens by Ukraine http://wapo.st/2Ofr9Ox David Holmes, an embassy staffer in Kyiv, testified that he heard Trump press Sondland about whether Zelensky would ‘do the investigation’
🐣 RT @rachaelmbade WOW. Yovanovitch got the call to come home while she was GIVING AN AWARD to the father of a deceased anti-corruption crusader who was killed by acid due to her work. ¤ She was told to “get on the next plane” that night.
💽 MSNBC: McCaskill: Quest[ion]ing of Yovanovitch ‘cleanup on aisle 5’ for GOP http://on.msnbc.com/2qYQXXa
// Former Sen. Claire McCaskill describes the Republican questioning of former Ambassador Marie Yovanovitch as “cleanup on aisle 5,” and questions whether you would stop investigating a failed robbery if the suspect was caught in the act.
WaPo, Dan Balz: Hearings underscore the pressure on career officials struggling to serve under Trump http://wapo.st/33RJrvL
🐣 RT @FaceTheNation “He made a mistake,” @SpeakerPelosi says on Trump’s tweet about Yovanovitch during her testimony. “I think part of it is his own insecurity as an impostor…he knows full well he’s in that office way over his head. And so he has to diminish everyone else.” https://cbsn.ws/32PUQek 💽 https://twitter.com/FaceTheNation/status/1195481643978498049?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @PaulaChertok Another “perfect” call. Witnessed by Holmes & others. Trump was shouting to Sondland, anxious to hear his bribery/extortion scheme to get Ukraine to announce Biden investigations was on track before he’d release aid. Remember, Putin heard all of this too. #Impeachment
⋙ 🐣 RT @PaulaChertok ‼️💥‼️David Holmes confirms Taylor testimony: He overheard Trump on call w/Sondland. Trump’s voice was so loud, Sondland held the phone away from ear.
TRUMP: So he’s gonna do the investigations?
SONDLAND: Zelensky will do whatever you want. He loves your ass”
#ImpeachmentHearings
NYT: Key Takeaways from Marie Yovanovitch’s Hearing in the Impeachment Inquiry http://nyti.ms/2OlPhz0
// Even as Ms. Yovanovitch was testifying about “the smear campaign against me,” President Trump hurled insults at her on Twitter.
🐣 RT @DeadlineWH “We look to our leaders for lots of things, including moral guidance. When something is wrong we have to say it’s wrong. If we don’t say it’s wrong we are complicit in that behavior. That is the obligation we all have as public servants.” – Chuck Rosenberg w/ @NicolleDWallace 💽 https://twitter.com/DeadlineWH/status/1195483923016540161?s=20/photo/1
↥ ↧
🐣 RT @JasonOverstreet Mild mannered chuck Rosenberg never speaks like this. But he just put his foot up Mike Pompeo‘s ass 💽 https://twitter.com/JasonOverstreet/status/1195378374950047744?s=20/photo/1
NYT, Charlie Savage: Did Trump Commit ‘Bribery’? Pelosi’s Impeachment Accusation, Explained http://nyti.ms/32UOjip
// Her declaration reflected a shift by Trump’s critics from talking about the Ukraine affair using more abstract concepts like “quid pro quo” or “abuse of power.”
🐣 RT @MichaelRWarren According to David Holmes’s opening statement obtained by @mkraju and @jeremyherb, Holmes could hear Sondland tell Trump on the phone that President Zelensky “loves your ass.” ¤ Trump responded “So, he’s gonna do the investigation?” ¤ “Sondland: “He’s gonna do it.”
WaPo: Trump attacks ambassador even as she describes feeling threatened by him http://wapo.st/2Ofr9Ox
// Yovanovitch says that Trump transcript ‘shocked’ and ‘devastated’ her
WaPo, Paul Waldman: Yovanovitch hearing confirms that Trump is running a thugocracy http://wapo.st/2pl6fFi
🐣 RT @real So they now convict Roger Stone of lying and want to jail him for many years to come. Well, what about Crooked Hillary, Comey, Strzok, Page, McCabe, Brennan, Clapper, Shifty Schiff, Ohr & Nellie, Steele & all of the others, including even Mueller himself? Didn’t they lie?….
WSJ: Federal Prosecutors Probe Giuliani’s Links to Ukrainian Energy Projects http://on.wsj.com/2NPZDbz
// Associates told others that Giuliani stood to profit from natural-gas project pitched alongside campaign for investigations of Joe Biden
🐣 RT @kylegriffin1 Chuck Rosenberg rips into Mike Pompeo: “His silence is deafening. It is an act of abject cowardice. I am astonished that somebody who … was an Army officer does not have the spine to stand up for the people in his organization who are being denigrated by this president.” @MSNBC
🐣 RT @MarshallCohen STONE GUILTY of lying to Congress about his outreach to WikiLeaks and attempts to coordinate with the Trump campaign about hacked Russian emails. He lied to Congress when he testified as part of the House Intelligence Committee’s investigation into Russian meddling in 2016.
🐣 RT @jimsciutto Breaking: Longtime Trump associate Roger Stone has been found guilty on at least one charge in a case that has shed new light on then-candidate Donald Trump’s anticipation of the release of stolen Democratic emails in 2016.
// 7 of 7 counts: Lied to save Trump
DailyBeast, Spencer Ackerman and Sam Brodey: Smeared, Fired U.S. Ambo to Ukraine Says Trump’s ‘Effect Is To Be Intimidating’ http://bit.ly/2CJ5TLM
// Democrats highlighted Marie Yovanovitch’s work to fight corruption—what President Trump claims motivated his pressure on Ukraine to investigate his political opponents.
🐣 RT @scottbix Marie Yovanovitch’s response to this tweet: “I… I don’t think I have such powers.”
⋙ 🐣 RT @real Everywhere Marie Yovanovitch went turned bad. She started off in Somalia, how did that go? Then fast forward to Ukraine, where the new Ukrainian President spoke unfavorably about her in my second phone call with him. It is a U.S. President’s absolute right to appoint ambassadors.
🐣 RT @RepAdamSchiff Ambassador Marie Yovanovitch is a stalwart anti-corruption advocate, dedicated to the rule of law. ¤ That made her an obstacle. ¤ So Trump and his allies pushed her out, and set the stage for what was to come.
🐣 RT @tribelaw In our book, “To End a Presidency: The Power of Impeachment, @JoshuaMatz8 and I predict that it’s how a guilty president reacts to the pressures of an ongoing impeachment proceeding that’s likely in the end to bring down an unredeemably corrupt, lawless leader.
DailyBeast, Lachlan Markay: Transcript Shows WH Made Up Details of Trump’s Zelensky Call http://bit.ly/2QmpwkR
// The transcript released on Friday doesn’t even mention the word “corruption.”
WaPo: Ex-U.S. ambassador says Trump’s comments ‘sounded like a threat’ http://wapo.st/2CIL1Ez
⭕ 14 Nov 2019
NewYorker, Masha Gessen: The Two Irreconcilable Realities of the Trump Impeachment Hearings http://bit.ly/35cCoOF
// “In Reality One, political power is governed by values, norms, history, procedure, and law. In Reality Two, political power aims to be absolute—its limit is what the President can get away with.”
💽 MSNBC, Rachel Maddow: Elephant in the impeachment hearing: Trump hands Russia big wins http://on.msnbc.com/2Os2kzg
// Rachel Maddow runs through a litany of foreign policy decisions by Donald Trump that were of dubious value to American national interests but from which Russia was a clear beneficiary.
💙💙 🔊 TheAtlantic: How to Stop a Civil War http://bit.ly/2Xlj6E4
// Index page for December issue: Listen to Jeffrey Goldberg, Danielle Allen, and Adam Serwer discuss how America is coming apart—and how they think it can be reunited.
● Jeffrey Goldberg: A Nation Coming Apart http://bit.ly/2XkLu9g
// The meaning of the American idea in 2019
● Yoni Applebaum: How America Ends http://bit.ly/2CGO3ZG
// A tectonic demographic shift is under way. Can the country hold together?
● Danielle Allen: The Road From Serfdom http://bit.ly/2OkaAkv
// How Americans can become citizens again
● Adam Serwer: Civility Is Overrated http://bit.ly/2OpHxvU
// The gravest danger to American democracy isn’t an excess of vitriol—it’s the false promise of civility.
Politico: Judge slams feds over murky stance on McCabe http://politi.co/2qW8TSx
CNN: Trump talks Russia probe audit with attorney general and White House counsel in Oval Office meeting http://cnn.it/2OdtKbR the “animated” discussion was noticed by those outside //➔ wild guess: Trump unhappy that even Barr has limits
Bloomberg: Giuliani Faces U.S. Probe on Campaign Finance, Lobbying Breaches http://bloom.bg/2NMFJhu “Probe of lawyer presents a threat to Trump’s presidency”
// Giuliani has become a central figure in impeachment inquiry
The probe of Giuliani, which one official said could also include possible charges on violating laws against bribing foreign officials or conspiracy, presents a serious threat to Trump’s presidency from a man that former national security adviser John Bolton has called a “hand grenade.”
Giuliani is a central figure in the U.S. House impeachment inquiry, which focuses on an effort led by the former New York City mayor to pressure Ukraine’s government to investigate the president’s political rivals. If Giuliani is charged or indicted, he could expose Trump to a new level of legal and political jeopardy, especially if he’s accused of committing a crime on the president’s behalf.
DailyBeast, Betsy Swan and Adam Rawnsley: Exclusive: Giuliani Ally Pete Sessions Was Eyed for Top Slot in Ukraine http://bit.ly/2NMDWsU
// Pete Sessions received millions from Giuliani’s indicted cronies. He joined Rudy in speaking out against the U.S. ambassador to Ukraine. He was even considered as her replacement.
DailyBeast, Betsy Swan, Erin Banco and Adam Rawnsley: The Conspiracy Theory So Far Out There Even Trump’s Biggest Defenders Are Walking Away From It http://bit.ly/2Koprtj
// The Ukrainians had to Google it. George Kent had never heard of it. And yet Trump was so obsessed he tried to will it into existence—but triggered an impeachment inquiry instead.
DailyBeast, Lachlan Markay and Betsy Swan: Five Cellphones, Trump Straws, a Lot of Cash—What This Giuliani Crony Was Carrying When the FBI Arrested Him http://bit.ly/373591X
// Lev Parnas also had the business card of a top Ukrainian anti-corruption prosecutor with whom Giuliani met this year.
TPM, Josh Kovensky: The Most Pivotal Moment In The Trump Ukraine Scandal Timeline http://bit.ly/378Ok5G “The fulcrum of the scandal was the April 21 election. It is the key to understanding what came before and to unlocking the sequence of events that followed”
// Lev and Igor
It all comes down to April. ¤ President Trump, Rudy Giuliani, and his two now-indicted cronies had thought they had struck a deal with Kyiv for political dirt.
But everything changed in a matter of days. Whatever deal the group thought they had struck fell apart with the election of President Volodymyr Zelensky, forcing Trump and Giuliani to launch a new pressure campaign to bully Kyiv anew into helping them politically.
It was then that Giuliani, his two buddies, and Trump embarked on a flurry of activity to try to convey to the newly elected Zelensky the need to announce investigations into the Bidens and into alleged Ukrainian interference in the 2016 election, eventually trying to bring to bear the full might of U.S. foreign policy to serve their partisan political goals.
The fulcrum of the scandal was the April 21 election. It is the key to understanding what came before and to unlocking the sequence of events that followed, culminating in the impeachment inquiry against Trump.
💙💙 TIMELINE: Also from ✅ FactCheck: http://bit.ly/2q5kgHM
Jan – Rudy (and Lev & Igor) meets w Poroshenko prosecutor Lutsenko in NYC on “investigations”
“Giuliani reportedly spoke with Trump about “investigations” after the January meeting, where Lutsenko spun Giuliani a tale about abuse of office by Joe Biden and supposed collusion in 2016 between Ukraine and the DNC.” Meeting had to be approved by Poroshenko. (Kent)
Feb – Then in Warsaw
March-ish – Deal didn’t materialize, but Lutsenko began talking to John Solomon about “dirt” [smears Yovanovich]
March 20 – Solomon begins publishing conspiracy theory about “dirt” in The Hill
April 21 – Poroshenko lost in landslide; Zelensky elected; Trump calls Zelensky, tells Hannity call will result in Biden dirt that Barr “would want to see”
Late April – Giuliani (w Lev and Igor) want to pitch “dirt” to Zelensky, but needed access, Lev and Igor fly to Israel to meet with oligarch supporting Zelensky, Kolomoisky, to secure access. Kolomoisky “kicked them out”
Early May – Rudy tells NYT he wants to encourage Kyiv to investigate Hunter Biden, as well as allegations that Ukraine interfered in the 2016 elections
May 7 – After lobbying by Giuliani, Parnas, and Fruman, Yovanovich forced out
May 9 – NYT published story, followed by “outcry”; Rudy trip cancelled
Early May – Trip of “Three Amigos” thrown together for Zelensky swearing-in (Perry, Volker, Sondlund)
May 20 – Zelensky inauguration
May 23 – Trump tells “Three Amigos” he was “worried about corruption in Ukraine and indicated that Giuliani – and his push for “investigations” into the matter – was necessary.”
Late May – “Three Amigos” try to get Zelensky to announce investigations; doesn’t happen. Hold put on military aid.
May 16 – Lutsenko tells Bloomberg Hunter Biden “broke no laws”
July 25 – Trump calls Zelensky in which he “praised Lutsenko while telling Zelensky to ‘do us a favor’ and open politically beneficial probes.”
Aug 12 – Whistleblower complaint filed
Aug 25 – Inspector General finds complaint “credible”; tells McGuire he must inform Committee Chairs in seven days
Aug 28 – Politico reports Ukraine money begin “slow-walked”
Aug 29 – Pentagon confirms “hold”; Taylor cables Pompeo to object
Sep 1 – Pence meets Zelensky; Sondland talks to Yermak: aid for “investigations”
Sep 13 – Schiff issues subpoena for whistleblower complaints
Sep 19 – CIOIG meets with Schiff; stopgap spending bill passed to secure Ukraine funding
Sep 25 – WH releases “transcript” of Trump/Zelensky phone call
Sep 26 – Redacted Whistleblower complaint published; Lutsenko tells WaPo Biden did nothing wrong
Sep 27 – Volker resigns
🐣 RT @JuliaDavisNews “The message is clear: The Kremlin is feeling invincible.”
⋙ WaPo: In Russia, Putin’s state TV apparatus is busy defending Trump http://wapo.st/375jRWm
// How impeachment and Ukraine are being covered in Moscow.
💙💙 🔆 This❗️⋙ HouseIntelCommittee (HPSCI): Committees Release Croft and Anderson Transcripts as Part of Impeachment Inquiry http://bit.ly/2Q5m4ep
● Croft: Key Excerpts: http://bit.ly/2O7AszY ; Transcript: http://bit.ly/2qN1BQF
● Anderson: Key Excerpts: http://bit.ly/2qGPlRU ; Transcript: http://bit.ly/2qN1Knb
“Catherine Croft and Christopher Anderson, both advisors to Ambassador Kurt Volker on Ukraine policy, testified before the Committees about concerns they had with efforts to press Ukraine into announcing specific investigations which would help President Trump politically. Ms. Croft also testified that Ukrainian officials approached her quietly about the hold on security assistance in the July or August timeframe, before the hold had been made public.”
NYT: Pelosi Points to Possible Bribery Charge Against Trump http://nyti.ms/34Z9yBl
// The day after the first public impeachment hearing, Speaker Nancy Pelosi used the word “bribery,” mentioned in the Constitution’s impeachment clause, to describe President Trump’s conduct.
DailyBeast, Justin Baragona: Fox Regular Claims George Soros ‘Controls a Very Large Part’ of the State Department http://bit.ly/374DfTo
// “He also controls the activities of FBI agents overseas who work for [non-governmental organizations]. That was very evident in Ukraine,” Joe diGenova told Lou Dobbs on Wednesday.
DailyBeast, Rick Wilson: All the President’s Fools Couldn’t Put Trump’s ‘Perfect Call’ Together Again http://bit.ly/2Qoxom5
// Wednesday’s impeachment hearing was a contest of gravitas that the skells, sycophants, and dead-end goons on the committee were bound to lose—and did.
DailyBeast, Spencer Ackerman, Sam Brodey and Asawin Suebsaeng: After Today, the Vise Tightens on Trump’s Ukraine Point Man http://bit.ly/32JS7TP
// Republicans argued that the two witnesses who testified Wednesday weren’t credible since they never spoke to Trump. Increasing pressure on a witness who did: Gordon Sondland.
⭕ 13 Nov 2019 Impeachment Hearings
💽 HuffPo: Dan Rather Exposes Shady GOP Tactic That ‘Jumped Out’ In Impeachment Hearings http://bit.ly/351NMwQ
// “The complicity of the Republicans is depressing, and it’s a serious moment for the country,” said the veteran journalist.
“They seek to have people become numb to what we already know,” Rather continued. “That’s what jumped out to me today, because we already know that the evidence we’re talking about now, the solicitation of a foreign power to get involved in our election, the evidence is strong. The president’s behavior in what he said has been outrageous.”
Rather described “the complicity of the Republicans” during” a “serious moment for the country” as “depressing” and explained how the impeachment effort against Trump differed to those against former Presidents Bill Clinton and Richard Nixon, both of which he reported on.
“First and foremost, this is the first time in which we’ve had an impeachment proceeding in which it involved questions of a foreign power involved in elections or sought to be involved in elections, and very serious military national security issues,” said Rather. “That didn’t exist with the Clinton impeachment. It didn’t exist with the impeachment effort against Richard Nixon, who resigned, rather than face them.”
“But in a broader and much more important way, this is fundamentally about our history of the country and the destiny of our country because history is watching and listening and it’s going to be a very tough chronicler of these events and the people involved in the events of today,” he added.
🐣 RT @mikecarpenter Viktor Shokin, Konstantin Kulyk, Yuri Lutsenko & Dmytro Firtash are all associated with major corruption scandals. Trump and Giuliani enlisted the most corrupt Ukrainian oligarchs and officials to carry out their scheme of pressuring President Zelensky.
⋙ JustSecurity, Kate Brannen, Tess Bridgemsn and Ryan Goodman: Highlights of Taylor-Kent Hearing and Connections to Other Witnesses http://bit.ly/2NK1CxS
🐣 RT @PreetBharara Ratcliffe used to be a US Attorney so of course he can’t understand why an extortion victim might deny being extorted in front of the extortionist upon whom he still relies
🐣 RT @danpfeiffer The Republicans are much more interested in persuading Trump of their loyalty than in persuading the public of Trump’s innocence.
💽 🐣 RT @neal_katyal The only other R arg, that aid ultimately was released, v weak:
1) It’s not a defense to bank robbery to say “I didn’t get to carry it out b/c the cops stopped me.” Attempted crimes are crimes. Trump tried to do this secretly, he just got busted
2) Timeline blows it apart…1/2 📌 https://twitter.com/neal_katyal/status/1194702105933746177?s=20
⋙ 🐣 RT @neal_katyal
[ Timeline blows it apart… ]
8/12/19–whistleblower files complaint
9/9/19- House told of whistleblower complaint.
9/9/19–Sondland and Taylor exchange text messages and Sondland sends scripted “no quid pro quo” text
9/10/19-House asks for info about whistleblower complaint
9/11/19–Ukraine aid released
⋙⋙ 🐣 RT @renato_mariotti Very important point by Neal Katyal. The Ukraine aid was only released after the House was informed of the whistleblower complaint.
⋙ 🐣 RT @neal_katyal The President attempted to get Ukraine secretly to help him by announcing a public investigation into his chief political rival. That’s impeachable, even if he didn’t pressure Ukraine thru tying up aid/WH meetings w him. But he did those too. Fact he got caught doesn’t excuse him
🐣 RT @NewsHour Rep. Jordan calls on the whistleblower to testify because they are “the reason we’re all sitting here today.” ¤ Rep. Welch: “I’d be glad to have the person who started it all come in and testify. President Trump is welcome to take a seat right there.” https://to.pbs.org/2qOAuFa 💽 https://twitter.com/NewsHour/status/1194902793502543873?s=20/photo/1
WaPo: Ambassador’s cellphone call to Trump from Kyiv restaurant was a stunning breach of security, former officials say http://wapo.st/2pmFP6g
Politico, Darren Samuelsohn and Josh Gerstein: Feds’ closing argument: Roger Stone made the House Russia report ‘not accurate’ http://politi.co/2XhJWNh
// Prosecutors also implied that Stone’s misdirection caused special counsel Robert Mueller to potentially lose out on key evidence.
💙💙 🔆 This❗️⋙ HPSCI (House Intel): Chairman Schiff Releases Opening Statement for First Open Hearing http://bit.ly/2KhuStF
Today, Chairman Adam Schiff released his opening statement for the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence’s first open hearing as part of the impeachment inquiry into President Donald J. Trump.
In 2014, Russia invaded a United States ally, Ukraine, to reverse that nation’s embrace of the West, and to fulfill Vladimir Putin’s desire to rebuild a Russian empire. In the following years, thirteen thousand Ukrainians died as they battled superior Russian forces.
Earlier this year Volodymyr Zelensky was elected president of Ukraine on a platform of ending the conflict and tackling corruption. He was a newcomer to politics and immediately sought to establish a relationship with Ukraine’s most powerful patron, the United States. The questions presented by this impeachment inquiry are whether President Trump sought to exploit that ally’s vulnerability and invite Ukraine’s interference in our elections? Whether President Trump sought to condition official acts, such as a White House meeting or U.S. military assistance, on Ukraine’s willingness to assist with two political investigations that would help his reelection campaign? And if President Trump did either, whether such an abuse of his power is compatible with the office of the presidency?
The matter is as simple, and as terrible as that. Our answer to these questions will affect not only the future of this presidency, but the future of the presidency itself, and what kind of conduct or misconduct the American people may come to expect from their Commander-in-Chief.
There are few actions as consequential as the impeachment of a President. While the Founders did not intend that impeachment be employed for mere differences over policy, they also made impeachment a constitutional process that the Congress must utilize when necessary.
The facts in the present inquiry are not seriously contested. Beginning in January of this year, the President’s personal attorney, Rudy Giuliani, pressed Ukrainian authorities to investigate Burisma, the country’s largest natural gas producer, and the Bidens, since Vice President Joe Biden was seen as a strong potential challenger to Trump.
Giuliani also promoted a debunked conspiracy that it was Ukraine, not Russia, that hacked the 2016 election. The nation’s intelligence agencies have stated unequivocally that it was Russia, not Ukraine, that interfered in our election. But Giuliani believed this conspiracy theory, referred to as “Crowdstrike,” shorthand for the company that discovered the Russian hack, would aid his client’s reelection.
Giuliani also conducted a smear campaign against the U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine, Marie Yovanovitch. On April 29, a senior State Department official told her that although she had “done nothing wrong,” President Trump had “lost confidence in her.” With the sidelining of Yovanovich, the stage was set for the establishment of an irregular channel in which Giuliani and later others, including Gordon Sondland – an influential donor to the President’s inauguration now serving as Ambassador to the European Union – could advance the President’s personal and political interests.
Yovanovich’s replacement in Kyiv, Ambassador Bill Taylor, is a West Point graduate and Vietnam Veteran. As he began to better understand the scheme through the summer of 2019, he pushed back, informing Deputy Assistant Secretary Kent and others about a plan to condition U.S. government actions and funding on the performance of political favors by the Ukrainian government, favors intended for President Trump that would undermine our security and our elections.
Several key events in this scheme took place in the month of July. On July 10th, Ambassador Sondland informed a group of U.S. and Ukrainian officials meeting at the White House that, according to Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney, a White House meeting desperately sought by the Ukrainian president with Trump would happen only if Ukraine undertook an investigation into “the energy sector,” which was understood to mean Burisma and, specifically, the Bidens. National Security Advisor Bolton abruptly ended the meeting and said afterwards that he would not be – quote – “part of whatever drug deal Sondland and Mulvaney are cooking up on this” – end quote.
A week later, on July 18, a representative from OMB, the White House agency that oversees federal spending, announced on a video conference call that Mulvaney, at the direction of the President, was freezing nearly $400 million in security assistance authorized and appropriated by Congress and which the entirety of the U.S. national security establishment supported.
One week after that, Donald Trump would have the now infamous July 25th phone call with Ukrainian President Zelensky. During that call, Trump complained that the U.S. relationship with Ukraine had not been “reciprocal.” Later, Zelensky thanks Trump for his support “in the area of defense,” and says that Ukraine was ready to purchase more Javelins, an antitank weapon that was among the most important deterrents of further Russian military action. Trump’s immediate response: “I would like you to do us a favor, though.”
Trump then requested that Zelensky investigate the discredited 2016 “Crowdstrike” conspiracy theory, and even more ominously, look into the Bidens. Neither of these investigations were in the U.S. national interest, and neither was part of the official preparatory material for the call. Both, however, were in Donald Trump’s personal interest, and in the interests of his 2020 re-election campaign. And the Ukrainian president knew about both in advance — because Sondland and others had been pressing Ukraine for weeks about investigations into the 2016 election, Burisma and the Bidens.
After the call, multiple individuals were concerned enough to report it to the National Security Council’s top lawyer. The White House would then take the extraordinary step of moving the call record to a highly classified server exclusively reserved for the most sensitive intelligence matters.
In the following weeks, Ambassador Taylor learned new facts about a scheme that even Sondland would describe as becoming more insidious. Taylor texted Sondland, “Are we now saying that security assistance and WH meeting are conditioned on investigations?”
As summer turned to fall “[i]t kept getting more insidious,” Mr. Sondland testified. Mr. Taylor, who took notes of his conversations, said the ambassador told him in a September 1 phone call that “everything was dependent” on the public announcement of investigations “including security assistance.” President Trump wanted Mr. Zelensky “in a public box.” “President Trump is a businessman,” Sondland said later. “When a businessman is about to sign a check to someone who owes him something, the businessman asks that person to pay up before signing the check.”
In a sworn declaration after Taylor’s testimony, Sondland would admit to telling the Ukrainians at a September 1st meeting in Warsaw “that resumption of U.S. aid would likely not occur until Ukraine provided the public anti-corruption statement that we had been discussing for many weeks.”
The President’s chief of staff confirmed Trump’s efforts to coerce Ukraine by withholding aid. When Mick Mulvaney was asked publicly about it, his answer was breathtaking: “We do that all the time with foreign policy . . . I have news for everybody: get over it. There’s going to be political influence in foreign policy. That is going to happen.” The video of that confession is plain for all to see.
Some have argued in the President’s defense that the aid was ultimately released. That is true. But only after Congress began an investigation; only after the President’s lawyers learned of a whistleblower complaint; and only after Members of Congress began asking uncomfortable questions about quid pro quos. A scheme to condition official acts or taxpayer funding to obtain a personal political benefit does not become less odious because it is discovered before it is fully consummated. In fact, the security assistance had been delayed so long, it would take another act of Congress to ensure that it would still go out. And that Oval Office meeting that Zelensky desperately sought – it still hasn’t happened.
Although we have learned a great deal about these events in the last several weeks, there are still missing pieces. The President has instructed the State Department and other agencies to ignore Congressional subpoenas for documents. He has instructed witnesses to defy subpoenas and refuse to appear. And he has suggested that those who do expose wrongdoing should be treated like traitors and spies.
These actions will force Congress to consider, as it did with President Nixon, whether Trump’s obstruction of the constitutional duties of Congress constitute additional grounds for impeachment. If the President can simply refuse all oversight, particularly in the context of an impeachment proceeding, the balance of power between our two branches of government will be irrevocably altered. That is not what the Founders intended. And the prospects for further corruption and abuse of power, in this administration or another, will be exponentially increased.
This is what we believe the testimony will show — both as to the President’s conduct and as to his obstruction of Congress. The issue that we confront is the one posed by the President’s Acting Chief of Staff when he challenged Americans to “get over it.” If we find that the President of the United States abused his power and invited foreign interference in our elections, or if he sought to condition, coerce, extort, or bribe an ally into conducting investigations to aid his reelection campaign and did so by withholding official acts — a White House meeting or hundreds of millions of dollars of needed military aid — must we simply “get over it?” Is that what Americans should now expect from their president? If this is not impeachable conduct, what is? Does the oath of office itself – requiring that our laws be faithfully executed, that our president defend a constitution that balances the powers of its branches, setting ambition against ambition so that we become no monarchy – still have meaning?
These are the questions we must ask and answer. Without rancor if we can, without delay regardless, and without party favor or prejudice if we are true to our responsibilities. Benjamin Franklin was asked what kind of a country America was to become, “A Republic,” he answered, “if you can keep it.” The fundamental issue raised by the impeachment inquiry into Donald J. Trump is: Can we, keep it?
🐣 RT @joshtpm What still sticks with me are the repeated interchanges where Castor or some GOP Rep asked Taylor abt some canard from John Solomon or Hannity and then grinned in vindication when Taylor said, “um I’m not familiar with that”.
⋙ 🐣 RT @joshtpm 2/ The idea being that if you weren’t fluent in the characters and spells from Ukraine Collusion D&D it was ludicrous that you could have a position of responsibility in the Foreign Service.
🐣 RT @HouseIntel Today we heard from Ambassador Bill Taylor and George Kent in the first public hearing of the impeachment inquiry. ¤ The takeaway: Testimony from both witnesses confirms that Trump abused the power of his office for his own political gain. ¤ Here’s what else you should know ⬇️ 💽 https://twitter.com/HouseIntel/status/1194775241039462400?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @AshaRangappa Has any GOP member explained why — if as Jim Jordan says Ukraine is “one of the three most corrupt countries on the planet” — Trump trusted them to investigate two U.S. citizens for…corruption? 🤔
🐣 RT @renato_mariotti The first day of impeachment hearings looked like trials where the prosecution has the defendant on tape admitting to a crime. ¤ Republicans tried to distract and confuse the issues because Democrats have the goods on Trump.
⋙ Politico, Renato Mariotti: Impeachment Is Not a Fair Fight, and on Day One It Showed http://politi.co/2ObQrNr
// There’s only so much Republicans can do when Democrats have all the evidence they need.
🐣 RT @joshtpm When I step back it’s just jarring how pathetic this is. We’re stuck in some alt reality where the gang from the geriatric ward is spun up about a great new offer emailed to them by a Nigerian prince. Only it’s not that funny because they’re running the country.
⋙ 🐣 RT @ “Rudy called me earlier this year to tell me what he discovered about Ukraine. He was told that these people in Ukraine were working to frame the president.” 💽 [DeGenova/Toensing on Fox]
⋙⋙ 🐣 RT @PaulaChertok We’re adaptive creatives—for better & worse. Most have adapted to the daily onslaught of authoritarian mafia state bs. Some still don’t grasp the gravity of what’s happened let alone maintain a sense of outrage. Then there’s us, who haven’t slept well since Russia invaded Crimea.
⋙⋙⋙ 🐣 RT @Basquerading “The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the convinced Communist, but people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction (i.e., the reality of experience) and the distinction between true and false (i.e., the standards of thought) no longer exist.” – Hannah Arendt [orig as pdf]
🐣 RT @JohnJHarwood on these two “dueling narratives”:
one of them – which Taylor and Kent described – has been proven true by overwhelming evidence
the other has been shown to be fabricated nonsense
⋙ WaPo, Issac Stanley-Becker: Dueling narratives, separated by a polarized media, collide at first public impeachment hearing http://wapo.st/34XmDuS
WaPo: Impeachment hearings begin with new evidence of phone call implicating Trump in Ukraine controversy http://wapo.st/33MNQjR
WaPo Editorial: Kent and Taylor testify to Trump’s corruption. And more evidence is coming. http://wapo.st/2Oef4cF
NYT, Noah Bookbinder: The Evidence of Wrongdoing by Trump Is Overwhelming http://nyti.ms/2QiJnkQ
// The witnesses’ testimony on Wednesday was clear and alarming.
DailyBeast, Spencer Ackerman, Sam Brodey and Asawin Suebsaeng: After Today, the Vise Tightens on Trump’s Ukraine Point Man http://bit.ly/32JS7TP
// Republicans argued that the two witnesses who testified Wednesday weren’t credible since they never spoke to Trump. Increasing pressure on a witness who did: Gordon Sondland.
WaPo: Republicans tried to make him impeachment’s ‘star witness.’ Bill Taylor became an Internet meme instead. http://wapo.st/2QgpriD
DailyBeast, Michael Tomasky: You’ve Got to Be High to Believe Republicans’ Impeachment Bullshit http://bit.ly/2Oct2eS
// Democrats have to sell the country on their assertion that Trump released the money only because he was about to get busted. A lot hinges on them winning that argument.
DailyBeast, Will Sommer: Devin Nunes Pushes Bogus ‘Ukrainian Collusion’ Conspiracies During Impeachment Hearing http://bit.ly/375LTRl
// The top intel committee Republican pushed debunked claims about Ukraine to excuse the president’s actions.
WaPo, EJ Dionne: Nunes and Kent tell us everything we need to know about impeachment http://wapo.st/375L6Qn
💙💙 💽 CSPAN: HPSCI Impeachment Hearing with William Taylor and George Kent http://cs.pn/2KjMcya
WaPo, Greg Sargent: At hearing, Republicans carry forward Trump’s effort to make lies into truths http://wapo.st/2QcIR86
WSJ: Justice Department Filing Suggests No McCabe Prosecution Imminent http://on.wsj.com/32EdF4c
// In pending lawsuit, DOJ says it won’t block release of documents related to former deputy FBI head based on probe
🐣 RT @GregMiller The big development today: new evidence tying Trump to Ukraine plot. He spoke by phone w/Sondland on 7/26 seeking status report on “investigations.” Shockingly, Sondland calls POTUS by cell from Kyiv restaurant. So Russia prolly intercepted the call.
⋙ WaPo: New testimony ties Trump more directly to Ukraine pressure campaign http://wapo.st/32L2UwM
🐣 RT @JoshTPM He used extortion to get a foreign country to sabotage a US election in his favor. What else is there to say?
🐣 RT @SarahKendzior “It’s about annihilating law, facts, truth. It’s about them saying ‘You know the truth. You may have even heard me confess the truth, confess my crimes. But it makes no difference what you heard, because this is a matter of power.'” — @gaslitnation
⭕ 12 Nov 2019
WaPo, David Ignatius: People died while Trump played games with Ukraine’s military aid http://wapo.st/2KedoOP
💙💙 CNN: Impeachment investigators slate open hearings for 8 more witnesses next week http://cnn.it/2NFDaxN ● https://twitter.com/Auriandra/status/1194460186947272704?s=20/photo/1
// Schedule of Hearings
● Jennifer Williams, an aide to Vice President Mike Pence, and Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman, a National Security Council aide next Tuesday morning
● Kurt Volker, the former US special envoy to Ukraine, and Tim Morrison, a National Security Council aide, next Tuesday afternoon
● Gordon Sondland, US Ambassador to the European Union on the morning of Wednesday, November 20
● Laura Cooper, a deputy assistant secretary of defense and David Hale, the under secretary of State for political affairs, on the afternoon of Wednesday, November 20
● Fiona Hill, Former White House Russia expert on the morning of Thursday, November 21
WaPo: Trump offers trade deal, sanctions workaround to Erdogan for better U.S.-Turkey relations http://wapo.st/36Wmt93
// The offer is likely to infuriate at least some of the overwhelming House majority that voted last month to impose sanctions on Turkey over its assault into Syria
🐣 RT @KatieCouric Pres. Trump likely lied to special counsel Mueller about conversations he had in 2016 regarding WikiLeaks’ plans to release info stolen from Democrats by Russian hackers. That’s the big takeaway from dramatic courtroom testimony that occurred Tuesday in the trial of #RogerStone.
⋙ 🐣 RT @MotherJones JUST IN: President Donald Trump likely lied to special counsel Robert Mueller about conversations he had in 2016 regarding WikiLeaks’ plans to release information stolen from Democrats by Russian hackers.
⋙⋙ MotherJones, Dan Friedman: Stone Trial Reveals Trump Likely Lied to Mueller http://bit.ly/2KhmsCV
// New bombshells at the trial of Trump’s longtime adviser.
WaPo: Aides are counseling Trump not to fire Mulvaney, as acting chief of staff changes course again http://wapo.st/2qR5DaJ
// Lawyer says the acting chief of staff will follow Trump’s order not to cooperate.
WaPo, Dana Milbank: The case against Trump in seven words http://wapo.st/2NG2fss
“He abused presidential powers for personal advantage”
“He abused presidential powers for personal advantage”
“He abused presidential powers for personal advantage”
“He abused presidential powers…
WaPo: At donor dinner, Giuliani associate said he discussed Ukraine with Trump, according to people familiar with his account http://wapo.st/2KgtMyu “Parnas’s account of the 2018 dinner is the first indication that he or Fruman interacted directly with Trump about Ukraine”
// Lev and Igor
TPM: Bill Taylor Op-Ed Subtweets Entire Trump Ukraine Scandal http://bit.ly/34V5im9
↥ ↧
💙💙 USEmbassyUkraine: Op-Ed in Novoye Vremya by CDA Taylor: Ukraine’s Committed Partner http://bit.ly/2NEHiOq
🔆 This❗️⋙ 📔 JustSecurity: Public Document Clearinghouse: UKRAINE Impeachment Inquiry http://bit.ly/2CEsQ2F ‼️ Links to ALL documents ‼️
Bloomberg, Ilya Arkhipov: Don’t Sweat U.S. Presidential Vote, Russia Says It’s on the Case http://bloom.bg/32C7qhe
● ‘Don’t worry,’ Russian foreign minister jokes at Paris forum
● U.S. intelligence concluded Russia meddled in 2016 campaign
AP, Jonathan Lemire: Trump to face limits of his power in impeachment hearings http://bit.ly/32Jix7Y
🐣 RT @HayesBrown ‘Twas the Night before Hearings
And all through the Hill
No business was moving
Not even a Bill
The committee room prepped
To minimize glare
Ready for the cameramen
Soon to be there
With the witnesses ready
And the lawyers on deck
POTUS readied his Twitter
To blast them to heck
🔆 This❗️⋙ 🐣 RT @MuellerSheWrote Here it is. The link we’ve been waiting for. Trump had foreknowledge of the Wikileaks dumps and talked to roger Stone about it. This has been redacted in every single report, filing, and 302 so far, but it just came out in open court.
⋙ 🐣 RT @BradMossEsq Trump denied in writing and under oath to Mueller any recollection of ever discussing WikiLeaks with Stone or being aware of Stone discussing WikiLeaks with the campaign. ¤ Gates testified he was in the car with Trump when he Trump talked to Stone about it.
⋙⋙ 🐣 RT @rachelseinerwp Rick Gates direct is over. Brief but hardly lacking in substance, including government getting on record that Donald Trump himself talked about upcoming WikiLeaks disclosures based on conversation with Roger Stone
💙🐣 RT @awprokop Now the audio is onto Swalwell questioning Stone about a deleted tweet of his attacking @RVAWonk and claiming he had a “perfectly legal back channel to Assange”
⋙ doccloud: http://bit.ly/32DoZ0l https://twitter.com/awprokop/status/1194340189453389824?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @SethAbramsom My only “ask” to print, radio, podcast, TV and digital media in the United States is that you not wait until it’s too late to see that we’re in a NATIONAL EMERGENCY ¤ If you work in media and aren’t acting like we’re in a NATIONAL EMERGENCY, you’re failing your duty to the country
🐣 RT @VeraMBergen Trump blames Michael Atkinson, whom he appointed, for being “disloyal” for finding the anonymous whistle-blower’s complaint on his interactions with Ukraine to be credible
⋙ NYT: Trump Has Considered Firing Intelligence Community Inspector General http://nyti.ms/2qKYsBa //➔ I’m shocked, shocked
// Haberman and Schmidt; The president blames Michael Atkinson, whom he appointed, for finding the anonymous whistle-blower’s complaint on his interactions with Ukraine to be credible.
🐣 Confession become him
⋙ 🐣 RT @real Why is such a focus put on 2nd and 3rd hand witnesses, many of whom are Never Trumpers, or whose lawyers are Never Trumpers, when all you have to do is read the phone call (transcript) with the Ukrainian President and see first hand? He and others also stated that there was…..
⋙ 🐣 RT @real …..”no pressure” put on him to investigate Sleepy Joe Biden even though, as President, I have an “obligation” to look into corruption, and Biden’s actions, on tape, about firing the prosecutor, and his son’s taking millions of dollars, with no knowledge or talent, from a…..
⋙ 🐣 RT @real ….Ukrainian energy company, and more millions taken from China, and now reports of other companies and countries also giving him big money, are certainly looking very corrupt (to put it mildly!) to me. Both Bidens should be forced to testify in this No Due Process Scam!
💙💙 TheAtlantic, Yoni Applebaum: How America Ends http://bit.ly/2CGO3ZG ¤ #longread
// Dec 2019 issue; A tectonic demographic shift is under way. Can the country hold together?
🐣 RT @SykesCharlie In retrospect, Nixon made a huge mistake by not spending months focused on the background and politics of Frank Wills, the security guard who stumbled on Watergate break-in…. #whistleblower
WaPo: On eve of open hearings, GOP, Democrats lay out competing cases on impeachment http://wapo.st/2Qe31ia
NBCNews: In private speech, Bolton suggests some of Trump’s foreign policy decisions are guided by personal interest http://nbcnews.to/34VTaBC
// The former national security director was especially critical of the president’s handling of Turkey, according to multiple sources present for his remarks.
CNN: Inauguration galas, an intimate dinner, and a White House party: Trump’s 10 interactions with indicted Giuliani associates http://cnn.it/2QeLTsq
WaPo, Greg Sargent: Trump just undercut his own spinners’ latest line of propaganda http://wapo.st/2NEc4aj
GOP HPSCI: Briefing Memo http://bit.ly/2KfVY4J
🐣 RT @PaulaChertok Trump told Lavrov & Kislyak he was fine with Russia’s election interference, admitting he knew it was a Russian operation! He was so grateful; he blurted out classified secrets! So PLEASE let’s stop saying he “believes” Ukraine did it. He is *knowingly pushing #disinformation. https://twitter.com/PaulaChertok/status/1194289278106230786?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @BillKristol So there was collusion, and there was lying to cover it up. And while I suspect the impeachment articles will be narrowly Ukraine-focused, members of Congress deliberating on impeachment are entitled to consider whether Ukraine is part of a longer train of abuses and usurpations.
⋙ 🐣 RT @BradMossEsq Trump denied in writing and under oath to Mueller any recollection of ever discussing WikiLeaks with Stone or being aware of Stone discussing WikiLeaks with the campaign. ¤ Gates testified he was in the car with Trump when he Trump talked to Stone about it.
WaPo Factchecker, Glenn Kessler and Salvador Rizzo: The Fact Checker’s guide to impeachment hearing spin http://wapo.st/32HN4TG
Politico, Juleanna Glover: There’s a Surprisingly Plausible Path to Removing Trump From Office http://politi.co/33H0HUG
// It would take just three Republican senators to turn the impeachment vote into a secret ballot. It’s not hard to imagine what would happen then.
🐣 RT @MarshallCohen THREAD: Top minds from both political parties are preparing their best strategy as the impeachment investigation into President Donald Trump heats up. Here’s my analysis of the strongest arguments FOR and AGAINST impeaching President Trump. 📌 https://twitter.com/MarshallCohen/status/1194245488301789184?s=20
⋙ CNN, Marshall Cohen: The case for and against impeaching President Donald Trump http://cnn.it/2rCBZql
TPM, Josh Marshall: The Collusion Never Stopped. The Whole GOP Got on Board. http://bit.ly/2X6vqrC The conspiracy theories being promoted by the GOP derive from Russian propaganda channels going back to 2016.
DailyBeast, Sam Brodey, Jackie Kucinich and Betsy Swan: Meet the Inquisitors About to Rule the Impeachment Hearing http://bit.ly/2Kcvlxx
// One’s a former mob-buster. The other’s a veteran of more than a decade of Capitol Hill’s most divisive investigations. And on Wednesday both will go prime time.
“His style is right out of the SDNY bootcamp, as am I. He will know everything there is to know about a witness and the circumstances around the witness. He’ll be fully, 100 percent prepared.””
— Elie Honig, a former SDNY prosecutor who worked with Daniel Goldman“He’s a very dedicated institutionalist. He’s one of those people you see on the Hill that you know he could have left a long time ago and made a lot of money in any number of places.”
— Former Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA), of Steve Castor
🐣 RT @tedlieu Dear @realDonaldTrump: It’s clear @GOPLeader McCarthy & Rep @DevinNunes are letting you down. Force them to release the “Republican version” of the witness transcripts. Why haven’t Kevin McCarthy & Devin Nunes done this yet? I hope you yell at them big time. They sure deserve it.
⋙ 🐣 RT @real Shifty Adam Schiff will only release doctored transcripts. We haven’t even seen the documents and are restricted from (get this) having a lawyer. Republicans should put out their own transcripts! Schiff must testify as to why he MADE UP a statement from me, and read it to all!
DailyBeast, Erin Banco and Sam Brodey: Top Pentagon Official: White House Asked Mysterious Questions About Ukraine Aid http://bit.ly/2qIq8Xe
// “The way the email was phrased, it said follow-up from POTUS meeting,” Laura Cooper testified. “So…I’m thinking that the questions were probably questions from the President.”
🐣 RT @glennkirschner2 I think we’re going to see some of the best America has to offer beginning on Wednesday. We’re going to see people who are the polar opposite of folks like Trump and Barr and Mulvaney and Graham and McConnell. We’re going to see sefless patriots.
⋙ 🐣 RT @wyomingnan I’m with you there. I have very low days having seen the real underside of America in all this &the worst is seeing what’s in the Repub party right now. I feel like evil aliens have slowly invaded our society without us knowing it. Is Wednesday going to bring hope or more crap?
⭕ 11 Nov 2019
TIME, Joyce White Vance: Why All of Trump’s Defenses Against Impeachment Are Doomed to Fail http://bit.ly/2OhyYEU
WaPo: Trump cites corruption in Kyiv and European stinginess to justify actions on Ukraine. Neither rationale withstands close scrutiny. http://wapo.st/33QcpMV Europe has provided $18.3B vs $4B from the U.S., and Zelensky filled his new cabinet with reformers
WaPo, Max Boot: Can American democracy survive a second Trump term? http://wapo.st/2O1JAGx “Second-Term Trump is more likely to inflict damage — to our democracy, our environment, our world order — that is incalculable and unfixable”
VanityFair, Eric Lutz: Giuliani Crony Lev Parnas Is Going Full Kamikaze on Ukraine http://bit.ly/2O9WxhE
// Spurned by Trump, Parnas now says he personally offered a quid-pro-quo ultimatum to the incoming Ukrainian government.
According to an attorney for Parnas, he traveled to Kiev just ahead of Volodymyr Zelensky’s swearing-in in May to deliver an ultimatum: investigate Joe Biden, or Vice President Mike Pence will not attend Zelensky’s inauguration, and Congressionally-approved military aid will be held up. The account to the New York Times, which was strenuously denied by Giuliani and others potentially implicated, suggests that the effort to extort Zelensky into conducting politically-motivated probes on Trump’s behalf began earlier than previously known and included threats beyond the suspended aid and a denied White House visit. It also puts the spotlight back on Giuliani, who rebutted Parnas’s accusation. “Categorically, I did not tell him to say that,” Giuliani told the Times. The other two people at the meeting this spring—Igor Fruman, the other Giuliani associate arrested last month, and Serhiy Shefir, a member of Zelensky’s inner circle—also denied Parnas’ claims.
Of course, it’s probably in their best interest to do so. Parnas’ account, which he plans to deliver to House lawmakers as part of their impeachment inquiry, draws all parties involved deeper into the scandal that has engulfed the White House and left several in the president’s orbit exposed to potential legal jeopardy. Giuliani has been under particular pressure since October, when Parnas and Fruman were pinched at Dulles International Airport attempting to flee the country—right after having lunch with Giuliani at Trump’s D.C. hotel.
WaPo: White House infighting flares amid impeachment inquiry http://wapo.st/2NDPRce
// A dispute erupts between the Mulvaney and Cipollone camps over how to counter House Democrats’ impeachment push
Reuters: Putin, Merkel say Ukraine’s Donbass [Donetz] should get special status – Kremlin http://reut.rs/2CB5WJB “The breakthrough raised hopes that a date would be set for the summit involving Kiev, Moscow, Berlin and Paris.”
Reuters: Putin, Merkel say Ukraine’s Donbass [Donetz] should get special status – Kremlin http://reut.rs/2CB5WJB //➔ In terms of language, culture and politics, Donbass [Donetz province] is the most Russophilic ~ but one remembers the Sudetenland
● https://twitter.com/Auriandra/status/1194198543742967810?s=20/photo/1
// four maps
WaPo, Eugene Robinson: Rank partisan solidarity is all Trump’s defenders have left http://wapo.st/2NBPAql
Axios, Mike Allen: Preview: “A Warning,” by “Anonymous” Trump official http://bit.ly/33Qtkyw “Don’t worry about Congress,” the president said. “Just do what you need to do.” ¤ “Can we just get rid of the judges? Let’s get rid of the fucking judges,” Trump fumed one morning.
RawStory: Trump told national security official to blow off Congress and ‘do whatever’ they wanted: tell-all book http://bit.ly/ book by “Anonymous”
Reuters: Former U.S. top diplomat Rice concerned by shadow diplomacy on Ukraine http://reut.rs/2KemlI3 “It is troubling. It is deeply troubling,” she said.
CNBC, Holly Ellyatt: The international system is somewhat dangerous and chaotic,’ Condoleezza Rice warns http://cnb.cx/3524FHR “nothing challenges this system like the rise of populism, nationalism, protectionism and isolationism“
● Condoleezza Rice, the former United States Secretary of State, said on Monday the ‘global order’ was in a “somewhat dangerous and chaotic” state.
● The global or world order refers to a rule-based system of international relations created by the U.S. and its allies after World War Two.
● Headlining a CNBC-moderated panel on “Political Risk in the 21st Century” at the Adipec oil and gas conference in Abu Dhabi, Rice told the audience that “the global order is suffering a period of dislocation.”
🔆 This❗️⋙ DailyBeast: Mulvaney’s OMB Held Up Lethal Ukraine Aid in 2017 for Fear of Russian Reaction http://bit.ly/2O0xayF
// “[It] was rather unusual to have OMB expressing concerns that were purely policy-based and not budget-oriented,” former White House official Catherine Croft told investigators.
🐣 RT @MaddowBlog It’s not just about praising Vladimir Putin and having secret communications with him all the time, it’s that this is what we are doing to our closest ally who is at most danger from Russia’s every move. ¤ This is what we’ve been doing to them.
⋙ 🐣 RT @MaddowBlog Unless this president is removed in this impeachment process, the repair of our standing with Ukraine is going to be job one for the next president of the United States. ¤ Whoever replaces Trump will have this as day one, job one as the cleanup for what this guy’s already done.
💽 MSNBC, DeadlineWH: Testimony reveals Trump’s view on Ukraine was driven by Russia and Hungary’s leaders http://on.msnbc.com/
// NYT’s Peter Baker, former chief of staff for the CIA and Dept of Defense Jeremy Bash, former congresswoman Donna Edwards, former deputy assistant attorney general Harry Litman, and NBC News’ Heidi Przybyla on the revelation in George Kent’s testimony about Russia and Hungary’s influence on Trump when it came to Ukraine
🐣 RT @tribelaw The REASON all Trump roads lead to Moscow is that Trump is so deeply beholden to Putin that he can’t afford to cross his (to put it politely) Kremlin sugar daddy. It explains sanctions relief, Ukraine shakedown, and pretty much all of what passes for Trump’s Russia policy.
WaPo: Testimony from Pentagon, State Dept. officials undercuts a key piece of Trump’s impeachment defense http://wapo.st/2X5EcpP
📔💙💙🔆 This❗️⋙ House Permanent Select Committee On Intelligence (HPSCI): President Trump’s Abuse of Power http://bit.ly/33QbknW Summary with Links; graphic presentation
// continually updated
When the White House released the July 25 phone record, the American public saw firsthand that when Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky sought more weapons critical to his country’s defense, President Trump responded: “I would like you to do us a favor though,” laying bare his grave abuse of the power of the presidency.
The House of Representatives launched an impeachment inquiry to ascertain the full extent of the president’s misconduct, and thanks to testimony from dedicated, nonpartisan public servants, we now have a much fuller picture of how President Trump abused the State Department and other levers of government for his own political gain.
Pursuant to House Resolution 660, we are now releasing transcripts of these witness interviews so every American can see the facts and decide for themselves: is this conduct acceptable?
Marie Yovanovitch is the former U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine.
Her testimony demonstrates how President Trump removed a respected diplomat in advance of a months-long pressure campaign to interfere in the 2020 election for his own political gain.President Trump approved the removal of a highly-respected and effective diplomat based on a smear campaign orchestrated by the President’s allies.
● The smear campaign against Ambassador Yovanovitch was based on public falsehoods. The president’s allies sought to tarnish her reputation, character, and her work to clear the deck to advance Trump’s scheme.
● Ambassador Yovanovitch said she felt threatened by Trump’s words and attempts to remove her, and expressed concern for her safety and career.Ambassador Michael McKinley is the former Senior Advisor to the Secretary of State.
His testimony demonstrates the contamination of U.S. foreign policy to serve the President’s political interests rather than our national security interests.With each new interview, we uncover more evidence about the President’s attempts to manipulate the levers of power to his personal, political benefit.
● Ambassador McKinley’s testimony confirms Trump and his allies launched a months-long pressure campaign starting back in November of 2018 to get Ukraine to launch bogus investigations into a political rival.
● It appears that Ambassador Yovanovitch was pushed out to make room for Trump’s henchmen to come in and advance his scheme. McKinley testified: “What is clear is that both Volker and Sondland were engaging the Ukranian Government in conjunction with Rudy Giuliani on domestic political issues.”Ambassador Gordon Sondland is the U.S. Ambassador to the European Union. Ambassador Kurt Volker is the former U.S. special envoy to Ukraine. Their testimony confirms the ‘insidiousness’ of President Trump’s months-long pressure campaign, jeopardizing national security.
● Ambassadors Volker and Sondland testimony shows the progression of efforts by the President and his agent, Rudy Giuliani, to use the State Department to press Ukraine to announce bogus investigations that would benefit President Trump politically.
● President Trump directed the Ambassadors to work with Giuliani on Ukraine policy, and over the course of the summer, an effort was made to extract a public statement from the new Ukrainian president that the Ukrainian government was investigating Burisma or the Biden family and a debunked conspiracy theory about the 2016 U.S. elections.
● It is clear from their testimony that, in exchange for the statement, President Trump would award the Ukrainian president with a highly coveted White House meeting and, later, with millions of dollars in critical military aid being withheld.
● Ambassador Sondland testified that the President’s scheme “kept getting more insidious as [the] timeline went on, and back in July, it was all about just corruption.”Ambassador Bill Taylor served as the chargé d’affaires for Ukraine.
His testimony confirms the insidiousness of Trump’s months-long pressure campaign at the expense of U.S. security and foreign policy interests.● The testimony of Ambassador Taylor—a West Point graduate, Vietnam veteran, and nonpartisan diplomat—shows how President Trump withheld military aid to Ukraine and conditioned its release, as well as a vital White House meeting, on the President of Ukraine publicly announcing investigations into debunked conspiracy theories involving the Biden family and the 2016 election.
● In the early stages, the promise of a coveted Oval Office meeting was dangled in exchange for announcing bogus investigations into the Bidens and 2016 election interference. As the Ukrainians resisted, the stakes were raised: nearly $400 million in desperately needed military aid was blocked.
● Taylor’s testimony lays bare how the shadow foreign policy channel pursued by the President’s agent, Rudy Giuliani, with the assistance of Ambassadors Sondland and Volker, placed immense pressure on the Ukrainian government to advance Trump’s scheme.
🐣 RT @MaddowBlog “In a meeting during that trip, Perry handed the new president a list of people he recommended as energy advisers. One of the four names was his longtime political backer Michael Bleyzer.”
⋙ 💙 AP: After boost from Perry, backers got huge gas deal in Ukraine http://bit.ly/2Q7HmYU
// But it’s *our* corruption
🐣 RT @IlvesToomas If it looks like an asset, talks like an asset and acts like an asset…
⋙ 🐣 RT @JuliaDavisNews Trump reportedly called Bolton at home to complain about a CNN story that said the Navy was pushing back against Russian aggression in the Black Sea. When CNN portrayed the move as a response to Russia, the White House told the Navy to cancel the maneuver.
⋙⋙ Politico: Alarm bells’: What Cooper, Croft and Anderson told impeachment investigators http://politi.co/2NBco9M
// The investigators released transcripts of Laura Cooper, Catherine Croft and Christopher Anderson.
💙 NYT, Michelle Goldberg: To Exonerate Trump, Republicans Embrace Russian Disinformation http://nyti.ms/36ZkwJ0
// In this week’s impeachment hearings, expect a lot of G.O.P. conspiracy theorizing.
NYT: Defense Dept. Official Testified Trump Questioned Ukraine Aid in June http://nyti.ms/34M43po
// Laura K. Cooper told impeachment investigators the White House began questioning the military aid after it came up at a meeting with President Trump.
NYT: Trump, Ukraine and Impeachment: The Inside Story of How We Got Here http://nyti.ms/2CvNGRV
// President Trump fixated on Ukraine as a solution to his political problems. In five months, his obsession upended American foreign policy and threatened his presidency. Here is how it happened.
💙💙 🔆 This❗️⋙ HouseIntelCommittee (HPSCI): Committees Release Laura Cooper’s Transcript as Part of Impeachment Inquiry http://bit.ly/34SP3pT
// 11/11/2019
● Cooper: Key Excerpts: http://bit.ly/34VAZvT ; Transcript: http://bit.ly/2NAN0kv
💙💙 🔆 This❗️⋙ HouseIntelCommittee (HPSCI): Committees Release Croft and Anderson Transcripts as Part of Impeachment Inquiry http://bit.ly/2Q5m4ep
● Croft: Key Excerpts: http://bit.ly/2O7AszY ; Transcript: http://bit.ly/2qN1BQF
● Anderson: Key Excerpts: http://bit.ly/2qGPlRU ; Transcript: http://bit.ly/2qN1Knb
H. Res. 660, which was passed by the House of Representatives on October 31, 2019, authorizes the Chairman of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence “to make publicly available in electronic form the transcripts of depositions” with “appropriate redactions for classified and other sensitive information.”
Pursuant to this resolution, and consistent with the Committee’s rules and longstanding bipartisan practice, the Committee has begun preparing transcripts from the impeachment inquiry for public release, which includes a thorough, nonpartisan security review to protect classified and other sensitive information.
As part of this process, the Committee is redacting (1) personally identifiable information; (2) the names of non-senior Executive Branch personnel and Intelligence Community employees; (3) the names of committee staff who did not ask questions or make on-the-record statements; and (4) classified or potentially classified information or other sensitive information not pertinent to the subject of the impeachment inquiry.
In addition, consistent with the Committee’s rules, each transcript has been made available to the witness for inspection, including to identify technical, grammatical, and typographical corrections. The Committee has also taken into consideration requested redactions from witnesses, if they fall within the parameters above.
Although the transcripts list Members of the three Committees who were present at the outset of a deposition, they do not necessarily reflect the attendance of all Members who may have joined or departed a deposition at different points.
WaPo, Aaron Blake: Nikki Haley’s real disclosure: Concerns about Trump’s dangerousness went right to the top http://wapo.st/34UKNX1
🐣 RT @carolecadwalla Boris Johnson is a national security risk. This is his personal decision. If the report contains information pertinent to the election, he is deliberately subjecting us to harm from a hostile foreign power for personal political gain.
⋙ TheGuardian, Charlotte Higgins: UK government delay of Russia report is shaming, says Clinton http://bit.ly/36QVH1P
// Ex-secretary of state says it is unacceptable to keep report from public before election
DailyBeast, Michael Tomasky: The Secret Reason Republicans Won’t Impeach Trump http://bit.ly/34RSCwA
// The modern GOP is an un-American party. It is not interested in democracy; it is interested in power and it doesn’t care how it gets it.
WaPo, Greg Sargent: An epic ‘Meet the Press’ rant unmasks the real goal of Trump’s lies http://wapo.st/32GeDN7
🐣 RT @CharlesPPierce There is not a lick of truth in this.
⋙ 🐣 RT @real Shifty Adam Schiff will only release doctored transcripts. We haven’t even seen the documents and are restricted from (get this) having a lawyer. Republicans should put out their own transcripts! Schiff must testify as to why he MADE UP a statement from me, and read it to all!
NYT: How Russia Meddles Abroad for Profit: Cash, Trolls and a Cult Leader http://nyti.ms/2NDAhh5
// Madagascar has little obvious strategic value for the Kremlin or the global balance of power. But Russians were there during an election, offering bribes, spreading disinformation and recruiting an apocalyptic cult leader.
NYT: Bolton Rejects Legal Alliance With Mulvaney http://nyti.ms/2p6YiDy
// A lawyer representing the president’s former national security adviser filed a motion opposing an effort by Mick Mulvaney to join a suit on impeachment testimony.
🐣 These will be hearings unlike any other. Two so-called “narratives” will compete. One is true. One is a lie. It is a test. The American people get to decide. Never have the stakes been higher. “A republic – if you can keep it.” #Impeachment
🐣 RT @Sulliview The national press faces its most difficult and important test of the Trump era starting Wednesday. Here’s how they can ace it. (Beware of stunts; focus on substance not speculation; lose the mealy-mouthed language of false equivalence.) My column:
⋙ WaPo, Margaret Sullivan: Media beware: Impeachment hearings will be the trickiest test of covering Trump http://wapo.st/34ONola
⋙ 🐣 RT @GeneralHealthy Providing one from each “side” to debate, when the evidence is 95% in favor of one side, is pure bullshit in the media. ¤ It gives the impression that there are REAL credible merits of the argument on both sides…when there really aren’t.
⋙⋙ There really aren’t, but 40% of people think there are. If 10-15% can be convinced by evidence – can distinguish between truth and spectacle – there is a chance we can come through this challenge intact.
🐣 My grandfather (WWI), father (WWII), husband (Viet Nam) and son (Iraq) have all been vets. We should honor all vets by winning the battle to save our democracy from ALL enemies, foreign and domestic, in this time of great peril. #Impeach
CNN, Zachary Wolf: The biggest week yet in the House impeachment investigation is here http://cnn.it/2CzAF9M
🐣 RT @AaronBlake The president’s top aide and his Secretary of State thought he was such a danger that they felt the need to recruit other people to resist him. ¤ The story isn’t that the U.N. ambassador declined. It’s that the the recruitment effort took place.
AP: After push from Perry, backers got huge gas deal in Ukraine http://bit.ly/2Q7HmYU
WaPo Factchecker, Glenn Kessler: Pompeo tries to spin himself out of a tricky situation http://wapo.st/2NXP8BW On the dismissal of Amb. Yovanovitch: “This is a story of spin. See if you can keep track of the bouncing ball.”
⭕ 10 Nov 2019
🐣 RT @djrothkopf Russia’s plan to infiltrate & influence right wing parties in Western democracies has turned out to be one of the greatest intelligence successes in modern history-a sweeping, shocking, enduring success. We need to view everything from the 2016 election to the Ukraine scandal… 📌 https://twitter.com/djrothkopf/status/1193540493415788545?s=20
🐣 RT @ as part of this one massive attack on our system. The Brexit vote and the current positioning of the UK Tory party is part of it. So too are political shifts in France, Italy, Austria, Germany, Hungary and Poland. Not viewing it in its totality is a huge mistake. [ … ]
🐣 RT @NightlyPolitics Republican Joe Walsh: ¤ “I’ve given up on the Republican Party. The Republican Party is a cult. They no longer stand for ideas. The Republican Party right now is all about washing their leader’s feet every day.” 💽 https://twitter.com/NightlyPolitics/status/1193759909495504896?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @EvanMcMullin And we have the White House’s own detailed accounting of Trump’s call with Ukraine’s president in which Trump himself attempted to secure illegal foreign election help in exchange for US military aid.
⋙ 🐣 RT @jimsciutto You would have to forget all we know about the top-down structure of this administration to imagine that Trump’s underlings were freelancing on Ukraine.
⋙⋙ 🐣 RT @GregJaffe In 3,000 pages of impeachment testimony Trump often seems like a supporting character in someone else’s drama– unseen, mercurial impossible to please. The key impeachment question: What exactly did he do?
⋙⋙⋙⋙ WaPo, Greg Jaffe: The key impeachment question: What did Trump want from Ukraine — and what exactly did he do? http://wapo.st/2X6AMTY
NYT Editorial: The Disorienting Defenses of Donald Trump http://nyti.ms/
// The president and his allies ask Americans to reject the evidence before their eyes.
NYT Editorial: The Disorienting Defenses of Donald Trump https://t.co/4ctPcCtRag pic.twitter.com/A4V9oPDhu2
— 🇺🇸 Auriandra 🇺🇦 (@Auriandra) November 11, 2019
The case for weighing the impeachment of President Trump boils down to a few simple points: In an effort to win re-election in 2020, Mr. Trump apparently attempted to extort a foreign government into announcing an investigation of his top political rival. The president did so while also trying to revive a conspiracy theory that casts doubt over whether the Russian government interfered in the 2016 election on his behalf. Witnesses have already testified that in order to achieve those goals, Mr. Trump withheld hundreds of millions of dollars in foreign aid against the bipartisan wishes of Congress. All the while, the president and his staff have refused to cooperate with the congressional investigation into what transpired.
Here’s a field guide to some of the lines of attack that Republicans have used so far.
● There was no quid pro quo.
● How could it have been a quid pro quo if the Ukrainians didn’t know about it?
● It’s all just hearsay. And the whistle-blower is a partisan Democrat.
● It was a quid pro quo. But so what? This happens all the time.
● It was a quid pro quo, but President Trump was only interested in rooting out corruption in Ukraine.
● It was a quid pro quo, but Mr. Trump had nothing to do with it.
● Fine. It was a quid pro quo. Trump ordered it. He did so for his own political benefit. The Ukrainians knew about it. That’s bad, but it’s not an impeachable offense.
● It wasn’t a real quid pro quo because the Trump administration is too disorganized to pull off such a scheme.
● “I hardly know the gentleman.”
● This is a coup by the Deep State! A decorated American soldier is a Ukrainian agent! The witnesses who have testified are “Never Trumpers”!
🐣 RT @JuliaDavisNews Retaliation against Lt. Col. Vindman started shortly after he reported his concerns with Trump’s call to Zelenskyy to the senior White House lawyer, John Eisenberg. Vindman was subsequently excluded from trips to all countries in his portfolio (Ukraine, Moldova, Belarus). https://twitter.com/JuliaDavisNews/status/1193642351970963457?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @brianstelter Bill Moyers says that he fears for the U.S. “for the first time in my long life.” ¤ “A democracy can die of too many lies. And we’re getting close to that terminal moment unless we reverse the obsession with lies that are being fed around the country.”
⋙ 💽 CNN: Bill Moyers says he fears for America for ‘first time’ http://cnn.it/2pZyMka
// Legendary journalist Bill Moyers discusses the looming impeachment hearings with Brian Stelter. Moyers fears for the country “for the first time, because a society, a democracy, can die of too many lies. And we’re getting close to that terminal moment, unless we reverse the obsession with lies that are being fed around the country.”
DailyBeast, Erin Banco: Ukrainians Contacted U.S. Officials in May About Aid Fears http://bit.ly/34OR06A
// nIn May, Ukrainian officials were growing increasingly concerned about Rudy Giuliani’s public comments regarding investigations into Hunter Biden and Burisma.
BusinessInsider: Boris Johnson’s Conservative party has received cash from 9 Russian donors named in a suppressed intelligence report http://bit.ly/2Ny5hio
// businessmen linked to Kremlin
🐣 RT @PaulaReidCBS UPDATE: @mikevolkov20, attorney for Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman, tells @CBSNews his client “Still has a job – his detail ends in July 2020.”
⋙ 🐣 RT @FaceTheNation VINDMAN OUT AT NSC: After testifying on the Hill, NSA O’Brien says Alexander Vindman will be removed from the National Security Council. “Everyone who’s detailed at the NSC, people are going…back to their own departments and we’ll bring in new folks” https://cbsn.ws/2p41BLK
🐣 RT @JuliaDavisNews The meeting took place in May, in Kyiv, with only 3 people in attendance: Parnas, Fruman and Serhiy Shefir, a member of the inner circle of President Zelenskyy. The sit-down took place at an outdoor cafe. The men sipped coffee and spoke in Russian.
🐣 RT @mikecarpenter Lev Parnas says he told a Zelensky associate in May that military aid would be withheld and VP Pence would not attend the inauguration unless the Bidens were investigated. Not sure I trust a con man’s word but this needs investigating.
⋙ NYT: Giuliani Associate Says He Gave Demand for Biden Inquiry to Ukrainians http://nyti.ms/32up8mM
// Lev and Igor; The claim by the associate, Lev Parnas, is being vigorously disputed.
🐣 RT @MSNBC “Bannon didn’t only say the Trump campaign was receiving what it thought was inside information on Wikileaks from Roger Stone, he also suggested that they believed that Stone was sort of orchestrating the release of these Democratic emails.” – Dan Friedman
⋙ MSNBC, TheLastWord: Bannon: Stone was ‘access point’ to WikiLeaks http://on.msnbc.com/36SgPo8
// Mother Jones reporter Dan Friedman tells Ali Velshi Steve Bannon’s testimony against Roger Stone suggests the “Trump campaign apparently thought it was colluding with WikiLeaks.” Bannon testified under oath that Donald Trump’s 2016 campaign considered Roger Stone as the “access point” to WikiLeaks. Natasha Bertrand joins.
⭕ 9 Nov 2019
DailyBeast, Christopher Dickey: The Night the Cold War World Turned Upside Down http://bit.ly/2WXEPlm
// The generation now quaintly known as “boomers” had grown up thinking the planet might soon be blown to hell. Now that threat was over. Or was it?
CNN, Kevin Liptak: Transcripts depict Trump as fickle, susceptible to flattery and prone to grudges http://cnn.it/2qD4dRd
🐣 RT @UROKlive1 “The Republican Party was in big trouble. I brought the party back. The Republican Party is strong. The Republican Party is strong. They’ve got to remain faithful. And loyal.” ¤ Who Will Betray Trump?
⋙ Politico Mag, Tim Alberta: Who Will Betray Trump? http://politi.co/33AjJMe
// 11/8/2019; Donald Trump knows there are potential traitors in his midst. His presidency could depend on keeping them at bay.
🐣 RT @waltshaub 18 U.S.C. § 201 makes it a crime to corruptly “demand” a thing of value in exchange for an official act. ¤ It does not matter if the demand was met. It does not matter if the official later dropped the demand. The demand is the crime.
// law, US code, anti-extortion
DailyBeast, Will Sommer: GOP Unveils Wild Wishlist of Impeachment Witnesses Including Hunter Biden and the Whistleblower http://bit.ly/2K4eih6
// Ranking Republicans issued their own list Saturday including Hunter Biden and the unnamed whistleblower, who they say will help treat the President with “fundamental fairness.”
DailyBeast, Betsy Swan: Aide to Ukrainian President Addresses Bill Taylor Testimony http://bit.ly/34Ndt41 //➔ Ukrainian official criticized US for pursuing politically-motivated investigations while urging Ukraine not to investigate its own previous president for corruption
// The top U.S. diplomat indicated to impeachment investigators that a Zelensky aide seemed enraged about his relative’s military service. That aide says there’s more to the story.
Volker and Taylor’s efforts to influence Ukrainian prosecutors’ investigation decisions made for a bit of discomfort, according to George Kent, the State Department’s deputy assistant secretary for European and Eurasian Affairs. Kent said that when Taylor and Volker urged Yermak not to investigate Poroshenko, Yermak pointed to American efforts to get Ukraine to open politically motivated investigations.
“Andry Yermak said: What? You mean the type of investigations you’re pushing for us to do on Biden and Clinton? And at that point Kurt Volker did not respond,” Kent said.
💙💙 DailyBeast, Masha Gessen: How the Fall of the Berlin Wall Radicalized Putin http://bit.ly/2Q6Wrd1
// orig dated 10/24/2019, pub’d today; In 1989, as East Germany collapsed around him, a KGB spy in Dresden named Vladimir Putin came to some hard conclusions that would later inform his bellicose geopolitics.
WSJ: Giuliani Associates Urged Ukraine’s Prior President to Open Biden, Election Probes http://on.wsj.com/34PVBpn
// Lev and Igor; Lev Parnas, Igor Fruman pushed then-president Poroshenko [earlier than thought] to announce probes in return for U.S. state visit
A late February meeting in Kyiv between Lev Parnas, Igor Fruman and then-Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko took place at the offices of Ukrainian general prosecutor Yuriy Lutsenko, the people said. It came soon after Messrs. Parnas and Fruman met with Mr. Giuliani, the president’s personal lawyer, and Mr. Lutsenko in New York in late January and again in Warsaw in mid-February, Mr. Giuliani has said.
Mr. Lutsenko also attended the late February meeting, the people said. Mr. Poroshenko didn’t ultimately announce that he was opening those investigations. Mr. Lutsenko, the prosecutor, gave an interview to the Hill in March in which he said he was opening an investigation into alleged interference by Ukrainians in the 2016 U.S. election. He also said he had evidence he wanted to present to the U.S. Justice Department related to former Vice President Joe Biden and Burisma Group, a Ukrainian gas company where Mr. Biden’s son, Hunter, was a director. Two months later, in an interview with Bloomberg, Mr. Lutsenko said he had no evidence of wrongdoing by the Bidens. …
The meeting, which hasn’t previously been reported, shows associates of the U.S. president’s personal lawyer as early as February were pressing the president of Ukraine to open investigations that could benefit Mr. Trump politically in exchange for a White House visit. No White House meeting resulted from the discussions. Mr. Poroshenko lost his re-election bid to Volodymyr Zelensky, who Mr. Trump in a July call urged to investigate the Bidens, as well as other matters. …
🐣 RT @TheHill Reporter: “What do you think of the idea of President Trump going to Moscow for the May Day parade?”
Joe Biden: “Are you serious?”
Reporter: “Yes, he’s been invited and he said he’s considering it.”
Joe Biden: “You’re kidding me. Whoa. Are you joking?”
💽 https://twitter.com/thehill/status/1193304483121520640?s=20/photo/1
💙 Bloomberg: State Department Freed Ukraine Money Before Trump Says He Did http://bloom.bg/33w4Vyc
● Department lawyers found the White House lacked authority
● Chain of events undercuts Trump’s account of freeing the funds
🐣😅 RT @AltCyberCommand impeachment is infair to rupublicans who had to waite through the mueller which hunt while they were just trying to smock their cigars and enjoy their covfefe with hamberders in everlasting peach. this is a unpresidented discgrace and also melanie will not let me tapp anymore
WaPo: Ukraine expert who listened to Trump’s call says ‘there was no doubt’ the president was seeking investigations of political rivals http://wapo.st/36RHXn9
// Lt Col Vindman
USAToday: 5 takeaways from the impeachment inquiry testimony of Fiona Hill, former White House adviser on Russia http://bit.ly/2NZYTiM
● Bolton was ‘furious’ about the push for Ukraine investigations
● Giuliani’s ‘whirlwind’ of Ukraine claims
● Gordon Sondland’s activities were ‘deeply concerning’
● Hill was ‘shocked’ by Trump’s call with Zelensky
● Hill and Republican questioners butt heads
WaPo: House GOP asks for Hunter Biden and whistleblower to testify in impeachment probe http://wapo.st/34H6vgM
⭕ 8 Nov 2019
WaPo, Daniel Baer: The Berlin Wall’s fall shaped a generation of U.S. diplomats. Trump upends that. http://wapo.st/32zpb0A
// American exceptionalism? Now it’s American pedestrianism.
EmptyWheel: Why Did Gucciardo Pay Giuliani Partners For His “Loan” To Fraud Guarantee? http://bit.ly/2Q61J8Q
Slate, William Saletan: The Ukraine Depositions Have Destroyed Trump’s “Corruption” Defense http://bit.ly/32vtBpf
// Republicans say the president wanted to clean up Ukraine. Witness testimony shows he didn’t.
💽 MSNBC, Hardball: Kathleen Matthews plays Hardball http://on.msnbc.com/33Ju8FL
// “Kathleen The Queen”; Hardball has a special guest for the show’s 20th anniversary: Kathleen Matthews!
WaPo, Philip Bump: An oral history of how Trump allegedly tried to leverage a White House visit for an investigation into the Bidens http://wapo.st/2p90kDm
🐣 RT @ChristopherJM Vindman testified that Fiona Hill told him that Patel was misrepresenting himself as a Ukraine expert and Trump believed Patel was in charge of Ukraine policy on the NSC. Vindman also said that he was told not to attend a meeting with Trump b/c he might be mistaken for Patel.
🐣 RT @myworldmysun Mo Brooks Republican Rep said
“The American people deserve a public and open process”
Just before the GOP stormed the Impeachment Inquiry.
Now Trump Says “They shouldn’t be having public hearings”
YahooNews: Testimony from Alexander Vindman and Fiona Hill caps a devastating week for Trump http://yhoo.it/2CsVHXS
🐣 RT @MSNBC So far, at least 11 officials have been no-shows for testimony during the House impeachment inquiry. https://twitter.com/MSNBC/status/1193106729317412864?s=20/photo/1
WashingtonExaminer: Bannon: Trump campaign saw Roger Stone as link to WikiLeaks and Assange http://washex.am/32uEGHk
💽 MSNBC, RachelMaddow: With impeachment looming, Trump rallies dubious support http://on.msnbc.com/34Jhl5Z
// Rachel Maddow looks at the cast of characters being assembled to support Rudy Giuliani and, in turn, Donald Trump heading into public impeachment hearings in contrast to the stalwart set of witnesses being lined up by the House impeachment committees.
WSJ: Giuliani Associates Urged Ukraine’s Prior President to Open Biden, Election Probes http://on.wsj.com/34PVBpn //➔ there was a prequel
// Lev and Igor; Lev Parnas, Igor Fruman pushed then-president Poroshenko to announce probes in return for U.S. state visit http://on.wsj.com/
CNN: UK inquiry was warned of Russian infiltration, leaked testimony shows http://cnn.it/2rkR4fU
🐣 RT @RepSwalwell One more time for the people in the back: ¤ The whistleblower pulled the fire alarm. The 1st responders showed up and saw smoke, flames, and @realDonaldTrump holding matches. Does it matter who pulled the fire alarm?
🐣 RT @MollyMcKew POTUS just said he wants to go to the Kremlin’s military parade in May — and hoo-boy, I guess he’s all done pretending that this wasn’t all about debasing himself for Russia. The propaganda is now writing itself.
DailyBeast, Justin Baragona and Asawin Suebsaeng: Vindman Burns Trump Booster John Solomon: ‘All the Key Elements’ of His Reporting ‘Were False’ http://bit.ly/2rrumD3
// Hannity’s favorite “investigative” reporter’s columns formed the basis for Trump allies like Rudy Giuliani’s messaging about Biden and Democrats.
Throughout his testimony, released Friday, the National Security Council’s top Ukraine expert, Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman—who listened in on the infamous July 25 call between Trump and Ukraine’s president—noted that Solomon’s March interview with former Ukraine Prosecutor General Yuriy Lutsenko was a major influence on Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani and the president, especially when it came to the removal of former U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine Marie Yovanovitch last spring.
Lutsenko alleged in the interview that Ukrainian officials helped Hillary Clinton in 2016 by leaking damaging information about former Trump campaign chair Paul Manafort and that Yovanovitch gave him a “do-not-prosecute” list and cooperated with Clinton to undermine Trump. Lutsenko eventually retracted the claim against Yovanovitch.
During an exchange with pro-Trump Rep. Lee Zeldin (R-NY), Vindman said that Solomon’s article was a “false narrative” and that he based that assertion on “authoritative sources.” When asked to elaborate, the NSC official said he talked to “interagency colleagues from State and the Intelligence Community,” adding they found the claims against Yovanovitch to be “preposterous.”
🐣 RT @PaulaChertok Oh BTW: Collusion. Steve Bannon just admitted on the witness stand in Roger Stone’s trial that the Trump campaign used Stone as the “access point” to Wikileaks. You know, the Russian asset that published Russia’s hacks to subvert our election that put a Putin-lover clown in WH.
🐣 RT @MaddowBlog “The Russians were who attacked us in 2016, and they’re now writing the script for others to do the same. And if we don’t get our act together, they will continue to make fools of us internationally.” -Fiona Hill, former senior NSC official 💽 https://twitter.com/MaddowBlog/status/1193004130589192193?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @PaulaChertok Fiona Hill gets brilliantly testy schooling & slamming Republicans’ Ukraine conspiracy theories as playing into Russia’s hands. “All of you are going down a [misinformation] rabbit hole…Russians thrive on misinformation …We’re in peril as a democracy.” #Maddow #UkraineGate https://twitter.com/PaulaChertok/status/1192996742834188288?s=20/photo/1-4
🐣 RT @harrylitman Both Hill and Vindman finger Mulvaney. Lines clearly drawn now: Giuliani, Sondland, Volker, Mulvaney Pompeo in roughly that order v. Hill, Vindman, Yovanovitch, Kent, Taylor.
Politico: Hateful calls, conspiracy theories’: What Fiona Hill told impeachment investigators http://politi.co/2WXhy2Q
🐣 RT @brianklaas Just to be clear: trying to extort a bribe is a crime even if you don’t get the bribe in the end. And impeachment (followed by Senate removal) is not “the death penalty.” It just means you don’t get to be president any longer. You know better, @NikkiHaley. Stop being so craven.
⋙ 🐣 RT @sahilkapur Nikki Haley says President Trump did “nothing impeachable” because he released the aid and Ukraine didn’t do the investigation. ¤ “Impeachment is, like, the death penalty for a public official…there’s nothing in that transcript that warrants the death penalty for the president.”
WaPo: Giuliani associates pressed past president of Ukraine to announce Biden investigation in exchange for state visit http://wapo.st/33xB5tb
NYT: Bannon Tells of Campaign Willing to Try ‘Dirty Tricks’ to Win in 2016 http://nyti.ms/36MS5xO
// The former Trump campaign chairman testified at the trial of a longtime Trump adviser, Roger J. Stone Jr.
NYT: Impeachment Briefing: Anatomy of a Scene From the Hill Testimony http://nyti.ms/2qyuJLA
// The transcript of Fiona Hill’s interview describes a cinematic White House scene. Our reporters help break it down.
WaPo: Trump learns that fake charities are tons of fun until you get caught http://wapo.st/2X6YAXT
// Maddow: Pam Bondi received $25,000 from charity; down she’s on Trump’s legal team
WSJ: Giuliani Lawyer Advised Company Shut Down Over Fraud Complaints http://on.wsj.com/34Tt4zh
// Rudy Giuliani’s new lawyer advised an invention-promotion company that allegedly defrauded customers
WaPo: Top White House official told Congress ‘there was no doubt’ Trump sought quid pro quo with Ukrainians http://wapo.st/34NKmNR
🐣 RT @RadioFreeTom This is a pretty widespread conclusion among almost all Russia experts. Because that’s how Russia works. It would have been strange if they had *not* targeted him.
⋙ 🐣 RT @janestreet Buried at the end of the testimony, Hill says she believes Putin was targeting Trump back when he was a businessman! https://twitter.com/janestreet/status/1192939766075015168?s=20/photo/1
WaPo: Alexander Vindman: Soviet emigre and decorated U.S. Army officer wanted to be as American as can be. Now the president questions his motives. http://wapo.st/2Q1XWZW
🐣 RT @OliverDarcy Lee Zeldin repeatedly asked Lt. Col. Vindman about the veracity of a John Solomon story. Vindman kept saying “all the key elements” of it “were false.” 📌 https://twitter.com/oliverdarcy/status/1192861998645731329?s=20
⋙ 🐣 RT @OliverDarcy Fiona Hill talks about influence of conspiracy theories from places like InfoWars. ¤ Asked about The Hill, she says, “It’s become part of what’s become a very large universe of information … that are out there on the internet … affecting an awful lot of people’s judgements.”
DailyBeast, Will Sommer: Trumpkins Accused Him of Being the Whistleblower. They Were Wrong. http://bit.ly/33txhsU
// A former Obama staffer has been erroneously accused by the pro-Trump internet of blowing the whistle on the Ukraine affair. He didn’t. But now his life has been upended.
DailyBeast, Justin Baragona and Asawin Suebsaeng: Vindman Burns Trump Booster John Solomon: ‘All the Key Elements’ of His Reporting ‘Were False’ http://bit.ly/2rrumD3
// Hannity’s favorite “investigative” reporter’s columns formed the basis for Trump allies like Rudy Giuliani’s messaging about Biden and Democrats.
WaPo, Jason Rezaian: A ray of light in the mysterious case of an American missing in Iran http://wapo.st/33vgaHn the case of Bob Livingston, the longest-held hostage in US history
WaPo, Dana Milbank: The United States is being run by a toddler http://wapo.st/34HWkIX “He has tantrums. He rips up paper. He disregards facts. He believes crazy conspiracies. He’s erratic and ill-informed”
📔🔆 This❗️⋙ HouseIntelCommittee (HPSCI): Committees Release Vindman and Hill Transcripts as Part of Impeachment Inquiry http://bit.ly/34JUlEa
// 11/8/2019; Depositions Reveal First-Hand, Direct Testimony on Instruments of Power Used for Political Gain
● Vindman: Key Excerpts: http://bit.ly/2NSQEoL ; Transcript: http://bit.ly/32sSKRt
● Hill: Key Excerpts: http://bit.ly/32xLow2 ; Transcript: http://bit.ly/2X12TDN
“Lieutenant Colonel Vindman—an active duty military officer who was awarded the Purple Heart after being injured by a roadside bomb in Iraq—performed another duty to the country by testifying before the Committees about presidential misconduct that he witnessed during his service at the White House. Lt. Col. Vindman testified that the July 25, 2019, call between President Trump and the Ukrainian president led him to report immediately to lawyers at the White House his serious concerns about political investigations the President pressed for on the call.
“Lt. Col. Vindman also told the Committees that the ‘demand’ by President Trump for the announcement of a politically-motivated investigation into a U.S. citizen by a foreign country forced him to make a‘moral and ethical’ judgment, and led to his concern that the act could ‘undermine U.S. national security.’ He also detailed a pressure campaign waged by the President and his allies ahead of the call, and how he properly reported this activity to the same White House legal advisors.
“Dr. Fiona Hill—a respected Russia and Ukraine expert who served as Lt. Col. Vindman’s supervisor—detailed how senior officials at the White House, including National Security Advisor John Bolton, shared her serious concern about efforts prior to the July 25 call to push Ukraine to undertake these politically-motivated investigations, and about her efforts, at Mr. Bolton’s direction, to report this activity to senior White House officials.
“Lt. Col. Vindman and Dr. Hill—two courageous and patriotic Americans—testified despite pressure by the White House to silence their testimony. Their superiors in the White House have declined to cooperate with the inquiry, but transcripts released today show clearly that individuals close to the President were alarmed by a presidential scheme as illicit and corrupt as a ‘drug deal.’”
NYT, Maggie Haberman: ‘A Warning’ by ‘Anonymous’: 5 Takeaways http://nyti.ms/33xWN0m
// The book seems to be the product of a Republican with access to the White House who grew increasingly upset by President Trump.
🐣 RT @JoyceWhiteVance If Bolton is serious about preserving the Republic he’ll present himself to testify instead of playing games about what he knows. It’s either party or country in this moment.
💙 ⋙ NYT: Bolton Knows About ‘Many Relevant Meetings’ on Ukraine, Lawyer Says http://nyti.ms/
// The former national security adviser would be an important witness in the impeachment inquiry, but his lawyer wants a court to rule on whether he should testify.
⭕ 7 Nov 2019
CNN: Pence aide said Trump’s July 25 call with Ukraine was political and not a normal diplomatic call http://cnn.it/2Q2pqi3
NBCNews: U.S. response on Ukraine sidelined by ‘Greenland question,’ testimony reveals http://nbcnews.to/2pUMRiL
// Trump sparked a diplomatic row with Denmark in August after he proposed that the U.S. buy Greenland.
WaPo: House GOP looks to protect Trump by raising doubts about motives of his deputies http://wapo.st/2WVfDf7 U.S. Ambassador to the European Union Gordon Sondland, Trump’s lawyer Rudolph W. Giuliani, and possibly acting White House chief of staff Mick Mulvaney
CNN: Lawyer for Ukraine whistleblower sends White House cease and desist letter to stop Trump’s attacks http://cnn.it/33FlUhu
🐣 RT @davidfrum These Ukrainian soldiers were killed in August 2019, while President Trump was withholding congressionally voted military aid to pressure Ukraine to exonerate Russia and defame his political opponents https://twitter.com/davidfrum/status/1179960497573171200?s=20/photo/1
// 10/3/2019; Ukrainian casualties: photos of 8 men
⋙ KyivPost: 72 Ukrainian soldiers killed in Russia’s war this year http://bit.ly/36MOrnh
// 8/30/2019
🐣 RT @JuliaDavisNews Trump went against the advice of his national security team when he decided to “congratulate” Putin and later invited him—OUR ADVERSARY—to the White House, but ripped up a congratulatory letter/WH invite addressed to—OUR ALLY— #Ukraine’s Zelenskyy. What’s wrong with this picture?
NBCNews: Diplomat testified that Putin, Orban poisoned Trump’s views on Ukraine http://nbcnews.to/2Nq9VyN
// Senior State Department official George Kent told House investigators that Trump’s views on Ukraine changed after conversations with the leaders of Russia and Hungary.
DailyBeast, Betsy Swan and Sam Stein: Ukrainians Teased U.S. Officials About Trump’s Obsession With Biden http://bit.ly/2NMww7K
// The conversation was described as “awkward.”
🐣 RT @McFaul The more we learn, the more I am impressed at how @ZelenskyyUa and his team resisted Trumps pressure to engage in misconduct.
🐣 RT @PaulaChertok NO way #Pence was outside the extortion loop. Recall Trump bailed on Warsaw Poland trip. Hurricane Dorian was a pretext. He played golf! And sent Pence as more pressure, reminding Zelensky that NO Trump meeting or aid unless Ukraine acquiesced on investigations. #UkraineGate
🐣 RT @joncoopertweets .@TheDemCoalition filed an election complaint w/ the DoJ against then FL Attorney General Pam Bondi in Sept 2016. The Trump Foundation gave Bondi $25,000 for her re-election, and she then dropped the case against Trump U. It was a bribe, plain and simple.
⋙ ABCNews (2016): Election Complaint Filed With DOJ Against Florida AG for 2013 Trump Foundation Contribution http://abcn.ws/33tKl1o
💙💙 WaPo, Philip Bump: This is how close Trump’s plan came to working http://wapo.st/2Ck10J1 TIMELINE: “But for two news articles, President Trump’s strong-arming of Ukraine probably would have worked.”
On Aug. 28, the first news article dropped. Politico reported that the aid was on hold and quoted an administration official who insisted that it was under review. In that article, an official from the Defense Department stated on the record that no further review was necessary, the aid having gone through necessary reviews. But still, no assistance was coming.
The next day, Yermak, the aide to Zelensky, texted Volker and William B. Taylor, the acting U.S. ambassador to Ukraine, with concerns about the article. While there are some indications that Ukraine knew about the aid stoppage before that point, it’s clear that it was the Politico article that forced the issue to the forefront. Taylor testified that he was flummoxed, not being able to give Yermak a reason the aid had been stopped.
Sondland made it clear to Yermak on Sept. 1: The aid had been stopped because the Trump administration wanted those investigations. Sondland told investigators with the House impeachment inquiry that he simply assumed this was the predicate for the aid to be released, without any specific direction from Trump. In short order, that explicit link between aid and the investigations trickled out to the rest of the United States’ Ukraine team. Taylor said that after confronting Sondland that same day, he was told that “everything” depended on an announcement of new investigations, “including security assistance,” and that Trump wanted Zelensky “in a public box” on the issue. …
Zelensky and his team struggled with a choice articulated by Andrew Kramer of the New York Times: “whether to capitulate to President Trump’s demands to publicly announce investigations against his political enemies or to refuse, and lose desperately needed military aid.”
Zelensky — who won election as an anti-corruption reformer — decided to capitulate. He’d announce the investigations in an interview with CNN on Sept. 13, Kramer said. The Ukrainians told Sondland on Sept. 8 and he shared it with Taylor.
Taylor, worried about the appearance of Ukraine taking a side in U.S. politics, pressured then-Ukrainian national security adviser Alexander Danyliuk to keep the CNN interview from happening. Kramer describes Danyliuk as the “lone holdout” among Zelensky’s team; he told Taylor that the interview wouldn’t happen. As the interview loomed, Taylor asked Zelensky’s team to confirm that no interview would take place. Yermak, he said, “looked uncomfortable in response to the question.”
By then, though, the second article had come out. The Washington Post’s editorial board wrote on Sept. 5 that it had been “reliably told” that the aid was on hold to pressure Ukraine to initiate investigations helpful to Trump. That was a Thursday; by Monday, Sept. 9, Democratic lawmakers had announced an inquiry of the Trump administration’s dealings with Ukraine. That day, the House and Senate intelligence committees were informed about a whistleblower complaint filed in response to Trump’s July 25 call, although it’s not clear whether they were informed about its focus.
Two days later, after Zelensky had agreed to the CNN interview but before it was set to occur, the administration released the aid. Zelensky’s team canceled the interview, leaving Ukrainians to wonder what he might have said. …
📔🔆 This❗️⋙ HouseIntelCommittee (HPSCI): Committees Release George Kent’s Deposition Transcript as Part of Impeachment Inquiry http://bit.ly/2pQjH4j
● Taylor: Key Excerpts: http://bit.ly/2CjYwud ; Transcript: http://bit.ly/2WRwZK5
“The testimony of Deputy Assistant Secretary of State George Kent strongly corroborates testimony from numerous other witnesses. Mr. Kent affirms that he and his colleagues recognized the impropriety of pressuring Ukrainian officials to undertake politically-motivated investigations to help President Trump’s reelection prospects in 2020.
“Mr. Kent not only affirms testimony released this week by the Committees, but he also describes his contemporaneous documentation of conversations and events. Yet, the State Department and White House continue to withhold these key documents from the Committees in defiance of duly authorized subpoenas. These actions demonstrate the President’s clear obstruction of Congress and support the inference that these documents further corroborate the testimony of presidential misconduct that we have received.”
💙💙 EmptyWheel, Marcy Wheeler: After Engaging in Multiple Overt Acts Benefitting a Conspiracy, Bill Barr Had Kerri Kupec Commit the Most Overt Act http://bit.ly/34G9h60
WaPo, Max Boot: The anatomy of a Republican smear http://wapo.st/2pHgp3v “If you want to see a real-time example of how McCarthyism operates, look no further than the attempts by President Trump and his henchmen to malign the heroic whistleblower”
DailyBeast, Rick Wilson: Trump Told Kentucky’s Voters to Make the Election About Him. They Did, and He’s Fucked. http://bit.ly/2WUrdav
// Trump proved this week that big rallies, big talk, and bad campaigns are a recipe for electoral disaster, and alienated suburban voters are a dagger in the heart of the GOP.
🐣 RT @mike_giglio internal State Dept. memo blasts Trump admin for not doing more to stop Turkey’s Syria invasion, accuses Turkey-backed fighters of “war crimes and ethnic cleansing,” and calls it all “a catastrophic sideshow and it is to a significant degree of our making”
⋙ WaPo: Bolton willing to defy White House and testify if court clears the way, according to people familiar with his views http://wapo.st/2NNVfsl the related ruling in the McGahn case could provide clarity by the end of November
DailyBeast, David Lurie: SCOTUS’ Choice: Trump or the Rule of Law http://bit.ly/36NHrXF
// With its own legitimacy at stake, the Supreme Court has avoided weighing in on the president’s attempts to make the legal system his personal guardian. That’s about to change.
As his losses pile up, Donald Trump has made it plain he expects the Supreme Court to serve as his ultimate protector from the overreaching “Deep State” and its allies in Congress.
We’re about to find out if Chief Justice John Roberts and other members of the Supreme Court’s conservative majority will accept Trump’s designation of their institution as his personal guardian. The court would do so at its own peril, as stepping in to protect the president could help elect a Democratic president and Senate, and encourage them to put a quick end to the court’s long-standing conservative majority.
Notably, the court has yet to weigh in as Trump has stonewalled nearly all efforts to gain access to key White House witnesses and documents for months. But it may weigh in soon, now that a federal appeals court in New York upheld a district court ruling ordering Trump’s accounting firm to hand over Trump business and financial records in its files, including the tax returns of the President and his businesses.
The case raises issues going “to the heart of our Republic,” Trump attorney Jay Sekulow said as he declared that Trump will petition the Supreme Court for relief. Under an agreement between the parties, Trump will be asking the court to decide the case during its current term, meaning a reckoning is coming. Trump’s argument that his accountants cannot be subpoenaed for his financial records is quite weak, particularly given that the court upheld a subpoena directly to the president for the White House tapes during Watergate, in its 8-0 United States v. Nixon decision. …
This is hardly the first time the Supreme Court has been called upon to render a decision in a high-profile case implicating who will become president, or whether a sitting president will remain in power. Such decisions almost inevitably have a heavy impact on the court’s reputation, for better or for worse.
The court emerged from Watergate with its reputation enhanced, after justices appointed by Republican and Democratic presidents (including Nixon himself) joined together to order the president to comply with a court order to turn over the tapes. Justice Brett Kavanaugh has described the Nixon decision as among the “greatest moments in American judicial history,” given that the courts “stood up to the other branches, were not cowed, and enforced the law.” …
🐣 RT @gtconway3d When there’s no room left in the stadium to move the goalposts, you just take the goalposts and leave.
⋙ 🐣 RT @ABC “I’m not going to read these transcripts,” Sen. Lindsey Graham says of transcripts of depositions from House impeachment inquiry. ¤ “The whole process is a joke…I’m not going to legitimize it.” https://abcn.ws/2oSjLzZ
WaPo, Paul Waldman: The Trump-era GOP: Grifters all the way down. http://wapo.st/2NQwk7p
⭕ 6 Nov 2019
DailyBeast, Justin Baragona: Lindsey Graham Claims Trump Donor Sondland Is in Cahoots With ‘Democratic Operatives’ http://bit.ly/2WRLIVj
// “Why did Sondland change his testimony?” Graham wondered aloud. “Was there a connection between Sondland and Democratic operatives on the committee?”
🐣 RT @yashar 1. Exclusive: I’ve obtained passages from the book by ‘Anonymous’, the author of the NYT Op-ed ¤ In the book, Anonymous claims that senior officials had no doubt that Pence would support invoking the 25th amendment if the majority of the cabinet agreed 📌 https://twitter.com/yashar/status/1192271574365278208?s=20
💙💙 WaPo: The fall of 1989 http://wapo.st/2p0X1xY
// ✛ Blacklist; various authors; The Berlin Wall crumbled. Regimes toppled. But 30 years later, how much have things changed?
🐣 RT @JuliaDavisNews Schiff asked Taylor about his assertion that multiple NatSec officials sought a meeting with Trump to discuss lifting a hold on military aid to #Ukraine but the meeting proved difficult to schedule, because the issue of “purchasing Greenland” took up a lot of energy in the NSC.” https://twitter.com/JuliaDavisNews/status/1192184402169749516?s=20/photo/1
⋙ 🐣 RT @CDG_GDR Apparently a lot of staff time taken up by something Republicans said was only a joke
🐣 RT @BillKristol I’m struck by Trumpworld’s obsession with the whistleblower. Exposing him wouldn’t help Trump’s case a bit. But it’s clear that outing him would be really satisfying psychologically to Trumpsters. One forgets how central to Trumpism are petty vindictiveness and cowardly bullying.
⋙ 🐣 RT @PaulaChertok The whistleblower is a powerful distraction. Smearing witnesses is a primary strategy. The WB is a focal point to literally put a face on the smear campaign, and to direct the angry mob to the scapegoat. They’re out for blood. And to revel in their lawlessness. Ugly AF.
TheAtlantic, David Graham: The More We Learn, the Worse Things Look for Trump http://bit.ly/2re8Q4q
// Republicans insisted that the full account would vindicate the president, but that’s not how it’s worked out.
💙 BuzzFeedNews, Emma Loop and Michael Sallah: Facing Scrutiny Of Their Donation To Top Republicans, Giuliani’s Associates Turned To A Major Trump Ally For Help http://bit.ly/33pNS0R
// Lev and Igor, source of funds related to marijuana [an interest of Firtash] and LNG imports [their side deal in Ukraine; RNC connections]; A firm run by Andy Surabian, who has worked with Steve Bannon and Donald Trump Jr., says Lev Parnas and Igor Fruman, the business partners at the center of the impeachment inquiry, still haven’t paid for work done last year.
🐣 RT @AndrewDesiderio WHOA. Costello is the lawyer who emailed Michael Cohen saying, “Sleep well tonight, you have friends in high places.” ¤ He’s now representing Giuliani.
⋙ 🐣 RT @ I am represented and assisted by Robert Costello and the Pierce Bainbridge firm in particular, Eric Creizman and Melissa Madrigal.
🐣 RT @BillKristol Isn’t Rudy admitting here that if he interfered to shape U.S. foreign policy, it was for the private interest of his client? And if he did so with Trump’s approval and involvement, that Trump was carrying out U.S. foreign policy in his personal interest not the national interest?
💙💙 🐣 RT @RudyGiuliani The investigation I conducted concerning 2016 Ukrainian collusion and corruption, was done solely as a defense attorney to defend my client against false charges, that kept changing as one after another were disproven.
WaPo: Prosecutor says Roger Stone lied ‘because the truth looked bad for Donald Trump’ http://wapo.st/2NsrRsN
NYT: Stone Trial Links Trump More Closely to 2016 Effort to Obtain Stolen Emails http://nyti.ms/2NojY7p
// Newly revealed calls between President Trump and Roger Stone dovetailed with key developments in the theft of Democratic emails, prosecutors said.
WaPo: Ambassador’s testimony offers window into impeachment inquiry’s first public hearing http://wapo.st/2JWZr7Y
WaPo, Dana Milbank: Are Bill Taylor’s notebooks Trump’s Nixon tapes? http://wapo.st/2qxEh9O
WaPo: Trump wanted Barr to hold news conference saying the president broke no laws in call with Ukrainian leader http://wapo.st/2Npbg9i
WaPo: John Bolton expressed alarm about shadow Ukraine policy, but at key moments it’s unclear what he did to stop it http://wapo.st/2pDQ4mU
🐣 RT @Bill_Maxwell_ Bill Taylor testimony: ¤ Transcript released for top US diplomat in Ukraine as part of impeachment inquiry. ¤ Taylor one of several witnesses who explained how he was told that “everything” Ukraine wanted was conditioned on the investigation.
📔🔆 This❗️⋙ HouseIntelCommittee (HPSCI): Committees Release Ambassador Bill Taylor’s Deposition Transcript as Part of Impeachment Inquiry http://bit.ly/2JWZiRS
● Taylor: Key Excerpts: http://bit.ly/2rhMrDn ; Transcript: http://bit.ly/2WQCys7
“The testimony of Ambassador Taylor—a West Point graduate, Vietnam veteran, and nonpartisan diplomat—shows how President Trump withheld military aid to Ukraine and conditioned its release, as well as a vital White House meeting, on the President of Ukraine publicly announcing investigations into debunked conspiracy theories involving the Bidens and the 2016 election.
“Ambassador Taylor’s testimony lays bare how this shadow foreign policy channel pursued by the President’s agent, Rudy Giuliani, with the assistance of Ambassadors Sondland and Volker, placed immense pressure on the Ukrainian government to accomplish the President’s goal. Ambassador Taylor makes clear why this military aid and continued bipartisan support for Ukraine are so critically important—and why these efforts to undermine U.S. foreign policy for domestic political reasons were so damaging. We look forward to his public testimony.”
HouseIntelCommittee (HPSCI): House Intelligence Committee Announces First Week of Open Hearings With William Taylor, George Kent and Marie Yovanovitch http://bit.ly/33AbmAc
WaPo: ‘Talk to Rudy’: Testimony from diplomats highlights Giuliani’s central role in driving Ukraine policy http://wapo.st/2CkllOd
🐣 RT @mitchellreports .@neeratanden: “A big question for Dems, in those counties can they get back some voters on kitchen table issues. Even in midterms, Dems did better in rural counties, significantly in many states really focusing on ACA expansion & issues like teacher pay.” #AMRstaff
⋙ 🐣 Yes, Dems did 13% better among RURAL voters in 2018 than in 2016 ‼️ This is a greater than the change for any other demographic.
CNN Exit Polls 2016 http://cnn.it/2PWBn9j
CNN Exit Polls 2018 http://cnn.it/2QHVBki ¤
✅ WaPo Factchecker, Salvador Rizzo: Trump’s false claim about what the Ukrainian president said about the U.S. ambassador http://wapo.st/2CfPIFE FOUR PINOCCHIOS 🍄🍄🍄🍄
WaPo, Tulose Olorunnipa and Philip Rucker: Trump makes falsehoods central to impeachment defense as incriminating evidence mounts http://wapo.st/2qujgfQ
🚫 WaPo: Senate Republicans consider including Bidens in Trump impeachment trial http://wapo.st/2PSzeex
// unlikely to happen; a distraction
ABCNews, Matthew Dowd: Impeachment looms large over the 2020 election, but Trump’s approval could be a bigger factor: Opinion http://abcn.ws/32qF49r Every president running for re-election for 60 years has received on election day within 1% of their job approval number
// “Every president running for reelection over the last 60 years has received on Election Day a percentage of the popular vote within a point of their job approval number.”
WaPo, RobertCosta: Kentucky outcome embarrasses Trump and worries many Republicans ahead of 2020 http://wapo.st/2JSHvLx
Newsweek, Greg Olear: Mike Pence Knew http://bit.ly/2WQw4t3
🐣 RT @JoeNBC #MoscowMitch has the lowest approval rating of any senator in America. Bevin’s approval rating was much higher. Your Putin fixation has now put the Majority Leader’s political future at risk. Russia’s Republican comrade is in for the fight of his political life.
⋙ 🐣 RT @real Based on the Kentucky results, Mitch McConnell @senatemajldr will win BIG in Kentucky next year!
RawStory: MSNBC’s Morning Joe hilariously blames ‘toxic’ Trump for Bevin loss: ‘You lost Kentucky for Republicans!’ http://bit.ly/2NLsk8d
“Donald Trump the night before saying, you have to do this for me, basically saying this is all about me, this is all about Trump,” Scarborough said. “Bevin has to win or if he doesn’t this will be the biggest loss in the history of American politics.”
“Before Donald trump went to Kentucky on that last night and had those stupid shirts that said, ‘Read the transcript,’ printed up,” Scarborough said. “By the way, which of course the document he was talking to said up top, ‘This is not a transcript.’ The stupidity, it’s really shocking, and we’re sitting there going, how do people get away with that? They don’t.”
“We’re going to get to what happened again in the suburbs, in the Cincinnati suburbs, which, again, once again shows that Donald Trump is toxic,” Scarborough said.
Republicans won the other statewide races in Kentucky, but they didn’t tie themselves so closely to the president.
“Here’s the thing, they don’t get away with it,” he added. “He doesn’t get away with it. He’s going to be impeached. His party lost the biggest landslide vote loss in the history of the United States, Republican 2018, for following him blindly.”
Scarborough said Bevin had been cruising to re-election before rallying with Trump the night before polls opened.
“Bevin, get this, oh, so unpopular,” he said. “Bevin was ahead by 5 percentage points in the polls before Donald Trump came to the state.”
“Donald Trump cost him 5 1/2, 6 percentage points by that one rally,” Scarborough continued. “Think about it, if you’re Donald Trump you’re waking up this morning and you know — Donald, come here. Get a little closer. Bevin was ahead, son. He was ahead by five points before you went to Kentucky.”
“Donald, look at that,” he added. “I know you don’t like reading, Donald, but look — that stands for Republican. He had 52 percent before you went and did that rally for him, and he got those poor folks wearing that shirt that said ‘read the transcript’ when the piece of paper itself said ‘this is not a transcript.’ Donald, this is not working for you. You should just stay home and watch like those cage fights, right?”
“Donald, my friend, you lost the state for Republicans,” he concluded.
⋙ @Morning_Joe Often overlooked is the 13% swing of RURAL voters toward Dems between 2016 and 2018. Most rural districts remained Red BUT it shows up in state wide races like for Senator or Governor, eg Kentucky governor.
2016 http://cnn.it/2PWBn9j
2018 http://cnn.it/2QHVBki ¤
🐣 RT @JimAcosta On last night’s results, source who regularly talks to Trump: “Totally bad. Kentucky and Virginia signal to GOP they are underestimating voter intensity against Trump, and it could be terrible for them next year,” the source said. “Bad omen for impeachment,” the source added.
⋙ 🐣 Per @Morning_Joe Beshear was losing by 5% in the last poll of the KY race
DailyBeast, Lachlan Markay and Asawin Suebsaeng: Giuliani Cronies Planned ‘Fraud Guarantee’ Infomercials Starring Rudy http://bit.ly/2qtZYqY
// The former New York City mayor was nearly even more of a cable news fixture.
🚫 DailyBeast, Julia Davis: Thanks to Rand Paul, Russian Media Are Naming the Alleged Whistleblower http://bit.ly/2oR6JCP
// disgusting; Outing “the whistleblower” is the most egregious, but certainly not the only, example of Kremlin-funded media cheerleading the fight against impeachment. They love “their” Trump.
⋙ 🐣 According to FoxNews poll http://fxn.ws/2PIxCDX 34% of the 41% currently opposing impeachment say they could be swayed by new evidence. If all were persuaded, it would add 14% to the current 49% favoring impeachment = 63%. It was 58% for Nixon (59% of GOP opposed) https://twitter.com/Auriandra/status/1192060377896562688?s=20/photo/1
// FoxNews poll from 11/3/2019
DailyBeast, Betsy Swan and Erin Banco: Exclusive: Trump Letter Promised Zelensky ‘Unwavering’ Support http://bit.ly/2PPYMc7
// In the letter, published here for the first time, Trump pledges to stand by Kyiv no matter what. That was before he withheld aid to pressure Ukraine into investigating his rival.
🐣 🔆 This❗️⋙ On @MorningJoe, @ HeidiNBC reports that in open hearings in no later than two weeks, these fact witnesses will testify:
● Marie Yovanovitch, former ambassador to Ukraine
● Willam Taylor, her successor
● Lt Col Alexander Vindman, listened to call between Trump & Zelensky
⭕ 5 Nov 2019
CREW Sues Pompeo and State Department Over Recordkeeping Failure http://bit.ly/33XQaVl ‘State Dept officials used an irregular channel that bypassed department recordkeeping systems to enlist the aid of Ukraine … to dig up dirt on the president’s political enemies’
WashingtonMonthly, Martin Longman: Lev Parnas Could Be the Star Witness Who Takes Trump Down http://bit.ly/2Q4RL7x
JustSecurity, Sidney Blumenthal: A Dozen Questions for John Solomon http://bit.ly/34PNaKB
💙 WaPo, Philip Bump: This is how close Trump’s plan came to working http://wapo.st/2Ck10J1 TIMELINE: “But for two news articles, President Trump’s strong-arming of Ukraine probably would have worked.”
NYT: U.S. Envoy in Syria Says Not Enough Was Done to Avert Turkish Attack http://nyti.ms/2qAgzty
// In an internal memo, the senior American diplomat in northern Syria criticized the Trump administration for failing to try harder to deter Turkey from invading northern Syria last month.
🐣 The fact Barr wouldn’t go “on tv” to say Trump’s phone call w Zelensky was ‘perfect’ gives me some hope maybe he’s going to break it to him that he found nothing going after Trump’s counter-narrative on the 🍊s of Mueller probe. He’s toast w Trump anyway? 🤞
WaPo: Trump ordered to pay $2 million to charities over misuse of foundation, court documents say http://wapo.st/36SxhoC
CNN, Elliot Williams: The biggest question facing voters in 2020 http://cnn.it/2Cpi28l “Do rules matter” //➔ seems Dems are the Constitutional LAW and ORDER vs Chaos party now
🐣 RT @SethAbramson Trump’s impeachable crimes *must* be seen by Americans as CUMULATIVE. He doesn’t get a pass on *any* of it. He obstructed justice. He committed bribery. He illegally solicited foreign donations. He witness tampered. He lied to investigators. He abused power. He violated his oath.
🐣 RT @McFaul Will Trump defenders now throw Sondland under the bus, or will they say his testimony is being misunderstood (like the perfect phone call)?
⋙ 🐣 Where they’re heading: “If the President does it, it’s not illegal.” We’ve been here before.
🐣 RT @ For over a year, I resisted calls for an impeachment inquiry, knowing it is a remedy with serious consequences for the country. ¤ But the evidence we’ve uncovered of the president’s abuse of power has made that inquiry a necessity. ¤ We will do our duty.
⋙ NYT: Inside Adam Schiff’s Impeachment Game Plan http://nyti.ms/2NmtSGT
// Democrats believe the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee could be the man to bring down President Trump. This is how he’s running his investigation.
🐣 RT @RepAdamSchiff Testimony from Sondland and Volker demonstrates:
➡️Trump used a White House meeting and military aid to pressure Ukraine to publicly announce political investigations.
➡️The pressure campaign came at the expense of our national security.
➡️And it got more insidious over time.
Testimony from Sondland and Volker demonstrates:
➡️Trump used a White House meeting and military aid to pressure Ukraine to publicly announce political investigations.
➡️The pressure campaign came at the expense of our national security.
➡️And it got more insidious over time. pic.twitter.com/NMZt2XRHDk
— Adam Schiff (@RepAdamSchiff) November 5, 2019
💽 MSNBC, Hardball: David Jolly thinks ‘Lindsey Graham should resign if he’s not going to do his job’ http://on.msnbc.com/2NO5sFj
// On Senator Lindsey Graham’s denial on a quid pro quo, David Jolly says: “I think Lindsey Graham should resign if he’s not going to do his job. He’s the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee and he says he’s not going to take the time to look at the facts.”
🐣 RT @renato_mariotti We’ve approached “Baghdad Bob” territory.
⋙ 🐣 RT @Yamiche NEW White House statement on impeachment inquiry:”Both transcripts released today show there is even less evidence for this illegitimate impeachment sham than previously thought.” https://twitter.com/Yamiche/status/1191815597971165191?s=20/photo/1
💙 WaPo, Philip Bump: Gordon Sondland just gave us this scandal’s smoking quid pro quo http://wapo.st/2NEWH04
🐣 .@SecPompeo ~ “A cadet shall not lie, cheat or steal or tolerate those who do.” ¤ My husband tells me this honor code applies for life. ¤ @StateDept @WestPoint_USMA
💙🐣 RT @brycetache Kentucky, Virginia and Sondland all flipped today.
WaPo, David Ignatius: Where is Mike Pompeo? He’s hiding in fear of Donald Trump. http://wapo.st/2CiLnl2
WaPo, David Ignatius: Where is Mike Pompeo? He’s hiding in fear of Donald Trump. http://wapo.st/2CiLnl2
NYT: Trump Tax Return Case Confronts Supreme Court With a Momentous Choice http://nyti.ms/2CfSSce
// Richard M. Nixon and Bill Clinton sustained unanimous losses when they sought to withhold evidence, suggesting that President Trump may face an uphill fight.
💙 NYT: Sondland Updates Impeachment Testimony, Describing Ukraine Quid Pro Quo http://nyti.ms/2WKIdjg
// Gordon D. Sondland recounted how he told Ukrainian officials that military aid was tied to their commitment to investigations President Trump wanted.
💙 WaPo: Gordon Sondland just gave us this scandal’s smoking quid pro quo http://wapo.st/2NEWH04
💙 🐣 RT @kylecheney READ: Sondland submitted this amendment to his testimony, saying other witnesses refreshed his recollection tha tmilitary aid was withheld as part of Trump’s push to get a Biden investigation going. https://twitter.com/kyledcheney/status/1191790088218394625?s=20/photo/1-3
📌 COMPLETE THREAD: https://twitter.com/kyledcheney/status/1191789347445624838?s=20
💙 🐣 MT @kylecheney WOW: Kurt Volker TEXTED to a top Ukrainian official the script they wanted Zelensky to read to announce the Burisma (i.e. Biden)/2016 election investigaitons. ¤ The text: https://twitter.com/kyledcheney/status/1191796014237331457?s=20/photo/1 ¤ The latest:
💙 🐣 RT @kylecheney In a conversation that included Volker, Trump said “all” Ukrainians as “corrupt” and “terrible people.” He said they “tried to take me down” — a reference to conspiracy theories that Manafort and Kilimnik had planted during the 2016 campaign. https://twitter.com/kyledcheney/status/1191813999849037826?s=20/photo/1
⋙ Politico: Sondland reverses himself on Ukraine, confirming quid pro quo http://politi.co/
// A key figure in the Ukraine saga revised his testimony for impeachment investigators.
🐣 RT @ABCNews JUST IN: DOJ, DOD, DHS, DNI, FBI, NSA, and CISA release joint statement on 2020 election security, warning, “Russia, China, Iran, and other foreign malicious actors all will seek to interfere in the voting process or influence voter perceptions.” https://abcn.ws/2PSAiin https://twitter.com/ABC/status/1191840420906643457?s=20/photo/1
WaPo, Aaron Blake: 5 takeaways from the Gordon Sondland and Kurt Volker testimonies http://wapo.st/2oPCwUJ
🐣 RT @AndreaChalup Putin has great representation in the hearings thanks to Devin Nunes. When Chairman Schiff first ran for Congress, bet he never imagined he’d have to counter Kremlin propaganda promoted by his GOP colleagues while they smeared a US ally. Pres. Reagan must be rolling in his grave.
⋙ 🐣 RT @JuliaDavis Are their heads truly filled with this garbage, or is the GOP willingly disseminating Russian conspiracy theories? https://twitter.com/JuliaDavisNews/status/1191809744966766592?s=20/photo/1
WaPo: With revised testimony, Sondland ties Trump to quid pro quo http://wapo.st/2JVk7gz
🐣 RT @Yamiche Huge change it seems. ¤ Amb to E.U. Gordon Sondland updated his statement before Congress to say he now remembers telling top Ukrainian official that country likely would not receive U.S. military aid unless it publicly committed to investigations of Bidens that Pres Trump wanted. https://twitter.com/Yamiche/status/1191793420072890368?s=20/photo/1
NYT: Impeachment Inquiry Transcripts: Key Excerpts of Sondland’s and Volker’s Testimonies http://nyti.ms/2JUBJtb
// House investigators on Tuesday released transcripts from two more closed-door depositions.
📔 🔄 🔆 This❗️⋙ HouseIntelCommittee (HPSCI): Committees Release Sondland and Volker Transcripts as Part of Impeachment Inquiry http://bit.ly/2WKuedv
// New Text Messages Also Released
● Sondland: Key Excerpts: http://bit.ly/33nkqsq ; Transcript: http://bit.ly/2NjiXxC
● Volker: Key Excerpts: http://bit.ly/34A7mQE ; Transcript: http://bit.ly/2WOhnXE
● Volker texts: Key Excerpts: http://bit.ly/2qtbhju ; Transcript: http://bit.ly/30QhpPi
“The testimony of Ambassadors Volker and Sondland shows the progression of efforts by the President and his agent, Rudy Giuliani, to use the State Department to press Ukraine to announce investigations beneficial to the President’s personal and political interests.
“As early as May 2019, President Trump directed the Ambassadors to work with Giuliani on Ukraine policy, and over the course of the summer, an effort was made to extract a public statement from the new Ukrainian president that the Ukrainian government was investigating Burisma or the Biden family and a debunked conspiracy theory about the 2016 U.S. elections.
“It is clear from their testimony that, in exchange for the statement, President Trump would award the Ukrainian president with a highly coveted White House meeting and, later, with millions of dollars in critical military aid being withheld. Ambassador Sondland called this changing U.S. policy toward Ukraine a ‘continuum’ that became ever more ‘insidious’ over time.
“Finally, with the release of the full production of text messages provided to the Committees by Ambassador Volker, and an additional declaration by Ambassador Sondland, the President’s scheme comes into clearer focus.
“In an effort to prevent further incriminating information from coming to light, the State Department is continuing to obstruct our investigation by refusing to provide subpoenaed records, including additional text messages provided to the Department by Ambassador Sondland. This blanket stonewalling will only continue to build the case against the President for obstruction of Congress, especially in light of the damning evidentiary record the Committees have already gathered.”
WaPo: The Mueller Report Illustrated: Inside the special counsel’s obstruction investigation – Washington Post http://wapo.st/2Cj5xLQ
// A forthcoming book and six-part digital series on the obstruction investigation
DailyBeast, Betsy Swan and Erin Banco: Gordon Sondland Admits He Told Ukraine Aid Was Tied to Biden Probe http://bit.ly/2JQ5FpZ
// The U.S. ambassador to the European Union revealed in his revised testimony that he believed there was an attempt to tie Ukraine aid to public announcements of investigations.
🐣 RT @pbump Sure, why not.
⋙ 🐣 RT @kathrynw5 Lindsey Graham, the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, says he won’t read any of the transcripts, and dismissed Sondland’s reversal. ¤ “I’ve written the whole process off … I think this is a bunch of B.S.” ¤ Per @alanhe
DailyBeast, Betsy Swan: Source for ‘Ukraine Collusion’ Allegations Met Devin Nunes http://bit.ly/2JSJik5
// Ex-diplomat Andrii Telizhenko said he and Nunes discussed Ukrainian politics and how to fight Russian propaganda.
⭕ 4 Nov 2019
Wonkette: Rudy’s Fixers Keep Breaking Sh*t http://bit.ly/2X8PMRe
WaPo, Yaël Eisenstat: I worked on political ads at Facebook. They profit by manipulating us. http://wapo.st/2K67ob2
// The company can’t avoid damaging democracy.
🐣 RT @justinamash Read the Constitution.
⋙ 🐣 RT @real Read the Transcript
DailyBeast, Lachlan Markay: Rudy Allies Are Spreading Dirt About Bannon Behind the Scenes http://bit.ly/36DKMYU
// Trump’s former chief strategist is coming under attack from allies of the president’s personal attorney, with one memo calling Bannon “THE FOX IN THE TRUMP HOUSE.”
Politico: Giuliani associate Parnas offers to comply with subpoena http://politi.co/33ltZIb
// Many of Parnas’ records were seized by the FBI in raids on his home and elsewhere around the time of his arrest last month.
🐣 RT @JoyceVanceWhite If reports that his pal Lev Parnas is cooperating are true, we will likely get answers to the question of who has been paying Rudy soon. That should make him very nervous.
⋙ 🐣 RT @ Prosecutors are looking at his bank records. I have lots of questions, including who’s paying Rudy, if he’s paying for his travel (if not, someone else is), if he’s being reimbursed for travel & if he’s received any reimbursements/payments from the gov’t. https://twitter.com/JoyceWhiteVance/status/1183906266520915969?s=20
// 10/14/2019
DailyBeast, Amy Knight: Putin’s Top Spy: We’re Teaming Up With D.C. on Cybersecurity http://bit.ly/36zVQq8
// Behind-the-scenes cooperation with U.S. agencies, particularly on cybercrime and terrorism, is a theme the Kremlin likes to push onto center stage. Trump likes it, too.
💽 MSNBC, TheBeatWithAri: Trump’s Nixon problem: When Republicans bail on impeachment http://on.msnbc.com/2oRjZHK
// Every House Republican voted against moving forward with the Trump impeachment probe. But Democrats may be eyeing lessons from Watergate, when public hearings helped turn sentiment against Nixon, and key Republicans bucked their own party to back impeachment.
🐣 RT @RadioFreeTom I am immobilized with a heating pad on my back, so you’re all getting my Sunday night blast of ill-temper about Trump’s latest attacks on Vindman and others. Bottom line: We are not required to think well of people who are still defending this. /1 📌 https://twitter.com/RadioFreeTom/status/1191200567210590210?s=20
🐣 RT @ “Polarization” implies that people give a shit about policies and ideas. I will fight all day long with @CharlesPPierce or @jentaub on the left, or @JayCaruso on the right, because we disagree about policies and visions for America. That’s not this. This is something else. /4
🐣 RT @ What’s also new is that the GOP – once called the party of ideas even by Sen. Moynihan in my lifetime – has now decided that being in power is more important than fidelity to ideas or to the Constitution itself. There is no legal or constitutional red line they respect. /6
🐣 RT @ Mass communication technology exploited by unprincipled and cynical leaders in wink-wink cahoots with foreign powers, demagogues getting rich by scaring rubes and old people, a sociopath with a cult following. This is something we once would have joined together to stop. /7
🐣 RT @ At some point, friendship and comity require shared values. Americans have broken friendships over early Communism, McCarthy, civil rights, Nixon, Vietnam. This was not a tragedy. It was the social opprobrium that is a sign of moral health rather than relativistic anomie. /11
🐣 RT @ This is another of those times. The President has become a raving paranoid on national television, name calling members of Congress, smearing military officers, promising secret revenge, demanding others in the govt break the law, deriding our intel and LE professionals. /12
🐣 RT @ But the damage to the legitimacy and the long-term health of our institutions is now, in some cases, deep and irreversible. This will harm everyone long after this idiocy is over, except for the right wing grifters who will take their payday and skip town. /17
🐣 RT @ Either way, the rest of us are not obligated to respect those views, no more than we had to respect the supporters of Joe McCarthy, Father Coughlin, Huey Long, George Lincoln Rockwell, or any of the other hideous Americans who attracted a mass following. Enough is enough. /19x
NYT: Excerpts and Analysis From 2 Impeachment Inquiry Transcripts http://nyti.ms/2Cj4ECF
// House Democrats released the first two transcripts of their closed-door impeachment testimonies.
💙 NYT: Pompeo Faces Political Peril and Diplomats’ Revolt in Impeachment Inquiry http://nyti.ms/2WK2Igf
// The secretary of state has been drawn deeply into the Ukraine scandal, with a parade of his diplomats testifying. He is sticking by the president.
WaPo, Dana Milbank: So this is why Trump doesn’t want officials to testify http://wapo.st/36zeEFQ
Yovanovitch detailed a Hollywood-ready tale about how Giuliani and two of his now-indicted goons hijacked U.S. foreign policy as part of a clownish consortium that also included Sean Hannity and a corrupt Ukrainian prosecutor. Their mission: to oust the tough-on-corruption U.S. ambassador who threatened to frustrate Giuliani’s plans to get Ukraine to come up with compromising material on Joe Biden and the Democratic Party.
WaPo: Former ambassador testifies she felt threatened by Trump’s comments about her http://wapo.st/2PMdzEN
📔 🔄 🔆 This❗️⋙ HouseIntelCommittee (HPSCI): Committees Release Testimony of Yovanovich and McKinley as Part of New Public Phase of Impeachment Inquiry http://bit.ly/36vgIPr
● Yovanovich: Key Excerpts: http://bit.ly/2PTqCnM ; Transcript: http://bit.ly/2PQOete
● McKinley: Key Excerpts: http://bit.ly/32cHgRT ; Transcript: http://bit.ly/2NJkdZE
The three Chairs issued the following statement announcing today’s releases:
“As we move towards this new public phase of the impeachment inquiry, the American public will begin to see for themselves the evidence that the committees have collected. With each new interview, we learn more about the President’s attempt to manipulate the levers of power to his personal political benefit.
“The transcripts of interviews with Ambassadors Yovanovitch and McKinley demonstrate clearly how President Trump approved the removal of a highly respected and effective diplomat based on public falsehoods and smears against Ambassador Yovanovitch’s character and her work in support of long-held U.S. foreign policy anticorruption goals.
“Ambassadors Yovanovitch and McKinley’s testimony also demonstrates the contamination of U.S. foreign policy by an irregular back channel that sought to advance the President’s personal and political interests, and the serious concerns that this activity elicited across our government.
“Unfortunately, despite those concerns, the transcripts also show clearly that efforts to secure public support for Ambassador Yovanovitch from the senior-most levels of the State Department were never realized, thanks to worry among those leaders that such support would be directly undermined by presidential attacks.”
🐣 RT @DeadlineWH “It looks like American foreign policy has become a cross between the Three Stooges and the Godfather. It’s an amazing mix of venal, violent corruption and complete and utter incompetence. That’s a toxic combination.” – @RonaldKlain w/ @NicolleDWallace 💽 https://twitter.com/DeadlineWH/status/1191491840597463041?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @duty2warn Malignant Narcissism has been at the root of the most vicious inhumanity in human history. A malignant narcissist when threatened tells lies that are the diametric opposite of truth. They walk a line between sanity and insanity. We are witnessing a descent now. In plain view.
🐣 RT @EricLiptonNYT There’s an earlier chapter with Trump & Ukraine. It involves a Ukrainian leader courting Trump. Hundreds of millions in politically convenient deals for Trump. A hold on Mueller investigation & US missiles. w/ @MarkMazzettiNYT @AndrewKramerNYT
⋙ 💙 NYT: Inside Ukraine’s Push to Cultivate Trump From the Start http://nyti.ms/2PMlhyQ
// Former President Petro Poroshenko alternately flattered President Trump, signed deals with U.S. firms and met with Rudolph Giuliani.
WaPo: Former ambassador Yovanovich testifies she felt threatened by Trump’s comments about her http://wapo.st/2PMdzEN
💙 NYT, Michelle Goldberg: On Ukraine, Trump Is a Con Man, but He’s Also a Mark http://nyti.ms/2C95SAD
// Corrupt forces find it easy to manipulate this president.
EmptyWheel, Marcy Wheeler: When Your Joint Defense Agreement with the Russian Mob Blows Up in Your Face http://bit.ly/2PO54ZQ “Parnas has decided to cooperate with the impeachment inquiry because Trump pretended not to know Parnas”
🔆 This❗️⋙ NYT: Lev Parnas, Giuliani Associate, Opens Talks With Impeachment Investigators http://nyti.ms/2JP0E16
// Mr. Parnas could offer Congress a vein of information about a political pressure campaign in Ukraine.
🐣 RT @DeadlineWH “These are, in today’s Republican party, spineless politicians rotten to the core without virtue, without any level of human integrity, devoid of self respect… Without courage and without the moral compass to recognize their own malevolence” – @DavidJollyFL w/ @NicolleDWallace 💽 https://twitter.com/DeadlineWH/status/1191487380190093313?s=20/photo/1
WaPo, Michael Gerson: Warren’s climb in the polls should horrify Democrats http://wapo.st/2oLMLtb
🐣 RT @JuddLegum A U.S. ambassador was under attack from several people close to the president so she asked her bosses at the State Department WTF was going on and THEY TOLD HER THEY’D CALL SEAN HANNITY TO FIND OUT
💙 Reuters, Polina Ivanova and Ilya Zhegulev: Exclusive: Ukraine to fire prosecutor who discussed Bidens with Giuliani – source http://reut.rs/2WJwh1l Basically in keeping with Trump’s demands
🐣 RT @Amy_Siskind The Mueller report interviews released Saturday revealed that Manafort pushed the conspiracy that Ukraine hacked the DNC, as early as the summer of 2016 -and importantly, per Gates, Manafort was parroting Konstantin Kilimnik, who the FBI believes has ties to Russian intelligence.
🐣 RT @Amy_Siskind So in summary, the conspiracy theory that Ukraine hacked the DNC server which Attorney General Barr is tracing down – and Giuliani, Trump and the rest of the regime are using to punish Ukraine, likely originated with Russian intelligence.
Reuters: Exclusive: Giuliani associate Parnas will comply with Trump impeachment inquiry – lawyer http://reut.rs/2WMipUa
TPM, Summer Concepcion: Grassley Defends Whistleblower Again After Trump Renews Attacks http://bit.ly/2CgkvBW
TPM, Josh Kovensky: Impeachment Be Damned: In Ukraine And US, The Hunt For Dirt Continues http://bit.ly/36Basp1
DailyBeast: Republicans’ Sad New Trump Defense: Is Attempted Murder Really a Crime? http://bit.ly/2WIPvUF “I don’t think it’s sunk in how damning these revelations are”
// I don’t think it’s sunk in how damning these revelations are, partly because information is coming at us so quickly that it’s hard to fully digest it.
💙 DailyBeast, Erin Banco and Jackie Kucinich: Senior State Adviser: Pompeo’s Silence on Yovanovitch Attacks Absolutely Killed Morale http://bit.ly/2NgR6OI
// “He just listened,” Michael McKinley, a senior aide to Pompeo, said.
💙 WaPo, Aaron Blake and Amber Phillips: 7 takeaways from Marie Yovanovitch’s and Michael McKinley’s Ukraine testimony http://wapo.st/2WIgJe2
// links to transcripts
💙 NYT: House Impeachment Investigators Release Transcripts of Closed-Door Testimony http://nyti.ms/32cN8dX
🐣 RT @JoyceWhiteVance Trump’s shift from “no quid pro quo” to “there was nothing wrong with my quid pro quo” is the kind of thing we’ve seen him get away with before. But, saying there was a quid pro quo is an admission there was attempted bribery. Bribery is a constitutional ground for impeachment.
⋙ 🐣 RT @ WaltShaub Trump just tweeted that there’s “nothing wrong” with engaging in “quid pro quo” to extort a foreign power into attacking our election. We are in some seriously dark times when the president’s defense becomes “I didn’t do the crime, but there’s nothing wrong with crime if I did.”
🔊 Words Matter Podcast: Audience of One: Donald Trump, Television, and the Fracturing of America on Apple Podcasts http://apple.co/36sfu7j
// It is impossible to understand Donald Trump without understanding America’s relationship with television. James Poniewozik is the chief television critic for The New York Times. He often focuses on the intersection between television, politics and culture. He is the author of the new book — Audience of One: Donald Trump, Television, and the Fracturing of America
// Donald Trump as anti-hero
⭕ 3 Nov 2019
🐣 RT @SallyDeal4 Biden & our allies pushed out Ukrainian prosecutor because he DIDN’T pursue corruption cases, not to thwart investigation of H. Biden. Burisma Holdings wasn’t even under scrutiny at the time Joe Biden called for Shokin’s ouster.
⋙ USAToday, Courtney Subramanian: Explainer: Biden, allies pushed out Ukrainian prosecutor because he didn’t pursue corruption cases http://bit.ly/33ERGLW
// because he DIDN’T
AP: Mueller documents: Manafort pushed Ukraine hack theory http://bit.ly/32etwWW
Notes from an FBI interview were released Saturday after lawsuits by BuzzFeed News and CNN led to public access to hundreds of pages of documents from special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation. The documents included summaries of interviews with other figures from the Mueller probe, including Trump’s former personal lawyer, Michael Cohen.
Manafort speculated about Ukraine’s responsibility as the campaign sought to capitalize on DNC email disclosures and as Trump associates discussed how they could get hold of the material themselves, deputy campaign chairman Rick Gates told investigators, according to a summary of one of his interviews.
Gates said Manafort’s assertion that Ukraine might have done it echoed the position of Konstantin Kilimnik, a Manafort business associate who had also speculated that the hack could have been carried out by Russian operatives in Ukraine. U.S. authorities have assessed that Kilimnik, who was also charged in Mueller’s investigation, has ties to Russian intelligence. American intelligence agencies have determined that Russia was behind the hack, and Mueller’s team indicted 12 Russian agents in connection with the intrusion.
💙 NYT: Manafort Spread Ukraine Conspiracy Theory Months Before 2016 Election http://nyti.ms/2PJ1ikv
// Documents from the special counsel’s inquiry show that President Trump’s former campaign chairman shared the theory shortly after stolen Democratic emails were published that June.
CBSNews: Whistleblower willing to answer Republicans’ questions in impeachment probe, lawyer says http://cbsn.ws/2K1nMK3 in writing, but without going through Democrats
🐣 RT @JohnJHarwood bipartisan support has long been the gold standard signifying national consensus ¤ but concept loses meaning if one party withholds support no matter what, as a matter of strictly-enforced doctrine ¤ McConnell announced this strategy against Obama ¤ It’s GOP impeachment strategy now
🐣 RT @BillKristol Of course many (all?) of those who listened to Trump’s call were horrified. But Trump does argue that he knew the call had many listeners, and that’s evidence of innocence. What then to make of his insistence on meeting Putin one-on-one, and confiscating the translator’s notes?
🐣 RT @amandarivkin There are countries capable of reform in the face of failure and collapse, countries where human misery and suffering are not treated as sports for the soul, where alcohol isn’t consumed by the bathtub full and the truth about the barbarism of the past isn’t spun into foul lies.
⋙ 🐣 RT @amandarivkin Just sayin’ Leonid, no one is Russophobic because Russophobia isn’t real. People don’t like Russia because it’s leadership past and present is literally comprised of some of the worst people on earth who are responsible for so much human misery on this earth.
⋙ 🐣 RT @amandarivkin There are better brands than a corrupt mafia coterie of oligarchs pretending to govern a country they are absolutely incapable of governing. There are big countries with a GDP greater than Italy. There are countries where the leader doesn’t get off on being a comic book villain.
🐣 RT @PaulaChertok Sure, Republicans want to retain power. But they’ve chosen wrapping themselves in Trump to do it. That means embracing mind-numbing propaganda, lurching toward fascism & aligning w/ true foes of America & democracy. Trump’s adopted Putin’s views on nearly everything, esp #Ukraine
⋙ 🐣 RT @PaulaChertok Do you think Republicans knew Trump would soak up Russian propaganda like a sponge? Because that’s the generous take on Trump’s apparent loathing of Ukraine. He’s even said “It’s not a real country.” GOP better wake up & smell the Putin. #ImpeachAndRemove WaPo: http://wapo.st/2pEzmU9
🐣 RT @NatSecMulligan As Americans begin to tune out of the confusing political debate about high crimes and misdemeanors and quid pro quo, Washington insiders should take note. We need to keep it simple. Here’s how. 1/ 📌 https://twitter.com/NatSecMulligan/status/1191058737848573953?s=20
🐣 RT @glennkirschner2 Given that we are now in an officially-declared impeachment hearing, Congress should subpoena all phone conversation records with specific world leaders (first among them Putin) that are hiding in the secret server. It would be a treasure trove of impeachable Trump dirty-talk.
🐣 I saw the danger of “siloing” back in the ‘90s ~ that the Internet wld let people self-sort. First I thought this would be based on ideology; then I thought it was based on brain structures; now I think it is based on social evolution: Enligtenment values vs a prior feudal model.
🐣 RT @BillKristol How large is Trump’s base? Well, take a look at the cross tabs at pages 43-44. 41% of registered voters are against impeachment. Of those, 57% say no new evidence could cause them to change their minds. That would put Trump’s hardcore base at around 25%. https://fxn.ws/2NcAc3J
📊 Fox News Poll: Fox News Poll: 49 percent favor impeaching Trump http://fxn.ws/2PIxCDX (Fox News polls are rated “A” by FiveThirtyEight)
● Job Performance 42/57 https://twitter.com/Auriandra/status/1191026872370503683?s=20/photo/1
● Impeach? 49/41 https://twitter.com/Auriandra/status/1191027250533142528?s=20/photo/1
● New evidence 34* https://twitter.com/Auriandra/status/1191027653622599680?s=20/photo/1
● Remove v Vote 42/43 https://twitter.com/Auriandra/status/1191028011132428289?s=20/photo/1
// *among those opposing impeachment: could change mind 34, no 57
📊 Fox News Poll: Biden leads nomination race, tops Trump by 12 points in matchup http://fxn.ws/2PIxCDX (Fox News polls are rated “A” by FiveThirtyEight)
● Change since March https://twitter.com/Auriandra/status/1191022351728730114?s=20/photo/1
● Matchups https://twitter.com/Auriandra/status/1191022672655847427?s=20/photo/1
// Trump vs: Biden 39/51, Sanders 41/49, Warren 41/46, Clinton 41/43, Buttigieg 41/41
CNN: Mueller interview notes obtained by CNN show Trump’s push for stolen emails http://cnn.it/33bW1G9
🐣 RT @RadioFreeTom Manafort was in bed with pro-Russian oligarchs, meaning “Russia.” They wanted to discredit the election story, and turn Americans – one in particular – against Ukraine. Manafort did what he was paid to do: keep Trump pro-Russian and anti-Ukraine
DailyBeast, Sam Brodey: Inside the Republican Plan to Deep-Six the Trump Impeachment Hearings http://bit.ly/33olegk
// Trump allies plan to call for witnesses who could bolster their narrative and hammer away at the anonymous whistleblower whose account launched the inquiry in the first place.
DailyBeast, Michael Weiss: Here’s How the KGB Knew You’d Be a Traitor: an Exclusive Look at Its Recruitment Manual http://bit.ly/32a5Rae
// The bottom line for spy recruitment comes down to this: look for the losers, especially the ones who want to think they are winners because they hang on to important positions.
⭕ 2 Nov 2019
🐣 RT @JuliaDavisNews Such a shocker that Konstantin Kilimnik, with his ties to Russian intelligence, has been promoting the same conspiracy theory (“let’s pretend that Ukraine—not Russia—meddled in U.S. elections”) that Trump is still pushing. https://twitter.com/JuliaDavisNews/status/1190739813919580161?s=20/photo/1
// from Buzzfeed’s Mueller docs
🐣 RT @JohnWDean At what crime did Richard Nixon succeed, Brit? The break-ins failed, the abuses of power failed, the obstructions failed. Have you ever heard of conspiracy, aiding & abetting, attempted crimes or endeavors— all can be serious crimes. Don’t show you’re stupid, @brithume
⋙ 🐣 RT @brithume Dumb answer. Failed crimes don’t get the ultimate penalties. Impeachment is the ultimate penalty.
🐣 RT @markrcarpenter Surely one of the most successful active measures of all time:
Manafort blamed Ukrainians for the DNC hacks by “parroting a narrative advanced by Konstantin Kilimnik,” who the FBI assessed has ties to Russian intelligence.
And it’s still propagating.
⋙ WaPo: Internal Mueller documents show Trump campaign chief pushed unproven theory Ukraine hacked Democrats http://wapo.st/34oCK4k
🐣 RT @tedlieu Why is @realDonaldTrump making up this lie? Because he knows these transcripts, which are all reviewed and signed off by the witnesses, will be devastating to him when they are released to the public. ¤ No one is above the law.
⋙ 🐣 RT @real Schiff will change the transcripts just like he fraudulently made up the phone call. He is a corrupt politician!
🐣 RT @ericgarland I concur. If Manafort, Kushner, and Trump were working with Veselnitskaya & Co on June 9 down to the level of propaganda about the Clinton Foundation, THEY WERE COLLUDING. BIGLY. WITH THE RUSSIAN MOB. 📌 https://twitter.com/ericgarland/status/1190794358519422977?s=20
🐣 RT @ THIS EXPLAINS THE PANIC CALLS TO UKRAINE THIS SUMMER. Trump knew that impeachment would bring up the real details of how in bed they were with Putin.
🐣 RT @ The only play Trump had left was to bully Ukraine’s new president into helping him “both sides” the issue by ginning up a fake investigation of Joe Biden. ¤ Because IT WASN’T BOTH SIDES.
🐣 RT @ Neither side is perfect. But only one political party conspired directly with America’s mortal enemies at the level of hacking computers, planning propaganda using Russian military-grade PsyOps, and laundering Russian Mob money into campaigns. ¤ The GOP. And Trump. [ … ]
WaPo: Internal Mueller documents show Trump campaign chief pushed unproven theory Ukraine hacked Democrats http://wapo.st/2NzIrFR The documents were obtained through FOIA lawsuits by BuzzFeed and CNN
EmptyWheel, Marcy Wheeler: DOJ Pre-Dumps the Stone Trial: What BuzzFeed Obtained via FOIA http://bit.ly/2PJwikm “we’re really only getting a snippet of damaging information we’ll get over the next two weeks”
NYT: In Trump’s Twitter Feed: Conspiracy-Mongers, Racists and Spies http://nyti.ms/2NDkA83
🐣 RT @ JasonLeipold Earlier this year, right after AG Barr released his memo characterizing Mueller’s report, I started filing #FOIA requests for primary source documents that were used to draft the report as well as other underlying documents amassed by Mueller’s probe ¤ 1/📌 https://twitter.com/JasonLeopold/status/1190834783514853376?s=20
⋙ BuzzFeedNews, Jason Leopold and Anthony Cormie: Here Are 17 Things BuzzFeed News Is Trying To Pry Loose About The Mueller Investigation http://bit.ly/34zXKp5
// 4/17/2019; BuzzFeed News has filed Freedom of Information Act requests for a broad swath of records about the Mueller investigation — and is already fighting for some of them in court.r
↥ ↧
💙💙 BuzzFeedNews: The Mueller Report’s Secret Memos http://bit.ly/2oIj8Jp
// By Jason Leopold and Zoe Tillman and Ellie Hall and Emma Loop and Anthony Cormier;
BuzzFeed News sued the US government for the right to see all the work that Mueller’s team kept secret. Today we are publishing the first installment.
⋙ ≣ First Tranche: [pdf] http://bit.ly/2NNmx2b 278p
🐣 RT @JuliaDavisNews Trump told his top advisers that “everyone” was telling him not to do it because it would anger Russia, the former official said. In fact, his entire team was advising the opposite.
🐣 RT @JuliaDavisNews Trump’s entire national security Cabinet unanimously supported selling antitank weapons to the Ukrainians. But Trump hesitated. “He kept saying it . . . wasn’t worth pissing off Russia and what a bad country Ukraine was.”
🐣 RT @JuliaDavisNews Trump peppered Volker with his negative views of Ukraine, suggesting that it wasn’t a “real country,” that it had always been a part of Russia, and that it was “totally corrupt.” ¤ [That is EXACTLY what Putin would want Trump to think and say.]
⋙ WaPo: A presidential loathing for Ukraine is at the heart of the impeachment inquiry http://wapo.st/36pnt5j
DailyBeast, Rick Wilson: Your Trumpkins Won’t Say It But You’re in Deep Shit, Donald http://bit.ly/2PCC6Mx
// You’ll never admit it, and no one in your orbit will tell you, but you’re in the s**t, and it’s getting deeper and more pungent by the hour.
⭕ 1 Nov 2019
ForeignPolicy (11/1): Fear and Loathing at Pompeo’s State Department http://bit.ly/33pp5tU
// Career diplomats feel betrayed as the secretary of state stays silent on the Ukraine inquiry. But Pompeo remains a star in Republican circles as he eyes a possible Senate run.
🐣 RT @ForeignAffairs Those battling today against the plagues of nationalism and irrationalism should remember Albert Camus’s greatest insight, writes Robert Zaretsky: while hope might well be foolish, despair is even more so.
⋙ ForeignAffairs, Robert Zaretsky: The Cure for the Plague Is Decency http://fam.ag/2WR8NYi
// For Times of Extremity, Albert Camus Prescribed Modest Virtues
💙 Reuters: Exclusive: Overhaul of Ukraine prosecution agency buries Manafort inquiries – investigators http://reut.rs/2pD724E
Politico, Natasha Bertrand: Testimony: White House lawyer told Vindman not to discuss Ukraine call http://politi.co/34vlElx
// The Nationals Security Council’s top Ukraine adviser told lawmakers he was instructed to conceal details of the president’s conversation from other officials.
Eisenberg recorded Vindman’s complaints in notes on a yellow legal pad, then conferred with his deputy Michael Ellis about how to handle the conversation because it was clearly “sensitive,” Vindman testified. The lawyers then decided to move the record of the call into the NSC’s top-secret codeword system—a server normally used to store highly classified material that only a small group of officials can access.
Vindman did not consider the move itself as evidence of a cover-up, according to a person familiar with his testimony. But he said he became disturbed when, a few days later, Eisenberg instructed him not to tell anyone about the call—especially because it was Vindman’s job to coordinate the interagency process with regard to Ukraine policy.
💽 MSNBC, All In: Chris Hayes presents 9 pieces of evidence of a quid pro quo http://bit.ly/2NFykPK
// Chris Hayes lays out the nine pieces of evidence that show Trump committed the most elemental form of corruption and bribery.
DailyBeast, Barbara McQuade: Trump and His Defenders Keep Tossing Around Legal Terms. Here’s What They Really Mean. http://bit.ly/325Z3uc
// The idea seems to be to confuse the public by tossing around terms that simply don’t apply to his impeachment proceeding.
WaPo, Barbara McQuade: Trump’s demands that we ‘READ THE TRANSCRIPT!’ are just sleight of hand http://wapo.st/2C4lqpl
// The president agrees with his critics on what happened on the call. But they disagree on whether it was corrupt.
🐣 RT @PaulaChertok Least surprising news: Indicted Russian mob linked oligarch #FIRTASH bankrolled Lev Parnas’ jet setting w/ #Giuliani in search of Biden dirt. So Firtash’s money, made thx to Putin, funded Trump’s Ukraine extortion scheme! #AllRoadsLeadToPutin #Impeachment
🔆 This❗️⋙ CNN, Vicky Ward and Marshall Cohen: ‘I’m the best-paid interpreter in the world’: Indicted Giuliani associate Lev Parnas touted windfall from Ukrainian oligarch http://cnn.it/36k2gcK
Earlier this year, Lev Parnas, the indicted associate of Rudy Giuliani, received a sudden windfall of money from a prominent Ukrainian oligarch who is fighting extradition to the United States and is suspected of having ties to the Russian mob, according to four sources who spoke with Parnas.
This summer, Parnas told potential business associates that his company began receiving payments from the oligarch, Dmytro Firtash, who is living in Austria while fighting bribery charges in the US, the sources told CNN.
Parnas also told these people he met with Firtash several times over the summer while in Vienna. In June, according to one of these sources, Parnas vouched to Firtash for two well-known Washington lawyers who later brought up Firtash’s plight in a face-to-face meeting with Attorney General William Barr.
These new details appear to reveal a much more substantial relationship than previously known between Parnas and Firtash, and how Firtash’s years-long extradition battle suddenly collided with Giuliani’s push to dig up dirt on President Donald Trump’s political opponents.
They could also raise the stakes for Giuliani, whose financial ties are being examined by federal investigators. A company owned by Parnas paid Giuliani $500,000 for consulting in the fall of 2018. Giuliani maintains that the money did not originate overseas.
CNN previously reported that a counterintelligence probe of Giuliani is also underway. Giuliani has maintained he’s acted appropriately in the interests of his client, President Donald Trump.
In private conversations with would-be business associates before his arrest this month, Parnas boasted that his newfound luxurious lifestyle was bankrolled by Firtash, two sources told CNN. …
Firtash’s lawyers have downplayed the relationship between their client and Parnas. In statements, they describe Parnas as merely an interpreter hired to communicate with Firtash, who does not speak English. …
Parnas played a pivotal role in Firtash’s decision to replace Davis with Joseph diGenova and Victoria Toensing, according to a source with direct knowledge of the situation. ¤ Parnas vouched for them directly to Firtash at a meeting in Vienna in June, specifically touting their personal ties to Giuliani, a source close to the lawyers told CNN. ¤ The husband and wife legal duo are well-known Republicans, frequent defenders of Trump on cable news and nearly joined Trump’s legal team last year. diGenova says he’s known Barr for 30 years— connections that could prove valuable in Firtash’s ongoing extradition fight.
Firtash was arrested in 2014 and the Austrian Supreme Court finally approved his extradition in June, though some legal obstacles still remain while he seeks to overturn the ruling.
A source with knowledge of the meeting told CNN that Parnas was the middleman who, a month after the Vienna meeting, formally met with Firtash’s legal team as well as diGenova and Toensing back in the US.
The July meeting took place at the Trump International Hotel in Washington. Present were Parnas, Fruman, diGenova, Toensing and two other Firtash representatives, a source with knowledge told CNN. Also in attendance, the source said, was David Correia, one of Parnas’ business partners who was also indicted in the campaign finance conspiracy.
At some point shortly before that meeting, the deal was sealed. Toensing and diGenova joined Firtash’s legal team and, they later met personally with Barr and other Justice Department officials, where they asked for the criminal case against Firtash to be dropped. The Washington Post was first to report the meeting, and that Barr declined to get involved. …
The next month, on October 4, shortly after House Democrats requested documents from Parnas and Fruman, flight records show that Parnas chartered a jet to Cape Cod. Parnas told two sources that he was there to meet his lawyer John Dowd, who previously represented Trump during the Mueller investigation.
Democrats have since subpoenaed Parnas and Fruman for documents, though Dowd has pushed back. Dowd directly tied Parnas and Fruman to the President when he told lawmakers that some requested materials could fall under attorney-client privilege because his clients “assisted Mr. Giuliani in connection with his representation of President Trump.”
The flight records indicate that Parnas and Fruman chartered a private jet from Fort Lauderdale, Florida, to Washington on October 8, the day before they were arrested at Dulles while boarding a plane to Vienna. Giuliani lunched with Parnas and Fruman at the Trump International Hotel in Washington just hours before they were arrested, according to the Wall Street Journal.
The purpose of their trip to Vienna, as CNN previously reported, was to meet up with Giuliani and former Ukrainian prosecutor general Victor Shokin, a major player in the widening Ukraine scandal because of his discredited claims against the Bidens.
As vice president, Biden led a push by the Obama administration that was joined by the International Monetary Fund and other European nations to have Shokin removed because he was not prosecuting corruption cases.
By the time of Parnas’ attempted trip to Vienna this month, Shokin was already involved in Firtash’s case. Shokin had submitted an affidavit to an Austrian court supporting Firtash’s arguments against extradition, claiming there was political interference by the US.
It was in that affidavit that Shokin first made the unfounded claims about Biden, which Giuliani promoted for months after speaking with Shokin earlier this year. That conversation happened over Skype after Giuliani unsuccessfully lobbied the State Department and White House to grant Shokin a visa so they could to meet face-to-face.
There is no evidence of wrongdoing by the Bidens.
Parnas and Giuliani hoped to book Shokin for a Fox News interview in Vienna, where he could levy his allegations against Biden for the first time on American television, according to four sources. It never happened.
TheHill: Pelosi suggests impeachment inquiry could expand beyond Ukraine http://bit.ly/2WFfnkn
💙 WaPo, David Ignatius: In Ukraine, the quid pro quo may have started long before the phone call http://wapo.st/322Duuo
// 10/31/2019; next 2 also from Maddow ✛ Ignatius Jan 2017 “dawdle”
↥ ↧
💙 WaPo, David Ignatius: Why did Obama dawdle on Russia’s hacking? http://wapo.st/2PE5cv2
// 1/12/2017
↥ ↧
💙 KyivPost, Veronika Melkozerova: Black ledger’ investigation appears to come to a halt http://bit.ly/34qKCCz
// 6/15/2017
WaPo: Growing number of GOP senators consider acknowledging Trump’s quid pro quo on Ukraine http://wapo.st/2WyhgPT
💙🐣 RT @TheReinhardt One British official with knowledge of Barr’s wish list presented to London commented “it is like nothing we have come across before, they are basically asking, in quite robust terms, for help in doing a hatchet job on their own intelligence services”’
⋙ TheIndependent [UK]: ‘It’s like nothing we have come across before’: UK intelligence officials shaken by Trump administration’s requests for help with counter-impeachment inquiry http://bit.ly/2JH5MnI
// As impeachment inquiries heat up, president’s people are busy pursuing a counter offensive aimed at discrediting Mueller’s findings that Russia interfered in 2016 election
🔆 This❗️⋙ WaPo: White House official who heard Trump’s call w Ukraine leader testified that he was told to keep quiet http://wapo.st/34l58nT Lt Col Alexander Vindman testified that he received this instruction from John Eisenberg, the top legal adviser for the National Security Council
BuzzFeedNews, Zoe Tillman: The Mueller Investigation Is Having An Unexpected Moment In Democrats’ Impeachment Inquiry Months After It Ended http://bit.ly/2NuUZhG left over legal cases become newly relevant
// What is dead may never die.
AP: Impeachment inquiry focuses on 2 White House lawyers http://bit.ly/2poqHp0 John Eisenberg, the lead lawyer for the National Security Council, and Michael Ellis, a senior associate counsel to the president. ⋙ shielded access to the call transcript
📊 WaPo, Jennifer Rubin: Poll warning for Trump and Republicans: Danger ahead. http://wapo.st/36lAXid WaPo/ABC Poll ● https://twitter.com/Auriandra/status/1190323925613531137?s=20/photo/1
A plurality (49 to 47 percent) approve of impeachment and removal, while a large majority (58 to 34 percent) disapprove of how he is handling impeachment. Perhaps smearing respected civil servants, threatening the whistleblower and insulting members of Congress is not the way to go. By a margin of 55 to 35 percent, Americans think Trump did something wrong regarding Ukraine; 47 percent say he did something seriously wrong. It is a good thing the House is moving to open hearings — by a 65 to 33 percent margin, Americans do not like the closed-door proceedings.
Sixty-six percent think Trump has behaved in an unpresidential way, and 58 percent say in a way damaging to the United States. A majority thinks the pullout in Syria damaged our image as a reliable ally, and a majority (54 to 28 percent) think he has made us less respected in the world.
His approval numbers are atrocious among women (31/64), white college graduates (38/61), women college graduates (32/67), suburban dwellers (41/56) and independents (38/57). Among suburban women he trails 33 to 63 percent. He is surviving almost entirely on white evangelicals (74/23).
WaPo, Greg Sargent: The GOP defense of Trump is getting more corrupt. Here’s what’s next. http://wapo.st/2PCGJGk
The scope of corruption is mind-boggling. ¤ Remember, this whole scheme amounted to a months-long plot involving diplomats colluding with Trump lawyer Rudolph W. Giuliani to manipulate our foreign policy and use hundreds of millions of dollars in U.S. aid urgently sought by a nation under Russian attack to serve Trump’s political imperatives — to falsify the corruption of the 2016 election and facilitate the corruption of the next one.
This plot also involves an extensive effort by Trump’s Cabinet officials, with Pompeo’s State Department trying to block officials from divulging the truth about it, Attorney General William P. Barr working to falsify the truth about 2016, and his Justice Department trying to smother insider whistleblowing about the effort to extort a foreign power to help rig the 2020 election.
More will be publicly documented in coming weeks. This is what Republicans will be either justifying or pretending doesn’t exist.
… Trump wants Republicans to say: Trump was damn right to pressure Ukraine to investigate Biden, because Biden is corrupt. Trump himself has at times unabashedly told reporters that, yes, Ukraine should investigate Biden.
I don’t know whether Trump will end up going quite this far. But as more corruption is documented, Republicans will find it harder and harder to explain away — even as Trump’s demands that they go all-in behind that worsening picture of corruption grow louder and more insistent.
✅ WaPo, Salvado Rizzo: The Trump brothers’ claims that they no longer profit from foreign deals http://wapo.st/36lvgkl FOUR PINOCCHIOS 🍄🍄🍄🍄
🐣 RT @NewsHour “This is the same process and the same procedures that were used during the Clinton impeachment and the Nixon impeachment,” says @RepAdamSchiff
⋙ PBS: Schiff says House GOP hasn’t taken advantage of depositions http://to.pbs.org/2oE9t6D
🐣 RT @JuliaDavisNews Trump is keeping US forces in Syria to secure its oil fields & is willing to go to war over them. “We may have to fight for the oil. It’s OK. Maybe somebody else wants the oil, in which case they have a hell of a fight. But there’s massive amounts of oil.” [There isn’t]
⋙ NewYorker, Robin Wright: Trump’s Baffling Plan to Pillage Syria’s Oil http://bit.ly/2C1CRqp
📊 WaPo: Americans sharply divided over whether to impeach & remove Trump from office, WaPo/ABC poll finds http://wapo.st/2q9oUEa 49% want president removed from office //➔ when televised Watergate hearings began, it was 19% (‼️) & 59% of GOP was stuck with Nixon until the end
//➔ people are characterizing this poll all wrong: 18% of REPUBLICANS thinking Trump should be impeached and removed is HUGE ● https://twitter.com/Auriandra/status/1190290865387909121?s=20/photo/1
//➔ at the beginning of the televised Watergate hearings, 19% thought Nixon should be removed; 49% think Trump should be ● https://twitter.com/Auriandra/status/1190292635531038720?s=20/photo/1
// Trump did something wrong: 47% serious, 8% not serious, 35% nothing wrong
🐣 RT @MollyJongFast How does one parody a president beyond parody?
⋙ 🐣 RT @jdawsey1 A lot of aides in Trump admin think releasing memo of Zelensky call was a mistake. Trump now says he wants to read it in a “fireside chat” on TV.
🐣 RT @Delavegalaw Trump/GOP aren’t saying “No quid pro quo.” They’re saying it was OK: an act of 45’s foreign policy power. That’s the issue! We have to argue it was NOT OK. Asking a foreign leader to aid you in an election? NOT OK. Shakedowns? NOT OK. Corrupt deals for POTUS’s benefit? NOT OK.
🐣💙 .@JonMeacham In July 2015, I wrote the passage below: @Morning_Joe ● Text Block: https://twitter.com/Auriandra/status/1190246756010938369?s=20/photo/1
Can we trust ourselves with our own future and that of our planet or have we lost our sense of agency: can we even begin to comprehend the consequences of our actions? … We feel enmeshed in an indecipherable network of causality, in which it impossible to act morally because we can identify neither reachable goals nor meaningful actions.
Has the Enlightenment itself failed? – that world of rights and responsibilities in which the individual was the measure of all things, the crux of ethics and morality, the agent of action. This question frames the dreadful legacy we may leave to our children. They will live with the consequences of our inaction, of our inability to bear the burden of moral and effective self-governance. “A Republic,” Ben Franklin cautioned: “ – if you can keep it.”
🐣 RT @Morning_Joe ‘Trumpists have returned to a pre+Enlightenment way of thinking and social orgaization and in which others did your thinking for you’ [approx] ~ Jon Meacham
🎃 🎃 31 Oct 2019 🔆 This❗️⋙ Beginning Impeachment
FinancialTimes, Edward Luce: How the Borgias point the way for Trump’s America http://on.ft.com/2NvjRWD
// There are disquieting similarities between the US today and the medieval Catholic church
NewYorker, Susan Glasser: “He’s No Mr. Nice Guy”: Impeachment Comes for Trump http://bit.ly/2r2TNdV
Trump says that his July 25th phone call with the Ukrainian President, Volodymyr Zelensky, which set off the alarm bells among his own national-security staff, was “perfect.” He wants his defenders to agree and to do so publicly. But Republican members of Congress have largely declined to follow Trump’s instructions. In the House debate on Wednesday, there was lots of discussion about how unfair the Democratic rules for the investigation are, but almost no one claimed that it’s just fine for the President to pressure a foreign leader to investigate his political rivals. No one said that the call was “perfect,” no matter how many times Trump has asked them to.
… … Trump told reporters, before flying to Chicago, where he proceeded to claim that the Democratic-run city was more dangerous than Afghanistan. “But I think you ought to look at the case. And the case is very simple. It’s quick. It’s so quick. … …
Trump, however, is arguably right about the straightforward nature of the case. It’s just that all of the evidence and testimony so far has tended to be damaging to him, including his own words. None of it has been exculpatory. …
… On Wednesday night, in the middle of Game Seven of the World Series, the President’s campaign ran an ad that somehow managed to mash it all together, attacking the Democrats for impeachment while touting his “obliteration” of Baghdadi and the Islamic State. The ad, I thought, was a true reflection of the Trump of 2019: angry, defensive, a literal killer. It is a dark, menacing ad, for a dark, menacing time. At any other moment, the linkage between the domestic political fight over impeachment and the actual war against the Islamic State would seem bizarre and inappropriate. But not at this moment. In Trump’s world, the linkage is simple: it’s all about him. So is the ad, which sells his divisive personality as the rationale for his reëlection. This is precisely the case that President Trump will make to the members of Congress who must consider the impeachment charges against him in the coming months, and it is the case that he will make to voters next November. “He’s no Mr. Nice Guy,” the ad admits, but so what? “Sometimes it takes a Donald Trump to change Washington.” In this case, the President is absolutely right. Washington is different than it was before. There is no going back.
WaPo, Dana Milbank: An extraordinary case of projection on the House floor http://wapo.st/2N6YQm9 Devin Nunes “railed about the sort of person who believes in ‘conspiracy theories’ and relies on ‘defamation and slander,’ who spins a ‘preposterous narrative’”
// inside title (fp title above): Republicans convene the cult of Trump; “… with ‘no evidence’ and only ‘bizarre obsession’.”
⇈ ⇊
WaPo, Dana Milbank: An extraordinary case of projection on the House floor http://wapo.st/2N6YQm9 (Did the Republicans all go to the same workshop on ‘How to Gaslight’ at that retreat last week?)
… [W]hat [Devin Nunes] said on the House floor during Thursday’s debate to authorize a formal impeachment inquiry was jaw-dropping. He railed about the sort of person who believes in “conspiracy theories” and relies on “defamation and slander,” who spins a “preposterous narrative” with “no evidence” and only “bizarre obsession.”
Surely he was describing one Donald J. Trump to a T?
On the contrary, Nunes applied these Trumpian signatures to Democrats. “What we’re seeing among Democrats on the Intelligence Committee,” he said, “is like a cult. These are a group of people loyally following their leader as he bounces from one outlandish conspiracy to another.”
It was perhaps the most extraordinary case of projection ever to present itself on the House floor. [Pure gaslighting, Orwellian]
Republicans are defending President Trump, who believes windmills cause cancer, in impeachment proceedings literally sparked by his pursuit of a debunked conspiracy theory in Ukraine — and Democrats are the ones loyally following the conspiracy theories of their cult leader, who apparently is Rep. Adam Schiff?
Republicans, therefore, need a defense mechanism to displace these unpleasant feelings onto somebody else. The Grand Old Party is grossly projecting. It’s Trump’s “No puppet. You’re the puppet!” defense, but now his entire party is doing it.
Trump has repeatedly advanced Moscow’s agenda, pulling out of Syria, siding with Russia over U.S. intelligence on election interference and withholding military aid to Ukraine. But Republican Whip Steve Scalise (La.) displayed on the House floor a poster of a hammer and sickle and the Kremlin and said Democrats are the ones doing things “Soviet-style.”
Trump put national security second to his political needs when he withheld aid to Ukraine in order to get dirt on Joe Biden. But Rep. Liz Cheney (Wyo.), the GOP conference leader, said Democrats are the ones “putting politics above national security.”
Trump dismissed the threat of foreign election interference, while his allies fought off legislation to strengthen election security. But House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (Calif.) alleged that Democrats are the ones undermining “the integrity of our electoral process.”
And then there was Rep. Michael McCaul (R-Tex.). “For one man to turn this country upside down,” he said, is something “our Founding Fathers warned about.” Surely this was about Trump? Nope — Schiff.
For years, the primary complaint against Trump has been that he tears the country apart — and that his constant chaos has put the nation through extraordinary stress. But during a GOP news conference after the vote, Rep. Lee Zeldin (R-N.Y.) said Democrats are the ones “eagerly ripping our country in half,” and Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) lamented “what the Democrats have put our nation through for now almost four years.” (He specifically blamed them for the Mueller probe, launched by Trump appointees.)
Trump, who made the politics of projection an art form, held his own. His campaign put out a quote from him saying “Democrats have committed themselves to destroying democracy.” And Stephanie Grisham, press secretary for the chaotic White House said after the vote: “I’ve got to say, Nancy Pelosi has lost all control over there.”
Also cult-like: Republicans’ claims not only that Trump did nothing impeachable but also that he did nothing wrong when he withheld an ally’s military aid for a promise to investigate a political opponent.
At their post-vote news conference, Republicans were asked: “Will you all go on the record and say the president did nothing inappropriate?” ¤ “Yes,” chorused the 50 men and three women onstage. ¤ “A very clear yes,” said McCarthy. ¤ Doesn’t he know that cults always end badly? [Do they?]
🐣 RT @DrDenaGrayson 🔥In a lawsuit on whether Don McGahn obey a #subpoena and testify, a federal judge slammed Team🇷🇺Trump: “We don’t live in a world where your status as a former executive branch official somehow shields you or prevents you from giving information.”😎
⋙ CNN: Judge critical of Trump administration’s attempt to control testimony of former official By Katelyn Polantz and Marshall Cohen, CNN http://cnn.it/2C1z6RL
Lawfare, Jonathan Shaun: The Executive’s Privilege: Rethinking the President’s Power to Withhold Information http://bit.ly/2PAyCtS
🐣 RT @tedlieu Let’s be clear. If @realDonaldTrump does this, he is sending the message that there is nothing wrong with the US President soliciting foreign interference in our elections, and that he will do it again unless he is removed.
🐣 RT @renato_mariotti Fantastic idea. Everyone in the United States should hear what Trump said on that call.
⋙ DavidMDrucker NEWS: A defiant @realDonaldTrump signaled he’s disinclined to cooperate w/ House Dems in impeachment proceedings, while suggesting he might read transcript of Zelensky call aloud to nation in “fireside chat.” https://washex.am/2N2J4Zm me & @robcrilly from the Oval. @dcexaminer
⋙ 🐣 We’re heading in 1984 territory: “The party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. It was their final, most essential command.” — George Orwell, “1984”
🐣 RT @viewsfordays “Just to be clear, it wasn’t just one phone call. That is what we’ve really learned over the last several weeks. This was a multiple-month operation to try to use the public office of the president for his private interests & do nothing to defend Ukraine”
⋙ RawStory: ‘Music to Putin’s ears’: Ambassador McFaul blasts Trump’s pattern of furthering Russian interests http://bit.ly/320qeGx
WSJ: Giuliani Associate Left Trail of Troubled Businesses Before Ukraine Probe Push http://on.wsj.com/2WGKvjH
// Lev Parnas pointed to relationship with ex-New York mayor to show investors he could ‘get things done’
⋙ See under Entire Articles: WSJ Parnas 10-31-2019
🐣 Tim Morrison was called as a fact witness. He is not a lawyer.
🐣 RT @tedlieu Today the House voted to authorize release of transcripts of the witness depositions, and public hearings with those same witnesses. I guarantee you that @realDonaldTrump and @GOP will like neither. The American people will soon see all the devastating evidence against @POTUS.
⋙ 🐣 RT @rebeccaballhouse Impeachment investigators have now heard accounts of a quid pro quo from:
1. Bill Taylor, who said aid was tied to investigations
2. Tim Morrison, who said the same
3. Gordon Sondland, who said a WH meeting was tied to investigations
⋙⋙ 🐣 RT @rebeccaballhouse NSC official Tim Morrison told impeachment investigators today that Gordon Sondland told an aide to the Ukrainian president that U.S. aid would be released if Ukraine committed to investigating Burisma Group, corroborating Bill Taylor’s testimony.
⋙⋙⋙ WSJ: White House Official Says He Heard Ukraine Aid Was Tied to Biden Probe http://on.wsj.com/2N5MsCS
// Morrison says he had concerns about what he heard on Trump’s call with Ukrainian leader, but had no worries about its legality
💙 CNN, KevinLiptak: Photos highlight stark differences in Trump and Obama approaches http://cnn.it/2N2pNaw
🐣 RT @TheBeatWithAri WATCH: As Dems are closer than impeaching President Trump than ever before, House leaders pleaded their case saying the American Democracy ‘is at stake.’ 💽 http://https://twitter.com/TheBeatWithAri/status/1190027850285498368?s=20
🐣 RT @ColMorrisDavis My prediction is that @RudyGiuliani will go pro bono and then appeal his conviction citing bullshit like this to demonstrate that he had incompetent counsel.
⋙ 🐣 RT @RudyGiuliani Is the Whistleblower part three of the conspiracy to overthrow @realDonaldTrump. Looks a lot like false Russian collusion conspiracy concocted by intelligence Deep Staters. Did Whistleblower work for Brennan? How much prep by Schiff and staff.
🐣 RT @PaulaChertok “Would I use Ukraine to beat sleepy Joe Biden??—Gaslighter-in-Chief to a chucking Nigel Farage (who apparently has a radio show NOT on Russian propaganda media). Yes, Donald. There were witnesses. And they’re talking. #Impeachment 💽 https://twitter.com/PaulaChertok/status/1190017053685452800?s=20/photo/1
🐣 Talk about projection!
⋙ 🐣 RT @atrupar NUNES: “What we’re seeing among Democrats on the Intelligence Committee down in the SCIF right now is like a cult. These are a group of people loyally following their leader as he bounces from one outlandish conspiracy theory to another. And the media are the cult followers.”📌 https://twitter.com/atrupar/status/1189901967809810432?s=20
🐣 RT @renato_mariotti The White House calls impeachment “unconstitutional.” But it is literally in the Constitution. [Letter:] https://twitter.com/renato_mariotti/status/1190014964901302273?s=20/photo/1
Dkos, Mark Sumner: And now the news from Opposite Land: White House produces hilarious list of ‘talking points’ http://bit.ly/2N4GLFb
AmericanOversight: Trump-Ukraine Key Figures and Documents http://bit.ly/2C24bES
AmericanOversight: The Trump Administration’s Contacts with Ukraine http://bit.ly/2BYSY89 from FOIA requests
🐣 Isn’t this jury-tampering? @RepAdamSchiff
⋙ Mediaite: CNN’s Dana Bash: Trump May Withhold Campaign Funds from GOP Senators Who Vote for Impeachment http://bit.ly/2qcMcJu
🐣 RT @DanRather The impeachment process is not about undoing the results of 2016. It’s about protecting the integrity of 2020.
🐣 I’m so glad @SteveSchmidtSES is back. He speaks with such moral clarity. @NicolleDWallace @DeadlineWH
DailyBeast, Betsy Swan and Sam Brodey: Impeachment Probe Eyes Mulvaney’s Office in Early Effort to Hold Up Ukraine Aid http://bit.ly/2qd6an3
// When the Trump administration first decided to send anti-tank weapons to Ukraine, Mick Mulvaney’s OMB put a mysterious, previously-unreported hold on the sale.
YahooNews: State Department agrees to turn over Ukraine documents, potentially providing Democrats with impeachment fodder http://yhoo.it/2N6cVjU
NYT: White House Aide Confirms He Saw Signs of a Quid Pro Quo on Ukraine http://nyti.ms/33480Wf
// Timothy Morrison, a National Security Council aide, said a top diplomat close to President Trump suggested a military aid package for Ukraine was conditioned on investigations into his political rivals.
🐣 RT @CharlesMBlow One genius move by House Dems was this: passing more than 100 bills that the Senate didn’t take up. Now that impeachment has begun, Repubs can’t say that Dems are distracted from passing legislation. McConnell has 100 on his desk. He simply has to bring them to a vote. Law passed
WaPo: Impeachment is going public. Republicans will find it harder to hide. http://wapo.st/2piPyKR
🐣 RT @SpeakerPelosi When we came to Congress, we all proudly raised our hands to support and defend the Constitution. That’s what today’s vote was about. In these open hearings we will seek the truth and ensure the American people can see it for themselves. #DefendOurDemocracy
🔆 This❗️⋙ WaPo: A divided House backs impeachment probe of Trump http://wapo.st/337zEBq
🐣 RT @JoeNBC The man who said Donald Trump was being paid off by Putin is now on the House floor defending the same man. ¤ What changed, Kevin?
⋙ WaPo Adam Entous, (2017): House majority leader to colleagues in 2016: ‘I think Putin pays’ Trump http://wapo.st/2NwQXFL caught on recording
🐣 RT @drothkopf GOP wanted a resolution, wanted public hearings, wanted transparency and wanted clear rules based on the normal order. They had the chance to vote for all those things and voted against them. Yet, now…they will get them and they will regret it. The truth will hurt.
🐣 RT @HouseJudiciary .@RepJerryNadler: It is indefensible for any official to demand that an ally—one depending on our support in an existential struggle with Russia—investigate his or her political adversaries.
WaPo: White House official expected to confirm diplomat’s account that Trump appeared to seek quid pro quo http://wapo.st/2psqyRk Tim Morrison, the top Russia and Europe adviser on President Trump’s National Security Council
Tim Morrison, the top Russia and Europe adviser on President Trump’s National Security Council, is expected to corroborate the testimony of a senior U.S. diplomat who last week offered House impeachment investigators the most detailed account to date for how Trump tried to use his office to pressure Ukraine to investigate former vice president Joe Biden, said a person familiar with the matter.
Morrison is expected to tell impeachment investigators on Thursday that the account offered by William B. Taylor Jr., the acting ambassador to Ukraine, is accurate. He also is expected to note that he alerted Taylor to a push by Trump and his deputies to withhold both security aid and a White House visit for the Ukrainian president until Ukraine agreed to investigate the Bidens and interference in the 2016 presidential election, said the person, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe sensitive discussions.
Morrison also is expected to tell lawmakers that he spoke with Taylor again on Sept. 7 to share a “sinking feeling” about a worrisome conversation between Trump and Sondland, the person said. Morrison will say that, during that conversation, Trump said he wasn’t seeking a “quid pro quo” but went on to insist that Ukrainian President Volodymr Zelensky had to publicly announce that he was opening investigations of Biden and 2016 election interference.
🐣 RT @gtconway3d It’s simply astounding to me how many people continue to be willing to sacrifice their honor and reputation to defend a man who has no redeeming moral virtues, and who is well on his way to well-earned self-destruction.
🐣 RT @justinamash This president will be in power for only a short time, but excusing his misbehavior will forever tarnish your name. To my Republican colleagues: Step outside your media and social bubble. History will not look kindly on disingenuous, frivolous, and false defenses of this man.
⭕ 30 Oct 2019
💙 WaPo, Ari Melber: ‘Bribery’ is right there in the Constitution. Trump could be impeached for that. http://wapo.st/34VCtpJ
// Why wrestle with the meaning of “high Crimes and Misdemeanors”? The president can be accused of an offense that’s already well-defined.
TheGuardian, Timothy Garton Ash: Democracy is under attack in post-Wall Europe – but the spirit of 1989 is fighting back http://bit.ly/33d73uK
// Thirty years after the fall of the Berlin Wall and Europe’s velvet revolutions, a new generation is standing up to the populists
DailyBeast, Amy Knight: Here’s How Dumb Bill Barr’s Great Mifsud Conspiracy Story Really Is http://bit.ly/2qekGLj
// Mifsud’s deep connections with Putin’s foreign policy establishment and his glowing appraisals of Russia’s role in global affairs show Barr has barked up the wrong tree.
It should be clear to Attorney General Barr that Mifsud was no CIA asset, but rather part of a cabal, including Roh and Timofeyev, that spreads pro-Kremlin propaganda under the guise of academia and acts as a conduit between the Kremlin and Western policy wonks who are sympathetic to the Putin regime.
In pursuing his CIA-FBI conspiracy theory, Barr is entering a complicated maze of secret and not-so-secret relationships that characterize Russia’s efforts to undermine Western democracies. If Barr were wise, he would back off.
WaPo, Michael McFaul: Alexander Vindman should be celebrated, not smeared http://wapo.st/335iyUR
NYT, Gail Collins: The Worst Trump Cabinet Member? You Picked a Real Winner http://nyti.ms/321yiXC
// William Barr; The vote wasn’t even close.
🐣 RT @DavidCornDC From the Department of Absolutely No Self-Awareness:
💽 https://twitter.com/DavidCornDC/status/1189727837185617921?s=20/photo/1
⋙ 🐣 RT @andrew_lawrence Actually just said by Donald Trump Jr: “I wish my name was Hunter Biden. I could go abroad and make millions off my father’s presidency. I’d be a really rich guy”
🐣 RT @TheHill JUST IN: Pompeo says Trump-Zelensky call was “consistent” with administration policy http://hill.cm/aAC4Hb8
🐣 RT @TheLastWord Dems are questioning whether to bring perjury charges against Amb. Gordon Sondland after key witnesses contradicted his testimony regarding Ukraine. @PeterWelch tells @Lawrence that after hearing from career diplomats, Sondland “has some explaining to do.” https://on.msnbc.com/3251soF
NYT: Trump, Zuckerberg & Pals Are Breaking America http://nyti.ms/2qafLLK
// Not in the Cold War, not during Vietnam, not during Watergate did I ever fear more for my country.
🐣 RT @HeidiNBC NEW:
Dems tie what U.S. founders considered ABC’s of high crimes and misdemeanors warranting impeachment to Trump/Ukraine:
A = abuse of power (using office for personal benefit)
B = betrayal of national security (compromising U.S. ally)
C = corruption of U.S. elections
@NBCNews [appearance on @Morning_Joe]
🐣 RT @kylegriffin1 Breaking via WaPo: Lt. Col. Vindman told John Eisenberg, the NSC’s lead counsel, about his concerns over Trump’s call with Zelensky. Eisenberg then proposed moving a transcript of the call to a highly classified server and restricting access to it.
⋙ WaPo: White House lawyer moved transcript of Trump call to classified server after Ukraine adviser raised alarms http://wapo.st/2PzhFjE
Moments after President Trump ended his phone call with Ukraine’s president on July 25, an unsettled national security aide rushed to the office of White House lawyer John Eisenberg.
Army Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman, the top Ukraine adviser at the White House, had been listening to the call and was disturbed by the pressure Trump had applied to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to investigate his political rivals, according to people familiar with Vindman’s testimony to lawmakers this week.
Vindman told Eisenberg, the White House’s legal adviser on national security issues, that what the president did was wrong, said the people, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the ongoing investigation.
Scribbling notes on a yellow legal pad, Eisenberg proposed a step that other officials have said is at odds with long-standing White House protocol: moving a transcript of the call to a highly classified server and restricting access to it, according to two people familiar with Vindman’s account.
💙 Politico: Testimony: Nunes acolyte misrepresented himself to Trump as Ukraine expert http://politi.co/2C3lK7r
// Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman also testified on Tuesday that the National Security Council staffer, Kash Patel, fed the president disinformation about Ukraine.
🐣 RT @McFaul What?
⋙ ‼️ 🐣 RT @ewong In a Fox interview, @SecPompeo peddles a new conspiracy theory involving Obama, Hunter Biden and military aid. This insinuation makes zero sense. Pompeo, the top US diplomat, doesn’t seem to care anymore about trying to establish a reputation as a straight talker. https://twitter.com/ewong/status/1189719256805597184?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @LACaldwellDC NEW: Vindman told House investigators that a WH meeting AND nearly $400 million in security and military aid was “contingent” on Ukrainian officials carrying out multiple investigations, including into Burisma, the Bidens, the 2016 election and Crowd Strike. w/ @GeoffRBennett
🐣 RT @MSNBC .@TheBeatWithAri outlines how despite President Trump’s criticisms, Democrats have actually outlined an impeachment process which gives him more power to participate than Presidents Nixon or Clinton had. https://on.msnbc.com/2q1Q53H https://twitter.com/MSNBC/status/1189690206565339136?s=20/photo/1
NBCNews, Jonathan Allen: Pelosi wants Americans to see the trial of Donald Trump http://nbcnews.to/2JBQSiV
// Analysis: Once uncertain about holding an impeachment-related vote on the floor, the House speaker is moving to show evidence to the public.
DailyBeast, Asawin Suebsaeng: Trump Wants You to Know He’s Smart and Capable Enough to ‘Do Quid Pro Quo’ http://bit.ly/332Popx
// Everyone should just stop saying he’s too dumb or incompetent to commit crimes—he could totally pull them off if he wanted to, Trump has been complaining privately.
NYT Editorial: The Rules of Impeachment http://nyti.ms/2oBpqKM
// Democrats get serious about the next phase of inquiry.
WaPo: National Security Council official set to testify in impeachment inquiry is leaving his post http://wapo.st/2psqyRk Tim Morrison has been the senior National Security Council official handling Russian affairs
Politico: Impeachment investigators ask John Bolton to testify http://politi.co/322a8MA
🐣 RT @MSNBC BREAKING: Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey: “We’ve made the decision to stop all political advertising on Twitter globally. We believe political message reach should be earned, not bought.”
⋙ NBCNews: Twitter to stop accepting political ads http://nbcnews.to/36cuypw
// Facebook is currently embroiled in a debate over its decision to allow political campaigns to push ads containing misinformation.
🐣 RT @LACaldwellDC NEW: Vindman told House investigators that a WH meeting AND nearly $400 million in security and military aid was “contingent” on Ukrainian officials carrying out multiple investigations, including into Burisma, the Bidens, the 2016 election and Crowd Strike. w/ @GeoffRBennett
🐣 RT @jimmykimmel We mashed up @BarackObama’s Bin Laden speech with @RealDonaldTrump’s al-Baghdadi speech, and the results are amazing 💽 https://twitter.com/jimmykimmel/status/1189153270167564288?s=20/photo/1
WaPo: Two volatile meetings at the White House have become central to the impeachment inquiry http://wapo.st/32YLNc1
NYT: Former G.O.P. Lawmaker Pressed for Ambassador’s Ouster, Diplomat Says http://nyti.ms/330C8S1
// Robert Livingston, the former congressman turned lobbyist, repeatedly contacted a White House official to criticize Marie L. Yovanovitch.
WaPo: Testimony from career diplomats to outline Trump’s dark view of Ukraine http://wapo.st/2BQY9ae
⭕ 29 Oct 2019
YahooNews, Luppe Luppen and Hunter Walker: ‘The Wild West’: Questions surround Trump legal team payments http://yhoo.it/2NFoLjJ
✅ NYT, Davey Alba: Debunking 4 Viral Rumors About the Bidens and Ukraine http://nyti.ms/321Te0z
// As lawmakers examine whether President Trump pushed Ukraine to investigate the Biden family, here are some of the most prominent falsehoods that have spread online and an explanation of what really happened.
🐣 RT @BillKristol You know why America is great? Because there are people the president has never heard of who have taken an oath to serve, who are equal to the president under the law, and who can testify to Congress on behalf of the rule of law. And who can help hold a president to account.
⋙ 🐣 RT @real Why are people that I never even heard of testifying about the call. Just READ THE CALL TRANSCRIPT AND THE IMPEACHMENT HOAX IS OVER! Ukrain said NO PRESSURE.
⋙⋙ 🐣 RT @real “There is no underlying crime in that transcript.” @IngrahamAngle 100% correct, and the Whistleblower disappeared after I released the transcript of the call. Where is the Whistleblower? That is why this is now called the Impeachment Hoax! The Do Nothing Dems are Doing Nothing!
🐣 RT @thehill Fmr. President Barack Obama: “This idea of purity and you’re never compromised and you’re politically woke, and all that stuff — you should get over that quickly. The world is messy. There are ambiguities. People who do really good stuff have flaws.” 💽 https://twitter.com/thehill/status/1189409128587956226?s=20/photo/1
WaPo: Two volatile meetings at the White House have become central to the impeachment inquiry http://wapo.st/32YLNc1
Task&Purpose: Here’s the military record of Lt. Col. Vindman, the soldier testifying at Trump’s impeachment inquiry http://bit.ly/2PvnKO4 @maddow
🐣 RT @davidfrum For some reason, war heroes, career law enforcement officers, lifelong public servants of all kinds are all just hopelessly biased against President Trump.
DailyBeast, Betsy Swan and Adam Rawnsley: Trump Sides With Indicted Oligarch Over His Own Diplomat http://bit.ly/34ec868
// The President of the United States amplified a tweet calling one of his diplomats a liar—and, by implication, absolving a Ukrainian gas mogul of any mob ties.
🐣 RT @StevenBeschloss A perfect call doesn’t have to be hidden in a secret server.
A perfect call doesn’t require manipulating its transcript.
A perfect call doesn’t require lying about a decorated war veteran & crudely questioning his loyalty when he testifies to set the record straight.
🐣 RT @glennkirschner2 So AG Bill Barr took a few minutes away from working on Trump’s re-election campaign to talk with Fox News. He assured everyone that his investigation of the investigators who found massive illegal Russian interference in the 2016 election isn’t designed to help Trump. 📌 https://twitter.com/glennkirschner2/status/1189337710772789248?s=20
🐣 RT @ 2. Really? Let’s see if that claim withstands scrutiny. All of our intelligence agencies concluded that Russia interfered in the 2016 presidential election to hurt Hillary Clinton and help Trump get elected. A bipartisan congressional committee concluded the exact same thing. [ … ]
🐣 RT @MaddowBlog “I know Lt. Col. Vindman. … The idea that somebody with his resume would not serve the United States of America is just disgusting. It’s outrageous. And I want those people to apologize and to remember what they’re doing when they take cheap shots…” -fmr Amb. Michael McFaul 💽 https://twitter.com/MaddowBlog/status/1189358052736196610?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @JoyceWhiteVance “The omissions, Colonel Vindman said, included Mr. Trump’s assertion that there were recordings of former VP…Biden Jr. discussing Ukraine corruption, & an explicit mention by Ukraine’s president…of Burisma Holdings, the energy company whose board employed Mr. Biden’s son”
🐣 RT @maggieNYT Vindman testified that the transcript of the Ukraine call omitted key phrases, including a reference to Burisma, and that he tried to get it restored. via @NYTimes
⋙ NYT: White House Ukraine Expert Sought to Correct Transcript of Trump Call http://nyti.ms/34enzKZ
// Lt. Col. Alexander S. Vindman, who heard President Trump’s July phone call with Ukraine’s president and was alarmed, testified that he tried and failed to add key details to the rough transcript.
💙 Newsweek, Shane Croucher: Trump Is a ‘Successful Sociopath’ and a Predator Who ‘Lacks a Conscience and Lacks Empathy,’ Says Former Harvard Psychiatrist http://bit.ly/2JzGwjn
🐣 RT @JessLehrich
Lt. Col. Vindman – war hero, WH aide
Taylor – Vietnam vet, 50 year public servant
Yovanovitch – FSO since 1986, MS from Nat’l War College
Fiona Hill – Trump appointee, served Bush + Obama
Volker – Trump appointee, Amb. to NATO under Bush
Laura Cooper – 2 decades at Pentagon
// impeachment witnesses
CNN: Shouting match erupts in Vindman deposition as Democrats accuse Republicans of trying to out whistleblower http://cnn.it/2q8CDLh
🐣 RT @emptywheel This fact seems to have been lost. There are at least 3 crimes in play on Ukraine part of impeachment:
1) Withholding duly appropriated funds
2) To extort
3) Election assistance from a foreign govt
🐣 RT @RepValDemings “Senior White House officials had intervened to ‘lock down’ all records of the phone call.” – Whistleblower Statement ¤ If they did nothing wrong, why the coverup?
🐣 RT @thehill Rep. @Liz_Cheney: “The [impeachment] process is broken. It’s tainted. They have gone through this process where you have seen one side of the story. It’s been an effort to get one side of facts and then to selectively leak those facts in order to taint the President.”
💽 https://twitter.com/thehill/status/1189270931287359488?s=20/photo/1
⋙ 🐣 Maybe the Republicans should leak the facts that *do* exonerate the President. Trouble is the only way to exonerate him is to say he’s incompetent or insane.
WaPo, Gary Kasparov: This Soviet dissident knew why finding common ground with dictators can’t work http://wapo.st/36ilRu0
🐣 RT @oliverdarcy “Jack Posobiec…tweeted the falsehood that Mr. Vindman had been advising the Ukrainian government on how to counter Mr. Trump’s foreign policy goals. Mr. Posobiec cited The New York Times as his source — in fact, The Times reported no such thing.” NYT: After Vindman’s Testimony Went Public, Right-Wing Conspiracies Fired Up http://nyti.ms/34dA1um
Jack Posobiec, a well-known figure on the far-right internet, tweeted the falsehood that Mr. Vindman had been advising the Ukrainian government on how to counter Mr. Trump’s foreign policy goals. Mr. Posobiec cited The New York Times as his source — in fact, The Times reported no such thing.
⋙ 🐣 RT @JackPosobiac BREAKING: US Army Officer Alex Vindman has reportedly been advising the Ukrainian government, his home country, how to counter President Trump’s foreign policy goals – NY Times https://twitter.com/JackPosobiec/status/1189293734355181569?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @glennkirschner2 I think all Trump enablers in government should be asking themselves the following question: if I support, encourage or cover-up presidential crimes, can I be charged as an Accessory After the Fact once a law-abiding Attorney General takes over? See 18 USC section 3.
🐣 RT @Esquire The new impeachment rules are out, but they’ve still got to go through a Judiciary Committee featuring Matt Gaetz and the clown crew. via @CharlesPPierce
⋙ Esquire, Charles Pierce: Republicans Are Going To Love Adam Schiff’s New Powers http://esqr.co/yiY9Mm6
TPM, Kate Riga: Vindman, Subject Of Xenophobic Attacks, Was Featured In Ken Burns’ ‘America’ In ’80s http://bit.ly/34dxVL0 “[T]he Vindmans are revealed to have such a compelling and classic story as to be featured in ‘Statue of Liberty,’ an ode to the immigrant’s American dream.”
🐣 RT @jameshohman New poll from Suffolk University & USA Today shows most Americans want Trump to stop stonewalling. Asked if the White House has an obligation to comply with the subpoenas from Congress, 66% say yes. Only 26% say no. Even 35% of R’s say WH ought to comply.
⋙ 🐣📊 WaPo, James Hohman: New poll shows why Trump’s defenders are more focused on impeachment process than substance http://wapo.st/
🐣 RT @MarkSZaidEsq Jeff is one of the better #JFK researchers out there & has been a friend for years. He wrote this major @washingtonpost story on my first @CIA case back in 1996. WaPo, Jefferson Morley (3/27/1996): The Spy Who Loved Him http://wapo.st/31Xa5lt
⋙ 🐣 RT @JeffersonMorley I second the motion. I got to know Mark through the #JFK story, which #CIA still wishes would go away. (It won’t). We often disagree. We always have productive, meaningful discussions. The GOP efforts to smear him and #WBers are pathetic & doomed to #Fail. #DeepStateBlog
🐣 RT @MarkSZaidEsq That article led to Jeff’s first book on the topic and included much of the information we obtained in our #FOIA lawsuit. I highly recommend it. ¤ Our Man in Mexico: Winston Scott and the Hidden History of the CIA http://amzn.to/31XGTug
// book 3/8/2008
🐣 RT @SpeakerPelosi Everybody has read your words on the call. The Ukrainian President asks for military aid to fend off the Russian attack, you say “I want you to do us a favor though,” and then you spend the rest of the call asking for bogus investigations to smear your political opponents.
⋙ 🐣 RT @real How many more Never Trumpers will be allowed to testify about a perfectly appropriate phone call when all anyone has to do is READ THE TRANSCRIPT! I knew people were listening in on the call (why would I say something inappropriate?), which was fine with me, but why so many?
🐣 ≣ RT @KyleCheney JUST IN: House resolution empowers SCHIFF to call public hearings and add as many rounds of uninterrupted questioning as he wants — up 45 minutes per side — in which only SCHIFF/NUNES or a staffer can ask questions. http://bit.ly/2PAGVpo
📌 https://twitter.com/kyledcheney/status/1189258627380588545?s=20
WaPo: Democrats unveil procedures for Trump’s impeachment inquiry, rebutting GOP attacks http://wapo.st/2BRZ7To
WaPo, Aaron Blake: The 5 public confirmations of a quid pro quo between Trump and Ukraine http://wapo.st/2BWOleA
WaPo, Aaron Blake: Why Alexander Vindman’s testimony is big http://wapo.st/32YE3Xp
✅ WaPo FactChecker, Salvador Rizzo: President Trump’s alternate reality on Ukraine http://wapo.st/2BQWSQj The false narrative linking numerous Four Pinocchio claims
🐣 RT @ScottMStedman I thought Mueller included a lot of unnecessary details about Ukraine in his report. Now I know why. 📌 https://twitter.com/ScottMStedman/status/1189045297864830976?s=2
⭕ 28 Oct 2019
TruthOut/Salon, Heather Digby Parton: It’s a Mistake to Laugh Off Republicans’ Dangerous Attacks on Impeachment http://bit.ly/36h6C4A
🐣 RT @gtconway3d Hint to GOP senators: Article I, section 3, clause 6 of the Constitution gives you the keys to your own prison. USE THEM.
DailyBeast, David Axe: How U.S. Commandos IDed a ‘Mutilated’ Baghdadi So Quickly http://bit.ly/31QIMZL
// New technology includes a smaller and much faster DNA-reader that troops can haul into combat aboard their helicopters and use while the smoke is still clearing.
WaPo: White House official to tell impeachment investigators he feared Trump’s demands of Ukraine would undermine national security http://wapo.st/36dRwgc
Smithsonian, David Wise (Nov 2015): Thirty Years Later, We Still Don’t Truly Know Who Betrayed These Spies http://bit.ly/2WiNYVk
// Was there a fourth mole in the U.S. intelligence system that blew these secret agents’ covers?
NBCNews: White House told in May of Ukraine President Zelenskiy’s concerns about Giuliani, Sondland http://nbcnews.to/2WlJ4Xz
// The White House was alerted earlier than previously reported that Giuliani’s pressure campaign was rattling the new Ukrainian president, two sources say.
RawStory: Columnist warns Bill Barr has already ‘corrupted’ the DOJ — and he’ll use it to target the 2020 Democratic nominee http://bit.ly/36iSmIDPaul Waldman, WP columnist, wrote in an article in The American Prospect
⋙ AmericanProspect, Paul Waldman: William Barr and the Corruption of the Justice Department http://bit.ly/2qSDsZg
// The attorney general is using the full resources of his office in pursuit of preposterous conspiracy theories.
ABCNews: ‘We’re keeping the oil’ in Syria, Trump says, but it’s considered a war crime http://abcn.ws/32WTC1F
🐣 RT @SethAbramson The more you investigate the Trump-Ukraine scandal, the more you realize it’s about the *2016* election—not because anyone wants it to be, but because that’s what it was primarily about for *Trump*. The Biden aspect is significant, but no more so than the Manafort/DNC components. 📌 https://twitter.com/SethAbramson/status/1189003770245648386?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @RonaldKlain John Yoo, who narrowly escaped referral to bar authorities for his torture memo, had the audacity to call a purple heart winner a spy on television tonight. #NewLows
🐣 RT @Amy_Siskind There is no bottom: Fox News host @IngrahamAngle claiming Vindman is a double agent.
⋙ 🐣 RT @ndrew_lawrence Oh my God, look at the spin they are using right now, actually saying that Vindman is a Ukrainian double agent….this is so freaking bananas 💽 https://twitter.com/ndrew_lawrence/status/1189002513594441730?s=20/photo/1
NYT, Michelle Goldman: In Praise of ‘Human Scum’ http://nyti.ms/2PqSGPi
// It’s not easy to turn your back on political comrades.
NYT: As Kurds Tracked ISIS Leader, U.S. Withdrawal Threw Raid Into Turmoil http://nyti.ms/2Neb8I4
// Trump’s decision to pull troops from Syria upended a 5-year alliance and threw the plans against al-Baghdadi into disarray.
🐣 RT @tburages John Eisenberg, according to this Politico article, was the lawyer who ordered the call record be hidden on the ultra-secret classified server.
⋙ Politico: The lawyer at the center of the Ukraine vortex http://politi.co/2MVveYQ
// Meet John Eisenberg, the White House attorney whose actions are coming under scrutiny in Democrats’ impeachment probe.
🐣 RT @MsEnergyHealer “At the direction of his superiors [Bolton]…Colonel Vindman drafted a memorandum in mid-August that sought to restart security aid that was being withheld from Ukraine, but Mr. Trump refused to sign it, according to documents reviewed by the Times.”
🐣 RT @juliehdavis An NSC Ukraine expert complained to WH lawyers about Trump’s appeal to Zelensky to investigate Biden. Lt. Col. Alexander S. Vindman will be 1st impeachment witness who heard July 25 call. “This would all undermine U.S. national security,” he will testify
🔆 This❗️⋙ NYT: Army Officer Who Heard Trump’s Ukraine Call Reported Concerns http://nyti.ms/345FUcY
// The top Ukraine expert at the White House will tell impeachment investigators he twice reported concerns about President Trump’s pressure tactics on Ukraine, acting out of a “sense of duty.” FULL Statement: http://bit.ly/32THfn3
A White House national security official who is a decorated Iraq war veteran plans to tell House impeachment investigators on Tuesday that he heard President Trump appeal to Ukraine’s president to investigate one of his leading political rivals, a request the aide considered so damaging to American interests that he reported it to a superior.
Lt. Col. Alexander S. Vindman of the Army, the top Ukraine expert on the National Security Council, twice registered internal objections about how Mr. Trump and his inner circle were treating Ukraine, out of what he called a “sense of duty,” he plans to tell the inquiry, according to a draft of his opening statement obtained by The New York Times.
He will be the first White House official to testify who listened in on the July 25 telephone call between Mr. Trump and President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine that is at the center of the impeachment inquiry, in which Mr. Trump asked Mr. Zelensky to investigate former Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr.
“I did not think it was proper to demand that a foreign government investigate a U.S. citizen, and I was worried about the implications for the U.S. government’s support of Ukraine,” Colonel Vindman said in his statement. “I realized that if Ukraine pursued an investigation into the Bidens and Burisma it would likely be interpreted as a partisan play which would undoubtedly result in Ukraine losing the bipartisan support it has thus far maintained.”
“This would all undermine U.S. national security,” Colonel Vindman added, referring to Mr. Trump’s comments in the call.
The colonel, a Ukrainian-American immigrant who received a Purple Heart after being wounded in Iraq by a roadside bomb and whose statement is full of references to duty and patriotism, could be a more difficult witness to dismiss than his civilian counterparts.
“I am a patriot,” Colonel Vindman plans to tell the investigators, “and it is my sacred duty and honor to advance and defend our country irrespective of party or politics.”
🐣 RT @Bill_Maxwell_ A few of the details from Trump’s al-Baghdadi presser were wrong. ¤ Many of the rest were either highly classified or tactically sensitive. ¤ Their disclosure by Trump made intelligence and military officials cringe. ¤ According to past and current officials.
⋙ NBCNews: Officials cringe as Trump spills sensitive details of al-Baghdadi raid http://nbcnews.to/34dVK5F
// Some details the president has revealed are inaccurate, others are classified. Officials say they worry what to put in briefings for a man with no filter.
🐣 RT @mkraju Judge Leon will meet the parties in court at 3 p.m. on Thursday, “due to the time-sensitive nature of the issues raised in this case,” the DC District judge wrote tonight, per @kpolantz on the lawsuit filed by former WH official who defied subpoena
⋙ CNN: Judge kicks newest impeachment lawsuit into high gear http://cnn.it/2Ju539y
Slate, Joshua Keating: After Betraying the Kurds, the U.S. Isn’t Leaving Syria After All http://bit.ly/2qSpNRY
WSJ: Sondland Told House Panels Trump’s Ukraine Pressure Was Quid Pro Quo http://on.wsj.com/362DbD0
// U.S. envoy to EU told House committees that he believed White House meeting was conditioned on Ukraine opening investigations, his lawyer says
NYT: Shifting Course, Democrats Plan First Floor Vote on Impeachment Inquiry http://nyti.ms/2Wt39ve
// House Democrats, who have resisted a floor vote on the impeachment inquiry for weeks, are planning to hold one Thursday to lay out rules for the investigation.
🐣 RT @SpeakerPelosi The House has been following the facts and the evidence has only made the President’s own words on his call more appalling. This resolution will set up the structure for the next phase where the American people can hear those facts for themselves in open hearings. #TruthExposed https://twitter.com/SpeakerPelosi/status/1188930794515062786?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @dcexaminer “Is America ready for a woman and a woman of color to be president of the United States?” ¤ Sen. @KamalaHarris blames campaign struggles on a “difficulty in imagining” a black, female president.
WashingtonExaminer: Kamala Harris blames campaign struggles on ‘difficulty in imagining’ a black, female president http://washex.am/2Wn2RWo
⋙ 🐣 Kamala Harris’s problem is not that she’s a black woman (people are more than ready for Michelle Obama). It’s that she is a hypocrite, weak on policy, had a questionable record as CA AG and she’s a #dramaqueen.
🐣📊 RT @Politics_Polls 2020 National GE:
Biden 52% (+11) Trump 41%
Sanders 50% (+8) Trump 42%
Warren 48% (+4) Trump 44%
Harris 47% (+3) Trump 44%
Buttigieg 44% (+1) Trump 43%
@surveyusa 10/15-16 http://bit.ly/2pkQm1F
WaPo, Max Boot: Baghdadi’s death could have been Trump’s finest hour. He messed it up anyway. http://wapo.st/2Js0qN8
🐣 RT @BrookingsInst .@SpeakerPelosi announced today that the House will vote on formalizing impeachment proceedings. Here’s what @Susan_Hennessey, @mollyereynolds, and @MargLTaylor had to say about procedural fairness and perceptions of legitimacy for the inquiry:
⋙ Lawfare, Susan Hennessey, Molly E. Reynolds and Margaret Taylor (Oct 3): How Should the House Handle Impeachment? http://bit.ly/2NjBys7
WaPo, Robert Costa and Philip Rucker: ‘It feels like a horror movie’: Republicans feel anxious and adrift defending Trump http://wapo.st/348HoDp
DailyBeast, Betsy Swan and Adam Rawnsley: Ukrainian Oligarch Seethed About ‘Overlord’ Biden for Years http://bit.ly/32V912u
// Dmytro Firtash’s lawyers say his team had to investigate Joe Biden to defend their client. One expert says Biden pushed reforms that cost the oligarch up to $400 million per year.
🐣 RT @propublica Lev Parnas, recently indicted for foreign influence in U.S. elections, collaborated closely with The Hill’s John Solomon to fuel spurious allegations involving the Bidens and Ukraine.
⋙ ProPublica: How a Veteran Reporter Worked with Giuliani’s Associates to Launch the Ukraine Conspiracy http://bit.ly/2Jq3R72
// 10/25/2019; Lev and Igor; Lev Parnas, recently indicted for foreign influence in U.S. elections, collaborated closely with The Hill’s John Solomon to fuel spurious allegations involving the Bidens and Ukraine.
NYT, Zach Dorfman: How Trump Is Helping Russia Help Trump Again http://nyti.ms/2Nkl8Qk
// The efforts by presidential associates like Rudy Giuliani in Ukraine are helping set up a 2020 disinformation campaign.
⭕ 27 Oct 2019
💽 CBSNews: 60Minutes: Joe Biden defends his son Hunter’s Ukraine dealings, answers for his gaffes in 60 Minutes interview http://cbsn.ws/2q2HQEn 17mind
DailyBeast, Julia Davis: Russia: Trump’s Baghdadi Victory Lap Is Nothing But ‘Propaganda’ http://bit.ly/366ZjfL
// The Russian Defense Ministry also disputed claims that Russia provided access to U.S. air units entering airspace it controls.
🐣 RT @kasparov63 Or are we to believe that it’s a coincidence that al-Baghdadi was in the only house left standing after all of Putin and Assad’s bombing of Idlib? Either they gave him up or simply declined to warn him this time.
🐣 RT @kasparov63 Isn’t it obvious that this is what happened here? Surely Putin & Erdogan gave up al-Baghdadi in exchange for Trump abandoning northern Syria and the Kurds. A quid pro quo, I believe it is called.
⋙ 🐣 RT @chessninja People we call US allies always seem to be harboring the world’s worst terrorists. When it suits them, they can kick them out or share their whereabouts. They’re just bargaining chips, like everything else to such regimes. 📌 https://twitter.com/chessninja/status/1188533602528776193?s=20
🐣 RT @julianbarnes NEW: The Baghdadi might have been like a movie, but Trump watched overhead drone video, not body cam footage–so he didn’t see anyone whimper or cry. @helenecooper @Tmgneff
⋙ NYT: Watching the Raid Was Like a Movie, the President Said. Except There Was No Live Audio. http://nyti.ms/369CurF
// Surveillance video provided a dramatic portrait of action outside the al-Baghdadi compound, but could not show what happened in an underground tunnel where the ISIS leader died. For that, Mr. Trump would have to hear from Delta Force, or their commanders.
🐣 RT @RickTyler Trump was kept in the dark about operational planning to get al-Bahgdadi. Military, intelligence and counterterrorism officials said @realDonaldTrump ’s decision to withdraw troops from Northern Syria disrupted careful planning. – @nytime
⋙ NYT: Trump’s Syria Troop Withdrawal Complicated Plans for al-Baghdadi Raid http://nyti.ms/2Wjz54Z
// President Trump’s abrupt decision to pull forces from northern Syria forced the Pentagon to press ahead with a risky night operation that killed the ISIS leader, military officials said.
JustSecurity, by Ambassador Dana Shell Smith: How Trump’s Gilding the Lily on Baghdadi Death Will Return to Haunt Americans http://bit.ly/2PyZMl5
// I handled State Dept’s public messaging after we killed bin Laden. I know the risks.
🐣 RT @JoyceWhiteVance As a prosecutor, I was taught that when a witness looks down & to the right as they answer, it’s a signal they are not being truthful.
⋙ 🐣 RT @FaceTheNation UKRAINE CONTROVERSY: “I can only tell you what I know…what I know is the transcript shows there was no quid pro quo in all of my interactions with President Zelensky,” @VP tells @margbrennan of @realdonaldtrump ‘s controversial call with Ukraine’s president. 💽 https://twitter.com/JoyceWhiteVance/status/1188499047201591296?s=20/photo/1 // Mike Pence
⋙ 🐣 RT @JoyceWhiteVance A lot of folks seem to take issue with this, so I’ll note, this is one of many tools prosecutors use for deciding whether they have confidence in a witness & want to put them in front of a jury. Ultimately, it’s up to juries, not prosecutors, to decide what the truth is.
NYT, David Sanger: Al-Baghdadi Raid Was a Victory Built on Factors Trump Derides http://nyti.ms/2WgSRyb
// The president cast the death of the ISIS leader as validation of his disengagement strategy. But it required intelligence agencies and allies he has spurned.
🐣 RT @B52Malmet Engel: Kurds aren’t celebrating Baghdadi’s death while their homeland is destroyed. Trump can trumpet the capture of one terrorist. But he has ethnic cleansing of a whole people on his hands.
⋙ MSNBC, AlexWitt: Engel: Kurds aren’t celebrating Baghdadi’s death while their homeland is destroyed http://on.msnbc.com/2WiHPbD
// NBC News Chief Foreign Correspondent Richard Engel joins Alex Witt to break down the U.S. operation that killed ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi. Engel then explains that the mood in northern Syria is not one of celebration because the Kurds, long terrorized by ISIS and happy about the death of Baghdadi, cannot celebrate because they are currently fighting a war with Turkey.
DailyBeast, Spencer Ackerman: Baghdadi Is Dead. The War on Terror Will Create Another. http://bit.ly/2MS6kJK
// A U.S. raid doomed the leader of the so-called Islamic State. But there will be another Baghdadi, and another ISIS, as long as the Forever War keeps going.
DailyBeast, Adam Rawnsley: The Kurds Spotted Baghdadi back in March. The U.S. Abandoned Them Anyway. http://bit.ly/2q2xjJl
// Back in March, America’s closest allies in Syria were telling the world where Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi was. If Team Trump found the information valuable, they didn’t show it.
WaPo, Bret McGurk: Baghdadi’s death underscores what we’ve lost by abandoning Syria’s Kurds http://wapo.st/2MSnJlB Brett McGurk served from 2015 to 2018 as a special presidential envoy for the Global Coalition to Defeat ISIS.
WaPo, Dan Zak: Whistleblowers walk among us. Now one has gotten in Trump’s head. http://wapo.st/32TJ4jU
NYT, Thomas Friedman: Al-Baghdadi Is Dead. The Story Doesn’t End Here. http://nyti.ms/31ObIlm
// President Trump boasts of defeating the Islamic State. He’s only showing how ignorant he is.
NYT, Margaret O’Mara: The ‘Deep State’ Exists to Battle People Like Trump http://nyti.ms/2Wh8mWG
// A merit-based system for hiring federal employees was created in reaction to the rampant corruption of the Gilded Age.
DailyBeast: National Security Adviser Robert O’Brien Says Russia is ‘Not an Ally,’ Can’t Explain Why Trump Thinks They Are http://bit.ly/2NfGYEp [re: @MTP]
🐣 RT @JoeBiden I congratulate our special forces, our intelligence community, and all our brave military professionals on delivering justice to the terrorist Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi. The world is better and safer without him in it. [Full statement:] Text Block: https://twitter.com/JoeBiden/status/1188474466155802624?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @fabricedp [Two war room photos] https://twitter.com/fabricedp/status/1188465073561460736?s=20/photo/1-2
// Osama bin Laden, al Baghdadi; Obama vs Trump
⋙ 🐣 What a brilliant contrast. I bet most GOP think the Trump war room photo is a “better” photo and most Dems think the Obama war room photo is far “better.” And therein lies the key to understanding our polarization.
🐣 The Kurds suffered 10,000 soldiers killed defeating ISIS and imprisoned 10,000 men “assumed to be ISIS” (NPR). Credit where credit is due. The Kurds defeated ISIS with our technical and air support, then we abandoned them. The question now is: Will ISIS re-emerge?
🐣 RT @CSIS The United States has squandered its leverage in Syria. Still, it has major interests there and should take immediate steps to responsibly mitigate the fallout.@csis_isp expert @natsecdalton take on the withdrawal of U.S. forces from northeast Syria.
⋙ CSIS, Melissa Dalton (10/17): When the Toll Comes Due: U.S. Failures in Syria and Next Steps http://bit.ly/2pZXsZe
🐣 I can’t think of any “test results” that could do this other than DNA testing which can take a while (DOD may have faster version than commercial) plus you need DNA prev from the same person or from close relatives. Dental records? Fingerprints?
🐣 RT @JuliaDavisNews Trump claims that Russia and Iraq helped the U.S. with al-Baghdadi operation. Meanwhile, Russia’s Defense Ministry says they know nothing about it, scoffing at Trump’s claims: “News of al-Baghdadi”s demise come after he was reported dead on several occasions in recent years…”
🐣 RT @RichardHaass The irony of the successful operation against al-Baghdadi is that it could not have happened w/o US forces on the ground that have been pulled out, help from Syrian Kurds who have been betrayed, and support of US intelligence community that has so often been disparaged.
WSJ: Sondland Told House Panels Trump’s Ukraine Pressure Was Quid Pro Quo http://on.wsj.com/362DbD0
// U.S. envoy to EU told House committees that he believed White House meeting was conditioned on Ukraine opening investigations, his lawyer says
Politico, Natasha Bertrand: ‘This is going to do lasting damage’: Impeachment leaves Ukraine policy in chaos http://politi.co/2JrfkDs
// The probe of President Trump’s conduct has created a cloud of uncertainty from Washington to Kyiv.
🐣 So will Trump praise and take credit for the work of the deepest part of the “deep state” – the CIA – that he so far has done nothing but vilify and demoralize?
⭕ 26 Oct 2019
CNN, Marshall Cohen: By pressing Zelensky for political favors, Trump upended US support for ‘rule of law’ in Ukraine http://cnn.it/2okM8qg
WaPo: Giuliani associates claimed to have sway with both foreign billionaires and Trump administration officials http://wapo.st/2Nevj8U
// Lev and Igor
WaPo: Elijah Cummings: We are in a fight for the soul of our democracy http://wapo.st/32OBB5G This op-ed is adapted from a foreword that Cummings wrote July 17 for the forthcoming book, “In Defense of Public Service” by Cedric L. Alexander. Cummings died Oct 17.
🐣 RT @JohnWDean Unlike Nixon’s defenders, Trump has a really weak team. This report of the GOP defense is pathetic, but with Nunez, Jordan and Meadow at the top of your team, you are easily out done. Not to mention Trump’s criminal shakedown is, in fact, indefensible!
🐣 Here’s the joke: No one not on Twitter knows who Baghdadi is ~ least of all, Trump voters.
💙🐣 RT @jasonintrator A chilling @emilybazelon piece on the growing threat of authoritarianism
⋙ NYT, Emily Bazelon: Who Is Bill Barr? http://nyti.ms/2MOWCHL
WaPo: John Kelly says he warned Trump he’d be impeached if he hired a ‘yes man’ as chief of staff to replace him http://wapo.st/2Pnkfcs //➔ and whuddaya know
NYT: Key Witness in Impeachment Inquiry Asks Federal Court to Rule Over Testifying http://nyti.ms/31RxBjs
// The move raises new doubts about whether President Trump’s closest aides will be able to cooperate with the inquiry.
Medium, Rick Wilson: Is William Barr the Head of DOJ or QAnon? http://bit.ly/31PLZcj
// John Durham’s investigation of the Russia probe as a criminal matter is further proof that the Justice Department is a tool for Trump now
● Text Block: https://twitter.com/Auriandra/status/1188288597985824770?s=20/photo/1
Trump seeks not only to destroy the people who tried to reveal the truth about Russia and 2016, but also to intimidate anyone else who dares to tell the truth about his rampant, ongoing regime of corruption and malfeasance. Barr is his weapon, his tool, his agent of vengeance.
That the MAGA and QAnon crowds see Durham as an avenging angel, a death-dealing wild dog here to maul and devour the Deep State, is both laughable and horrifying. Their fantasies of roundups, mass arrests, secret indictments, and one-way tickets to GITMO for anyone connected to the operations to identify and neutralize Russian election interference are a common element of their wishcasting. They’re convinced Durham will open the floodgates and bust open a conspiracy that doesn’t exist.
🐣 RT @thehill “What was working in Syria was that for very little investment, the Kurds were doing all the fighting, the vast majority of the dying, and we were providing intelligence and fire support assistance. And we were winning.”
⋙ TheHill: John Kelly: Pulling out of Syria was a catastrophic idea http://bit.ly/31R1oZQ
🐣 RT @kylecheney JUST IN: Pointing to yesterday’s ruling declaring their impeachment inquiry valid, House investigation leaders demand that KUPPERMAN (Bolton’s deputy) honor their subpoena. https://twitter.com/kyledcheney/status/1188228696601174018?s=20/photo/1-4 📌 https://twitter.com/kyledcheney/status/1188228696601174018?s=20
NYT, Peter Baker: Waiting for Bolton: A Capital Speculates on What He Will Say http://nyti.ms/2NjH6D7
// As the House impeachment inquiry enters its second month, there may be no witness investigators want to question more than John R. Bolton, the president’s former national security adviser.
Mr. Bolton implicitly criticized Mr. Trump’s foreign policy, declaring that “despite all the friendly notes and photo ops, North Korea isn’t our friend and never will be.” But he also wrote that the nation’s security “is under attack from within,” citing “radicalized Democrats.”
The conflicting signals were maddening. After either resigning or being fired last month depending on whose version is to be believed, is Mr. Bolton so estranged from Mr. Trump that he might provide damaging testimony to House investigators? Or does he share the president’s view of out-of-control Democrats pursuing an illegitimate impeachment out of partisan excess?
WaPo: In impeachment inquiry, Republican lawmakers ask questions about whistleblower, loyalty to Trump and conspiracy theories http://wapo.st/2BI4Dbp
⭕ 25 Oct 2019
💙💙 TheMoscowProject: Dmitry Firtash: A Familiar Face in a New Scandal http://bit.ly/34kHbNu All about Rudy, Lev, Igor and Firtash, including a timeline
💙💙 NYT Editorial: Thanks, Whistle-Blower, Your Work Is Done http://nyti.ms/2Wh14lJ Whistle-blower complaint, annotated with corroboration
NBCNews, Josh Lederman: Impeachment hearings depict a quid pro quo that evolved over time http://nbcnews.to/347Ji7r
// After some 65 hours of testimony along with public comments from Trump, his aides and allies, a clear portrait is emerging.
WaPo Editorial: In Trump’s world, Syria is a success. In the real world, it’s a humiliation. http://wapo.st/31NGQkS
🐣 RT @HouseJudiciary NEW: Chairman @RepJerryNadler released the following statement after Chief Judge Beryl Howell ordered the Department of Justice to turn over redacted 6(e) grand jury material from Special Counsel Mueller’s report by October 30, 2019. https://twitter.com/HouseJudiciary/status/1187838217002934272?s=20/photo/1
NBCNews: Watchdogs inside government blast DOJ for not referring Ukraine whistleblower to Congress http://nbcnews.to/32QYs0o
// The watchdogs say the Office of Legal Counsel’s decision not to forward the complaint to Congress could “undermine the critical role whistleblowers play.”
💙 NYT: Impeachment Inquiry Is Legal, Judge Rules, Giving Democrats a Victory http://nyti.ms/2WgMevv
// The declaration came in a 75-page opinion by Chief Judge Beryl A. Howell of the Federal District Court in Washington. She ruled that the House Judiciary Committee was entitled to view secret grand jury evidence gathered by the special counsel, Robert S. Mueller III.
DailyBeast, Adam Rawnsley: The Powerful Ukrainian Oligarch With a Stake in Trumpworld’s Search for Biden Dirt http://bit.ly/2oeuqEO
// He’s wanted by U.S. authorities and has been linked to Russian organized crime, but his interests have strangely aligned with those in Trumpworld recently. Meet Dmytro Firtash.
LawFare, Benjamin Wittes: The Collapse of the President’s Defense http://bit.ly/2BGxSer
// Ukraine, impeachment
🐣 RT @BarbMcQuade The end game of discrediting U.S. intelligence is not only to vindicate Trump, but also to remove sanctions on Russia.
💙 🐣 RT @MarkWarner Senate Intel is wrapping up a three-year bipartisan investigation, and we’ve found nothing remotely justifying this. ¤ Mr. Barr’s “investigation” has already jeopardized key international intelligence partnerships. ¤ He needs to come before Congress and explain himself.
⋙ NYT: [10/24] Breaking News: The Justice Dept. is said to have opened a criminal inquiry into its own Russia investigation, which is likely to raise alarms of political payback http://nyti.ms/2ohlM8z
JustSecurity, Jean Galbraith and Michel Paradis: George Washington’s Advisors Agreed: Impeachment Did Away with Executive Privilege http://bit.ly/2PjcJPz
🐣 RT @sarrahkendzior “There are rational reasons to be afraid. But bravery is continuing to act for what’s right in the face of that fear. It’s not a lack of fear, it’s persevering, and that’s what Cummings did until the very end.” — @gaslitnation
🐣 RT @gregolear Let’s talk about Donald Trump and his intimate relationship with organized crime—the only partner he’s ever been faithful to his whole life. 📌 https://twitter.com/gregolear/status/1187679439196426242?s=20
🐣 RT @BillKristol Isn’t Lindsey Graham’s resolution a sign of weakness? Key point: It’s not a defense of the president. It’s a criticism of House Democrats which, when the committees release the transcripts and move to open hearings and then the floor, becomes moot. And it only has 44 sponsors.
DailyBeast, Sam Brodey and Sam Stein: Senate GOP to Trump: You’re Not Helping Yourself by Attacking Us http://bit.ly/364YNPh
// “It’s exhausting and they don’t know what they don’t know in terms of where this is going,” one Senate GOP operative said of the Trumpworld pressure on them.
💙🐣 RT @KenDilanian New: In letter, Inspectors General repudiate DoJ OLC opinion that the whistleblower’s complaint was not an “urgent concern.” https://twitter.com/KenDilanianNBC/status/1187711845014089728?s=20/photo/1-4
↥ ↧
🐣 ≣ RT @WaltShaub The Inspector General council writes: “the OLC opinion, if not withdrawn or modified, could seriously undermine the critical role whistleblowers play in coming forward to report waste, fraud, abuse, and misconduct across the federal government” http://bit.ly/2NcYR6R
🐣 RT @MalcolmNance WARNING: I heard a DC rumor fm a close Trump source in May 2017 he wanted to charge Obama, Biden, Brennen & Clinton w/treason over Russia. Now with Barr as AG this may be crazy but viable. It could incite civil unrest…the ultimate distraction to help steal an election. #Standby
⋙⋙ 🐣 RT @B52makmet This is the next level bs conspiracy theory Barr is gonna now sell to the American people- that it was the Obama administration which set up the whole “Russia thing” – they want to hang this on OBAMA. Barr going around the world trying to get other countries to back this up.
⋙ 🐣 I’ve come across this theory on alt-alt-right crazytown Twitter. I just don’t think truth or the ranks of patriotic civil servants can be bent that far. 🙏
🐣 RT @JuliaDavisNews Firtash’ lawyers have another client: The columnist who pushed Biden corruption claims. “John Solomon has been a client of our firm for a very long time,” Joe diGenova told POLITICO. “He’s a journalist and he has legal needs, like many journalists.”
💙 ⋙ Politico: Lawyers for Ukrainian oligarch have another client: The columnist who pushed Biden corruption claims http://politi.co/2qFmWvq
// Conservative legal duo Joe diGenova and Victoria Toensing represent gas tycoon Dmitry Firtash as well as the writer John Solomon.
🐣 RT @brett_mcgurk I sincerely hope the US-led @coalition will support Iraq and the Kurdistan Region as it receives over 1,000 refugees per day from what was a stable NE Syria. Congress can also help ensure SIV processing. It would be doubly shameful to wash our hands.
🐣 RT @masroor_barzani Important cabinet meeting today. On Syria, KRG stands committed to supporting those in the most need and we have a response plan in place to accommodate over 1,000 refugees crossing each day. This is an international crisis and we call on our partners to support.
🐣 RT @cassandra17lina #FlashbackFriday to #Watergate, where 40 of #Nixon’s “faithful” went to prison. You might remember the #WatergateSeven, but the rest were tossed into the ash-heap of history, where many of #Trump’s “faithful” will soon be joining them. https://twitter.com/cassandra17lina/status/1187704593184149505?s=20/photo/1
// NYT front page
📊 FiveThirtyEight: 53.1% Support Impeachment Process (41.9% Don’t) http://53eig.ht/2N5MJV2 https://twitter.com/Auriandra/status/1187706390221148160?s=20/photo/1
📊 FiveThirtyEight: 48.1% Support Impeachment and Removal from Office (43.7% Don’t) http://53eig.ht/2N5MJV2 https://twitter.com/Auriandra/status/1187706456902164481?s=20/photo/1
📊 FiveThirtyEight: Trump Favorability lowest since Feb 2018 http://53eig.ht/2MJpIt2
📊 FiveThirtyEight: Trump Favorability lowest since Feb 2018 https://t.co/lleNKboqP9 pic.twitter.com/rkKXi80DwP
— 🇺🇸 Auriandra 🇺🇦 (@Auriandra) October 25, 2019
// Fav 40.7%, Unfav 54.6%
⭕ 24 Oct 2019
💙 EmptyWheel, Marcy Wheeler: If the AG Is Involved in a Foreign Influence Operation, Does He Have to Register with Himself? http://bit.ly/2MYDEi8
WIRED, Garrett Graff: Pompeo Was Riding High—Until the Ukraine Mess Exploded http://bit.ly/2q0jeMQ
// The US secretary of state may be a Trump favorite, but the Ukraine scandal appears to threaten Mike Pompeo’s ambitions for higher office.
NBCNews: The moment that shocked the room during Taylor’s Ukraine testimony http://nbcnews.to/2NbdYhg
// The former acting ambassador described a meeting that connected Trump to the withholding of U.S. aid.
WaPo, Neal Katyal: No, Trump couldn’t shoot someone without being investigated for it http://wapo.st/2W9t8HU
// The president is arguing that he’s completely above the law. He’s wrong.
💽 Crooks&Liars, Aliza Worthington: Former Rep. Liz Holtzman On Trump: ‘A Threat To Our Democracy’ http://bit.ly/2BJbTUe
🐣 RT @anneapplebaum This is exactly what the Polish government did in an attempt to kill off independent media. First ban all govt office subscriptions, then pressure advertisers…
⋙ Axios: White House to order federal agencies to end NYT and WaPo subscriptions http://bit.ly/2PjYSIO
WashingtonExaminer: DOJ inspector general says report on alleged FISA abuses ‘nearing completion’ http://washex.am/32XOwlK
🐣 RT @lotteleicht1 In adopted Res, #EU Parliament “firmly rejects #Turkey’s plans to establish a so-called safe zone along the border in northeast #Syria ..stresses that any forcible transfer of Syrian refugees ..to this area would constitute a grave violation of” int’l law.https://trib.al/q1VlBvX
🐣 need an instant vacay? visit my Twitter list
“Pictures and Poetry”
it’s addictive
https://mobile.twitter.com/Auriandra/lists/pictures-poetry
🐣 RT @normative The NYT reporters do at least lampshade the odd specificity of what sources were willing to confirm: “It was not clear what potential crime Mr. Durham is investigating, nor when the criminal investigation was prompted.”
🐣 RT @jdawsey1 US trade office recommended Ukraine be given trade privileges earlier this year. Just before papers went to POTUS desk in August, it was pulled back. Bolton told USTR head Robert Lighthizer that POTUS wanted to do nothing to help Ukraine. w/@davidjlynch
🐣 RT @joshtpm All of this together again makes clear that President Trump is a clear and present danger to the American Republic. Bill Barr does his bidding. The entire Republican Party supports him. Only the Democratic Party stands in their way.
🐣 RT @Voter99percent @maddow Diversion? ¤ Maybe Trump and Barr are simply bent on clearing Russia and Putin of U.S. election interference.
All roads lead to Putin.
Trump and Barr desperately needs to find some way or something to divert from impeachment hearings. Maddow just divert over 30 minutes.
⋙ The story hit just as she was coming on air. I want to think it’s a diversion ~ create a headline to force the impeachment news to the background for a day or two. We’ll see. I wish I could still drink.
⋙ 🐣 The story hit just as she was coming on air. I want to think it’s a diversion ~ create a headline to force the impeachment news to the background for a day or two. We’ll see. I wish I could still drink.
🐣 Well, when it comes to the NYT story, there seem to be two types of people: a) the calm-downer (“Trump just wants a headline”) people, and b)💥 The Republic is 💥 Exploding 💥 people. I wish there were more of the former than the latter. @maddow
🐣 RT @BradMossEsq I have no idea what John Durham found nor the basis for his decision to move to a criminal phase of his inquiry. If he actually found something that met the threshold for criminal activity, so be it, but so far I remain skeptical this is going to be the bombshell Trump wants.
🐣 RT @RichardEngel There is something I call the Dictator’s Treadmill: once you get on, you can’t get off, because falling off means ending up in jail. It’s something I often consider wherever I report. What options does the leader have, and what is he/she willing to do not to fall off?
🐣 RT @UrbanAchievr Remember, all Trump wanted from Ukraine was an announcement of an investigation into Biden on CNN. He wanted a headline. ¤ What is the political leadership at Justice giving Trump at a time when his Republican support is wavering? A headline.
NewYorker, Susan Glasser: On “Human Scum” and Trump in the Danger Zone http://bit.ly/2N8BR92
// After Ambassador William Taylor’s testimony, the President is freaking out about impeachment.
🐣 RT @MSNBC “This effort by the president to create or inflate a sense of threat is something you see authoritarian leaders use across the globe. It creates justification for leaders to dismantle institutions.” – Fmr. CIA analyst Andrea Kendall-Taylor
⋙ MSNBC, Hardball: Fmr. intel officer says Trump’s attacks on intel community sends ‘chilling effect’ http://on.msnbc.com/2N9VKwD
// President Trump’s attacks on public servants is part of a larger war “fomented in part by far-right media and conspiracy theorists who have gained favor” with the president. That’s according to the New York Times, which reports that those public servants feel: denigrated, sidelined, or forced out of jobs by a president who marinates in suspicion. The Trump administration has lost nearly 1200 senior career service employees. That’s according to the Partnership for Public Service.
🐣 RT @ezraklein Bill Barr is the most mysterious character in the whole Trump drama. He watched Trump’s fury build towards Sessions and decided to become the loyalist AG even Sessions refused to be. Why light your legacy on fire this way? What’s the endgame?
🐣 RT @matthewamiller Even with Trump as president, I never thought DOJ could become politicized this badly. Incredibly dangerous moment for our country.
⋙ 🐣 RT @matthewamiller We know more about the Russia investigation than probably any probe in DOJ’s history, and haven’t seen a single shred of evidence that would provide a predicate for a criminal investigation. This looks like a Trump takeover of law enforcement, plain and simple.
🔆 This❗️⋙ NYT: Justice Dept. Is Said to Open Criminal Inquiry Into Its Own Russia Investigation http://nyti.ms/2BFgruT
// The move is likely to open the attorney general to accusations that he is trying to deliver a political victory for President Trump.
JustSecurity, Barbara McQuade and Joyce Vance: United States of America v. Rudolph W. Giuliani http://bit.ly/2N8LDbq
// Former U.S. Attorneys draft a “Mock Indictment” based on publicly available evidence of Giuliani’s misconduct.
🐣 RT @DanRather Per the GOP stunt of their “brave” storming of Capitol Hill, that old Carl Sandburg quote comes to mind:
“If the facts are against you, argue the law. If the law is against you, argue the facts. If the law and the facts are against you, pound the table and yell like hell.”
🐣 RT @smk429 Spot on ¤ @GOP ¤ “They should stop worrying about saving their seats and start worrying about saving their souls. They should start worrying about what their grandchildren will say about them as they’re accomplices to this assault on the Constitution” -Max Boot @MaxBoot
🐣 RT @weinbergersa EXCLUSIVE: A DHS intelligence assessment obtained by @YahooNews warns Russia is still active in disinformation campaigns and looking to 2020 as a “key opportunity.” ¤ Also say sanctions and other measures haven’t worked.
⋙ YahooNews: DHS warns of Russian interference plans in 2020 elections, as Washington focuses on Ukraine http://yhoo.it/362Lui5
YahooNews: DHS warns of Russian interference plans in 2020 elections, as Washington focuses on Ukraine http://yhoo.it/362Lui5
🔆 This❗️⋙ Axios: Turkey’s Erdogan calls on U.S. to hand over top Kurdish commander http://bit.ly/2NcYbOO
WSJ: U.S. Weighs Leaving More Troops, Sending Battle Tanks to Syria http://on.wsj.com/340Hay2
// The options represent a shift from the pullout President Trump wanted and modify U.S. objectives—from countering Islamic State to also protecting oil fields
🐣 RT @FaceTheNation [7/25/2018] Rep. @TGowdySC on the House hearings with Peter Strzok and Lisa Page: Well, our private hearing was much more constructive than the public hearing. Public hearings are a circus. That’s why I don’t like to do them. I mean, it’s a freak show. 💽 https://twitter.com/FaceTheNation/status/1018511889964437505?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @ananavarro That’s well over 60 Million Americans. ¤ How comforting to know our tax-dollars pay her salary.
⋙ 🐣 RT @thedailybeast White House Press Secretary Stephanie Grisham says those “against” Trump deserve to be called “human scum” https://trib.al/JjypE4O
🐣 Twice Hillary’s 30 million “Deplorables”
NYT: As Putin Era Begins to Wane, Russia Unleashes a Sweeping Crackdown http://nyti.ms/2MKQctf
// A wave of arrests against journalists, opposition activists, doctors and religious believers raises a question: Is this a police state in the making or just a highly dysfunctional one?
TheAtlantic, Eliot Cohen: Trump’s Character Betrays Him http://bit.ly/2JlNLeB
// In foreign policy, reputation means everything.
🐣 RT @mikecarpenter Shame on DOD for trying to intimidate my successor, Laura Cooper, to prevent her from speaking to the House impeachment inquiry. Laura’s a professional who has served with honor and distinction under R and D admins. She does not deserve this crap.
⋙ NYT: Read the Trump Administration’s Warning Letter to Laura Cooper http://nyti.ms/2ohmQth
// The No. 2 Pentagon official told Ms. Cooper, the military’s Russia-Ukraine expert, not to talk to Congress. She did anyway.
WaPo, Michael Gerson: Senate Republicans must weigh the full cost of complicity http://wapo.st/345RSDL
WaPo: White House delayed Ukraine trade decision in August, a signal that U.S. suspension of cooperation extended beyond security funds http://wapo.st/2NbmVab
NYT Editorial: Donald Trump’s ‘Very Special’ Victory in Syria http://nyti.ms/2BIFLjz
// It’s certainly special for Erdogan, Putin and al-Assad.
Politico, Ben Levebvre: Democrats eyeing Ukraine oligarch in probe of Giuliani associates’ campaign contributions http://politi.co/32MVOsw
🐣 RT @JoyceWhiteVance After investigating for 4 years, Starr gave his report on Clinton to House Judic. Today, the House must investigate Ukraine on its own b/c Barr’s DOJ won’t. This explains closed House sessions-it’s investigation. GOP should be careful what it asks for, Open hearings soon enough.
🐣 RT @JuliaDavisNews #Russia’s state TV: Ukrainian panelist says that he doesn’t usually get involved in U.S. politics, but America can’t stand four more years of Trump. Host Olga Skabeeva tells him: “When we interfere, our candidate usually wins—and yours loses. That’s what happened in 2016.”
WaPo, Max Boot: Trump is helping to demolish a cardinal principle of the postwar order http://wapo.st/2N7ybV7 “In the past, the United States stood by its allies, championed freedom and opposed human rights abuses.”
NYT: Trump’s War on the ‘Deep State’ Turns Against Him http://nyti.ms/2MJxvGl
// The impeachment inquiry is in some ways the culmination of a battle between the president and the government institutions he distrusted and disparaged.
🐣 RT @revrlewis Andrew Napolitano: “As frustrating as it may be to have these hearings going on behind closed doors … they are consistent with the rules. … When were the rules written last? In January of 2015. And who signed them? John Boehner. And who enacted them? A Republican majority.” Fox&Friends 💽 https://twitter.com/revrrlewis/status/1187339967300812800?s=20/photo/1
DailyBeast, Jonathan Alter: The Anti-Shakedown Law That Could Finally Bring Down Trump http://bit.ly/32TzGwZ “The relevant law is the 1946 Hobbs Act”
// When voters hear “no president is above the law,” many want the law in question to be more like something out of a police procedural than a constitutional law seminar.
⭕ 23 Oct 2019
Newsweek: Retired Generals and Admirals: We Call on Trump to Start Living Up to the Values of U.S. Armed Forces http://bit.ly/2NgDO38
TheIntercept, Robert Mackey: Trump Pressed Ukraine’s President to Act Out a Fake News Script, Live on CNN http://bit.ly/31Htuq7
NYT: Italy Did Not Fuel U.S. Suspicion of Russian Meddling, Prime Minister Says http://nyti.ms/2BHuPTj
// Casting holes in a Trump conspiracy theory, Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte revealed details of two visits to Rome by Attorney General William P. Barr.
💽 MSNBC, Hardball: Leon Panetta calls Trump’s Syria pullout the ‘most disastrous foreign policy blunder’ http://on.msnbc.com/2BFfu60
// On Trump’s Syria pullout, Leon Panetta says “This is the most disastrous foreign policy blunder I’ve seen a President of the United States make and it’s sending a terrible message to the world that you can’t trust the United States.”
ForeignAffairs, Michael McFaul: Trump’s Gift to Putin http://fam.ag/2Pepqv5
// The President’s Privatized Foreign Policy Is a Boon for Russia
DailyBeast, Spencer Ackerman and Erin Banco: Pompeo Gets Drawn Deeper—Way Deeper—Into the Ukraine Scandal http://bit.ly/347EbnR
// Amb. Taylor’s deposition moved the Secretary of State to the center of the impeachment probe. House Democrats are redoubling efforts to get him to answer their questions.
Taylor stated that he told Pompeo, who recruited him to helm the embassy in Kyiv, that he would only accept the ambassadorship if Pompeo supported him against what he called “a web of political machinations in Kyiv and in Washington” to undermine U.S. policy supporting Kiev against Moscow. Those machinations had detonated Yovanovich’s like-minded ambassadorship. Pompeo, Taylor said, gave Taylor his desired assurances – meaning that Pompeo knew about the shadow effort as early as that May 28 conversation.
When Taylor arrived in Ukraine in June, he said, he found little evidence of such support from the secretary. Giuliani, Volker, and Sondland seemed to be in charge of the policy, and they were pushing to get Zelensky to publicly commit to investigating the origins of Robert Mueller’s Trump-Russia probe and a firm on whose board Joe Biden’s son sat.
Taylor, as text messages previously released this month made clear, considered all that a disaster undermining the anti-corruption policy he thought he was enforcing. On advice from then-national security adviser John Bolton, Taylor said he wrote an Aug. 29 cable — a formal State Department document — to Pompeo “describing the ‘folly’” he “could not and would not defend.” He told Congress he received “no specific response.”
… Countryman [Thomas Countryman, who retired from State in January 2017 after a three-decade diplomatic career] said, “I think that if Mr. Pompeo ever absorbed any of the leadership lessons I know West Point teaches”—Pompeo, like Taylor, is a graduate of the U.S. Military Academy—“he has long forgotten them.”
🐣 RT @real Neither he (Taylor) or any other witness has provided testimony that the Ukrainians were aware that military aid was being withheld. You can’t have a quid pro quo with no quo.” Congressman John Ratcliffe @foxandfriends Where is the Whistleblower? The Do Nothing Dems case is DEAD
// confession
🐣 RT @DeadlineWH .@mccaffreyr3 gives his take on Trump’s position on Syria w/ @NicolleDWallace: “I’ve worked in 3 administrations… I have never seen anything like this. There’s an Orwellian fantasy quality to what’s coming out of the White House.” 💽 https://twitter.com/DeadlineWH/status/1187137457583771649?s=20/photo/1
WaPo Editorial: The White House resorts to character assassination of courageous public servants http://wapo.st/31G6O9O
WaPo, Philip Bump: When did Ukraine know that Trump had frozen aid? http://wapo.st/2BF9dal
// Why that timing does — and doesn’t — matter
WaPo: Trump administration sought billions of dollars in cuts to programs aimed at fighting corruption in Ukraine and elsewhere http://wapo.st/31JpipU
// Democrats have slammed White House insistence that Trump was focused on corruption — not Bidens — when he blocked Ukraine aid funds.
NYT: White House Aides Feared That Trump Had Another Ukraine Back Channel http://nyti.ms/2W9vTcj
// Senior national security officials grew concerned about Kash Patel, a colleague who had previously been involved in Republicans’ efforts to undermine the Russia investigation.
🐣 RT @tedlieu As a former prosecutor, I know that when the facts and law are not on your side, the defense attacks the process. ¤ It’s no coincidence that Republicans disregarded all rules & norms by storming the SCIF to stop interviews the day after Ambassador Taylor’s devastating testimony.
Bloomberg: Trump Administration Given Deadline to Release Ukraine Documents http://bloom.bg/32FnQpS
● Group demanded records after aborted Rudy Giuliani trip in May
● Judge says administration must release some papers in 30 days
NYT, Thomas Friedman: Trump’s Syria Trifecta: A Win for Putin, a Loss for the Kurds and Lots of Uncertainty for Our Allies – It’s pure genius! http://nyti.ms/31GXJh4
NYT: Ukraine Knew of Aid Freeze by Early August, Undermining Trump Defense http://nyti.ms/2obwT2R
// Top officials were told in early August about the delay of $391 million in security assistance, undercutting a chief argument President Trump has used to deny any quid pro quo.
VanityFair, Abigail: Bill Taylor’s Testimony Puts Trump’s Impeachment in Overdrive http://bit.ly/2Pdu5gX
In the four weeks since Democrats opened an impeachment inquiry into Donald Trump, there has been no testimony as damning to the president as that of Bill Taylor, a career diplomat now serving as acting ambassador to Ukraine, who described a sweeping shadow campaign by Trump and his allies to suborn foreign interference in the 2020 election. “It is a rancorous story about whistle-blowers, [Rudy] Giuliani, side channels, quid pro quos, corruption, and interference in elections. In this story, Ukraine is an object,” Taylor told lawmakers in his opening statement Tuesday.
Over the course of more than nine hours, he meticulously outlined Trump’s efforts to pressure Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky into publicly announcing investigations into Hunter Biden, the former vice president’s son, and an unfounded conspiracy theory that Ukraine framed Russia for election meddling in 2016. And Taylor confirmed that the White House made these investigations a precondition for the release of nearly $400 million in military aid to help Ukraine counter an ongoing Russian invasion—the quid pro quo Trump and his allies have been denying since the story broke.
Even so, Taylor—who testified that the directive to block the military aid came directly from Donald Trump and that E.U. Ambassador Gordon Sondland had conveyed the president’s order that “everything” was contingent on Ukraine launching investigations—was critical to corroborating a fact pattern that will provide the basis for impeachment. “There’s a lot of information. It fills in a lot of blanks. It helps you understand the broader scope of this scheme,” said Congressman Mike Quigley, another member of the intelligence panel. Perhaps most important, he explained, each piece of evidence has reinforced the others. “Nothing I have heard publicly, privately, or whatever, has done anything but corroborate and strengthen that which is in the public record—the whistle-blower’s complaint, the White House version of a transcript [of Trump’s July 25 call with Zelensky].”
NYLawJournal: New York City Bar Calls for US AG William Barr’s Recusal in Ukraine Matter http://bit.ly/32I89OJ
// If Barr does not recuse himself, the bar association’s statement said, “he should resign or, failing that, be subject to sanctions, including possible removal, by Congress.”
🐣 RT @jonfavs AP sources: More than two months before the phone call that launched the impeachment inquiry into President Trump, Ukraine’s newly elected leader told advisers he was worried about pressure from the U.S. president to investigate Democrat Joe Biden. http://apne.ws/XZpANgo
AP: Ukrainian leader felt Trump pressure before taking office http://bit.ly/2pN9wwS
Trump has denied that an investigation of Biden was a condition for releasing military aid as a quid pro quo. But on Tuesday, the senior U.S. diplomat in Ukraine at the time, Ambassador William Taylor, starkly contradicted the president, saying that Trump had demanded that everything Zelenskiy wanted, including the aid and a White House meeting, was conditional on a public vow that he would open an investigation.
Taylor also detailed multiple previously undisclosed diplomatic interactions between Trump’s envoys and senior Ukrainian officials in which the president’s demand to investigate the Bidens in exchange for American aid was clear.
The continued flow of high-tech U.S. weaponry is seen as essential to the survival of the Ukrainian government, which has been mired in a long-running civil war with Russian-aligned separatists in the east of the county.
🐣 RT @MiekeEoyang A few words on why Gaetz stunt to storm the SCIF to disrupt Laura Cooper’s deposition is a VERY serious national security problem. ¤ Note, I worked in that SCIF for HPSCI and handled cybersecurity issues while there. 📌 https://twitter.com/MiekeEoyang/status/1187032800572125191?s=20
🐣 RT @AndrewDesiderio JUST IN: Schiff/Engel/Maloney write to State Dept demanding release of documents “that are directly and highly relevant” to the impeachment probe. ¤ (Bill Taylor referenced his notes a lot yesterday, per sources, & Sondland has said he wants to provide docs but is being blocked.) https://twitter.com/AndrewDesiderio/status/1187046669608804358?s=20/photo/1-2
⋙ 🐣 RT @AndrewDesiderio “These documents include information central to the inquiry’s core area of investigation: the President’s efforts to press Ukraine to initiate investigations that would benefit his personal and political interests, and not the national interest.”
http://bit.ly/31AYnww
🐣 RT @JuliaDavisNews Gaetz is still searching for Captain Kangaroo
⋙ 🐣 RT @sambrodey Matt Gaetz says he’s about to lead this phalanx of House Republicans into the SCIF to check out what’s going on with the whole impeachment thing
🔆 This❗️⋙ NYT: Contradicting Trump, Ukraine Knew of Aid Freeze Before It Became Public http://nyti.ms/2JgpsyW
// Top officials were told in early August about the delay of $391 million in security assistance, undercutting a chief argument President Trump has used to deny any quid pro quo.
💙 WaPo: An overlooked Bill Taylor revelation hints at worse to come from Trump http://wapo.st/33UJRkH //➔ is the Barr investigation into the origins of the Mueller investigation intended to validate the Ukraine conspiracy theory in order to absolve Russia to lift sanctions?
🐣 yesterday’s “no obstruction, no collusion” is today’s “no quid pro quo”
⭕ 22 Oct 2019
EmptyWheel, Marcy Wheeler: How DOJ Worked Overtime to Avoid Connecting the Dots in the Whistleblower Complaint http://bit.ly/31HEUu5
NYT, Sharon LeFraniere: 6 Key Revelations of Taylor’s Opening Statement to Impeachment Investigators http://nyti.ms/2MDbRDG
// with excerpts: William B. Taylor Jr., the top American diplomat in Ukraine, delivered detailed testimony on Tuesday about the actions at the heart of the inquiry.
1. Taylor described an explicit quid pro quo.
2. The White House had two channels on Ukraine policy: official and unofficial. Giuliani helped steer the unofficial policy.
3. Taylor was told Ukraine had to ‘pay up’ before the president would ‘sign a check.’
4. Taylor said Ukrainians would die at the hands of Russian led-forces as a result of the delay in American military aid.
5. Bolton fought the effort to hijack the policy toward Ukraine and Pompeo did not respond directly to complaints, Taylor said.
6. Demands were made for secrecy and career officials, including Taylor, were left in the dark about key events..
🐣 RT @delavegalaw Basically, Trump ordered U.S. officials to hold the President of Ukraine in a hammerlock until he agreed to do what Trump wanted him to do for Trump’s own personal benefit. That’s how crude this shakedown op was. And he did this while Ukraine was under daily attack.
🐣 RT @kyledcheney CICILLINE called Taylor a key witness who should be asked to give public testimony. He also said testimony underscores the importance of John Bolton’s role, and it raises question about why Bolton left the administration when he did.
WaPo, Harry Litman: On impeachment, the Democrats are getting it right http://wapo.st/2qvopV1
🐣 next it’ll be “a holocaust” not a “lynching”; just wait
🐣 RT @Isikof Taylor testifies he sent Pompeo a cable on 8/29 protesting the “folly” of withholding military aid to Ukraine and that he “could not and would not” defend such a policy. Where is it?
🐣 RT @dcpoll Firtash was financing Parnas and Fruman’s activities. ¤ Parnas paid Trump’s free lawyer Giuliani $500K. Ergo, Firtash was financing Giuliani’s dirty work for Trump in Ukraine. ¤ Reminds me of another Firtash bagman: Trump’s free campaign manager, Manafort. 📌 https://twitter.com/dcpoll/status/1183968849890304000?s=20
NYT, Jesse Wegman: Donald Trump’s Quid Pro Quo Is Now a Smoking Gun http://nyti.ms/32Grujl
// Mr. Trump’s own acting envoy, William Taylor, described how the president tried to force Ukraine to advance his political interests.
🐣 RT @mattklewis Just a reminder to Republicans: This won’t go away. Trump is going to do this Every. Damn. Day. You will constantly have to go on the record defending the indefensible. This will be your legacy. This is how history will remember you. This will not stop. He won’t suddenly get well
⋙ 🐣 RT @jdawsey1 A statement from WHITE HOUSE after Trump admin pick Bill Taylor testified all day: “President Trump has done nothing wrong — this is a coordinated smear campaign from far-left lawmakers and radical unelected bureaucrats waging war on the Constitution. There was no quid pro quo.”
🐣 What will this boil down to from GOP POV? ¤ $50k/mo for H Biden ¤ It’s that simple.
🐣 “Lev and Igor” has an “Uday and Qusay” ring to it.
🐣 RT @justinamash Bill Taylor’s testimony is devastating evidence that President Trump engaged in both a corrupt act and a quid pro quo.
🐣 [reply to @YoBusiness1] Thank you! my husband went to @WestPoint_USMA and served two tours in Viet Nam. @SecPompeo of @StateDept is a disgrace. “A cadet shall not lie, cheat or steal or TOLERATE those who do.”
💙 WaPo: Prosecutors flagged possible ties between Ukrainian gas tycoon Firtash and Giuliani associates [Lev and Igor] http://wapo.st/31Bcp11
// weedsy
In September, Firtash’s Austrian lawyers filed in court an affidavit by a former Ukrainian prosecutor [Shokin] in which the prosecutor claimed he was fired because he was investigating then-Vice President Joe Biden’s son Hunter Biden. Giuliani has since cited that document as evidence supporting his claims.
In 2010, WikiLeaks published an internal U.S. diplomatic cable from years earlier in which then-U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine William B. Taylor Jr. wrote that Firtash had “acknowledged ties” to Mogilevich in a private meeting. Taylor wrote that Firtash had denied breaking the law but said “he needed Mogilevich’s approval to get into business in the first place.”
Firtash tried one last-ditch effort to forestall the long-delayed start of his U.S. trial. ¤ That month [June], the energy mogul met Parnas in Vienna through a mutual Ukrainian friend, according to a person familiar with the episode. At the time, Firtash was considering switching lawyers and asked about Toensing and diGenova. Parnas vouched for the couple, whom he had met through Guiliani, and urged Firtash to hire them, the person said.
In recent months, Firtash’s Austrian lawyers filed a court document criticizing the Justice Department in ways that echo Trump’s own attacks on the department, according to a person familiar with the sealed Austrian proceedings.
The attorneys argued that the case against Firtash was politically motivated because Andrew Weissmann, a lawyer working for then-special counsel Robert S. Mueller III, had offered to resolve Firtash’s case if he would implicate Trump and former campaign chairman Paul Manafort in Russian interference in the 2016 election. [Denied]
At the same time, Parnas and Fruman began touting their close ties to Giuliani as they pursued their own business interests. ¤ They… invoked Firtash’s name as they sought business for a new liquefied natural gas company that they had founded in 2018, according to two people familiar with the conversations.
At an energy conference in Houston in March, the two made a pitch to Ukrainian state oil and gas giant Naftogaz, approaching a top official at the company, Andrew Favorov, according to a colleague of Favorov.
Parnas and Fruman told Favorov that they hoped to see new leadership at Naftogaz soon that would be receptive to their proposal and the ouster of then-U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine Marie Yovanovitch, whom they perceived as opposed to their plans. By May, she had been removed from her post on Trump’s orders.
In an interview, Perry [a Naftogaz partner] said Parnas and Fruman’s grand plan included one other element that Favorov found puzzling at the time: They said Naftogaz should put aside financial disputes with Firtash, a decision that could provide a windfall of more than $1 billion for the tycoon.
Meanwhile, Parnas and Fruman were also assisting Giuliani as he sought information in Ukraine to prove his claims that Democrats received help from Ukrainians during the 2016 election and that Biden had orchestrated the 2016 removal of a Ukrainian prosecutor because he was investigating the gas company Burisma, whose board included Biden’s son.
Parnas and Fruman helped connect Giuliani by Skype to Shokin, who alleged to the former New York mayor that his firing was connected to his Biden work. On Sept. 4, Shokin swore out a 12-page affidavit attesting to that same fact, a document Giuliani has waved on television as proof of his allegations.
According to the document, it was prepared “at the request of lawyers acting for Dmitry Firtash.””
🐣 RT @tribelaw To be troubling enough for the IG to classify as “a matter of urgent concern,” a “promise” by POTUS to any of the foreign leaders we know Trump spoke with in July or August (including Kim and Putin) would have to be one betraying our national security. This cannot stand.
⋙ 🐣 RT @ChrisAlbertoLaw Great News! Amy Klobuchar uncovered new corroborating evidence in her probe into AG Barr’s violation of a federal law meant to protect our national security. Barr was required notify the FEC about the whistle-blower’s complaint. He did not. Read more:
⋙ ⋙ MotherJones, Pemy Levi: New Evidence Hints at Another Justice Department Coverup http://bit.ly/2qEmRbD
// Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.) released evidence on Tuesday that the Justice Department buried the whistleblower complaint about President Donald Trump’s call with the Ukrainian president by failing to refer the matter to the Federal Election Commission (FEC).
⋙ 🐣 RT @ChrisAlbertoLaw Note Barr’s possible role in an illegal delay of reporting the whistleblower complaint to Congress. The orchestrated delay is similar to his 3-week delay of the Mueller report. Trump’s Acting Intel Dir. violated a 7-day report-to-Congress requirement citing a DOJ “legal review.”
DailyBeast, Sam Stein, Asawin Suebsaeng and Justin Baragona: Trump Whines That Senate Republicans Are Failing Him on Impeachment and Not Owning Nearly Enough Libs http://bit.ly/2P6Xn0C
// The president and his advisers want Republicans in the Senate to stage their own hearings to counteract what’s happening in the House.
BuzzFeedNews: The Investigation Into Rudy Giuliani’s Associates Has Widened http://bit.ly/2JhqudY
// Federal investigators have acquired records — many obtained earlier this month by BuzzFeed News — showing a whirlwind of lavish spending by Lev Parnas and Igor Fruman, two key operatives who dug up dirt on Joe Biden for President Trump.
NYT, Peter Baker: An Envoy’s Damning Account of Trump’s Ukraine Pressure and Its Consequences http://nyti.ms/2MFWB9b
// William B. Taylor Jr. laid out in visceral terms the potentially life-or-death stakes of what he saw as an illegitimate scheme to pressure Kiev for political help by suspending American security aid.
WaPo, Dana Milbank: Impeachment Diary: The words that could end a presidency http://wapo.st/2W6DDvx
🐣 RT @marty_lederman 1/ Of course the substance of the grotesque breach of constitutional duty Taylor describes is of the upmost importance. But don’t lose sight of three other things: First, as Taylor pleads at the end, don’t forget about the devastating impact …@just_security
📌 https://twitter.com/marty_lederman/status/1186733813503844354?s=20
// Lederman is a law professor at Georgetown
📊 CNN Poll: 50% support impeaching Trump and removing him from office http://cnn.it/32Ilneo
🐣 RT @mccaffreyr3 The Trump White House backed by Sec State Pompeo acts like a third world nation. Incredible trickery, deception, and arrogance mugging the Ukrainians. Withholding Congressional approved military funds for domestic political purposes was chilling.
⋙ 🐣 RT @gregpmiller Bill Taylor took ambassador job in Ukraine with promises he was there to back Kyiv against Russia. Within weeks he realized he was faced with a different threat: the political schemes of the American president. Amazing read @GregJaffe
⋙⋙ WaPo: ‘Alarming circumstances’: A distressed diplomat tells a tale of venal intrigue http://wapo.st/31DOChh
WaPo Editorial: Here’s the quid pro quo proof, Lindsey Graham http://wapo.st/32ETIeq
🐣 RT @RepAdamSchiff It will be said of House Republicans, ¤ When they found they lacked the courage to confront the most dangerous and unethical president in American history, ¤ They consoled themselves by attacking those who did.
🐣 RT @Hardball “We now have Sondland, we have Taylor, we have Giuliani, we have Mulvaney all saying there was a quid pro quo. This, in fact, was a shakedown of a foreign govt for the president’s political purposes. That is against the law.”@clairecmc on Taylor’s testimony. #Hardball 💽 https://twitter.com/hardball/status/1186788309441404930?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @kyledcheney THE LATEST: Bill Taylor has departed after 9.5 hours of testimony that portrayed Trump as the captain of an effort to coerce Ukraine to damage Joe Biden — in part by withholding military aid to the beleaguered nation. Story w/ @AndrewDesiderio
💙💙🔄≣ NYT: Ukraine Top Diplomat William B. Taylor Jr.‘s Statement to the Impeachment Inquiry http://nyti.ms/2P80Yvn
// William B. Taylor Jr., the United States’ top diplomat in Ukraine, delivered testimony to impeachment investigators on Tuesday that described an effort by President Trump to withhold aid for Ukraine until the country’s leader agreed to investigate Mr. Trump’s political rivals.
🐣 .@McFaul The title of your next book should be “The Illiberal Internationale”
// quoting him
🐣 RT @neal_katyal I cannot overstate how damaging this Amb Taylor testimony is to Trump. https://twitter.com/neal_katyal/status/1186734449720848384?s=20/photo/1
🔆 This❗️⋙ WaPo: U.S. envoy says he was told release of Ukraine aid was contingent on public declaration to investigate Bidens, 2016 election http://wapo.st/2MErA5s
WaPo: In Hungary, a Freewheeling Trump Ambassador Undermines U.S. Diplomats http://wapo.st/2PaqxMo
// He brokered a White House meeting for Hungary’s prime minister. He spends $320,000 on parties and takes positions at odds with American policy. He says he knows what President Trump wants.
🐣 My guess: Anonymous is George✛Kellyanne
🐣 RT @TheRickWilson I have rarely read a more devastating indictment of a President and his cronies than that of Taylor. This is chapter-and-verse stuff. Totally indefensible.
≣ From WaPo: Amb Taylor’s full statement [pdf] http://bit.ly/2W3tIH2 apparently a series of photos of the pages https://twitter.com/Auriandra/status/1186736148774830080?s=20/photo/1
// “first draft of history”
WaPo, Jennifer Rubin: Trump has lost the battle to discredit impeachment http://wapo.st/366D2i6
NYT, Andrei Kozyrev: From Russia, With Admiration and Despair http://nyti.ms/2W4jdmR
// When I was the Russian foreign minister, America was a beacon of moral truth. By impeaching Donald Trump, it can become one again.
🐣 RT @mitchellreports On Bill Taylor testimony, @samstein: “Everything we’re getting anecdotally from the Hill is that it’s a remarkable set of testimony, again painting picture of a potentially corrupt process going on at the State Department vis-à-vis Ukraine and withholding military aid.” #AMRstaff
🐣 RT @publicintegrity When Trump announced that he was pulling American troops out of northern Syria, many warned he was removing the head of the campaign to defeat ISIS. Now, it’s clear that Trump handed ISIS its biggest win in years. (via @nytimes)
⋙ NYT: ISIS Reaps Gains of U.S. Pullout From Syria http://nyti.ms/2P7yAcC
// The troop withdrawal ends American operations against the terrorist group conducted jointly with a Kurdish-led militia.
⭕ 21 Oct 2019
💙 NewYorker, Jill Lepore (10/21): The Invention—and Reinvention—of Impeachment http://bit.ly/2pR02kZ “Impeachment is a terrible power because it was forged to counter a terrible power: the despot who deems himself to be above the law”
// It’s the ultimate political weapon. But we’ve never agreed on what it’s for.
Cass Sunstein, who testified before Congress on the meaning of “high crimes and misdemeanors” during the impeachment of William Jefferson Clinton, both Ford and Pelosi were fundamentally wrong. “High crimes and misdemeanors” does have a meaning. An impeachable offense is an abuse of the power of the office that violates the public trust, runs counter to the national interest, and undermines the Republic. To believe that words are meaningless is to give up on truth. To believe that Presidents can do anything they like is to give up on self-government.
The failed impeachment of Andrew Johnson steered the United States toward a regime of racial segregation: the era of Jim Crow, which would not be undone until the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Acts of 1965 were passed, a century later, in the Administration of another Johnson. Johnson’s acquittal undid the Union’s victory in the Civil War, allowed the Confederacy to win the peace, and nearly destroyed the Republic
Not every impeachment brings about a political settlement, good or bad. The failed impeachment of Bill Clinton, in 1999, for lying about his sexual relationship with Monica Lewinsky, settled less than nothing, except that it weakened Americans’ faith in impeachment as anything other than a crudely wrought partisan hatchet, a prisoner’s shiv.
The impeachment of an American President is certain to lead to no end of political mischief and almost certain to fail. Still, worse could happen. Heaven forbid this Republic should become one man’s kingdom.
MotherJones: Read Nancy Pelosi’s “Fact Sheet” About Trump’s Ukraine Call: Truth Exposed http://bit.ly/342ezbY 1. The Shakedown, 2. The Pressure Campaign, 3. The Cover-Up
💙💙🔄◕ WaPo, Kate Rabinowitz and Kevin Schaul: Who’s involved in the Trump impeachment inquiry http://wapo.st/2W673dg
// The House’s impeachment inquiry into President Trump has sought testimony and documents from dozens of witnesses. Some of them are under scrutiny for pursuing foreign policy in Ukraine intended to benefit the president, while others are high-level administration aides who have been called to testify about what they witnessed and their concerns.
WaPo, Michael Gerson: The smoking gun has already been revealed http://wapo.st/32z6Gdw
WaPo, Eugene Robinson: Trump likely saw Pelosi’s overseas trip as a slap in the face. But someone had to do it. http://wapo.st/31EpQNM
WaPo, Jennifer Rubin: Pompeo and Mulvaney beclown themselves http://wapo.st/31D9aGx
🐣 RT @JuliaDavisNews One does wonder what Pompeo thinks he is accomplishing — both in serving a president who betrays allies while empowering Russia and in sacrificing his own credibility for defending policies he would have excoriated under President Barack Obama.
⋙ 💙 WaPo: Putin and Hungary’s Orban helped sour Trump on Ukraine http://wapo.st/2BAh34Q
💙💙 JustSecurity, Ryan Goodman and Alex Potpokaru: The Missing Link: Getting Dirt on Biden Was Key Part of “Investigation into 2016 Election” Too http://bit.ly/2JaX8h2
💙 DailyBeast, Michael Tomasky: Bill Barr’s Plan to Rig 2020 for Trump: Frame ‘Deep State’ for Russia’s 2016 Interference http://bit.ly/2VYSJD8
// As always, what Trump says is the direct opposite of the truth, and he is describing not his opponents but himself. The “deep state” story is Trumpland’s Plan B.
NYT, Ian Buruma: This Is the True End Of Pax Americana http://nyti.ms/2qtcmaJ
// Mr. Trump is taking a wrecking ball to the world order.
🐣 RT @cnnbrk Joe Biden was a top target of Russians who are building a network of accounts designed to look like groups in swing states, new Facebook data shows https://cnn.it/2MyFUfJ
⋙ CNN: Facebook: Russian trolls are back. And they’re here to meddle with 2020 http://cnn.it/2J9A5Ds
📊 FiveThirtyEight: How unpopular is Donald Trump? http://53eig.ht/2MJpIt2 just now https://twitter.com/Auriandra/status/1186333295644237825?s=20/photo/1
// Approve 41.2%, Disapprove 54.4%
WaPo: Netanyahu announces he can’t form a government, opening door for Israeli president to tap political rival to build a coalition http://wapo.st/31CcZvA
NYT: Erdogan’s Ambitions Go Beyond Syria. He Says He Wants Nuclear Weapons. http://nyti.ms/2p06CFb
// A month before invading Kurdish areas in Syria, Turkey’s president said he “cannot accept” the West’s restrictions that keep him from a bomb.
⭕ 20 Oct 2019
🐣 RT @AriMelber What is the clearest Constitutional case for impeaching Trump? ¤ He sought a bribe from Ukraine. ¤ No one can deny that “bribery” is impeachable, because the Constitution *says* it is. ¤ My @washingtonpost article: 📌 https://twitter.com/AriMelber/status/1185961336829894656?s=20
⋙ WaPo: ‘Bribery’ is right there in the Constitution. Trump could be impeached for that. http://wapo.st/35V1bba
// Why wrestle with the meaning of “high Crimes and Misdemeanors”? The president can be accused of an offense that’s already well-defined.
⋙ 🐣 RT @AriMelber A focus on bribery may also distinguish this case from the 2 presidential impeachments in history, neither of which resulted in conviction in the Senate ¤ The Johnson & Clinton cases were bogged down by a difficult question: What defines a high crime or misdemeanor?
⋙ 🐣 RT @AriMelber In those trials, the Senate did not reach a super majority to accept that the alleged offenses were high crimes. ¤ By contrast, no one can deny that bribery is impeachable, because the Constitution says it is.
🐣 RT @KasieDC “…The Kurds carved out their own little enclave. It was peaceful, it was generally egalitarian, it was feminist, it was a unique thing. Men and women fighting together, co-ruling together. They had hopes that this was going to last.” -@RichardEngel in his own words 💽 https://twitter.com/KasieDC/status/1186066564489068544?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @glennkirschner2 AG Barr has abdicated his law enforcement responsibilities in favor of conducting an actual witch hunt, trying to undo the conclusions of both Mueller & Congress regarding Russia’s attack on our 2016 election. BUT Congress is stepping up & stepping in.
TheAtlantic, McKay Coppins: The Liberation of Mitt Romney http://bit.ly/2o3ezch
// The newly rebellious senator has become an outspoken dissident in Trump’s Republican Party, just in time for the president’s impeachment trial.
🐣 RT @DrGJackBrown THREAD: Body Language Analysis No. 4401 Nancy Pelosi’s and Donald Trump’s ‘Meltdown Meeting’ #DonaldTrump
#NancyPelosi #Meltdown #MeltdownMeeting #NancysPoint #BodyLanguage #BodyLanguageExpert #Nonverbal #EmotionalIntelligence 📌 https://twitter.com/DrGJackBrown/status/1186032130255548416?s=20
WaPo: Pelosi leads a surprise delegation to Jordan for ‘vital discussions’ on Syria crisis http://wapo.st/33R53bd
💽 Mediaite: Chris Wallace Brutally Grills Mick Mulvaney as He Attempts to Walk Back Briefing Comments: ‘You Said What You Said!’ http://bit.ly/32AYYQ8
🐣 RT @MeetThePress WATCH: @brett_mcgurk says Trump threw all of American leverage in the Middle East “out the window” with his Oct. 6 phone call. #MTP #IfItsSunday ¤ “I’m afraid that now the future of Syria will be determined by actors who are quite hostile to our interests.” 💽 https://twitter.com/MeetThePress/status/1185933473061785601?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @tribelaw “When tides turn, they often turn quickly and harshly. . . . [T]his week . . . brings to mind Winston Churchill’s words . . . : ‘Now is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning.’”
⋙ WaPo: The Senate is likelier to remove Trump after impeachment than you think http://wapo.st/2MUFcsc
// The history of past acquittals isn’t as helpful to Trump as naysayers believe
NYT, Frank Bruni: How Low Will Trump Go? http://nyti.ms/2W1UOOW
// The president is unabashed, unapologetic and out of control.
ForeignAffairs: Disaster in the Desert http://fam.ag/31xEuGF
// Nov-Dec 2019 issue; Trump’s Middle East Plan Can’t Work
NYT: Pelosi Visits Jordan to Discuss Syria Crisis Amid Shaky Cease-Fire http://nyti.ms/2Mtyw5j
// Speaker Nancy Pelosi led a bipartisan delegation to meet the Jordanian king as an American-brokered truce with Turkey in northern Syria continued to stutter. http://nyti.ms/
NPR: Kurdish General Slams U.S.-Syria Policy; Gen. Petraeus Calls Withdrawal ‘A Betrayal’ http://n.pr/2P0JK2O
🐣 Tulsi’s visit to Assad ruined my view of her, but I can’t help but wonder if HRC’s attack isn’t related to Tulsi’s take-down of Kamala Harris, a Clinton fave. The take-down was legit. Harris is a flawed candidate. All drama, no policy chops. And as tone-deaf as HRC.
🐣 RT @BillBrowder Tulsi Gabbard say that she doesn’t control the Russian bots that support her, but she did control the hiring of Chris Cooper, the smear campaigner who was paid by Natalia Veselnitskaya and her Russian backed sponsors to smear me and try to repeal the Magnitsky Act in DC https://twitter.com/Billbrowder/status/1185836541295415297?s=20
WSJ: U.S. Troops Leaving Syria Will Be Assigned to Iraq, Defense Chief Says http://on.wsj.com/2MVy2Ef “He said the U.S. hopes to continue working with Kurdish forces”
// Islamic State fight will shift, details yet to be sorted out, Esper says
Mr. Esper said one reason for his weeklong trip to the Middle East and to North Atlantic Treaty Organization headquarters in Brussels was to iron out the specifics of the campaign against Islamic State. ¤ Mr. Esper said he would be meeting with allies on a key question: “What does the next phase of the counter-ISIS campaign look like?” he said, using an acronym for the terror group. He said the U.S. hopes to continue working with Kurdish forces.
🐣 RT @tribelaw “It’s not an exaggeration to say that Trump embodies Hamilton’s worst fears about the kind of person who might someday head the government.”
🐣 RT @tribelaw “Not only is Trump himself on trial, but he is also testing our constitutional system to the breaking point. [Yet] Hamilton anticipated …the chaos and demagoguery now on display in Washington. He also helped design and defend the remedy: impeachment.”
⋙ WaPo, Ron Chernow: Hamilton pushed for impeachment powers. Trump is what he had in mind. http://wapo.st/2P3SmpG
// He wanted a strong president — and a way to get rid of the demagogic ones.
💙 🐣 RT @repcummings I’m begging the American people to pay attention to what is going on. Because if you want to have a democracy intact for your children, and your children’s children, and generations yet unborn we’ve got to guard this moment…this is our watch. 💽 https://twitter.com/RepCummings/status/1154161356171599877?s=20/photo/1
// 7/24/2019; Dance with those angels, Elijah. ♡ ૂི•̮͡• ྀ ♡
⭕ 19 Oct 2019
WashingtonExaminer: ‘God knows why’: Long wait for DOJ inspector general report on alleged FISA abuses vexes Trump allies http://washex.am/2p0DY6Z
// DOJ IG Horowitz
DailyBeast, Julia Davis: Russian Media Cheers Trump’s Moves in Syria: ‘Putin Won the Lottery!’ http://bit.ly/2J42eMk
// For Russia, Trump’s presidency is a gift that keeps on giving. The Kremlin’s propagandists see no acceptable alternative among any viable presidential candidates in 2020.
NYT, Nicholas Kristof: Trump Takes Incoherence and Inhumanity and Calls It Foreign Policy http://nyti.ms/2oNrkYX
// He was right when he said, “Foreign policy is what I’ll be remembered for.”
🐣 RT @tomjoseph Trump will be viewed as a war criminal. His words nail him for complicity in ethnic cleansing- green lighting Turkey’s move & saying “they had to have it cleaned out,” referring to Kurds living along Turkish border in Syria. He betrayed & set up the Kurds w/ no window to escape. https://twitter.com/RichardEngel/status/1185501990555738113
NYT: Review of Russia Inquiry Grows as F.B.I. Witnesses Are Questioned http://nyti.ms/2BtM0I5
// The review, led by the prosecutor John Durham, has focused on former investigators who are frequent targets of President Trump.
🐣 RT @RichardEngel The top Kurdish commander in Syria, General Mazlum Kobane told @NBCNews he is trying to pull his forces back from Ras al-Ayn, but Turkey is not allowing it. He alleges Turkey does not want Kurdish fighters to withdraw – a condition of the ceasefire – but to kill them.
WaPo: ‘They are livid’: Trump’s withdrawal from Syria prompts rare public criticism from current, former military officials http://wapo.st/35RwMdF
🐣 RT @michaelluo Illuminating (and depressing) @IChotiner interview with @brett_mcgurk. “…he doesn’t want to be in Syria. So, if a leader calls him up and says he will deal with it, the President, being totally unprepared for these phone calls, kind of rolls over.”
⋙ NewYorker, Isaac Chotiner: The Former U.S. ISIS Envoy on Trump and the Crisis in Syria http://bit.ly/2px66P0 ● Text Block: https://twitter.com/Auriandra/status/1185698409103183872?s=20/photo/1
Five years ago, President Obama appointed Brett McGurk as his special envoy to counter isis. The Obama Administration had sent a limited number of troops to Syria; McGurk’s job was focussed on destroying isis strongholds and supporting the Kurds in northern Syria, who had taken up much of the anti-isis fighting. Last December, McGurk and the Secretary of Defense, James Mattis, abruptly resigned after President Trump threatened to pull American troops out of Syria. “The President’s decision to leave Syria was made without deliberation, consultation with allies or Congress, assessment of risk, or appreciation of facts,” McGurk wrote in the Washington Post, in January. He warned that Trump’s choices “are already giving the Islamic State—and other American adversaries—new life.”
⭕ 18 Oct 2019
Reuters: What Hunter Biden did on the board of Ukrainian energy company Burisma http://reut.rs/2CBcKqE
// 10/18/2019
Zlochevsky, who founded Burisma in 2002, served as a minister under Ukraine’s then-President Viktor Yanukovich from 2010 to 2012. Burisma then began adding high-profile names to its board, including Biden and a business associate of his called Devon Archer, in April 2014.
A source close to the company said Biden took part in strategic conversations and shared his opinions and experience. In between board meetings, “there were constant calls, dialogue, sharing of advice, consideration of different options,” the source said. “Expansion to other markets was also discussed,” the source added.
Another source close to Burisma said Biden assisted with analysis of oil and gas assets the company was considering buying abroad, though a deal didn’t go through. The company was considering possible acquisitions in Europe, Kazakhstan and the United States, the source and another person close to Burisma said. …
TheAtlantic, Chris Coons (10/18): The Senate Must Rein In Trump http://bit.ly/2MTnDZq
// Unless Congress acts, the Kurds may not be the last allies this president abandons.
TheAtlantic, Peter Nicholas: The Unraveling of Donald Trump http://bit.ly/2MWFT4r
// As the impeachment inquiry intensifies, some associates of the president predict that his already erratic behavior is going to get worse.
💙 🐣 RT @HoarseWhisperer So, boiling down several stories into a likely set of punchlines:
– A mobbed up Russian oligarch, Firtash, was indicted by the feds
– He was arrested in Vienna and is fighting being extradited to the U.S.
– In an effort to buy his way out of trouble, he started spending $$
1/ 📌 https://twitter.com/HoarseWisperer/status/1185401923182174208?s=20
⋙ 🐣 RT @HoarseWhisperer – He hired Trump’s lawyer friends Toensing and DeGenova
– He hired Giuliani’s dirty Ukrainian pals
– He splashed money around looking for dirt on Biden
2/
⋙ 🐣 RT @HoarseWhisperer Per new reporting, Rudy just so happened to have a meeting at the DOJ recently.
Rudy was there to talk about an unnamed client facing bribery charges.
That is nearly certainly Firtash. [link NYT: Rudy Mixes … http://nyti.ms/2Bu4isJ%5D
⋙ 🐣 RT @HoarseWhisperer And the quid pro quo was that the Russian mobster was going to help the Trump campaign by helping Rudy scrounge for Biden dirt.
That’s all rather illegal – and is another bribery case for Firtash.
It may well be a new pile of crimes for Rudy too.
8/
⋙ 🐣 RT @HoarseWhisperer …and the best part?
As we learned from the unsealed indictments of Rudy’s buddies, the feds had warrants up the wazoo and may well have been sitting on wiretaps.
Rudy has been a bad boy… and just how bad is all coming to light.
Happy Friday.
9/9
⋙ 🐣 RT @HoarseWhisperer One correction: Firtash is under house arrest not in jail.
⋙ ⋙ 🐣 RT @BrightEyedDyer Have you read Proof of Conspiracy or Blowout yet?
⋙ 🐣 RT @HoarseWhisperer No, neither
⋙⋙ 🐣 RT @BrightEyedDyer Both are fabulous at putting the dots together. Blowout is the history of the oil industry and how it all ties into this and Proof is jawdropping.
💙 MotherJones, Dan Friedman: How an Indicted Oligarch Became a Key Player in Trump’s Ukraine Scandal http://bit.ly/32xsQwD “Is it possible that [Ukrainian oligarch] Firtash’s case, Parnas and Fruman’s plotting, and Giuliani’s freelancing in Ukraine are intertwined?”
// Dmytro Firtash is fighting extradition to the United States. His lawyers are the president’s staunchest defenders.
NYT: As Inquiry Widens, McConnell Is Said to See Impeachment Trial as Inevitable http://nyti.ms/2J3Y6Mg
💙 NYT Editorial: The Crisis of the Republican Party http://nyti.ms/31nAnNm
// The G.O.P. will not be able to postpone a reckoning on Donald Trump’s presidency for much longer ~● https://twitter.com/Auriandra/status/1185539934544977921?s=20/photo/1
// Caption: “At the Peace Monument near the United States Capitol, Grief weeps on the shoulder of History”
🔄 🔆 This❗️⋙ WaPo: Trump impeachment inquiry: Latest news and updates http://wapo.st/2P09WuE [Continually updated]
💙 NYT: Giuliani Mixes His Business With Role as Trump’s Lawyer http://nyti.ms/31rJNaw
// Amid intensifying scrutiny of his own work, the former New York mayor met recently with senior Justice Department officials on behalf of a client in a foreign bribery case.
WaPo, Tony Schwartz: Why Trump can’t change, no matter what the consequences are http://wapo.st/2VW0Kcf
// Personal growth is about seeing more. The president is too self-absorbed for that.
KyivPost [UKR]: Impeachment witnesses tell how Ukraine policy hijacked by Giuliani http://bit.ly/31rS2DD
ProPublica: The Pro-Trump Super PAC at the Center of the Ukraine Scandal Has Faced Multiple Campaign Finance Complaints http://bit.ly/2P6WTr4
// Randy Perkins donated $500,000 to America First Action, a pro-Trump super PAC, a day after his company won federal money as part of a contract. The same PAC was dubbed “Committee 1” in a federal indictment alleging illegal donations from two Rudy Giuliani associates.
NN: Exclusive: Giuliani pushed Trump administration to grant a visa to a Ukrainian official promising dirt on Democrats http://cnn.it/2BnYpgv
WaPo: State Department probe of Clinton emails finds no deliberate mishandling of classified information http://wapo.st/33B9SWe
💙 TPM, Josh Kovensky: The Debunked Biden Allegations Are Incredibly Useful To Dmitry Firtash http://bit.ly/2Wwm9J1
💙💙 Bloomberg, Stephanie Baker and Irina Reznik: To Win Giuliani’s Help, Oligarch’s Allies Pursued Biden Dirt http://bloom.bg/2oKHfY0
● Associates of Ukraine’s Firtash procured witness statement
● U.S. law forbids foreign assistance in political campaigns
Associates of a Ukrainian oligarch fighting extradition to the U.S. were working to dig up dirt on former Vice President Joe Biden last summer in an effort to get Rudy Giuliani’s help in the oligarch’s legal case, according to three people familiar with the exchanges.
Dmitry Firtash, charged with conspiracy by the U.S. and living in Vienna, shuffled lawyers in July to add Joe diGenova and Victoria Toensing, vocal supporters of President Donald Trump who had worked with Giuliani. Around that time, some of Firtash’s associates began to use his broad network of Ukraine contacts to get damaging information on Biden, the people said.
DiGenova and Toensing have billed Firtash about $1 million for their work, one of the people said. That includes costs for Lev Parnas, a Giuliani associate, as a translator and important contact, the person said. Parnas was arrested last week along with several associates and accused of conspiring to violate campaign-finance laws.
People working on Firtash’s behalf collected a witness statement from Viktor Shokin, a former Ukrainian prosecutor-general. The statement, dated early September, helped Giuliani renew an assertion that he’d been advancing for months — that Biden had tried in 2016 to sway Ukrainian politics to help his son. U.S. and Ukrainian officials have disputed Shokin’s account.
Shokin, though, had been promised his statement wouldn’t be made public, according to the people. Giuliani went on to cite it repeatedly, waving it around on cable news as evidence of Biden’s alleged corruption. The Hill and other media outlets provided links to it, with Giuliani later suggesting he had a role in making it public. “This is the affidavit I put out,” he said during a Fox News interview this month.
As a result of the publicity Giuliani generated with Shokin’s statement, two of the people said they believe the odds of the Justice Department dropping the case against Firtash have plummeted, because it would look like a quid pro quo. Others connected to the case agreed.
U.S. lawmakers conducting a presidential impeachment inquiry are bearing down on whether favors were traded for influence. They are examining Giuliani’s efforts to turn up evidence in Ukraine and allegations that the Trump administration withheld crucial aid until the country’s president agreed to investigate the Bidens. …
Bloomberg, Jonathan Browning: Oleg Deripaska-Linked Firm Was Raided for Undisclosed U.S. Inquiry http://bloom.bg/2BnIu1E
● Filings in U.K. reveal ‘live’ U.S. criminal investigation
● Laundering investigation grew out of Robert Mueller’s work
WaPo Editorial: Trump hosting the G-7 at his resort is blatant, corrupt self-dealing http://wapo.st/2MPN3au
WaPo, Mitch McConnell: Withdrawing from Syria is a grave mistake http://wapo.st/2MXanTX ”America’s wars will be ‘endless’ only if America refuses to win them.”
NYT Editorial: Turkey’s Victory Over Donald Trump http://nyti.ms/2OYZJyk
// The Turkish president got what he wanted — as did Russia and Iran.
WaPo: Impeachment inquiry shows Trump at the center of Ukraine efforts against rivals http://wapo.st/35LlbNq
TheGuardian: Fighting continues on Syria-Turkey border despite ceasefire http://bit.ly/2OYOtCm
// Artillery fire and ground clashes reported in violation of US-brokered five-day truce
🐣 RT @MSNBC “The fact that they tried to walk it back… is an indication of how damaging that accurate confession really is. That is impeachment game over… ¤ Mulvaney just made himself a really damning witness against the president.” -Fmr. prosecutor Glenn Kirschner
⋙ MSNBC, TheBeatWithAri: Impeachment preps underway amid Ukraine quid pro quo admission http://on.msnbc.com/2J2KXCW
// Donald Trump’s top aide undercut the president’s own defense of “no quid pro quo” with Ukraine. Top DOJ veteran Glenn Kirschner assesses the White House admission, saying Mulvaney was “extremely credible” in his “confession” and it should be “impeachment, game over.” It comes as a majority of Americans say they want Trump impeached and removed from office.
🔆 This❗️⋙ Reuters: Russia says it is starting to resume U.S. cyber cooperation: TASS http://reut.rs/35IS2lZ //➔ impeachment can’t come soon enough
DailyBeast, Rick Wilson: Our Commander in Chief is a Petulant Little Child, and the Bad Guys of the World Have His Number http://bit.ly/2BlF0gr
// The humiliations mount, and you can hear the laughter from Pyongyang to Ankara to Tehran. Trump isn’t their boss. He’s their bitch.
TheDailyBeast, Jackie Kucinich, Asawin Suebsaeng and Sam Brodey: Mick Mulvaney Has Conservatives Asking: WTF Are You Doing? http://bit.ly/2VXoo83
// The acting chief of staff had himself a day on Thursday and his critics say he’s in over his head.
⭕ 17 Oct 2019
CSIS, Melissa Dalton (10/17): When the Toll Comes Due: U.S. Failures in Syria and Next Steps http://bit.ly/2pZXsZe
WaPo/AP Ken Bajak: Why Trump asked Ukraine’s president about ‘CrowdStrike’ http://wapo.st/2o12u7s
WaPo, Jennifer Rubin: Impeachment is now a slam dunk http://wapo.st/2J0KlOi
🐣 RT @tomiahonen Meanwhile in the Mueller Report (WTF? I thought we lost that fight?)
Meanwhile! ¤ ..in the Mueller Report.. ¤ Pay attention kids! Meanwhile, in the Mueller Report. A judge just ruled that DOJ made unlawful redactions! Yes, AG Barr had hidden parts that Mueller tried to tell us
WaPo, Michael Gerson: Trump is turning American ideology into a sham http://wapo.st/31saQlY
🔆 This❗️⋙ Reuters: Russia says it is starting to resume U.S. cyber cooperation: TASS http://reut.rs/35IS2lZ //➔ impeachment can’t come soon enough
🐣 RT @MaddowBlog A surprise announcement from the Russian news service, TASS: According to the FSB in Russia, the US government has now agreed to carrying out joint cyber operations with Russian intelligence.
🐣 RT @JuliaDavisNews Erdogan expected a confrontational meeting, but the mood softened when it became clear the US officials were asking only for token concessions. In return for a brief pause in fighting, there would be no sanctions & no requirement for a Turkish withdrawal.
⋙ 🐣 RT @JuliaDavisNews Pence portrayed the agreement as a hard-fought victory. The deal delivered Erdogan concessions he had been unable to win during years of negotiations w/ the US. The Turkish side was surprised at how easy the negotiations were: “We got everything we wanted”
MSNBC, CraigMelvin: Former CIA Dir. John Brennan: This is a time of great national concern http://on.msnbc.com/2oVrQUH
// There are new reactions to the damning revelations from the President’s Ambassador to the E.U Gordon Sondland, as he continues testifying on the Hill. Plus Vice President Mike Pence and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo are meeting with Turkish president Erdogan. Joining Chris Jansing to discuss all this is former CIA director John Brennan.
🐣 RT @jeffreyprescott “A Turkish official briefed by participants in the talks said the Turkish side was surprised and relieved at how easy the negotiations were. ‘We got everything we wanted,’ said the official.”
⋙ WaPo: Syria cease-fire agreement lifts threat of U.S. sanctions while letting Turkey keep buffer zone http://wapo.st/2oQYgj6
TheWeek, Joel Mathis: Trump is getting worse http://bit.ly/2ps3DFw “Can you imagine how much more quickly the misjudgments and lashings-out will pile up as impeachment draws ever nearer? The crisis is going to grow only more intense.”
🐣 RT @bkdefend “When we’re dancing with the angels, the question will be asked, in 2019, what did we do to make sure we kept our democracy intact? Did we stand on the sidelines and say nothing? Did we play games?”
Rep. Elijah Cummings 2/27/19
R.I.P. Rep. Cummings
🐣 RT @brhodes The entire foreign policy of the United States is corrupted. We can’t be sure of a free and fair election in 2020. Our allies are being killed and displaced. Dictators are privileged over democratic allies.
⋙ 🐣 RT @MarthaRaddatz Secretary Mattis lets loose “I earned my spurs on the battlefield; Donald Trump earned his spurs from the doctor”.
WaPo Editorial: Mick Mulvaney’s comments on Trump and Ukraine couldn’t have been clearer http://wapo.st/33Hc4vs
DailyBeast, Christopher Dickey: The Kurds Gave Their Lives to Defeat the Islamic State. Trump Just Pissed It All Away. http://bit.ly/2nRLMqS
// He blames those he betrayed as if they were servants who failed him.
🐣 RT @waltshaub In case it’s not clear from my freaking out, this G-7 thing is an escalation. It may look from the outside like it’s been corruption all along—because it has been—but participating in a contract award to yourself is different by orders of magnitude. This is a red line crossed.
💙 NewYorker, Susan Glasser: Forget Trump’s “Meltdown”—Follow the Testimony http://bit.ly/2qjCEMA
// On a week of revelations in the House’s impeachment inquiry.
DailyBeast, Justin Baragona: Fox’s Judge Napolitano: G7 at Trump Doral Is as ‘Profound a Violation’ as ‘One Could Create’ http://bit.ly/32qHLJ1
// “He has bought himself an enormous headache now,” Napolitano said. “This is about as direct and profound a violation of the emoluments clause as one could create.”
WaPo: Islamic State sees a chance to re-emerge as Turkey batters Kurds http://wapo.st/2VPETD0 ISIS eyes breakout opportunity as Turkish forces batter Kurds
// Despite a temporary cease-fire, Turkey’s incursion into Syria has been a propaganda windfall for the extremist group, which has stepped up attacks on prisons and the Kurdish militia, analysts said.
WaPo, Toluse Olorunnipa: ‘Get over it’: Mulvaney’s twin admissions put Trump at the center of emoluments and Ukraine controversies http://wapo.st/33GTBiA
// The Debrief: An occasional series offering a reporter’s insights
NYT Editorial: Turkey’s Victory Over Donald Trump http://nyti.ms/2OZ5hsK
// The Turkish president got what he wanted — as did Russia and Iran.
NYT: Mulvaney Says, Then Denies, That Trump Held Back Ukraine Aid as Quid Pro Quo http://nyti.ms/2Mshm8m
// Conflicting comments by the acting White House chief of staff threw Washington into turmoil.
💙💙 NYT, William McRaven: Our Republic Is Under Attack From the President http://nyti.ms/2OX0UP2 Admiral McRaven is a former commander of the United States Special Operations Command.
// If President Trump doesn’t demonstrate the leadership that America needs, then it is time for a new person in the Oval Office.
🐣 RT 💽 @ABC In impassioned remarks on the Senate floor, Sen. Mitt Romney calls for public hearings on the Trump administration’s actions in Syria, saying the U.S. has abandoned the Kurds while advancing Russian interests in the region. http://abcn.ws/2P2ej8B
In impassioned remarks on the Senate floor, Sen. Mitt Romney calls for public hearings on the Trump administration's actions in Syria, saying the U.S. has abandoned the Kurds while advancing Russian interests in the region. https://t.co/lTeSbXVIGp pic.twitter.com/Xt7ZkSxVTW
— ABC News (@ABC) October 18, 2019
DailyBeast, Christopher Dickey: The Kurds Gave Their Lives to Defeat the Islamic State. Trump Just Pissed It All Away. http://bit.ly/2MqGxIo
// He blames those he betrayed as if they were servants who failed him.
🐣 RT @maddow (1) turkey wants to push the kurds out of that part of syria.
(2) trump gives ‘em the OK to invade.
(3) pence brokers a “deal” in which the kurds… must get out of that part of syria.
(4) the US agrees to un-sanction turkey.
that’s a “deal” like being mugged is a deal.
‘
🐣 RT @neal_katyal This is the textbook definition of an impeachable offense, and the White House Chief of Staff has just admitted it.
⋙ 🐣 RT @JohnJHarwood Mulvaney concedes that Trump’s desire to investigate “DNC server” was part of the reason Ukraine aide was held up ¤ reporter: so it was a quid pro quo ¤ Mulvaney: we do that all the time. get over it. politics is going to be involved in foreign policy. elections have consequences
⭕ 16 Oct 2019
TIME, Simon Shuster (10/16): Exclusive: How a Ukrainian Oligarch Wanted by U.S. Authorities Helped Giuliani Attack Biden http://bit.ly/378exRY
DailyBeast, Kevin Poulsen (10/16): The Truth About Trump’s Insane Ukraine ‘Server’ Conspiracy http://bit.ly/2MGAHCH
// updated from 9/25; Trump asked Ukraine’s president to help prove a bonkers, Russia-friendly conspiracy theory that U.S. intel relied on manufactured evidence to blame the 2016 DNC hack on Moscow.
TheBulwark, George Thomas (10/16): Donald Trump, Constitutional Ignoramus http://bit.ly/2o6GGHB
// He doesn’t understand the first thing about the charter he has sworn to “preserve, protect and defend.”
WaPo, Philip Bump: Only once has Gallup seen more support for removing a president. Nixon was gone four days later. http://wapo.st/2MQ0tDh
// Which, again, is why a fight with Senate Republicans is bizarre
WaPo: President Trump’s Oct. 9, 2019, letter to President Erdogan of Turkey http://wapo.st/2J0lnPc
🐣 RT @SethAbramson (HISTORIC PHOTOGRAPH) I agree with those saying this photograph will go down in history. Nancy Pelosi was reportedly chastising @realDonaldTrump, in the moment captured below, by saying the following to him: ¤ “All roads with you lead to Putin.”
(HISTORIC PHOTOGRAPH) I agree with those saying this photograph will go down in history. Nancy Pelosi was reportedly chastising @realDonaldTrump, in the moment captured below, by saying the following to him:
"All roads with you lead to Putin." pic.twitter.com/6DCxYmnZS2
— Seth Abramson (@SethAbramson) October 17, 2019
🐣 RT @BretMcGurk “I don’t say this lightly, and I worked for two years in the Trump administration. ¤ He doesn’t know what he’s doing or talking about. ¤ He made this decision on Sunday night without any contingency plan for our troops on the ground.” -Brett McGurk, former special presidential envoy
N🐣 RT @glennkirshner2 Trump just said the fighting in Syria “has nothing to do w/us.” So, in substance, he’s saying that loyalty to our allies ‘has nothing to do w/us.’ Standing w/those who stood by us ‘has nothing to do w/us.’ Preventing the slaughter of our brothers in arms has nothing to do w/us.’
🐣 RT @MarshallCohen Trump is WRONG (or lying) when he says the whistleblower inaccurately described his call with Zelensky. The whistleblower was RIGHT that (1) Trump asked Zelensky to probe Biden, (2) Trump mentioned CrowdStrike, (3) Trump told Zelensky to talk to GIuliani https://
⋙ 🐣 RT @real Shifty Adam Schiff wants to rest his entire case on a Whistleblower who he now says can’t testify, & the reason he can’t testify is that he is afraid to do so because his account of the Presidential telephone call is a fraud & totally different from the actual transcribed call… 📌 https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1184293357121613824?s=20
🐣 RT @kylegriffin1 Schumer on the Trump Syria meeting: “He was insulting, particularly to the Speaker. She kept her cool completely, but he called her a third rate politician. He said that there are communists involved and you guys might like that. I mean, this was not a dialogue.” Via ABC
WaPo: Trump called Pelosi a ‘third-rate politician’ in first encounter between the leaders since impeachment inquiry began, Schumer says http://wapo.st/2Ml941J
🐣 RT @TheRickWilson Da fuq?
⋙ 🐣 ≣ RT @trish_regan EXCLUSIVE: I have obtained a copy of @realDonaldTrump ’s letter to #Erdogan. @POTUS warns him to not “be a tough guy! Don’t be a fool!” Says he could destroy Turkey’s economy if #Syria is not resolved in a humane way. Details tonight at 8pm #TrishRegan #FoxBusiness https://twitter.com/trish_regan/status/1184559361638748161?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @RepAdamSchiff The Office of Management and Budget, State Department and the DOD have failed to comply with Congressional subpoenas. ¤ Despite this unprecedented obstruction, we’ve uncovered significant evidence of Trump’s abuse of power. ¤ And we’ll continue to expose the truth.
🐣 RT @djrothkopf If it weren’t Trump’s insane parroting of Russian & Turkish talking points, betrayal of the Kurds, failure to understand the basics of Middle Eastern geopolitics, we would be focused on his complete misunderstanding of trade, alliances & his insults of the Europeans right now.
🐣 RT @TheRickWilson Donald Trump vomiting out Turkish and Russian propaganda is something to be proud of, isn’t it @LindseyGrahamSC? ¤ Did you get your orders straight? ¤ Sit. Stay. Roll over.
🐣 RT @joshrogin Trump doesn’t seem to understand that terrorists can plan and execute attacks from long distances. That’s crazy irresponsible.
🐣 RT @NBCNews JUST IN: David Correia, 1 of the 4 people indicted in an alleged scheme to funnel foreign money and violate FEC laws was taken into custody at New York’s JFK airport this morning; the case includes Giuliani associates Lev Parnas and Igor Fruman – @Tom_Winter
🐣 RT @glennkirschner2 Great point Brian – you would have to be a really incompetent dictator/despot NOT to own Trump. He is so easily manipulated.
⋙ 🐣 RT @aniphoristan Honestly, you’d be a pretty terrible autocrat if you DIDN’T own Trump. He’s so easily own-able. The questions are: how did we let an owned asset ascend to the office, how do we remove him, and how do we insulate ourselves from its happening in the future?
WaPo: Pompeo adviser to decry politicization of State Dept. in impeachment probe testimony http://wapo.st/2VMY5RT former senior adviser to Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, Michael McKinley, who resigned suddenly last week
🐣 RT @ImpudentCat Wow… he almost earns some respect here
Lindsey Graham: “He will have American blood on his hands if he abandons the Kurds… because ISIS WILL come back. And if ANY American is killed ANYWHERE because of a resurgent ISIS, it will fall on Trump
#TrumpImpeachment
🐣 RT @joshtrogin Trump spouting nonsense: “The Kurds are safer right now… they are not angels, they are not angels.” Then says they aren’t really good fighters without our help.
🐣 RT @joshtpm The total humiliation of the USA here is mind boggling
⋙ 🐣 RT @Haaretz haaretz.com @haaretzcom · Erdogan: “When Trump comes here I will talk to him” Turkey’s president says while snubbing Pence and Pompeo [$link]
DailyBeast, Jeremy Hodge: Here’s How Trump Handed Bashar al-Assad Victory in Syria http://bit.ly/2IT3GRC
// Trump’s petulant decision to pull out U.S. troops while pretending sanctions can prevent Turkey from slaughtering former U.S. allies merely opened the door wide to Assad.
⭕ 15 Oct 2019
CSIS: Syria: The Real Prizes are Iraq, the Gulf, and the Southern Flank of NATO, and the U.S. May Well Be Losing Them http://bit.ly/33L6KXU
🐣 RT @BarbaraBoxer What a symbol: the US abandoned base is now flying the Russian flag in Syria. This seat-of-the-pants President had our troops leave their half-eaten meals behind while our allies who defeated ISIS face death. #ImpeachTrump.
⋙ NYT (10/15): In Syria, Russia Is Pleased to Fill an American Void http://nyti.ms/35SaOqW
// As the United States withdraws from Syria, Russia is stepping in, running patrols to separate warring factions, striking deals and helping President Bashar al-Assad advance.
⏳ NBCNews: Timeline: Trump impeachment inquiry http://nbcnews.to/2Bg58sT
// NBC News’ timeline of events leading up to and following House Speaker Pelosi’s announcement that the House would launch an impeachment inquiry into Trump and his dealings with Ukraine.
🐣 RT @abbydphillip Lindsey Graham to @SuzanneMalveaux says Trump: “is not listening to his commanders. He’s not listening to his advisers, he’s not. He’s making the biggest mistake of his presidency by assuming the Kurds are better off today than they were yesterday.”
🐣 RT @RepTedDeutsch Vice President Mike Pence doesn’t think that Congress or the American people deserve to know if he was involved in the effort to ask Ukraine to interfere in our elections. ¤ There is no privilege that allows anyone in the WH to cover up wrongdoing.
⋙ 🐣 RT @kylegriffin1 Mike Pence says he won’t comply with a wide-ranging request for documents from House impeachment investigators trying to better understand any role he may have played in Trump’s attempts to pressure Ukraine to political investigations.
⋙⋙ NBCNews: Pence refuses House request to provide documents related to Ukraine call http://nbcnews.to/2OT5Qo7
// The vice president’s office says it won’t cooperate with a “self-proclaimed impeachment inquiry.”
WaPo: Mulvaney emerges as a key facilitator of the campaign to pressure Ukraine http://wapo.st/2BkFJy4
TheAtlantic, Peter Wehner: Trump Betrayed the Kurds. He Couldn’t Help Himself. http://bit.ly/31kOaE8
// Humiliating his own Cabinet secretaries was bad. Putting faithful American allies in harm’s way is far worse.
DailyBeast, Jeremy Hodge: Here’s How Trump Handed Bashar al-Assad Victory in Syria http://bit.ly/2IT3GRC
// Trump’s petulant decision to pull out U.S. troops while pretending sanctions can prevent Turkey from slaughtering former U.S. allies merely opened the door wide to Assad.
NYT: Giuliani Pushed Trump to Deport Cleric Sought by Turkey, Ex-White House Officials Said http://nyti.ms/33zLCUj
// The president’s personal lawyer called Fethullah Gulen an extremist, but his repeated demands raised eyebrows.
NYT, Tom Friedman: It’s Not Trump vs. the Dems. It’s Trump vs. the Country’s True Defenders. http://nyti.ms/35B649c
// Public servants who swore to protect the Constitution also set the impeachment process in motion.
🐣 RT @RadioFreeTom We are now sanctioning Turkey for something Trump gave them permission to do, because no one knows what the President is saying to any foreign leaders at any given moment.
🐣 RT @monaheart1229 BREAKING: SDNY has filed a 6 count indictment against a Turkish bank with ties to Giulaini for moving billions of $ of Iranian oil revenue & millions of $ in bribes to high ranking Turkish Gov’t officials. And he fired his lawyer today.. #TuesdayMotivation
⋙ TheHill: Turkish bank linked to Giuliani client charged with fraud, money laundering in New York http://bit.ly/35DiYn0
WaPo: White House directed ‘three amigos’ to run Ukraine policy, senior State department official tells House investigators http://wapo.st/35DiYn0 Energy Secretary Rick Perry, US Amb. to the EU Gordon Sondland and special US envoy to Ukraine Kurt Volker
NYT: Senior State Dept. Ukraine Expert George Kent Says White House Sidelined Him http://nyti.ms/
// Mr. Kent told investigators he was cut out of Ukraine policymaking and told to “lay low” on it, after a May meeting orchestrated by Mick Mulvaney, the acting White House chief of staff.
A senior State Department official in charge of Ukraine policy told impeachment investigators on Tuesday that he was all but cut out of decisions regarding the country after a May meeting organized by Mick Mulvaney, the acting White House chief of staff, describing his sidelining by President Trump’s inner circle as “wrong,” according to a lawmaker who heard the testimony.
🐣 RT @allinwithchris BREAKING: State Department official told Congress the White House directed “three amigos” to run Ukraine policy. #inners 💽 https://twitter.com/allinwithchris/status/1184260397110644738?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @PoliticusSarah Rep. Jackie Speier (D-CA) said Democrats only have five or six more witnesses to interview before they are ready to turn over their evidence to the House Judiciary Committee for public impeachment hearings.
WaPo, Jennifer Rubin: John Bolton might get the last laugh http://wapo.st/2oxAR6h
🐣 RT @cassandra17lina Good morning, #Trumpkins… looks like the infighting has begun. We tried to warn you. Remember what happened in #Watergate? 40 of #Nixon’s “loyal” team went to prison. Nobody remembers more than a few of them. The rest, like you, will be tossed in the ash heap of history. #sad https://twitter.com/cassandra17lina/status/1184076241755877376?s=20/photo/1
// great Watergate cartoon
🐣 RT @MSNBC .@neal_katyal on President Turmp’s plan to stonewall impeachment: “There’s one president who tried that before. His name was Richard Nixon and he went down in flames. I suspect the same thing will happen here.”
⋙ 💽 MSNBC, TheBeatWithAri: DOJ veteran predicts Trump’s Ukraine stonewalling will make him go ‘down in flames’ like Nixon http://on.msnbc.com/
// Former Acting Solicitor General Neal Katyal joins MSNBC’s Ari Melber for ‘Opening Arguments’ to discuss Trump’s ‘ridiculous’ attempts to stonewall Congress’ impeachment probe. Katyal comments on WSJ’s reports of Mike Pompeo’s former senior adviser Michael McKinley’s upcoming testimony, saying more Trump aides are telling ‘the truth to the American people.’ Katyal says if Trump continues to ‘try and run out the clock’ on the impeachment probe he will ‘go down in flames’ like Richard Nixon, as Trump holds no ‘valid legal argument.’ Katyal also weigh in on Rudy Giuliani’s investigation, calling the involvement of the DOJ’s ‘legendary figure’ in the Ukraine scandal ‘sad.’
WaPo: Russia patrolling between Turkish and Syrian forces after U.S. troops withdraw http://wapo.st/2IQQHzR
DailyBeast, Asawin Suebsaeng and Sam Stein: Trump Suspects a Spiteful John Bolton Is Behind Ukraine Leaks http://bit.ly/32kMz2w
// Trump fears the leaks are now coming from the people he chose to serve—and that only increases the paranoia currently infecting the West Wing.
⭕ 14 Oct 2019
NYT: Russia Savors U.S. Missteps in Syria, and Seizes Opportunity http://nyti.ms/2MGTNHO
// President Trump’s erratic moves are letting Russia seize the role of peacemaker — and deal-maker — in Syria.
BusinessInsider, Sonam Sheth: FBI officials were ‘rattled’ and ‘blindsided’ by Trump’s call for Ukraine to manufacture dirt on Joe Biden http://bit.ly/31eAuLa
🐣 RT @EdwardGLuce Worth emphasising the scale of the disaster Trump has wrought in the week since his call with Erdogan. 1. Revived Isis. 2. Cemented Assad’s grip on Syria. 3. Handed Russia yet another geopolitical windfall. 4. Betrayed the Kurds. 5. Immeasurably harmed US power. Thread 1. 📌 https://twitter.com/EdwardGLuce/status/1183718809942839299?s=20
GQ, Jay Willis: How Don Jr., Ivanka, and Eric Trump Have Profited Off Their Dad’s Presidency http://bit.ly/2IShP17
WaPo: Trump’s ex-Russia adviser Fiona Hill told impeachment investigators of Giuliani’s efforts in Ukraine http://wapo.st/2BeKARq
// Fiona Hill, who resigned from her National Security Council post this year, told lawmakers that Rudolph W. Giuliani’s dealings with Ukraine circumvented U.S. officials and career diplomats.
NYT Editorial: Trump Is Making Syria, and the Middle East, More Dangerous http://nyti.ms/2B9O5J4
// As desperate Kurds ally with Assad, the specter of the Islamic State threatens again, and American power dims.
WaPo, Ishaan Tharoor: Trump’s lose-lose game in Syria http://wapo.st/2VIzZaR
WSJ: Federal Prosecutors Scrutinize Rudy Giuliani’s Ukraine Business Dealings, Finances http://on.wsj.com/32fcLeY
// Trump lawyer’s bank records have been examined; witnesses are questioned about work for a Ukraine mayor, efforts to oust U.S. ambassador
WSJ: Kurdish-Syrian Pact Scrambles Mideast Alliances http://on.wsj.com/2VHFwP3
// Kurdish authorities give way to regime allied with Russia and Iran in territory cleared by U.S. coalition
WSJ, Editorial: Trump’s Syria Mess ~ He resorts to sanctions as the harm from withdrawal builds. http://on.wsj.com/2qf3tSc “What a mess.”
🐣 RT @RBReich Trump’s withdrawal from Turkish border is:
causing slaughter of our Kurdish allies
rekindling ISIS
pushing Kurds into alliance with Syria
making Russia preeminent superpower in region.
Just as worrying, Trump made this decision w/o consulting anyone.
🐣 RT @MSNBC “Syria’s longterm goal is to regain control of all of its territory, Kurdish areas included. Now the Kurds have said ‘Fine, we’ll do that …just don’t let these Turkish militias carry out ethnic cleansing.”@RichardEngel reports on the situation in Syria.
⋙ MSNBC, RachelMaddow: Absent US, Kurds panicked by Arab ‘shock troops’ turn to Syria http://on.msnbc.com/2oKaz0t
// Richard Engel, NBC News chief foreign correspondent, talks with Rachel Maddow about the power dynamics in Syria after Donald Trump opened the door for Turkey to slaughter Syrian Kurds in what is devolving into a land grab between Syria and Turkey.
WaPo, David Ignatius: For U.S. soldiers, ‘it’s a dagger to the heart’ to abandon the Kurds http://wapo.st/2VHE13d
🐣 RT @brianschatz This Bolton thing seems damning. But let’s not forget that we already have the President admitting to a pretty obviously impeachable offense in dangling military assistance in exchange for personal political favors. We already have all the unrefuted facts we need.
🐣 RT @NeersTanden John Bolton called the lawyers because he was worried Giuliani and Sondland were committing crimes…man this is far worse than we thought. And all these people were just going to hide all of this. ¤ The whistleblower is an American hero.
🐣 RT @kylegriffin1 Breaking via NYT: John Bolton instructed Fiona Hill to notify the chief lawyer for the National Security Council that Rudy Giuliani was working with Mick Mulvaney on a rogue operation with legal implications, Hill told the investigators.
⋙ NYT: Bolton Objected to Ukraine Pressure Campaign, Calling Giuliani ‘a Hand Grenade’ http://nyti.ms/2VJSjjP
● John Bolton ordered an aide to report Rudy Giuliani’s campaign to a lawyer, House investigators were told by Fiona Hill, a former White House official.
● The testimony revealed the degree to which Mr. Giuliani’s efforts to extract damaging information on President Trump’s behalf divided the White House.
WaPo Editorial: Trump’s blunder in Syria is irreparable http://wapo.st/2MEOcS8
🐣 RT @MrDanZak Today the White House’s former top Russia adviser told impeachment investigators that Giuliani ran a shadow foreign policy in Ukraine that circumvented U.S. officials and diplomats in order to personally benefit President Trump.
⋙ WaPo: Trump’s ex-Russia adviser Fiona Hill told impeachment investigators of Giuliani’s efforts in Ukraine http://wapo.st/2BeKARq
🐣 RT @andrewsweiss* THREAD: Have we reached the point where Giuliani’s role in Ukraine-gate no longer looks like an outtake from a bad Coen Brothers movie and is creating a far more serious legal situation that should be setting off alarm bells inside DOJ comparable to James Comey’s firing? 1/ 📌 https://twitter.com/andrewsweiss/status/1183842426445807616?s=20 *(“Vice President for Studies, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. Russia and Eurasia Program.”… )
⋙ 🐣 RT @andrewsweiss WSJ reported on Oct 10 that Lev Parnas, one of the Giuliani associates arrested by the Feds, had been hired by Firtash’s defense team as a translator.…/5
⋙⋙ WSJ (10/10/2019): Two Giuliani Associates Who Helped Him on Ukraine Charged With Campaign-Finance Violations http://on.wsj.com/2ovkQOd
// Prosecutors say Lev Parnas and Igor Fruman were part of a conspiracy to funnel foreign money into U.S. elections
⋙⋙ NYT (3/25/2018): Trump Won’t Hire 2 Lawyers Whose Appointments Were Announced Days Ago http://nyti.ms/2OMuzdF
🐣 RT @brianklaas Trump is the arsonist who likes to pretend to play the firefighter after the blaze he started burns out of control
⋙ 🐣 RT @real Statement from President Donald J. Trump Regarding Turkey’s Actions in Northeast Syria https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1183833640507269120?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @writernthesky The US nuclear weapons are now Erdogan’s hostages. To fly them out of Incirlik would be to mark the de facto end of the Turkish-American alliance. To keep them there ‘is to perpetuate a nuclear vulnerability that should have been eliminated years ago.’
🐣 RT @ Powerful @SangerNYT “Mr. Trump ignored months of warnings from his advisers about what calamities likely would ensue if he followed his instincts to pull back from Syria and abandon America’s longtime allies, the Kurds. He had no Plan B, other than to leave.”
⋙ 🐣 RT @RonBrownstein Can’t summarize it better than this: “All the warnings were there. But President Trump’s reliance on his instincts, and his relationships, led him to ignore the consequences of a move that has emboldened Russia, Iran and the Islamic State.”
⋙⋙ NYT, David Sanger: Analysis: Trump Followed His Gut on Syria. Calamity Came Fast. http://nyti.ms/32qhqLr
// All the warnings were there. But President Trump’s reliance on his instincts, and his relationships, led him to ignore the consequences of a move that has emboldened Russia, Iran and the Islamic State. … Rarely has a presidential decision led so rapidly to what his own party leaders have described as disastrous consequences for U.S. allies and interests.
NYT: Harold Bloom, Critic Who Championed Western Canon, Dies at 89 http://nyti.ms/2MdDNOg
// Called the most notorious literary critic in America, Professor Bloom argued for the superiority of giants like Shakespeare, Chaucer and Kafka.
✅ WaPo Factchecker: President Trump has made 13,435 false or misleading claims over 993 days http://wapo.st/35AT2bG
WaPo, Rick Noack: The four biggest foes of America that gain from Trump’s Syria pullout http://wapo.st/2IRtMUR Russia, #ISIS, Iran, Assad regime
WaPo: Trump’s campaign manager calls impeachment inquiry a ‘seditious conspiracy’ as another witness testifies http://wapo.st/2VOh8eM
WaPo, James Hohman: Trump hands Putin another win with Syria pullout http://wapo.st/2VH4UEq
WaPo: Syrian forces retake territory long held by U.S. allies, as Turkey expands offensive http://wapo.st/2IPVlOe
// Alt hl: Syrian troops enter towns in northeast as Erdogan warns of wider offensive; Syrian government troops moved back into towns for the first time in years after U.S.-allied Kurdish fighters, in a stunning reversal, reached a deal with the government. Turkish-backed rebels have begun a push to retake the northern city of Manbij, which has long been a flash point.
NYT, David Sanger: Analysis: Trump Followed His Gut on Syria. Calamity Came Fast. http://nyti.ms/32qhqLr
// All the warnings were there. But President Trump’s reliance on his instincts, and his relationships, led him to ignore the consequences of a move that has emboldened Russia, Iran and the Islamic State. … Rarely has a presidential decision led so rapidly to what his own party leaders have described as disastrous consequences for U.S. allies and interests.
WaPo, Max Boot: Are you happy now, Trump supporters? http://wapo.st/2VGNDLD
DailyBeast: Donald Trump Isn’t Julius Caesar. He’s Republic-Killer Tiberius Gracchus. http://bit.ly/2BbMpPe
// What made him so dangerous was his determined incitement of the worst and most violent tendencies of his populist mob.
DailyBeast: Trump Just Enlisted America in a New Axis of Evil http://bit.ly/2BbCOYA
// In short, Trump has for the first time in our history aligned the U.S. with our enemies and against everything we should stand for and that is in our interest.
🐣 Winners: Russia, ISIS, Saudi Arabia, Trump properties; Losers: Kurds, US, NATO, Israel. (Staviridis etc on @Morning_Joe)
Staviridis: Collision of Ottoman Turks, Sunni Arabs, and Persians (Iran) with Russia hovering over (on @Morning_Joe)
WaPo: ‘I sort of thrive on it’: The impeachment crisis shines a spotlight on Trump’s state of mind http://wapo.st/2pmzcR6 //➔ ah! so from Lear on the Heath to End-Stage MacBeth
DailyBeast, Christopher Dickey and Spencer Ackerman: The U.S. Spoiled a Deal That Might Have Saved the Kurds http://bit.ly/2MCo3Du
// Forsaken by the U.S. and under attack by Turkish troops, the Kurds are turning to Russia for help. The last time they tried to do so, the Americans worked to talk them out of it
⭕ 13 Oct 2019
💙 ForeignAffairs, William Burns : The Demolition of U.S. Diplomacy http://fam.ag/2Mjo1Sh
// Not Since Joe McCarthy Has the State Department Suffered Such a Devastating Blow
In my three and a half decades as a U.S. Foreign Service officer, proudly serving five presidents and ten secretaries of state from both parties, I’ve never seen an attack on diplomacy as damaging, to both the State Department as an institution and our international influence, as the one now underway.
The contemptible mistreatment of Marie Yovanovitch—the ambassador to Ukraine who was dismissed for getting in the way of the president’s scheme to solicit foreign interference in U.S. elections—is just the latest example of President Donald Trump’s dangerous brand of diplomatic malpractice. His is a diplomacy of narcissism, bent on advancing private interests at the expense of our national interests.
Ambassador Yovanovitch is not the first professional diplomat to find herself in political crosshairs in the history of the State Department. Trump is not the first demagogue to bully career personnel. And Secretary of State Mike Pompeo is not the first secretary of state derelict in his duty. But the damage from this assault—coming from within the executive branch itself, after nearly three years of unceasing diplomatic self-sabotage, and at a particularly fragile geopolitical moment—will likely prove to be even more severe to both diplomatic tradecraft and U.S. foreign policy. …
To clean up the institutional wreckage in the State Department will take many years. The damage to our influence and reputation may prove to be even longer lasting—and harder to repair.
WaPo, Ishaan Tharoor: Trump’s retreat in Syria turns into a mess http://wapo.st/35yi2Ai
NYT: Macabre Video of Fake Trump Shooting Media and Critics Is Shown at His Resort http://nyti.ms/2IPuPVh //➔ this sounds hideous; video not included ~ but description alone very disturbing
WaPo: Unswayed by top advisers, Trump doubles down on decision to withdraw troops http://wapo.st/33tpfzW
DailyBeast, Michael Tomasky: The Three Keys to Trump’s Coming Coup http://bit.ly/2VFC2MU
// With this man in office and with an authoritarian political party behind him, as we inch closer to justice, we also inch closer to our worst nightmare.
DailyBeast, Christopher Dickey and Spencer Ackerman: The U.S. Spoiled a Deal That Might Have Saved the Kurds http://bit.ly/2MCo3Du
// Forsaken by the U.S. and under attack by Turkish troops, the Kurds are turning to Russia for help. The last time they tried to do so, the Americans worked to talk them out of it
AP, Vladimir Isachenov: Kremlin relishes US pullback from Syria, turmoil in Ukraine http://bit.ly/2VKqLej
🐣 RT @OARichardEngel Since the impeachment inquiry started, Trump has only dug in. “Once he gets away with something, he tries something more extreme,” says political scientist @brianklaas. That normalizes rule-breaking behavior & conditions people to accept outrage, he says.
WaPo: As Trump withdraws U.S. forces from northern Syria, his administration scrambles to respond http://wapo.st/32c0bNr
🐣 RT @ChrisMurphyCT Every mother and father in America should watch video. Play it all the way to end. Know that this is the re-election message of your President. ¤ And then ask yourself – how you sit your kids down and tell them you want this person to lead us. https://twitter.com/ChrisMurphyCT/status/1183591860889100288?s=20
⋙ 🐣 RT @HawaiiDelilah The Trump admin embodies structural immorality. Caging children; ignoring Puerto Rico; dismissing the state-sponsored murder of a columnist; green lighting genocide; leaving our own troops at risk; laughing it up with dictators. And now: the valorization of mass murder on video.
🐣 Fall of Saigon 1975 https://twitter.com/Auriandra/status/1183428297339949057?s=20/photo/1-3
🐣 ♫ Song for the Times: Death March by Algiers
Lyrics and Credits: http://bit.ly/32armII
YouTube: https://youtu.be/5EZ3ci-r0yk
♫ Song for the Times: Death March by Algiers
Lyrics and Credits: https://t.co/i8yxMAWlzs
YouTube: https://t.co/XkQHAIfKEe pic.twitter.com/4RDTeoBq6r— 🇺🇸 Auriandra 🇺🇦 (@Auriandra) October 14, 2019
♫ Death March
By Algiers♪ This can’t be how it all falls apart
Constant fear of explosion
Crypto-fascist contagion♪ They took no time to unwind it all
Manufactured suggestion
Wag the dog and then drown him♪ How hate keeps passing on
This is how the hate keeps passing on♪ This can’t be how it all whimpers out
Live to die in the gutter
Empty ivory towers♪ They pay no mind just to wind you up
Informed autosuggestion
State-sanctioned assassination♪ How hate keeps passing on
This is how the hate keeps passing on
CNN: Retired Marine Gen. John Allen: ‘There is blood on Trump’s hands for abandoning our Kurdish allies’ http://cnn.it/2IOIRqj
💙 NYT: Abandoned by U.S. in Syria, Kurds Find New Ally in American Foe http://nyti.ms/2MCKhp5 //➔ if this saves the Kurds from being massacred, I am relieved and happy for them but what a disaster for the US’s standing in the world!
● Under fire by Turkish forces, the militia that battled ISIS joined Syria’s Russian-backed government, a major turning point in the long war.
● It capped a day of whipsaw developments as Turkish troops advanced and hundreds of women and children linked to ISIS escaped from a detention camp.
WaPo, EJ Dionne: Trump is the culmination of all that has gone wrong in our politics http://wapo.st/2qbxcLQ
NBC, Meet The Press: Poll: Is there enough evidence to begin an impeachment inquiry? Republicans: ‘Trump before Party’ ~ No: 91%; ‘Party before Trump” ~ 58%
🔆 This❗️⋙ ≣ Axios, Alayna Treene: House Democrats’ impeachment roadmap http://bit.ly/35yUDP9
Below are some of the key areas of interest to the committees, as outlined in their Oct. 9 letter:
● All transcripts, notes, recordings, summaries, prep sessions and communications around Trump’s April and July calls with Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky.
● Efforts to restrict access to or limit distribution of documents referring to calls with foreign leaders; policies surrounding the practice of moving politically damaging documents to a special electronic system.
● Interagency meetings relating to foreign assistance of any kind.
● A meeting on or around May 21 in Kiev, Ukraine, with Energy Secretary Rick Perry, U.S. ambassador to the European Union Gordon Sondland, former special envoy to Ukraine Kurt Volker, Ukrainian officials and representatives of the Ukrainian energy sector.
● A White House meeting on or around May 23 involving Trump, Volker, Perry or Sondland.
● A dinner in Brussels on or around June 4 involving Jared Kushner, Zelensky, Sondland and Perry.
● A White House meeting on or around July 10 with Ukrainian officials and former national security advisor John Bolton, Volker, Perry, Sondland — and possibly Trump and Vice President Mike Pence.
● Efforts by Rudy Giuliani or associates to pressure Ukrainian government officials to investigate Joe Biden and his son Hunter, Paul Manafort, the DNC, Hillary Clinton and former U.S. ambassador to Ukraine Marie Yovanovitch.
● Potential attempts by Trump administration officials to influence Ukraine’s state gas company Naftogaz.
● Ukraine’s acquisition of Javelin missiles from the U.S. and the decision to stop investigating Manafort and cease cooperation with former special counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia investigation.
● Efforts by Trump administration officials to retaliate against the whistleblower or dispose of documents relating to the Ukraine investigation.
WaPo Editorial: There’s yet another level to the Trump administration’s corruption in Ukraine http://wapo.st/2oHOLTl
🐣 Dear @GOP, I hope your tax cuts were worth the #Kurds. @senatemajldr
🐣 RT @mccaffrey3 Vital we withdraw nuclear weapons from Turkey. NATO should administratively cut links to their armed forces. Erdogan an authoritarian threat to his own people and his NATO allies.
⋙ 🐣 RT @ RichardHaass Long overdue to give up fiction that Erdogan’s Turkey is an ally in practice. US should withdraw all nuclear weapons, reduce reliance on Turkey’s bases, and restrict intelligence sharing and arms sales. Should also articulate red lines in Syria. https://washingtonpost.com/national-security/2019/10/12/us-forces-say-turkey-was-deliberately-bracketing-american-forces-with-artillery-fire-syria/
⋙⋙ WaPo: U.S. forces say Turkey was deliberately ‘bracketing’ American troops with artillery fire in Syria http://wapo.st/2OLcQmK
⋙⋙ 🐣 But Erdogan asked Trump’s permission, right? Honestly, Trump’s access to nuclear weapons worries me a lot more than Erdogan’s.
🐣 RT @SethAbramson NOTE: The Soviet-born Lev Parnas, who says (WP) he met Trump “several” times before the 2016 election and came to “admire” him, began working with the Trump Org around 1987—the year Trump first went to the Soviet Union in a trip reports say the KGB set up. 📌 https://twitter.com/SethAbramson/status/1183412392547495936?s=20
🐣 RT @brhodes The consequences of a single phone call from Erdogan to Trump are staggering
🐣 RT @BenjaminHallNC URGENT: US official tells me the situation in NE Syria is deteriorating rapidly. US Forces are at risk of being isolated and the risk of confrontation between Turkish proxies and US Forces is high. Extremist Turkish proxies are wearing SDF uniforms and killing civilians. ¤ @foxnews
🐣 RT @MeetThePress WATCH: Turkey using militias to advance in Syria, including former Al Qaeda and ISIS members “close to U.S. forces” #MTP #IfItsSunday ¤ @RichardEngel: “The situation is not how it has been portrayed over the last several days as a conventional Turkish assault.”
🐣 RT @TheRickWilson SPOILER: Trump won’t do a damned thing.
⋙ 🐣 RT @ABCpolitics Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin on Turkey: “We’ve put them on warning. The president has authorized me to effectively shut down the entire Turkey economy and we can do that at a moments notice on his command” https://abcn.ws/2Mccm7K
WaPo Editorial: The truth about taxation in America http://wapo.st/35tSynL Two gurus of inequality research, University of California at Berkeley economists Emmanuel Saez and Gabriel Zucman, think Democrats have been far too timid about taking on inequality
WaPo: Trump orders withdrawal of U.S. forces from northern Syria, days after Pentagon downplays possibility http://wapo.st/32c0bNr
NYT Editorial: Making America Worse http://nyti.ms/2B8liEH
// As impeachment commands the spotlight, the Trump administration continues to gut the rule book to hurt millions.
WaPo: How two Soviet-born emigres made it into elite Trump circles — and the center of the impeachment storm http://wapo.st/35zje6O
WaPo, Fareed Zakaria: I’ve long opposed impeaching Trump. That’s different now. http://wapo.st/31chQ6k
🐣 RT @JuliaDavisNews 12 Hours. 4 Syrian Hospitals Bombed. One Culprit: #Russia. ¤ The Russians saved Bashar al-Assad’s government. A trove of Russian Air Force recordings obtained by The Times shows how bombing Syrian hospitals helped them do it. #Syria
⋙ NYT: 12 Hours. 4 Syrian Hospitals Bombed. One Culprit: Russia. http://nyti.ms/2MAoezm
// The Russians saved Bashar al-Assad’s government. A trove of Russian Air Force recordings obtained by The Times shows how bombing Syrian hospitals helped them do it.
🐣 Trump needs the also release the readout from his undoubtedly “perfect” phone call with Erdogan that led to this catastrophe.
🐣 RT @rcallimachi Among the dirty little secrets of how Turkey wages war in Syria is that it’s not just Turkish soldiers poring over the border. It’s also allied rebels whose behavior isn’t so different from ISIS. This horrific video shows how they kill Kurds:
⋙ NYT: Syrian Arab Fighters Backed by Turkey Kill Two Kurdish Prisoners http://nyti.ms/2INODIH
// The killings, one of them caught on video, raised the specter of wider sectarian warfare as fighting in Syria escalates.
WaPo: U.S. troops withdraw from another Syrian town as Turkish forces block supply lines http://wapo.st/317Hh9r
// fp title: WaPo: U.S. troops evacuate Syrian town as Turkish-led forces advance, potentially marooning other U.S. soldiers http://wapo.st/317Hh9r
⭕ 12 Oct 2019
🐣 RT @BillKristol Who wanted Trump to withdraw U.S. troops and abandon the Kurds? Not the Defense or the State Department. Not the foreign policy establishment or the American people. Not Republicans or Democrats. ¤ Who wanted Trump to abandon the Kurds and withdraw U.S. troops? Erdogan. And Putin.
🐣 RT @StevenBeschloss On Trump. Every ISIS car bomb. Every air strike on Kurdish sites. Every jailbreak. Every beating. Every injury. Every death. Every collection of mass casualties. Every one. On Trump, who decided by himself and for himself, to betray the Kurds and betray America.
🐣 RT @McFaul Wow! If true, this is a bombshell. Sondlands text about there is no quid pro quo sounded so forced and scripted. This expIains why.
⋙ 🐣 RT @DavidJollyFL “The U.S. ambassador to the European Union, Gordon Sondland, intends to tell Congress this week that the content of a text message he wrote denying a quid pro quo with Ukraine was relayed to him directly by President Trump in a phone call.”
⋙⋙⋙ WaPo: Trump’s envoy to testify that ‘no quid pro quo’ came from Trump http://wapo.st/2OKtOSi
💙💙 NYT, Matt Flegenheimer: James Comey Would Like to Help http://nyti.ms/32bFhhH
// The former F.B.I. director wants an end to the Trump presidency. And yes, he knows you might think he caused it.
NYT: ISIS Rears Its Head, Adding to Chaos as Turkey Battles Kurds http://nyti.ms/2q0X5Oa
// 10/11-12/2019; A prison break and a bombing claimed by the Islamic State punctuated fears that the Turkish invasion, now in its third day, was sowing mayhem.
🐣 RT @JuliaDavisNews Putin says all foreign militaries, including the U.S., must leave Syria: “Everyone who is illegitimately on the territory of any state, in this case Syria, must leave this territory. This applies to all states” [except for Russia, “invited” by Assad.]
🐣 RT @tribelaw Trump’s name will forever be linked with the word “betrayal”:
Betrayal of the our loyal allies the Kurds,
Betrayal of our battle against ISIS,
Betrayal of Ukraine,
Betrayal of Truth,
Betrayal of his Oath of Office,
Betrayal of the United States of America.
WaPo, Michael Gerhardt: Trump’s impeachment defense boils down to this: Treat me like a king http://wapo.st/2B7BdD6
// If he can’t be indicted, and if he can dictate his own terms to Congress — as the White House counsel suggests — then the president is saying that he’s something other than a president.
NYT, Michelle Goldberg: America Exports Its Corruption to Ukraine http://nyti.ms/2M7HK77
// Once upon a time, we spread ideals of democracy and rule of law. Now? We send Giuliani.
⭕ 11 Oct 2019
Snopes (Oct): EXCLUSIVE: Expanding Pro-Trump Outlet ‘The BL’ Is Closely Linked to The Epoch Times http://bit.ly/2Q8v0hu
// 10/11/2019; Both The Epoch Times and The BL deny any connection whatsoever. Our report makes that a challenging argument to defend.
DailyBeast, Asawin Suebsaeng and Sam Stein: Trump’s Favorite Impeachment Lawyer Is …Trump Himself http://bit.ly/33rXRCm //➔ turns out the letter from the OLC was largely his political talking points
// Trump penned letter from OLC himself; President Donald Trump has slowly but surely bent the Office of the White House Counsel to his will.
WaPo, Nancy Gibbs: It’s clear. Trump doesn’t want to be president anymore.http://wapo.st/2MCom13
🐣 RT @bret_mcgurk Turkish forces have fired on a declared U.S. military outpost in northern Syria. Turkey knows all of our locations down to the precise grid coordinate as confirmed by SECDEF and CJCS only two hours ago. This was not a mistake. 📌 https://twitter.com/brett_mcgurk/status/1182756792675139584?s=20
WaPo, Jennifer Rubin: The bully in chief loses his secret weapon: Fear http://wapo.st/2IKuIdz
CNN: Federal judge says Trump’s use of emergency funds to build wall is unlawful http://cnn.it/2p9Jyn7
@business Kremlin-directed operatives opened champagne when Trump won in 2016 and “uttered almost in unison: ‘We made America great,'” according to communication in a new Senate Intelligence Committee report on Russia election interference https://bloom.bg/2M7HGUQ https://twitter.com/business/status/1182953611812323328?s=20/photo/1
🐣 Let resignations flow like a mighty river. #TrumpAdmin
🐣 Shep Smith was a diamond in the dumpster that is Fox.
🐣 Rudy, Pompeo, Barr and Trump. They’re all going down ~ if justice.
🔆 This❗️⋙ 🔊 MaddowShow: Former Ukraine Amb. Marie Yovanovitch, Rudy Giuliano and Secy of State Pompeo: Apple Podcast http://apple.co/2M9yRdu This is incredible ‼️
⋙ Listen to Former ambassador excoriates corruption of Trump acolytes from The Rachel Maddow Show on Apple Podcasts. https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-rachel-maddow-show/id294055449?i=1000453205257
CNN, Marshall Cohen: 5 explosive lines from ex-ambassador Marie Yovanovitch’s statement to Congress http://cnn.it/2oDDdAi
“Although I understand that I served at the pleasure of the President, I was nevertheless incredulous that the US government chose to remove an ambassador based, as best as I can tell, on unfounded and false claims by people with clearly questionable motives.”
“With respect to Mayor Giuliani, I have had only minimal contacts with him — a total of three that I recall. None related to the events at issue. I do not know Mr. Giuliani’s motives for attacking me. But individuals who have been named in the press as contacts of Mr. Giuliani may well have believed that their personal financial ambitions were stymied by our anti-corruption policy in Ukraine.”
“…after being asked by the Department in early March to extend my tour until 2020, I was then abruptly told in late April to come back to Washington from Ukraine on the next plane.”
“I met with the Deputy Secretary of State, who informed me of the curtailment of my term. He said that the President had lost confidence in me and no longer wished me to serve as his ambassador. He added that there had been a concerted campaign against me, and that the Department had been under pressure from the President to remove me since the Summer of 2018. He also said that I had done nothing wrong and that this was not like other situations where he had recalled ambassadors for cause.”
“”Today, we see the State Department attacked and hollowed out from within. State Department leadership, with Congress, needs to take action now to defend this great institution, and its thousands of loyal and effective employees. We need to rebuild diplomacy as the first resort to advance America’s interests and the front line of America’s defense. I fear that not doing so will harm our nation’s interest, perhaps irreparably.”
NBCNews: Giuliani’s associates tried to cut business deal in Ukraine boasting of Trump ties http://nbcnews.to/33nSZy3
// Lev Parnas and Igor Fruman pushed for the removal of a Ukrainian gas executive hailed for his anti-corruption efforts, two sources say.
🐣 RT @MSNBC Where did the Biden-Ukraine conspiracy theory come from? The New Yorker’s Jane Mayer tells @AllInWithChris how she traced its origin to a dark money group linked to one of Trump’s biggest supporters – Robert Mercer.
💙💙 ⋙ 💽 MSNBC, AllIn: Where Trump’s conspiracy theories come from http://on.msnbc.com/2OHkzCy
// Where Trump’s conspiracy theories come from The New Yorker’s Jane Mayer tells Chris Hayes about the right-wing ecosystem that creates scandals — and might well inadvertently bring down a president.
🐣 RT @maddow “US Federal prosecutors in Illinois said in court papers in 2017 that Firtash was an “upper-echelon” associate of Russian organized crime. He was indicted in 2013 on bribery charges.”
🐣 RT @maddow “Firtash is a former supporter of Ukraine’s ousted pro-Russian president Viktor Yanukovich. He made a fortune selling Russian gas to Ukraine. An Austrian court in June cleared the way for his extradition to the US, but Firtash continues to fight it.”
🔆 This❗️⋙ Reuters: Indicted Giuliani associate worked on behalf of Ukrainian oligarch Firtash http://reut.rs/2M9PA0b surprise surprise!
🐣 .@SecPompeo “A cadet will not lie, cheat, steal, or tolerate those who do.” In case you forgot. @WestPoint_USMA
NYT: Giuliani Is Said to Be Under Investigation for Ukraine Work http://nyti.ms/2IKZxPr
// Prosecutors are investigating whether the president’s lawyer broke laws meant to prevent covert foreign influence on the government. http://nyti.ms/
🐣 RT @ClaraJeffery Holy shit this interview Pompeo gave NBC Nashville affiliate reporter @WSMVNancyAmons is bonkers
⋙ 💽 MSNBC, MitchellReports: Pompeo refuses to say if he met with Giuliani on February Warsaw trip http://on.msnbc.com/
// Secretary of State Mike Pompeo is doing “everything he can,” according to Andrea Mitchell, to avoid discussing Rudy Giuliani. Former CIA director John Brennan joins to discuss.
NYT, Michelle Cottle: All the President’s Henchmen http://nyti.ms/2B2wLW7
// Mr. Trump has assembled a colorful cast of characters who are having trouble keeping their stories straight.
WSJ: Indicted Donors Spread Campaign Cash Widely http://on.wsj.com/2IIuow2
// Pair of Soviet-born Florida businessmen donated $675,000 to at least 14 GOP candidates and groups last year
YahooNews: Pentagon officials deemed withholding of military aid to Ukraine was illegal http://yhoo.it/2OCZnNI
🐣 RT @real TRUMP: “Are you ready? Saudi Arabia at my request has agreed to pay us for everything we are doing. That is a first. Saudi Arabia, and other countries soon now, but Saudi Arabia has agreed to pay us for everything we are doing to help them and we appreciate that.”
Medium, Rick Wilson: The Minister of Justice Meets the Minister of Propaganda http://bit.ly/33rcntU
// Why William Barr’s meeting with Rupert Murdoch is so dangerous
CNN: Rudy Giuliani is still Trump’s attorney but won’t deal with Ukraine matters, source says http://cnn.it/33mqVLr
WaPo: Trump’s Ukraine stone wall has begun to crack http://wapo.st/2VAhXHP
🐣 RT @chocobean73 @realDonaldTrump Well, whaddya know. Here’s a picture Fromm WWII showing Kurds doing what nobody from your family line has ever done, fought alongside our allies at war. #cowardinchief https://twitter.com/chocobean73/status/1182784335562399746?s=20/photo/1
💙 DailyBeast, Rick Wilson: The ‘Serious’ Senate Republicans Chiding Trump Are Profiles in Chickenshit http://bit.ly/2oBbrEB “Unless they confront Donald J. Trump, they’re a party to the atrocities that spring from his actions.”
// Trump broke something in them, something deep and fundamental. He numbed not only their prior commitment to conservative principles but even their very instinct for survival.
DailyBeast, Spencer Ackerman Sam Brodey and Sam Stein: More Potential Whistleblowers Are Contacting Congress http://bit.ly/2B4f7S3
// The first two officials who came forward about the president’s pressure campaign on Ukraine seem to be just the beginning, according to Hill sources.
DailyBeast: Bill Barr, Trump’s Hatchet Man, Is About to Become His Scapegoat http://bit.ly/31551L5
// Trump’s DOJ is arguing that Congress should never have heard Nixon’s “smoking gun” tape and should be barred from reviewing any further evidence of Trump’s criminality.
DailyBeast: Trump Says U.S. Troops Have Quit Syria. It’s Not True. http://bit.ly/2IJnCWN
// “I don’t know what the tactical rationale for this is,” says a former Pentagon official as Turkey assaults the Kurds whom the U.S. used to attack ISIS.
WaPo: New revelations about Trump test Pelosi’s narrow impeachment strategy http://wapo.st/2M9PFAV
WaPo: Ousted ambassador Marie Yovanovitch tells Congress Trump pressured State Dept. to remove her http://wapo.st/2OEe2IH
⋙ ≣ WaPo: Read Marie Yovanovitch’s prepared deposition statement http://wapo.st/2VzCOel
WaPo, David Priess: The Senate is likelier to remove Trump after impeachment than you think http://wapo.st/2M4SLpQ David Priess is chief operating officer at the Lawfare Institute
// The history of past acquittals isn’t as helpful to Trump as naysayers believe
NPR: Former U.S. Ukraine Ambassador Marie Yovanovich Testifies In Impeachment Probe On Capitol Hill http://n.pr/2MAVhD5
⭕ 10 Oct 2019
FinancialTimes: Trump adviser says China provided information about Hunter Biden http://on.ft.com/2JuvTOC
// Michael Pillsbury claims Beijing supplied background on alleged $1.5bn payment
EmptyWheel, Marcy Wheeler: DOJ Confirms that Trump’s Anti-Biden Propagandists Were in the Employ of a Russian http://bit.ly/2VDRBok
// Lev Parnas and Igor Fruman; “Putting together the Dowd letter and the indictment, it becomes clear that the John Solomon propaganda that Trump was pushing (and which Rudy sent to Mike Pompeo’s State Department as part of the effort to get rid of Yovanovitch and which Lindsey Graham just invited Rudy to come present to the Senate Judiciary Committee) was funded by an as yet unnamed Russian.”
WaPo, Max Boot: Why did Trump betray the Kurds? The rationales make no sense. http://wapo.st/2nC7wa9
WaPo: White House political appointees overrode career staffers before freezing Ukraine aid http://wapo.st/2VyXh2M
🐣 RT @kenvogel SCOOP: Indicted pro-TRUMP Ukraine researcher LEV PARNAS told people he paid RUDY GIULIANI hundreds of thousands of dollars to work for his firm, Fraud Guarantee. ¤ Giuliani first seemed to admit working for the firm in 2018, then said he couldn’t confirm.
⋙ NYT: Giuliani’s Ukraine Team: In Search of Influence, Dirt and Money http://nyti.ms/
// The president’s lawyer was paid by Lev Parnas, who with Igor Fruman worked on behalf of President Trump in Ukraine.
Their mission was to find people and information that could be used to undermine the special counsel’s investigation, and also to damage former Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr., a prospective Democratic challenger to Mr. Trump.
Over the past year, the two men connected Mr. Giuliani with Ukrainians who were willing to participate in efforts to push a largely unsubstantiated narrative about the Bidens. They played a key role in a campaign by pro-Trump forces to press for the removal of the United States ambassador to Ukraine on the grounds that she had not shown sufficient loyalty to the president as he pursued his agenda there.
🐣 RT @ZeleskyLuke This could happen here. How many times in the trump era has a friend said to you, “yeah I just don’t follow current events. It’s all too crazy.”?
⋙ 🐣 RT @Heidi_Cuda “The greatest challenge..is ‘beznadyoga’—a collective feeling of hopelessness that paralyzes efforts to overturn the status quo..It’s this aspect of the Russian psyche that the opposition—led by @Navalny smashed on Sunday after marathon protests”
Politico (9/11/2019): [Valany protests] http://politi.co/35rYcqi
🐣 RT @anders_aslund We are many who have pointed out the obvious criminality of the Trump family & gang for a long time (e.g. @JuliaDavisNews @olgaNYC1211). Finally, the FBI is catching up with its arrests of Parnas & Fruman. Logically, @RudyGiuliani should be the next with many to follow.
NBCNews: Intel officials say ISIS could regroup after U.S. ‘betrayal’ of Kurds in Syria http://nbcnews.to/2IH6EIz
// They are all going to be killed or detained after we betrayed them,” an ex-CIA officer said. “Killed with weapons we gave to the Turks.”
WaPo, George F Will: The spiraling president adds self-impeachment to his repertoire http://wapo.st/2B02KpV
If Trump gets away with his blanket noncompliance, the Constitution’s impeachment provision, as it concerns presidents, will be effectively repealed, and future presidential corruption will be largely immunized against punishment.
The canine loyalty of Senate Republicans will keep Trump in office. But until he complies with House committee subpoenas, the House must not limply hope federal judges will enforce their oversight powers. Instead, the House should wield its fundamental power, that of the purse, to impose excruciating costs on executive branch noncompliance. This can be done.
🐣 RT @jonflan The terrible trio of Trump, Pompeo and Giuliani ran Yovanovitch, a career diplomat with three decades of experience, out of her job as ambassador to the Ukraine; she’s coming to town to tell her story on the Hill; that’s what a truth teller does.
TheIntercept, Ryan Grim: The Actual Laws Trump Broke Amount to 10 Years in Prison http://bit.ly/2MwhHpb
DailyBeast, Julia Davis: Trump’s Syria Fiasco Is Part of Putin’s To-Do List http://bit.ly/316WnM8
// Trump tried to keep his talks with Putin at Helsinki last year secret from his staff and the world, but Russia’s president held up the checklist for the cameras. Syria was on it.
🐣 RT @WendySiegelman Wow – Lev Parnas was hired by DiGenova and Toensing as an interpreter for Dmitry Firtash
⋙ 🐣 RT @cjcmichel Aaaand here’s the confirmation that Parnas’s trips to Vienna are officially connected to Firtash: https://twitter.com/cjcmichel/status/1182471626413297664?s=20/photo/1
⋙⋙ WSJ: Two Giuliani Associates Who Helped Him on Ukraine Charged With Campaign-Finance Violations http://on.wsj.com/2VBaS9V
// Prosecutors say Lev Parnas and Igor Fruman were part of a conspiracy to funnel foreign money into U.S. elections
🐣 RT @emptywheel Effectively, the President of the United States is sharing lawyers and (now-indicted) researcher/translators with Dmitry Firtash.
DailyBeast, Sam Stein and Lachlan Markay: Dems Want to Know: Who Paid Rudy? http://bit.ly/2MAVzdc
// The president’s personal lawyer has been digging dirt for him in Ukraine. Now Congress wants to know: who picked up the tab?
WaPo: Senior adviser to Pompeo resigns http://wapo.st/2MuCedH “amid rising dissatisfaction and plummeting morale inside the State Department over what is seen as Pompeo’s failure to support personnel ensnared in the Ukraine controversy”
// “A senior officer who has held a range of diplomatic posts, including ambassador to Afghanistan, Colombia and Peru, [Michael] McKinley was serving as ambassador to Brazil last year when Pompeo recruited him as a policy adviser and a conduit between his office and the career service.”
WaPo: Kellyanne and George Conway’s tawdry love triangle with all of us http://wapo.st/2Mv1T6e
WaPo: We investigated the Watergate scandal. We believe Trump should be impeached. http://wapo.st/35nNRvJ By 17 Watergate special prosecutors
🐣 RT @MarshallCohen Paul Manafort’s defense attorneys are helping Lev Parnas and Igor Fruman today at their initial criminal appearance at EDVA. CNN’s @kpolantz spotted Manafort’s attorneys Kevin Downing and Tom Zehnle at the courthouse. (Zehnle said he was just here to help out for the time being.)
🐣 RT @ Tom_Winter NBC News: Attorney General William Barr has been aware of the investigation into Parnas and Fruman and was since shortly after he came into office this past February, @PeteWilliamsNBC reports.
TheAtlantic, Elaina Plott: The Mystery of Rudy Giuliani’s Vienna Trip http://bit.ly/2q3TAXp
// Dmitri Firtash, Ukrainian oligarch, Russian organized crime, associate of Manafort, favored by Putin per Maddow; President Trump’s personal lawyer told me he was planning to fly to Vienna roughly 24 hours after his business associates were arrested as they prepared to do the same.
Vox, Ian Millhiser: Trump’s resistance to the impeachment inquiry is a genuine constitutional crisis http://bit.ly/2Vy3Z9t
// Here’s how bad things can get if Trump keeps stonewalling impeachment.
CNN: Giuliani dealings with associates scrutinized as part of investigation http://cnn.it/35lGu82
TheAtlantic, David Graham: The Story Keeps Getting Worse for the White House http://bit.ly/2pZ3ZU5
// A pair of men helping the president’s supposed anti-corruption campaign were apprehended as they tried to leave the United States.
🐣 RT @mikercarpenter Oh boy will the WH regret this: On October 3, 2019, counsel for Parnas and Fruman sent a letter to Congress requesting additional time…and confirming that “Messrs. Parnas and Fruman assisted Mr. Giuliani in connection with his representation of President Trump.”
🐣 RT @DeadlineWH WATCH: “When the indictment itself says that this conspiracy involved others known and unknown, there are others that are being investigated… When I read this indictment… I smell not only human informants but I also smell a wiretap” – @FrankFigliuzzi1 w/ @NicolleDWallace 💽 https://twitter.com/DeadlineWH/status/1182419806466826242?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @MarshallCohen BREAKING: The FBI and federal prosecutors in NYC are scrutinizing Rudy Giuliani’s financial dealings with the two men charged today. The men, Lev Parnas and Igor Fruman, are charged with pumping Russian money into US political campaigns. (reporting from @evanperez @ShimonPro)
🐣 RT @DrGJackBrown Putin knows that Trump’s time in the White House in growing short. This will cause Putin to exert increasing greater force upon Trump as he asks/demands/extorts for favors. America’s National Intelligence and all who put the country first must be on high alert. Stay Vigilant.
NBCNews: Trump’s former Russia aide set to give revealing testimony on Giuliani, Sondland http://nbcnews.to/2OzGYRU
// Fiona Hill’s appearance next week before Congress has stoked fear among people close to the president.
WaPo: At least four national security officials raised alarms about Ukraine policy before and after Trump call with Ukrainian president http://wapo.st/310WIAd
NYT, David Leonhardt: ‘Wow. This Letter Is Bananas.’ When reality is inconvenient, reinvent it http://nyti.ms/310SI2F
There is no legal or logical basis to President Trump’s claim that the impeachment inquiry is illegitimate.
“Wow. This letter is bananas,” Gregg Nunziata, a lawyer and former Republican staff member on the Senate Judiciary Committee, wrote yesterday, referring to the White House letter announcing it would not cooperate with the inquiry. “A barely-lawyered temper tantrum. A middle finger to Congress and its oversight responsibilities. No Member of Congress should accept it, no matter his or her view on the behavior of Pelosi, Schiff, or Trump.”
🐣 RT @TommyVietor Via NYT: “the United States was providing intelligence to Turkey until Monday that may have helped it target Kurdish forces.”
⋙ 🐣 RT @TommyVietor Americans fighting with the Kurds could be among those killed by Turkey, including this former Marine. https://twitter.com/TVietor08/status/1182302797795975170?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @jennycohn1 Trump’s campaign manager, Brad Parscale, just asked Lee Stranahan (who works for Sputnik, a registered agent of the Russian Federation) for help with 2020. This is happening in real time, in broad daylight. #ImpeachTrump
🐣 RT @Alexandrachalup Trump’s campaign manager asked Russia for 2020 election assistance. ¤ Lee Stranahan works for Sputnik, which is a registered agent of the Russian Federation and part of Putin’s disinformation warfare machine targeted at the U.S.
🐣 RT @RepAdamSchiff European nations are some of our closest allies. Our security is intertwined. ¤ If Trump’s impulsive capitulation to Erdogan leads to a resurgence of ISIS, it threatens everyone- in Syria, in Europe, and here at home. ¤ America may not have a friend left after this presidency.
WSJ: White House Shifted Authority Over Ukraine Aid Amid Legal Concerns http://on.wsj.com/2nzzpjf
// House Democrats are investigating why a political appointee was given control of dispensing military aid after career budget staff questioned the legality of delaying the funds
🐣 RT @JoyceWhiteVance Convenient to arrest witnesses with knowledge of campaign finance issues who are on their way to be deposed by House impeachment investigators
⋙ 🐣 RT @npfandos Parnas was supposed to be headed to Capitol Hill right now for a deposition with House impeachment investigators. Fruman was to be tomorrow. ¤ They helped Giuliani on the ground in Ukraine as he tried to gin up inquiries into the Bidens and a conspiracy about the 2016 election
⋙⋙ 🐣 RT @npfandos NEWS: Lev Parnas and Igor Fruman, two Giuliani associates who donated to a pro-Trump super PAC, were arrested late Wednesday on criminal charges of violating campaign finance rules. They have been under investigation by SDNY. w @aviswanatha @sgurman
↥ ↧
WSJ: Two Foreign-Born Men Who Helped Giuliani on Ukraine Arrested on Campaign-Finance http://on.wsj.com/35nkJow
// Charges Lev Parnas and Igor Fruman are expected to appear in federal court in Virginia later on Thursday
WaPo: George Conway and other prominent conservatives call for ‘expeditious’ impeachment probe http://wapo.st/2OB9Zwx
⭕ 9 Oct 2019
Bloomberg: On Bidens and Ukraine, Wild Claims With Little Basis http://bloom.bg/2Kf8m4W
// 10/9/2019, upd. 10/15/2019
4. What criminal charges came out of this? ¤ None. Burisma issued a statement in 2017 saying that “all legal proceedings and pending criminal allegations” against it and Zlochevsky were closed and that it paid an extra 180 million hryvnias ($7 million) in taxes. There’s also no known evidence that any of the investigations ever involved Hunter Biden. Ukraine’s former prosecutor general, Yuriy Lutsenko, told Bloomberg News in May that there was no evidence of wrongdoing by the Bidens.
WaPo Editorial: It’s tempting to ignore Trump’s unhinged letter to Congress. But this is different. http://wapo.st/2Mt2ghA
WaPo: Trump’s Syria decision tests the bounds of Republican support as he demands solidarity on impeachment http://wapo.st/2Mutvbn
WaPo, Hemin Kobane: Turkey wants to destroy us. Trump just gave them a green light. http://wapo.st/2p7fdWp Hemin Kobane is the Syrian Democratic Forces liaison with the international coalition against the Islamic State.
WaPo, Ashley Parker: The ‘I’m rubber, you’re glue’ presidency: Trump turns to schoolyard taunts in impeachment battle http://wapo.st/2pdrQPt
NYT Editorial: Trump Wants a Fight. Pelosi Can Hit Back. http://nyti.ms/2ICGMh7
// With rules, rigor and resolution.
🐣 RT @JohnJHarwood former aide to GWB and Mitt Romney
⋙ 🐣 RT @TheLifeOfSally So let me get this straight. Basically the President of the United States helped coordinate an attack on an ally.
DailyBeast, Sam Brodey: As Capitol Hill Drafts Sanctions on Turkey, Trump Shrugs at Kurds http://bit.ly/2B0aY1j
// Even Trump’s allies are livid at his inaction as Turkey advances into Kurdish lands in northern Syria.
🐣 RT @JenGriffinFNC I just spoke to a distraught US Special Forces soldier who is among the 1000 or so US troops in Syria tonight who is serving alongside the SDF Kurdish forces. It was one of the hardest phone calls I have ever taken. ¤ “I am ashamed for the first time in my career.”
🐣 RT @JohnJHarwood new Fox News poll on whether Congress should impeach Trump and remove him from the presidency: 51% yes, 40% no
DailyBeast:Trump Defends Abandoning the Kurds: They ‘Didn’t Help Us With Normandy’ http://bit.ly/2IBYgds
🐣 RT @McFaul This Trump decision is just shocking. Those currently being bombarded by Turkey are the same fighters who defeated ISIS — our enemy — alongside the United States and our partners/allies in Operation Inherent Resolve. A very sad day for American leadership in the world.
⋙ 🐣 RT @JenGriffinFNC The US military has been ordered by President Trump not to help.
⋙⋙ 🐣 RT @LucasFoxNews Syrian Kurds under bombardment from Turkish jets urgently request air support from U.S. and “No fly zone” to protect civilians: SDF statement
⋙⋙⋙ 🐣 RT @AmericanCrawl So Trump is commanding our troops to STAND DOWN while the Kurds, including women and children are being slaughtered. And Republicans do nothing. Republicans have blood on their hands for not holding this monster accountable.
WaPo: Turkey launches offensive against U.S.-allied Kurdish forces in northern Syria http://wapo.st/325XGMM
🐣 RT @ShriazMaher Here is the immediate cost of Trump’s announcement. Islamic State launched a fairly significant attack on Raqqa last night, once the group’s de facto capital, given the group is now worried about a Turkish incursion into its territory from the north. 1/
📌 https://twitter.com/ShirazMaher/status/1181833570077331457?s=20
⭕ 8 Oct 2019
TheAtlantic, Joseph Votel and Elizabeth Dent: The Danger of Abandoning Our Partners http://bit.ly/324CMh1
// The Syria policy reversal threatens to undo five years’ worth of fighting against ISIS and will severely damage American credibility and reliability.
DailyBeast Michael Daly: This Army Veteran Went to Syria for the Kurds. He Can’t Believe What Trump Is Doing. http://bit.ly/2pTkz7P
// Porter Goodman volunteered as a combat medic in northern Syria. He fears for the Kurds he trained.
Bloomberg: Who Are the Syrian Kurds the U.S. Is Abandoning? http://bit.ly/2Vrm9K7
● https://twitter.com/Auriandra/status/1181776671260721152?s=20/photo/1
DailyMail [UK]: Turkey fires first shots: Ankara bombs Kurdish supply route ahead of invasion to create a ‘peace corridor’ along border just hours after Trump pulls US troop http://dailym.ai/2ohAEEa //➔ as president reveals he has invited Erdogan to the White House next month ● 🌎 https://twitter.com/Auriandra/status/1181774003616337921?s=20/photo/1
● Turkey confirmed it carried out strikes against Kurdish forces on the Syria-Iraq border overnight Monday
● Strike was designed to sever supply lines between Kurds in the two countries in preparation for invasion
● Turkey plans to create a ‘peace corridor’ in northern Syria by driving Kurdish forces away from its border
● Comes after Donald Trump agreed to withdraw U.S troops from Syria, but denied he abandoned the Kurds
● Trump revealed on Tuesday that he has extended an invitation to Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan to meet with him at the White House in November
● He tweeted that Turkey was a ‘good trading partner’ of the U.S and ‘have been very good to deal with’
🐣 Trump wants blood and the Kurds will pay the price, as Trump destroys alliances and the value of the “U.S. handshake” as he goes down. It’s Mad Lear on the Heath but with armies.
WaPo: Former national security officials fight back as Trump attacks impeachment as ‘deep state’ conspiracy http://wapo.st/2LZ66A8
WaPo: White House escalates standoff with Congress, says it will not cooperate with impeachment inquiry of Trump http://wapo.st/2p77IPi
↥ ↧
≣ WaPo: Letter from White House counsel Pat Cipollone to House leaders http://wapo.st/33gqHpb
🐣 RT @JoyceWhiteVance Trump says the whistleblower got the facts wrong so @just_security took a hard look & confirmed his accuracy. See it for yourself, with annotations to the original complaint showing the facts, thanks to @rgoodlaw
⋙ JustSecurity, Ryan Goodman and John Nelson: Overwhelming Confirmation of Whistleblower Complaint: An Annotation http://bit.ly/2nt8CF5
NYT: Trump’s Ukraine Call Was ‘Crazy’ and ‘Frightening,’ Official Told Whistle-Blower http://nyti.ms/2M0EgmV “completely lacking in substance related to national security”
// The whistle-blower wrote a memo describing an official who heard the call as “visibly shaken” by it.
Politico, Charlie Sykes: The Humiliation of Lindsey Graham http://politi.co/35iRWBc
// He traded his honor to be “relevant” as a Trump adviser. But on Syria, Trump didn’t bother to ask what he thought.
🐣 RT @MarkWarner The Senate Intelligence Committee just released its report on Russia’s use of social media during the 2016 election. You can read the whole thing for yourself, but here are the important takeaways and recommendations: 📌 https://twitter.com/MarkWarner/status/1181617144611643394?s=20
⋙ Warner.Senate.gov: Senate Intel Committee Releases Bipartisan Report on Russia’s Use of Social Media http://bit.ly/35g5kpO
🐣 RT @IgnatiusPost A bad situation in Northeast Syria is about to get much worse. Sources tell me that US officials have just informed the Syrian Kurds that Turkey is likely to attack on air and ground in next 24 hours. The US will do nothing. Targets are Tal Abyad and Ras al Ayn…. 📌 https://twitter.com/IgnatiusPost/status/1181724204233904128?s=20
⋙ 🐣 RT @IgnatiusPost [3] …I’m also told that Turkish attack appears coordinated with the Russians. Russian-backed forces are mobilizing to invade the Kurdish area from the south — towards Tabqa and other spots. Meanwhile, ISIS is mobilizing sleeper cells in Raqqa and attacks have taken place tonight.
🐣 RT @SpeakerPelosi .@realDonaldTrump, you are not above the law. You will be held accountable. #TruthExposed
⋙ Speaker.gov: Pelosi Statement on Trump Administration Refusal to Comply with House Subpoenas http://bit.ly/33gf3KZ
🐣 RT @SpeakerPelosi .@realDonaldTrump, you are not above the law. You will be held accountable. #TruthExposed
⋙ Speaker.gov: Pelosi Statement on Trump Administration Refusal to Comply with House Subpoenas http://bit.ly/33gf3KZ
NYT: Top Secret Russian Unit Seeks to Destabilize Europe, Security Officials Say http://nyti.ms/2pSJfxf
NYT: White House Declares War on Impeachment Inquiry, Alleging Effort to Undo Trump’s Election http://nyti.ms/35jRL91
📊 WaPo/Schar Poll: Trump loves to tout his base. But a new poll shows increasing GOP support for impeachment — and even removing him. http://wapo.st/2p3tu6i 58 percent support the inquiry; 38 percent who oppose it; plus, this:
● https://twitter.com/Auriandra/status/1181694154528739328?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @rickhausen Wow, ok. Read @jeremystahl William Barr’s Department of Justice now says Congress never should have been granted key evidence it needed to conduct Watergate. via @slate
⋙ Slate, Jeremy Stahl: DOJ: If Watergate Happened Today, We’d Block Evidence From Congress http://bit.ly/2IzGxU2
WaPo: Demoralized State Department personnel question Pompeo’s role in Ukraine crisis http://wapo.st/2VqeknD
DailyBeast, Adam Rawnsley: The Weird Rise of Trump’s Ukraine Hatchet Man http://bit.ly/2LXbiEl
// In any normal administration, Gordon Sondland’s tenure as ambassador to the EU might have been unremarkable. But we’re pretty far from normal.
DailyBeast, Ronald Radash: The Deep State Conspiracy Is About to Go Into Overdrive http://bit.ly/2oc6cLD
// The American right has advanced nutty conspiracy theories for decades. But the one we’re about to see play out will make Joe McCarthy look like an amateur.
⭕ 7 Oct 2019
TheAtlantic, Franklin Foer: What Authoritarians Mean by ‘Corruption’ http://bit.ly/2VtsmoR
// The president is following the template employed by other autocrats to destroy their rivals.
NYT, Paul Krugman: The Education of Fanatical Centrists http://nyti.ms/310QpwB Trump isn’t an aberration. He’s unusually blatant and gaudily corrupt, but at a basic level he’s the culmination of where his party has been going for decades.
// Will they finally admit what the G.O.P. has become?
🐣 RT @KimberlyEAtkins “According to people close to Romney, he’s firmly decided against primarying Trump. … Instead, a Romney adviser told me, Romney believes he has more potential power as a senator who will decide Trump’s fate in an impeachment trial.” #mapoli #utpoli
⋙ VanityFair, Gabriel Sherman: “Romney Is the Pressure Point in the Impeachment Process”: Mitt Won’t Primary Trump—But He’s Trying to Bring Him Down http://bit.ly/35fYPDk
// Trump’s favorite punching bag is reaching out to fellow Republicans to raise the temperature on impeachment. “Romney is the one guy who could bring along Susan Collins, Cory Gardner, Ben Sasse,” says a Mitt confidant.
WaPo, Michael Carpenter: Only in Trump’s world could what Joe Biden did in Ukraine be considered ‘corrupt’ http://wapo.st/2IuG3P6
Politico Mag, Jack Shafer: Why Trump Can’t Tweet His Way Out of This http://politi.co/35k6FMz
// On impeachment and Syria, Congress and the news media at last care more about what the president does than what he says. http://politi.co/
🐣 RT @JuliaDavisNews The Trump administration is pulling out of the Open Skies Treaty, which allows the United States and our allies and partners in Europe to monitor Russian military deployments. Withdrawal risks dividing the transatlantic alliance. https://twitter.com/JuliaDavisNews/status/1181322726843265026?s=20/photo/1
NYT, Ken Frydman: What Happened to Rudy Giuliani? http://nyti.ms/2LW5wmu Mr. Frydman was press secretary for Rudolph W. Giuliani during the 1993 mayoral campaign.
// The man I worked for in 1993 is not the man who now lies for Donald Trump.
🐣 RT @ActiveMeasuresDoc: I know a lot’s happened in the last 12 hours, but let’s not let this story fall through the cracks. If you don’t get this part you don’t get what Rudy was really doing in Ukraine.
⋙ 🐣 RT @ScotMStedman BREAKING: Giuliani associates Lev Parnas and Igor Fruman planned to steer lucrative contracts from a Ukrainian gas deal to Trump allies. [Link to AP article] 📌 https://twitter.com/ScottMStedman/status/1180990387608936449?s=20
⋙⋙ 🐣 RT @ScotMStedman This scandal just exploded perhaps far wider than the Russia investigation.
⋙⋙ 🐣 RT @ScotMStedman 🚨🚨🚨Lev Parnas told associates that “Trump planned to remove U.S. Ambassador Marie Yovanovitch and replace her with someone more open to aiding their business interests.”
⋙⋙ 🐣 RT @ScotMStedman “Perry made clear that the Trump administration wanted to see the entire Naftogaz supervisory board replaced, according to a person who attended both meetings…”
🐣 RT @KyleGriffin1 As Rudy Giuliani was pushing Ukrainian officials to investigate Biden, individuals with ties to Trump and Giuliani were getting involved with Ukraine’s massive state gas company, AP reports.
⋙ AP: Profit, not politics: Trump allies sought Ukraine gas deal http://bit.ly/2nr8I07
NYT: ‘We Absolutely Could Not Do That’: When Seeking Foreign Help Was Out of the Question http://nyti.ms/2oVzcY3
⭕ 6 Oct 2019
🐣 RT @dcpoll Because if you’re going to run a racket on Ukrainian state-owned gas company, Naftogaz, who better to go to for advice than Manafort, bagman for Firtash, who made billions doing the very same and, though exiled in Austria, still wields power in Ukraine.
⋙ 🐣 RT @dcpoll In recent months, Trump’s lawyer, Giuliani, met with imprisoned Paul Manafort, whose pro-Putin dirty work in Ukraine was financed by Russia mobster Dmitry Firtash, who was “the de-facto head of Naftogaz [Ukrainian state-owned gas company] under Yanukovych.”
⋙⋙ WaPo (10/2): Giuliani consulted on Ukraine with imprisoned Paul Manafort via a lawyer http://wapo.st/2phcFor
GQ, Julia Ioffe: Here’s Why Ukraine Pops Up in So Many U.S. Scandals http://bit.ly/2pU6WVY
// Whether it’s Paul Manafort or Hunter Biden and Donald Trump, Ukraine seems to play a disproportionately popular role in our nation’s recent controversies. Julia Ioffe explains why the same small country is increasingly involved in America’s political chaos
WaPo, Fred Hiatt: It’s not news that Trump is corrupt. What’s new is how he is succeeding in corrupting our government. http://wapo.st/2p4l2UA
NewYorker, Jeffrey Toobin: Donald Trump’s Ukraine Scandal Has Its Roots in Russia http://bit.ly/35dyTZd
// Both situations stem from the President’s apparent willingness to accept political favors from foreign leaders, and his eagerness to do Putin’s bidding.
NYT: Legal Team Says It Represents a Second Whistle-Blower Over Trump and Ukraine http://nyti.ms/30Tu6IZ
WaPo: Barr’s review of Russia investigation wins Trump’s favor. Those facing scrutiny suspect he’s chasing conspiracy theories. http://wapo.st/3384LfW
WaPo: Whistleblower’s attorney says team now representing ‘multiple’ officials as impeachment inquiry expands http://wapo.st/33d3cgz
⭕ 5 Oct 2019
Politico: Judge orders White House to preserve records of Trump’s dealings with foreign leaders http://politi.co/2MitFmb U.S. District Judge Amy Berman Jackson issued the order Thursday
🐣 RT @mhmck Russia attacked Ukraine 24 times yesterday, October 5th. The Russian invaders are shelling with heavy artillery and heavy mortars, violating several provisions of the Minsk Agreement – unfortunately with impunity from the accord’s guarantors, France and Germany.
WaPo, Joe Biden: Trump won’t destroy me, and he won’t destroy my family http://wapo.st/2IocZbF “It all comes down to the abuse of power. That is the defining characteristic of the Trump presidency.”
💙💙 🔆 This❗️⋙ NYT, Peter Pomerantsev: Rudy Giuliani Welcomes You To Eastern Europe http://nyti.ms/2Imayqj ‘Seeing all rules and norms as mere facades for a vast conspiracy legitimizes the exercise of unlimited corruption’
// When truth dissolves anything is possible.
🐣 RT @davidfrum “If you can help me with ‘X,’ we’ll help you achieve ‘Y.’ This is what partnerships do.”
-Secretary of State Mike Pompeo.
That’s an excellent description of both international diplomacy and organized crime, depending upon the “X.”
⋙ 🐣 Even when there a LAW against the X being ‘anything of value from a foreign country to influence a US election’?
🐣 Pretty soon Trump will be demanding protection money from countries so we don’t nuke them.
💙💙 NewYorker, Jane Mayer: The Invention of the Conspiracy Theory on Biden and Ukraine http://bit.ly/2IqF0zz
// How a conservative dark-money group that targeted Hillary Clinton in 2016 spread the discredited story that may lead to Donald Trump’s impeachment.
🐣 RT @PeterGleick Day 1. It never happened.
Day 2. Maybe it happened.
Day 3. It wasn’t me.
Day 4. Yes, it was me but it wasn’t wrong.
Day 5. I’d do it again, and ask China too.
Day 6. Rick Perry made me do it.
🐣 RT @JohnWDean In declaring his mission is to “disrupt the world,” he is claiming he is a anarchist — a kind of terrorist? Did Donald Trump place his in charge of anarchy?
⋙ 🐣 RT @Alyssa_Milano I’m leaving this here. I’m warning you, it bone chilling. 💽 https://twitter.com/JohnWDean/status/1180616924394164224?s=20/photo/1
// Interview w Rudy Giuliano
WaPo: Russia looks for leverage as Ukraine slides deeper into impeachment probes http://wapo.st/2oSC5IY
DailyBeast, Michael Tomasky: Trump and the Republicans: Part Mafia, Part Eastern Bloc Politburo, All Disaster http://bit.ly/2olunHg
// Everything is distrust, paranoia, and setting this one against that one.
DailyBeast: Betsy Swan, Asawin Suebsaeng and Spencer Ackerman: How Rudy Giuliani’s Bid to Discredit Mueller Played Into Impeachment Probe http://bit.ly/2oYMpPv
// The former New York mayor dug around Ukraine to undermine Robert Mueller’s investigation. He may have hamstrung his client’s presidency instead.
WaPo: Pompeo says he sent response to House investigators, but subpoenaed documents remain undelivered http://wapo.st/335iiER
WaPo: Mounting evidence buttresses the facts laid out in whistleblower complaint http://wapo.st/2LQrFTe
⭕ 4 Oct 2019
DailyBeast, Nico Hines: Email Leak Exposes Trump Tower Russian’s Dirty Lobbying Operations http://bit.ly/2AQQ0BV
// According to leaked emails from Natalia Veselnitskaya, Russia’s disinformation campaign may have broken U.S. law and exposed details of a witness who later fell from a window.
🐣 RT @JillWineBanks Love current discussion of ellipses in Trump-Zelensky convo. @chucktodd called it the #RoseWoods of this scandal and @neal_katyal said it was the 18 min gap. As the Watergate prosecutor who cross-examined Nixons secretary, Rose Mary Woods, I love the analogy. Sorry for deja vu.
CNN: Pompeo fails to meet House subpoena deadline to produce Ukraine documents http://cnn.it/2M8xvhy
WaPo, Ashley Parker: ‘Me! Me!’: An aggrieved Trump spins an alternate reality as impeachment probe escalates http://wapo.st/2LOh6Qy
// The Debrief: An occasional series offering a reporter’s insights
💙💙 WaPo: Trump’s calls with foreign leaders have long worried aides, leaving some ‘genuinely horrified’ http://wapo.st/31L1gfe
WaPo: Holding Ukraine hostage: How the president and his allies, chasing 2020 ammunition, fanned a political storm http://wapo.st/2IohinC
🔆 This❗️⋙ NYT: 2nd Official Is Weighing Whether to Blow the Whistle on Trump’s Ukraine Dealings http://nyti.ms/2Om516J
// The official, a member of the intelligence community, was interviewed by the inspector general to corroborate the original whistle-blower’s account.
🔆 This❗️⋙ WSJ: Trump, in August Call With GOP Senator, Denied Official’s Claim on Ukraine Aid http://on.wsj.com/30KZwRJ “Johnson said that Gordon Sondland, the U.S. ambassador to the European Union, had described to him a quid pro quo involving a commitment by Kyiv … ”
// Sen. Ron Johnson asked the president after hearing of potential pressure campaign
Sen. Ron Johnson said that Gordon Sondland, the U.S. ambassador to the European Union, had described to him a quid pro quo involving a commitment by Kyiv to probe matters related to U.S. elections and the status of nearly $400 million in U.S. aid to Ukraine that the president had ordered to be held up in July.
WaPo: Democrats hate Trump’s executive orders. Why are they promising so many of their own? http://wapo.st/2LMkKdW
🐣 RT @JoyceWhiteVance The biggest difficulty we’ll face after Trump is making sure we haven’t come to accept death by 1000 cuts to our republic & that we insist on integrity in all things from elected officials of both parties going forward. No more nepotism, conflicts, profiting from the presidency.
NYT, Margaret Taylor: Adam Schiff Is the Right Man for the Moment http://nyti.ms/2IpxYLv
// A clinical and focused approach is called for in the face of Trump’s theatrics and distraction.
🐣 RT @tedlieu Looks like Republican Members of Congress have now abandoned the hearsay defense for @realDonaldTrump. ¤ They’ve apparently now moved to the Nixon defense of “if the President does it, it’s not illegal.”
WSJ: Trump Administration Used Potential Meeting to Pressure Ukraine on Biden, Texts Show http://on.wsj.com/2LIuNk3
// President also called on China to investigate former vice president and his son
⭕ 3 Oct 2019
JustSecurity, James Bowman: Trump’s Extortion of Ukraine Is an Impeachable Abuse of Power http://bit.ly/366aftU
💙💙✅ NBCNews (10/3): Trump seized on a conspiracy theory called the ‘insurance policy.’ Now, it’s at the center of an impeachment investigation. http://nbcnews.to/2WcgRlK on: Crowdstrike, “insurance policy,” Ukraine server, DNC server conspiracy theories
// tags: conspiracy, Crowdstrike, “insurance policy”, Ukraine server, DNC server; Just months after Trump’s inauguration, conspiracy theorists pushed a fanciful and unsubstantiated narrative in which the DNC framed Russia for election interference.
Beginning months after Trump’s inauguration, conspiracy theorists have pushed this fanciful and unsubstantiated narrative in which the Democratic National Committee framed Russia for its election interference in 2016 and later covered up its false accusation with help from then-Vice President Joe Biden and officials in Ukraine.
In the conspiracy theory, impeachment proceedings recently pursued by House Democrats were always the DNC’s endgame, effectively a cash-out on the “insurance policy.”
Although Trump has often brought up various conspiracy theories, there had been little indication that the president had taken aggressive action on them. That changed last month, when the White House released the summary of a call with Ukraine. The subsequent release of a whistleblower complaint further confirmed that the ardently pro-Trump conspiracy theories that have percolated on the far right for years had reached the highest echelons of power — and influenced the decision-making of the president.
✅ NYT (10/3): How a Fringe Theory About Ukraine Took Root in the White House http://nyti.ms/2pzNFJy “‘The DNC server and that conspiracy theory has got to go,’ [Thomas Bossert] said. ‘If he continues to focus on that white whale, it’s going to bring him down.’” #Crowdstrike
WaPo, Joe Lockhart: I worked in the White House during impeachment. Trump’s team isn’t ready for it. http://wapo.st/2MeGIFe
// Panic, gallows humor, no sleep — it was the most harrowing period of my career.
NYT: Trump Denies Quid Pro Quo for Ukraine, but Envoys Had Their Doubts http://nyti.ms/330fs3W
NewYorker, John Cassidy: Trump’s Call for China to Investigate the Bidens Shows How Far He’ll Go to Save Himself http://bit.ly/2InwLnZ
NewYorker, Susan Glasser: Did Donald Trump Just Self-Impeach? http://bit.ly/31O8AGU
Lawfare: The Constitution Says ‘Bribery’ Is Impeachable. What Does That Mean? http://bit.ly/31YMP76 By Ben Berwick, Justin Florence, John Langford
🐣 RT @MSNBC In June, Trump promised Pres. Xi he’d stay quiet on Hong Kong protests during trade talks, CNN reports. “He’s essentially selling off the commitment to freedom by the United States in order to get something through this trade deal,” says @JohnJHarwood
⋙ MSNBC, TheLastWord: President Trump reportedly promised Xi he’d stay quiet on Hong Kong protests during trade talks http://on.msnbc.com/2Mga1Hq
// Trump publicly called on China to investigate his political rival, and CNN reports a June phone call in which Trump raised Biden and told President Xi he’d stay quiet on Hong Kong protests during trade talks. John Harwood says Trump is selling America’s commitment to freedom in exchange for something on trade, and that will be harder for Republicans to defend. Lawrence O’Donnell also discusses with Joyce Vance.
WaPo: Trump wanted Ukraine’s president to launch investigations before face-to-face meeting, State Dept. texts show http://wapo.st/2MeQDui
NYT Editorial: Trump, the Self-Impeaching President http://nyti.ms/2VcomJ2
// Now he wants China to investigate the Bidens and help his re-election bid. Give him this, he’s not subtle.
🐣 RT @McFaul The quid pro quo: Kurt Volker: “Heard from White House—assuming President Z convinces trump he will investigate / “get to the bottom of what happened” in 2016, we will nail down date for visit to Washington.” CLEAR AS DAY.
⋙ 🐣 RT @McFaul Amb Soundland not satisfied with Zelensky announcing an investigation. Wants it in writing: “To avoid misunderstandings, might be helpful to ask Andrey [Zelensky aide] for a draft statement so that we can see exactly what they propose to cover.”
⋙ 🐣 RT @McFaul Remember, Gordon Sundland is a real estate developer (not career diplomat), Trump donor, rewarded for his money to Trump with the position of US Ambassador to the EU. Why he is involved in these Ukrainian negotiations is mysterious to me.
⋙ 🐣 RT @McFaul Zelensky aide Yermak: “I thinks its possible to make this declaration and mentions all these things. Which we discussed yesterday. But it will be logic to do after we receive a confirmation date [of Oval office meeting with Trump].” Quid pro quo being executed.
⋙ 🐣 RT @McFaul Acting US ambassador in Ukraine, Bill Taylor, expressed concerns of Ukrainians of delivering the quid before the quo is in hand: “The nightmare is they give the interview [announcing investigation of Biden] and don’t get the security assistance. The Russians love . (And I quit).”
⋙ 🐣 RT @McFaul Ambassador Taylor is a real professional. Had served as US ambo to Ukraine before. He clearly is pushing back on the schemes of Giuliani, Sondland and Volker.
⋙ 🐣 RT @McFaul Amb Taylor (USMA grad, longtime USG public servant) to Amb Sondland (Trump funder, real estate business person, serving in Brussels, not Kyiv or DC): “As I said on the phone , I think its crazy to withhold security assistance for help with a political campaign.” MONEY QUOTE !
⋙ 🐣 RT @McFaul There. I read (and provided context about ) the information released tonight by the House Intel and Foreign Affairs committees so you don’t have to. Bottom line: overwhelming confirming evidence about Trump’s use of public office & US taxpayer money for private electoral gains.
⋙ 🐣 RT @McFaul These texts also show that the Trump call to Zelensky was just ONE of many different actions to compel Ukraine to investigate (1) Biden and (2) Ukraine “interference” in 2016 US election. Multiple people — Giuliani, Pompeo, Sondland, Volker — all involved in the operation.
⋙ 🐣 RT @McFaul For me, very depressing to read. Maybe I’m just a naive, idealistic optimist. But when you sign up to serve in the USG, you take an oath to defend the United States of America, and not any one individual. Hoping we might get back to the honorable idea someday in the future. END
🐣 RT @davidfrum Don’t call these texts dumb. Taylor was building a file. If we save the country, his determination to put the facts on record will be an important reason why. Sonderland not dumb either. He recognized what Taylor was doing and demanded Taylor cease. Which Taylor refused to do
🐣 RT @JRubinBlogger Other than shouting “quid pro quo” from the rooftops I’m not sure what these guys could have done to highlight the quid pro quo. Hey, deliverable for the aid, right?
⋙ 🐣 You know this is all going to boil down to whether HBiden is worth paying $50K a month, don’t you? The Law doesn’t matter. And whataboutism won’t work on Trump.
🐣 RT @S_R_Anders These Kurt Volker text messages are FILLED to the BRIM with quid pro quo. ¤ I never expected anything this explicit in writing. It’s truly astounding. https://twitter.com/S_R_Anders/status/1179967439737630720?s=20/photo/1-3
🐣 RT @CNN “I think he’s holding the smoking gun,” says Guy Smith, who served as special adviser to Bill Clinton during the impeachment inquiry, discussing President Trump. “I think that it’s just nuts, what he’s doing.” http://cnn.it/2Oj6haJ 💽 https://twitter.com/CNN/status/1179968279609319424?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @ewarren Donald Trump is now openly calling for foreign governments to interfere in our elections from the White House Lawn. If he thinks openly committing the same crime will convince people his secret calls weren’t illegal—he’s wrong. We will hold him accountable. He must be impeached.
🐣 RT @brhodes Sad to see Trump try to turn the State Department into a tool of his criminal behavior. Infuriating to see Republicans who claimed to be about our national security and values enable it with their silence.
🐣 RT @S_R_Anders Okay, now that actually is quid pro quo.
⋙ 🐣 RT @rebeccaballhouse Kurt Volker, U.S. envoy for Ukraine, texted a top aide to Zelensky right before his call w/Trump: “Heard from White House—assuming President Z convinces Trump he will investigate/”get to the bottom of what happened” in 2016, we will nail down date for visit to Washington.”
TheHill: Trump officials drafted statement for Ukraine leader pledging investigation involving Biden, Clinton: report http://hill.cm/2Ql6FXT
🐣 RT @waltshaub After today, you either do or don’t believe we can tolerate POTUS and VPOTUS soliciting attacks on our election by an authoritarian superpower and a country that’s dependent on the U.S. government for its survival. You either love this republic or you don’t. It’s that simple.
🐣 RT @tedlieu Dear @realDonaldTrump: It is a betrayal of our values & an abuse of power to solicit a foreign power to target U.S. citizens for political purposes. That’s why Congress opened an impeachment inquiry. ¤ If you continue to double down, you leave us little choice but to impeach you.
⋙ 🐣 RT @real As the President of the United States, I have an absolute right, perhaps even a duty, to investigate, or have investigated, CORRUPTION, and that would include asking, or suggesting, other Countries to help us out!
🐣 RT @bhrodes These texts confirm that Trump fully attached US foreign relations – diplomacy, security assistance, and high level contacts – with a nation invaded by Putin to a bizarre scheme to investigate his political opponents. This is a betrayal of everything America has stood for.
↥ ↧
🐣💙 ≣ RT @RepAdamSchiff After receiving a trove of important documents from the first of the state department witnesses, my fellow chairs and I highlight some of those deserving of the most attention and what is at stake. ¤ Read them here: http://bit.ly/30QhpPi
🐣 RT @kylegriffin1 In newly disclosed texts shared with Congress and obtained by ABC News, the top U.S. diplomat to Ukraine at the time writes to a group of other American diplomats: “I think it’s crazy to withhold security assistance for help with a political campaign.”
⋙ ABCNews: ‘Crazy to withhold security assistance’ to Ukraine for political campaign: Top US diplomat http://abcn.ws/2pCfd0D
WaPo, Karen Tumulty: This might be the worst impeachment news of all for Trump http://wapo.st/30IvM80 “As the president of the United States rants and rages about the prospect of his impeachment, the woman who set the gears in motion is a study in serenity.”
WaPo Editorial: Trump is now publicly abusing his oath of office http://wapo.st/2o3FqFc
🐣 RT @MayaWiley #Trump raised not only #Biden but #ElizabethWarren prospects w/ China in June!: “Trump raised Biden with Xi in June call housed in highly secure server”
⋙ CNN: Trump raised Biden with Xi in June call housed in highly secure server http://cnn.it/2OhYWby and Warren
CNN: Trump raised Biden with Xi in June call housed in highly secure server http://cnn.it/2OhYWby and Warren
DailyBeast: White House Floats Potential DOJ Investigation Into ‘Joe Biden and His Family’ http://bit.ly/2LHMtwa
// A little noticed White House messaging memo says President Trump asked Ukraine to comply with “any” future DOJ probe into Joe Biden and his son, Hunter.
WaPo: Giuliani was warned Ukrainian claims of Bidens’ misconduct were not credible http://wapo.st/2MeQDui
// ⇈ FP title; inside title: Trump’s ex-envoy says Ukrainians gave Giuliani misinformation on the Bidens
💙 WaPo: Trump publicly calls on China to investigate Bidens http://wapo.st/31KNp8F
🔆 This❗️⋙ TheAtlantic, George T Conway III: Unfit for Office http://bit.ly/30NCwkV
// Donald Trump’s narcissism makes it impossible for him to carry out the duties of the presidency in the way the Constitution requires.
🐣 RT @jedshug This was felony solicitation of a foreign campaign contribution.
The statement itself – legitimating the smear with an investigation – would have been a gift to Trump.
And Volker’s text shows a knowing & willful violation.
Plus bribery/extortion.
⋙ 💙 NYT: Trump Envoys Pushed Ukraine to Commit to Investigations http://nyti.ms/2AEWjbN
🐣 RT @AdamSchiff The President cannot use the power of his office to pressure foreign leaders to investigate his political opponents. ¤ His rant this morning reinforces the urgency of our work. ¤ America is a Republic, if we can keep it.
⋙ NYT: Trump Publicly Urges China to Investigate the Bidens http://nyti.ms/2AHP4jw
// President Trump made a similar, but private, request of the president of Ukraine, an episode that has sparked an impeachment inquiry.
CNN: Biden to Trump: ‘You’re not going to destroy me’ http://cnn.it/2pArORY
🐣 RT @CSPAN Trump: “China should start an investigation into the Bidens because what happened in China is just about as bad as what happened with Ukraine. So, I would say that President Zelensky, if it were me, I would recommend that they start an investigation into the Bidens.” 💽 https://twitter.com/cspan/status/1179769217534582784?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @eliehonig I hope everyone understands how absolutely nuts it is for the Attorney General of the United States to fly all over the world personally doing this bogus, overtly political investigation. (And he’s terrible at it, having never actually prosecuted a case).
⋙ WaPo Editorial: Trump used his office for political gain. Now Barr appears to be using his authority to help him. http://wapo.st/2oasq0p
🐣 RT @BradMossEsq Again, calling on foreign governments to conduct law enforcement inquiries into his domestic political opponents.
⋙ 🐣 RT @PeterAlexander Asked what he wanted President Zelensky to do about the Bidens, “If they were honest about it, they would start a major investigation into the Bidens.”
DailyBeast, Julia Davis: Russians Praise Trump, Taunt Zelensky, as Ukraine Signs On to Peace-Plan Proposal http://bit.ly/2IgQ16f
// “Trump let Zelensky down. Three times he told him: ‘Go meet with Putin,’” gloated one prominent Russian TV host.
⭕ 2 Oct 2019
🐣 RT @olgaNYC1211 With this whole Ukraine/Giuliani scandal when will we get to @LindseyGrahamSC role who was pushing opening investigations on several of these conspiracies. I said it back then and again now. It was coordinated between the far right, Giuliani, trump, graham, hannity, Solomon
WaPo: Giuliani consulted on Ukraine with imprisoned Paul Manafort via a lawyer http://wapo.st/2ptuy3v
TPM, Matt Shuham: Awkward: Trump Admin Official Met With Rep For Company At Center Of Biden Smears http://bit.ly/2n4Vq9d In September 2018, the AP reported Kurt Volker met with Vadym Pozharskyi, an adviser to Burisma’s board
TPM, Josh Marshall: The Rudy Dossier http://bit.ly/2nQULJb “Needless to say, it’s quite clear that Pompeo is deeply implicated in these abuses of power. Meanwhile Rudy Giuliani is happy to provide more evidence of Pompeo’s involvement.”
NYT: First Barr, Now Pompeo: Italy Is Hub of Impeachment Intrigue for Trump Officials http://nyti.ms/2psYugc //➔ Looking for Dr Mifsud
Salon, Heather Digby Parton: Yes, it’s this bad: Conspiracy-hunter Bill Barr is roaming the globe under Trump’s orders http://bit.ly/2pxkvL0
// Remember when Trump’s AG had a reputation for rectitude? Now he’s traveling the world hunting for loose nuts
🐣 RT @McFaul Things roll differently in the Trump team. But I cannot believe VP Pence would hold a meeting with Zelensky without first reading what Trump said to Zelensky just beforehand. No way. Transcript was very short ! It’s a long flight to Warsaw.
🐣 RT @PaulaChertock #Maddow shows images of “The Packet of Propaganda, Disinformation & Conspiracy Theories” from right-wing media that Giuliani gave to Pompeo, and IG gave Congress today. A disinformation campaign seems to have been the basis for firing Ukraine Ambassador Yovanovitch. 😰 ¤ #UkraineGate
#Maddow shows images of “The Packet of Propaganda, Disinformation & Conspiracy Theories” from right-wing media that Giuliani gave to Pompeo, and IG gave Congress today. A disinformation campaign seems to have been the basis for firing Ukraine Ambassador Yovanovitch.😨#UkraineGate pic.twitter.com/Xku4gcdxvm
— 🇺🇦Paula Chertok🗽 (@PaulaChertok) October 3, 2019
DailyBeast, Max Moran and Jeff Hauser: Don’t Stop With Donald Trump, Democrats: Impeach Attorney General Bill Barr http://bit.ly/2o1jU3D
// The sentence “every week brings a shocking new revelation” is supposed to apply to Trump. But now it also applies to his attorney general and personal fixer. Enough.
DailyBeast: Don’t Stop With Donald Trump, Democrats: Impeach Attorney General Bill Barr http://bit.ly/2o1jU3D
// The sentence “every week brings a shocking new revelation” is supposed to apply to Trump. But now it also applies to his attorney general and personal fixer. Enough.
DailyBeast, Eleanor Clift: Trump’s ‘Civil War’ Tweet Didn’t Come From Nowhere—in Fact, It Came From Here http://bit.ly/2nPpwy8
// Most of the media were shocked at Trump’s “civil war” tweet over the weekend. One expert who’s been watching the right wing is not.
WaPo: ‘A presidency of one’: Key federal agencies increasingly compelled to benefit Trump http://wapo.st/2pumnUF
WaPo: Trump involved Pence in efforts to pressure Ukraine’s leader, though officials say vice president was unaware of allegations in whistleblower complaint http://wapo.st/2nNRqum on @maddow
DailyBeast, Rick Wilson: Trump Is Going to Burn Down Everything and Everyone, and Republicans, That Means You http://bit.ly/2oIjHlP
// That press conference was terrifying. And congressional Republicans should be more afraid than anyone. Trump’s going down and taking them with him.
⋙ See under Entire Articles: DBeast RWilson Trump Takes All 10-2-2019
DailyBeast, Erin Banco and Maxwell Tani: Biden Dirt File Has Private Email Between John Solomon and Rudy Allies http://bit.ly/2nYCABb
// The email was then included in part of a misinformation dossier that the State Department Inspector General delivered to Congress.
🐣 RT @real Congressman Adam Schiff should resign for the Crime of, after reading a transcript of my conversation with the President of Ukraine (it was perfect), fraudulently fabricating a statement of the President of the United States and reading it to Congress, as though mine! He is sick!
🐣 Where is that crime in the U.S. Code?
🐣 RT @HHooverGhost The statement was based on fact, presented as a representation & is constitutionally protected speech. ¤ At worst though it would be truthful hyperbole ¤ Feign indignation much? ¤ Maybe desperately keep seeding doubt in the minds of your Stupids & hope something sticks https://twitter.com/HHooversGhost/status/1179504525687713792?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @minhtngo “NO SURRENDER.” Thousands of people have gathered in Kiev tonight to protest against President Zelensky’s capitulation to Russia re Donbass. ¤ The Ukranian President announced the concessions following a meeting with Trump. #TrumpUkraine
🐣 “Mr President, you have here a great democracy. Keep it going on.” – President of Finland to Trump, at end of contentious press conference. #inners
WaPo: Rahm Emanuel: On impeachment, Pelosi has many good options http://wapo.st/2oBXkic
WaPo Editorial: Pompeo is enabling the destruction of U.S. diplomacy http://wapo.st/2pxeY7j
🐣 RT @C71marie Omg. The reporter asks him to answer the question and what did the #CriminalInChief do?!? Attack the reporter and the free media instead of answering the question. He can’t answer cus he knows he has nothing but a made up story. Pathetically sad. #ImpeachmentIsComing
⋙ 🐣 RT @Reuters President Trump lashed out at @Reuters reporter @jeffmason1, who asked him what he wanted Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy to do when Trump brought up the business ties to Ukraine of Hunter Biden, son of Joe Biden https://reut.rs/2nLI6ao https://twitter.com/C71Marie/status/1179550650767687681?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @atrupar Is there a less believable reader in the world than Trump?
[Trump’s crazy press avails] https://mobile.twitter.com/atrupar/status/1179464938974334976
🐣 Realize: Trump is going after Biden by ginning up disinformation (I researched this extensively: there’s no ‘there’ there) because he wants to run against a “socialist.” ¤ Do not let your views on ANY candidate be affected by what Trump (or Rudy) says.
NYT: Schiff Got Early Account of Accusations as Whistle-Blower’s Concerns Grew http://nyti.ms/2psN3Ff
🔆 This❗️⋙ WaPo: Trump involved Pence in efforts to pressure Ukraine’s leader, though aides say vice president was unaware of pursuit of dirt on Bidens http://wapo.st/2nNRqum
WaPo: Trump lashes out at impeachment inquiry in fiery news conference http://wapo.st/2n4yerR
⭕ 1 Oct 2019
EmptyWheel, Marcy Wheeler: Is Bill Barr Already Feeding Sidney Powell So-Called Evidence Trump Coerces? http://bit.ly/2n1XJKa
🐣 RT @JohnBrennan A reminder to federal officials: ¤ There is no limit on the number of individuals who can use the whistleblower statute. ¤ If you think you were involved in unlawful activity as a result of a directive from Mr. Trump or someone doing his bidding, now is the time to report it.
🐣 RT @HouseIntel BREAKING — @RepAdamSchiff, @RepCummings, @RepEliotEngel warn @StateDept: any attempt by @SecPompeo to intimidate witnesses violates the law and is obstruction of the impeachment inquiry. Read the chairmen’s letter here. http://bit.ly/2nFFzhJ
BREAKING — @RepAdamSchiff, @RepCummings, @RepEliotEngel warn @StateDept: any attempt by @SecPompeo to intimidate witnesses violates the law and is obstruction of the impeachment inquiry. Read the chairmen’s letter here. ⬇️⬇️⬇️ https://t.co/MRzCpRsn1k pic.twitter.com/G4DbpvO7PU
— House Intelligence Committee (@HouseIntelDems) October 2, 2019
NBCNews: Feds say Michael Flynn is pushing conspiracy theories in bid to hinder case http://nbcnews.to/2nGlh7Q
// After pleading guilty in the Russia probe, Flynn accused prosecutors of suppressing exculpatory evidence and alleged he was targeted for political reasons.
NBCNews, Heidi Przybyla and Allan Smith: Giuliani turns on ‘honest’ Ukrainian prosecutor who says Bidens did nothing illegal http://nbcnews.to/2nFtMQv
// Rudy Giuliani had nothing but praise for Ukrainian prosecutor Yuriy Lutsenko — until he didn’t.
DailyBeast, Barbie Nadeau: Barr Went to Rome to Hear a Secret Tape from Joseph Mifsud, the Professor Who Helped Ignite the Russia Probe http://bit.ly/2p4UbaH
// US Attorney General William Barr traveled to Italy to meet with Italian secret service agents—and, potentially, undermine the Mueller investigation.
WSJ: Tense Relationship Between Barr and Giuliani Complicates Trump Impeachment Defense http://on.wsj.com/2pcaumi
// The president’s two highest-profile lawyers are struggling to get on the same page
🐣 RT @rgoodlaw Smart point. ¤ Committee Chairs’ letter to DOS points out Pompeo’s conflict of interest: ¤ 1. He was in on Ukraine call (for which, I’d add, there’s serious concerns a crime, in addition to impeachable conduct, was committed) ¤ 2. He’s acting to block State Dept officials testifying https://twitter.com/rgoodlaw/status/1179199271909953536?s=20/photo/1
⋙ 🐣 RT @karenamyatt He apparently sought information about how he could discipline any state dept employee cooperating with Congress. Maybe that’s why the IG seeks an urgent meeting with Congress now.
🐣 RT @ChrisAlbertoLaw Yes, the deal Trump struck with Zelensky is much bigger than the dirt-on-Biden story. Z’s capitulation to the Russian occupation of eastern Ukraine is a HUGE WIN FOR PUTIN & a huge loss for the Ukrainian people, NATO allies & U.S. national security.
⋙ 🐣 RT @ChrisAlbertoLaw I don’t disagree. But there is an argument to be made that extreme Eastern Ukraine fits better in Russia: Russian-speaking, voted for pro-Russian candidates etc. I realize the dangers to Baltic states and the precedent. But there’s this. ? is will Putin stop now? ● https://twitter.com/Auriandra/status/1179242672676130816?s=20/photo/1
WaPo, Philip Bump: Government-by-conspiracy-theory rides again http://wapo.st/2nI9GVE
🐣 RT @nahaltoosi Since the memo detailing Trump’s call with his Ukrainian counterpart was released, dozens of Foreign Service officers have joined a private Facebook group for those considering quitting their jobs, a member of the group told POLITICO. https://politi.co/2mHDyB7 via @politico
⋙ Politico, Nahal Toosi: ‘Height of irony’: Pompeo’s subpoena pushback rankles diplomats http://politi.co/2p4kOwq
🐣 RT @Mimirocah1 To me, it feels like the walls are falling down around Trump so he & allies are acting desperate & pulling out all the stops. That makes it scarier but also more likely they get caught (as they have) & stopped. Like a sickness that needs to peak before it’s gone.
Politico, Daniel Lippman and Natasha Bertrand: White House ordered ultrasecret system upgraded to prevent leaks http://politi.co/2ooYy0c “The changes included a new log of who accessed specific documents in the NSC’s system”
Politico: Grassley breaks with Trump over protecting whistleblower http://politi.co/2ojL71o
// The Iowa Republican is one of the few GOP senators defending the whistleblower.
🐣 RT @JasminMuj Of course he’s trying to whip up his base, of course he’s trying to incite scandal, to cause a media frenzy. But his unhinged rhetoric must be part of the impeachment inquiry; neither he nor future presidents can be permitted to bloviate their way out of constitutional oversight.
⋙ 🐣 RT @real 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….
⋙ 🐣 RT @real ….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!
NYT, Frank Bruni: If Trump Goes Down, He’s Taking Everyone With Him http://nyti.ms/2p6WUAp
// The impeachment inquiry is laying him bare. It’s not a pretty sight.
WaPo: Tension escalates between administration, lawmakers as impeachment inquiry broadens http://wapo.st/2nHABAW
// letter from Pompeo refusing State Dept people from responding to subpoenas, and their response
🐣 RT @BrianKarem NOW From a GOP Senate staffer: “The Civil War tweet is a tipping point for some, but not all.” Says Trump’s actions are pushing the GOP toward removal if that vote comes. It boils down to @senatemajldr “If Sen. McConnell votes for removal, then it’s over.” @realDonaldTrump
DailyBeast, Erin Banco: Pompeo Pushed Out His Own Ukraine Rep to Squash a Growing Scandal http://bit.ly/2onMiwC
// “Volker was the easier guy to let go,” said one former State Department official. “But just because it is an easy choice doesn’t mean it is the right choice.”
🐣 RT @BarbMcQuade IG’s request for urgent meeting with congressional committees seems very significant. This comes shortly after Pompeo stiff-armed them on subpoenas. The truth will come out. Didn’t these guys read “All the President’s Men”? Or even see the movie?
🔆 This❗️⋙ CNN: State Department inspector general requests urgent briefing on Ukraine with congressional staff http://cnn.it/2paOvfw
WaPo, James Hohman: Mike Pompeo and Bill Barr are increasingly implicated in the impeachment inquiry http://wapo.st/2paOvfw
🐣 RT @MuellerSheWrote BREAKING: sounds to me like there’s a whistleblower in the state department with an urgent matter and the IG is going to inform congress, or the state department acting legal counsel forwarded documents to the IG and they want to brief congress. #beans
⋙ ABCNews: State Dept inspector general requests ‘urgent’ Ukraine briefing on Capitol Hill http://abcn.ws/2pcgITd
NYT Mag, Amanda Hess: This Is the Moment Rachel Maddow Has Been Waiting For [Interview] http://nyti.ms/2oV1G3W
// How the MSNBC host staked her show on Trump — and won the largest and most obsessive audience of her career.
⭕ 30 Sep 2019
NYT, Michelle Goldberg: Trump’s Claims About Biden Aren’t ‘Unsupported.’ They’re Lies. http://nyti.ms/2nGYbhp
// The president’s accusations turn reality on its head and the media should say so.
🐣 RT @NatashaBertrand NEW: No, Fiona Hill is not the whistleblower. But she and her team were among those wary of the shadow foreign policy being done on Ukraine by Giuliani, Sondland, and Volker. She resigned just a week before Trump’s fateful Zelensky call. My profile:
⋙ Politico: The Russia Hawk in the White House http://politi.co/2nc5uNY
// Nobody ever expected Fiona Hill to become a Trump adviser. She ended up staying far longer than anyone predicted — including her.
🐣 RT @BFriemanDC In the last 14 hours, the President has threatened to arrest political opponents for treason, intimidated whistleblowers with “big consequences,” called the free press “dangerous and bad” and echoed a prediction of civil war if he is removed from office. Guys, he needs to go https://twitter.com/BFriedmanDC/status/1178657693382385665?s=20/photo/1-4
🐣 RT @NatashaBertrand NEW: No, Fiona Hill is not the whistleblower. But she and her team were among those wary of the shadow foreign policy being done on Ukraine by Giuliani, Sondland, and Volker. She resigned just a week before Trump’s fateful Zelensky call. My profile:
⋙ Politico: The Russia Hawk in the White House http://politi.co/2nc5uNY
// Nobody ever expected Fiona Hill to become a Trump adviser. She ended up staying far longer than anyone predicted — including her.
Reuters, Polina Ivanova and Pavel Polityuk: Ukraine agency says allegations against Burisma cover period before Biden joined http://reut.rs/2oOxJT7
🐣 RT @mccaffrey3 Trump,Pompeo, Barr, Giuliani are going to totally defy the House Impeachment inquiry. They will tell the supporting actors to obstruct and claim privilege. They will not acknowledge the Constitution. At the end of the day, the 2020 election will decide.
⋙ 🐣 RT @PreetBharara Drip drip drip. ¤ And on each drip, a public-facing body can issue subpoenas. And hold hearings. And make statements. And level accusations. ¤ Utterly unlike the Mueller investigation. The dynamic is different and far worse for the President.
🐣 RT @michikokakutani Inner circle around the leader “never stops to think about the world as it really is and never compares the lies with reality. Its most cherished virtue… is loyalty to the Leader, who, like a talisman, assures the ultimate victory of lie and fiction over truth and reality”
⋙ 🐣 RT @michikokakutani Hannah Arendt in “The Origins of Totalitarianism”: “totalitarianism in power invariably replaces all first-rate talents, regardless of their sympathies, with those crackpots and fools whose lack of intelligence and creativity is still the best guarantee of their loyalty.”
RandCorp, Christopher Paul and Miriam Matthews: (2016): The Russian “Firehose of Falsehood” Propaganda Model http://bit.ly/2o8DlqR
// Why It Might Work and Options to Counter It
Politico, Bryan Bender and Wesley Morgan: How U.S. military aid became a lifeline for Ukraine http://politi.co/2mp5fys
// The U.S. provided about $1.5 billion in military aid to Kiev between 2014 and this past June, according to a Congressional Research Service analysis
📊 WaPo: Nearly half of Americans support impeaching Trump, two new polls find http://wapo.st/2oHTgwG both are for “impeach and remove”: Quinnipiac 47% in favor /47% against (was 37/57% a week ago); CNN 47% in favor (vs 41% in May)
🐣 RT @matthewamiller One thing about this investigation Barr is flying around the world to personally oversee: what is the predicate? There has never been a single credible allegation that a crime was committed.
⋙ 🐣 RT @mayawiley Quite the contrary. There has been an avalanche of evidence that Russia interfered actively in the US Presidential election & Trump campaign actively sought to have information on Clinton emails from Russians. But not the predicate #Barr is chasing down.
🐣 RT @RichardEngel A former Ukrainian lawmaker deeply familiar with the Giuliani dirt-digging campaign told me Trump’s phone call to the Ukrainian president asking for an investigation into the Bidens, while withholding vital military aid, was “pressure,” “blackmail,” and “quid pro quo.”
💽 RawStory: CNN’s Jim Acosta: Administration officials are warning Trump that he’s probably going to be impeached http://bit.ly/2n6kTiQ
NYT, Paul Krugman: Warren Versus the Petty Plutocrats http://nyti.ms/2njYgYb
// Why do they hate her? It’s mainly about their egos.
NewYorker, David Remnick: The Floodgates Open on Trump http://bit.ly/2mqP2J5
🐣 RT @JohnJHarwood if the United States were no longer a sovereign nation, this might be true
⋙ 🐣 RT @carlquintanilla MOSCOW, Sept 30 (Reuters) – The Kremlin said on Monday that Washington would need Russian consent to publish transcripts of phone calls between U.S. President Donald Trump and his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin
🐣 RT @emptywheel Again: George Papadopoulos testified under oath that the conspiracies that the Attorney General of the United States is flying around the world to chase he was simply parroting because he read it in a John Solomon column. ¤ That’s where this comes from.
🐣 RT @mitchellreports I tried to ask @SecPompeo today why he is targeting veteran diplomats for routine emails when they had nothing to do with that private server. ¤ He turned his back and walked away.
NYT (5/2/2018): Ukraine, Seeking U.S. Missiles, Halted Cooperation With Mueller Investigation http://nyti.ms/2nWJdUd ⋙ as referenced on @Maddow
// 5/2/2018
↥ ↧
🐣 RT @dcpoll Ukraine, Seeking US Missiles, Halts Cooperation With Mueller Probe. In another move hindering Mueller’s probe, Ukrainian law enforcement allowed potential witness, Konstantin Kilimnik, to leave for Russia, putting him out of reach for questioning. ¤ #Maddow https://nyti.ms/2FzVW2n
🐣 RT @kylegriffin1 Lawyers for the House have revealed that they have reason to believe that the grand-jury redactions in Robert Mueller’s report show that Trump lied about his knowledge of his campaign’s contacts with WikiLeaks, Politico reports.
⋙ Politico, Andrew Desiderio: Trump may have lied to Mueller, House Democrats say http://politi.co/2mqLh6t
// Dems believe the special counsel’s grand-jury materials could aid their Ukraine investigation, according to a court filing.
DailyBeast, Michael Tomasky: Democrats Have Impeachment by the Tail. Here’s How They Tame It. http://bit.ly/2nYDX2w
// It’s not about fast/slow or narrow/broad. It’s about conducting this in a way that nullifies right-wing talking points.
TheGuardian, Laurence H Tribe: The House must flex its constitutional muscles to get to Trump http://bit.ly/2oNihXx
// Only the procedures enshrined in the impeachment process have the power to cut through the president’s smokescreens
WaPo, Catherine Rampell: There’s another whistleblower complaint. It’s about Trump’s tax returns. http://wapo.st/2ndK4zK
NYT: Alex Pascal : Did the Trump White House Mishandle the Ukraine Call Memo? http://nyti.ms/2muVq2a Mr. Pascal oversaw the system for producing and editing national security memorandums in the Obama White House.
// What the whistle-blower describes is highly unusual and cause for concern.
🐣 RT @tedlieu TRANSLATION: Bill Barr of @TheJusticeDept doesn’t believe the American people should have found out about the “sweeping and systematic” attack by Russia on our elections in 2016. He believes the Mueller investigation should never have started. This is crazy stuff from the AG.
⋙ 🐣 RT @jaketapper WP: AG Barr “has held private meetings overseas with foreign intelligence officials seeking their help” in a DOJ inquiry “that President Trump hopes will discredit U.S. intelligence agencies’ examination of Russian interference in the 2016 election”
⋙⋙ 🔆 This❗️⋙ WaPo: Barr personally asked foreign officials to aid inquiry into CIA, FBI activities in 2016 http://wapo.st/2mp5fys
✅ WaPo Factchecker, Glenn Kessler: Trump’s false claim that the rules for whistleblowers were recently changed http://wapo.st/2mstlIP FOUR PINOCCHIOS 🍄🍄🍄🍄
🔆 This❗️⋙ WSJ: Pompeo Took Part in Trump-Zelensky Phone Call, Official Says http://on.wsj.com/2nW8zl6
// McConnell says he envisions Senate trial if House passes articles of impeachment
NBCNews: More than 300 ex-officials say Trump’s Ukraine actions are ‘profound national security concern’ http://nbcnews.to/2nVfuem
// The former national security officials, from Democratic and GOP administrations, shared their worries over Trump in a letter released Friday.
–
NYT, Peter Wehner: What’s the Matter With Republicans? http://nyti.ms/2n06cxJ
// Trump has given them another chance to break away. Why won’t they take it?
WaPo: Jeff Flake: Fellow Republicans, there’s still time to save your souls http://wapo.st/2nYpCCY “[Y]ou can go elsewhere for a job. But you cannot go elsewhere for a soul.”
⭕ 29 Sep 2019
NewYorker, David Rohde: The Dangerous Position of William Barr http://bit.ly/2oBDSSw
🐣 RT @neal_katyal The Trump defense is falling apart because there is no way to defend the indefensible. Trump put himself over country, and sold out our foreign policy interests for his private benefit. That is literally what our Founders thought impeachment was for.
🐣 RT @kasparov63 They’ll attack the truth-tellers, accuse them of anything at all, because playing defense takes energy. They’ll use whataboutism to distract from their crimes. Keep following the money and repeating the truth.
DailyBeast, Justin Baragona and Scott Bixby: Trump-Supporting Lawyers diGenova and Toensing Teamed Up With Giuliani to Dig Up Ukraine Dirt on Biden: Report http://bit.ly/2nHA6qv
// Fox News cited a U.S. official who said all three were working off the books apart from the administration, and the only person who knew “what they were doing is President Trump.”
DailyBeast, Kevin Poulsen: GOP Shows Russian Trolls How It’s Done With Whistleblower Smear http://bit.ly/2mWP37Y
// Trump has joined an army of conservative commentators in pushing a false story involving an obscure government form, a Trump official, and the whistleblower.
NYT Editorial: Note to the Impeachment Investigators: Trump Rarely Acts Alone http://nyti.ms/2oosh9i incl: Giuliani, Barr, Mulvaney, Pompeo, Pence, Bolton, CI IG Atkinson, and the ambassadors to Ukraine and the EU
// Here’s who the House needs to hear from during its inquiry.
● Rudy Giuliani, Mr. Trump’s personal attorney/fixer.
● Bill Barr, attorney general.
● Mick Mulvaney, acting White House chief of staff.
● Mike Pompeo, secretary of state.
● Kurt Volker, former part-time special envoy to Ukraine, and Gordon Sondland, ambassador to the European Union.
● Mike Pence, vice president.
● John Bolton, former national security adviser.
● Michael Atkinson, the inspector general of the intelligence community
NYT: Inside the F.B.I. File of Trump’s Mentor, Roy Cohn http://nyti.ms/2nNsQsU
// The president isn’t mentioned in just-released documents. Still, the thick file is a timely reminder of the unusual realm his feared mentor inhabited.
🐣 RT @ryanlizza It seems like a crisis right now in American politics is disimformation and how press, voters and Congress deal with it. Worth remembering that this isn’t the first time that our politics has been seized with a political actor and his allies spreading falsehoods with a firehouse. 📌 https://twitter.com/RyanLizza/status/1178516302807191552?s=20
⋙ 🐣 RT @ryanlizza I was doing some reading on Joe McCarthy and noticed that his reign of demagoguery and disinformation lasted exactly 4 years, 4 months—from 1950 speech about communists at State to “have you no sense of decency?” It‘s been 4 years, 3 1/2 months since Trump’s announcement speech.
🐣 RT @SykesCharlie The president is nuts.
🐣 RT @joshscampbell This blast from the U.S. President comes as CBS News reports the whistleblower is under federal protection because he or she fears for their safety
⋙ 🐣 RT @real ….In addition, I want to meet not only my accuser, who presented SECOND & THIRD HAND INFORMATION, but also the person who illegally gave this information, which was largely incorrect, to the “Whistleblower.” Was this person SPYING on the U.S. President? Big Consequences!
⋙ 🐣 RT @real His lies were made in perhaps the most blatant and sinister manner ever seen in the great Chamber. He wrote down and read terrible things, then said it was from the mouth of the President of the United States. I want Schiff questioned at the highest level for Fraud & Treason…..
⋙ 🐣 RT @real ….In addition, I want to meet not only my accuser, who presented SECOND & THIRD HAND INFORMATION, but also the person who illegally gave this information, which was largely incorrect, to the “Whistleblower.” Was this person SPYING on the U.S. President? Big Consequences!
🐣 RT @CREWcrew With President Trump apparently so worried about corruption, he will certainly be alarmed to learn that his business interests have resulted in more than 2,310 conflicts of interest. https://twitter.com/CREWcrew/status/1178436822092931072?s=20
🐣 RT @EdHull8 Have you seen any of Trump’s recent meltdown tweets? ASTOUNDINGLY FRIGHTENING, and GETTING WORSE by the minute. His mind has now take a one way, no return trip into the abyss of INSANITY. God protect us from this MADMAN.
🐣 RT @maggieNYT “Another former senior official said it was a constant struggle to convince Mr. Trump that Russia, not Ukraine, had interfered in the election.”
⋙ NYT: Trump Was Repeatedly Warned That Ukraine Conspiracy Theory Was ‘Completely Debunked’ http://nyti.ms/2nI49yg
// Thomas P. Bossert, President Trump’s first homeland security adviser, said he was “deeply disturbed” that Mr. Trump had urged Ukraine to investigate Democrats.
🐣 RT @gtconway3d In point of fact, @realDonaldTrump *is* a raving lunatic
⋙ 🐣 RT @tribelaw Trump’s implication that he wants @RepAdamSchiff executed for treason is unhinged, disgusting, and beyond intolerable. The president is acting like a raving lunatic.
⋙⋙ 🐣 RT @real His lies were made in perhaps the most blatant and sinister manner ever seen in the great Chamber. He wrote down and read terrible things, then said it was from the mouth of the President of the United States. I want Schiff questioned at the highest level for Fraud & Treason…..
💙 WaPo, Jackson Diehl: How the diplomatic pros lost Ukraine to Trump http://wapo.st/2mMnVIT
Needless to say, that era is over. In a matter of months, President Trump and his personal lawyer, Rudolph W. Giuliani, have twisted U.S. policy in Ukraine to their personal ends, touching off turmoil inside the White House and State Department and weakening — perhaps critically — a bilateral relationship that is crucial to containing Russian aggression in Europe.
The story of Trump’s strongarming of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky is first and foremost one of Trump’s abuse of his presidential power in pursuit of personal political gain. But it is also an epic example of how Trump has destroyed U.S. diplomacy in places around the world where, for years, it had worked smoothly and relatively effectively despite the growing partisan polarization in Washington.
Though Trump never had a positive view of Ukraine, the trouble really started with Giuliani, who has a record of working for and with the very Ukrainian actors that U.S. policy has aimed to marginalize: shady business executives and corrupt politicians with ties to Russia, organized crime or both.
… When members of the U.S. delegation to Zelensky’s May 20 inauguration reported back to Trump at the White House and expressed enthusiasm about the new president, Trump launched into a tirade about Ukrainian corruption and a supposed Ukraine-based conspiracy to prevent his election. He then refused to schedule a meeting with Zelensky.
… But then the State Department came up with a classic State Department solution: Organize talks. … ¤ The idea was that Zelensky would talk about his plan to “drain the swamp” in Kiev and Trump would then offer him the visit to the White House that the Ukrainian badly wanted.
The problem is that the pros misread Trump. He had no genuine interest in Ukrainian corruption. He simply wanted to squeeze the Ukrainians for the dirt on Biden and the Democrats that Giuliani said they had.
🐣 RT @ElaineLuriaVA 🚨PSA🚨: “Fox News has learned that the Pentagon, State Department, and National Security Council were ‘unanimous’ in supporting the aid to Ukraine, and that Trump acted alone in withholding the aid over the summer.”
⋙ FoxNews: Giuliani was not working alone in Biden Ukraine probe http://fxn.ws/2mLLBNz
🐣 RT @HeathMayo “For a unitary executive to become incapacitated or corrupt, Madison warned, could be ‘fatal to the republic’ without some provision for his removal from office. After this debate, the convention voted by eight states to two to make the president impeachable.” https://twitter.com/HeathMayo/status/1178503039952531457?s=20/photo/1
Reuters: Trump-Putin phone calls in U.S. Democrats’ sights: Schiff http://reut.rs/2nPtPsz
🐣 RT @TheRickWilson Dear Republican friends: he’s lost it, and you know it. ¤ And every single one of you stupid badtards who pretended to love him and embraced his crapulous regime will pay the price with your reputations until the end of time.
🐣 RT @AmoneyResists 18 U.S.C 2383: “Whoever incites any rebellion or insurrection against the authority of the United States shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than ten years, or both; and shall be incapable of holding any office under the United States.”
🐣 RT @HeerJeet Nice little republic you got there. Be a shame if it were torn apart in a Civil War.
⋙ 🐣 RT @real ….If the Democrats are successful in removing the President from office (which they will never be), it will cause a Civil War like fracture in this Nation from which our Country will never heal.” Pastor Robert Jeffress, @FoxNews
CNN, Asha Rangappa: Rudy Giuliani — international man of mystery http://cnn.it/2mUr21a
Politico: Trump demands to meet whistleblower and leakers of his Ukraine call http://politi.co/2otI7Qb
DailyBeast: Alexander Hamilton Warned Us About Trump and Barr http://bit.ly/2md2q3y
// Trump will argue whatever is in his immediate interests; Barr has argued for decades against any real congressional oversight of the president.
WaPo: Democrats count on Schiff to deliver focused impeachment inquiry of Trump http://wapo.st/2mTZIjB
⭕ 28 Sep 2019
ABCNews: For Ukraine help, Giuliani turned to unlikely Florida fixers http://abcn.ws/2MmNMAo
DailyBeast, Maxwell Tani and Justin Baragona: Leaked Memo: Colleagues Unload on John Solomon, the Journo Who Kicked Off Trump’s Ukraine Conspiracy http://bit.ly/2ohARGV
// The Trump-friendly scribe and his Biden-Ukraine conspiracies were cited multiple times in the whistleblower memo. Many of his co-workers are ashamed to be associated with him.
NYT (9/28): How a Shadow Foreign Policy in Ukraine Prompted an Impeachment Inquiry http://nyti.ms/2oOmLx5 as on @maddow
🐣 RT @AshaRangappa_ There is a kind of karmic hilarity to the fact that in order to protect Trump, his staff centralized the materials that could doom him in a highly classified system that can’t be erased or manipulated without a record of access by a very small number of people.
🐣 I thought maybe he was trying to echo an old comic strip called “Li’l Abner” but screwed it up. It sort of sounds like “Li’l Adam.” Just a hunch.
NYT: Impeachment Battle to Turn for First Time on a President’s Ties to a Foreign Country http://nyti.ms/2ohoVFd “George Washington spoke of ‘the insidious wiles of foreign influence,’ calling it ‘one of the most baneful foes of republican government’”
🐣 RT @RonWyden The same day that I released a report detailing the close relationship between the NRA and Russia, Trump met with its top exec to discuss a quid pro quo: blocking gun legislation in exchange for protection from impeachment. The corruption in this administration knows no bounds.
🐣 RT @sam_vinograd THREAD ¤ Let’s talk about Presidential readouts (send me any questions): 📌 https://twitter.com/sam_vinograd/status/1177964814414602242?s=20
NYT, Ross Douthat: Last Exit From Trumpland http://nyti.ms/2nyLLro “You can’t say that you didn’t have an early exit from the Trump era. You can’t say you didn’t have a choice.”
🐣 RT @GlennKesslerWP So many falsehoods here: not greatest economy, didn’t rebuild military, not biggest tax cut, not record deregulation, did not create VA Choice. Bottomless Pinocchios galore!
⋙ 🐣 RT @real How do you impeach a President who has created the greatest Economy in the history of our Country, entirely rebuilt our Military into the most powerful it has ever been, Cut Record Taxes & Regulations, fixed the VA & gotten Choice for our Vets (after 45 years), & so much more?…
🐣 RT @SpeakerPelosi We have a responsibility to protect our democracy for future generations. We must not abandon that duty. #ExposeTheTruth 💽 https://twitter.com/SpeakerPelosi/status/1177942420098605057?s=20/photo/1
NBCNews: Rudy Giuliani’s former DOJ colleagues believe he committed crimes in pushing Biden probe http://nbcnews.to/2lXTUVR
// “I think the Giuliani that I know would prosecute the Giuliani of today,” said Jeffrey Harris, who worked closely with him in the 1980s.
💙 WaPo, Philip Gordon and Daniel Fried: The other Ukraine scandal: Trump’s threats to our ambassador who wouldn’t bend http://wapo.st/2o7v2vw by two Asst Secs of State for Europe, one under Bush, one under Obama about dismissal of Amb to Ukraine Marie Yovanovitch
The recent revelations about President Trump’s treatment of Ukraine catalogue a number of potentially serious misdeeds, including abuse of power, extortion of a foreign leader, violation of campaign finance laws and a conspiracy to cover up all of the above by storing records of phone conversations on a top-secret server in the White House.
But as investigations proceed and Americans consider these revelations, they should hold in mind another transgression: the president’s egregious mistreatment of one of the country’s most distinguished ambassadors. Even before the rough transcript of the call between Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky was released, we knew that the administration had prematurely curtailed the appointment of U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine Marie Yovanovitch following public attacks on her by the president’s eldest son and by his personal lawyer, Rudolph W. Giuliani. Administration officials then falsely claimed that she was leaving her post “as planned.” Now, we also know that Trump went on to denigrate the ambassador in a phone call to a foreign leader, telling Zelensky that “the woman” was “bad news” and vaguely but ominously noting that “she’s going to go through some things.”
🐣 RT @VABVOX NEW: Apparently AG Barr was “surprised and angry” that Trump put him and Giuliani together and comparable the #Ukraine call. Trump has treated Barr as if he were another personal attorney of Trump’s. Maybe if Barr didn’t act like he is, it’d be different.
⋙ AP, Michael Balsamo: Trump blurs lines between personal lawyer, attorney general http://bit.ly/2nDw4z5
🐣 RT @neal_katyal Why FEC decn so impt: Trump DOJ secretly cleared him of criminal wrongdoing w Ukraine b/c claimed foreign campaign aid wasn’t a “thing of value.” ¤ FEC, which has expertise in this, disagrees. We’d not even learned of doj jail free card w/out wblower. FEC is saying this is illegal.
🐣💙 RT @jbk1755 Wow. ¤ Yesterday the FEC chair tried to publish their weekly journal & was blocked. She says that’s unprecedented ¤ It has a draft rule re: foreign election interference ¤ So she tweeted the ENTIRE journal. ¤ Just putting that here…
@KevinMKruse @HC_Richardson H/T @PoliticusSarah
🐣 RT @EllenLWeintraub 2/ ¤ This week, I published a “Draft Interpretive Rule Concerning Prohibited Activities Involving Foreign Nationals” on the http://fec.gov web site:
⋙ ≣ FEC, Ellen Weintraub: Proposed FEC Rule: “Interpretive Rule Concerning Prohibited Activities Regarding Foreign Nationals” [pdf] http://bit.ly/2nDmWKP 8p incl cover letter
WaPo, Anne Applebaum: Americans spent decades discussing rule of law. Why would anyone believe us now? http://wapo.st/2nwfVeU
🐣 RT @ColMorrisDavis Hillary Clinton left office over 6 1/2 years ago. The statute of limitations on any potential offense is 5 years. This is 100% pure political stunt perpetrated to try and deflect attention from the corruption of the @realDonaldTrump administration.
⋙ 💙💙 🔆 This❗️⋙ WaPo: State Dept. intensifies email probe of Hillary Clinton’s former aides http://wapo.st/2nxYdaS
The Trump administration is investigating the email records of dozens of current and former senior State Department officials who sent messages to then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s private email, reviving a politically toxic matter that overshadowed the 2016 election, current and former officials said.
As many as 130 officials have been contacted in recent weeks by State Department investigators — a list that includes senior officials who reported directly to Clinton as well as others in lower-level jobs whose emails were at some point relayed to her inbox, said current and former State Department officials. Those targeted were notified that emails they sent years ago have been retroactively classified and now constitute potential security violations, according to letters reviewed by The Washington Post.
To many of those under scrutiny, including some of the Democratic Party’s top foreign policy experts, the recent flurry of activity surrounding the Clinton email case represents a new front on which the Trump administration could be accused of employing the powers of the executive branch against perceived political adversaries.
A former senior U.S. official familiar with the email investigation described it as a way for Republicans “to keep the Clinton email issue alive.” The former official said the probe was “a way to tarnish a whole bunch of Democratic foreign policy people” and discourage if not prevent them from returning to government service.
🐣 RT @carlbildt Whether EU can step up its Ukraine efforts to handle the deepening mess remains to be seen. In Paris, President Macron seems to have gone super-Gaullist in a new effort to embrace Russia. London has its own meltdown. And it will take weeks for Brussels to sort itself out.
🐣 RT @anders_aslund The damage Trump has done to Ukraine:
1. Supported the most corrupt officials in Ukraine against the government.
2. Withheld singlehandedly $400 min of badly needed US aid.
3. Dragged the new Ukrainian President into his world of lies, trying to extort him into crime.
⭕ 27 Sep 2019
✅ PolitiFact (9/27): Trump mentioned the ‘Crowdstrike’ conspiracy during his call with Ukraine. Here’s what that means http://bit.ly/32nLqay #Ukraine
BuzzFeedNews, Maya Wiley: Opinion: Impeach William Barr http://bit.ly/2mKdlll “But it’s now clear that Attorney General Barr deserves an impeachment inquiry, regardless of the outcome, because trust in government requires it.”
// As a former assistant US attorney, I thought Barr’s past service as attorney general meant he would respect the rule of law. I was wrong.
◕ WaPo: Who’s who in the whistleblower complaint [graph] http://wapo.st/2lXbV6R
WaPo, Jennifer Rubin: Seven important and awful signs for Trump http://wapo.st/2nurPFW
NYT, Roger Cohen: ‘I Fought the Law and the Law Won’ http://nyti.ms/2o20TxH
// Trump is disturbed and growing more so. The narcissist cannot bear not getting away with whatever he wants.
LATimes: Trump, caught off guard, struggles to fight impeachment storm http://lat.ms/2nlytP4 “Senate Maj Ldr Mitch McConnell said Friday that if the House does vote for impeachment, the Senate ‘has no choice’ but to hold a trial to decide whether to remove Trump from office.”
NYT Editorial: Why the Trump Impeachment Inquiry Is the Only Option http://nyti.ms/2nobxyF
🐣 RT @justinhendrix I want you to cast your mind forward out of this time, beyond these headlines. We must commit to one another to use this moment to set the nation on a new path; to attack the bigotry, the plutocracy, the profound rot at the core of this country. We have decades of work to do.
NYT: White House Classified Computer System Is Used to Hold Transcripts of Sensitive Calls http://nyti.ms/2o27et9
// Current and former officials said the White House used a highly classified computer system accessible to only a select few officials to store transcripts of calls from President Vladimir Putin and the Saudi royal family.
🐣 RT @kylegriffin1 The Chairmen have notified Pompeo that the Committees have scheduled depositions for 5 State Department officials:
*Amb. Marie “Masha” Yovanovitch
*Amb. Kurt Volker
*Deputy Asst. Secretary George Kent
*Counselor T. Ulrich Brechbuhl
*Amb. Gordon Sondland
https://bit.ly/2nhWOFh
Slate, William Saletan: The Ukraine Timeline Shows Trump Is Lying http://bit.ly/2mupyKP
// The phone call and the whistleblower complaint are just the beginning of the evidence.
WaPo/AP: US official: Trump’s special envoy to Ukraine has resigned http://wapo.st/2mu8VyT
🐣 RT @MuellerSheWrote You’re a disgusting traitor, @realDonaldTrump and you deserve every bit of karma about to rain down on you. How dare you darken the Oval Office, disrespect the oath, and disrespect the constitution so many people braver than you fought and sacrificed to defend. #Impeach
🐣 RT @KevinMKruse cc: William Barr
⋙ 🐣 RT @KevinMKruse [May] For his role in the Watergate cover-up, Attorney General John Mitchell was found guilty of conspiracy, obstruction of justice and perjury. He spent over a year and a half in a federal prison. https://twitter.com/KevinMKruse/status/1177208467951632385?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @MuellerSheWrote I have some guilt for feeling giddy that the floodgates are now open and trump will drown in his former officials’ press reports. The Putin call. The MBS call. The Oval Office admission to the Russians. It’s all going to come out.
🐣 RT @ThePlumLineGS In this context, a reminder: When White House officials stashed Trump’s call with the Ukrainian president on the super secret server, it was a much more serious abuse of power than it first appears, once you peel back the layers of what that really means:
⋙ RT @ThePlumLineGS Stashing Trump’s call on a super-classified system was a serious abuse of power. ¤ That system is ordinarily for the most sensitive info in the government’s possession, like covert action programs. ¤ It is explicitly *not* for politically sensitive info:
Stashing Trump's call on a super-classified system was a serious abuse of power.
That system is ordinarily for the most sensitive info in the government’s possession, like covert action programs.
It is explicitly *not* for politically sensitive info:https://t.co/j3Y1XEiB1k pic.twitter.com/60n4anIYmP
— Greg Sargent (@GregTSargent) September 27, 2019
⋙ 🐣 Including how blaming Ukraine for election interference could lead to softening sanctions on Russia.
🐣 RT @glennkirschner2 So let me get this straight-White House officials were in essence catching & killing damaging things Trump was saying (including to Russians) that the American people had a right to know? These “officials” need to be held accountable.
🐣 RT @tribelaw It’s all starting to spill out now. The dam is breaking. There’s no stopping it.
🐣 RT @Lawrence The gun keeps smoking and the dam keeps breaking.
🐣 RT @PreetBharara It is all going to come out. All of it. The dam has broken.
🐣 RT @GottaLaff BREAKING >>Trump told Russian officials in 2017 he wasn’t concerned about Moscow’s interference in U.S. election
⋙ 💙💙 WaPo: Trump told Russian officials in 2017 he wasn’t concerned about Moscow’s interference in U.S. election http://wapo.st/2o0lnXN
📌 https://twitter.com/GottaLaff/status/1177742109127741440?s=20
🐣 RT @GottaLaff 2/ “A memorandum summarizing the meeting was limited to all but a few officials with the highest security clearances in an attempt to keep the president’s comments from being disclosed publicly”
🐣 RT @GottaLaff 3/ “WH officials were partic distressed by Trump’s election remarks bc it appeared the pres was forgiving Russia for an attack that had been designed to help elect him, the 3 former officials said. Trump also seemed to invite Russia to interfere in other countries’ elections”
🐣 RT @GottaLaff 4/ “The president and his top aides seemed not to understand the difference between Voice of America, a U.S.-supported news organization that airs in foreign countries, with Russian efforts to persuade American voters by surreptitiously planting ads in social media”
WaPo/AP: Senator Ron Wyden (D-OR): NRA acted as Russian ‘asset’ in run-up to 2016 http://wapo.st/2noCFxa detailed in new report
Vox, Ian Millhiser: The 4 possible crimes in the Trump-Ukraine whistleblower scandal, explained http://bit.ly/2nU0Js5
// Based on what we know so far, Trump and his top aides could be implicated in four different types of federal crimes.
🐣 RT @Amie_FR Russia, freaked by the release of the Trump-Zelensky phonecall, says it hopes the US will not show Putin’s calls with Trump. What on Earth could they be afraid of?
Russia, freaked by the release of the Trump-Zelensky phonecall, says it hopes the US will not show Putin’s calls with Trump. What on Earth could they be afraid of? https://t.co/mQ5qTFndP2
— Amie Ferris-Rotman (@Amie_FR) September 28, 2019
🐣 RT @JuliaDavisNews In the case of Trump’s call with Prince Mohammed, officials who ordinarily would have been given access to a rough transcript of the conversation never saw one. A transcript was never circulated at all, which was highly unusual.
⋙ 🐣 RT @JuliaDavisNews White House efforts to limit access to President Donald Trump’s conversations with foreign leaders extended to phone calls with Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman and Russian leader Vladimir Putin.
⋙⋙ 💙💙 CNN: White House restricted access to Trump’s calls with Putin and Saudi crown prince http://cnn.it/2muMIkr
WaPo: Giuliani cancels paid appearance next week at Kremlin-backed conference http://wapo.st/2lKrHSm
Reuters: Kremlin says it hopes U.S. won’t release details of Putin-Trump calls http://reut.rs/2nKGwoA
🐣 RT @JuliaDavisNews House committees have scheduled depositions for several key State Department officials. One of those officials, Deputy Assistant Secretary George Kent, was named by the Russian state TV as someone Trump should pressure in order to extract “Biden dirt.”
⋙ 🐣 RT @JuliaDavisNews Russian state TV directed Trump to pressure a specific official within the U.S. Department of State for “dirt on Biden,” openly hoping that Trump will “disprove” Russia’s interference in the 2016 US elections & destroy the Democratic party in the process.
⋙⋙ 💙 DailyBeast, Julia Davis: Russia’s Fingerprints Are All Over Trump’s Ukraine Whistleblower Scandal http://bit.ly/2miPMA2
// Prominent figures on Russian TV have been openly putting out the same ideas that we now know the American president was privately pursuing.
🐣 RT @20committee KINDA
⋙ 🐣 RT @kylegriffin1 Nancy Pelosi on Trump-Ukraine: “By the way, I think Russia has a hand in this, by the way.” @Morning_Joe
💽 MSNBC, 11thHour: Trump whistleblower leads to ‘most serious impeachment allegation’ in U.S. history http://on.msnbc.com/2lA3puc
// Jeremy Bash details why the allegations from the Trump-Ukraine whistleblower have lead to an impeachment inquiry like no other in American history.
🐣 RT @MSNBC “He’s gone rogue.” – Speaker Pelosi says about AG Barr on @Morning_Joe. https://twitter.com/MSNBC/status/1177553600551301120?s=20
🐣 RT @atrupar This is one of the dumbest tweets I have ever read. On top of everything else, the president doesn’t know what a hyphen is.
⋙ 🐣 RT @ real To show you how dishonest the LameStream Media is, I used the word Liddle’, not Liddle, in discribing Corrupt Congressman Liddle’ Adam Schiff. Low ratings @CNN purposely took the hyphen out and said I spelled the word little wrong. A small but never ending situation with CNN!
🐣 RT @AshaRangappa_ To be fair, though — who would have predicted that putting Fruity G in charge of an international election meddling operation involving multiple U.S. agencies to try to substantiate a right-wing conspiracy theory and take down a political opponent could be a bad idea?
🐣 RT @MSNBC Speaker Pelosi: “The president of the United States used taxpayer dollars to shake down the leader of another country for his own political gain.” ¤ Watch more: https://on.msnbc.com/2n8cxqz
🐣 RT @tribelaw The House could vote an Article of Impeachment over Ukraine and its coverup before Thanksgiving — and then continue hearings into Trump’s many other impeachable acts. ¤ Congress needn’t and shouldn’t wait on this first Article but should strike while the iron is hot.
🐣💙💙 RT @MSNBC 6 U.S. officials, other than president, were implicated in the whistleblower’s complaint. At the top of the list are VP Pence, AG Barr and Pres. Trump’s lawyer Rudy Giuliani. [✛ Pompeo ~ dismissal of Amb Marie Yovanovich; Mulvaney ~ hold on $$ ]
⋙ 💽 MSNBC, DeadlineWH: All the president’s men named in the whistleblower complaint http://on.msnbc.com/2n73PIX
// Former deputy national security advisor Ben Rhodes, former Senator Claire McCaskill, Real Clear Politics’ A.B. Stoddard, former managing editor for TIME Magazine Rick Stengel, and former U.S. attorney Joyce Vance on the 6 other U.S. officials, beyond the president himself, who were implicated in the whistleblower’s complaint
⭕ 26 Sep 2019
≣ TIME: Read the Entire Declassified Version of the Trump Whistleblower Complaint http://bit.ly/35QX535
Laura: This is a version of the whistleblower complaint that includes notes that you might find useful. The complaint itself is well-organized and well-written. The New York Times has suggested it was compiled by a CIA analyst assigned to the National Security Council. Clearly, it represents input from numerous concerned people. As of today, the identity of the whistleblower is not known. By law, whistleblowers are protected.
The main “impeachable act” is that Trump withheld Congressionally approved military aid to Ukraine (for its war with Russia) unless they provided “dirt” on Joe Biden. It is illegal to request anything of value from a foreign country intended to influence a U.S. election.
CNN, Zachary B. Wolf and Curt Merrill: The whistleblower complaint, annotated http://cnn.it/2nLitXa
// 9/26/2019; A line-by-line analysis of the report that triggered the Ukraine scandal.
🐣 RT @michaelluo .@SpeakerPelosi tells Remnick: “People say you changed your mind. I didn’t change my mind. The facts changed the situation.”
💙💙⋙ NewYorker, David Remnick: Nancy Pelosi: An Extremely Stable Genius http://bit.ly/2nFwgxT
// When asked if it was possible that impeachment might backfire, the Speaker of the House insisted that politics has nothing to do with it. “It doesn’t matter,” she said. “He has given us no choice.”
⋙⋙ 🐣 Trump said Pelosi is no longer Speaker. Looks to me like she’s now “Acting President”
DailyBeast/WaPo: Former Ukrainian Prosecutor General: Hunter Biden ‘Did Not Violate Anything’ http://bit.ly/2mupyKP Yuri Lutsenko: “Hunter Biden cannot be responsible for violations of the management of Burisma that took place two years before his arrival”
🐣 RT @danpfeiffer It’s pretty amazing that Ken Vogel had all the information needed for a Watergate-style scoop about Trump and was so hell bent on fitting the information into a predetermined anti-Biden narrative that he fumbled the ball.
⋙💙🚫◕ NYT: Trump’s Efforts to Push Ukraine Toward a Biden Inquiry: A Timeline [Interactive] http://nyti.ms/2me1BHI
// because Vogel critics thinks he lends cred to anti-Biden claims; by By Weiyi Cai, K.K. Rebecca Lai, Alicia Parlapiano, Jugal K. Patel and Kenneth P. Vogel
WaPo, Michael Gerson: The process of impeachment is now inevitable http://wapo.st/2lBiLPg “For the first time in American history, the president has pleaded guilty to an impeachable offense.”
WaPo, Eugene Robinson: Damn the torpedoes. Full speed ahead on impeachment. http://wapo.st/2mb9GwN “The nation has suffered this small, foolish, dangerous man long enough.”
🐣 RT @PaulaChertok Can’t say it enough: “Ukraine Collusion” is a Russian propaganda conspiracy theory long promoted by Putin’s Kremlin to transfer blame for Russia’s election interference onto its enemy Ukraine. Trump, Giuliani are (again) pushing Russian disinformation. @RepAdamSchiff #Maddow 💽 https://twitter.com/PaulaChertok/status/1177451931612008455?s=20/photo/1 [MaddowShow]
🐣 RT @McFaul Yes. I was watching and that’s what triggered my tweet. Supporters of Trump can have their own opinions but they don’t get to have their own facts. Enough already.
⋙ 🐣 RT @ScottMStedman Professor, any thoughts on Joe diGenova now representing Firtash and getting Shokin to swear in court to all sorts of wacky Biden disinformation?
🐣 RT @McFaul Shokhin was NOT investigating Hunter Biden! Stop with this disinformation campaign.
⋙ 🐣 RT @davidisaksen Case was about a transaction in 2013, before HB joined the company. It was shelved in 2014. Shokin was voted out by parliament in March 2016. Seriously?
⋙ 🐣 RT @mokimono16 “Ukraine’s parliament voted overwhelmingly to fire Viktor Shokin, ridding the beleaguered prosecutor’s office of a figure who is accused of blocking major cases against allies and influential figures and stymying moves to root out graft.” [Source?]
🐣 RT @brianbeutler If the whistleblower’s understanding is correct and there’s a classified server full of incriminating conversations between Trump and world leaders, then not exposing the truth keeps the president in hoc to those leaders for as long as he’s president.
💙 🐣 RT @atrupar Here’s Rudy Giuliani reading personal text messages live on air in an effort to prove just how deeply involved in this Ukraine mess the State Department is 💽 https://twitter.com/atrupar/status/1177416704634359809?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @rickwtyler This is NOT Watergate. It’s not about the coverup. This is about the President of the Unites States Donald J. Trump extorting Ukraine using military support in exchange for political gain. Period.
💙 🐣 RT @howroute Sean Hannity is having a meltdown on live TV. 💽https://twitter.com/howroute/status/1177399876101050371?s=20 /photo/1
🐣 RT @BradMossEsq In all seriousness, is there no one left in Rudy’s life who can stage an intervention at this point? Someone who can reason with him, calm him down? ¤ Hell, someone to remind him he has a right to remain silent and that providing potentially inculpatory evidence on TV is dumb?
🐣 RT @RusEmbUSA “@Russia desires above all the maintenance of the American Union as one indivisible nation” – Foreign Minister Gorchakov, 1862.
In September 1863, Russian frigates steamed into New York Harbor, prevented hostile foreign interference in #CivilWar
⋙ RussiaBeyond: What role did Russia play in the U.S. Civil War? http://bit.ly/2m9kThn
// 8/16/2017; odd
🐣 RT @MuellerSheWrote Holy Impeachment, Robin! The bean signal!!
⋙ 🐣 RT @pauldauenhauer https://twitter.com/pauldauenhauer/status/1177415431952502784?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @HeathMayo Some observations after re-reading the documents that have surfaced so far in the Ukraine scandal. ¤ Let’s start with the TELCON of the July 25 call between Trump & Zelenskyy, which ends up being only one piece of evidence in this puzzle.
📌 https://twitter.com/HeathMayo/status/1177353356576210944?s=20
🐣 RT @BoutrousTed It’s difficult to overstate just how devastating it is to @realDonaldTrump that the whistleblower’s complaint (written weeks ago) matches up precisely with the official White House memorandum of Trump’s phone call with the President of Ukraine (publicly released only yesterday).
GQ, Adam Jentleson: Here’s What Democrats Need to Do to Pull Off a Successful Impeachment Inquiry http://bit.ly/2nHVHz7
// The Ukraine news is damning and House Democrats should plan a process that exerts maximum pressure on Senate Republicans.
🔆 ‼️ ⋙ FoxNews, Joseph Wulfson: Jeff Flake says ‘at least 35’ Republican senators would privately vote to impeach Trump http://fxn.ws/2nBWHo8
🐣 RT @JuliaDavisNews Oh my, the Russians weren’t lying. They knew what was taking place behind-the-scenes. The #WhistleblowerComplaint revealed that Trump personally instructed Pence not to attend the inauguration.
⋙ 🐣 RT @JuliaDavisNews [5/13/2019] #Russia’s state TV shamelessly lies that Rudy Giuliani was going to travel to #Ukraine for President-elect Volodymyr Zelensky’s inauguration, but Trump personally directed him & any other official U.S. representatives not to attend the inauguration. ¤ So many lies, so little time.
🐣 .@SpeakerPelosi could be proclaimed Dem Nominee and break the glass ceiling and the age ceiling simultaneously‼️🥂
TheGuardian: Whistleblower report reveals how far Trump’s dubious ethics have spread http://bit.ly/2nHl04f
// Report indicates there were a lot of people involved in Trump’s scheme to tamper in the 2020 election and prosecute opponents
🐣 RT @JRubinBlogger it gives me great joy to know you will see insane Republicans defending a president’s threat vs. a whistleblower. Their remarks will become part of history and future employers including the voters will have a clear record of their moral lunacy.
WaPo: Whistleblower painstakingly gathered material and almost single-handedly set impeachment in motion http://wapo.st/2luxsDH
🐣 RT @nytopinion “The president has launched a fresh assault on fair elections.” Unfortunately, this isn’t happening a long time ago in a universe far, far away. 💽 https://twitter.com/nytopinion/status/1177383602792927232?s=20/photo/1
// after Star Wars
WaPo: In gambit for Trump, Giuliani engaged parade of Ukrainian prosecutors http://wapo.st/2lZWBXd
WaPo: Effort to shield Trump’s call with Ukrainian leader was part of broader secrecy effort http://wapo.st/2lxNhti
🐣 RT @MelaniaTrumpe [parody] I have start write my memoir. Here is first few lines:
“Twas the night before Impeachment, and all through the house…
Was nobody left who support him, not even him spouse.”
Is good?
🐣 RT @chrislhayes Giuliani clearly thinks it gets him off the hook if the State Department was deeply involved in this whole mess, but the more State was involved the bigger the scandal.
🐣 RT @BrBabblingBooks What we are seeing in America is a great struggle between liberal democracy and authoritarian nationalism.
🐣 RT @BrBabblingBooks In the end liberal democracy always wins out. But authoritarian movements can dominate in some places for a long periods of time. This restricts freedom and leads to suffering and loss of life.
💙💙 🔊 Soundcloud: The Whistleblower’s Complaint https://twitter.com/MaddowBlog/status/1177387952739160064?s=20
🐣 RT @kylegriffin1 House Democratic leaders are eyeing a fast-paced investigation into the possible impeachment of Trump, instructing the committees handling the probe to wrap up their findings within weeks in hopes of concluding before the holiday season.
⋙ WaPo: Democrats eye quick impeachment probe of Trump as freshmen push for focus on Ukraine http://wapo.st/2n1BjZe
🐣 RT @Heidi_Cuda On September 24, 2019, it was quite clear: flipping the House blue in those critical midterms in 2018 gave us an opportunity to save our democracy. In this excellent archival story by @chaunceydevega for @Salon, author @craigunger explains the backstory. 📌 https://twitter.com/Heidi_Cuda/status/1177258057090289664?s=20
⋙ 🐣 RT @Heidi_Cuda 1/ “I’ve always been reluctant to use words like ‘treason’ or ‘fascism’ to discuss Trump. But I think we’ve entered a very dark time in American history. We can’t turn this around and save the country unless the Democrats win Congress in the midterms.”-@craigunger Oct. 2018
NBCNews: ‘Total panic’ as ‘shell-shocked’ White House struggles to find impeachment footing http://nbcnews.to/2nFcPp2
// While many in the Trump White House are battle-tested from the Mueller investigation, this is starting to feel different, aides and advisers said.
NYT, Michelle Goldman: Just How Corrupt Is Bill Barr? http://nyti.ms/2m9GKFj
// Trump’s attorney general is implicated in the Ukraine scandal, but refuses to recuse.
🐣 RT @gabrielsherman Chaos inside Fox News as impeachment looms. Mgmt told Smith to stop attacking Carlson. Hannity privately says whistleblower is really bad for Trump. Paul Ryan has told Lachlan to plan for a post-Trump future.
⋙ VanityFair: “It’s Management Bedlam”: Madness at Fox News as Trump Faces Impeachment http://bit.ly/2lsPEgP
🐣 Nixon still had 24% approval when he resigned ~ 50% among Republicans https://twitter.com/Auriandra/status/1177377960640286722?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @PreetBharara Acting DNI says IG and whistleblower acted in good faith and did everything by the book
🐣 RT @NateSilver538 Weird how an explosive new scandal that caught Trump red-handed working with foreign leaders moved the numbers when 2.5 years of rilitigating Mueller/Russia didn’t.
⋙ 🐣 RT @Rschooley Weird how all those people who said if you make a case the people will follow were right.
⋙⋙ 🐣 RT @AJentleson Another new poll shows majority (53%) support for impeachment [inquiry]. That’s two in two days.
⋙⋙⋙ 🐣 RT @FiveThirtyEight Some new polling from SurveyMonkey and Business Insider suggests that support for impeachment is increasing in the wake of the Ukraine news.
⋙⋙⋙⋙ BusinessInsider: POLL: Americans support the impeachment inquiry into Trump, but they worry about electoral blowback http://bit.ly/
● Forty-five percent of respondents to a SurveyMonkey Audience poll conducted Wednesday and Thursday said they believed that the House of Representatives should impeach the president.
● A majority — 53% — backed the launch of an impeachment inquiry in the House.
🐣 RT @NBCpolitics The whistleblower says that multiple U.S. officials told him or her that Amb. Volker and Amb. Sondland “provided advice to the Ukrainian leadership about how to ‘navigate’ the demands that the president had made of Mr. Zelenskiy.”
⋙ NBCNews: Whistleblower says U.S. envoy scrambled to contain Giuliani’s damage to national security http://nbcnews.to/2n6UGjq
// The special envoy served as the facilitator for Giuliani’s talks with Ukrainian officials.
🐣 JohnWDean Trump and Rudy are spending full time trashing Joe and Hunter Biden. Classic slander for they have no evidence to back up their claims whatsoever. The Bidens should sue for defamation. But that’s a Trump trick so they won’t do it.
🐣 RT @glennkirschner2 But his phone calls . . . #ButHisPhoneCalls
⋙ 🐣 RT @AlyssaMilano They’ve been covering up potentially incriminating phone calls on a separate server. #ServerGate #CoverUp
🐣 RT @McFaul Here is my legal question: Under what conditions should a State Department employee be tasked with setting up meeting between a foreign government and a private US citizen for the purpose of obtaining dirt on an electoral opponent? My answer: never. Ok, lawyers, now correct me.
🐣 RT @CheriJacobus Ultimately, it will be Ivanka who tells Trump that he must resign.
🐣 RT @djrothkopf So, misclassifying information in a White House full of people with faulty security clearances about a case of someone trying to engineer foreign intervention into an impending US election is not a matter concerning the DNI? But running it by the alleged wrong-doers is prudent?
🐣 It’s important that Schiff focused on the process, because it was almost accidental that the Intel Committee’s got the whistleblower complaint in light of obstruction by the White
House and DOJ. Rules must be clear for future situations.
🐣 RT @EricGarland Schiff is revealing something terrible and threatening about the acting Director of National Intelligence: He is unwilling to call foreign interference in our democracy a national security threat when invited by the President.
⋙ 🐣 RT @EricGarland Moreover, Maguire is unwilling to clearly ask for a full investigation OF A NATIONAL SECURITY THREAT to democracy itself from the highest office in the land. Because the President should have, ostensibly, executive privilege when committing crimes and frauds.
WaPo: Trump’s call with Ukrainian leader is unlike anything presidential scholars have heard before http://wapo.st/2n1FUKN
MotherJones, Pema Levy: Not Just Ukraine: Whistleblower Says the White House Is Hiding Other Damaging Documents http://bit.ly/2ntKxh2
// The Trump administration is accused of abusing classification to bury “politically sensitive” information.
WaPo, Aaron Blake: 5 key takeaways and allegations from the Trump whistleblower complaint http://wapo.st/2lQiqZe
1. The White House allegedly tried to bury the Trump-Zelensky call
2. Trump allegedly dangled a meeting with Zelensky as a reward
3. Two ambassadors allegedly worked to contain the potential damage
4. The whistleblower nailed the July 25 call
5. Many people around Trump are apparently troubled, and some are allegedly assisting in a coverup
WaPo: Whistleblower claimed Trump abused office and White House officials tried to cover it up http://wapo.st/2lQdOCo
// Complaint is at heart of burgeoning controversy over Trump-Ukraine call
💙💙 WaPo: Whistleblower claimed that Trump abused his office and that White House officials tried to cover it up http://wapo.st/2lQdOCo
⋙⋙ ≣ WaPo: [Transcript] http://wapo.st/2mc7XHy
💙💙 ≣ NYT: The Whistle-Blower Complaint: Read the Document [Interactive] http://nyti.ms/2nq4FAD
// Here is the complaint filed by an intelligence officer about President Trump’s interactions with the leader of Ukraine. It was released with a letter from the inspector general for the intelligence community
↥ ↧
🔆 This❗️⋙ NYT, Eileen Sullivan: Whistle-Blower’s Complaint Says White House Tried to ‘Lock Down’ Ukraine Call Records http://nyti.ms/2lQynP4
// The declassified complaint, released Thursday, accuses the president of trying to get Ukraine to interfere in the 2020 election to benefit him.
TheIntercept, Robert Mackey: How Trump Pushed Ukraine’s President to Probe Conspiracy Theories About Democrats http://bit.ly/2npOMKN
// (✛ possible additional withholding of weapons]
… [W]hen Zelensky said that his country wanted to buy Javelin antitank missiles from the United States — using millions of dollars in American military aid the White House was blocking at the time — Trump responded by saying, “I would like you to do us a favor though.” The American president then presented shards of a conspiracy theory he’s invoked before: that the DNC computers were not hacked by Russian intelligence agents, as Special Counsel Robert Mueller concluded, rather, Democrats had framed Russia for the crime, with the help of a Ukrainian-owned cybersecurity firm.
… Trump said “they say Crowdstrike… I guess you have one of your wealthy people… The server, they say Ukraine has it.” This is a frankly baffling sequence of sentences for anyone not deeply versed in the alternative reality explanations broadcast nightly on Fox News in support of Trump’s refusal to acknowledge that Russia sabotaged Hillary Clinton’s 2016 campaign to help elect him president.
CrowdStrike, as Kevin Poulsen explained in The Daily Beast, “enters the picture because it’s the security firm the DNC hired to investigate the breach back in 2016, and the first of many to identify Russia’s military intelligence agency, the GRU, as the perpetrator. A publicly-traded company headquartered in California, CrowdStrike has nothing to do with Ukraine, except in conspiracyland, which pretends that CrowdStrike co-founder Dmitri Alperovitch is Ukrainian, and that he framed Russia for election interference both on the DNC’s orders and to punish Putin for invading his homeland.” ¤ Alperovitch, however, is not Ukrainian. He is an American citizen who was born in Russia and emigrated to the U.S. as a child.
The theory “is absurd for many reasons,” the New York Times cybersecurity reporter Nicole Perlroth observed on Twitter. “The server is not in Ukraine; it’s sitting in the DNC basement. Despite Trump’s repeated claims Democrats withheld the server from the FBI, CrowdStrike and the DNC actually gave all their forensic evidence to the FBI.” ¤ “This DNC-didn’t-give-the-server-to-the-FBI idea makes no sense,” Thomas Rid, a professor of strategic studies at Johns Hopkins University’s School of Advanced International Studies, tweeted last year.
Trump previously raised the supposedly missing server while standing next to Russia’s president, Vladimir Putin, at their summit in Helsinki last year. Asked by a reporter why he took Putin at his word that Russia had nothing to do with the hacking, despite evidence gathered by U.S. intelligence agencies, Trump suggested that the matter was still in doubt because the Democrats had concealed evidence. … “… Where is the server? I want to know. Where is the server and what is the server saying?”
In Helsinki, the president also seemed to conflate the DNC server with the home email server Hillary Clinton used as secretary of state. On Wednesday in New York, as his Ukrainian counterpart shifted uneasily in his seat, Trump told reporters that he believed that Hillary Clinton’s deleted personal emails “could very well be” hidden in Ukraine.
Trump also referred in his call with Zelensky in July, and at their news conference on Wednesday, to a false claim that has become an article of faith among his supporters: that Ukrainian officials had tried to help Clinton defeat him in 2016 by fabricating evidence of money-laundering by Paul Manafort, his then-campaign chairman. If those documents were false, the thinking goes, the entire Mueller investigation should be called into question.
Although there is no evidence that this is true, Trump’s personal lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, claimed on CNN last week that records of $12.7 million in secret payments to Manafort from the Ukrainian political party of his former client, Viktor Yanukovych, the pro-Russian president who was toppled in a popular uprising in 2014, had been forged. In fact, as Andrew Kramer of The New York Times reported at the time, others named in the secret ledger where the payments to Manafort were documented have confirmed the records are genuine.
“Our country has been through a lot and Ukraine knows a lot about it,” Trump told Zelensky in the call. “There are a lot of things that went on, the whole situation.” He then referred to Mueller’s testimony to Congress about his investigation, which took place the day before the July call, and added, “they say a lot of it started with Ukraine.”
Trump expanded on that idea while sitting with Zelesnky on Wednesday, telling reporters that he had asked Ukraine’s president to cooperate with an investigation into the origins of the Mueller probe by Giuliani.
“Rudy is looking to also find out where the phony witch hunt started, how it started. You had a Russian witch hunt that turned out to be two and half years of phony nonsense,” Trump said. “And Rudy has got every right to go and find out where that started. And other people are looking at that, too. Where did it start? The enablers — where did it all come from?” …
As I reported in May, and again this week, while Biden’s son, Hunter, was asked to join the board of a Ukrainian gas firm suspected of corruption in 2014, his father pressed Ukraine to fire its chief prosecutor the following year because that official, Viktor Shokin, had failed to pursue corruption cases — including one against the same firm. In other words, the evidence shows that the then-vice president had acted to make the prosecution of the firm paying his son more likely, not less likely.
Biden was proud of his successful intervention, which was supported by other international donors to Ukraine and local anti-corruption activists who also demanded Shokin’s ouster for failing to pursue cases against former officials and crooked businesses that profited from state contracts.
Speaking to Zelensky in July, Trump praised the disgraced prosecutor, Shokin, and suggested that the anti-corruption activists and reformers in Ukraine’s parliament who voted him out were somehow the bad guys. “I heard you had a prosecutor who was very good and he was shut down and that’s really unfair,” Trump told Zelensky, “A lot of people are talking about that, the way they shut your very good prosecutor down and you had some very bad people involved.” …
⭕ 25 Sep 2019
Army.mil: More joint efforts likely as the Army prepares for multi-domain operations http://bit.ly/2p0r9cu
🐣 RT @Acosta WH accidentally emailed talking points to House Dems https://twitter.com/Acosta/status/1176896651727908866?s=20/photo/1-4
TheWeek, David Faris: Donald Trump and the Derp State http://bit.ly/2lA6j2g
If President Trump is impeached sometime in the coming months — and the incomplete-yet-incredibly-damaging notes from his July 25 call with Ukrainian President Volodmyr Zelensky suggest this is all but a certainty — you can probably thank Joe Biden’s polling numbers. As we learn more about what nudged President Trump down the path of fresh impeachable conduct and slapdash criming, all roads lead back to his visceral insecurity and thin-skinned inability to cope with dozens of head-to-head surveys showing the former vice president obliterating Trump by double digits in next year’s general election. His refusal to countenance a fair fight with Biden led the president to reportedly assemble a goon squad full of the stupidest spies in human history to blackmail the president of Ukraine. And it may be his undoing.
TheGuardian: Favors, dirt, investigations: key takeaways from the Trump-Ukraine memo http://bit.ly/2mXj7zX
// The White House released a summary of Trump’s call with Zelenskiy that lies at the heart of the impeachment inquiry
NewYorker, Susan Glasser: “Do Us a Favor”: The Forty-eight Hours That Sealed Trump’s Impeachment http://bit.ly/2n3DDio
NYT, Charles M Blow: It Has Begun http://nyti.ms/2lSbdHW
// An impeachment inquiry is nothing to celebrate. Still, it is evidence of what’s right being put ahead of what’s expedient.
🐣 RT @MaddowBlog Rep. Jackie Speier: “I can describe that [whistleblower] complaint as nothing short of explosive.” 💽 https://twitter.com/MaddowBlog/status/1177039780049313799?s=20/photo/1
WaPo, Adam Taylor: How Trump talks to world leaders in private http://wapo.st/2lHfYnP
WaPo: Trump offered Ukrainian president Justice Dept. help in an investigation of Biden, memo shows http://wapo.st/2l61P2X
// “The complaint also alleges a pattern of obfuscation at the White House, in which officials moved the records of some of Trump’s communications with foreign officials onto a separate computer network from where they are normally stored, this person said.”
Politico: Federal agency tries to serve Steve Bannon a subpoena http://politi.co/2lcVD9z
// The former Trump campaign CEO is part of a probe into “deceptive or unfair” use of Facebook data by the political consulting firm Cambridge Analytica.
🐣 RT @kylegriffin1 Breaking via NYT: The intelligence officer who filed the whistleblower complaint raised alarms not only about what Trump and Zelensky said in the phone call, but also about how the White House handled records of the conversation, according to two people.
⋙ NYT: Whistle-Blower Is Said to Allege Concerns About White House Handling of Ukraine Call http://nyti.ms/2lQ7Dhl
// New details have emerged about the intelligence officer who raised alarms about the president’s pressure on Ukraine to open inquiries that could benefit him politically.
🐣 RT @MollyJongFast There’s there there
⋙ 🐣 RT @AaronBlake Romney says it’s “troubling in the extreme.”
Toomey says it’s “inappropriate.
Sasse, who has now reviewed the complaint, says it’s “really troubling.”
Getting tougher for GOP to argue there’s no there, there.
NBCNews: White House appears to inadvertently send Ukraine talking points to Democrats http://nbcnews.to/2nkAD1h
// In a separate email obtained by NBC News, a White House staffer sought “to recall the message.”
🐣 The case was closed (found nothing; also Hunter Biden was never a target) BEFORE Biden acting for the Obama Admin and joined by the IMF and many Euro countries called for the prosecutor’s removal. He was voted out in lopsided vote in UKR parliament.
TheResurgent, Erick Erickson: REPUBLICAN SOURCE: “[The whistleblower] paints a clear path to impeachment.” http://bit.ly/2nkOzbC “it is really bad”
ABCNews: Ukrainians understood Biden probe was condition for Trump-Zelenskiy phone call: Ukrainian adviser http://abcn.ws/2lP5bHV
🐣 RT @tribelaw Trump’s attempts to talk his way out of his latest, most jaw-dropping abuse of power are unraveling by the hour. Impeachment is now all but inevitable.
🐣 RT @MalcolmNance I’ve read it. Trump is dirty AF. Barr needs to be impeached as well. Giuliani needs to be prosecuted. This was extortion 101. The entire purpose of the call was to get dirt on Biden and Zelensky agreed. Zelensky kne[w] his defense funds were suspended so he cooperated. #Impeachment
DailyBeast, Michael Tomasky: Will Joseph Maguire Be the First Hero to Emerge from Trumpland? http://bit.ly/2lPjr3r
// All he has to do is come to the hearing with the IG report and then testify fully and honestly as to its contents. Simple.
DailyBeast, Matt Lewis: No One Can Defend Trump After Seeing Ukraine Call Memo http://bit.ly/2nkRwJf
// Death knell? Of course not—the White House wouldn’t have released it in that case. But it sure is enough to start impeachment proceedings.
DailyBeast, Kevin Poulsen: The Truth About Trump’s Insane Ukraine ‘Server’ Conspiracy http://bit.ly/2laB2ma
// Trump asked Ukraine’s president to help prove a bonkers, Russia-friendly conspiracy theory that U.S. intel relied on manufactured evidence to blame the 2016 DNC hack on Moscow.
💙💙 ≣ NYT: Full Document: Trump’s Call With the Ukrainian President [Interactive] http://nyti.ms/2lfBkbC (Annotated)
// The White House released this document on Wednesday, showing a July call between President Trump and Volodymyr Zelensky, the president of Ukraine. The document warned its contents were “not a verbatim transcript.” Read our live coverage of the impeachment inquiry.
🐣 RT @AndrewDesiderio SCHIFF after reading whistleblower complaint: “I found the allegations deeply disturbing. I also found them very credible. I can understand why the IG found them credible …The complaint was very well written and certainly provides information for the committee to follow up…”
⋙ 🐣 RT @AndrewDesiderio Schiff, continued: “It is an urgent matter. And there was simply no basis to keep this from the committee. The idea that DOJ would have intervened to prevent it from getting to Congress throws the leadership of that department further into ill-repute.”
🐣 RT @carlbildt Essentially Trumps throws Ukraine under the bus. “You work it out with Putin”. Not a hint of Russia actually being the aggressor, and Ukraine in need of also political support.
⋙ 🐣 RT @joshtpm Look of existential terror descends over Zelensky’s face as Trump responds to question about military aid with suggestion that Zelensky work things out with Putin.
WaPo: Trump offered Ukrainian president Justice Dept. help for Biden investigation, memo shows http://wapo.st/2l61P2X
✅ NYT, Linda Qiu: Trump’s Misleading Defense for Withholding Assistance to Ukraine http://nyti.ms/2nil0aG
// The president, facing calls for impeachment over his pressuring Ukraine to investigate his political rival, inaccurately accused European countries of not providing aid to Ukraine.
European countries have contributed $1.8 billion in development assistance from 2014 to 2017, compared to $926 million from the United States, according to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. ¤ Countries outside of Europe have assisted Ukraine as well, with Canada providing $785 million and Japan $468 million.
🐣 He has since denied this.
⋙ 🔆 Just Now❗️⋙ WaPo: Acting director of national intelligence threatened to resign if he couldn’t speak freely before Congress http://wapo.st/2mEL7Z9
WaPo, Max Boot: The rough transcript is devastating. How could Trump not know that? http://wapo.st/2ngIX23
🐣 RT @ChrisMurphyCT a. from what I understand, they aren’t providing a transcript, so let’s stop calling it that ● b. the fact that the President’s campaign has seen it before Congress does is, frankly, more evidence of the corruption
⋙ 🐣 RT @abbydphillip Rudy Giuliani is saying on Fox News that he has had the Ukraine transcript read to him. ¤ I’d be interested in knowing what rationale could possibly exist for a person who does not work for the government getting access to the transcript before Congress.
🐣 RT @Mimirocah1 This is remarkable. Giuliani holding up his phone he says proves that he was sent by State Dept. to Ukraine. Looks to me like he’s warning others involved not to throw him under the bus (too late) because he’s got evidence & will use it.
⋙ 🐣 RT @andrew_lawrence Rudy Giuliani: “I never talked to a Ukrainian official until the state department called me and asked me to do it”
🐣 RT @gtconway3d Also: Ukrainian-aligned Martians mixed $6 trillion in George Soros-supplied bitcoin with Alpo and fed it to Jill Biden’s dog. So demand production of the dog now!
⋙ 🐣 RT @ We know corrupt Ukrainian oligarch laundered $3 million to the Biden Family. But $3 to $4m more was laundered to Biden. So release all the financial records of all businesses involving Biden, Kerry’s stepson and notorious mobster Whitey Bulger’s nephew.
🐣 RT @BillKristol So: In order to get dirt on a political opponent, the president removed a U.S. ambassador, used (paid?) a private citizen to threaten a foreign government, personally called a foreign leader, and delayed disbursing appropriated funds for that nation. All to get dirt on Joe Biden.
🐣 RT @jonlemire “The impeachment inquiry, sets up Democrats’ most direct and consequential confrontation with the Republican president, injects deep uncertainty into the 2020 election campaign and tests anew the nation’s constitutional system of checks and balances”
⋙ AP: Dems take up impeachment drive, say Trump betrayed his oath http://bit.ly/2n50udj
🐣 RT @NBCNews President Trump’s claims appear to be at the center of a scandal involving a phone call with Ukraine’s president, in which he reportedly pressed for a probe of his political rival.
⋙ NBCNews: There’s no evidence for Trump’s Biden-Ukraine accusations. What really happened? http://nbcnews.to/2mzVcGA
// Trump’s claims appear to be at the center of a scandal involving a phone call with Ukraine’s president, in which Trump reportedly pressed for a probe of his political rival.
⭕ 24 Sep 2019 ⋙ Impeachment Inquiry Announced
🐣 “THESE are the times that try men’s souls. The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of their country; but he that stands by it now, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman.” — Thomas Paine
📔 Forbes, Zak Doffman: Russian Secret Weapon Against U.S. 2020 Election Revealed In New Cyberwarfare Report http://bit.ly/2nIAJQW
🐣 RT @MSNBC “The President actually said to Nancy Pelosi, ‘Hey, can we do something about this whistleblower complaint, can we work something out.’ And she said ‘Yes, you can tell your people to obey the law.’ So she quickly swatted that down.” – @HeidiNBC
⋙ MSNBC, TheBeatWithAri: Sources: Pelosi says Trump called her today trying to ‘figure something out’ about whistleblower complaint http://on.msnbc.com/2mGgNgo
// After House Speaker Nancy Pelosi announced a formal impeachment inquiry into President Trump, MSNBC’s Heidi Przybyla joins Ari Melber on The Beat to share reporting about a phone call between the president and speaker today when Trump asked Pelosi if they could “work something out” about the whistleblower complaint.
NewYorker, John Cassidy: Nancy Pelosi Finally Goes All In on Impeachment http://bit.ly/2mxlvx7
In her subsequent public statement, which she made from the Capitol Building, after meeting with the Democratic caucus, Pelosi began by running through the history of the Ukraine story, which emerged after an anonymous intelligence official filed a whistle-blower complaint that the Trump Administration has refused to turn over to Congress. Then she got to the point. “This week, the President has admitted to asking the President of Ukraine to take actions that would benefit him politically,” she said. “The actions of the Trump Presidency reveal the dishonorable fact of the President’s betrayal of his oath of office, betrayal of our national security, and betrayal of the integrity of our election. Therefore, today, I am announcing the House of Representatives is moving forward with an official impeachment inquiry. . . . The President must be held accountable. No one is above the law.”
🐣 RT @JillWineBanks Notice his “it was a perfect call” before diversion to but Biden is evil. Also notice Melania’s face. Let’s be sure we hear from all the people who heard the call before accepting his version of it.
⋙ 🐣 RT @washingtonpost Watch: Trump confirms he withheld military aid from Ukraine before his call with Ukrainian President Zelensky 💽 https://twitter.com/JillWineBanks/status/1176749152866361345?s=20/photo/1
JustSecurity, Viola Geinger and Ryan Goodman: Timeline: Trump, Giuliani, Biden, and Ukrainegate http://bit.ly/2l0SlWQ
🐣 RT @atrupar Trump ends his bilateral media availability with the Polish president by claiming that “if a Republican ever did what Joe Biden did … they’d be getting the electric chair right now,” before calling the assembled journalists “crooked as hell.” 💽 https://twitter.com/atrupar/status/1176206521287544832?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @chrislhayes If this is true, why on earth did the State Department call in the president’s personal attorney, with no expertise or diplomatic experience in the region, to do this? Was this Pompeo using American foreign policy for the president’s narrow political interest?
⋙ 🐣 RT @atrupar Wow. Here’s Rudy Giuliani throwing the State Department under the bus and saying State officials called him and asked him to get involved in Ukraine.
💽 [Fox] https://twitter.com/atrupar/status/1176687420961710082?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @AngryWHStaff Remember what I said: ¤ When the GOP splits from Trump, it’s going to happen *fast* ¤ I doubt today is the day, but if you don’t think Mitch packed an extra chute, you’re crazy.
🐣 RT @McFaul There is no way that Zelensky will admit , standing next to Trump, that the Trump administration pressured him to reopen an investigation of VP Biden’s son.
🐣 RT @maziehirono From Day 1 of his presidency, @realDonaldTrump has been motivated by two things: protecting himself and making money. Speaker Pelosi is right to hold this dangerous chief executive accountable.
⋙ 🐣 RT @maziehirono Here’s what we know so far:
-obstructed justice as detailed in the Mueller Report
-named as unindicted co-conspirator in campaign finance crime
-received money in violation of the Constitution from foreign governments
-pressured a foreign govt to investigate his political rival
⋙ 🐣 RT @maziehirono He’s also stonewalled every effort by Congress to do its job of oversight and investigation, by directing witnesses not to testify in front of Congress, refusing to turn over documents, and asserting privileges that don’t exist.
🐣 RT @JohnWDean Impeachment must include AG Barr for coverups and SecState Pompeo re Ukraine — along with President Trump. Others as their involvement becomes apparent. This is beyond a one man show!
NYT, Carl Hulse: Why an Impeachment Inquiry Now? Democrats Cite the Clarity of the Case http://nyti.ms/2mZ1iQY
RawStory/Alternet, Cody Fenwick: Here’s the damning timeline of Trump’s blatantly corrupt Ukrainian collusion http://bit.ly/2kVUbIp
💙 WaPo, Dana Milbank: On impeachment, the worm has turned http://wapo.st/2n3l8L3
💙 WaPo, David Ignatius: This isn’t just another spat. Trump compromised our security for his gain. http://wapo.st/2mA3zBO
Why is this more than just another Trump vs. Democrats mud fight? Because the Ukraine issue is about compromising U.S. national security — and direct pledges to allies — for the president’s personal political gain
Forget the political jousting between Trump and Biden, and consider the Ukrainian soldier in the field fighting to save his country. He has a nightmare communications problem because he can’t talk reliably with his commanders. Russia has been hacking or jamming Ukrainian military communications since it seized Crimea and began supporting the separatists in 2014.
The United States wanted to help fix this battlefield communications disaster. One item in the $391 million package Congress appropriated is a secure system made by L3 Technologies, a unit of Harris Corp., that could allow the Ukrainians to maintain contact despite Russian interference. The L3 equipment was ready for delivery in July when the company was told no, there was a hold, the equipment couldn’t be shipped, according to a congressional source.
L3 and other companies supplying Ukraine contacted leading Republican members of Congress, such as Sen. Lindsey O. Graham (S.C.) to find out why there was a delay. …
But Graham warned the White House: “You can’t send a signal that we’re going to back out of the deal,” the source said, adding, “It’s one thing to do ‘due diligence’ and another that we’re changing our posture.” These national security arguments eventually prevailed, and the Ukraine assistance was finally released on Sept. 11.
🐣 RT @ScotMStedman If Trump pressured Zelensky 8 times to investigate Biden on a phone call he knew was monitored, imagine what he did alone with Putin for 2 hours.
⋙ 🐣 The bedraggled look of Trump vs the triumphant look of Putin coming out of that meeting suggested Putin did most of the talking.
🐣 RT @samstein Giuliani’s contacts w/ officials at the State as part of efforts to dig up Biden dirt are more extensive than perviously reported. He briefed the US Ambassador to the EU, raising questions about what Foggy Bottom knew
⋙ 💙 DailyBeast: U.S. Ambassador Roped Into Rudy’s Quest to Smear Biden http://bit.ly/2l12q6c by Erin Banco, Asawin Suebsaeng and Adam Rawnsley
// And that ambassador was involved with the now-infamous phone call that has Washington headed towards an impeachment inquiry.
🐣 RT @SpeakerPelosi The times have found us. The actions taken to date by the President have seriously violated the Constitution. It is for this reason that the House of Representatives is moving forward with an official impeachment inquiry. 💽 https://twitter.com/SpeakerPelosi/status/1176635371460976640?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @MuellerSheWrote The DNI is still claiming privilege and overriding the determination of the IC IG. Here is the DNI OGC letter to the whistleblower’s lawyer. They’re continuing to obstruct. Hold the DNI in contempt tomorrow. Might want to have a contempt resolution at the ready. @HouseJudiciary
// DNI OGC = Director of National Intelligence Office of General Counsel
3. ⋙ 🐣 RT @BradEsq Here is the letter – http://2mXI2Dq
2. 🐣 RT @MaddowBlog Letter from the whistleblower’s lawyers: http://bit.ly/2kW3E2x
1. 🐣 RT @BarbMcQuade For a balanced view of the whistleblower matter, read letter from ICIG, a Trump appointee. He says the matter is credible, of urgent concern, and relates to “one of the most significant and important of the DNI’s responsibilities to the American people.” http://bit.ly/2n15KyO
// ICIG = Intelligence Community Inspector General
🐣 RT @JohnBrennan Impeachment hearings are essential to determine whether Donald Trump, as alleged, engaged in extortion of a foreign government for personal political gain. If the allegations are true, Trump should be impeached, convicted by the Senate, & charged with a federal crime.
WaPo, Robert Kagan: If we legitimize Trump’s behavior, it’ll be open season on our politics http://wapo.st/2mv1ZS1
🐣 RT @JuliaDavisNews Though the whistleblower report focuses on the Trump-Zelensky call, officials familiar w/ its contents said that it includes references to other developments tied to the president, including efforts by Giuliani to insert himself into US/Ukrainian relations
🐣 RT @renato_mariotti All of those officials should be subpoenaed, along with Rudy Giuliani. If they feared that Trump would abuse his power on the call, the House should find out why.
⋙ 💙 WaPo: Giuliani pursued shadow Ukraine agenda as key foreign policy officials were sidelined http://wapo.st/2kUR7fB
✅ ━━━━━━━▼ Hunter Biden FactCheck
DailyBeast, Anna Nemtsova: Ukraine Likely to Reopen Probe of Hunter Biden Firm: Sources http://bit.ly/2mwUXfi
// 9/24/2019; President Zelensky came to office vowing to fight corruption, and it looks like he’ll open a lot of cases shut by shady prosecutors. But the focus is on Ukraine, not the U.S.
🐣 RT @jennycohn1 It is important to understand that the Trump regime is LYING when it says that prosecutor Shokin—who Biden & the EU called out—wanted to investigate Burisma’s corruption. It was the opposite. Shokin enabled Burisma’s corruption by refusing to turn over evidence to the UK. 1/ 📌 https://twitter.com/jennycohn1/status/1176333122507440129?s=20
// 9/23/2019; Hunter Biden
AP, Stephen Braun and Lynn Berry: The story behind Biden’s son, Ukraine and Trump’s claims http://bit.ly/2kUQBOR
// 9/23/2019
MMFA, Courtney Hagle and Bobby Lewis: Debunking lies about Trump, Biden, Ukraine, and the whistleblower http://bit.ly/2l05I9O research contributed by Courtney Hagel and Eric Kleefeld
// 9/23/2019
💙💙 🔆 WaPo, Philip Bump: Trump has been openly trying to leverage Ukraine to his political benefit for months http://wapo.st/2m6eRxr
// 9/20/2019
💙💙 🔆 DailyBeast, Anna Nemtsova: Ukrainian Official: Trump Wants Dirt ‘To Discredit Biden’ http://bit.ly/2mrtjR4
// 9/20/2019
Politico: Biden wages war on Hunter-Ukraine reporting http://politi.co/2lx49jR
// 9/24/2019; ‘You saw what happened to Hillary in 2016 with all of the ridiculous coverage about her emails. That’s not going to happen with us. We learned.’
WashingtonExaminer, Joseph Simonson: Business efforts of Biden brother and son prompt new questions over influence peddling http://washex.am/
// 8/15/2019
Politico, Ben Schreckinger: Biden Inc. http://politi.co/2mGFxoQ
// Over his decades in office, ‘Middle-Class Joe’s’ family fortunes have closely tracked his political career.
// 8/2/2019
NewYorker, Adam Entous (7/1): Will Hunter Biden Jeopardize His Father’s Campaign? http://bit.ly/2kx7q28
// 7/1/2019, background
VanityFair, Rachel Dodes: Hunter Biden Is the Best Thing That Could Happen to Joe Biden http://bit.ly/2mHGsW0
// 6/27/2019; If Biden is in fact the Democratic nominee in 2020, his son’s messy personal life might actually be an advantage.
Bloomberg: Ukraine Prosecutor Says No Evidence of Wrongdoing by Bidens http://bloom.bg/2kJF6tz By Daryna Krasnolutska , Kateryna Choursina , and Stephanie Baker
// 5/16/2019
● Hunter Biden, Burisma not targets, despite Giuliani’s pleas
● Long-running investigation said to focus on another Ukrainian
Law&Crime, Jeremy Smith: Ukrainian Prosecutor Rains on Giuliani’s Parade, Says There’s No Evidence the Bidens Broke the Law http://bit.ly/2mFSpvK
// 5/16/2019
FreeBeacon, Brent Sched: Hunter Biden’s China Deal Partners Include Mobster Whitey Bulger’s Nephew, John Kerry’s Stepson http://bit.ly/2l6jJmn
// 5/13/2019
TheIntercept, Robert Mackey (May): A Republican Conspiracy Theory About a Biden-in-Ukraine Scandal Has Gone Mainstream. But It Is Not True. http://bit.ly/2muqizk
// 5/10/2019
TheAtlantic, Peter Nicholas: Trump’s Biden Plan? It Could Get Dirty. http://bit.ly/2l6doaz
// Should Biden remain atop the 2020 field, Donald Trump and his allies may attack the former vice president’s family.
// 5/2/2019
NYT, Kenneth Vogel and Iuliia: Biden Faces Conflict of Interest Questions That Are Being Promoted by Trump and Allies http://nyti.ms/2lsdSrL
// 5/1/2019
~~~~~~~~~~
✅ PolitiFact: PolitiFact, Louis Jacobson: Donald Trump’s accusations about Hunter Biden and a payout from China: A closer look http://bit.ly/2OidDLW not illegal; HB was unpaid board member; company raised $4.2M (not $1.5B), Hunter invested $420K; no returns realized
// 10/2/2019
✅ NPR, Greg Myre: What Were The Bidens Doing In Ukraine? 5 Questions Answered http://n.pr/2kUuHuZ
// 9/24/2019
1. So what did Joe Biden do in Ukraine?
2. What role did Joe Biden’s son Hunter Biden play in Ukraine?
3. Is there any sign of wrongdoing by either Joe Biden or his son Hunter Biden?
4. How do Trump and his supporters see Joe Biden’s work?
5. What’s next?
✅ PolitiFact, Louis Jacobson: Fact-checking Joe Biden, Hunter Biden, and Ukraine http://bit.ly/2mqKylA
● Text Block: https://twitter.com/Auriandra/status/1176620172830023680?s=20/photo/1
// 9/24/2019; “Half-True”
The image gets individual pieces of this assertion right — Hunter Biden was a director of the company, and Joe Biden did leverage U.S. aid to fire a prosecutor. But it overreaches by assuming that Joe Biden acted to protect the company his son was affiliated with. In reality, there was widespread agreement in the West that the existing prosecutor had to go, and it’s not clear that the company would have benefited from his ouster anyway, given evidence that its cases had long been dormant.
✅ FactCheck.org, Eugene Kiely: Trump Twists Facts on Biden and Ukraine http://bit.ly/2liUTjn
// 9/24/2019; Hunter Biden
✅ CNN, Daniel Dale: Fact check: What Trump has been getting wrong on Biden and Ukraine http://cnn.it/2mZxIef
// 9/23/2019; Hunter Biden
✅ PolitiFact, Louis Jacobson and John Kruzel: Trump’s Ukraine call, a whistleblower and the Bidens: What we know, what we don’t http://bit.ly/2mSDu14
// 9/23/2019; Hunter Biden
✅ WaPo FactChecker, Glenn Kessler and Salvador Rizzo: Fact-checking Trump’s latest claims on Biden and Ukraine http://wapo.st/2muacWl No there there.
// 9/23/2019; Hunter Biden
━━━━━━━▲
🐣 RT @TrickFreee A Ukraine legislator and former head of the country’s domestic intelligence agency tells @annanemtsova the country will likely reopen an investigation into the energy company whose board included Hunter Biden
⋙ DailyBeast, Anna Nemtsova: Ukraine Likely to Reopen Probe of Hunter Biden Firm: Sources http://bit.ly/2mwUXfi
// President Zelensky came to office vowing to fight corruption, and it looks like he’ll open a lot of cases shut by shady prosecutors. But the focus is on Ukraine, not the U.S.
WaPo, Amber Philips: Why the Ukraine allegations broke the Democratic dam on impeachment http://wapo.st/2mwUXfi
🔆 This❗️⋙ WaPo: Pelosi announces formal impeachment inquiry of Trump http://wapo.st/2ltjUIy House Speaker Nancy Pelosi announces formal impeachment inquiry of Trump, says his actions were a ‘betrayal of national security’
● Cover: https://twitter.com/Auriandra/status/1176609030053212160?s=20/photo/1
🔆 This❗️⋙ NYT: HOUSE TO BEGIN IMPEACHMENT INQUIRY AGAINST TRUMP http://nyti.ms/2luyxeu President Accused of Enlisting a Foreign Power to Help Him Politically
● Cover: https://twitter.com/Auriandra/status/1176608857927430145?s=20/photo/1
WaPo: WaPo, Philip Bump and Aaron Blake: The full Trump-Ukraine timeline — as of now http://wapo.st/2mrKemq
🐣 The transcript is not sufficient. The whistleblower complaint is mandatory. So are transcripts/notes from anyone Giuliani talked to. Apparently Trump told Zelensky to talk to Giuliani.
🐣 Trump’s collusion with Ukraine has already affected the 2020 election by casting Biden as “dirty” and perhaps not the “most electable.” He wants to run against someone he can brand a “socialist.” Listen to his UN speech. It’s Russia collusion all over again.
🐣 RT @RepAdamSchiff We have been informed by the whistleblower’s counsel that their client would like to speak to our committee and has requested guidance from the Acting DNI as to how to do so. ¤ We‘re in touch with counsel and look forward to the whistleblower’s testimony as soon as this week.
🐣 .@SpeakerPelosi just said straight out that the Acting ODNI “broke the law.”
🐣 RT @BradMossEsq Folks, don’t let him set the narrative. There is no confirmation that the WBer complaint was this limited in scope or evidence.
🐣 RT @MayaWiley #Trump authorizing release of transcript is right thing to do but NOT enough. He must also ask #DOJ to cease its position withholding #whistleblower complaint from Congress since reporting is IG #Trump appointed suggested “multiple actions.” http://bit.ly/2muGYGQ #Ukraine
🐣 RT @politico BREAKING: Trump said tomorrow he’ll release the “complete, fully declassified and unredacted transcript” of his phone call with the Ukrainian president in which he discussed a possible investigation into Joe Biden and his son [broken link]
WaPo: Biden says he’ll call for impeachment if Trump doesn’t cooperate with investigations http://wapo.st/2moUR9K he comes just shy of calling for Trump’s impeachment over Ukraine allegations
// Biden will come just shy of calling for Trump’s impeachment over Ukraine allegations
WaPo: Trump confirms he withheld military aid from Ukraine, says he wants other countries to help pay http://wapo.st/2kRe9E7
🐣 RT @howardfineman Very solid #Dem House leadership source just confirmed to me that @SpeakerPelosi will announce a formal impeachment inquiry this afternoon and imply that she herself favors impeachment of @realDonaldTrump.
TheBulwark, Andrew Egger: Kamala Harris Lets Trump Do Her Dirty Work http://bit.ly/2mwvumb
// will leave it up to “the pundits” on whether Biden is culpable on Ukraine
⭕ 23 Sep 2019
🐣 RT @jennycohn1 It is important to understand that the Trump regime is LYING when it says that prosecutor Shokin—who Biden & the EU called out—wanted to investigate Burisma’s corruption. It was the opposite. Shokin enabled Burisma’s corruption by refusing to turn over evidence to the UK. 1/ 📌 https://twitter.com/jennycohn1/status/1176333122507440129?s=20
// Hunter Biden
🐣 RT @RWPUSA Trump’s been caught red handed. The sooner the House votes out articles of impeachment, the sooner Senate Republicans are in the hot seat. If they prevent a fair trial or acquit him they go down with Trump.
DailyBeast, Lachlan Markay and Asawin Suebsaeng: Not Just Ukraine: Rudy and Bannon Try a Whole New Way to Slime Biden http://bit.ly/2lgkg5c
// The president and his allies, from Peter Schweizer to Frank Gaffney, want to open a new front on the former VP’s son even as their Ukraine gambit appears to have backfired.
TheBulwark, Tim Miller: Truth, Lies, and the Nonsense Trump-Biden-Ukraine False Equivalency http://bit.ly/2miTRno
// One of these guys was pressuring Ukraine to help him out in an election. The other was pressuring Ukraine to end corruption. They are not the same.
🐣 RT @MSNBC “Bribery is a high crime or misdemeanor that is specifically included in the Constitution.” ¤ Fmr. U.S. Attorney Barbara McQuade on reports that Pres. Trump offered military aid to Ukraine in exchange for information on fmr. VP Joe Biden.
NYT: Instead of ‘No Collusion!’ Trump Now Seems to Be Saying, So What if I Did? http://nyti.ms/2mnd4nP
🐣 RT @jmeacham For Republicans, this is a Margaret Chase Smith moment: Stand up for country over party. History will reward you.
TheBulwark, Bill Kristol: What the Democrats Need to Do This Week http://bit.ly/2mfD3xM
// For starters: Keep the focus on what Trump said and don’t get bogged down in the intricacies of whistleblower law.
TheBulwark, Charlie Sykes: The Trump-Ukraine Story is a Stress Test http://bit.ly/2licWpJ
// Five systems are being tested. None of them look ready.
🔆 This❗️⋙ WaPo: Trump ordered hold on military aid days before calling Ukrainian president, officials say http://wapo.st/2mIPySE
WaPo: Pelosi quietly sounding out House Democrats about whether to impeach Trump, officials say http://wapo.st/2l10WJf
🐣 RT @TheBeatWithAri “It’s about as grave in offense as you can imagine. Even Richard Nixon, when he ordered the Watergate break in and didn’t have the imagination to outsource to a foreign government or foreign intelligence service” -@neal_katyal on Trump asking Ukraine to go after Biden 💽 https://twitter.com/TheBeatWithAri/status/1176264907140059136?s=20/photo/1
WaPo, Eugene Robinson: Trump is practically begging for impeachment. Give it to him, already. http://wapo.st/2kIorGL
WaPo, Randall Eliason: If the Ukraine allegations are true, there are criminal consequences http://wapo.st/2mj7W45
🐣 RT @Karoli BREAKING: According to the Washington Post, House Democratic leaders have called a caucus meeting Tuesday to discuss questions of impeachment.
🐣 RT @Duty2Warm Approximately 250 Republican Congressmen in the House/Senate have unilaterally sold their souls, unanimously placed party over country, collectively chosen demagoguery over democracy, placed falsehood over truth, and the fear of tweets from a madman above courage and conviction.
NYT, Michelle Goldberg: Nancy Pelosi’s Failure to Launch http://nyti.ms/2l0Vc27
// The House speaker’s hesitation on impeachment empowers a lawless president.
NYT: As Trump Confirms He Discussed Biden With Ukraine, Pressure to Impeach Builds http://nyti.ms/2kZvV8d
// Speaker Nancy Pelosi warned of a “new chapter of lawlessness” and a turning point in the House investigation of President Trump.
WaPo, Marc Fischer: ‘He ignores the law when he doesn’t like it’ http://wapo.st/2kVqKGE
WaPo, Daniel Drezner: The strategic case for impeaching President Trump http://wapo.st/2kAMCqn
// Welcome to some zero-sum game theory.
WaPo, James Downie: Begin impeachment hearings now http://wapo.st/2mzVVHL
WaPo, Greg Sargent: It’s time, Speaker Pelosi http://wapo.st/2l7orjw
⭕ 22 Sep 2019
🐣 RT @joshscampbell The U.S. Secretary of State endorses Rudy Giuliani’s efforts to seek help from a foreign government to investigate President Trump’s political opponent
💽 https://twitter.com/joshscampbell/status/1175771817602093056?s=20/photo/1
// Pompeo on FaceTheNatiom
Newsweek: Nancy Pelosi Calls Trump Administration Blocking Whistleblower Disclosure ‘a Grave New Chapter of Lawlessness’ http://bit.ly/2kuvaUr
🐣 RT @RichardEngel Historians and social scientists deeply worried Trump is showing all the signs of authoritarianism. Not just his rivals are saying it. Big concern there could be a crisis, real or contrived, that could push our old, and generally successful, experiment in democracy over the edge.
DailyBeast, Gideon Resnick: Impeachment Pressure Builds for Nancy Pelosi’s House Democrats After Ukraine Whistleblower and Trump Admission http://bit.ly/2kXioOs
// The calls to proceed are coming from inside the House, and outside it.
NYT: Trump’s Hold on Military Aid Blindsided Top Ukrainian Officials http://nyti.ms/2mtRA98
🐣 RT @JoeBiden Let’s be clear, Donald Trump pressured a foreign government to interfere in our elections. It goes against everything the United States stands for. ¤ We must make him a one-term president.
DailyBeast: Adam Schiff Says Trump’s Ukraine Call Could Justify Impeachment http://bit.ly/2kZjeu3
DailyBeast, Michael Tomasky: Trump’s Firing Away on Fifth Avenue, and We Are Fucked http://bit.ly/2m4lwbB
// The president has all but ’fessed up to his latest impeachable offense, and Republicans are shrugging. That’s on them—not the Democrats.
NYT: Pelosi Warns of ‘New Stage’ of Inquiry if Trump Blocks Whistle-Blower Complaint http://nyti.ms/2kZvV8d
// Without mentioning impeachment, Speaker Nancy Pelosi said President Trump’s refusal to hand over the whistle-blower complaint would trigger a “new chapter of lawlessness.”
WaPo: Trump suggests he mentioned Biden in phone call with Ukrainian president http://wapo.st/2m0C6t5
DefenseOne. Uri Friedman: Imagine If Obama Had Done This http://bit.ly/2m1MuRi
// Republicans have tolerated plenty of foreign-policy moves by Trump that they would never have let his predecessor get away with. Will that continue with Iran?
🐣 RT @JuliaDavisNews Russia’s state TV is eating up Trump’s mess like candy, arguing that the White House is not only indifferent towards Ukraine’s plight, but believes that Ukraine is “occupying Russia’s territory,” emphasizing that the only thing Trump wants from Ukraine is the Biden investigation.
WaPo, Jennifer Rubin: We’re passing the tipping point on impeachment http://wapo.st/2kMFbwF
WaPo: Ukrainian leaders feel trapped between warring Washington factions http://wapo.st/2m2Tn4G
🐣 RT @JohnJHarwood senior Dem aide on Speaker/impeachment: “contrary to popular belief, Pelosi isn’t giving members a red light. She’s telling them to do what’s right for them and their district. But Ukraine stuff may be breaking point. goes to whether we can actually have free/fair 2020 election”
🐣 RT @costareports Giuliani spoke w/ Post Sunday. Said he will be relentless this wk in pushing media orgs to cover Biden fam. Post asked if he has POTUS blessing. He said, “I don’t do anything that involves my client without speaking with my client.” Did not offer details of any convos w/ Trump.
🐣 RT @atrupar Trump, looking very red, basically admits he asked Ukrainian President Zelensky to look into Biden during call that’s part of whistleblower complaint: “It was largely [about] fact that we don’t want our people like VP Biden & his son creating to the corruption largely in Ukraine” 💽 https://twitter.com/atrupar/status/1175780830012223490?s=20/photo/1
🐣 MT @tribelaw “There is no evidence that Mr. Biden intentionally tried to help his son when he pushed for the dismissal of the Ukrainian prosecutor, who was widely seen in the West as corrupt.” (NYT) So Trump & Co. are deflecting by fake whataboutism.
// NYT http://nyti.ms/2kyM3xs
NewYorker, Adam Entous (Jul): Will Hunter Biden Jeopardize His Father’s Campaign? http://bit.ly/2kx7q28 “There is no credible evidence that Biden sought Shokin’s removal in order to protect Hunter”
// 7/1/2019; Joe Biden’s son is under scrutiny for his business dealings and tumultuous personal life
🚫🐣 RT @PhillippeReines .@kenvogel on January 11, 2017. The @nytimes hired him AFTER this tweet. DESPITE this tweet. BECAUSE of this tweet.
@HillaryClinton was the target in 2016; @JoeBiden is the 2019 target; whoever our nominee is will get this treatment in 2020. https://twitter.com/PhilippeReines/status/1175801826450530304?s=20/photo/1
⭕ 21 Sep 2019
Politico Mag, Renato Mariotti: Trump Didn’t Bribe Ukraine. It’s Actually Worse Than That http://politi.co/2m3Vrtn “[I]t’s a breach of the president’s duty to not use the powers of the presidency to benefit himself”
// Mislabeling what the president has done could make impeachment more difficult to achieve
🐣 RT @DavidCornDC Disinformation works because it creates an impression. Accuracy doesn’t matter. Then reporting on the disinformation spreads the impression. And even debunking can spread the impression. We in the media have to find a way not to be accomplices. So far, the media has not.
⋙ 🐣 RT @AnneApplebaum this is diabolical, if you think about it. Despite the fact that there is no evidence of impropriety, the issue of “Biden’s son” becomes a liability for Biden anyway.
this is diabolical, if you think about it. Despite the fact that there is no evidence of impropriety, the issue of "Biden's son" becomes a liability for Biden anyway. https://t.co/ooav9ceKDU
— Anne Applebaum (@anneapplebaum) September 21, 2019
NYT, Nicholas Kristof: Trump and Election Interference, Whistle-Blower Edition http://nyti.ms/2kZhvVN “This is a test of our political system, and the next few months will determine whether we pass.”
// Many elements are murky, but something clearly stinks.
Trump has been credibly accused of using the presidency to enrich himself (summits at Trump properties!), to protect himself from law enforcement (appeals to James Comey, offers of pardons!) and to punish perceived adversaries (Amazon, CNN, Andrew McCabe). Now he may have harnessed the power of the presidency to gain political advantage.
🐣 RT @DrGJackBrown THREAD: Body Language Analysis No. 4397: Donald Trump Defends Himself Against The Whistleblower – Nonverbal and Emotional Intelligence — https://youtu.be/OAR7FLBLJvg — #BodyLanguage #BodyLanguageExpert #EmotionalIntelligence #Nonverbal #DonaldTrump #Ukraine #Whistleblower
📌 https://twitter.com/DrGJackBrown/status/1175596503189999617?s=20
🐣 RT @DrGJackBrown […] 39/ Trump’s Freudian Slip — when he says, “… and keep asking questions and build it up as big as possible, so you can have a bigger downfall”— is projection. He feels this advice applies to himself. It shows us he’s a man sensing his own fall — and that he’s desperate. ¤ END
WaPo: Ukrainian leaders feel trapped between warring Washington factions http://wapo.st/2m2Tn4G
🐣 RT @kasparov63 You don’t tell cancer that chemotherapy is off the table so you can rely on crystal healing. You fight for your life. Trump will, and this abuse with Ukraine is the smallest taste of what is to come.
🐣 There’s no need to retweet Trump or other despicable people, even with a comment. Paraphrase or refer to a tweet, don’t retweet. It just reinforces or introduces the toxin. It’s what they want.
🐣 RT @gtconway3d He makes everything up as he goes along.
⋙ 🐣 RT @neal_katyal This switch in strategy away from denial may mean Trump finally read something, the transcript of the call. Also …. isn’t this the same guy who 2 days ago denied the story because he knows his calls with foreign leaders are “heavily populated”? Now he’s saying the call wasn’t?
🐣 RT @glennkirshner2 Bingo! As SCOTUS said nearly 200 years ago: Congress’ power to “hold someone in contempt is essential to ensure that Congress is not exposed to every indignity and interruption that rudeness, caprice or even conspiracy may mediate against it.” Great thread. ¤ The time is NOW!
⋙ 🐣 RT @kurteichenwald 1. When the executive branch is playing Constitutional hardball – undermining checks & balances – here is what Congress is empowered by law to do and should do. If they do not, @SpeakerPelosi @RepAdamSchiff @RepJerryNadler are not strong enough for their jobs. First, why do it… 📌 https://twitter.com/kurteichenwald/status/1175181159308959744?s=20
🐣 RT @RyanLizza This is a very useful thread by an expert on Ukraine and corruption. It seems notable that the people who know the most about Ukraine are the most adamant that this Hunter Biden story is bogus.
⋙ 🐣 RT @anders_aslund Simple facts about the Trump Ukraine affair: 1. Viktor Shokin was prosecutor general from February 2015 to March 2016. He was considered close to President Poroshenko & was considered utterly corrupt. He did not prosecute any high-level person.
📌 https://twitter.com/anders_aslund/status/1175203002870849536?s=20
🐣 RT @edbot If Woodward and Bernstein had to deal with today’s media landscape.
⋙ 🐣 RT @KevinMKruse “The break-in at the Democratic National Committee’s headquarters at the Watergate Hotel raises some troubling questions about just what it is that the Democrats are hiding there.”
🐣 RT @BillKristol “‘We haven’t seen anything like this in my lifetime,’ said William A. Galston, a senior fellow in governance at the Brookings Institution…’He appears to be daring the rest of the political system to stop him — and if it doesn’t, he’ll go further.’”
⋙ WaPo: Trump’s Ukraine call reveals a president convinced of his own invincibility http://wapo.st/2mlyjGG
Bloomberg (May): Ukraine Prosecutor Says No Evidence of Wrongdoing by Bidens http://bloom.bg/2kJF6tz By Daryna Krasnolutska , Kateryna Choursina, and Stephanie Baker
// 5/16/2019
🐣 RT @JennyCohn1 Trump froze $$$ to Ukraine while pressuring it to ascribe a fake nefarious motive behind Biden’s support of the ouster of a prosecutor who had “failed to prosecute any single prominent member of the [pro-Putin] Yanukovych regime,” a Manafort client.
📌 https://twitter.com/jennycohn1/status/1175458142894690304?s=20
⋙ AtlanticCouncil, Anders Åslund (2016): Shokin’s Revenge: Ukraine’s Odious Prosecutor General Fires Honest Deputy Before Parliament Sacks Him http://bit.ly/2kVBMeP
// 3/29/2016
🐣 The two best articles I’ve found on Biden’s Unkraine Non-Scandal are:
🔆 DailyBeast, Anna Nemtsova: Ukrainian Official: Trump Wants Dirt ‘To Discredit Biden’ http://bit.ly/2mrtjR4
🔆 WaPo, Philip Bump: Trump has been openly trying to leverage Ukraine to his political benefit for months http://wapo.st/2m6eRxr
🐣 Trump wants to dirty up Biden w false accusations to convince people he’s not the “most electable” candidate, to drive down his lead by a point or two. ¤ Trump wants to run against Warren or Sanders, who he can brand as “socialist” & who may not share Biden’s swing state strength.
WaPo, Serhiy Leshchenko: Rudy Giuliani accused me of exposing Paul Manafort’s Ukraine deals to help U.S. Democrats. That’s a lie. http://wapo.st/2ksSLVx “Never in my wildest dreams did I imagine the Manafort revelations would become fodder for the U.S. elections in 2020”
🐣 RT @RWPUSA The United States will go down in human history as a country that impeached a president for lying about a fully consensual affair with an intern but would not impeach a president who, in two separate elections, colluded with a foreign power against a political opponent. ¤ Pathetic.
WaPo, Dan Balz: President Trump and the warping of democratic governance http://wapo.st/2munr9J “‘I have the right to do whatever I want as president,’ Trump once said, and that appears to be the basis upon which he is operating.”
The outlines are these: According to multiple reports, on July 25, the president spoke on the phone with newly elected Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. In that conversation, he pressed the Ukrainian leader to reopen an investigation into a company that at one time had Hunter Biden, the son of Democratic presidential candidate and former vice president Joe Biden, on its board.
Shortly after that phone call, Rudolph W. Giuliani, the former New York mayor and Trump’s personal lawyer, met in Spain with an adviser to Zelensky. Giuliani further pressed the Ukrainian government to pursue the investigation involving Biden’s son, as well as one about alleged Democratic involvement with Ukrainians affecting Paul Manafort, Trump’s former campaign chairman who is in prison.
Meanwhile, during this period, $250 million in military assistance for Ukraine, money appropriated by Congress, was, for a time, held up. Was that directly connected to Trump’s efforts to pressure the Ukrainians? That question also remains unanswered.
The contents of the Trump phone call prompted someone in the government to file a whistleblower complaint, an unprecedented grievance aimed at the president. The inspector general for the intelligence community found the whistleblower’s charge credible and urgent, in which case the information should have been relayed to Congress. That hasn’t happened because the White House and Justice Department are fighting it.
America’s democratic system, the world’s oldest, is said to be resilient, with institutions strong enough to defend against runaway actors and with checks and balances designed to prevent too much power from building up in any one place or with any one person. Earlier in Trump’s presidency, that appeared to be the case. Right now, however, that is in question.
🐣 I’ve about had it with the @nytimes; by @Jzikah ⇊
🚫 NYT: For Biden, Whistle-Blower Complaint Could Cut 2 Ways http://nyti.ms/2m6mzaU
// RTing this’s trayf helps Trump; Reports that President Trump sought help from the Ukranian government could offer former Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. both opportunities and risks.
CNN (6/4): Co-author of controversial New York Times Biden-Ukraine story is hired as Ukraine president’s spokesperson http://cnn.it/2m7oLPm freelancer Iuliia Mendel wrote the 5/1 article with Ken Vogel
⋙ NYT (May): Biden Faces Conflict of Interest Questions That Are Being Promoted by Trump and Allies
TheAtlantic, Tom Nichols: If This Isn’t Impeachable, Nothing Is http://bit.ly/2kXW7jx
// The president reportedly sought the help of a foreign government against Joe Biden.
Politico, Renato Mariotti: The Weak and Risky Case Against Andrew McCabe http://politi.co/2kXUWk7
// Is the president pushing prosecutors to file charges they can’t make stick?
🐣 RT @McFaul Ukrainians just voted into office a new president and parliament, creating the possibility of a genuine break with the past. At this most critical moment in Ukrainian history, Trump should be supporting this new president & parliament, not dragging them into OUR swamp.
🚫 NYT (May): Biden Faces Conflict of Interest Questions That Are Being Promoted by Trump and Allies http://nyti.ms/2kWmEOm
// 5/1/2019; Ken Vogel and Iuliia Mendel
🐣 RT @MuellerSheWrote Super space beans: Kushner’s Ukraine “peace plan” has always been about lifting Russian sanctions, maybe to guarantee the commission from the Rosneft sale to himself and his family. Where’d that $283M payable by Qatar go?
🐣 RT @JoshMarshall Correct. The jejune fatalism is bullshit. People should be ashamed of themselves. This is definitely big stuff.
⋙ 🐣 RT @brianschatz Everybody trying to be all savvy and knowing about this and say “nothing matters” or whatever needs to summon some righteous outrage on behalf of our republic. This is big stuff.
🐣 But not simple, intuitive or easy-to-explain. If I can’t explain it to my 24yo daughter in 5 minutes, her eyes glaze over.
🐣 RT @JoshMarshall To me, the way this crime endangers the American government is the big deal. But we shouldn’t lose sight of the repulsive treatment of Ukraine. This is a small (in geopolitical terms) country menaced by a larger neighbor. It’s desperate for military assistance and the signal …
⋙ 🐣 RT @JoshMarshall 2/ sent by the US giving military assistance. The key word is desperate. The President is withholding that aid, which the Congress has already appropriated, until the President orders prosecutors to manufacture a case against Biden. That violates the law in Ukraine …
⋙ 🐣 RT @JoshMarshall 3/ It also puts the country in an impossible situation vis a vis the US since they know there’s a good chance Trump will be gone in a year and they’ll be faced with the party Trump made them plot against. It’s pretty garden variety extortion.
🐣 RT @kurteichenwald 1. It is very rare that I criticize a reporter by name. However, the recklessness and poor reporting of @kenvogel – and his “we’re going to keep pulling back the Biden story” garbage requires pointing out the abject poverty of his “reporting” and his attempts to take a few…
📌 https://twitter.com/kurteichenwald/status/1175474606485975042?s=20
⭕ 20 Sep 2019
🚫 NYT, Ken Vogel: Behind the Whistle-Blower Case, a Long-Held Trump Grudge Toward Ukraine http://nyti.ms/2n4jUPM
// 9/20-23/2019; anti-KV animus
WaPo, Asha Rangappa: The U.S. has no rules for when the president is a national security threat http://wapo.st/2m3lvEP
// The whistleblower controversy reveals the limits of our system’s defenses.
NYMag, Jonathan Chait: Trump’s Ukraine Scandal Is Hiding in Plain Sight http://nym.ag/2lYxOSR
🐣 RT @MaxBoot “This is such an egregious example of the president misusing his office for personal gain.” My comments on @CNNTonight about why impeachment is necessary if Ukrainegate is as bad as it appears to be. See also my @PostOpinions column:
💽 https://twitter.com/MaxBoot/status/1175407179060273152?s=20/photo/1
⋙ WaPo, Max Boot: If Trump extorted a foreign leader for political gain, it’s impeachment time http://wapo.st/2AB9334
NYT, Stephen Vladeck: Why the Whistle-Blowing Process Is Breaking Down http://nyti.ms/2kVsv6o
// The separation of powers has become increasingly subservient to the separation of parties.
Politico: Biden calls for release of Trump’s phone call with Ukraine http://politi.co/2m5OYxM
DailyBeast, Sam Brodey and Sam Stein: Pelosi Not Budging on Impeachment and Her Colleagues Are Privately Screaming http://bit.ly/2kxQTeo
// “She’s still holding back,” one pro-impeachment lawmaker said of the Speaker. “If impeachment isn’t for this, why is impeachment in the constitution?”
🐣 RT @gtconway3d “The problem for Giuliani, the Republicans, and the president himself … is that Biden and his actions are now irrelevant to the offenses committed by Trump. The accusations against Biden are false, as we know from multiple fact checks ….”
⋙ WaPo, George Conway III and Neal Katyal: Trump has done plenty to warrant impeachment. But the Ukraine allegations are over the top. http://wapo.st/2kxR2ys
DailyBeast, Barbara McQuade: If Whistleblower Is Right, Trump May Have Committed Extortion and Bribery http://bit.ly/2m2B53x
// The president supposedly dangled millions of dollars in military aid to Ukraine in exchange for Kiev investigating Joe Biden. That looks a lot like old-fashioned corruption.
🐣 RT @maxbergmann What’s stunning is that Trump didn’t THREATEN to hold Ukraine security assistance hostage. He. Actually. DID. IT. He actually held hostage vital military aid to an ally AT war to pressure them to do a hit job on Dems. @ThePlumLineGS has a great overview
⋙ WaPo, Greg Sargent: As whistleblower scandal deepens, Trump bets on the coverup working http://wapo.st/2kxfBvo
🐣 RT @AshaRangappa_ So basically Vogel is saying that if Trump and Rudy would tone it down and not make it so obvious that they are illegally seeking foreign election assistance it would be much easier for the NYT to help them weaponize the disinformation they are trying to spread
⋙ 🐣 RT @atrupar Here’s @kenvogel of the New York Times saying on MSNBC that he views Joe Biden son’s work in Ukraine as “a significant liability for Joe Biden.” ¤ “There is a story here,” Vogel adds, saying “we’re going to continue to, sort of, pull that back.” (I’m sure Trump is very grateful!) 💽 https://twitter.com/atrupar/status/1175155103847845893?s=20/photo/1
WaPo: U.S. to send additional troops to Saudi Arabia after attacks on oil facilities http://wapo.st/2m6EIW0 “a ‘moderate deployment,’ numbering in the hundreds” //➔ aka “sitting ducks”
🐣 RT @adamschiff The Inspector General found the whistleblower complaint involves “one of the most significant and important of the DNI’s responsibilities to the American people.” ¤ He found it to be both credible and urgent. ¤ And it’s being withheld from Congress. ¤ It will be brought to light. https://twitter.com/AdamSchiff/status/1175081169659908096?s=20
🐣 RT @Mimirocah1 If US has legit need to investigate a US citizen with the help of a foreign government, there’s a formal process through a Mutual Legal Assistance Treaty filed by DOJ with aid of State Dept. That’s NOT what this was. This was a political hit job through bribery & extortion.
🐣 RT @davidcicillini This is deadly serious. If the President does not allow the whistleblower complaint against him to be turned over to Congress, we will add it to the Articles of Impeachment.
⋙ 🐣 The articles of impeachment that will be printed on candy hearts next Valentine’s Day?
🐣 RT @PhilipRucker “Ukraine, if you’re listening…” — @AshleyRParker on one of the enduring characteristics of the Trump presidency: Saying the quiet part out loud.
⋙ WaPo, Ashley Parker: Ukraine, if you’re listening … How Trump tries to quell controversies by saying the quiet part out loud http://wapo.st/2kLkzF2
// The Debrief: An occasional series offering a reporter’s insights
🐣 RT @BillKristol Congress shouldn’t be distracted by the unusual way Trump’s demand for help from a foreign government against a U.S. politician came to light—a whistleblower complaint to an IG. Watergate began with a policeman coming upon a burglary. The key now is discovering what Trump did.
🐣 RT @ericbradner New Joe Biden states on Trump/Ukraine: “If these reports are true, then there is truly no bottom to President Trump’s willingness to abuse his power and abase our country.” https://twitter.com/ericbradner/status/1175176406965391360?s=20/photo/1
🐣 I dip my toes into the right wing fever swamp enough to have seen this coming about Hunter Biden. Here’s the rub: There’s no there there. This is Trump/Rudy trying to kick dirt in Biden’s face. Time to squash it. Like a bug.
WaPo, Aaron Blake: 9 questions about the Trump whistleblower complaint, answered http://wapo.st/2m5qTHq
🐣 RT @McFaul Viktor Shokin had a reputation of NOT cracking down on corruption, not the opposite.
⋙ 🐣 RT @McFaul Yes, the IMF and other providers of economic assistance to Ukraine at the time were deeply disappointed in Prosecutor General Shokin’s weak efforts in fighting corruption. Biden was part of big & loud chorus, not acting on his own.
⋙⋙ 🐣 RT @McFaul YES !!! It was not just Obama administration policy (not just “Biden policy”) to push for this Ukrainian general prosecutor to go, but a shared view in many capitals, multilateral lending institutions, and pro-democratic Ukrainian civil society.
⋙⋙⋙ 🐣 RT @JoshMarshall Not enough news orgs are making the point that the person in question in 2015 was somehow us and eu believed was corrupt and had to go. Biden was US point man. Whole thing is preposterous. Everybody knows this. Some msm effort to muddy it.
⋙⋙⋙⋙ 🐣 RT @chrislhayes I am watching this somehow turn into a story about Biden and am going to pass out.
🐣 RT @DeadlineWH MUST WATCH: Jeremy Bash sees 3 possible underlying crimes here: Extortion, conspiracy to engage in extortion, and conspiracy to violate federal election law. See the full interview w/ @NicolleDWallace: 💽 https://twitter.com/DeadlineWH/status/1175170315854462979?s=20/photo/1 https://on.msnbc.com/2kvt8DJ
🐣 RT @SethAbramson 1/ This is impeachable. Every Democrat holding public office in the United States needs to immediately say that this is impeachable. There should be no dithering about whether this is impeachable. It’s impeachable. America still has rule of law. Everyone must be on the same page. 📌 https://twitter.com/SethAbramson/status/1175153177110417408?s=20
🐣 RT @kylegriffin1 Interesting wording: “Mr. Trump’s desire for a Ukrainian investigation of Mr. Biden … is part of the secret whistle-blower complaint that is said to be about Mr. Trump and at least in part about his dealings with Ukraine, according to two people familiar with the matter.”
⋙ 🐣 RT @kylegriffin1 NYT now confirms: Trump repeatedly pressed his Ukrainian counterpart to talk with Rudy Giuliani, who had been urging the government in Kiev for months to investigate Joe Biden and his family, according to people briefed on the leaders’ call.
⋙⋙ NYT: Trump Pressed Ukraine’s Leader as Giuliani Pushed for Biden Inquiry http://nyti.ms/2mrEPMf
WaPo, Anne Appleman: Welcome, Americans, to the Ukrainian swamp http://wapo.st/2lYNaqC
🐣 RT @davidgura Rudy Giuliani, to Chris Cuomo: “If @RepAdamSchiff sent me a letter, I’d rip it up and throw it in the garbage.”
⋙ 🐣 Giuliani is existentially incapable of not committing perjury.
WSJ: Trump Repeatedly Pressed Ukraine President to Investigate Biden’s Son http://on.wsj.com/2m0dKzw Interactions under focus amid whistleblower complaint on U.S. president’s dealings with a world leader
● https://twitter.com/Auriandra/status/1175157164291305472?s=20/photo/1
// Interactions under focus amid whistleblower complaint on U.S. president’s dealings with a world leader
President Trump in a July phone call repeatedly pressured the president of Ukraine to investigate Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden ’s son, urging Volodymyr Zelensky about eight times to work with Rudy Giuliani, his personal lawyer, on a probe, according to people familiar with the matter.
“He told him that he should work with [Mr. Giuliani] on Biden, and that people in Washington wanted to know” whether allegations were true or not, one of the people said. Mr. Trump didn’t mention a provision of foreign aid to Ukraine on the call, said this person, who didn’t believe Mr. Trump offered the Ukrainian president any quid-pro-quo for his cooperation on any investigation.
🐣 There’s really no equivalence between the Trump/Ukraine/whistleblower story and the Biden son/Ukraine story. ¤ But I’ve been researching this for several hours and it’s too complicated not to be spun by Trump into fake-Kompromat on Biden. ¤ The public may not see the difference.
WaPo: Trump pressed Ukrainian leader to investigate Biden’s son, according to people familiar with the matter http://wapo.st/2ko3wbE
🔆 This❗️⋙ WaPo, Philip Bump: Trump has been openly trying to leverage Ukraine to his political benefit for months http://wapo.st/2m6eRxr //➔ Is there an equivalence to a DNC contractor seeking information in Ukraine on Paul Manafort? How about Hunter Biden? #deepdive
[In a]n effort to wave away questions about Russia’s role in the 2016 election [Trump and his team] suggest[ed] that Ukraine was engaged in something equivalent. It was a line of argument that leveraged a January 2017 article from Politico, describing how a consultant working for the Democratic National Committee had sought information from Ukrainian officials largely centered on Paul Manafort, previously a political consultant in that country but at the time Trump’s campaign chairman.
When news broke about Donald Trump Jr.’s having embraced an offer of dirt on Hillary Clinton that he believed came from the Russian government, the incident with the DNC contractor was lifted up as a counterpoint. Trump Jr.’s only media interview in the immediate aftermath of the revelation of the Trump Tower meeting was with Fox News’ Sean Hannity — who opened his show by walking through the DNC-Ukraine story in his own loaded, spottily accurate way.
Where this particular look-at-Ukraine effort fails is largely in scale. What’s alleged is that one contractor — who stopped working with the DNC in July — worked with staff at the Ukrainian embassy to examine Manafort’s record. Such research wasn’t part of her role with the party, and there’s no evidence that the DNC was broadly aware of her efforts. There’s no evidence that the Ukrainian government was actively engaged in a large effort to aid the Democrats or Hillary Clinton’s campaign. By contrast, U.S. intelligence officials uncovered evidence that Russia was trying to aid Trump at the highest levels — and was actively doing so in various ways.
The allegation is that in March 2016, Biden, then vice president, threatened to withhold $1 billion in loan guarantees unless the country fired its prosecutor general, Viktor Shokin. Shokin had been accused of not cracking down on corruption, and the Ukrainian parliament voted him out of office soon after.
Giuliani’s allegation of bribery centers on Biden’s son Hunter, who at the time served on the board of an energy company owned by a Ukrainian oligarch. That oligarch and the company, Burisma, may have been under investigation by Shokin at the time of his firing. That’s the line Giuliani draws: investigation tangentially related to Hunter Biden, ergo Joe Biden wants investigator fired.
Except, as with so many of Giuliani’s claims, that’s not a fair presentation of what happened.
As our fact-checkers have explained, Shokin had been under scrutiny for a long time for his failures to crack down on corruption, and not just by Biden or the United States. There’s no indication that the push to dump Shokin originated from Biden; it instead apparently came from staffers at the U.S. Embassy in Kiev. An anti-corruption activist in Ukraine told the Intercept that Shokin “was fired because he attacked the reformers within the prosecutor general’s office, reformers who tried to investigate corrupt prosecutors.”
In short, then, there’s a dearth of evidence that Biden decided that Shokin had to go in order to protect his son, or that the company for which his son worked was under investigation or that his son was involved in aspects of the company that would have been investigated. In fact, Shokin’s ouster led to the appointment of a prosecutor who ended up opening an investigation into Burisma, anyway (though this, too, is complicated).
While the thrust of the whistleblower complaint remains unclear, Giuliani seemed to suggest to Cuomo that it might involve Trump’s demanding that Ukraine focus on “corruption,” which, in Giuliani’s explanation centered on this Biden interaction. There’s speculation that Trump might have withheld aid to Ukraine in part to compel the country to conduct this “corruption” investigation — speculation that comes from people including U.S. senators. …
Here is where the loudness of the allegations is useful to Trump. If the whistleblower complaint does allege that Trump demanded Ukraine in essence bolster his political efforts in exchange for aid, Giuliani’s very public and very energetic discussion of that push in the context of “fighting corruption” has preset a narrative among Trump’s supporters. It would then have been a dually useful effort on Giuliani: smearing Biden and inoculating Trump’s base.
“Asked whether he discussed Biden in this conversation, [Trump said,] ‘It doesn’t matter what I discussed,’ ” The Post’s Seung Min Kim reports, “and says ‘someone ought to look into Joe Biden.’”
WaPo, Aaron Blake: Why Ukraine being the focus of Trump’s whistleblower complaint is particularly ominous http://wapo.st/2m0cpIY
Trump lawyer Rudolph W. Giuliani has publicly urged the Ukrainians to pursue investigations that he has admitted would benefit Trump, and one in particular that could damage what appears to be Trump’s most threatening potential 2020 Democratic opponent, Joe Biden.
In May, Giuliani canceled a controversial planned trip to Ukraine that he had admitted was intended to apply pressure on its government to investigate Biden’s son Hunter Biden and his work for a Ukrainian gas company that had previously been of interest to investigators in the country.
Giuliani even acknowledged before the planned trip that it was intended to help Trump and that Giuliani was “meddling” in foreign affairs to that end.
“We’re not meddling in an election; we’re meddling in an investigation, which we have a right to do,” Giuliani told the New York Times’s Kenneth P. Vogel. Giuliani added: “There’s nothing illegal about it. Somebody could say it’s improper. . . . I’m asking them to do an investigation that they’re doing already and that other people are telling them to stop. And I’m going to give them reasons why they shouldn’t stop it because that information will be very, very helpful to my client, and may turn out to be helpful to my government.”
It was a remarkable admission at the time — particularly that it could be “very, very helpful to my client” and separating that from the idea that it might also happen to benefit the U.S. government. And it’s even more remarkable in this moment.
When Giuliani canceled the trip, he blamed the Ukrainian government and suggested Democrats had overblown the situation.
[T]he Ukrainian government’s readout of that call mentioned how Trump was “convinced the new Ukrainian government will be able to quickly improve [the] image of Ukraine, [and] complete [the] investigation of corruption cases, which inhibited the interaction between Ukraine and the USA.”
“The reality is the president of the United States has every right to say to another leader of a foreign country, ‘You got to straighten up before we give you a lot of money,’ ” Giuliani said. “It is perfectly appropriate for [Trump] to ask a foreign government to investigate this massive crime that was made by a former vice president.”
He tweeted the same sentiment shortly thereafter, despite the allegations involving the Bidens being highly speculative and far from proved.
🔆 This❗️⋙ DailyBeast, Anna Nemtsova: Ukrainian Official: Trump Wants Dirt ‘To Discredit Biden’ http://bit.ly/2mrtjR4 //➔ Head of Ukraine’s investigative agency: “There were no signs of illegality in [Hunter] Biden’s work in Ukraine.” He may be investigated anyway, to please Trump.
// Ukraine officials see no indication Biden or his son broke their laws. If Trump wants them investigated in Kyiv, his government will need to say why and what for.
Ukraine is ready to investigate the connections Joe Biden’s son Hunter had with the Ukrainian natural gas company Burisma Holdings, according to Anton Geraschenko, a senior adviser to the country’s interior minister who would oversee such an inquiry.
Geraschenko told The Daily Beast in an exclusive interview that “as soon as there is an official request” Ukraine will look into the case, but “currently there is no open investigation.”
“Clearly,” said Geraschenko, “Trump is now looking for kompromat to discredit his opponent Biden, to take revenge for his friend Paul Manafort, who is serving seven years in prison.”
His remarks last week came amid widespread speculation that U.S. President Donald Trump had made vital U.S. military aid for Ukraine contingent on such an inquiry, but had tried to do so informally through unofficial representatives, including his lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, and Giuliani’s adviser on Ukraine, Sam Kislin.
But Geraschenko spoke before the appearance of a Washington Post story on Thursday that implied that an intelligence community whistleblower may have reported that the untoward quid pro quo was put forth directly by Trump in a phone call with Ukraine’s newly elected president last July.
Geraschenko reconfirmed his statements in a phone call on Friday.
Trump spoke to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky on July 25 to congratulate him on his election. According to the official readout on Ukraine’s presidency website, “Donald Trump is convinced that the new Ukrainian government will be able to quickly improve image of Ukraine, complete investigation of corruption cases, which inhibited the interaction between Ukraine and the USA.”
Toward the end of August, the White House reportedly was considering whether to block $250 million of funds to support Ukraine’s military in its war against Russian-backed separatists. On Sept. 12, however, that funding was released, and even increased. Congressional pressure played a role, and it is unclear whether the whistleblower’s reported “promise” allegations, made soon after the Zelensky phone call, did as well. (On Friday, Zelensky’s office announced that he will meet with Trump next week.)
What’s certain is that American and Ukrainian politics are closely connected these days, and on Thursday evening Giuliani admitted he had asked officials in Ukraine to investigate Biden. Giuliani told CNN’s Chris Cuomo in a contentious interview that there is nothing wrong with pressing for an investigation into corruption.
Others might call this whole affair a matter of political—indeed, geopolitical—extortion.
At a minimum, Giuliani’s pressure has been interpreted here as weakening this country’s institutions by pressing them to dig for dirt on Trump’s most important Democratic challenger.
The Trump administration eventually released $390 million in military aid to Ukraine, $140 million more than the amount Kyiv had expected before the administration suspended the funds for “review” last month.
[Roman Truba’s agency, the State Bureau of Investigations] neither investigated Biden’s son nor Burisma Holding. There were no signs of illegality in Biden’s work in Ukraine, he said. “The State Bureau of Investigations should be an independent institution. I wish we would become as highly qualified, equipped with all modern technologies, and professional as the FBI.”
DailyBeast, Casey Michel: Rudy Giuliani Just Declared That It’s Open Season for Foreign Influence http://bit.ly/2m1NwNb
// Kyiv may have said “no,” but Trump’s personal lawyer has opened the floodgates for other governments to follow the president’s bidding and investigate and throw dirt on his rivals.
DailyBeast: Trump on Speaking to Ukraine Leaders About Biden: ‘It Doesn’t Matter What I Discussed’ http://bit.ly/2kKSIot
When asked whether he spoke to Ukrainian leaders about Joe Biden, President Donald Trump on Friday told reporters that “it doesn’t matter what I discussed.” “Someone ought to look into Joe Biden’s statement, because it was disgraceful,” Trump said in the Oval Office, adding that the “fake news doesn’t look into things like that” because the former vice president is a Democrat. “I don’t want to talk about any conversation other than to say, other than to say great conversation, totally appropriate conversation,” Trump said when reporters continued to press him. “It couldn’t have been better and keep asking questions and build it up as big as possible so you can have a bigger downfall,” he added, calling the conversation “beautiful.”
Trump then insisted that all of his conversations with foreign leaders are above board, and that he doesn’t know the identity of the “partisan whistleblower” who filed a complaint about a pledge the president allegedly made to a foreign leader. Trump’s remarks came shortly after The Daily Beast reported that a Ukrainian official said the country is ready to investigate connections Joe Biden’s son Hunter had with the Ukrainian natural-gas company Burisma Holdings.
DailyBeast, Kevin Rawnsley: There’s Never Been a Whistleblower Case Like This Before http://bit.ly/2m6lYWE “the administration’s refusal to allow [the] information to go to Congress is a blow to the IG’s independence”
// The whistleblowing process Congress set up for the intelligence community has been used up to 20 times a year, according to official reports. But never like the Trump complaint.
Background ⋙ BuzzFeedNews (7/22): Two Unofficial US Operatives Reporting To Trump’s Lawyer Privately Lobbied A Foreign Government In A Bid To Help The President Win In 2020 http://bit.ly/2mrkG95 //➔ It’s not just Rudy #longread
// 7/22/2019; By Michael Sallah, Tanya Kozyreva and Aubrey Belford; Reporting directly to Donald Trump’s personal lawyer, two operators waged a brazen back-channel campaign that could thrust another foreign country to the center of the next US election.
Background ⋙ Law&Crime, Matt Clibonoff (8/22): Rudy Giuliani Astonishes Legal Experts with Remarks on Ukraine-DNC Collusion Investigation http://bit.ly/2kIbOeR
// 8/22/2019
Background ⋙ JustSecurity, Viola Geinger (9/10): Trump and Giuliani’s Quest for Fake Ukraine “Dirt” on Biden: An Explainer http://bit.ly/2lPw3XT
Background ⋙ VanityFair, Alison Durkee (May): Ukraine Isn’t Having Rudy Giuliani’s Biden Conspiracies http://bit.ly/2krv8g3
// 5/16/2019; Even Giuliani’s top Ukrainian ally now says his claims about Hunter Biden have no basis in fact.
Background ⋙ NYMag, Adam Raymond (May): Everything We Know About the Joe Biden–Ukraine Controversy http://nym.ag/2mso8QR
// 5/7/2019
Vox, Aaron Rupar: Rudy Giuliani’s viral CNN meltdown over Trump and Ukraine, explained http://bit.ly/2kwDjb8
DailyBeast: Rudy Giuliani: Trump Just ‘Doing His Job’ on Joe Biden and Ukraine http://bit.ly/2kSW4FN
⭕ 19 Sep 2019
DailyBeast, Justin Baragona: Giuliani Admits He Asked Ukraine About Biden Seconds After Denying He Did in Insane CNN Interview http://bit.ly/2kKX92B 🤪🤐
// Giuliani CNN interview; “No, actually I didn’t,” Giuliani said when asked if he’d asked Ukraine to investigate Joe Biden and family. Thirty seconds later, he changed his tune: “Of course I did.”
🐣 RT @mayawiley I agree the facts, if the pan out, would be #bribery- meaning the facts show corrupt intent to bribe a foreign govt to interfere with a US election
⋙ 🐣 RT @Mimirokah1 This would clearly be federal criminal bribery & serious enough that an independent AG would at least consider suspending the policy against indicting a sitting President. (And, yes, I know that’s not the AG we have).
⋙⋙ 🐣 RT @GregMiller NEW: the Trump call at the center of the IC firestorm centers on Ukraine. Trump spoke with leader of Ukraine weeks before the complaint was filed. @shaneharris @nakashimae @CarolLeonnig
⋙⋙ 🐣 RT @GregMiller What did Trump “promise” the leader of Ukraine? TBD, but important context: US has been holding back millions in military/intel aid for Ukraine. At same time, Giuliani has made clear Trump team wants Ukraine to pursue probe that might implicate son of Joe Biden.
⋙⋙⋙ 🐣 Just as with the so-called “fake dossier,” they’re building a counter-narrative that Biden withheld $1B unless Poroshenko fired a prosecutor of company Hunter Biden was on the board of. I understand the timeline doesn’t support this, but that’s what they’ll do. Wash-Rinse-Repeat
NYT Editorial: ‘Urgent Concern’ About the President http://nyti.ms/2kVM1Qb
// A whistle-blower’s report has alarmed the intelligence agencies’ watchdog. Why won’t the administration share it with Congress?
🐣 RT @MSNBC Fmr. asst FBI Dir. @FrankFigliuzzi1 has advice for the whistleblower: If by next week his or her complaint hasn’t been “substantively conveyed to the house or senate intelligence committee, it’s time for you to come forward directly to those committees.”
⋙ 💽 MSNBC, DeadlineWH: ‘Our founding fathers didn’t envision this level of corruption and obstruction’: The president’s actions were behind the whistleblower’s complaint http://on.msnbc.com/2lXcayu
// Wash Post’s Ellen Nakashina, former assistant director at the FBI Frank Figliuzzi, former deputy assistant attorney general Harry Litman, The Daily Beast’s Sam Stein, and NYT’s Nick Confessore on the new reporting that reveals it was the president’s “promise” to a foreign leader that sparked the whistleblower’s complaint
🐣 RT @brhodes If Trump was trying to abuse his power of the presidency to solicit foreign help for his campaign, it’s hard to imagine a more impeachable offense.
🐣 RT @tribelaw Yes.
⋙ 🐣 RT @BillKristol If the whistleblower complaint is serious—as the IG seems to think—it won’t be Trump being careless or reckless on calls with foreign leaders. It would have to be an apparent quid pro quo—an offer of a U.S. policy in return for Trump’s personal benefit or electoral advantage.
🐣 RT @tribelaw Presidential obstruction of the legal process created specifically to hold the Executive Branch accountable to Congress’s Intelligence Committees is clearly an impeachable offense on top of whatever abuses of power the whistleblower reported to the DNI.
🐣 RT @JRubinBlogger IF Trump traded aid for investigating Biden what excuse will R’s come up with then? If this is nailed down impeachment is imperative. This would be bribery and a high crime and misdemeanor
🐣 RT @McFaul So the president’s personal lawyer is confirming what the rest of us have been hypothesizing– that Trump asked Zelensky for dirt on Biden’s son. But Giuliani didnt provide the quo to this quid. U.S. assistance to Ukraine? If that’s true, then we have a real scandal.
🐣 RT @brhodes Trump sees no difference between his campaign and the national security policies of the US government. This is an existential crisis for American democracy.
⋙ 🐣 RT @ChrisMurphyCT I don’t know what is in the whistleblower complaint, but it was clear to me that Ukraine officials were worried about the consequences of ignoring Giuliani’s demands. And of course they were. That’s why presidents shouldn’t have their campaigns talking to foreign leaders.
🐣 RT @nedprice An extraordinary letter from the Intelligence Community IG to Congress. The IG–a Trump appointee–doubles down on his determination that the matter DOES fall under the DNI’s jurisdiction and “relates to one of the most significant and important of the DNI’s responsibilities.”
⋙ 🐣 RT @nycsouthpaw A second letter from the IC IG to Schiff, dated September 17th. https://twitter.com/nycsouthpaw/status/1174745350780968961?s=20/photo/1-4
🐣 RT @DrDenaGrayson 🔥@ChrisCuomo: Did you ask #Ukraine to investigate @JoeBiden?#Giuliani: No, actually I didn’t.
Just 26 seconds later, Giuliani ADMITS to asking #Ukraine to probe Biden.
Cuomo: So you did ask #Ukraine to look into Joe Biden?
Giuliani: Of course I did!🤯 https://twitter.com/DrDenaGrayson/status/1174879855890092032?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @jonflan Rudy’s word salad, crazed shouting, and fake fact attacks on CNN earlier this evening suggest 2 things – 1. Biden is gathering electoral steam (thus the attack), and 2. the Judiciary Committee hearings earlier this week hurt Mr. T –
🐣 RT @rgoodlaw Pence’s reply was NOT a denial. If anything, he referred to Trump wanting the new government to move ahead with process against “corruption.” That’s the same word Giuliani uses in reference to his (false) Ukraine-Biden conspiracy. ¤ Read Pence’s non-response for yourself: https://twitter.com/rgoodlaw/status/1174844883330306048?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @JoyceWhiteVance If this turns out to be what the whistleblower complaint is about & it’s accurate, Trump must leave office immediately. A president can’t offer US aid to a foreign country in exchange for prosecution of a political opponent. Heaven help us if we can’t all agree on that.
≣ PBS: Read what the inspector general wrote about the ‘urgent’ whistleblower concern http://to.pbs.org/2mo89TL the two letters to House Intel Chair Rep Adam Schiff
🐣 RT @atrupar Rudy denying he asked Ukraine to investigate Biden followed by Rudy admitting he asked Ukraine to investigate Biden within 30 seconds of each other in this clip is just incredible to watch 💽 https://twitter.com/atrupar/status/1174874518080434176?s=20 /photo/1
NYT: Trump Lawyers Argue He Cannot Be Criminally Investigated http://nyti.ms/2mrPQ0d
// The president’s legal team is trying to block a subpoena seeking his tax returns, claiming that any criminal investigation of Mr. Trump is unconstitutional.
🐣 RT @NatashaBertrand New from me: What happens when an intelligence official blows the whistle on the president? The Whistleblower protection law never contemplated a scenario in which the DNI would completely withhold a complaint that the inspector general had deemed “urgent” 📌 https://twitter.com/NatashaBertrand/status/1174864521359503361?s=20
⋙ Politico, Natasha Bertrand: ‘A deficiency in the law’: How Trump accidentally exposed a whistleblower loophole http://politi.co/2mpXTKS
// What happens when the administration won’t tell Congress about a whistleblower complaint regarding the president? The answer to the once hard-to-fathom question is complicated.
DailyBeast: Trump Whistleblower Saga Threatens to Blow Up 2020 Campaign http://bit.ly/2mr5ZTv by Sam Brodey, Erin Banco, Asawin Suebsaeng and Sam Stein
// Two reports on Thursday night say the conversation in the complaint involved Ukraine, the country that the president’s close lawyer has turned to looking for dirt on Joe Biden.
DailyBeast, Scott Bixby: Whistleblower Complaint Being Suppressed by Trump or Someone ‘Close’ to Him, Schiff Says http://bit.ly/2mr5Sax
// Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA) says the inspector general’s complaint is being held from Congress under the direction of either President Trump or someone in his camp.
NYT: Whistle-Blower Complaint Sets Off a Battle Involving Trump http://nyti.ms/2kVJZQ5
// The complaint, from a member of the intelligence community, remained opaque but involved at least one of the president’s communications with a foreign leader.
WaPo: Trump’s purported ‘promise’ to a foreign leader came after the White House scaled back readouts http://bit.ly/2mmj54g
WaPo: Whistleblower complaint about President Trump involves Ukraine, according to two people familiar with the matter http://bit.ly/2m5s21F
🐣 RT @MiekeEoyang Another interesting wrinkle here. The President’s classification authority is *regulatory* where as the requirement to disclose to the committees is *statutory*. ¤ Further, executive privilege is also not rooted in statute, and the supreme court has said that it is not absolute.
NYT: Whistle-Blower’s Complaint Is Said to Involve Multiple Acts by Trump http://nyti.ms/2kTS7Rg
// The complaint goes beyond a commitment that President Trump was said to have made to a world leader.
🐣 RT @DanaBashCNN Scoop from @mkraju Multiple sources say the House Judiciary Committee is preparing to take initial steps to potentially hold Corey Lewandowski in contempt over his refusal to answer questions at this week’s hearing.
🐣 RT @BradMossEsq We are on the verge of a major constitutional crisis here, folks.
WaPo, Aaron Blake: What is the Trump whistleblower complaint about? Here’s a timeline of what we know. http://bit.ly/2kvlwkE
NYMag, Jonathan Chait: Trump Administration Covering Up His Disturbing Offer to Foreign Leader http://nym.ag/2lZ6X9c
🐣 RT @carriecordero So far based on reporting, it appears an IC whistleblower has followed the law & procedures to report, through appropriate channels, an issue the person believed urgently needed the attention of independent overseers…. 📌 https://twitter.com/carriecordero/status/1174677950656110599?s=20
Politico: Andrew McCabe cites Barr in bid to avoid charges http://politi.co/2mq7269
// Lawyers for the former FBI deputy director are asking whether the Justice Department is using a double standard to pursue him.
WaPo: Iran warns U.S. of ‘all out war’ if attacked http://bit.ly/2lVFTrB
⭕ 18 Sep 2019
WaPo, Greg Sargent (9/18): Are Democrats ready for the coming disinformation tsunami? http://wapo.st/2kw77oj
🐣 RT @mrbromwich Time to hold the lawyers accountable. The DC Rules of Professional Conduct define misconduct as “conduct that seriously interferes with the administration of justice.” Every WH lawyer who facilitates obstruction of Congress through bogus privilege claims violates this rule. https://twitter.com/mrbromwich/status/1174283126832545793?s=20
TheBulwark, Jonathan Last: 33 Questions About Lewandowski’s Lie http://bit.ly/2lXvUSs
// He says he’s not obligated to be honest with the media. This raises questions for everyone.
🐣 RT @alfonslopeztena The dictator is the one animal who needs to be caged. He betrays his profession and his constitution. He betrays the people and destroys human values. He destroys culture. He binds the youth. He makes the structure collapse. He rules by fluke and freak. – Zulfikar Ali Bhutto 💽 https://twitter.com/alfonslopeztena/status/1083465747270115329?s=20/photo/1
// 🌀 Trump glowing globe Saudis skeletal
NBCNews, Ken Dilanian: Trump communication reportedly at center of whistleblower complaint http://nbcnews.to/2koDJQD
// The complaint the administration is withholding from Congress was filed by an intelligence officer after a phone call the president had, according to a former official.
🐣 RT @NatashaBertrand JUST IN: The Acting Director of National Intelligence will testify publicly before the House Intel committee on Sept 26 in relation to the whistleblower complaint received by ODNI. The Intel community inspector general will testify in closed session tomorrow, per @RepAdamSchiff
🐣 RT @cryborg Iran calls it slander they’re being accused of attacking SA. SA says Iran is the culprit and offers ‘proof’. Yemen: Houthis claim responsibility
Trump wants to creditline Iran 15 billion
Putin is an Iranian ally and business partner.
Putin controls Trump
Quite the 🧩
🐣 RT @tburages I suddenly remembered what Putin asked of Trump a year ago: McFaul and Browder. Back then Trump didn’t refuse. ¤ And Putin wants Smolenkov added to that list
⋙ 🐣 RT @McFaul [2018] I am an American. Call me crazy, naive, or idealistic, but I expect my government to defend me when attacked by a hostile government. I cannot defend myself from Putin alone.
⋙⋙ 🐣 RT @DaniScotchIrish [2018] Michael @McFaul went to the White House today after Trump said he would hand him over to Putin to meet with Trumplicans about the possibility that Russia could charge him & other Americans Putin has it in for like @Billbrowder #Maddow
🐣 RT @brhodes The saddest thing is that Trump can find lackeys at the top of DoJ and count on Republicans in Congress to support his efforts to actively undermine the United States of America.
🐣 RT @AshaRangappa_ THREAD: Why should we be concerned that there may have been a communication between Trump and a foreign leader that involved a “promise” that was thought to be so alarming that it warranted a whistleblower complaint? There are tricky legal issues here I’ll try to spell out: 📌 https://twitter.com/AshaRangappa_/status/1174515385204445184?s=20
WaPo: Pelosi says she would have held Lewandowski in contempt ‘right then and there’ http://bit.ly/ 2kHu6gk
🐣 RT @kelly2277 ‼️BREAKING NEWS‼️whistleblower report involves President Trump’s communications via a phone call with a foreign leader and a ‘promise’ that was made 🔥🔥🔥
⋙ [WaPo http://bit.ly/2kEHRMJ%5D
🐣 RT @kelly2277 [VentureCapital] […] 🔥🔥Well… look at the Kremlin’s readouts on calls between Trump and Putin vs the absence of any on our end 🤔 🎩 tip to @Feenielives4him for this interesting thread by @File511 https://twitter.com/kelly2277/status/1174498172401541120?s=20
⋙ 🐣 RT @File511 Now ¤ Now ¤ Don’t be mean and think I’m making something out of nothing because ¤ DID ¤ YOU ¤ MISS ¤ THE ¤ AUGUST 1, 2019 US TREASURY SANCTIONS DIRECTIVE? ¤ Always read the whole thread… https://twitter.com/File511/status/1174506186370166784?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @cbn2 Did you see WaPo’s breaking news on the whistleblower? ¤ Reports the person is [WAS] involved with the National Security Council, and is concerned by a promise Donald Trump made to a foreign leader in a phone call.
// To @TheRickWilson
🐣 RT @dcpoll July 31: “The Russian president viewed Trump’s offer as a sign that fully-fledged bilateral relations could be restored in the future.”
⋙ 🐣 RT @NedPrice Apropos of nothing, this July 31 Trump-Putin phone call, which Trump initiated ostensibly to offer assistance for wildfires in Siberia, has never made sense to me. Also, California was burning at the time, and Trump barely lifted a finger.
⋙⋙ 🐣 RT @RusEmbUSA US President Donald Trump, in phone talks with Vladimir Putin, offered assistance to Moscow in fighting wildfires in Siberia. The Russian president viewed Trump’s offer as a sign that fully-fledged bilateral relations could be restored in the future https://twitter.com/RusEmbUSA/status/1156692980180410368?s=20
🐣 RT @PaulaChertok Let me reiterate, I’m speculating about what promise Trump could have made to Putin that might compel a whistleblower to file a complaint. My theories are all very plausible & very disturbing. Lives are at risk. And Putin’s done NOTHING to deserve accommodating promises. #Maddow
⋙ 🐣 RT @PaulaChertok One explosive theory: Maybe Trump made a promise to Putin involving the exfiltrated Russian spy outed in Virginia—the CIA asset w/ direct knowledge that Putin directed Russia’s attack to help Trump win the 2016 election. That would light a whistleblower’s hair on fire. #Maddow
⋙⋙ [More Theories] 🐣 RT @PaulaChertok Pentagon defunds European projects that deter #Russia to fund Trump’s wall, authority DoD gained when Trump declared the border a national emergency – The Washington Post 📌 [Thread] https://twitter.com/PaulaChertok/status/1169379170259877888?s=20
🐣 RT @Lawrence Here’s the law on whistleblower info to Congress. https://twitter.com/Lawrence/status/1174502169061539840?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @SethAbramson 1/ Presidents are allowed to make promises; they do it all the time, for instance by promising to stand by our allies in this or that way. That a secret Trump promise to a foreign national led to an intelligence community whistleblower complaint means it was an IMPROPER PROMISE. 📌 [Thread] https://twitter.com/SethAbramson/status/1174496418335252480?s=20
🐣 RT @tribelaw Even if POTUS made some other promise to Putin — or to some other dictator — one wonders how close to treason it’d have to come for @SpeakerPelosi to be moved to consider . . . oh, say, impeachment?
⋙ 🐣 RT @tribelaw Might POTUS have promised Putin in a call in August 12 that he’d unmask the Kremlin spy who then had to be exfiltrated to save his life? Just wondering . . . @RepAdamSchiff
↥ ↧
🐣 Partial thread from 9/14/2019 https://twitter.com/Auriandra/status/1174499048331649024?s=20/photo/1
NYT: This Picture Tells You Everything You Need to Know About Impeachment http://nyti.ms/2m1BDGK
// A Renaissance-style tableau for a divided Washington.
🐣 RT @neal_katyal This is going to be huge. DOJ& Admin are contorting themselves backwards to try to hide this. Truth will come out. There are probably tapes and transcripts documenting a gross abuse of power by Trump. Gonna be ugly.And enablers should all face consequences
🐣 RT @JohnJHarwood “Trump’s interaction w/foreign leader included a ‘promise’ so troubling that it prompted a whistleblower complaint. ¤ “complaint was filed 8/12. WH records indicate Trump had interactions with 5 foreign leaders in preceding weeks, including a call w/Putin”
⋙ 🔆 This❗️⋙ WaPo: Trump’s communications with foreign leader are part of whistleblower complaint that spurred standoff between spy chief and Congress, former officials say http://bit.ly/2kEHRMJ
// By Greg Miller, Ellen Nakashima and Shane Harris; Carol D. Leonnig and Julie Tate contributed to this report.
🐣 RT @qjurecic Yes. Part of the job of representing the public is to guide them toward what is important and what they should care about. Pretending this isn’t so is absurd and insulting.
⋙ 🐣 RT @chrislhayes The reason that the House Democrats’ efforts have failed to galvanize the public is because the Speaker of the House very clearly does not WANT the public galvanized on impeachment. End of story.
WaPo, Max Boot: In his showdown with Iran, Trump blinks http://bit.ly/2kQA8er “The hardliners are right: Trump is weakening America with his incoherent foreign policy. Our enemies don’t fear us and our allies don’t trust us.”
WaPo, Greg Sargent: Mystery of Adam Schiff and whistleblower takes dangerous new turn http://bit.ly/2lXC8Si
🐣 RT @mayawiley I watched with great relief as @BarryBerke drew blood, drawing out #Lewandowski lies in the press, and drawing out by inference that Lewandowski did fear committing a crime. #MasterClass
⋙ 🐣 RT @thepopcornwheel Barry Berke. This is how you question a fool like Corey Lewandowski. Don’t be nice. Don’t say “I agree with you”, like some of the Democrats did today in their exchanges. Just keep throwing out the questions. 💽 https://twitter.com/mayawiley/status/1174317924527554561?s=20/photo/1
⭕ 17 Sep 2019
🐣 RT @lawfareblog The executive branch holds many cards in the dispute over an intelligence whistleblower. ¤ The administration forcing litigation on this could push resolution past the 2020 election—which, @MargLTaylor writes, could be a dereliction of constitutional duty.
⋙ Lawfare: The Mysterious Whistleblower Complaint: What Is Adam Schiff Talking About? http://bit.ly/2kUgPRx xx
💽 MSNBC, TheLastWord: Fmr. federal prosecutor: Lewandowski “may have perjured himself” in hearing http://on.msnbc.com/2kP5a6k Mimi Rocah tells Lawrence that Corey Lewandowski was likely caught in a series of lies
// Mimi Rocah tells Lawrence that Corey Lewandowski was likely caught in a series of lies under the questioning of the Democratic counsel on the Judiciary Committee. Lawrence is also joined by Judiciary member Rep. Eric Swalwell.
Politico: Schiff: Top intel official has refused to turn over ‘urgent’ whistleblower complaint http://politi.co/2lWLtd5 “”We also believe at this juncture that it would be premature for the DNI to appear on Thursday at a congressional hearing,” the DNI General Counsel wrote to Schiff
Vox, Andrew Prokop: Corey Lewandowski’s chaotic congressional testimony, explained http://bit.ly/2kCSuzD
// It was House Judiciary Democrats’ first big hearing of the fall. Here’s how it went.
NYT Editorial: When Is Impeachment Not Impeachment? http://nyti.ms/2kiiH6a
// When the speaker of the House thinks it is politically foolhardy.
🐣 RT @RepCohen Lewandowski was fired from Americans for Prosperity following voter fraud allegations & his former boss was convicted of corruption & lying to authorities. He has been around corruption for years. That’s why Trump asked him to help obstruct the #MuellerInvestigation. #CoverUp
NYT: Key Moments from Corey Lewandowski’s Testimony Before Congress http://nyti.ms/2kF6RU9
// Mr. Lewandowski, President Trump’s former campaign manager, testified before lawmakers conducting an impeachment inquiry.
TheHill: Nadler considering holding Lewandowski in contempt http://bit.ly/2mnAVnF
🐣 RT @TheRickWilson Jesus, they should have LED with Berke and they would have an ENTIRE DAY OF NEWS
🐣 RT @ Ok, so Barry Berke is revealing @CLewandowski_ as lying, corrupt criminal he is. He’s showing what a well-prepared, experienced, strategic defense attorney can do. This is getting real facts & real truth out. Kudos to the @HouseJudiciary for making this happen.
🐣 RT @JoyceWhiteVance It’s now clear why the GOP didn’t want Berke to question Lewandowski, who unraveled into acknowledging lies and half truths. Lewandowski was the smarmy witness in a trial who the jury sees straight through.
⋙ 🐣 RT @JoyceWhiteVance As @RepJerryNadler announces experienced criminal lawyer & House Judic comm staffer for the Dems Barry Berke will begin 30 minutes of questioning of Lewandowski, GOP Reps break out in a flurry of parliamentary motions & a request to adjourn.
⋙ 🐣 RT @JoyceWhiteVance The Lewandowski hearing is still going-the hour of questioning by each party’s committee staff will happen, presumably, at the end. And it will be make or break.
⋙ 🐣 RT @ “Optimistic might be too strong of a word given how many times we’ve thought the rule of law would finally have a resurgence and it’s flopped… If the Democrats play their 30 minutes right… We’ll have this series of admissions…” – @JoyceWhiteVance w/ @NicolleDWallace 💽 https://twitter.com/JoyceWhiteVance/status/1174077301199441920?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @atrupar .@RepJayapal backs Lewandowski into corner about disconnect between what he’s saying (he was truthful w/Mueller) & what Trump has said (that whole Mueller report is fabricated). ¤ She ends by pressing him about if he “lied about POTUS telling you to write down a note” for Sessions
WaPo, Greg Sargent: Get ready for a spectacular display of Trump’s corruption http://bit.ly/2kGg26L
🐣 RT @JRubinBlogger lewandowski just told us Trump tried to obstruct the impeachment process
⋙ WaPo, Jennifer Rubin: The best evidence of obstruction of justice http://bit.ly/2kRhWkL
🐣 RT @moscow_project Lewandowski admits that he didn’t want to meet with Sessions at the DOJ because he didn’t want there to be an official record. ¤ That’s not what you do if you think what you’re doing is innocent.
🐣 RT @BarbMcQuade 1h Narrative that House hearings are a “redo“ of Mueller investigation is misleading nonsense. Mueller was unable to decide whether a crime was committed because he believed it was not his province to do so. It is the province of Congress. That’s why we’re here. #CoreyLewandowski
🐣 RT @jonflan The error here is that Lewandowski committed several overt acts in furtherance of the obstruction conspiracy and never w/drew from the conspiracy – a conspiracy takes 2 to tango, and you don’t have to succeed. L is exposed to prosecution w/o any immunity. So is Mr. T., Pile on.
🐣 RT @TheRickWilson 1/ This is outrageous contempt. It isn’t just that this scumbag Lewandowski is slapping the committee with it. ¤ This is a test, and the Democrats are going to fail it. They’re so bad at this it makes me cringe. 📌 https://twitter.com/TheRickWilson/status/1174025822719631361?s=20
🐣 RT @joycewhitevance If Lewandowski continues to refuse to answer questions, saying “WH has directed me not to disclose” @HouseJudiciary needs to get a judge to compel him to testify.
🐣 RT @vickerysec What Lewandowski is doing, at this very moment, is obstruction of justice in the sense that whatever he testifies to right now is sworn testimony considerable within any criminal investigation. ¤ He is committing a crime right now.
🐣 RT @mayawiley What I hope Americans ask is why #GOP and White House are desperate to prevent #Lewandowski from simply sayin what he said to #Mueller. It’s because it was so clearly an active attempt to #obstruction the #MuellerInvestigation
🐣 RT @RepValDemings It’s clear that Mr. Lewandowski is going to treat this hearing as a charade. ¤ From the first minute, he is refusing to answer questions as simple as “did you meet with the President?” ¤ This is a coverup, orchestrated by the White House to protect the president.
🐣 RT @tribelaw .@RepAdamSchiff rightly said on @Morning_Joe that the president’s ongoing obstruction of all Congress’s efforts to investigate his misconduct is itself an impeachable offense. Exactly.
💙 🐣 RT @JenniferTaub 📌 Here we go! Tweeting the @HouseJudiciary impeachment inquiry hearing. Witness will be Corey Lewandowski, former Trump Campaign manager. Chairman Nadler gaveled in at 1:16 p.m.
// livetweet thread
🐣 RT @tedlieu Trump told Lewandowski to direct Sessions to limit the Mueller investigation to future elections & prohibit any look at Russian interference in the 2016 election. An attempt to obstruct an investigation is a federal crime.
⋙ 🐣 RT @tedlieu Robert Mueller identified 10 instances of Obstruction of Justice. In 5 of those instances, he found “substantial evidence” the crimes were committed. Corey Lewandowski was intimately involved in one of those crimes. He is the witness today at @HouseJudiciary. 🔲 https://twitter.com/tedlieu/status/1174008953820319744?s=20
🐣 RT @kasparov63 Germany went through the painful process of admission & reconciliation with its dark past. The USSR never did. There was no Nuremberg for Communism, even when the USSR fell in 1991. Just 9 years later, Putin took over.
🐣 RT @RepAdamSmith Under the White House legal theory, witnesses are immune from subpoena if they have:
– Worked for the President (or not)
– When he was President (or not)
– About conversations the President was in (or not)
Wrong. Corruption isn’t a privilege. And compliance isn’t voluntary.
⋙ 🐣 RT @mkraju WH says Corey Lewandowski can’t talk about conversations with the president not contained in Mueller report. Lewandowski was never a WH employee.
WH says Corey Lewandowski can’t talk about conversations with the president not contained in Mueller report. Lewandowski was never a WH employee. pic.twitter.com/mBC4xEc5th
— Manu Raju (@mkraju) September 17, 2019
⭕ 16 Sep 2019
🐣 RT @JavierBlas The level of trolling of Putin reaches a new high, joking that #SaudiArabia should buy the same S-300 anti-missile defence system that Moscow already sold to Tehran (amid the laughter of Iranian officials, including President Rouhani) | #OOTT #oil #Iran #Russia 💽 https://twitter.com/JavierBlas/status/1173696058704191495?s=20/photo/1
USAToday, Barbara McQuade: Democrats should think like criminal prosecutors as they investigate Trump impeachment http://bit.ly/2knFWfl
🐣 RT @kylegriffin1 Nadler responds: “This is a shocking and dangerous assertion of executive privilege and absolute immunity. The President would have us believe that he can willfully engage in criminal activity and prevent witnesses from testifying before Congress.”
⋙ 🐣 RT @kylegriffin1 The White House has blocked former Trump aides Rob Porter and Rick Dearborn from testifying in House Democrats’ impeachment inquiry. Corey Lewandowski has been cleared to provide only limited testimony about potential obstruction by Trump, NYT reports.
⋙⋙ NYT: Lewandowski Cleared to Testify in House Inquiry, as White House Blocks Others http://nyti.ms/2lSoX58
WaPo, Harry Litman: A whistleblower filed a complaint to the intelligence IG. Why is it being withheld from Congress? http://bit.ly/2lQJNlx
Politico, Natasha Bertrand and Josh Gerstein: Obama’s team lines up to defend Andrew McCabe in court http://politi.co/2lQvxJx
// Obama-era national security leaders would testify on behalf of McCabe should he face trial over allegations that he misled officials about leaks to the media.
NYT: 8 Years of Trump Tax Returns Are Subpoenaed by Manhattan D.A. http://nyti.ms/2kP2ANE
// Investigators demanded the president’s personal and corporate tax returns as they examine hush money paid to Stormy Daniels.
Salon, Sophia Tesfaye: Is the Trump administration squelching a whistleblower — and a major scandal? http://bit.ly/2kkclmZ
// Intel Committee chair Adam Schiff thinks there’s a major scandal brewing — and it may touch Trump personally
YahooNews: Exclusive: Russia carried out a ‘stunning’ breach of FBI communications system, escalating the spy game on U.S. soil http://yahoo.it/2lSRgQS
⭕ 15 Sep 2019
🐣 RT @justinamash Under our Constitution, the power to commence war lies with Congress, not the president and certainly not Saudi Arabia. We don’t take orders from foreign powers.
⋙ 🐣 RT @real Saudi Arabia oil supply was attacked. There is reason to believe that we know the culprit, are locked and loaded depending on verification, but are waiting to hear from the Kingdom as to who they believe was the cause of this attack, and under what terms we would proceed!
💙💙 Salon, Paul Rosenberg: The Trump depression (and we don’t mean the economy): Key symptom of autocratic regimes http://bit.ly/2md6tfH
// Experts see a “population-based depression” taking hold in America. But it might force us toward positive change
America is nowhere near as bad as Brazil or China, much less North Korea. But our democracy is eroding significantly. Varieties of Democracy (V-Dem) tracks hundreds of attributes of democracy for 202 countries, spanning more than two centuries. Its 2019 report found that “24 countries are now severely affected by what is established as a ‘third wave of autocratization,'” an erosion of democratic rights “that has slowly gained momentum since the mid 1990s. … Among them are populous countries such as Brazil, India and the United States.”
If Trump has his way — demolishing all restraints on his power — things will only get much worse, with the journey Glasser took as a tour book guide of what’s to come. And people are feeling it in their bones.
“In America under Trump there is a population-based depression taking hold. It is a very subtle, smoldering, pervasive and serious condition that people in autocratic countries chronically live with,” physician and scholar Frederick “Skip” Burkle told me in a recent interview. Burkle has any number of academic credentials: He was founding director of the Center for Excellence in Disaster Management and Humanitarian Assistance at the University of Hawaii, and currently serves in advisory or research capacities at the Harvard School of Public Health, Johns Hopkins University Medical Institutes, the Woodrow Wilson Center in Washington and elsewhere. …
The rise of these sycophants to positions of power in Trump’s administration is one key developments that has accelerated the craziness of late. William Barr’s appointment as attorney general was a watershed moment in this regard. His outright lying about the contents of the Mueller report profoundly misled the public about its basic findings, a state of affairs that persists to this day. That is arguably the driving reason Trump has not already been impeached.
That was echoed as farce when NOAA disavowed a National Weather Service tweet correcting Trump’s false claim that Hurricane Dorian was threatening Alabama. The insistence that Trump had no hand in that — his sycophants were only too eager to take action unbidden — is actually worse, in terms of how the pathocracy is advancing. The rot is spreading, and growing more virulent.
[Elizabeth] Mika went even further in her description. “Once a conscienceless individual assumes position of ultimate power, he gathers around him others who are psychologically similar to him, and builds a government almost exclusively comprised of characterologically defective people to better implement his egocentric, often anti-human agenda.”
“The lessons from the collapse of communism are the same lessons that any peoples fighting against oppression have always had to learn,” she said. “The resistance always starts with like-minded people — in this case, people with a functioning conscience opposing the grip of pathocracy — finding each other, coming together, and turning their first internal, then external protest into a more or less organized social movement.” Ultimately, she assured me, “The resistance wins; all inhumane regimes eventually fall.”
Disruption for its own sake is what we got under Trump, but it was emphatically not the ideal form of disruption. “When disruption is called for, as happens during times of peoples’ increasing pain and suffering,” Mika said, “it would take on a transformative character, leading toward, and not away from, higher values. It is the positive aspect of positive disintegration.”
That’s what we should be striving for now. It’s what we should be looking for in our leaders, and in ourselves. “It is up to us to keep this transformative momentum growing,” Mika said, stressing that in her view positive change is inevitable. “Our developmental trajectory leads always toward our highest values, despite — and because of — periods of trials and tribulations.”
‼️ Let’s not forget Congress tried to stop arms sales to Saudis for Yemen war ⋙ TheTelegraph (7/25/2019): Trump vetoes measures blocking arms sales to Saudi Arabia for war in Yemen http://bit.ly/2mg26AB
WaPo: Legal showdown looms over House subpoena to intel director http://bit.ly/2lSAukT
🐣 RT @SethAbramson **TIMELINE*
1. Trump orders Deputy DNI fired (8/9).
2. Whistleblower complaint filed (8/12).
3. DNI leaves job (8/15).
4. ICIG rules whistleblower report properly filed, “urgent,” and for Congress’s eyes.
5. Acting DNI refuses to give Congress report, citing a “higher authority.”
💙 ◕ Medium, @Rigel2020 (2017): They are Rigging Elections Around the World — Staging Coups & Ruining Democracies Everywhere http://bit.ly/2me7ows
// 11/12/2017; awesome charts
🐣 RT @repadamschiff No Director of National Intelligence has ever refused to turn over a whistleblower complaint the IG determined to be urgent and credible. ¤ There is no privilege to engage in misconduct; not under this president, or any other. ¤ That’s why I issued a subpoena and will enforce it. 💽 https://twitter.com/RepAdamSchiff/status/1173299911158374410?s=20/photo/1
⭕ 14 Sep 2019
🐣 RT @PaulaChertok #Russia Has Compromising Information on Trump, former KGB chief Oleg Kalugin says 📌 https://twitter.com/PaulaChertok/status/1171474113249992705?s=20
🐣 RT @PaulaChertok Ex KGB Chief Kalugin says he saw documents about the kompromat collected from Trump’s USSR visits. He says the compromising material is w/ girls/prostitutes. He states Russia’s KGB has a very long memory & can wait decades before using its kompromat. Trump knows this, he says.
Ex KGB Chief Kalugin says he saw documents about the kompromat collected from Trump's USSR visits. He says the compromising material is w/ girls/prostitutes. He states Russia's KGB has a very long memory & can wait decades before using its kompromat. Trump knows this, he says. pic.twitter.com/NgAK3Wttx4
— 🇺🇦Paula Chertok🗽 (@PaulaChertok) September 14, 2019
// 9/10-14/2019
💙💙 TheGuardian, Peter Pomerantsev: I left Russia to escape Putin’s assault on reason. Now I fear the UK is on the same path http://bit.ly/2knB7CM
// We need to develop a more collaborative political discourse, built on facts, not spin
Nothing is true and everything is possible. That was my one-line attempt to sum up the politics and propaganda that enveloped Russia at the start of the 21st century. It was a world where politicians no longer cared whether they were caught lying; where old ideologies were dead and conspiracy thinking had become the new way to explain the world; where all the old political categories (socialist and liberal, conservative and communist) seemed utterly meaningless and it was unclear what political parties stood for; where warped nostalgia and vague emotive calls to “Raise Russia From Its Knees” had taken over from any rational idea of the future.
🐣 RT @AshaRangappa_ I’m sure it’s just a coincidence that the Russian organized crime and money laundering experts in DOJ who continued their investigations unabated happen to be the very people targeted by the Trump admin, as explained here:
⋙ TheAtlantic, Natasha Bertrand (2018): Trump’s Top Targets in the Russia Probe Are Experts in Organized Crime http://bit.ly/2LGGSTm
// 8/30/2018; Some of President Trump’s favorite targets in the Russia probe have spent their careers in the Justice Department and the FBI investigating organized crime and money laundering, particularly as they pertain to Russia.
⋙⋙ 🐣 RT @BillBrowder Unbelievable! Cameron Ortis, the Canadian law enforcement official heading up the money laundering investigation connected to the Magnitsky murder was arrested last night in Ottawa for alleged espionage and working with a foreign power. Same thing happened in Switzerland
⋙⋙⋙ 🐣 RT @MichelleZillio BREAKING: RCMP official charged with breaching official secrets law oversaw Russian money-laundering probe http://bit.ly/tgam.ca/2kBGPkD (via @globeandmail) #cdnpoli #RCMP #CameronOrtis
⋙⋙⋙ 🐣 RT @MichelleZillio #CameronOrtis oversaw a money-laundering probe into allegations that millions in defrauded Russian tax dollars, exposed by Russian tax lawyer Sergei Magnitsky, were funneled through Canada, a source with knowledge of the matter told The Globe and Mail. #cdnpoli #RCMP
SFChronicle: Editorial: Democrats are and should be conducting an impeachment inquiry http://bit.ly/2lQSKLD
🐣 RT @NaveedJamali The unredacted #MuellerReport contains mention of an investigation into foreign influence via money flowing to a PAC. I have long suspected this was Qatar, Saudi Arabia and/or UAE. All of which are engaged in a proxy war with Iran. This is how Trump has sold our foreign policy.
🐣 RT @tribelaw This would’ve been conspiracy by POTUS to commit criminal espionage. @RepAdamSchiff’s Committee needs to get to the bottom of it.
⋙ 🐣 RT @TomJChicago Connect the dots:
1 Spy extracted from Russia is outed w/ MSM coverage
2 Schiff says DNI is withholding urgent whistleblower info
3 IG agrees- urgent
4 Barr helps cover
Guess only- Trump’s ppl planned to expose spy to Putin. Going public stopped the plan.
⋙⋙ 🐣 RT @Atlas2112 As a former field agent, if the implications of this are fact[,] then the President of the United States and this administration are handing over government agents to Russia… while they are active… to be killed… @maddow @RepAdamSchiff @RepJerryNadler
⋙⋙⋙ 🐣 RT @MissFuhrerious And this whistleblower knew Trump fed Dilanian the assets name & home address at the direction of Putin to put a target on his back? Cuz this is something HUGE going on here.
⋙⋙⋙⋙ 🐣 Why wouldn’t Trump tell Putin directly? The whistleblower could have told Dilanian to make public to compel WITSEC to act; though Dilanian said they figured out who it was from publicly available sources. (Actually, for all we know, the guy is dead.)
🐣 RT @kelly2277 [VentureCapital] 🚨Emergency🚨 @AdamSchiff subpoenaed DNI Maguire for not providing him w a whistleblowers complaint regarding the intel community. The DOJ- Barr won’t release it because of ‘privileged comms’ which must mean @realDonaldTrump is involved 😳 http://bit.ly/2kLdSme 📌 https://twitter.com/kelly2277/status/1172860031697653760?s=20
⋙⋙ 🐣 The whistleblower is going to have to come forward to Schiff. They will never release the report to HouseIntel. (This may be why Schiff released to letter to the public)
⋙ 🐣 RT @kelly2277 […] Timing: Smolenkov, the RU spy that said Putin gave a direct order to help Trump win the election was “relocated” the other day. Trump asked Barr to find out sources & methods that precipitated the investigation😳 http://cnn.com/ [link error]
#ImpeachTrumpNow
⋙ 🐣 RT @kelly2277 Everyone is curious why all of a sudden Smolenkov’s identity and address were ‘discovered.’ Did Trump and Barr find out about Smolenkov and share his location w Putin ¤ Did Trump want revenge on this dbl agent that had exposed his treason ¤ @RepAdamSchiff
⋙⋙ Newsweek: Russian Officials ‘Punished’ for Allowing Top CIA Spy in Kremlin to Escape Moscow, Actions Blasted As ‘Irresponsible’ http://bit.ly/2kcWTc6
⋙ 🐣 RT @kelly2277 Why does @realDonaldTrump hate Montenegro ”US contacts told the Montenegrins there were some people who had to board a vessel “without any pomp”, but gave no further details. Montenegro officials agreed without asking any questions” [⇊]
⋙⋙ TheGuardian: Oleg Smolenkov: alleged US spy who gave Russia the slip http://bit.ly/2kMov8d
// A Montenegro holiday reportedly provided cover for a defection that until this week had left little trace
NatRev, Andrew McCarthy: Why It’s Unlikely the McCabe Grand Jury Voted against Indictment http://bit.ly/2kmxGfC
⭕ 13 Sep 2019
WaPo, Anne Applebaum: How tragic that a Republican president is undermining economic and political freedom http://bit.ly/2kAqdK4 “I doubt Trump has heard of ‘autocratic capture.’ But it’s the policy he pursues.”
“State capture” is a form of systemic corruption in which private companies have improper influence on the state: They use their money to “buy” whole parts of the bureaucracy to ensure that laws and regulations fit their needs. It’s an expression the World Bank invented to describe some of the economies in the post-Soviet world.
“Autocratic capture” — a newer phrase invented by Ian Bassin, a lawyer and the director of the activist group Protect Democracy — is something like the opposite. It’s a form of systemic corruption in which politicians have improper influence on private companies. They use government power to put pressure on businessmen and to force them, or their employees, to toe a political line. …
Many Americans, but Republicans in particular, long opposed the nationalization of industry and state-controlled companies that are more common in Europe. Instead, they were proud of the American commitment to both economic and political freedom. How ironic, how tragic, that a Republican president is now undermining both.
WaPo, Jennifer Rubin: A big loss in court for Trump http://wapo.st/2kho9X7 On Friday, a Second Circuit appeals court revived a lawsuit filed by businesses that claim President Trump’s unconstitutional receipt of foreign emoluments negatively impacted their business.
🐣🔊RT @harrylitman The possible “no bill” in the Andrew McCabe prosecution would be huge. That calls for an immediate TALKING FEDS NOW! emergency episode with great former feds to unpack what happened and assess the damage to the DOJ. Fortunately we have one right here: http://bit.ly/McCastrophe
🐣 RT @AshaRangappa_ Yeah so this not good. Not just for them, but potentially for us: We share extensive intelligence with the Canadians 😳
⋙ 🐣 RT @MercedesGlobal #Breaking Global News has learned that the Director General of an intelligence unit at RCMP HQ has been arrested and charged under the secrets act involving espionage by foreign powers. Sources tell Global News this was an extensive national security investigation #cdnnatsec 📌 https://twitter.com/MercedesGlobal/status/1172540842944471043?s=20
⋙⋙ 🐣 RT @MercedesGlobal Global News can identify the senior RCMP member charged as Cameron Ortis. This is a very serious and rarely used charge #cdnnatsec
🐣 RT @Heidi_Cuda Another brilliant explainer on Russia’s aggression toward the West by author @KeirGiles. ¤ His first point: the language “hybrid warfare” is way too innocuous to describe the damage wrought by the relentless electronic and information attacks target nations are facing. Thread. 📌 https://twitter.com/Heidi_Cuda/status/1172702487473582080?s=20
⋙ FedAcadSecurityPol, Keir Giles: “Hybrid Threats”: What Can We Learn From Russia? (working paper) http://bit.ly/2kx8WRX
// “16/2019”
🐣 RT @renato_mariotti Wow. The Justice Department argues the House of Representatives should not have access to the results of a criminal investigation of the President. ¤ The House has the “sole power” to remove the President from office. No court will deny the House the ability to exercise its duty.
⋙ 🐣 RT @CNNPolitics BREAKING: Justice Department argues House lawmakers should not gain access to Mueller grand jury materials https://cnn.it/2UUEXky
🐣 RT @cbn2 So, according to Schiff’s letter, this whistleblower disclosure went to the IG on August 12 (Monday) … just 3 days after Deputy Director Sue Gordon resigned on August 9 (Friday), and two weeks after Coats’ resignation letter (July 28). Any connection?
🐣 RT @kylecheney HMMM: SCHIFF has issued a cryptic subpoena, claiming an intel community whistleblower’s complaint has been withheld from Congress — and could, perhaps, involve the president. 📌 https://twitter.com/kyledcheney/status/1172655862277689346?s=20
// 🚨 Alarming thread: Schiff memo; Coates etc resignation; leaks; outing CIA asset
💽 MSNBC, 11th Hour: Christopher Dickey: We’re seeing the death of democracy in America and Europe http://on.msnbc.com/2lTIOkg
// With populism on the rise in the U.S. and across Europe, veteran foreign journalist Christopher Dickey gives a stark warning.
WaPo, Randall Eliason: If the Andrew McCabe grand jury refused to indict, it’s a big deal http://bit.ly/2kzlp7L “If McCabe ultimately ends up being indicted anyway, it will further fuel suspicions that politics may be infecting the decisions of President Trump’s Justice Dept”
🐣 NO President has EVER been convicted in the Senate. Remember – Nixon resigned. Andrew Johnson was saved by one vote, but his powers were curtailed. Clinton was chastened but survived. Impeachment itself is a stain, a censure and a warning not to mess with the Constitution.
🐣 RT @Susan_Hennessey If the grand jury returned no true bill, that is an enormous black eye to DOJ. It is practically unheard of for a grand jury to refuse to indict and usually indicates dramatical prosecutorial overreach. It would be shocking if DOJ actually tried to submit after that.
WSJ: Andrew McCabe Hasn’t Been Indicted, a Sign That Case May Be in Jeopardy http://on.wsj.com/2keNxN2
● Text Block: https://twitter.com/Auriandra/status/1172687959340015622?s=20/photo/1
// Lawyer for the former FBI official again asks prosecutors to drop the case
The Washington Post reported Thursday that the grand jury had been released Thursday with no immediate signs of an indictment.
The investigation centered on Mr. McCabe’s comments to FBI inspections division agents on May 9, 2017, and later interviews with the inspector general’s office. In those interviews, Mr. McCabe allegedly said he didn’t know who had told the Journal about a phone call he had with a senior Justice Department official in 2016 about an investigation into the Clinton Foundation, even though he had authorized his lawyer to provide the information. Mr. McCabe has said he never deliberately misled investigators and cited the “chaos” of that day, which is when Mr. Trump fired James Comey as FBI director, making Mr. McCabe the bureau’s acting director.
Mr. McCabe sued the Justice Department last month, saying his termination was unlawful and part of a plot to remove law-enforcement officials deemed insufficiently loyal to Mr. Trump.
🐣 RT @JoyceWhiteVance An acting DNI is w/holding a complaint lodged by a whistleblower with the inspector gen’l for the intelligence community from House Intel Comm (which believes it concerns Trump or someone in his WH) in violation of rules worked out in the wake of Watergate
⋙ HouseIntelComm: Chairman Schiff Issues Subpoena for Whistleblower Complaint Being Unlawfully Withheld by Acting DNI from Intelligence Committees http://bit.ly/2kLSuNx
🐣 RT @SethAbramsom (SUMMARY) For the first time in history, someone outside the intel community has engaged in acts threatening national security; the intel community knows of it; whistleblower paperwork was properly filed; and Team Trump is illegally hiding it from Congress 📌 https://twitter.com/SethAbramson/status/1172703173322203136?s=20
🐣 RT @kylecheney Rather than turn over the complaint as statute requires, Schiff claims DNI Maguire shared it with DOJ lawyers and claimed it might be privileged. ¤ Schiff says the confluence extraordinary maneuvers suggest it implicates someone senior in the admin.
⋙ Politico, Kyle Cheney: Schiff accuses top intel official of illegally withholding ‘urgent’ whistleblower complaint http://politi.co/2mfGQen
↥ ↧
🐣 RT @harrylitman That point is so true, and it’s never been fully documented or appreciate it. There is basically zero doubt that the agents’ anti-Hilary texts would swamp the anti-Trump ones like Strzok and Page’s in both number and animosity.
↥ ↧
🐣 RT @steve_vladeck “The Committee can only conclude, based on this remarkable confluence of factors, that the serious misconduct at issue involves the President of the United States and/or other senior White House or Administration officials. [Schiff letter:] http://bit.ly/2lT3HMM ¤ This is a Very. Big. Deal.
⋙ 🐣 RT @k8brannen According to @RepAdamSchiff, a whistleblower lodged an urgent complaint about wrongdoing within the Intelligence Community.
📌 https://twitter.com/K8brannen/status/1172661416987439110?s=20
⋙⋙ 🐣 RT @k8brannen […] The delay raises “serious concerns that the whistleblower complaint is being withheld to protect the President or other Administration officials.”
🐣 RT @TheBeatWithAri BREAKING: In a historic step, Andrew McCabe, the former FBI official who led the Russia probe, and his team are going public with pressure – demanding answers from Trump’s DOJ on their reported attempts to bring charges against McCabe.
💽 https://twitter.com/TheBeatWithAri/status/1172643577329045504?s=20/photo/1
≣ 🔆 This❗️⋙ HouseIntelCom (9/13): Letter from Chair Rep Adam Schiff to Acting DNI Joseph Maguire http://bit.ly/2lT3HMM on Whistleblower case: “Grave concerns”
TheHill: House Democrats seeking Sessions’s testimony in impeachment probe http://bit.ly/2mebKnj
🐣 RT @gregsargent Seems like a pretty clear invitation to make it a whole lot clearer that an impeachment investigation is underway.
⋙ 🐣 RT @kylecheney BREAKING: DOJ has filed a 40-page brief arguing that the Judiciary Committee’s “impeachment investigation” really isn’t one. Cites Pelosi and Hoyer’s statements form *yesterday* as evidence. Story w/ @AndrewDesiderio TK
BREAKING: DOJ has filed a 40-page brief arguing that the Judiciary Committee's "impeachment investigation" really isn't one. Cites Pelosi and Hoyer's statements form *yesterday* as evidence.
Story w/ @AndrewDesiderio TK pic.twitter.com/4nPA246NV4
— Kyle Cheney (@kyledcheney) September 13, 2019
⋙⋙ 🐣 RT @ This is really bad for House Dems. DOJ has already seized on their inconsistent and head-spinning messaging on impeachment to argue that they should not be granted access to Mueller’s grand-jury files—bc the cornerstone of their argument is that they’re in an impeachment probe.
⋙⋙⋙ 🐣 RT @AndrewDesiderio JUST IN: DOJ urges a federal judge to deny the House Judiciary Committee’s petition for Mueller’s grand jury materials. ¤ The filing cites Democrats’ muddled messaging this week on impeachment — including stories from me, @kyledcheney, @npfandos & others. ¤ Story TK https://twitter.com/AndrewDesiderio/status/1172636002705432578?s=20/photo/1
DailyBeast, Erin Banco: State IG Set to Recommend Discipline for Trump’s Top Iran Hand http://bit.ly/2lTDbT8
// Brian Hook is reportedly in the running for national security adviser, and any discipline for his role in politically motivated State Dept. firings would likely hurt his chances.
🐣 I think if McCabe has issues with operations in the FBI, it might have to do with the NY Field Office, not the FoxNews/Q lineup of villains ~ #Beans
🔆 This❗️⋙ WashingtonExaminer: DOJ inspector general completes investigation into alleged FISA abuse http://washex.am/2lNcNKW
💙 Lawfare, Quinta Jurecic and Benjamin Wittes: On the Mystery of the McCabe Grand Jury http://bit.ly/2lUDLA1 https://twitter.com/Auriandra/status/1172623168936337409?s=20/photo/1
Normally, when the Justice Department informs a criminal target that it is moving ahead with charges, particularly when the target is a high-profile one, the indictment follows immediately. Yet in this case, no indictment materialized. And that wasn’t because the grand jury didn’t meet.
According to the Post, rather, the grand jury was reconvened on Thursday—but no public charges against McCabe were filed. Now, McCabe’s lawyer, Michael Bromwich, has written to U.S. Attorney Jessie Liu, whose office is handling McCabe’s case, stating that the defense team has heard “rumors from reporters … that the grand jury considering charges against Mr. McCabe had declined to vote an indictment”—though the defense has “no independent knowledge of whether the reporting is accurate.” Bromwich added that “based on our discussion with” government lawyers, “it is clear that no indictment has been returned.”
The possibility of a criminal case against McCabe has smelled bad for a while. As one of us has spelled out in detail, this is not the kind of case that normally ends up as a criminal matter. While the Justice Department inspector general report that led to McCabe’s dismissal from the bureau is sharply critical of his conduct, indictments for false statements in internal Justice Department investigations, without some exacerbating factor, are exceedingly rare. This sort of misconduct is normally handled in internal disciplinary proceedings—and McCabe was already fired. Indeed, there’s nothing about the inspector general’s findings about McCabe that seem to make his case a likely candidate for a criminal disposition. What makes McCabe’s situation distinctive, rather, is the public campaign against him by the president of the United States, who has tweeted and spoken repeatedly about McCabe and publicly called for his prosecution.
💙💙 📔 OIG Report (2018): A Report of Investigation of Certain Allegations Relating to Former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe [pdf] http://bit.ly/2mfvS8H 39p
// Feb 2018
🐣 RT @.MuellerSheWrote A message to the winner in 2020 @KamalaHarris @ewarren @BernieSanders @BetoORourke @CoryBooker @JoeBiden @AndrewYang @JulianCastro @amyklobuchar @PeteButtigieg
If you do not investigate Trump, Kavanugh, and Barr, you will be responsible for canceling America.
🐣 Several progressive news outlets are reporting that McCabe is not going to be indicted by the Grand Jury. We don’t know that. The finding might be delayed or under seal.They could also convene a new Grand Jury. Trump will not let this go. McCabe is key to his counter-narrative.
DailyBeast: Seth Rich Family’s Lawsuit Against Fox News Revived in Federal Court http://bit.ly/2lLyXNv
🐣 RT @harrylitman A Grand Jury’s refusal to return an indictment is something that happens maybe once every five years in a given office. If it occurred here, given the magnitude and visibility of the McCabe case, it is a stunning and humiliating rebuke for overreaching and playing politics.
💙 🐣 RT @TheRickWilson I doubt this is over. ¤ Barr has orders, and he’ll run McCabe to ground if it breaks every law, precedent, and DOJ procedure. ¤ They need a scalp for the Trump/Fox/QAnon crowd.
⋙ 🐣 RT @NatashaBertrand Just in: Andrew McCabe’s legal team says in a new letter to Jesse Liu that based on their conversations with the US Attorney’s office in DC yesterday, “it is clear that no indictment has been returned” against McCabe by the grand jury.
Just in: Andrew McCabe’s legal team says in a new letter to Jesse Liu that based on their conversations with the US Attorney’s office in DC yesterday, “it is clear that no indictment has been returned” against McCabe by the grand jury. pic.twitter.com/XtMTelYqEv
— Natasha Bertrand (@NatashaBertrand) September 13, 2019
⋙ ⋙ 🐣 RT @NatashaBertrand Now, they’re asking whether the grand jury indeed declined to bring charges, and argue that if it did, “the justice manual compels you not to resubmit the case to the same or a different grand jury.”
Wonkette: Justice Department Will Get Andy McCabe, Or Die Tryin http://bit.ly/2kgckAl
The Washington Post was first to report that the DOJ intends to file a criminal indictment against the former deputy director of the FBI. The Justice Department’s Inspector General concluded that McCabe lied under oath about authorizing Lisa Page and another agent to speak to the Wall Street Journal about Hillary Clinton’s BUT HER EMAILS. McCabe contends that he never misled investigators intentionally and that he sought to revise his statements upon further review. But these arguments appear to have fallen on deaf ears, with line prosecutors at the DOJ and US Attorney for the District of Columbia Jessie Liu agreeing that McCabe should be charged.
Negotiations between McCabe’s lawyers and Deputy AG Jeffrey “The New Rod” Rosen ended yesterday, with the DOJ informing McCabe that “The Department rejected your appeal of the United States Attorney’s Office’s decision in this matter.” Because we all know that the Trump administration cannot abide lying or leaking in any form!
So, should Andy McCabe prepare to be arrested imminently? ¤ Well, MAAAAAYBE.
The Post reports that the grand jury empaneled to hear the government’s case against McCabe had been on hiatus for months. Yesterday it reconvened, and then … nothing happened. It appears that no indictment, sealed or otherwise, has been filed, leading to widespread speculation that the jurors are unhappy with the government’s case. Prosecutors only need to convince 12 of 23 jurors to sign on the dotted line, and yet this ham sandwich remains un-indicted.
BuzzFeedNews, Zoe Tillman: An Appeals Court Revived Another Lawsuit Against Trump For Continuing To Profit From His Businesses http://bit.ly/2lPrkpr
// The 2nd Circuit found that hotel and restaurant owners could bring constitutional claims against Trump for refusing to divest from his companies.
⭕ 12 Sep 2019
💽 MSNBC, Rachel Maddow: Trump may have poisoned the case he’s pushing for against McCabe http://on.msnbc.com/2mbtjV2 Donald Trump’s advocacy for McCabe’s prosecution could undermine that very case: former DOJ spokesperson Matt Miller
// Matt Miller, former Justice Department spokesperson, talks with Rachel Maddow about the strange situation in which all indications being that former F.B.I. deputy director Andrew McCabe was to be indicted but no charges have been announced, and the likelihood that Donald Trump’s advocacy for McCabe’s prosecution could undermine that very case.
💽 MSNBC, RachelMaddow: DOJ pursuit of Trump vendetta against McCabe takes odd turn http://on.msnbc.com/2kLgtfZ Maddow looks at Donald Trump’s “persecution” of Andrew McCabe who opened the counterintelligence and obstruction of justice investigations into Trump
// Maddow looks at Donald Trump’s persecution of all of the officials involved in the investigation of Russia’s intrusion in the 2016 election in support of Trump, and the particularly hard time the Trump administration and Trump-supporting media have given former F.B.I. deputy director Andrew McCabe, who opened the counterintelligence and obstruction of justice investigations into Trump.
Alternet, Cody Fenwick: ‘Ugly and deeply disturbing’: Trump’s DOJ appears primed to indict ex-FBI chief Andrew McCabe http://bit.ly/2me3kMJ
TheHill: Toobin defends McCabe as DOJ moves toward charges http://bit.ly/2kIPmSI “McCabe’s record … impeccable; … one of the most honored and successful FBI agents of his generation”; criticized the president for going on a crusade to “disparage” McCabe.
Vox, Ian Millhiser: Justice Sotomayor warns the Supreme Court is doing “extraordinary” favors for Trump http://bit.ly/2lSe2s0
// The Trump administration thinks the court is its personal fixer. The court isn’t doing much to disabuse it of this idea.
TheGuardian: Russian police carry out mass raids against opposition activists http://bit.ly/2kkmmRa
// Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny says searches show ‘Putin is very angry’ after Moscow polls
NBCNews, Tom Steyer: Democratic leaders, stop dragging your feet and impeach Trump now http://nbcnews.to/2m7WYyn
// Nobody is above the law, and especially not the president. Proving that to Trump can’t wait until 2020.
TheAtlantic Russell Berman and Elaine Godfrey: The Question Democrats Have to Answer Before They Can Impeach http://bit.ly/2kcVToo
// The lawmakers who most want to oust President Trump don’t agree on what the party’s strongest case against him is.
WaPo: ‘You’re a prop in the back’: Advisers struggle to obey Trump’s Kafkaesque rules http://bit.ly/2ki8c2X
WaPo: Trump, facing another bipartisan rebuke, frees aid for Ukraine to battle Russian separatists http://bit.ly/2lSYFiZ
NYT: House Judiciary Committee Inches Toward Impeachment http://nyti.ms/2lNX5Pw
🐣 RT @RobReiner Today The House Judiciary Committee formally voted to launch an Impeachment investigation into the most criminally corrupt President in US history. The question isn’t will there be Articles of Impeachment. The question will be how many? Stay tuned.
CNN, Frida Ghitis: A President who threatens national security http://cnn.it/2mfTWZf
🐣 RT @atrupar TRUMP: “It’s a lot of fun to work with Donald Trump. And it’s very easy, actually, to work with me. You know why it’s easy? Because I make all the decisions — they don’t have to work.” 💽 https://twitter.com/atrupar/status/1172273988699119616?s=20/photo/1
WaPo: Justice Department authorized prosecutors to charge Andrew McCabe http://bit.ly/2mfThHf “But with the green light to proceed — and a grand jury summoned back after a months-long hiatus to consider the case — the day came and went with no public charges being filed.”
WaPo, Jennifer Rubin: Where are we on impeachment? http://bit.ly/2lLnr4S ‘the charges echo those against Richard M. Nixon: obstruction of justice, abuse of power and defiance of subpoenas, as well as violation of campaign finance law and allegations of self-enrichment’
🐣 RT @kurteichenwald If you know the reality of the @doj the limited inspector general report and other information released, the threatened indictment of Andrew McCabe is a terrifying step towards a system where politics dictates indictment. There has NEVER been a case like this. Abuse of power.
🐣 RT @DavidRothkopf Make no mistake, DoJ has it out for Andrew McCabe because he did his job, honored his oath and sought to find out the truth about Russia and Trump. They are prosecuting the good guys…which is what the bad guys do.
🐣 RT @PalmerReport For Donald Trump, putting Andrew McCabe on trial was supposed to be just a fantasy to sell his base. ¤ But now that McCabe is apparently going to be indicted after all, this will be a disaster for Trump. An actual trial, with discovery and so on? Trump might as well resign now.
🐣 RT @gregolear I have a sneaking suspicion that this is going to backfire spectacularly on Barr and Trump.
⋙ 🐣 RT @bradheath Federal prosecutors in Washington recommended that Andrew McCabe, the former second in command of the FBI and a frequent target of President Trump, be indicted. A top Justice Department official agreed, clearing the way for him to be charged.
📌 https://twitter.com/bradheath/status/1172205034790105088?s=20
⋙⋙ USAToday: Federal prosecutors recommend that Andrew McCabe, former FBI second-in-command, face criminal charge http://bit.ly/2kxHEuM
🐣 RT @TheBeatWithAri “Whether McCabe did anything wrong, or didn’t do anything wrong, Trump has basically put the case in a position where it is super politicized.” Fmr Watergate Prosecutor @nickakerman on reports of Trump’s DOJ authorizing charges against top FBI official 💽 https://twitter.com/TheBeatWithAri/status/1172284928714838017?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @girlsreallyrule Andrew McCabe told Robert Mueller the extent to which Donald Trump went to demand that others assist him in obstructing justice and now Trump is having Barr issue the payback. Make no mistake.
⋙ NBCNews, Julia Ainsley: Andrew McCabe appeal to avoid criminal charges rejected https://tinyurl.com/y4jfqwen
// A DOJ watchdog said former FBI Deputy Director McCabe made unauthorized releases of information and then misled investigators about it.
🐣 RT @MimiRocah1 The things cited in this thread about the potential case against McCabe that should give the prosecutors very serious pause before indicting.
⋙ 🐣 RT @adamgoldmanNYT The rejection of Mr. McCabe’s appeal would typically foreshadow an impending indictment, but that has apparently not yet happened.
📌 https://twitter.com/adamgoldmanNYT/status/1172223402427506688?s=20
⋙⋙ NYT: Justice Dept. Rejects Andrew McCabe’s Bid to Avoid Charges http://nyti.ms/2lMWayQ ‘The case is politically fraught because of Trump’s attacks on Mr. McCabe, who was acting FBI director when the inquiry was opened into whether the president obstructed justice’
⋙ 🐣 RT @adamgoldmanNYT […] One prosecutor assigned to the case recently left, an unusual step so close to an indictment. Another departed for a private law firm and has expressed reservations about the merits of the case.
⋙ 🐣 RT @adamgoldmanNYT And one key witness testified that Mr. McCabe had no motive to lie because he was authorized as the F.B.I.’s deputy director to speak to the media, so he would not have had to hide any discussions with reporters.
TheHill: Trump administration releases $250M in military aid to Ukraine http://bit.ly/2keI8Wi
🐣 RT @HouseJudiciary .@HouseJudiciary is engaged in an investigation that will allow us to determine whether to recommend articles of impeachment. ¤ Some call this process an impeachment inquiry. ¤ Some call it an impeachment investigation. ¤ There is no legal difference between these terms.
🐣 RT @senrobportman I spoke with @RealDonaldTrump last night to ask him to release the security funds for #Ukraine, and I want to thank him for doing so. I strongly support @POTUS’ position that our European allies can, & must, do more to support #Ukraine. https://bit.ly/2k9WBCO 📌 https://twitter.com/senrobportman/status/1172209348011057153?s=20
🔆 This❗️⋙ 🐣 RT @MuellerSheWrote BREAKING: NYT Justice reporter says former FBI Acting Director McCabe has been advised he will be indicted.
TheHill: Russia raids scores of homes, offices of Putin critic’s supporters http://bit.ly/2ketdeJ
⭕ 11 Sep 2019
💽 MSNBC, AllInWithChris: Michael Cohen helping Manhattan District Attorney, NBC News report http://on.msnbc.com/2lKPBNm
// President Trump’s former personal lawyer is helping the Manhattan District Attorney with its investigation into Trump’s business.
DailyBeast, Amy Knight: Will the CIA’s Former Top Spy Fall Prey to Putin’s Murderous Mole Hunt? http://bit.ly/2kdJ6lD
// The Russian daily Kommersant on Tuesday published the name and biography of a man living under his own name with his wife and children near Washington, D.C.
NYT: ‘Trump Unplugged’: A President as His Own National Security Advisor http://nyti.ms/2m8uogk
LADailyNews, Molly Davis: Kamala Harris’ criminal justice reform plan can’t be trusted http://bit.ly/2kG45he “Harris has been caught lying for political gain before, so what’s stopping her from doing it again—especially if it could win her the Oval Office?”
🐣 RT @MuellerSheWrote And now Flynn’s lawyer Sidney Powell’s motivation becomes clear. She wants access to all the Mueller materials that Barr wouldn’t even give to congress so she can falsify an allegation that the Mueller’s team members were “creeps on a mission”. She doesn’t give a shit about Flynn
⋙ 🐣 RT @ZoeTillman It lists a set of 40 categories of materials that Flynn contends the government should have to turn over — it includes certain docs that directly reference Flynn, as well as things like unredacted copies of all of James Comey’s testimony before congressional committees https://twitter.com/ZoeTillman/status/1171863363116314624?s=20/photo/1-4
WaPo: NBC News wanted a part of the Russian spy story. So it did something really stupid. http://bit.ly/2kHAQdM
MotherJones, David Corn and Dan Friedman: House Democrats Are Examining Whether the Middleman in Trump’s Secret Moscow Deal Withheld Information http://bit.ly/2kwLbcL
// But Felix Sater says he has cooperated fully with the probe of Trump’s covert Russia venture.
DailyBeast, Amy Knight: Will the CIA’s Former Top Spy Fall Prey to Putin’s Murderous Mole Hunt? http://bit.ly/2ktZ3V8
// The Russian daily Kommersant on Tuesday published the name and biography of a man living under his own name with his wife and children near Washington, D.C.
⭕ 10 Sep 2019
Vox, Alex Ward: CIA reportedly removed top spy from Russia over fear of retaliation — and maybe Trump http://bit.ly/2lKPqlb
JustSecurity, Viola Geinger (9/10): Trump and Giuliani’s Quest for Fake Ukraine “Dirt” on Biden: An Explainer http://bit.ly/2lPw3XT
🐣 RT @politico John Bolton’s exit is a stark illustration of how President Trump has grown increasingly confident in his own judgment on national security
⋙ Politico, Eliana Johnson: Why Trump and Bolton parted ways http://politi.co/2lPtaq1
// The president says he fired his national security adviser. Bolton says he resigned. Either way, their conflict was deep — and irreconcilable.
🐣 RT @JoeNBC POTUS considered Bolton
*Insufficiently pro-Taliban
*Insufficiently pro-North Korea
*Insufficiently pro-Russia
*Insufficiently pro-Iranian
Trump wanted to play “Let’s Make A Deal” with those who hate America the most.
Bolton is not Monty Hall.
CNN: Chairman of the House Oversight Subcommittee on National Security petitions Pompeo on delayed Russia sanctions http://cnn.it/2lQaDtJ Rep. Stephen Lynch (D-MA)
DailyBeast, Sam Stein: Top Dem Think Tank Scraps Talk of Killing Russia Project http://bit.ly/2k9gRVa //➔ live long and prosper, @moscow_project
// “People were looking for other jobs,” said one source familiar with the discussions. “And people on the project thought it was going to end.”
🐣 RT @thomaswright08 A thread on John Bolton. This was inevitable. For many months Trump wanted to pivot to striking deals w/ America’s enemies– Taliban, Iran, DPRK, even Russia– in the run up to the election. Pompeo was willing to accept this to shape it. Bolton was not & sought to sabotage it 1/9 📌 https://twitter.com/thomaswright08/status/1171512406134022144?s=20
❤️ NYT, Stanley Greenberg: The Republican Party Is Doomed http://nyti.ms/2m31hLk Stanley Greenberg is a Democratic pollster
// This is a transformational moment. Do the Democrats understand how to take advantage of it?
NYT Editorial: What John Bolton’s Ouster Says About Donald Trump http://nyti.ms/2m3MqAj
// No matter who advises this president, chaos will reign.
Newsweek, Naveed Jamali: I’m a Former U.S. Double Agent, and Trump Is Recklessly Endangering the Lives of America’s Spies http://bit.ly/2lKaZSV
YahooFinance, Rick Newman: Trump’s trade war has killed 300,000 jobs http://yahoo.it/2kFITYy
WaPo: The ‘rebel alliance’ teamed up to thwart Boris Johnson’s plans. Can it stay united to steer Brexit? http://wapo.st/2kdZC5h
WaPo, Harry Litman: The Justice Department’s outlandish and arrogant position on congressional subpoenas http://wapo.st/2m2ZGVQ
WaPo, Greg Sargent: What explains the Democrats’ impeachment muddle? http://wapo.st/2lFTbYZ
🐣 RT @dcexaminer [AOC:] “I want to see every Republican go on the record and knowingly vote against impeachment of this president, knowing his corruption, having it on the record. This is outrageous to protect the amount of lawlessness.” https://washex.am/34u5YQ6 💽 https://twitter.com/dcexaminer/status/1171549488256868353?s=20/photo/1
WaPo, Donna Edwards: Time is running out. Impeach Trump. http://wapo.st/2kaQDSe
DailyBeast, Jeff Hauser: Trump’s Going to Manipulate the Government to Stay in Power http://bit.ly/2lNrpK0
// The president has given us ample signs that he will use the powers of the presidency in ways previously unimaginable. How come Democrats seem so relaxed about it?
⭕ 9 Sep 2019
Politico Mag, Jack Shafer: The Dynasty Ends With King Donald http://politi.co/2lPuA3Q
// There will be no President Ivanka. No President Jared. And certainly no President Donald Jr.
NYT, Paul Krugman: How Democracy Dies, American-Style http://nyti.ms/2kDBc59
// Sharpies, auto emissions and the weaponization of policy.
💙 TheAtlantic, McKay Coppins: The Heir http://bit.ly/2lKOMUQ
// Oct 2019 issue; Ivanka was always Trump’s favorite. But Don Jr. is emerging as his natural successor.
WaPo: Michael Flynn ordered to testify before Congress on Sept. 25 http://wapo.st/2kCdpTk
Vox, Andrew Prokop: The House Judiciary Committee will finally vote on an impeachment investigation this week http://bit.ly/2kszOT9 (Andrew Prokop’s explainers are always good)
// The vote will be about “procedures” for the investigation. Here’s the big picture.
TheHill, Alan Lichtman: Why impeachment of William Sulzer is solid precedent for Donald Trump http://bit.ly/2m0IlwK No American president has been impeached and removed from office, but several governors have …
WaPo, Amber Phillips: Congress is back, and an impeachment inquiry is here. Here’s what to expect. http://wapo.st/2k8yMvj
Alternet: Former GOP intel chair breaks down the irreparable harm Trump did by compromising US spy in Russia http://bit.ly/2k8yq7X former Rep Mike Rogers (R-MI)
CBSNews: Russian opposition barred from Moscow elections, but still finds “victory” in the results http://cbsn.ws/2m7Egai
NYMag, Jonathan Chait: U.S. Intelligence Had to Pull Spy From Russia Because Trump Is a Security Risk http://nym.ag/2ksxyeD
TheMoscowProject: Congress’s Critical Impeachment Inquiry http://bit.ly/2m9rurR
🐣 RT @MuellerSheWrote Email evidence that McCabe DID inform Comey of an forthcoming WSJ story about Jill McCabe and @Comey acknowledged it. The IG left that detail out of the report. Are there emails confirming he told Comey about the 2nd WSJ story? Lack of candor, my ass.
⋙ DailyBeast, Betsy Woodruff: Emails Show McCabe Scrambling to Handle Stories About Hillary Probe http://bit.ly/2m9jC9N
// The messages shared with The Daily Beast cast additional light on the circumstances that preceded McCabe’s firing from the FBI. ⋙ Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW), a government watchdog group, obtained the emails through FOIA litigation and shared them with The Daily Beast. They are also available in the FBI’s FOIA vault. CREW’s litigation is ongoing.
🐣 RT @HouseIntel BREAKING: House Intelligence, Foreign Affairs & Oversight Committees launch a wide-ranging investigation into reported efforts by Trump, his personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani, and possibly others to pressure Ukraine to help the President’s reelection campaign:
⋙ HouseIntel Press Release: Three House Committees Launch Wide-Ranging Investigation into Trump-Giuliani Ukraine Scheme http://bit.ly/2kqOan2
// Engel, Schiff, and Cummings Demand Records about Efforts to Pressure Ukraine’s Government to Assist Trump’s Reelection Campaign
🐣 RT @McFaul For non-Russian speakers, this tweet is from Alexey Navalny declaring “Victory” in the Moscow elections yesterday. The results are indeed surprising. Putin’s ruling party is not very popular in Moscow. https://twitter.com/McFaul/status/1171100789609074689?s=20
WaPo, Greg Sargent: The push to impeach Trump just got more serious. But there’s a problem. http://wapo.st/2lFLfHc
NBCNews: House lays out its impeachment probe http://nbcnews.to/2m11UFd
// The House Judiciary Committee laid out the procedures on Monday of what it’s calling its ongoing “impeachment investigation” of President Donald Trump.
The resolution, should it pass, would make the following four changes to the committee rules governing hearings:
● It would allow the chairman to designate full committee or subcommittee hearings as part of the impeachment probe.
● It would allow staff to question witnesses for an additional hour, equally divided between the majority and minority.
● It would allow for secret grand jury material to be reviewed in closed executive session.
● It would allow for the president’s counsel to respond to information and testimony presented in committee in writing and give the chairman authority to invite the president’s counsel to review and respond in writing to executive session materials.These procedures are expected to follow those the Judiciary Committee used in 1974 during the Nixon impeachment proceedings.
🐣 RT @CaroleCadwalla “You can read Lebedev’s takeover of the British press as a noble effort to save an industry in trouble. Or you can see it as a soft power play, designed in the best traditions of the KGB to weaken the enemy from inside,” @lukeharding1968 One or the other
⋙ TheGuardian, Luke Harding: Hunt the Banker: The Confessions of a Russian Ex-Oligarch by Alexander Lebedev – review http://bit.ly/2kaOpT1
// Lebedev refrains from criticising Russia’s elite in the story of his rise from the KGB to billionaire owner of London’s Evening Standard
CNN: Exclusive: US extracted top spy from inside Russia in 2017 http://cnn.it/2lGEdSu “driven, in part, by concerns that President Donald Trump and his administration repeatedly mishandled classified intelligence and could contribute to exposing the covert source”
💙💙 TheAtlantic, James Fallows: The End of the Roman Empire Wasn’t That Bad http://bit.ly/2kBO6k7
// Oct issue; Maybe the end of the American one won’t be either.
⭕ 8 Sep 2019
🐣 RT @RadioFreeTom Meanwhile, the country continues to stagger along, functionally operating without an executive branch. Unless by “executive branch” we mean a cabal of lawyers working with Mitch McConnell to appoint judges, hand out some favors to industry pals and some Russians. /1 📌 https://twitter.com/RadioFreeTom/status/1170813394984820736?s=20
⋙ 🐣 RT @RadioFreeTom In foreign policy, the entire diplomatic and national security apparatus reverse-engineers rationales for whatever the President blurts out at any given time, almost entirely based on what the Trump WH thinks moves the media and the polls, rather than the national interest. /2
⋙ 🐣 RT @RadioFreeTom All this, while the most powerful man in the world wrecks our alliances, starts a trade war, coddles our enemies, invites terrorists to Camp David, and then, when people question his grip on reality, responds by tweeting out cat memes while the rubes cheer. Good job, GOP. /3x
⋙⋙ 🐣 RT @igt1960 Unfortunately, Trump is the least of our worries – he’s just the bully who kicked over the sandcastle. What’s deeply troubling is finding out our institutions, norms, and laws were so easily knocked over. Getting rid of Trump is a necessary start, but it won’t fix the foundation.
💙💙 Politico Mag, Rick Shenkman: The Shocking Paper Predicting the End of Democracy http://politi.co/2lCY991 “The irony is that more democracy—ushered in by social media and the Internet … —is what has unmoored our politics, and is leading us towards authoritarianism”
// Human brains aren’t built for self-rule, says Shawn Rosenberg. That’s more evident than ever.
Right-wing populist politicians have taken power or threatened to in Poland, Hungary, France, Britain, Italy, Brazil and the United States. As Rosenberg notes, “by some metrics, the right wing populist share of the popular vote in Europe overall has more than tripled from 4% in 1998 to approximately 13% in 2018.” In Germany, the right-wing populist vote increased even after the end of the Great Recession and after an influx of immigrants entering the country subsided. ¤ A brief three decades after some had heralded the “end of history” it’s possible that it’s democracy that’s nearing the end. … Taking democracy’s place, Rosenberg says, will be right-wing populist governments that offer voters simple answers to complicated questions. …
And therein lies the core of his argument: Democracy is hard work and requires a lot from those who participate in it. It requires people to respect those with different views from theirs and people who don’t look like them. It asks citizens to be able to sift through large amounts of information and process the good from the bad, the true from the false. It requires thoughtfulness, discipline and logic.
The irony is that more democracy—ushered in by social media and the Internet, where information flows more freely than ever before—is what has unmoored our politics, and is leading us towards authoritarianism. Rosenberg argues that the elites have traditionally prevented society from becoming a totally unfettered democracy; their “oligarchic ‘democratic’ authority” or “democratic control” has until now kept the authoritarian impulses of the populace in check.
And unlike democracy, which makes many demands, the populists make just one. They insist that people be loyal. Loyalty entails surrendering to the populist nationalist vision. But this is less a burden than an advantage. It’s easier to pledge allegiance to an authoritarian leader than to do the hard work of thinking for yourself demanded by democracy. …
There were less discomforting moments in Lisbon. The convention gave an award to George Marcus, one of the founders of the discipline, who has dedicated his career to the optimistic theory that human beings by nature readjust their ideas to match the world as it is and not as they’d like it to be—just as democracy requires.
But this isn’t a moment for optimism, is it? What is happening around the world shows that the far-right is on the march. And when it comes to the U.S., the problem might be larger than one man. Liberals have been praying for the end of the Trump presidency, but if Rosenberg is right, democracy will remain under threat no matter who is in power.
Hullabaloo, digby: The political argument for impeachment http://bit.ly/2lIZMC8 “[T]his isn’t about a couple of furtive blow jobs. The stakes in this are much, much more like Watergate.… Also, the monumental corruption. The sheer volume of impeachable offenses is enormous.”
Is it risky? Sure, anything can happen. But I have never understood this notion that Trump will gain power from being impeached. It’s ridiculous. I realize that a lot of the media have simply assumed that since Clinton was acquitted and remained popular that it’s a losing strategy. But this isn’t about a couple of furtive blow jobs. The stakes in this are much, much more like Watergate, even higher when you consider the act that this president welcomed the sabotage of his opponent’s election campaign by a foreign adversary and provably (and openly!) obstructed justice to cover it up. Also, the monumental corruption. The sheer volume of impeachable offenses is enormous.
I suppose a majority of the public may say that they realized this behavior is exactly what they yearn for in a president and they can’t wait for four more years after the congress lays it all out in one big case. If so, we have much, much bigger problems. And we might.
DailyBeast, Sam Brodey: Trump Raids Funds Meant to Deter Russia to Pay for His Wall http://bit.ly/2m7Rfsz //➔ Trump: Who’s gonna pay for the Wall? MAGAts: NATO‼️
// National security experts believe it could be a gut punch to U.S. diplomatic and security interests in a part of the world that’s been a sore spot for the president: Europe.
WaPo, Robert Samuelson: Political pressures rolled back globalization before. It can happen again. http://wapo.st/2kBZAEr “the trade war [with] China will lead to no good — with consequences that could … threaten the world’s geopolitical and economic stability.”
WaPo Editorial: A Russian passport. A Russian murder? http://wapo.st/2k6AQ6V “This is not the first time a Chechen rebel has been murdered abroad. Mr. Khangoshvili was reportedly on a Russian blacklist”
NYT: Democrats to Broaden Impeachment Inquiry Into Trump to Corruption Accusations http://nyti.ms/2lLnjC7 ‘Democrats plan to scrutinize role in hush payments to two women and reports that he dangled pardons to officials to break the law to implement his immigration policies’
NYT: Democrats Plan Vote to Formalize Procedures for Impeachment Investigation http://nyti.ms/2k4unta the investigation will now be primarily focused on whether to recommend articles of impeachment
🐣 RT @carlquintanilla JPMorgan has a new index — called the “Volfefe Index” — that measures Trump’s tweets and their impact on bond volatility. (1/x) 📌 https://twitter.com/carlquintanilla/status/1170693477576916992?s=20 ✛ /photo/1
🐣 RT @JuliaDavisNews The decision to invite Taliban leaders and Afghan President Ashraf Ghani to Camp David was made a week ago in a meeting with Trump and national security officials. Trump told his team he would be better positioned to do the negotiating himself.
⋙ 🐣 RT @ Pompeo said Sunday’s now-canceled meeting at Camp David was in the works “for a while” and defended Trump’s decision to invite Taliban leaders on US soil. Pompeo said the admin was seemingly close to a deal: ¤ “We have it in hand.”
⋙⋙ CNN: US still interested in Taliban peace deal, Pompeo says http://cnn.it/2lIXVNk
DailyBeast, Jonathan Alter: Yes, Democrats Should Impeach Trump — and Make Mitch McConnell Defend His Acquittal http://bit.ly/2m6eB1H
// The Senate will acquit the president if the House impeaches him, true. But that’s not a reason not to do it. It’s exactly why they should do it.
⭕ 7 Sep 2019
🐣 RT @JohnWDean Expect impeachment proceedings to become more focused. House must make his fitness for office a 2020 campaign issue! Other than tweet, play golf, and embarrass the USA what has he done? Corruption and abuses of power! He’s a disaster! Unfit for office…
⋙ 🐣 RT @voxdotcom The House Judiciary Committee plans to define its impeachment inquiry, bringing clarity to what it hopes to accomplish with its impeachment inquiry, and where it sees the investigation going.
⋙⋙ Vox: The House Judiciary Committee plans to finally define its impeachment inquiry http://bit.ly/2m7bxT1
// The committee will formalize its plans for its impeachment inquiry next week. http://bit.ly/
🐣 RT @McFaul What? TASS has these details but USG has not released them? This is very strange. And why does Russia need to be present at signing? We’re they fighting Taliban and Al Qaeda in Afghanistan and I just missed that?
⋙ 🐣 RT @JuliaDavisNews #Russia’s state media: ¤ Draft peace agreement between the Taliban and the Trump admin said that U.S. forces will leave five bases in Afghanistan within 135 days of signing the document, the U.S. & the Taliban insist that Russia be present at the possible signing of the agreements. https://twitter.com/McFaul/status/1170580543412613120?s=20/photo/1
WaPo: Trump says he canceled secret meeting with Afghan president, Taliban at Camp David http://wapo.st/2ky7jmM
🐣 RT @glennkirschner2 I absolutely do. Trump will implode. Barr has already over-played his constitutional hand in the recent DOJ court filing saying, in substance, Congress does not have the power to perform oversight of the executive branch. He’s trying to destroy accountability. He will fail.
⋙ 🐣 RT @ SchrbrM Glenn do you honestly think justice will prevail? That although it will be bruised we will get our country and democracy back? Sometimes I have faith and sometimes I wonder if it is lost..😐
🐣 RT @gregolear Harrowing passage from A Russian Diary, by the journalist Anna Politkovskaya, who was assassinated in 2006. https://twitter.com/gregolear/status/1170435426588463104?s=20/photo/1
// corruption of elections and the courts
🐣 RT @sandralhanlon The damage is massive. The State Department is gutted. Every department we depend on is weakened. We will be in cleanup mode for decades & that depends on us winning elections. Winning elections is all about the votes. & local races are vital!
🐣 RT @FrankFigliuzzi Trump moves us closer to dictatorship as our military rejects congressional oversight and shifts its allegiance to the #CommanderinCheat
Trump moves us closer to dictatorship as our military rejects congressional oversight and shifts its allegiance to the #CommanderinCheat https://t.co/xqE6LbRg3m
— Frank Figliuzzi (@FrankFigliuzzi1) September 7, 2019
WaPo: Judiciary panel to activate rare impeachment-time authorities, highlighting divide in chamber’s endgame http://wapo.st/2k8FscQ “It resembles something the Judiciary Committee did in 1973, two weeks after the ‘Saturday Night Massacre’”
The Judiciary resolution, which will be voted on Wednesday, is still being finalized. But those familiar with the resolution expect that it will allow panel staff to question witnesses for an additional hour during hearings. It would also allow the panel to discuss evidence in closed session, a move the panel wants to protect confidential information — potentially even grand jury material.
The Judiciary Committee has appealed to a federal judge seeking to the underlying evidence and grand jury information that informed former special counsel Robert S. Mueller III’s report. Panel investigators believe those documents hold damaging evidence about Trump, but Attorney General William P. Barr has ignored a subpoena to turn over the information.
DailyBeast, Sam Brodey: House Democrats Set to Question Corey Lewandowski in Public http://bit.ly/2lJVASj
// Lewandowski will answer questions in an open hearing with the cameras rolling—making him the first Trump associate to do so before Jerry Nadler’s committee
DailyBeast, Rick Wilson: Donald Trump Enters the Eccentric Dictator Phase of His Presidency http://bit.ly/2k5b5E9
// Laws? Elections? In the Dear Leader universe, these are mere echoes of the weak, corrupt past. And the facts are whatever he says they are.
NYT, Jenni Russell: The ‘Political Anarchist’ Behind Britain’s Chaos http://nyti.ms/2lJIR1Z
// Dominic Cummings, Boris Johnson’s Rasputin, is happy to watch the country blow up if he gets what he wants.
🔆 This❗️⋙ CNN: House panel to take formal steps on impeachment probe next week http://cnn.it/2kzuE7A
⭕ 6 Sep 2019
EmptyWheel, Marcy Wheeler: Donald Trump Was “Colluding” with Roger Stone on Four Different Direct Lines http://bit.ly/2kAACFt //➔ and lied about it on written answers to Mueller: Pre-trial documents from Stone case
NewYorker, Masha Gessen: A Summer of Unprecedented Brutality in Moscow http://bit.ly/2m4TOeV
🐣 RT @rigel2020 (3/24/2019) Sam Patten in 2015 started a company with Kilimnik and Nick Ayers… FYI.. Wendy does great Research @WendySiegelman
⋙ ◕ Medium, Wendy Siegelman (2018): Social Media and Influence Companies Related to the Trump Russia Story http://bit.ly/2tqNNKg
● https://twitter.com/Auriandra/status/1170250881071276032?s=20/photo/1
// 7/6/2018
🐣 💽 RT @JordanUhl Breaking now on CNN: The House will take formal steps on an impeachment probe for @realDonaldTrump next week https://twitter.com/JordanUhl/status/1170176002875637760?s=20/photo/1
TheHill, Kevin Fashola: How Russia uses racial divides to undermine American democracy http://bit.ly/2k4TDj0 Fashola is a visiting fellow w the Defending Democratic Institutions Project w the Center for Strategic & Intl Studies & a fellow w the Congress Black Caucus Foundation
TheAtlantic, Adam Serwer: Trump Is Winning His War on the FBI http://bit.ly/2lDOizL
// Within the bureau, there’s an asymmetry that even those who seek to play by the rules cannot ignore.
JustSecurity, Kate Brannon: Trump Cuts “Muscle” from European Defense to Fund Border Wall http://bit.ly/2lCFhqw
🐣 RT @JohnJHarwood the ways Trump is warping US government functions – examples surfacing today involved NOAA, the US military, and the Justice Department – increase impeachment pressure on Pelosi from within the House Democratic caucus
🐣 RT @TimInHonolulu I need to dig into facts but I think that it’s arguably DOD procurement fraud. I don’t think the civil liability can be washed away and may expose his properties to being seized in 2021 when he’s out of office. Will destroy a lot of military careers. That’s likely Putin’s plan.
⋙ 🐣 RT @NatashaBertrand BREAKING: House Oversight is investigating whether US military expenditures have been propping up Trump Turnberry. A peculiar refueling stop in Glasgow by a US Air Force crew, who stayed overnight at the resort—there & back—tipped them off. Our exclusive:
⋙⋙ 💙💙 Politico, Natasha Bertrand and Bryan Bender: Air Force crew made an odd stop on a routine trip: Trump’s Scottish resort http://politi.co/2m25m2p re: @maddow
// Now the layover is part of a broader House inquiry into military spending at and around the Trump property.
NYT, Bret Stephens: How Vladimir Putin Falls http://nyti.ms/2kwLNip ‘Lyubov Sobol, 31, is a Moscow lawyer who has spent years pursuing a graft investigation of Putin intimate Yevgeny Prigozhin’
// A dictator meets an opponent he can’t co-opt, corrupt, calumniate, cow or coerce.
🐣 RT @AndreaChalup Ukraine has survived and sacrificed so much to become a democracy and now a refuge for Russian opposition activists. Trump and Guiliani pressuring Ukraine this way is unconscionable and serves the interests of the powerful mass-murdering dictatorship invading the country:
⋙ 🐣 RT @olgaNYC1211 So much more! Russia started floating Ukraine interfering in US elections in 2016 to deflect from their actions. If Ukraine complies then Russia will blame Ukraine, Europe will not back them. If Ukraine doesn’t comply they risk losing funds necessary for protection.
🐣 RT @JuliaDavisNews #Russia’s state TV discusses Trump defunding more than $770 million in military projects designed to shore up European defense against Russia. ¤ Host Evgeny Popov says that could mean only one of two things: ¤ “Either Trump is ours, or we [Russia] are not a threat.”
🐣 RT @kyledcheney NEW: THe House Judiciary Committee has taken the first formal steps to broaden its impeachment probe to include questions about the president steering government business to his resorts — highlighted by his push to host the G7 at Doral. Story TK What the committee wants: https://twitter.com/kyledcheney/status/1169969369427906561?s=20/photo/1
WaPo: How Joe Biden attracts both black voters and racially ‘resentful’ voters http://wapo.st/2m3IvUh
Reuters: Exclusive: U.S. congressional probe finds possible lapses in Deutsche Bank controls – sources http://reut.rs/2kwzXEY
CNN: Democrats widen impeachment probe as they confront roadblocks http://cnn.it/2m4IjUP
🔲 NYT The Weekly: The Blueprint: Russia’s Playbook for Disrupting Democracy [Trailer] http://nyti.ms/2kyqugr full episode available on FX and Hulu
⭕ 5 Sep 2019
🔆 This❗️⋙ WaPo: Trump tries to force Ukraine to meddle in the 2020 election http://wapo.st/2lCfNcO
// added 11/2/2019
⇈ ⇊ ?
WaPo Editorial: Is Trump strong-arming Ukraine’s new president for political gain? http://wapo.st/2lCfNcO “He is attempting to force Zelensky to intervene in the 2020 US presidential election by launching an investigation of the leading Democratic candidate, Joe Biden”
Ukraine’s neophyte president, Volodymyr Zelensky, took a big step this week toward proving that he will be, as he promised, the most pro-reform president in Ukraine’s history. On Monday, he laid out a breathtakingly ambitious five-year plan including virtually every measure the International Monetary Fund and Western governments have urged on Ukraine in recent years, from land reform to the privatization of state companies to a cleansing of the judiciary.
That ought to be cause for celebration in Washington, where successive Democratic and Republican administrations have tried to draw Ukraine away from Vladimir Putin’s Russia and into the ranks of Western democracies, only to be frustrated by the fecklessness and corruption of the country’s political leaders. Yet Mr. Zelensky has so far failed to win the backing of President Trump. Not only has Mr. Trump refused to grant the Ukrainian leader a White House visit, but also he has suspended the delivery of $250 million in U.S. military aid to a country still fighting Russian aggression in its eastern provinces.
Some suspect Mr. Trump is once again catering to Mr. Putin, who is dedicated to undermining Ukrainian democracy and independence. But we’re reliably told that the president has a second and more venal agenda: He is attempting to force Mr. Zelensky to intervene in the 2020 U.S. presidential election by launching an investigation of the leading Democratic candidate, Joe Biden. Mr. Trump is not just soliciting Ukraine’s help with his presidential campaign; he is using U.S. military aid the country desperately needs in an attempt to extort it.
LATimes, Virginia Heffernan: Count Rod Rosenstein, the guy who tapped Robert Mueller, among Trump’s toadies. Sad! http://lat.ms/2k3sfBY
💽 MSNBC, RachelMaddow: Trump relationship with Putin hampers NATO as Russia oversteps http://on.msnbc.com/2ky3T3o
// Rachel Maddow looks at what is known about the nuclear nature of a recent deadly explosion in Russia and notes reporting that while Russia’s conduct in the incident would be expected to elicit an international response, Donald Trump’s relationship with Vladimir Putin undercuts NATO’s ability to do so.
KyivPost: Bloomberg: Putin says he offered to sell Trump Russia’s newest missiles http://bit.ly/2lxE97J //➔ the exploding ones? sure! throw in a couple of those exploding submarines, too!
⭕ 4 Sep 2019
🐣 They follow orders. The higher-ups can give their opinions but in the end, they follow orders, or in rare cases, resign, like Mattis. No, they’re not fascists, but the Commander-in-
Chief is unstable (putting it mildly). I’m glad my son’s deployment is over (for now).
🐣 At least Obama has a good excuse for pulling troops out of Iraq, which refused to sign a Status of Forces Agreement. Trump just wants out of Afghanistan and it’s up to the Military and State to make it look reasonable. Bad things will happen.
Newsweek, Tom O’Connor: Russia Warns of New U.S. Moves Against Venezuela, Where Military Goes on High Alert http://bit.ly/2lzIbwa
CNN, Elie Honig: In the mafia, there is a name for what Pence and Barr did http://cnn.it/2lTMEKf //➔ it’s called “kicking up” or “paying tribute” to the Boss (like in “Goodfellas”!)
💙💙 🔆 This❗️⋙ CrookedMedia, Brian Beutler: Democrats Have Reached A Crossroads http://bit.ly/2k5zppu //➔ If Dems win, do they have it in them to hold Republicans to account?
Politico, Alexandra Panetta: Unlike U.S., Canada plans coordinated attack on foreign election interference http://politi.co/2lZKhWr
// Ahead of the October election, Canada finds itself on the front lines of the war on disinformation and hacking.
CNN: House panel subpoenas DHS for documents on reports Trump offered pardons related to immigration agenda http://cnn.it/2lDlU0o Judiciary Committee
🚫 TheAtlantic, Russell Berman: The Impeachment Summer That Wasn’t http://bit.ly/2kjdknw
// followed ONE rep; Despite impeachment efforts from progressive activists, most of the Democrats who flipped GOP seats in 2018 aren’t ready to go there.
🐣 RT @SethAbramson BREAKING NEWS: Man Working in Trump’s 2020 Re-election Intelligence Apparatus Identified As “Trollbot” By Twitter’s Top Bot-Detection Service; BotSentinel Reports That Ex-DoD Intel Officer Tony Shaffer “Exhibits Alarming Tweet Activity and Patterns That Match a Trollbot Account” https://twitter.com/SethAbramson/status/1169368477859057664?s=20/photo/1
WashingtonFreeBeacon (rw): Andrew McCabe to Headline Dem Fundraiser in PA http://bit.ly/2lzBtXb ‘He plans to discuss his interactions with Donald Trump, the fallout and aftermath of James Comey’s firing, Russian meddling in the election, and the Mueller Investigation.’ Wow.
// Fired FBI official also recently joined CNN
TheHill, Joseph Dresen: The unraveling of Vladimir Putin http://bit.ly/2lDfrTa
The Trump/Nunes #TrumpRussia counter-narrative ⇉ WashingtonExaminer: Devin Nunes: Horowitz teeing up Comey for conspiracy charges http://washex.am/2kuZ1fB //➔ oranges🍊🍊🍊‼️
AP, Calvin Woodward: Analysis: Trump’s conservative critics are speaking a code http://bit.ly/2lZVyGg ‘DC’s partisan fever coexists with a more decorous tradition in some quarters — People such as Mattis, Robert Mueller and Chief Justice John Roberts are steeped in those ways’
// Washington’s well-known partisan fever coexists with a more decorous tradition in some quarters — of raising eyebrows instead of raising hell, of saying things in so many words without actually using the words. People such as Mattis, former special counsel Robert Mueller and Chief Justice John Roberts are steeped in those ways.
DailyKos, Joan McCarter: Russia, guns, aluminum, and Moscow Mitch http://bit.ly/2luMQQ1 “Thanks to the investigation … of the NRA and its ties to the Kremlin, we’ve discovered that McConnell really owes Putin and the oligarchs.”
WaPo, David Ignatius: Why America is losing the information war to Russia http://wapo.st/2k2BB0X “The cruel paradox of the Internet, once hailed as a liberating force, is that it empowers governments that control information and enfeebles those that let it run free”
Richard Stengel, a former Time editor who became the State Department’s undersecretary for public diplomacy, writes that he was once an information “idealist.” He believed that in the marketplace of ideas, the truth would ultimately prevail. Not anymore.
“I think we all now know that this is a pipe dream,” writes Stengel in a disturbing memoir of his three years on the communications firing line. “Unfortunately, facts don’t come highlighted in yellow. A false sentence reads the same as a true one. It’s not enough to battle falsehood with truth; the truth does not always win.”
This book carries a blunt and frightening message: The United States is losing the fight for what Russians call the “information space.” The cruel paradox of the Internet, once hailed as a liberating force, is that it empowers governments that control information and enfeebles those that let it run free.
Stengel’s account, which will be published in October, is titled “Information Wars: How We Lost the Global Battle Against Disinformation & What We Can Do About It.” Unfortunately, the first half of the subtitle is more convincing than the second. This is a tale of how government bureaucracy, inertia and, most of all, the inherent constraints of an open, democratic society made the United States so vulnerable to covert action via the Internet.
“Let’s face it, democracies are not very good at combating disinformation,” writes Stengel. Authoritarian governments, in contrast, “have gone from fearing the flow of information to exploiting it. They understand that the same tools that spread democracy can engineer its undoing.” …
Stengel frankly admits that the Obama administration was slow to react to Russia’s 2016 election manipulation. “The scale of Russian disinformation was beyond what we were capable of responding to,” he writes. He notes the eerie similarity between Russian covert propaganda and Donald Trump’s campaign themes.
But he’s skeptical that Russian intervention was decisive in 2016. “To this day, I’m not sure what impact it had,” he writes. “Russian messaging had a lot of reach but hardly any depth.” And he includes this memorable zinger: “By televising hundreds of hours of Trump’s campaign speeches, CNN did a whole lot more to elect him than Russia Today did.”
🐣 RT @tribelaw “The president is negating the Constitution’s most fundamental principle — the separation of powers. [He’s] assaulting . . . our power of the purse, and he’s undermining the oath of office he takes to protect and defend the Constitution and the American people.” @SpeakerPelosi
⭕ 3 Sep 2019
Salon, Richard Saletan: Trump, Not Comey, Is the Crook http://bit.ly/2k33oyg “Contrary to the president’s smear campaign, Comey isn’t being reprimanded for lying. He’s being reprimanded for the way he told the truth”
// The new DOJ report doesn’t say James Comey lied. It reprimands him for the way he exposed the president’s misconduct.
🐣 RT @glennkirschner2 If one political party absolves the other of criminal wrongdoing after the power shifts in 2020, then I fear all hope of true government reform will be dead. Losing power should not serve as a bar to being held accountable for the crimes you committed while in power.
CommonDreams, Jake Johnson: ‘Naked Attack on the Free Press’: Trump Allies Reportedly Raising $2 Million for Campaign to Discredit Journalists http://bit.ly/2lxIfwq
// “Intimidating reporters to influence coverage is a tactic of dictators and has no place here,” said Sen. Jeff Merkley
🐣 RT @CheriJacobus Team Trump is now targeting me, targeting the celeb readers of “America Reads The Mueller Report” and are VERY nervous that the folks Putin and Parscale misinformed might learn what’s actually in The Mueller Report as we raise money to air this on local TV stations everywhere.
🐣 RT @CheriJacobus I mean, come on — the spokesthug for Trump’s evil spawn out of the blue started attacking one of the celeb readers for “America Reads The Mueller Report” — Team Trump is terrified that Americans will learn what the Report actually says and that Barr, Hannity, Rush lied to them
🐣 RT @CheriJacobus I’m just spitballin’ here, but do you think it’s possible that Arthur Schwartz, the spokesperson for Don Jr., is trying to silence me because if this? Not sure why they would fear direct excerpts from a government report with no political commentary, no spin — just the facts.
🐣 RT @CheriJacobus Arthur told me Cohen &Stone used to tweet for Trump after a certain hour at night (pre-campaign). When discussing that Trump used to keep a copy of a book of Hitler speeches at his bedside, Arthur told me Trump didn’t just read it, but made notes in the margins. @DonaldJTrumpJr https://twitter.com/CheriJacobus/status/1168914481398865927?s=20
⋙ 🐣 RT @CheriJacobus Arthur told me all about Henry Greenberg’s role in taking down @EliotSpitzer. So much for keeping confidences of even his boss/clients. Keep that in mind, @DonaldJTrumpJr. ⇇ ⇊ Schwartz is DonJr’s spokesperson
⋙ ⋙ 🐣 RT @ArthurSchwartz [Reply also to Rucker] ]Yes. I won’t disclose things that I’m told by other people in confidence. Unlike Rucker, who promises sources that he will keep things to himself and then burns them.
⋙⋙ 🐣 RT @EdSayGo [Reply also to @EliotSpitzer] When we were still “friends” he told me the Trump Admin was a “shitshow” and no one in the White House knew what they were doing. He also shared in those early days that KellyAnne Conway spent a lot of time crying at her desk. That was nice to hear…
🐣 RT @AshaRangappa_ Rod Rosenstein is really not that enigmatic or complicated. He is simply a weak character whose moral compass is outweighed by his instinct for self-preservation and need for belonging, and he’s therefore susceptible to stronger forces around him in service of those goals 1/ 📌 https://twitter.com/AshaRangappa_/status/1168910610131836934?s=20
// also: 🐣 RT @harrylitman
WaPo, Stephanie Miller: Why is the Russian meddling in 2016 such a big secret? I’m not allowed to say. http://wapo.st/2kt3uzd Stephanie Murphy, a Democrat, represents Florida’s 7th Congressional District
🐣 RT @DavidCornDC Damn, the Trump Lying Machine™ just doesn’t stop. What he says about the IG report & the Mueller report isn’t true at all. These assertions have been disproven, discredited, and debunked. Yet he keeps spewing them. He’s a Prevaricating Parrot™ who believes his fans are suckers.
⋙ 🐣 RT @real Based on the IG Report, the whole Witch Hunt against me and my administration was a giant and illegal SCAM. The House of Representatives should now get back to work on drug prices, healthcare, infrastructure and all else. The Mueller Report showed No Collusion, No Obstruction!
DefenseNews: US lawmakers press Trump to release aid for Ukraine to fight Russia http://bit.ly/2khUCg3
MotherJones, David Corn: How to Stop Russia From Attacking and Influencing the 2020 Election http://bit.ly/2lulv0v
// A new report offers a roadmap. If only Trump gave a damn.
↥ ↧
💙💙📔 CAP: James Lamond and Talia Dessel: Democratic Resilience ~ A Comparative Review of Russian Interference in Democratic Elections and Lessons Learned for Securing Future Elections http://ampr.gs/2kqq2AE
🐣 RT @AndreaChalup Who helped prop-up the destructive far-right nationalist Bolsonaro?
Steve Bannon
Who does Bolsonaro’s younger son work with to organize far-right nationalists in Latin American countries?
Steve Bannon
🐣 RT @SenRobPortman As the co-chair of the Senate #Ukraine Caucus, I joined @SenatorShaheen & my fellow co-chair @SenatorDurbin, along w/ @SenBlumenthal & @SenRonJohnson in sending a letter to @MickMulvaneyOMB urging the admin to release $250M in authorized military security assistance for #Ukraine.
NYT, Michael Khodarkovsky: Putin’s Nightmare: The Ballot Box http://nyti.ms/2lXChFr
// On the eve of regional elections, the Kremlin has turned to tricks, threats and shows of force to get past the shadows of protests and falling approval ratings for Russia’s president.
🐣 RT @GovHowardDean This is the biggest danger of many from a trump presidency. He has no ability to defend American interests or democracy because of his crippling psychiatric disorders.
⋙ 🐣 RT @MarkHertling Today in international affairs:
-NKorea “advancing missile arsenal” (below)
-ISIS “regenerating” in Syria/Iraq
-China beating protesters
-Russians kill more in Donbas;VP indicates less support to Ukraine
-Taliban gain “upper hand” in Afghan negotiations
⋙⋙ NYT: North Korea Missile Tests, ‘Very Standard’ to Trump, Show Signs of Advancing Arsenal http://nyti.ms/2lXQl1J
Politico, Kyle Ferris and Sarah Ferris: Democrats’ messy impeachment push hits critical phase http://politi.co/2kfqqCh
// The window to impeach Trump is closing, and senior lawmakers are sending mixed messages.
DailyBeast, David Lurie: It’s Not Over: Trump Is Stalked by Investigations He Tried to Stonewall http://bit.ly/2k1AkY0
// Fall is here. Congress is back. The president isn’t out of trouble. A look at the post-Mueller probes.
⭕ 2 Sep 2019
🐣 RT @benjaminwittes Memo to @RodRosenstein: Stop. You’re embarrassing yourself.
🐣 RT @benjaminwittes Further memo to @RodRosenstein: If you have a story to tell, tell it. If you want to defend your tenure, by all means do so. But cut the faux-Delphic speaking in platitudes. Cut the advice about how to read. And stop cloaking yourself in the traditions of the department. It’s old
🐣 RT @benjaminwittes Further memo to @RodRosenstein: if you want to have a serious conversation about your time in office, to give your thoughts and reflections on it and answer questions about it, you are welcome any time and at any length as my guest on the Lawfare Podcast.
WaPo: Pence critical of Russia — days after Trump advocates inclusion at next G-7 summit http://wapo.st/2kcuSBH
🐣 RT @repcohen I’m pleased that 135 @HouseDemocrats support an impeachment inquiry, but we’re beyond the stage of simply having an inquiry. There’s no question he’s violated the #Constitution & committed innumerable impeachable offenses and he should be impeached. It’s time for action. 💽 https://twitter.com/RepCohen/status/1168545631394258944?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @kenvogel NEW FILING: Oleg DERIPASKA urges a judge to overturn sanctions against him because he says @USTreasury failed to establish that he acted as PUTIN’s agent, & also because Russia’s election interference & other activity doesn’t constitute a nat’l emergency. http://bit.ly/2lWZjwh
Newsweek, David Brennan: Russia Condemns U.S. ‘Provocation’ of Iran As ‘Absolutely Unacceptable’ As Nations Build Front Against Trump http://bit.ly/2kfsTfZ
DailyBeast, Anna Nemetsova and Christopher Dickey: The CAR Murders: A Critical Cold Case in the New Cold War Points to ‘Putin’s Chef’ Yevgeny Prigozhin http://bit.ly/2jUHr4f
// Evidence mounts that shows three Russian journalists investigating the mysterious Wagner mercenaries in Africa were set up by some of the same people who attacked U.S. elections.
🐣 RT @MarkHartling Russia knows it, Ukraine knows it, all of Europe and our other allies know it, and all Americans – except about 37% of us who don’t know enough to admit it – know it.
⋙ 🐣 RT @JuliaDavisNews #Russia’s state TV says “Donald Trump lied to everyone, as we’ve been predicting,” when he used the excuse of watching a hurricane to avoid meeting the President of #Ukraine, Volodymyr Zelenskyy. “In reality, Trump was just casually golfing — what else was there for him to do?”
🐣 RT @McFaul Wow. Exactly what Putin wants to hear. (Deleting my earlier tweet that is was better to have Pence than Trump in Warsaw)
🐣 RT @kasparov63 I’d say Putin would be happy to hear this if Putin hadn’t written it.
🐣 RT @GovHowardDean Right on schedule with Putin’s agenda.
⋙ 🐣 RT @JuliaDavisNews Pence delivers Trump’s message: The US has “carried the load” on #Ukraine, “but we believe it’s time for our European partners to step forward” and the U.S. still has “great concerns” about corruption in Ukraine. Translation: Say goodbye to U.S. aid
⋙⋙ Bloomberg: Time for Europe to Do More to Help Ukraine, U.S’s Pence Says http://bloom.bg/2lQW9da
⭕ 1 Sep 2019
🐣 RT @MSNBC “Is the IG really saying – and I think by the way that he is really saying – that if you are a law enforcement officer who’s a witness to potentially criminal activity, you got to shut up?” – Lawfare’s Ben Wittes on the DOJ report on James Comey
⋙ MSNBC, MTPDaily: IG report has ‘anger’ directed at Comey over memos http://on.msnbc.com/2jU2LqI
// 8/29/2019
HollywoodReporter: ‘Citizen K’ Director Sees Film of Putin’s Russia as “Cautionary Tale” for Trump’s America http://bit.ly/2jNzqOu
// ‘This is a cautionary tale for what’s happening in America right now,” says director Alex Gibney about his scalding portrait of the fall of dissident exiled oligarch Mikhail Khodorkovsky and the power politics of Vladimir Putin’s Russia.
🐣 RT @ARVershbow OK, but will @realDonaldTrump unblock the $250 billion in military aid, and stop defending #Putin’s ongoing aggression?
⋙ 🐣 RT @Reuters Pence says U.S. will continue to support Ukraine https://reut.rs/2ZBpCdh
NPR, Philip Ewing: What You Need To Know About Foreign Interference And The 2020 Election http://n.pr/2jPgzmc
⭕ 31 Aug 2019
NYT/Reuters: Poland Wants Sanctions Against Russia Over Crimea to Continue http://nyti.ms/32j5BpK
TheGuardian, Sabrina Siddiqui: Washington’s great mystery: Trump’s affinity for Putin and populists baffles experts http://bit.ly/2ZD7XlB
// President’s approach to foreign policy, from defending his Russian counterpart to supporting Bolsonaro after he rejected aid, has experts sounding alarms
⭕ 30 Aug 2019
TheTimes [UK]: Russia offers Iran sanctions-free oil route to Turkey and Syria http://bit.ly/2jRc2Qa
WaPo: Trump’s pardon offer may have violated federal bribery laws http://wapo.st/2lmVgst
🐣 RT @WaltShaub The appearance of a link between Trump’s threat to block aid to Ukraine and Trump’s attorney demanding that Ukraine investigate his political rival is a red alarm. If the link can be proven, it’s an impeachable abuse of power. It must be investigated.
⋙ CNN: Trump seriously considering blocking $250M in military aid to Ukraine http://cnn.it/2HC2aCD
WaPo, John Wagner: Trump says he should be ‘given our stolen time back’ after release of Comey report http://wapo.st/30Ot81p
Law&Crime: Harvard Law Prof Declares Trump Is Both a ‘Russian Asset and an Idiot’ http://bit.ly/2LbCHC3 “Of course he’s both,” Lawrence Tribe said. “Trump has been a Russian asset AND an idiot, how useful is unclear, from the beginning.”
NewCivilRightsMovement, David Badash: ‘We Have a Russian Asset Sitting in the Oval Office’ Says Former Senior DOJ Official http://bit.ly/30Os9OL Glenn Carle, a former CIA operative: “no question” in his mind that the president is behaving like “a spy for the Russians.”
LATimes, David Myers: Opinion: Trump’s silence on Kashmir sends a dangerous signal to the world’s autocratic leaders http://lat.ms/2HBhdMG Muslims “represent a constant irritant and threat to the Hindu nationalists of Modi’s BJP, who aspire to achieve ethnic purity in India”
TIME, Simon Shuster: Ukraine Is Struggling to Make Sense of Trump and Bolton’s Conflicting Messages on Russia http://bit.ly/2ZqRsKj
🐣 RT @brianklaas How is it possible that Trump being named as Individual-1—someone who literally directed a criminal conspiracy, a conspiracy that his lawyer is serving jail time for carrying out—has had no discernible consequences at all? It’s not contested. We have physical evidence, too.
🐣 RT @WarOnTheRocks Greenland is once again becoming a crucial issue on the American security agenda and it’s time for the U.S. to secure its position on the island. That doesn’t mean owning it.
⋙ WarOnTheRocks, Jon Rahbek-Clemmensen: Let’s (Not) Make a Deal: Geopolitics and Greenland http://bit.ly/2ZDU9Y0
// 8/28/2019
RollingStone, Ryan Bort: Why Is Trump Considering Blocking Military Aid to Ukraine? http://bit.ly/2NCsUqu
// We’re not saying it’s not because of Vladimir Putin
ForeignAffairs, Gideon Rose: Autocracy Now ~ Profiles of the New Strongmen http://fam.ag/30MBQ03
// Sep-Oct. 2019 issue
RFE/RL: Tensions Along Disputed Georgia-South Ossetia Boundary Lead To Calls For Restraint http://bit.ly/2Ld2NF1
Salon, Igor Derysh: After ignoring climate at G7, Trump gets back to work killing the planet http://bit.ly/34czABw
// Trump belittled the climate crisis in Biarritz. Now he’s back at his real job: Gutting regulations, smoochin’ Putin
Newsweek: Russian Official Praises Trump for Delaying Military Aid to Ukraine, Argues Americans Care About ‘Own Wellbeing,’ Not ‘Hegemonic Ambitions’ http://bit.ly/2PnZtuz
WaPo, Aaron Blake: Comey IG report exposes the hypocrisy of the ‘Russia hoax’ crowd http://wapo.st/2ZuJKif
Salon, Heather Digby Parton: James Comey has been cleared (mostly). But Republicans’ ruthless power grab continues http://bit.ly/32kHozw
// Former FBI director’s tangled saga is now over — but Republicans still yearn for hearings and show trials
🐣 RT @realDonaldTrump The disastrous IG Report on James Comey shows, in the strongest of terms, how unfairly I, and tens of millions of great people who support me, were treated. Our rights and liberties were illegally stripped away by this dishonest fool. We should be given our stolen time back?
🐣 RT @real The fact that James Comey was not prosecuted for the absolutely horrible things he did just shows how fair and reasonable Attorney General Bill Barr is. So many people and experts that I have watched and read would have taken an entirely different course. Comey got Lucky!
🐣 RT @real Bryan Dean Wright, former CIA Officer(Dem): “In 2016 we had a Coup. We have to take Comey and others to task. Makes no sense not to prosecute him. Comey got a book deal. I fear for my Country. He tried to kneecap our duly elected president, and there are no consequences.” @fox
🐣 RT @Comey And to all those who’ve spent two years talking about me “going to jail” or being a “liar and a leaker”—ask yourselves why you still trust people who gave you bad info for so long, including the president.
🐣 RT @BarbMcQuade DOJ concluded no criminal charges against Comey, IG found policy violations. Like the man who breaks into a house to save his family from a storm, @Comey may have broken FBI rules, but his actions were justified. My thoughts at @NBCNews.
⋙ NBCNews, Barbara McQuade: Comey says the DOJ IG report vindicates him. Trump says he’s ‘horrible.’ So who’s right? http://nbcnews.to/2NGiXbu
// Reasonable minds can disagree about the official status of Comey’s memos. But even if the IG report is correct, it seems to miss the big picture.
🐣 RT @BarbMcQuade DOJ decision not to charge @Comey is no surprise. OIG report shows his memos were classified retroactively, negating any willful violation of the law at the time of disclosure. And no evidence of intent to harm the national security of the United States. Quite the opposite.
🐣 RT @sinanaral published our paper in @sciencemagazine on “Protecting Elections from Social Media Manipulation.”: https://bit.ly/2L7gMw9 1/
📌 [Thread:] https://twitter.com/sinanaral/status/1167142057724563456?s=20
⋙ ScienceMag, Sinan Aral and Dean Eckles (MIT): Protecting elections from social media manipulation http://bit.ly/32qdRV9
Summary: To what extent are democratic elections vulnerable to social media manipulation? The fractured state of research and evidence on this most important question facing democracy is reflected in the range of disagreement among experts. Facebook chief executive officer Mark Zuckerberg has repeatedly called on the U.S. government to regulate election manipulation through social media. But we cannot manage what we do not measure. Without an organized research agenda that informs policy, democracies will remain vulnerable to foreign and domestic attacks. Thankfully, social media’s effects are, in our view, eminently measurable. Here, we advocate a research agenda for measuring social media manipulation of elections, highlight underutilized approaches to rigorous causal inference, and discuss political, legal, and ethical implications of undertaking such analysis. Consideration of this research agenda illuminates the need to overcome important trade-offs for public and corporate policy—for example, between election integrity and privacy. We have promising research tools, but they have not been applied to election manipulation, mainly because of a lack of access to data and lack of cooperation from the platforms (driven in part by public policy and political constraints).
🐣 RT @tribelaw .@JRubinBlogger says “We have no deus ex machina — not Mattis, not Mueller, not the 25th Amendment and not impeachment.” ¤ But why NOT impeachment? I refuse to accept that we are so constitutionally impotent. If we are, it’s our own doing.
⋙ 🐣 RT @JRubinBlogger We have no deus ex machina — not Mattis, not Mueller, not the 25th Amendment and not impeachment. We have “only” our democracy. If we cannot collectively figure out how to motivate people to vote Trump out, we might be incapable of rational self-governance
⋙⋙ WaPo, Jennifer Rubin: Jim Mattis’s dilemma is our problem http://wapo.st/2UmGXls
🐣 RT @tribelaw I know that as well as anyone, @JRubinBlogger. You know I do. But assuming impeachment is pointless or inevitably counterproductive unless it leads to removal — even though it’s clearly the right thing to do — is just too defeatist and morally compromising for me to live with.
⋙ 🐣 RT @JRubinBlogger we can impeach, we cannot remove absent a R morality and spine transplant
⋙⋙ 🐣 If Trump is not impeached – given his egregious high crimes and misdemeanors – no president will ever be impeached again. It would be the ultimate abdication of Congressional power. At the very least, a vigorous investigation must be well underway come Election Day.
WaPo: Trump says he should be ‘given our stolen time back’ after release of Comey report http://wapo.st/2ZCf39Z
// It was not immediately clear what Trump meant, but in May he shared a tweet by a supporter that said he should have two years added to his term as compensation for having endured the investigation of special counsel Robert S. Mueller III into possible coordination between Trump’s campaign and Russia.
🐣 RT @KevinDrum “By definition, leaking is against government policy…But surely Comey’s act was more whistleblowing than leaking? It exposed clear wrongdoing on the president’s part. No classified information was put at risk and no investigations were compromised.”
⋙ MotherJones, Kevin Drum: Is James Comey a Leaker or a Whistleblower? http://bit.ly/2HzJAeo
WaPo: Longtime lobbyist and former congressman Vin Weber resigns from consulting firm http://wapo.st/2HALeMJ “Weber’s resignation is the latest turn in a drama that has engulfed several top Washington figures as a result of special counsel Robert S. Mueller III’s investigation.”
// As part of that probe, Mueller charged former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort with lobbying violations related to work he did in Ukraine.
WaPo, Aaron Blake: Fox News’s commendable — and necessary — rebuke of Trump’s demand for sycophancy http://wapo.st/2Lnm1X8
🐣 RT @WarOnTheRocks New Net Assessment with @profmarlowe, @ConsWahoo, and @capreble: Trade conflicts can be hard to win. Does the U.S. have a trade policy strategy for success? Or is the president simply venting frustration through erratic policies? What’s the endgame?
⋙ WarOnTheRocks: Does Trump’s Trade War Spell the End of the Global Order? http://bit.ly/ by Melanie Marlowe, Bryan McGratg and Christopher Preble
🐣 RT @BillKristol ”National conservatism is against the primacy of individual liberty….But what is national conservatism for? It is anti-immigration and anti-trade, along with pro-industrial policy and social homogenization, administered by a powerful central government.”
⋙ TheBulwark, Thomas Firey: Departing the Shining City http://bit.ly/2MSRuUD
// Michael Anton’s “Flight 93 Election” wasn’t just a call to oppose Hillary Clinton; it was a full-throated rejection of Goldwater–Reagan conservatism.
⭕ 29 Aug 2019
WaPo, Eric Wemple: Sean Hannity and John Solomon slimed James Comey. Will they admit it? http://wapo.st/2L6Dep0
🐣 RT @AlexandraChalup Russian Ambassador Antonov is on the sanctions list of Canada and the EU for his role in Russian troops invading Ukraine and the illegal annexation of Ukraine’s Crimea. ¤ Putin’s war in Ukraine continues while Trump delays military aid to help Ukraine.
⋙ BusinessInsider: Meet Anatoly Antonov, Russia’s newest ambassador to the US http://bit.ly/2L7tE5k
// 8/21/2019
WaPo, Jennifer Rubin: The DOJ’s inspector general buries the real news http://wapo.st/2Zp0F5R
That finding is buried in the Trump-Barr cloud of spin, which looks at whether Comey, in attempting to document gross misconduct by the president of the United States, did not follow department procedure. Former federal prosecutor Joyce White Vance tells me, “This debunks the myth from the right that Comey would be prosecuted for his actions. The conclusion of the report questions the ethics of his conduct, but not its legality.”
🐣 RT @Steven_Strauss Thread, anyone know why the OIG is not investigating this?
📌 https://twitter.com/Steven_Strauss/status/1167086140610007041?s=20
⋙ 🐣 RT @nycsouthpaw (2018) According to the testimony of the Attorney General in the IG report, nine days before the election she and the FBI Director discussed how a “deep and visceral hatred of Secretary Clinton” by a cadre of senior NY FBI agents “has put us where we are today” w/r/t the Weiner laptop. https://twitter.com/nycsouthpaw/status/1008032109183856640?s=20/photo/1
NYT/Reuters: Liberal U.S. House Democrat Urges Trump Impeachment Decision by Year-End http://nyti.ms/34azDxw Ro Khanna (D-CA) is vice chair of the 98-member Congressional Progressive Caucus
Slate, Dahlia Lithwick: Let’s Compare Donald Trump’s Week to the Impeachment Articles Brought Against Nixon, Clinton, and Johnson http://bit.ly/2L6RwpO
// Forget what you think “high crimes and misdemeanors” means and consider what we’ve impeached presidents for in the past.
🐣 RT @Mimirocah1 “A huge fire had broken out, and Horowitz is now castigating Comey for using a noncompliant fire extinguisher.” Can’t say it better than my friend @harrylitman does here.
⋙ WaPo, Harry Litman: James Comey helped save democracy when he wrote his memos http://wapo.st/2HySmJo
Slate, Jeremy Stahl: Inspector General Report Reveals Charges Against James Comey To Be Mind-Numbingly Stupid http://bit.ly/2HwePXS
🐣 RT @JoyceVanceWhite The only good thing to come out of this administration is @RandyRainbow. Do yourself a favor & stop whatever you’re doing to listen.
💽 https://twitter.com/JoyceWhiteVance/status/1167237204848103426?s=20/photo/1
⋙💙💙 🐣 RT @RandyRainbow 🎶Cheeto Christ…Cheeto Christ…He’s like if Jesus were pumpkin-spiced…🎶🙌 #CheetoChrist #StupidCzar #TheChosenOne
💽 https://twitter.com/RandyRainbow/status/1167130654561185792?s=20/photo/1
Politico: Mattis says he owes Trump silence, but won’t keep quiet ‘forever’ http://politi.co/34bKkzW
Politico: DOJ watchdog finds Comey violated policies with private memos about Trump http://politi.co/2NLpxgK by Josh Gerstein, Natasha Bertrand and Andrew Desiderio
🐣 RT @tribelaw The IG report clears Comey of leaking classified info and of lawbreaking but dumps on Comey for blowing the whistle on Trump’s obstruction of justice, reflecting the IG’s frankly bizarre moral compass. This analysis lays it out clearly and fairly
⋙ Lawfare, Benjamin Wittes: What that Comey Email Report Really Says http://bit.ly/349ZaqP
MSNBC, Hardball: Atlantic: Mattis found Trump to be of ‘limited cognitive ability, dubious behavior’ http://on.msnbc.com/32cdHAl
// Retired four-star General and former Secretary of Defense James Mattis is breaking his silence and sharing some of his thoughts on the Trump administration.
KyivPost, Askold Krushelnycky [UKR]: Trump is one big headache for Ukraine http://bit.ly/2MKmNRb
WaPo, Aaron Blake: New IG report rebukes Comey — and debunks Trump http://wapo.st/2ZCVnmc
WaPo, Judy Dempsey: The unfulfilled promise of the revolutions of 1989 http://wapo.st/2ZxtFn6 “The reunification of Europe after 1989 was one of the great achievements of the post-1945 era”
WashingtonExaminer: Graham open to putting Obama under oath in probe into Russia investigation origins http://washex.am/2Hv4Ul1 “I’d like to know what President Obama thought about the investigation” – Senator Lindsey Graham (R-SC)
🐣 RT @JuliaDavisNews Kremlin-controlled media reacted to Trump’s G7 performance with laughter and mockery. ¤ One anchor rejoiced that “Trump is dancing to Putin’s tune,” while others were amused by the “maniacal persistence” with which Trump was lobbying for Russia.
🐣 RT @JuliaDavisNews Current and former spies are floored by President Donald Trump’s fervent defense of #Russia at this year’s #G7 summit in Biarritz, France. They say Trump’s performance suggests he’s either a ‘Russian asset’ or a ‘useful idiot’ for Putin
// Note: Julia Davis watches Russian media and translates it from Russian to English
⋙ BusinessInsider, Sonam Sheth: US spies say Trump’s G7 performance suggests he’s either a ‘Russian asset’ or a ‘useful idiot’ for Putin http://bit.ly/2LiRHgm
CNBC: US intel report says mysterious Russian explosion was triggered by recovery mission of nuclear-powered missile, not a test http://cnb.cx/2HxCN4V
🐣 RT @Comey And to all those who’ve spent two years talking about me “going to jail” or being a “liar and a leaker”—ask yourselves why you still trust people who gave you bad info for so long, including the president.
🐣 RT @Comey DOJ IG “found no evidence that Comey or his attorneys released any of the classified information contained in any of the memos to members of the media.” I don’t need a public apology from those who defamed me, but a quick message with a “sorry we lied about you” would be nice.
🐣 RT @TheBeatWithAri “Comey did not leak classified information. Period. Anything to the contrary, that you’re hearing, is a lie. I think there is a broader issue here, what was the FBI director to do when he thinks the President is corrupted and obstructing?” -@FrankFigliuzzi1 on DOJ’s findings 💽 https://twitter.com/TheBeatWithAri/status/1167205572845940736?s=20/photo/1
🐣💽 RT @TheHill WATCH: Kremlin-backed TV runs mashup of Trump singing “Señorita” to Putin http://hill.cm/9b9wJ4a
🐣 RT @ABCPolitics James Mattis reflects on his resignation as defense secretary and warns against the current state of American politics: “When my concrete solutions and strategic advice, especially keeping faith with our allies, no longer resonated, it was time to resign”
⋙ ABCNews: ‘I did as well as I could for as long as I could’: Trump’s former defense secretary http://abcn.ws/30Hb1u9
TheAtlantic, Jeffrey Goldberg: The Man Who Couldn’t Take It Anymore http://bit.ly/2ZwWkNc
// Oct Issue; “I had no choice but to leave,” General James Mattis says of his decision to resign as President Trump’s secretary of defense.
DailyBeast, Molly Jong-Fast: The Five Distinct Levels of Donald Trump Ass-Kissing, Explained http://bit.ly/2ztTo5c
// They may all look the same to you, but in fact, there are subtle differences in the types of Trump brown-nosing. Dante helps explain it all.
DailyBeast, Barbara McQuade: Trump Is Joking When He Asks People to Break the Law? Tell That to the Russians. http://bit.ly/2Uc5Ik8
// The White House says the president wasn’t serious when he told subordinates it’s OK to commit crimes to ‘build the wall.’ Recent history shows someone may take him seriously.
⭕ 28 Aug 2019
NYMag, Adam Raymond: Mattis Criticizes American Isolationism, Divisiveness Without Using Trump’s Name http://nym.ag/2NDAHV1
MSNBC, KaryTur: Former Defense Secretary Jim Mattis issues a warning to the President http://on.msnbc.com/2Zzieem
// Four star general and NBC News military analyst Barry McCaffrey joins MSNBC’s Chris Jansing to discuss the former Defense Secretary’s excerpt from his forthcoming book, and what his warning could signal from a defense perspective.
NYT: Afghan Forces Still Unable to Counter Violence Alone, Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Says http://nyti.ms/3495LBP “During a rare news conference at the Pentagon, Gen Joseph F Dunford Jr, the chairman of [JCS], said he was not ready to use terms like ‘withdrawal’…”
Newsweek: Donald Trump ‘Extremely Nervous’ About Tax Returns, Says Nixon’s White House Counsel: ‘There Could Be a Lot of Trouble’ http://bit.ly/2ZoJVvw
// John Dean
NationalInterest, Hunter DeRensis: How Russia and Iran Dominated the G7 Summit http://bit.ly/30Gx2cA
// Despite not being invited as official participants, Russia and Iran were front and center in the G7 summit discussions.
Brookings, John Hudak: Trump, the G7 and the perception of being Putin’s puppet http://brook.gs/2zyPbgp
💙💙 🔊 PlayerFM: Best Trump Russia Investigation Podcasts (2019) http://bit.ly/2MKbtV8 //➔ list is overly inclusive, but no omissions. My favorites: @MuellerSheWrote is very detailed and entertaining; The Asset tells the story best; Lawfare (selected episodes) is most professional
NewYorker, Adam Gopnik: Another Look at Impeachment, at the End of a Long Summer http://bit.ly/2L1l2gv “The principled case, now and then, is summed up in three words: Trump’s a crook.”
🐣 RT @SethAbramson Don’t underestimate how much of a sign of *total meltdown* it is that Trump is urging his 64 million Twitter followers to permanently abandon Fox News ¤ It’s a bridge he’s never crossed—and he’s crossing it hours after news broke that he secretly has Russian cosigners on his loans
ABCNews: Trump’s secretive intelligence advisory board takes shape with security pros and GOP donors http://abcn.ws/34alv7G
EmptyWheel, Marcy Wheeler: Glenn Greenwald and David Frum Need to Stop Looking to the Mueller Report for FBI’s Counterintelligence Conclusions http://bit.ly/2L1BixV
💙💙 ModernDiplomacy, Louis René Beres [EU]: “Whisperings of the Irrational”: Core Origins of America’s Trump Decline http://bit.ly/2Pk6ddf
DailyBeast: Senator Ron Johnson (R-WI) Tried to Make Nice With Russia. It Shut Him Out. http://bit.ly/2Ue9Gsg by Betsy Woodruff, Erin Banco and Sam Brodey
// Ron Johnson was working to set up talks with members of the Russian government before he was denied entry into the country.
🐣 RT @TheBeatWithAri .@AymanM: does Trump have any right to do anything through executive action on the topic of birthright citizenship?
Former Acting Solicitor General @neal_katyal: “Zero. Trump only talks about this when his poll numbers are going down and when he’s scared.” 💽 https://twitter.com/TheBeatWithAri/status/1166852669367050241?s=20/photo/1
Axios: House Judiciary Committee to investigate Trump’s 2020 G7 hosting plan http://bit.ly/2ZoaaSN
MMFA, Matt Gertz: The Trump campaign is crediting Hannity with launching a DOJ investigation into the Obama administration, and they’re probably right http://bit.ly/2L2hZos
WaPo, Jennifer Rubin: Trump deserves impeachment quite apart from the Mueller report http://wapo.st/2L1ag9P
Newsweek: Donald Trump Is ‘Playing Lapdog’ to Putin and Has ‘Consistently Refused to Take on Russia,’ Senator Jeff Merkley Says: ‘It’s Pretty Horrific’ http://bit.ly/32dqGBI
🐣 RT @RepAdamSchiff Trump is withholding vital military aid to Ukraine, while his personal lawyer seeks help from the Ukraine government to investigate his political opponent. ¤ It doesn’t take a stable genius to see the magnitude of this conflict. ¤ Or how destructive it is to our national security.
⋙ 🐣 RT @NatashaBertrand BREAKING: Trump has asked his national security team to review funding for Ukraine, to ensure the money is being used “in the best interests” of the US. The funding has been put on hold. ¤ News comes days after Trump advocated for reinstating Russia to G7.
⋙⋙ Politico: Trump slow-walks Ukraine military aid meant to contain Russia http://politi.co/328t0do
NYT: The Trump Secrets Hiding Inside Deutsche Bank http://nyti.ms/2ZvRGL9
// The president’s longtime lender has extensive documents related to Mr. Trump’s personal and business finances. Here’s what they could reveal.
🐣 RT @Lawrence Last night I made an error in judgment by reporting an item about the president’s finances that didn’t go through our rigorous verification and standards process. I shouldn’t have reported it and I was wrong to discuss it on the air. I will address the issue on my show tonight.
Law&Crime: Potential Trump Lawsuit Against Lawrence O’Donnell Could ‘Backfire’ by Making Deutsche Bank Docs Part of Discovery http://bit.ly/2zunhm0
CNN: MSNBC host Lawrence O’Donnell says he was ‘wrong’ to report thinly-sourced Trump finances story http://cnn.it/2zDUZpj
CNN, Stephen Collinson: Trump’s invitation to Putin would abandon one of America’s greatest achievements http://cnn.it/2LaeZoI
TheHill: Trump lawyer demands MSNBC retract report alleging banking ties to Russian oligarchs http://bit.ly/2PjvB2I
Separately: https://twitter.com/kim/status/1166799324220551169?s=20/photo/1-2
The White House on Wednesday condemned the MSNBC report. ¤ “This is one of the reasons that a majority of Americans have lost trust in the media,” White House press secretary Stephanie Grisham told Fox News media reporter Brian Flood. “Instead of applying ethics and standards to their reporting, journalists and left-wing outlets have weaponized the media, using it to attack and harass people with little to no regard for the truth.”
The details of O’Donnell’s report have not been verified by NBC News, according to a tweet by MSNBC “Morning Joe” producer Mike Del Moro.
⋙ 🐣 RT @MikeDelMoro Deutsche Bank is declining to comment on Lawrence O’Donnell’s reporting that Russian oligarch’s co-signed Trump’s loans. The information came from a single source who has not seen the bank records. NBC has not seen those records and has not yet been able to verify the reporting.
⭕ 27 Aug 2019
TheGuardian, Suketu Mehta: Immigration panic: how the west fell for manufactured rage http://bit.ly/2kaQ9vA
// From Trump to Orbán, politicians are winning votes by stoking age-old hatreds. Where does this fear of migrants come from?
WSJ: Democrats’ Emerging Tax Idea: Look Beyond Income, Target Wealth http://on.wsj.com/2Hwc0WC
// Lawmakers and 2020 candidates offer a range of options focused on capturing some of the trillions of dollars in assets belonging to the nation’s richest
🐣 RT @1_aurelius From the reaction Justice Kennedy has seems like #IndividualOne told him he needed #RussianCosigners to get the loan from #DeutscheBankLoans
💽 https://twitter.com/1_aurelius/status/1166654916267409408?s=20/photo/1
// Justice Kennedy stops dead in his tracks talking to Trump
WaPo: Putin’s power depends on his popularity. That makes him vulnerable. http://wapo.st/2MHeSEd
// Public opinion plays a bigger role in Russian politics than most people think
🐣 RT @SethAbramson I believe things are coming that can’t be ignored. ¤ By anyone.
🐣 RT @DavidKayeJ Single source report tonight by @Lawrence, when I was his opening guest, of Russian co-signers on Trump’s Deutsche Bank loans fits w/ what I’ve been saying for years. ¤ Judge should review loan docs in chambers. If true, judge can – and should – put in public record ASAP.
NBCNews (5/19): Deutsche Bank employees reportedly flagged suspicious transactions involving Trump and Kushner http://nbcnews.to/2ZnJbGT
// Tammy McFadden, a former Deutsche Bank employee, said she reviewed transactions that involved Kushner’s company and Russians in the summer of 2016.
🐣 RT @JoyceWhiteVance To say nothing of unprecedented national security issues, particularly if, as virtually all oligarchs, Trump’s guarantors work hand in hand with the Kremlin. This would explain all of the obvious we’ve seen in Trump’s interactions with Putin & Russia.
⋙ 🐣 RT @TimObrien If what @Lawrence has is on target, there are multiple Russian oligarchs who guaranteed Trump’s loans. At a minimum, that creates a bonfire of ethical — If not legal — issues for the White House:
💽 https://twitter.com/TimOBrien/status/1166554423516172293?s=20
WashingtonExaminer: Lawrence O’Donnell: Source says Russian oligarchs co-signed Trump’s Deutsche Bank loans http://washex.am/32b8DvY
🐣 RT @Comey Tonight, I told a former colleague that I’m tired of being a Trump critic. He responded with encouraging words that apply to all of us: “Where you see wrong or inequality or injustice, speak out, because this is your country.” He’s right. Keep speaking out.
🐣 RT @AnnKatz12 Tax expert David Cay Johnston warns Russian oligarchs may not be the only foreigners co-signing Trump’s loans
⋙ 💙 RawStory, Bob Brigham: Tax expert David Cay Johnston warns Russian oligarchs may not be the only foreigners co-signing Trump’s loans http://bit.ly/2PhFbmu
⋙⋙ 🐣 Johnston has seen Trump’s taxes. With the judges soon getting access to them, is he possibly putting this out there as Lawrence’s source as a warning that the truth is known and to prevent destruction of records or Barr intervening?
DailyMail: How Donald Trump’s campaign manager Brad Parscale went from family bankruptcy to splashing out millions on mansions, condos and luxury cars through his companies that get a hefty cut of the president’s $57M campaign contributions http://dailym.ai/2HuZxCJ
LawFare, Benjamin Wittes: Thoughts on the Impending Prosecution of Andrew McCabe http://bit.ly/2PgGemQ //➔ I’m still hoping someone stands up to Trump on this
In two meetings last week, Mr. McCabe’s lawyers met with the deputy attorney general, Jeffrey A. Rosen, who is expected to be involved in the decision about whether to prosecute, and for more than an hour with the United States attorney for the District of Columbia, Jessie K. Liu, according to a person familiar with the meetings. The person would not detail the discussions, but defense lawyers typically meet with top law enforcement officials to try to persuade them not to indict their client if they failed to get line prosecutors to drop the case.
Let me translate this paragraph for you: Such meetings generally take place when indictment is imminent; they happen when the government plans to bring charges. You should thus expect charges against McCabe to be forthcoming any day. And if such charges don’t happen, that doesn’t mean they weren’t planned but, rather, that some extrinsic event has intervened.
Why is that shocking? Because as best as I can tell, the facts available on the public record simply don’t support such charges. The only visible factor militating in favor of the Justice Department charging McCabe, in fact, is that the department has been on the receiving end of a sustained campaign by President Trump demanding McCabe’s scalp.
🐣💙 RT @GrantStern Deutsche Bank is a pit of law-breaking, corruption and Russian money laundering. ¤ A trusted source close to @SpeakerPelosi told me they might flip on Trump and try cutting a deal for themselves. ¤ Now, @Lawrence reports they’ve given Trump loans with Russian oligarch co-signers.
🚫 RawStory: Deutsche Bank has Trump’s taxes — and loan applications cosigned by Russian oligarchs: report http://bit.ly/2L1AjO8
// single source
🐣 RT @BradMossEsq View the Trump loan bombshell re Russian co-signers with serious skepticism for now. Single source, no other confirmation yet. Wait for more.
🐣 .@Lawrence better be pretty close to correct on this or @msnbc will take a real hit for promoting conspiracy theories. he stresses it’s a single source “close to Deutschebank”
🐣 RT @kurteichenwald Wait…. what?!? If true, @Lawrence just broke the biggest story in years.
⋙ 🐣💙💙 🔆 This❗️⋙ RT @Lawrence A source close to Deutsche Bank says Trump’s tax returns show he pays very little income tax and, more importantly, that his loans have Russian co-signers. ¤ If true, that explains every kind word Trump has ever said about Russia and Putin.
⋙ on his show: “Russian oligarchs close to Putin”
🐣 .@Lawrence just said he has a source who says Trump’s loans from Deutschebank are co-signed by … Russian oligarchs. As @MuellerSheWrote might say ~ “beans”
Politico: Deutsche Bank all but confirms it possesses some of Trump’s tax returns http://politi.co/2MIXwa6
WaPo, Jennifer Rubin: Trump’s subservience to Putin on display http://wapo.st/2PiqvUq
WaPo: Trump advocates for Putin at G-7 summit in move to soften Russia’s pariah status http://wapo.st/2MDQPGo
WaPo, David Von Drehle: What does Trump see in Putin anyway? http://wapo.st/30DFbhT
Newsweek: MSNBC Host: ‘Staggering’ to See Trump Attack Obama to Defend Russia’s Putin ‘On the World Stage’ http://bit.ly/30Ee2f1
MSNBC host Joe Scarborough expressed shock at seeing President Donald Trump attack former President Barack Obama during a press conference at the Group of Seven (G-7) Summit on Monday
Politico, Marianne Levine and Burgess Everett: Senate tangles with Russia after Trump’s overtures to Putin http://politi.co/32bTgDx ‘as the Kremlin bars senators in both parties from visiting, the Democrats urge Trump to keep Russia out of the G-7’
🐣 RT @rice_ricejj Klobuchar had a bill enacted into law today (Family Farmer Relief Act) & one signed in June giving her a new grand total of 35. Im voting for Amy because of her demonstrable ability to get things done,&her leadership capability & her sound approach to solving nations problems
PolitiFact: Donald Trump misleads on Russia, Crimea, Obama and the G-8 http://bit.ly/2ZvFA8J MOSTLY FALSE
⭕ 26 Aug 2019
WhatsNewInPublishing: Behind the scenes of ground-breaking multimedia storytelling: Insider’s illustrated Mueller Report http://bit.ly/323VBAD
WaPo, Aaron Blake: Trump’s bewildering history lesson on Obama and Crimea http://wapo.st/2ZxMMBn “It could have been stopped, it could have been stopped with the right, whatever.” – POTUS
WaPo: Trump advocates for Putin at G-7 summit in move to soften Russia’s pariah status http://wapo.st/2MDQPGo
Mediaite: Shepard Smith Calls Out Trump For Saying Russia Was Bounced From G8 Because Putin Outsmarted Obama: ‘Not True’ http://bit.ly/30D0tfN
💽 MSNBC, MTP Daily: Full Connolly: Impeachment can no longer ‘be ignored’ http://on.msnbc.com/2HqCYic
// Gerry Connolly (D-Va.) joins MTP Daily to discuss the impeachment debate as support grows amongst Democrats.
DailyBeast, Will Sommer: Rudy Giuliani Jumps on the Seth Rich Conspiracy Bandwagon http://bit.ly/2Hs3XKt //➔ debunked in the Mueller Report
// Trump’s lawyer says he’s just pointing to “nagging coincidences,” even though Rich’s family has begged people to stop speculating about their son’s death.
NYT: Prosecutors Near Decision on Whether to Seek an Andrew McCabe Indictment http://nyti.ms/2U8aijl
NYMag, Jonathan Chait: Trump Went to the Mat for Putin at the G-7 Summit http://nym.ag/2ZfHX0e
🐣 RT @HouseJudiciary [Dems] NEW: Today @HouseJudiciary filed a motion to expedite the ruling in the lawsuit to compel former WH Counsel Don McGahn to testify as part of the impeachment investigation into obstruction, corruption + abuse of power by President Trump and his associates. http://bit.ly/2NtwOBY
NEW: Today @HouseJudiciary filed a motion to expedite the ruling in the lawsuit to compel former WH Counsel Don McGahn to testify as part of the impeachment investigation into obstruction, corruption + abuse of power by President Trump and his associates. https://t.co/4Wl4KSN2Cm pic.twitter.com/QzUWqbxO6G
— House Judiciary Dems (@HouseJudiciary) August 27, 2019
🐣 RT @MaddowBlog “Barium-139, barium-140, strontium-91 and lanthanum-140 were found in a cloud of radioactive gases that drifted over the city of Severodvinsk following the Aug. 8 explosion on a nearby offshore platform in the White Sea…”
⋙ Bloomberg: Russia Says Nuclear Isotopes Found After Blast That Killed Five http://bloom.bg/2KWwvxE
● Air tests showed ‘short-lived’ isotopes in radioactive cloud
● Radiation situation stabilized, meteorological service says
DailyBeast, Justin Baragona: Trump at G7 Blames Everybody but Putin for Crimea Annexation http://bit.ly/2PdKqDO
// “President Putin outsmarted President Obama,” Trump declared on Monday while repeating Russian propaganda and blaming his predecessor.
🐣💙 RT @MuellerSheWrote BREAKING: Will Barr force DoJ prosecutors to indict McCabe? According to the NYT, two meetings last week indicate that the DoJ might be thinking about indicting Andrew McCabe. Do you want to know what *I* think happened? Join me for a super space beans thread! /1 📌 https://twitter.com/MuellerSheWrote/status/1166099245004312576?s=20
WaPo: Justice Dept. could be nearing decision on whether to charge Andrew McCabe http://wapo.st/30D9TYq
NYT: Rule 1 at the G7 Meeting? Don’t Get You-Know-Who Mad http://nyti.ms/2ZkfNkC
🐣 RT @moscow_project Trump continues the hard work of advancing Russia’s interests, using Putin’s own rhetoric to minimize Russia’s illegal invasion of Ukraine and argue that Russia shouldn’t face any consequences.
⋙ MoscowProject (Jul): Putin’s Payout: 12 Ways Trump has Supported Putin’s Foreign Policy Agenda http://bit.ly/30BAsxl
// 7/12/2019
⋙ 🐣 RT @atrupar Asked to explain why he supports readmitting Russia to the G8, Trump quickly pivots to attacking Obama. He then says “a certain section of Ukraine … was sort of taken away from President Obama.” He doesn’t have a single negative thing to say about Russia’s illegal invasion. 💽 https://twitter.com/atrupar/status/1166009322637340672?s=20/photo/1 📌 https://twitter.com/atrupar/status/1166009322637340672?s=20
⭕ 25 Aug 2019
🔊 Listen to Bonus Episode: “Felix Sater Unbound” from Skullduggery in Podcasts. https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/skullduggery/id1333621434?i=1000447688142
DailyBeast, Clive Irving: The Russians Have Been Attacking Us For 100 Years but ‘Moscow Mitch’ Still Doesn’t Get It. http://bit.ly/2ZeB3bu
// Two Vladimirs – Lenin and Putin – have given a master class in how to incite violence and chaos in Western democracies. We are just the latest victims.
Newsweek: Trump Says It’s ‘Certainly Possible’ He’d Invite Russia’s Putin to G-7 Next Year After Europe Insists It’d Never Agree http://bit.ly/2ZrNccq
VoiceOfAmerica: Trump at Odds with G-7 Leaders on Trade, Iran, North Korea, Russia http://bit.ly/2U1JXU0
TheGuardian: G7: Trump’s demands for Russia’s readmission cause row in Biarritz http://bit.ly/2ZfU9hJ
// US president argues Putin should be included in discussions on Iran, Syria and North Korea
💙💙 🔆 This❗️⋙ Harper’s, Kevin Baker (Sep Issue): The Deep State of Dementia http://bit.ly/2zpxgIZ //➔ in which 50 years of political disinformation coups flash before very our eyes; masterfully written and alarming
⋙ See under Entire Articles: Harpers Dementia/Disinfo Sep 2019
PostJournal, Rolland Kidder: Hearings Were Mueller Being Mueller http://bit.ly/2ZoJxMK “He sounded like he was back at Paris Island in the Marine Corps. He didn’t want to go to Capitol Hill, but when summoned by subpoena, he obeyed orders and went.”
⭕ 24 Aug 2019
YahooNews, Michael Isikoff: Felix Sater: Trump wanted to reveal my secret CIA, FBI work during the campaign http://yhoo.it/2U37UKI
🐣 RT @deepa_shivaram KAMALA HARRIS spoke on identity politics tonight at the Durham Committee on the Affairs of Black People Gala. She says the term is the new way of saying “race card” ¤ She adds when talking about civil rights issues, it’s brought as a way meant to marginalize, say hush or “shut up”
KAMALA HARRIS spoke on identity politics tonight at the Durham Committee on the Affairs of Black People Gala. She says the term is the new way of saying "race card"
She adds when talking about civil rights issues, it's brought as a way meant to marginalize, say hush or "shut up" pic.twitter.com/4aezlEQbmA
— Deepa Shivaram (@deepa_shivaram) August 25, 2019
TimesArgus: Trumpilton: An American Musical Parody ~ September 27-29, 2019, Poultney VT http://bit.ly/2Zh0OYL //➔ I just KNEW there’d be a musical!
● Text Block: https://twitter.com/Auriandra/status/1165538103022497794?s=20/photo/1
Klami/Holmes Productions presents Trumpilton: An American Musical Parody, a light-hearted, tastefully irreverent musical parody, which takes a look at Trump’s life and his presidency. Improv actor and stand-up comic Michael Kingsbury, as Donald Trump, plays against musical theatre talents Lina Cloffe, Danielle Houston, and Christopher Daniel Restino. This parody features Broadway show tunes, past and present, as sung by a host of characters, including Hillary Clinton, Stormy Daniels, Robert Mueller, Bernie Sanders, Sarah Huckabee Sanders–to name just a few–and of course “you know who” himself. ¤ Come join us! May the political catharsis be with you!
BusinessInsider, Brett Bruen: It’s still way too easy for countries to meddle in America’s elections. Here’s how it will happen in 2020. http://bit.ly/2KSDkjM
TheHill, Adam Levin: Prediction: 2020 election is set to be hacked, if we don’t act fast http://bit.ly/323IShj ⋙ from the DefCon annual hackers’ conference
🐣 RT @BillKristol It feels like a global inflection point. Authoritarianism has unfortunately been gaining ground in free and democratic nations. But autocracies like China, Russia, Venezuela and Iran face real challenges from within. The 2020 election is key not only for the U.S. but the world.
EU: Remarks by EU President Donald Tusk before the G7 summit in Biarritz, France http://bit.ly/2L4OlgU ⋙ Truly tells of the damage Trump has done to the entire world (without ever mentioning him directly)
// liberal democracy, climate (Amazon), trade wars, nuclear proliferation (Iran), inviting Russia back (emphatic no), female empowerment (sexual violence), Brexit
… The last years have shown that it is increasingly difficult for all of us to find common language when the world needs our cooperation more, not less.This may be the last moment to restore our political community. …
1. The defence of liberal democracy, rule of law and human rights, in particular in the context of the revival of nationalisms and new forms of authoritarianism, as well as threats coming from the development of digital technologies (meddling in elections, fake news, using artificial intelligence against citizens and their freedoms).
2. Climate crisis and the protection of natural environment, including forests and oceans. The burning Amazon rainforest has become another depressing sign of our times. … [I]t is hard to imagine a harmonious process of ratification by the European countries as long as the Brazilian government allows for the destruction of the green lungs of Planet Earth. This is about our “to be or not to be.” …
3. Putting a stop to trade wars. Trade deals and the reform of WTO are better than trade wars.Trade wars will lead to recession, while trade deals will boost the economy, not to mention the fact that trade wars among G7 members will lead to eroding the already weakened trust among us.
4. The threat of nuclear proliferation. The rejection of the nuclear deal with Iran by the US hasn’t brought about any positive results, and the divisions in the Western world when it comes to this issue, play into the hands of the Iranian Ayatollahs, as well as Russia and China.
5. Russia’s policy towards its neighbours, especially its aggression against Ukraine. One year ago, in Canada, President Trump suggested reinviting Russia to G7, stating openly that Crimea’s annexation by Russia was partially justified. And that we should accept this fact. Under no condition can we agree with this logic. When it comes to speculations around inviting Russia to the table I would like to say this. First: the reasons why Russia was disinvited in 2014, are still valid. What is more, there are new reasons, such as the Russian provocation on the Azov Sea. Second: when Russia was invited to G7 for the first time, it was believed that it would pursue the path of liberal democracy, rule of law, and human rights. Is there anyone among us, who can say with full conviction, not out of business calculation, that Russia is on that path? …
6. … Last but not least, the EU will contribute an initial 1 million euros to the “International Fund for Survivors of Conflict-Related Sexual Violence” that Nadia Murad and Doctor Denis Mukwege, winners of the 2018 Nobel Peace Prize, will present to G7 leaders tomorrow.
… And I still hope that PM Johnson will not like to go down in history as Mr No Deal. We are willing to listen to ideas that are operational, realistic, and acceptable to all Member States including Ireland, if and when the UK government is ready to put them on the table.
🐣 RT @DefendDemocracy #EU🇪🇺 at #G7Summit:
Urgent & essential to build unity on:
1 #DefendingDemocracy, rule of law & human rights
2 Climate crisis & environment
3 Stop trade wars
4 Nuclear proliferation
5 More reasons for Russia out of G7; instead invite Ukraine
#G7Biarritz http://bit.ly/2L4OlgU
↥ ↧
🐣 RT @WordswithSteph G7 News: Donald Tusk, President of the European Council, announces that “under no condition” will the EU agree to Trump’s suggestion to invite Russia back into the G7. In fact, Ukraine may be invited as a guest to next year’s summit. #G7Biarritz #G7Summit 💽 https://twitter.com/thomaswright08/status/1165308677919846400?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @TheHill JUST IN: EU’s Tusk breaks with Trump, says “under no condition” should Russia be allowed back into G-7 http://hill.cm/haT4eoS
🐣 RT @_EthanGrey Impeaching Trump also doesn’t just weaken him and the GOP, it makes Democrats look consistent. We describe him as a lawless president who has committed obstruction of justice and welcomes foreign influence in our elections. Voters will ask “Then why haven’t you impeached him?”
🐣 RT @tribelaw An impeached Trump who escapes conviction in the Senate will be weaker in 2020 than a Trump who can brag that not even a Democratically controlled House could impeach him. And GOP Senators who give him a pass will be easier to defeat than ones who’re spared any need to be counted
🔆 This❗️⋙ Lawfare, Erica Newland: How to Protect Elections—From the President http://bit.ly/2Zt47HP Erica Newland is Counsel at Protect Democracy
↥ ↧
≣ ProtectDemocracy (Jul): Report: Play Fair ~ How to Prevent a Corrupt President from Tipping the Playing Field in His Own Election [pdf] http://bit.ly/32bkfiX 28p
BrookingsRegister, Byron York: What we need to know from the Horowitz report http://bit.ly/2U5Lk4e
⭕ 23 Aug 2019
YahooNews, Alexander Nazaryan: The long road to redemption for Felix Sater, Trump’s man in Moscow http://yhoo.it/329f2rP
IBA, Michael Goldhaber: American presidency: As Special Counsel, Robert Mueller more than fulfilled DoJ mission http://bit.ly/2KRlzkR Goldfarber is the US Correspondent for the International Bar Association
DailyBeast, Hanna Trudo:The Billionaire About to Make Impeachment Go Prime-Time http://bit.ly/2KQLERh
// Tom Steyer has spent years making the case for impeachment and now he’s closer than ever to doing so on the debate stage.
ProvidenceJournal: Inside Story: Impeachment scholar and historian puts the summer of 2019 in perspective http://bit.ly/33WWqwI Frank O. Bowman III outlines arguments for and against an inquiry into President Trump.
Bloomberg, Jonathan Bernstein: Does Pelosi Have a Plan for Impeachment? http://bloom.bg/2Hpu2d1
// The House speaker’s hesitation keeps the narrative in Democrats’ hands, but her strategy might not work out in her favor.
TheHill: Pelosi asks Democrats for ‘leverage’ on impeachment http://bit.ly/2TXNRxg
💙 DailyBeast, Betsy Woodruff: Revealed: Felix Sater Did Extensive Work for U.S. Intelligence http://bit.ly/33RUl5r
// A newly unsealed letter from federal prosecutors shows the businessman supplied information on the Taliban, Al Qaeda, and American mobsters.
BuzzFeedNews, Jason Leopold and Anthony Cormier: These New Documents Confirm Trump Associate Felix Sater Helped Track Osama Bin Laden http://bit.ly/2Hoi57l
// Documents newly released by a federal judge confirm BuzzFeed News’ reporting that Felix Sater was a key US asset in major terror and Mafia cases.
CNN: Former officials deny ex-CEO’s claim FBI asked him to pursue Maria Butina http://cnn.it/33UKVWK
🚫 🐣 XT @SethAbramson (THREAD) It’s time to separate fact from fiction in the case of Patrick Byrne, Maria Butina, Trump Jr. and a cadre of FBI agents and leaders. This is a still-developing story—but problematic reporting and Byrne’s bad framing are muddling events. I hope you’ll read on and retweet. 📌 https://twitter.com/SethAbramson/status/1164909216357933057?s=20
// I never know how seriously to take Seth’s threads
AtlanticCouncil, Arseniy Yatsenyuk: G7 Leaders: The Kremlin Is Setting a Trap. Don’t Fall for It http://bit.ly/2MAuUjc
🐣 RT @BillBrowder New 31 year old Russian Opposition Leader, Lyubov Sobol is terrifying Putin and his cronies. His heavy handed reaction to her has allowed the whole world to see how scared Putin is.
⋙ NPR, Lucian Kim: ‘The Government Is Very Afraid’: Meet Moscow’s New Opposition Leader, Lyubov Sobol http://n.pr/2KTtEG0
// 8/21/2019
TIME, Billy Perrigo: The Overstock CEO Resigned Claiming ‘Deep State’ Conspiracy and a Relationship With a Russian Spy. Here’s What to Know http://bit.ly/2Zf3Psz
NBCNews/AP: Trump associate Felix Sater proved invaluable FBI source, records show http://nbcnews.to/31X3NT6
// Sater’s name appears dozens of times in former special counsel Robert Mueller’s report on Russian interference.
TheGuardian, Shaun Walker: The Russian spy who posed as a Canadian for more than 20 years http://bit.ly/2NoLUZv
// Elena Vavilova’s book offers rare insight into the Soviet deep-cover ‘illegals’ programme
WaPo, Philip Bump: Spying, sex and the 2016 campaign: Parsing wild new allegations against the FBI http://wapo.st/2MwOBZf
// The former CEO of Overstock.com made some hard-to-believe — and confusing — new claims.
Meduza: ‘Putin could shut us down with one little finger’ ‘Ekho Moskvy’ chief editor Alexey Venediktov lays out his storied career and insider insights http://bit.ly/2TYU9wn
⭕ 22 Aug 2019
WarOnTheRocks, Robert Levinson: The Fight in the Right: It is Time to Tackle White Supremacist Terrorism Globally http://bit.ly/2NzEmTS “it is the growing international component that requires new strategies and tools”
Axios, Steve Levine: Russian interference, 2020 http://bit.ly/2ZqyKBE
🚫 🐣 XT @sethabramson (THREAD) MAJOR BREAKING NEWS (CNN): Convicted Kremlin agent Maria Butina’s longtime boyfriend confirms that Don Jr. met secretly with Kremlin agents for an hour during the 2015 NRA Conference in Knoxville; Don Jr. therefore lied to Congress about collusion. Please RT and read on. 📌 https://twitter.com/SethAbramson/status/1164714935944974336?s=20 ●●●
⋙ 🐣 XT @sethabramson NOTE5/ I think most reading this know this, but in the event you don’t, the CNN report referred to in the first tweet in this thread is the interview that @ChrisCuomo conducted with Patrick Byrne on the former’s hour-long CNN program tonight. Byrne also (previously) spoke to FNC.
https://mobile.twitter.com/SethAbramson/status/1164770621726703617
⋙ 🐣 XT @sethabramson VIDEO/ Feel free to watch Byrne’s odd interview with FNC, in which he reveals the third person his orders came from—per his undisclosed sources—was McCabe. You’ll also see that he’s framing his story in a way that has nothing to do with why it’s important 💽 https://twitter.com/SethAbramson/status/1164768002127978496?s=20
⋙ 🐣 XT @sethabramson VIDEO2/ Here’s the CNN interview referenced in my first tweet. It’s odd—again—but remember everyone agrees he had a relationship with Butina, the DOJ does believe he did work with the FBI involving Butina, and there’s significant other media corroboration. 💽 https://twitter.com/SethAbramson/status/1164768782797008898?s=20
// See his follow-up thread on 8/23
Vox, Andrew Prokop: Did Democrats already start an impeachment inquiry? It’s complicated. http://bit.ly/2ZkV7s9
// Would an impeachment inquiry by any other name smell as sweet?
Salon: Constitutional scholar Laurence Tribe: Framers would tell us to impeach him right now http://bit.ly/33SRARe
// Harvard constitutional law professor says Trump’s “treachery and betrayal” are now clear. There’s one solution
WaPo, Danielle Allen: Don’t forget there’s an impeachment inquiry underway http://wapo.st/2My78Em
🐣 RT @renato_mariotti If Rudy Giuliani does not speak for the United States government, why were our tax dollars spent to help him ask a foreign government to investigate Joe Biden and his son? ¤ Giuliani violated the Logan Act if he was not acting as a representative of the United States.
🐣 RT @ScottMStedman This is simple. If Giuliani is acting as a private citizen for the Trump campaign here, he is in SERIOUS legal trouble. He’s a private citizen attempting to collude with a foreign government to affect the 2020 election.
⋙ 🐣 RT @kenvogel JUST IN: The @StateDept, which facilitated @RudyGiuliani’s communications with the Ukrainian gov’t (during which he urged an investigation of @JoeBiden), says Giuliani “acts in a personal capacity as a lawyer for President TRUMP. He does not speak on behalf of the US Government.”
🐣 RT @fairchild01 Wonder why Trump is especially off the rails crazy this week? ¤ The appeals court hearing on Mazars case is Friday. Trump is expected to lose & hence his financials will be forfeited to Congress. ¤ Celebrating #TGIF early!
⋙ WaPo: Appeals court challenges Trump’s bid to block congressional subpoena to Mazars USA accounting firm http://wapo.st/2zfz2fV
🐣 RT @harrylitman It is illegal for “any person to solicit, accept, or receive anything of value from a foreign national in connection with a U.S. election.” no requirement of knowledge by or coordination with the campaign. what’s he thinking?
⋙ 🐣 RT @Mimirocah1 He’s doing this again? There was an outcry, he canceled it, and now he’s just back at it? This seems highly unethical and likely illegal.
⋙⋙ NYT: Giuliani Renews Push for Ukraine to Investigate Trump’s Political Opponents http://nyti.ms/2KODysf
🐣 RT @avarosis So now that we know that Maria Butina apparently used sex as a weapon of her spy craft, it opens an interesting question as to how many of the GOP men she met she slept with, and whether the ones we don’t know about are now compromised (they likely are).
NYT: Patrick Byrne, Overstock C.E.O., Resigns After Disclosing Romance With Russian Agent Maria Butina http://nyti.ms/2TV9NZF
🔆 This❗️⋙ JustSecurity, Andy Wright: Just Security Launches the Russia Investigation Congressional Clearinghouse http://bit.ly/2L21uHz ● Text Block: https://twitter.com/Auriandra/status/1164582181999718400?s=20/photo/1
Today we launch the Russia Investigation Congressional Clearinghouse – a resource tool that seeks to provide, in one place, all congressional investigations’ materials related to Russia’s efforts to interfere in U.S. elections. We trust it will be a great resource for journalists, academics, and the broader Just Security readership.
Bookmark the clearinghouse page to find publicly released document request letters, committee reports, deposition and interview transcripts, hearing transcripts, legislative proposals, subpoenas, criminal referrals, and major press releases related to the various Russian investigations. The database is organized by congressional session, and then by committee, with an internally hyperlinked table of contents to take you to the right section of materials.
WaPo: Overstock CEO Patrick Byrne resigns after saying he aided in ‘deep state’ Russia investigation http://wapo.st/2NpY5VZ “Last week, shares of Overstock.com tumbled 36 percent after Byrne said had been assisting federal authorities for years.”
WaPo, Adam Taylor: Why Russia’s relationship with the G-7 collapsed http://wapo.st/2U1sXgM
⭕ 21 Aug 2019
SFChronicle: Activists interrupt Pelosi award ceremony in San Francisco, demand she take action to impeach Trump http://bit.ly/2Nq06Bt
Salon, Jefferson Morley: Expect three authoritarian regimes — Israel, Russia and Saudi Arabia — to get Trump reelected in 2020 http://bit.ly/2HjS5tU
// This discussion is in light of the Israeli government’s decision to bar Reps. Ilhan Omar and Rashida Tlaib
WaPo, Lisa Monaco and Ken Wainstein: America, please look beyond your self interest and do your duty http://wapo.st/2Z9y5Fi Both Monaco and Wainstein served as chief of staff to FBI Director Robert S. Mueller III.
TheGuardian, Richard Wolffe: Trump wanting to buy Greenland is yet another sign of Putin’s puppetry http://bit.ly/2TUjZ4B
// Greenland didn’t just bubble into Trump’s mind randomly – it’s very much on Russia’s radar for its unknown supply of oil, gas and rare metals
⭕ 20 Aug 2019
KXLY/CNN, Katelyn Polantz: Russian firm accused of election meddling could face trial in April http://bit.ly/2KZAus9
// The company, Concord Management, has pleaded not guilty
Politico: House Democrats say whistleblower bolsters case for getting Trump’s tax returns http://politi.co/30plFWf
CNN: Trump could ‘certainly’ support Russia’s return to what would be the G8 http://cnn.it/2L0R6zK
NYT: Trump Says Russia Should Be Readmitted to G7 http://nyti.ms/2KMlTBG //➔ think Trump knows they were booted out for seizing Crimea?
WaPo, Harry Litman: Why Andrew McCabe’s complaint about his firing is likely to prevail http://wapo.st/2ZbUQUg
🐣 RT @just_security Welcome to the launch of our new Resource Tool: #MuellerReportExpertSummaries ¤ 16 top legal experts condensed the Special Counsel’s report down to a fraction of its length. ¤ Lead editors: @rgoodlaw @AshaRangappa_ @jgeltzer @K8brannen
📔 ⋙ 🔆 This❗️⋙ JustSecurity: Expert Summaries of Mueller Report: A Collection http://bit.ly/2NluoW3
// by Kate Brannen, George T. Conway III, Jennifer Daskal, Kristen Eichensehr, Joshua Geltzer, Ryan Goodman, Elie Honig, Harry Litman, Renato Mariotti, Barbara McQuade, Asha Rangappa, Mimi Rocah, Paul Seamus Ryan, Rita Siemion, Joyce Vance and Andy Wright
Epilogue
By George T. Conway III
From: JustSecurity: Expert Summaries of Mueller Report: A Collection
http://bit.ly/2NluoW3
8/20/2019[ This essay is abridged ]
Four hundred and forty-eight pages. Two thousand, three hundred and seventy-five footnotes. About 16,500 lines of text, and roughly 200,000 words. And downloaded, the Justice Department reports, nearly 800 million times.
With all the exposure it received, and given its manifest importance, you might have thought that more people would have read some or all of the Mueller report. But it seems that few have, including many members of Congress. No doubt for some, the size of the report and the sprawling nature of its subject has much to do with that. Which is why we assembled this remarkable team to summarize it all here.
The summaries distill the report to a manageable size; even so, the report’s sprawling nature is made clear. But the report’s ultimate significance can be boiled down even further—to an essence that every citizen should understand, and, ultimately, one that speaks to the obligations and duties of a president of the United States.
That essence is this. In 2016, the United States was attacked. Not its ships or its soldiers, and not with missiles or bombs. Our democracy was attacked, by a hostile foreign government, through the use of technology, lies, and deception. In “sweeping and systematic fashion,” the report tells us, the Russian government interfered in an American presidential election, seeking to affect its result, and to undermine public confidence in our politics. Whether the attack did the former will be debated for a long time, but it certainly did the latter, and all patriotic Americans ought to agree: We must do everything we can to see that it never happens again.
To that end, it was the job of the executive branch, led by the President—first President Barack Obama, and then President Donald Trump—to find out exactly what happened. America’s intelligence agencies all agreed, and still do: The Russians did interfere. In particular, they tried to help Trump and hurt candidate Hillary Clinton. The question was, exactly what did the Russians do, and how did they do it?
That was the core of the job that former FBI Director Robert Mueller was assigned—to conduct a counterintelligence investigation. To be sure, his mandate as special counsel was broader, and included a prosecutorial focus: If he uncovered crimes, he could charge them. And in particular, given some unusual links between some in the Trump Campaign and agents of Russia—including a campaign manager with financial ties to a Russian oligarch and Russian-backed Ukrainians, and a foreign policy advisor whom a court found to be an “agent of a foreign power,” namely Russia—Special Counsel Mueller’s job was also to find out the extent of those links. (The report, while finding no chargeable criminal conspiracy involving Trump campaign aides and the Russians, and not addressing the nonlegal concept of “collusion,” in the end found many more such links.)
For his part, the job of the President was to protect the nation. That meant allowing the investigation to proceed to its rightful conclusion, indeed supporting it, and letting the chips falling where they may.
But Trump didn’t see it that way. From the outset, he looked at the investigation in terms of how it affected him personally, and not in terms of how it impacted the country. From the outset, he tried to affect its outcome.
Ironically, his effort made the investigation more about himself than it ever had to be. Trump fired an FBI director because the FBI director wouldn’t make a public statement Trump wanted about his status in the investigation—and then bragged about the firing to, of all people, the foreign minister of the Russian Federation and its ambassador to the United States.
The President relentlessly attacked the investigation over the course of two years. And he tried to sharply curtail it, and even kill it altogether. Repeatedly. The President particularly hated that it made it seem he hadn’t actually won the great election victory of which he liked to boast. …
The President did much more than this, but all of this is more than enough: He committed the crime of obstructing justice—multiple times. The report doesn’t specifically draw this conclusion, but it goes through the legal analysis step by step, and the result, at least for several of the incidents the report describes, is clear. Trump’s conduct satisfies the three essential elements of obstruction: (1) an obstructive act, meaning anything that could impede the course of justice; (2) a nexus, meaning a temporal, causal, or logical connection, to a pending or contemplated or official proceeding; and (3) corrupt intent.
It doesn’t matter that the investigation may have gone on unimpeded—the statute actually refers to, and thus explicitly covers, “attempts” to “obstruct[], influence[], or impede[]” a proceeding. It also doesn’t help Trump that Article II of the Constitution gives him the power to hire and fire executive officials, and to exercise executive powers, including the power to decide what to investigate and prosecute. This is because the Constitution doesn’t give a president the power to exercise those powers “corruptly” to obstruct justice, which is what the statute, by its terms, prohibits.
And the President did just that. He certainly acted corruptly. He wanted to impede and end an investigation for his own personal reasons, not for the benefit of the nation. Officials around him knew it, which is why they refused to do his bidding, and even grew so alarmed they consulted personal counsel apparently for fear that Trump was potentially putting them into personal legal jeopardy. …
Indeed, the report shows that Trump even obstructed justice about obstructing justice. When the media reported that he had asked his White House counsel to take steps to get rid of the Mueller, Trump tried to get the counsel to lie about it. The counsel refused. Not only that, Trump tried to get the counsel to create a false document about it. The counsel refused to do that as well. Still, trying to get a witness to adopt a false story, or to create a false record, about a matter under investigation, constitutes classic obstruction. Trump brazenly did both.
Yet, in the end, the ultimate importance of the Mueller report doesn’t stem from whether it shows specific elements of a particular subsection of the Criminal Code, even one prohibiting obstruction, have been satisfied. To be sure, for the President of the United States—sworn by oath to take care that the nation’s laws are faithfully executed—to commit a crime, and a federal crime at that, is awful. And for him to commit a crime that involves an attempt to pervert justice is absolutely reprehensible.
But there is actually more at stake here, something far more fundamental. The people of the United States of America have the right to expect far more of a president than merely that he not be provably a criminal. They have the right to expect of a president what the Framers expected—and what the Constitution demands.
The Framers understood the presidency—not just the presidency, but all public offices, and especially the presidency—to be a fiduciary position, a position of trust. …
In the case of a president, the trust is the nation’s federal government, and the beneficiaries are its people. The President is called upon to “pursue the public interest in a good faith republican fashion rather than pursuing his self-interest.” In particular, given his constitutional duty to faithfully execute the laws, the President “must diligently and steadily execute Congress’s commands” as embodied in federal law. The special counsel’s report shows Trump disregarded that duty—indeed, that he showed contempt for it almost whenever he could. Called upon to protect the nation against an attack from a foreign power, he acted principally to protect himself. …
The Framers laid out the standard by which the President’s compliance with his fiduciary obligations must be judged—as well as who must do the judging. The standard is “high crimes and misdemeanors.” That term was not meant merely to incorporate the criminal statute books. It is a legal term of art, packing in centuries of Anglo-American parliamentary history. At its core, as another scholar has explained, “the phrase denotes breaches of fiduciary duties” by public officials. And the Framers charged the Congress of the United States with enforcing that standard.
If the Mueller report demonstrates one thing, it is that President Trump utterly failed to carry out his duties under the Constitution—that indeed, he shamelessly abjured them. It is time for members of Congress to do their duties and to hold the President to account.
⭕ 19 Aug 2019
DailyBeast, Betsy Woodruff (8/19): Trump Staffer Says He Recruited Lobbyists for Wealthy Russians http://bit.ly/2ZiFfqV ‘A little-known former Trump campaign staffer reached out to Washington lobbyists w an eyebrow-raising ask: shield well-heeled Russians from U.S. sanctions’
// Daniel Gelbinovich; It’s another strand in the web of connections between Trump World and Russia.
🐣 RT @WSJ Four Russian nuclear-monitoring stations have gone silent, official says, fueling concerns Moscow is trying to conceal data after a recent explosion
⋙ WSJ: More Russian Nuclear Monitoring Stations Went Silent Days After Blast, Test-Ban Official Says http://on.wsj.com/2Z2e0AA
// Interruption in nuclear data deepens mystery around explosion in northern Russia
MotherJones: Michael Flynn and George Papadopoulos Are [Were] Scheduled to Speak at a Conference Organized by a QAnon Supporter http://bit.ly/2ZZMH6p //➔ they have now pulled out
// The right-wing event aims to prepare “social media warriors” for a coming “digital war.” http://bit.ly/
WSJ, Jason Fuhrman: Trump Is Losing the Trade War With China http://on.wsj.com/33GYDMF //➔ ouch! more criticism from Murdoch’s shop
// The markets doubt tariffs will bring about any major concessions. The U.S. needs a multilateral approach.
🐣 RT @economic [Bloomberg] A new idea dawns: Wrecking international cooperation is the point (via @bopinion)
⋙ Bloomberg, Shira Ovide: A Self-Inflicted Recession Is a Bad Soap Opera http://bloom.bg/31JjPQm A new idea dawns: Wrecking international cooperation is the point (via @bopinion)
// Even more dangerous than disrupted trade is the message U.S. actions send about wrecking global integration.
NYMag, Olivia Nuzzi: Mueller Was Listening to This Guy? Sam Patten’s wild life as a cooperating witness. http://nym.ag/2ZbQTip
TheHill: Anti-Trump vets join Steyer group in pressing Democrats to impeach Trump http://bit.ly/2P3eZMw
MotherJones, Ali Breland: 2020 Candidate Michael Bennet Wants to Sanction Russia for Its Memes http://bit.ly/33IXODc
// “We had a Russian attack on our democracy and we have a president who refuses to take any action.”
Politico [EU], Matthew karnitschnig: Trump’s German frenemy http://politi.co/2Z2Zfxp Sigmar Gabriel
// Sigmar Gabriel’s ties to Russia make him an unlikely bridge between Berlin and Washington.
ProjectSyndicate, Carl Bildt: Remembering the Miracle of 1989 http://bit.ly/2P6Ur5C
// Thirty years ago this month, a series of peaceful demonstrations in Eastern Europe set off a chain of events that culminated in the collapse of the Soviet Union. Looking back, it is now clear that Europe experienced a miracle in 1989: the story could have had a much darker and bloodier ending.
Politico: Ben Ray Luján, No. 4 House Democrat, backs opening Trump impeachment inquiry http://politi.co/2z9gkq9
RFE/RL: British Investigators: More Evidence Found Of Russian Role In Donbas [Ukraine] http://bit.ly/2TKudVk
⭕ 18 Aug 2019
Trump-Russia, Seth Hettena: The CEO of Overstock Has More to Say about Maria Butina, the FBI … and Don Jr http://bit.ly/2ziTkFq
🐣 RT @EUvsDisInfo Russia is the leading global offender of foreign #disinfo influence operations around the world, accounting for a whopping 72% of total operations. Study by Princeton’s @ESoConflict:
⋙ ESOC: Trends in Online Foreign Influence Efforts http://bit.ly/2KGTJaZ
🐣 RT @ToddBreassealeDHS This is a fully terrifying but necessary read from a conservative (not in the current sense that America has recently co-opted the term) publication that, unfortunately, won’t sway any of the people who should be swayed by it. #democracy
💽 https://twitter.com/TBreassealeDHS/status/1163316511206887424?s=20/photo/1
⋙ 🐣💽 RT @TheEconomist Four signs that democracy is under attack https://econ.st/2Nj5AOv
🐣 RT @carlbildt Today it’s 30 years since the historic pan-European pick nick in Sopron in Hungary that started the collapse of the Iron Curtain. Angela Merkel and Victor Orbán will take part in the commemorations there. 💽 https://twitter.com/carlbildt/status/1163317825714499585?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @jennycohn1 Black Cube’s “operatives—who include former Mossad agents—allegedly use false identities to get close to their targets and create fake companies to provide cover as they seek out evidence of financial or sexual impropriety & other embarrassing information.” 1/ 📌 https://twitter.com/jennycohn1/status/1163312237777342466?s=20
⭕ 17 Aug 2019
🐣 RT @SethAbramson (THREAD) Here’s my thread on the discovery, by @ScottMStedman, of a document indicating Oleg Deripaska’s Rusal was making in-roads in Kentucky politics earlier than previously believed—in fact, in April 2016, as Deripaska’s old employee Manafort was infiltrating Trump’s campaign. 📌 https://twitter.com/SethAbramson/status/1162795272067604482?s=20
⭕ 16 Aug 2019
DailyBeast: Robert Mueller Russia Investigation Report Was Downloaded Nearly 800 Million Times: FOIA http://bit.ly/2Zbw63j
💽 MSNBC, RachelMaddow: Republicans block FEC probe of NRA’s Russia money and Trump [Video] http://on.msnbc.com/31LGrjm
// Ellen Weintraub, chair of the FEC, talks with Rachel Maddow about the resistance by her Republican colleagues to allow so much as a phone call to the FBI to inquire about an investigation into whether Russian money donated to the NRA was for the Donald Trump campaign.
🐣 RT @MaddowBlog “…this agency barely lifted a finger to find out the truth behind one of the most blockbuster campaign finance allegations in recent memory.” -FEC Chair Ellen Weintraub 💽 https://twitter.com/MaddowBlog/status/1162540298226012160?s=20/photo/1
// NRA, Butina and Torshin
WaPo, Anne Applebaum: Hong Kong and Russia protesters fight for democracy. The West should listen and learn. http://wapo.st/2Z6ORE5
Reuters: Ex-Trump campaign chief Lewandowski says ‘happy’ to testify before Congress http://reut.rs/33IwBAG
Politico: House Intel Committee could bolster Dem case for impeaching Trump http://politi.co/31GRD0D
// Democrats are using the House Intelligence Committee in an unprecedented way as they consider whether to remove the president.
AmericanProspect, Robert Kuttner: The Other Reason to Impeach—Trump’s Increasing Lunacy http://bit.ly/2MkIuHx
Politico: House Intel Committee could bolster Dem case for impeaching Trump http://politi.co/2z5I1A8
// Democrats are using the House Intelligence Committee in an unprecedented way as they consider whether to remove the president.
⭕ 15 Aug 2019
LawFare: Good News for Christopher Wray: Morale Is Up at (Most of) the FBI http://bit.ly/2MwRYPL Counter-Intelligence, not so much
● https://twitter.com/Auriandra/status/1164422764868059136?s=20/photo/1
🔆 This❗️⋙ USAToday, Tom Nichols: Why this Never Trump ex-Republican will vote for almost any 2020 Democratic nominee http://bit.ly/31NJesq
I don’t care if Sen. Elizabeth Warren is a mendacious Massachusetts liberal. She could tell me that she’s going to make me wear waffles as underpants and I’ll vote for her. I don’t care if Sen. Kamala Harris is an opportunistic California prosecutor who wants to relitigate busing. She could tell me that I have to drive to work in a go-cart covered with Barbie decals and I’ll vote for her. I don’t care if Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders is a muddle-headed socialist from a rural class-warfare state (where I once lived as one of his constituents). He could tell me he’s going to tax used kitty litter and I’ll vote for him.
All of the policy “what about” hypotheticals from my conservative friends are diversions. They’re trying to move the argument to policy to blind us to the reality that President Donald Trump is both unstable and compromised.
As I have argued for well over two years, there is plenty of evidence that the president is compromised by our most dedicated enemy. Even before the Mueller report laid bare the degree to which the Trump campaign welcomed Russian help, it was obvious that Trump feared Russian President Vladimir Putin — not only because Putin knew how much Trump had lied to the American people during the campaign about his dealings with Russia, but also likely because Moscow holds Trump’s closest financial secrets after years of shady dealings with Russian oligarchs.
It is a sign of how low we have fallen as a nation that “rational” and “not compromised by an enemy” are now my only two requirements for the office of the president of the United States. Perhaps years of peace and prosperity have made us forget the terrifying responsibilities that attend the presidency, including the stewardship of enough nuclear weapons to blow the Northern Hemisphere to smithereens.
As long as the Democrats can provide someone who can pass these simple tests, their nominee has my vote. ¤ Pass the waffles.
ColumbusDispatch: Dean: Fallout from Trump-Russia probe just beginning http://bit.ly/2ZdKUO1
NYT: Overstock C.E.O. Takes Aim at ‘Deep State’ After Romance With Russian Agent Maria Butina http://nyti.ms/307WhnY “It was the start of a three-year relationship between the e-commerce executive, Patrick Byrne, and the young woman, Maria Butina, that became romantic at times”
TheHill: GOP senators call for Barr to release full results of Epstein investigation http://bit.ly/2Tzt3fk
EmptyWheel, Marcy Wheeler: Bill Barr Refuses to “Comply First, Complain Later” with Congressional Oversight http://bit.ly/2TBGb3k
Newsweek: Russia Signs Deal to Send Navy to Venezuela After ‘Unacceptable’ U.S. Moves http://bit.ly/2H8JkCY
WaPo: Russia’s mysterious ‘new’ nuclear weapons aren’t really new http://wapo.st/2YYNuZb
// Skyfall: The U.S. pursued similar technology in the 1960s but abandoned it back then. For good reasons.
But in fact, these “new” missiles are a throwback to the early days of the Cold War. And back then, it was the United States that developed a nuclear-powered cruise missile, in the early 1960s. “Project Pluto” was part of a Pentagon program known as Supersonic Low Altitude Missile, a clunky name almost certainly designed to yield its catchier acronym, SLAM. The missile was canceled in 1964, never having taken flight. Nuclear-powered cruise missiles were not a good idea then, and they are not a good idea now.
🐣 RT @ryanjreilly House Democrats subpoena Corey Lewandowski hours before the potential U.S. Senate candidate is set to appear at a Trump rally in New Hampshire.
⋙ HuffPo: House Democrats Subpoena Corey Lewandowski Ahead Of Trump Rally http://bit.ly/2Z5qimY
// According to the Mueller report, Trump told his former campaign manager to ask Jeff Sessions to clear the president of wrongdoing and curtail the Mueller probe.
⭕ 14 Aug 2019
💽 MSNBC, StephanieRuhle: Pelosi calls McConnell ‘Moscow Mitch’ for blocking election security legislation [Video] http://on.msnbc.com/2TB8Sh9
// He might not like being called Moscow Mitch, but a new TIME article raises serious questions about why Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell lifted sanctions on one very specific Russian oligarch who then spent big bucks in his home state of Kentucky. TIME Washington Correspondent Vera Bergengruen joins Stephanie Ruhle to explain.
Bloomberg: The Bond Market Is Saying Scary Stuff http://bloom.bg/2TwX3se
// Recession signals keep popping up all over.
CNN: Report: Epstein autopsy finds broken bones in his neck http://cnn.it/2KKkGcI “This sort of break can happen when a person hangs themselves or dies by strangulation, forensics experts told the Post.”
💽 🔆 This❗️⋙ MSNBC, RachelMaddow: Mitch McConnell at nexus of increased Russian leverage on U.S. [Video] http://on.msnbc.com/2N3COkx
// Rachel Maddow shares details from a recent Pentagon white paper about how Russia secures its influence over other countries’ politics and notes that Mitch McConnell’s role in facilitating an investment of hundreds of millions of dollars in his home state of Kentucky, among other things, aligns with Russia’s strategy.
ForeignAffairs, Susan Glasser: Putin the Great http://fam.ag/33wQXfT
// Sep-Oct issue; Russia’s Imperial Impostor
Esquire, Charles Pierce: Surely It’s a Coincidence That a Firm Tied to a Russian Oligarch Is Pouring Millions Into Kentucky http://bit.ly/2KymLJL
// Surely.
≣ 🔆 This❗️⋙ PoliticusUSA: Jaws Drop as Rachel Maddow Lays Out Mitch McConnell’s Economic Treason http://bit.ly/2Z76wYq (includes partial transcript)
// Rachel Maddow explained how Mitch McConnell has allowed Russia to gain an economic foothold in the US so that they can influence US politics from within.
Forbes, Zak Doffman: Pentagon Report Warns On Threat To U.S. From Russia’s Dangerous Global Influence http://bit.ly/2TyI8O1
// 7/1/2019 upped because on Maddow; “Russian Strategic Intentions”
↥ ↧
💙💙📔 PublicIntelligence: Joint Staff Strategic Multilayer Assessment: Russian Strategic Intentions http://bit.ly/2MjbWh1
// Summary dated 7/7/2019; 171p doc dated 5/6/2019
🐣 RT @oneunderscore_ [Ben Collins] I can’t believe it’s come to this, but since it’s now susceptible to weird reporting, here’s a quick 4chan literacy lesson. ¤ Let’s start with our story from yesterday on 4chan and Jeffrey Epstein—and how disinfo from 4chan can spread faster than real info. 📌 https://twitter.com/oneunderscore__/status/1161703815806148608?s=20
✅ CNN, Daniel Dale: Fact check: Kamala Harris makes false claim about Trump and auto jobs http://cnn.it/2OSobDh //➔ a gaffe, an error, or a lie?
WIRED, Sam Patten: Kostya and Me: How Sam Patten Got Ensnared in Mueller’s Probe http://bit.ly/2YKKW0q
// A political consultant crosses paths with Konstantin Kilimnik, Paul Manafort, and Cambridge Analytica, then becomes part of the Russia investigation.
🐣💙 Twitter List: Investigators ~ Intel Community; investigative journalists, bloggers & sleuths (971 members) https://twitter.com/Auriandra/lists/investigators
ABCNews: Federal workers sue for the right to call for Trump’s impeachment or to #Resist http://abcn.ws/2N7zO6L
Politico: Judge rejects House Dem request to link McGahn, Mueller grand jury lawsuits http://politi.co/2OWTJbh
WaPo: Trump wants to focus on the ‘real threat’ to elections: Not Russia, but imaginary voter fraud http://wapo.st/2TvDGQj
MotherJones, Dan Friedman: Is Sen. Richard Burr Investigating Trump’s Russia Ties—or Helping to Cover Them Up? http://bit.ly/2KNwn2d
// In his role as chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee, Burr walks the line between probing the Trump-Russia scandal and providing cover for the president.
🐣 RT @HillaryClinton Russia’s interference in our elections will continue to threaten our democracy until Republicans join Democrats to stop it. @MichaelBennet’s new book shines a spotlight on this critical issue. Maybe we can all send a copy to @senatemajldr?
⋙ 💙📔 Dividing America: How Russia Hacked Social Media and Democracy by Senator Michael Bennet http://bit.ly/2N49dY8
// READ for free at link ⇈
⭕ 13 Aug 2019
🔊 ACSLaw Podcast: Will the Mueller Report Lead to Articles of Impeachment? http://bit.ly/2YRgv8Q Speakers: Caroline Fredrickson, ACS President, Neil Kinkopf, Professor of Law, Georgia State University, Ciara Torres-Spelliscy, Professor of Law, Stetson University
🐣 RT @MuellerSheWrote So humbled to be mentioned in @TIME , but even more humbled to be mentioned by @JoyceWhiteVance
⋙ TIME, Joyce Vance: William Barr Is the Wrong Person to Lead the Jeffrey Epstein Investigation http://bit.ly/2H54IsI
⋙⋙ 🐣 RT @MuellerSheWrote Whether you believe there are nefarious forces within the DoJ that assisted with or turned a blind eye to the Epstein death, the bigger point is no one trusts the department of justice. No one.
🐣 RT @renato_mariotti Does this have something to do with Mitch McConnell’s refusal to allow the Senate to vote on an election security bill that would prevent future attacks on our elections by Russia?
⋙ 💙💙 WaPo: How a McConnell-backed effort to lift Russian sanctions boosted a Kentucky project http://wapo.st/2MgkSne
NYT, Edward Wong: Waning of American Power? Trump Struggles With an Asia in Crisis http://nyti.ms/2MfSIZG
// The Trump administration has taken a hands-off approach to conflicts — from Kashmir to Hong Kong to the rivalry between Japan and South Korea — as Asian officials escalate the battles.
EmptyWheel, Marcy Wheeler: Don McGahn Is Not the Most Critical Witness on Impeachment http://bit.ly/2YN6HwD Jay Sekulow, John Kelly, Steve Engel (OLC) are others
MotherJones: Michael Flynn and George Papadopoulos Are Scheduled to Speak at a Conference Organized by a QAnon Supporter http://bit.ly/2ZZMH6p
// The right-wing event aims to prepare “social media warriors” for a coming “digital war.”
💙💙 TIME: A Kremlin-Linked Firm Invested Millions in Kentucky. Were They After More Than Money? http://bit.ly/2Z7WuGA
NBCNews, Alexander Smith: Failed Russian nuclear test hints at Putin’s dangerous plans to beat U.S. defenses http://nbcnews.to/2TuDm42
// “Is it dangerous? Yes! I think the phrase ‘flying nuclear reactor’ tells you all you need to know,” one analyst said.
JustSecurity: Yes, Trump Could Be Indicted If He Leaves Office in 2021, But Is That Likely? http://bit.ly/2ZaAor2
TheNation, Steve Phillips: It’s Safe to Impeach Donald Trump http://bit.ly/31Dm5c0
// So why do pundits keep claiming that it would put Democrats in danger?
WaPo, Charles Koch: It’s not just up to policy. Leaders must empower people, too. http://
USAToday, Noah Bookbinder: Make it simple, Democrats: How to tell the Trump impeachment story and speed it up, too http://bit.ly/2OTvURy
// Centralize and simplify the impeachment narrative. Show how Trump’s abuses relate to each other and how they started on the day he took his oath.
DailyBeast: Russia Evacuating Village After Nuclear Reactor Explosion Put Radiation Levels at 16 Times Above Normal http://bit.ly/2ZZWbPh
🐣 RT @JoyceWhiteVance Trump has beaten the country’s morale down to the point where there isn’t widespread outrage over his desire to restrict LEGAL immigration to those who can pay for it. The American dream dies with this administration.
⭕ 12 Aug 2019
Bloomberg: Mueller-Fueled FARA Fear Grips Washington as Craig Goes to Trial http://bloom.bg/2YYiZxz
● Ex-White House lawyer faces charges over his work for Ukraine
● Lobby registrations spike amid renewed focus on Nazi-era law
Politico, Josh Gerstein: Mueller fallout continues as Greg Craig trial opens http://politi.co/2Kv3EjO
💙💙 WaPo, Charles Lane: Would reparations for slavery be constitutional? http://wapo.st/31zuqgB //➔ likely not, the author argues; besides, just 27% of American support it; this is a losing issue and Dems should avoid it, as President Obama warned Ta-Nehisi Coates
OpenCulture (2017): Hannah Arendt Explains How Propaganda Uses Lies to Erode All Truth & Morality: Insights from The Origins of Totalitarianism http://bit.ly/31zjrnp
// 1/24/2017
Bloomberg, Billy House: Pelosi’s Litigation-First Impeachment Strategy Has Its Own Risks http://bloom.bg/31sxAD0
● Court cases seeking Trump information could take months, years
● The number of House Democrats calling for action is growing
Lawfare, David Priess and Margaret Taylor: What if the House Held Impeachment Proceedings and Nobody Noticed? http://bit.ly/2YK15n0
CNN, Julian Zelitzer: Trump is impeaching himself http://cnn.it/2Z03JUF
Newsweek: House Democrats Continue to Lean into Trump Impeachment Proceedings in New Court Filing http://bit.ly/2TqbTk2
DailyBeast: Russia Now Says a Small Nuclear Reactor Exploded in the White Sea Last Week http://bit.ly/2TqtrN3
Politico Mag, Darren Samuelson: ‘Everyone Owes Robert Mueller a Dinner … For All of This http://politi.co/2MUSXsB
// Scandals don’t die, they just breed more podcasts.
JustSecurity, Fred Wertheimer: The Trump Impeachment Process Began on March 4 http://bit.ly/2H1c7cE
TheHill: Trump: US is ‘learning much’ from Russian missile explosion http://bit.ly/2OTHZpY
⭕ 11 Aug 2019
WSJ: Russia Protests Present New Challenge to Putin’s Dominance http://on.wsj.com/33woh71
// Demonstrators say they are upset over the sluggish economy and a lack of political options
⭕ 10 Aug 2019
🐣 RT @SethAbramson Understand that the reason Russian bots are all over the Internet making wild claims about a Clinton connection to the Epstein suicide is because key people in the United States and abroad know the *Trump* connection to Epstein is the one that matters, and is the real story here.
🐣 RT @gtfonway3d “Reactions to actions by Trump are always filtered through the prism of the ever-more-widely accepted view—within his administration, within Congress, within the United States and around the world—that the 45th president is a reckless buffoon, a conspiratorial racist moron ….”
⋙ 🐣 RT @davidfrum The current president accused a predecessor of murder to cover up sex crimes. It’s not something to pass over with a joke.
⋙⋙ TheAtlantic, David Frum: The Shame and Disgrace Will Linger http://bit.ly/2ySPPoK
On Saturday, President Trump spread a conspiracy theory accusing the Clintons of murdering Jeffrey Epstein.
🔆 This❗️⋙ NYT, Jo Becker: The Global Machine Behind the Rise of Far-Right Nationalism http://nyti.ms/2OSX2A0
● Text Block https://twitter.com/Auriandra/status/1160372764345327616?s=20/photo/1
// Sweden was long seen as a progressive utopia. Then came waves of immigrants — and the forces of populism at home and abroad.
Russian and Western entities that traffic in disinformation, including an Islamaphobic think tank whose former chairman is now Mr. Trump’s national security adviser, have been crucial linkers to the Swedish sites, helping to spread their message to susceptible Swedes.
The Times identified 356 domains that linked to all four Swedish sites.
Many are well known in American far-right circles. Among them is the Gatestone Institute, a think tank whose site regularly stokes fears about Muslims in the United States and Europe. Its chairman until last year was John R. Bolton, now Mr. Trump’s national security adviser, and its funders have included Rebekah Mercer, a prominent wealthy Trump supporter.
Other domains that linked to all four Swedish sites included Stormfront, one of the oldest and largest American white supremacist sites; Voice of Europe, a Kremlin-friendly right-wing site; a Russian-language blog called Sweden4Rus.nu; and FreieWelt.net, a site supportive of the AfD in Germany.
This loosely knit global network does not just help increase readership in Sweden; researchers have tracked how Russian state outlets like RT and Sputnik, along with Western platforms like Infowars and Breitbart, have picked up and amplified Swedish immigration-related stories to galvanize xenophobia among their audiences.
WaPo/AP, Mary Jalonick: Q&A: Are the Democrats starting impeachment, or not? http://wapo.st/2MQgs5U
DailyBeast: David Crosby on How Trump Is ‘Under the Control of Russia’ http://bit.ly/2yRKrm0
// The iconic singer-songwriter behind the Byrds and Crosby, Stills & Nash writes about President Trump’s curious relationship with Russia—and why he must be defeated in 2020.
⭕ 9 Aug 2019
TPM, Tierney Sneed: Judge Sides With Gov’t In Dispute With Russian Company Over Mueller Discovery http://bit.ly/2TsxXuq
Slate, Igor Dervsh: Trump’s DOJ hid shocking report on growing terror threat from white supremacists http://bit.ly/31vJMms
// Hidden report shows white supremacists were responsible for every race-based domestic terror attack in 2018
Bloomberg, Eli Lake: Syria Tests Trump’s Attempt to Reset U.S. Policy http://bloom.bg/2KFxzom
// The president wants to prioritize the threat from great powers without losing focus on counterterrorism.
🚫 WashingtonExaminer: Lindsey Graham: Bruce Ohr notes are ‘tip of the iceberg’ of ‘systematic corruption’ at DOJ and FBI http://washex.am/2MT1ZX1
// GOP conspiracy bs
🔆 This❗️⋙ CNN: White House proposal would have FCC and FTC police alleged social media censorship http://cnn.it/2Maomrw “Their proposal today amounts to nothing short of a speech police.” – Senator Wyden
Some people close to the tech industry expressed frustration that the White House seemed to be trying to have it both ways — excoriating tech companies for allegedly censoring conservative speech, a claim the platforms vigorously dispute, while castigating them for failing to block enough violent or hateful content. ¤ “The internal inconsistency of this is outrageous,” one of them said.
MotherJones, Dan Spinelli: Don’t Let Anyone Tell Trump How Much His New Intelligence Chief Disagrees With Him http://bit.ly/2OP2t2T
// Probably because Joseph Maguire “has impressive military and NCTC management experience.”
Reuters: U.S.-based experts suspect Russia blast involved nuclear-powered missile http://reut.rs/2GVCzUH “They said that they suspected the explosion and the radiation release resulted from a mishap during the testing of a nuclear-powered cruise missile [near] Nyonoksa.”
🐣 RT @glennkirschner2 So now there two highly respected, top intelligence officials being pushed out of their jobs by Trump so he can take control of the intel apparatus for his nefarious purposes. Ms. Gordon and Mr. Coates – you’ve seen something, now please say something.
⋙ MSNBC, SteveBenen: Why the shakeup of Donald Trump’s intelligence team matters http://on.msnbc.com/2yRH5iU
Common sense suggests it might’ve been a good idea to keep someone like Sue Gordon around to assist with the transition between ODNI leaders, but Trump nevertheless showed her the door.
A Washington Post report added that the president “was reluctant to keep someone with whom he had never formed a close bond.” Trump and his team also apparently “regarded her as a career official and consequently suspicious.”
MSNBC, RachelMaddow: Trump entertains idea of ‘human sieve’ Hoekstra for DNI http://on.msnbc.com/2OMT5wM
// Rachel Maddow reviews many of the times Pete Hoekstra was found to have leaked or otherwise publicly mishandled classified information, and marvels at the possibility that Donald Trump would consider him to replace Dan Coats as Director of National Intelligence, particularly after the humiliating withdrawal of his first pick, John Ratcliffe.
🐣 RT @MuellerSheWrote Beans 2‼️[ = Prediction come true ]
⋙ 🐣 RT @slickrockweb #BREAKING: Whoah. FBI 302 Interviews with Bruce Ohr about #SteeleDossier Released To Judicial Watch. One bombshell in these FBI notes says there was communication between Russian Alfa Bank and the Trump Tower server “and it wasn’t spam”!!
#BREAKING: Whoah. FBI 302 Interviews with Bruce Ohr about #SteeleDossier Released To Judicial Watch. One bombshell in these FBI notes says there was communication between Russian Alfa Bank and the Trump Tower server "and it wasn't spam"!! #russiagatehttps://t.co/NPeLzv5VE5 pic.twitter.com/MOBPtPu53K
— SlickRockWeb 🇺🇲🇺🇦 (@SlickRockWeb) August 9, 2019
⋙ ⋙ NewYorker, Dexter Filkins (2018): Was There a Connection Between a Russian Bank and the Trump Campaign? http://bit.ly/A team of computer scientists sifted through records of unusual Web traffic in search of answers.
// 10/8/2018
NYMag, Ed Kilgore: Nadler Makes It Clear House Is Already in ‘Impeachment Proceedings’ http://nym.ag/2KCaovj
WaPo: Trump’s pick for intelligence director is a respected Special Operations veteran http://wapo.st/2TkHRy0
WaPo, Chuck Park: I can no longer justify being a part of Trump’s ‘Complacent State.’ So I’m resigning. http://wapo.st/2MbuGyW Chuck Park’s resignation from the Foreign Service is effective Thursday.
CNN: Top intel official interrupted meeting to urge his deputy to resign http://cnn.it/2ZMT50L IOW, outgoing Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats urged his deputy Sue Gordon to resign
WaPo, Amber Phillips: The impeachment inquiry Trump feared is already here http://wapo.st/31sOKAo
// Proceedings are underway, and they have been for a while.
USAToday, Michael Stern: It’s about time Peter Strzok sued. Firing him from the FBI was abusive Trump hypocrisy. http://bit.ly/2KBcQlM
WaPo: FBI releases records of Justice Dept. official Bruce Ohr interviews about Russia probe http://wapo.st/31tgLaS
⭕ 8 Aug 2019
Brookings, Darrell West: Foreign campaign intervention may go way beyond Russia to China, Iran, North Korea, and Saudi Arabia http://brook.gs/2KrSLPT
CNN: Early FBI interviews of DOJ contact with author of Trump dossier released http://cnn.it/2yRooeY
WaPo: For Trump and his cronies, draining the swamp means ousting experts http://wapo.st/2yMPvrF “The latest, most egregious example involves the Economic Research Service, an independent statistical agency at the Agriculture Department.”
🐣 RT @tribelaw Andrew McCabe’s lawsuit and Peter Strzok’s parallel lawsuit filed two days earlier together lay out a strong case for Trump’s grave abuses of power in penalizing civil service employees for political views he disliked and for protecting national security
🐣 RT @JohnJHarwood no kidding
⋙ 🐣 RT @costareports Per a WH official and several top Rs tonight, Gordon’s exit has congressional Rs and Ds on edge. Intel com worried the WH is gaining power with CIA director largely a behind-the-scenes leader and Pompeo/Bolton now driving national-security policy + AG probing intel activities.
🐣 RT @JoyceWhiteVance Trump couldn’t let a career person be run the intelligence community for even a heartbeat. As with other agencies, he wants an acting head, not confirmed by the Senate, whose personal loyalty will undoubtedly be to the man who puts him in place & upon whom his tenure depends.
CNN: Nadler presses ahead with impeachment probe as Pelosi keeps door open http://cnn.it/2M7taxL
DailyBeast, Betsy Woodruff: Deputy Intel Chief Sue Gordon Is Out After Trump Snub http://bit.ly/2OIEd2q
// Sue Gordon would have been next in line as acting director following the scheduled departure of Dan Coats on Aug. 15.
WaPo, Jennifer Rubin: A major impeachment development: Court may order McGahn’s testimony http://wapo.st/2KAKtUD
Stars&Stripes: Andrew McCabe sues FBI over firing, alleges plot by Trump to oust those disloyal to him http://bit.ly/31tsxCd
TPM, Josh Tovensky: WSJ: Banks Hand Over Trump Docs To House, State Investigators http://bit.ly/2OMkPln
MarketWatch/WSJ: Banks hand over documents on Russians possibly linked to Trump http://on.mktw.net/2MQ7PZk
// Some documents are related to Russians who may have had dealings with Trump, his family or Trump Organization
WashingtonMonthly, Nancy LeTourneau: To Mueller, Trump Couldn’t Recall if He Conspired With Russia http://bit.ly/2YSIbpc “It Trump didn’t know about Russia’s plans for hacking DNC emails or the timing of their release, why wouldn’t he just say so?”
⭕ 7 Aug 2019
WaPo: Democrats ask federal judge to force testimony from ex-White House counsel McGahn http://wapo.st2KwZcQD/
⭕ 6 Aug 2019
WashingtonExaminer: Durham and Graham obtained 2018 deposition of Clinton ‘dirt’ tipster Joseph Mifsud http://washex.am/2KsKMSF
↥ ↧
Wikipedia: Volume 1 of the Mueller Report[20] states that Mifsud travelled to Moscow in April 2016, and upon his return told Papadopoulos that the Russian government had “dirt” on Hillary Clinton.[18] It also mentions that Papadopoulos “suggested to a representative of a foreign government that the Trump Campaign had received indications from the Russian government that it could assist the Campaign through the anonymous release of information damaging to candidate Clinton”. This would appear to corroborate the contact with Downer. …
Papadopoulos and some critics of the investigation of Russian interference in the 2016 campaign have asserted without evidence that Mifsud was actually a Western intelligence operative who was instructed to entrap Papadopoulos in order to justify the investigation.[25][26] During Robert Mueller’s testimony to two congressional committees on July 24, 2019, Republicans Jim Jordan and Devin Nunes sought to portray Misfud as a central figure in what they asserted was an investigation based on false and politically motivated premises, while Democrats characterized their assertion as a diversion and conspiracy theory.[27] Jim Jordan asked Robert Mueller why he never charged Mifsud with lying to the FBI while George Papadopoulos was charged for lying about Mifsud.[28]
Politico, Natasha Bertrand: Peter Strzok sues over firing for anti-Trump texts http://politi.co/2YRoWjy
// The former FBI agent who opened the bureau’s Russia probe says the government violated his First and Fifth Amendment rights.
🐣 RT @petestrzok My profound thanks to everyone for their support. This would not be possible without you. https://twitter.com/petestrzok/status/1158862496108879873?s=20/phABCNews: Former FBI agent Peter Strzok sues FBI, DOJ, claiming firing due to pressure from President Trump http://abcn.ws/2ZymgEK
LATimes, Susan Newall: Why impeachment would damage Trump, with or without Senate conviction http://lat.ms/2MIW6LN
// letter
⭕ 5 Aug 2019
Newsweek, Tom O’Connor: Russia and Iran to Train Together ‘This Year’ As They Fight Back Against U.S. Policies http://bit.ly/2yHYXfS
Politico, Kyle Cheney: Nadler: Judiciary panel could recommend articles of impeachment by late fall http://politi.co/2KstmVa
CNN, Manu Raju: House Judiciary chairman Nadler says panel could move to impeach by end of year http://cnn.it/2KtSieP
Politico, Darren Samuelson: Judge signals interest in removing Mueller report redactions http://politi.co/2ODm6uF
// ‘That’s what open government is all about,’ Judge Reggie Walton said during court arguments over a FOIA lawsuit against the Justice Department.
NewRepublic, Ankit Panda: Trump’s Reckless New Missile Race http://bit.ly/2M1IFax
// His withdrawal from the INF Treaty will spur a rush to build new arsenals with no plan for how to use them.
AlJazeera: Russia’s Putin urges new arms talks with US to avoid ‘chaos’ http://bit.ly/33fA5Km
// If US makes new missiles, Russia ‘will be forced to begin the full-scale development of similar missiles’, Putin says.
BrennanCenter, Burt Neuborne: Both Chambers of Congress Should Censure Trump http://bit.ly/2GQaJt7
// A bicameral, bipartisan rebuke of the president would enable voters to make the final judgment on the findings of the Mueller report, argues NYU law professor Burt Neuborne.
WSJ: Putin Says Russia Will Spy on U.S. to Match Missile Development http://on.wsj.com/2MBvDjv
// Leader sets out retaliatory measures after collapse of Cold War weapons treaty
WaPo/Bloomberg, Gregory White: Why Trump and Putin Blew Up Cold War Arms Treaty http://wapo.st/2M22JJI
NYT, Timothy Walton: America Could Lose a Real War Against Russia http://nyti.ms/2KiwHHa
// With Putin and Trump having torn up a Cold War pact that lowered the risk of nuclear war, America should build more conventional missiles to catch up with Russia and China.
⋙ Mr. Walton is a co-author of a report issued by his policy institute titled “Leveling the Playing Field: Reintroducing U.S. Theater-Range Missiles in a Post-I.N.F. World.”
⭕ 4 Aug 2019
NYT: In Ukraine, a Rival to Putin Rises http://nyti.ms/2YJoxzN
// Volodymyr Zelensky, once a comedian, won Ukraine’s presidential election after playing an unlikely president on TV. Some of his shows also aired in Russia.
📊 MorningConsult Poll: On the Question of Impeachment, Even Voters Who Acknowledge Trump’s Wrongdoing are Split http://bit.ly/ //➔ Note: Chart shows NET (“Agree” MINUS “Disagree”) ● https://twitter.com/Auriandra/status/1158085908433920000?s=20/photo/1
WaPo: Impeachment summer? August town halls may decide next steps http://wapo.st/2GJzI12
⭕ 3 Aug 2019
CNN: Under pressure, Trump slaps long-overdue sanctions on Russia over chemical weapons use http://cnn.it/2MzuJno
Salon, Matthew Rozsa: Donald Trump’s connections to Russia, explained http://bit.ly/2GJHDvo
// Here are five irrefutable facts about our president’s ties to a foreign adversary
1. This is not McCarthysim.
2. It all started with money.
3. The Mueller report irrefutably links members of the Trump campaign to Russia.
4. In spite of Trump’s questionable connections with Russia, his administration’s policies toward the country are not drastically different from those pursued by his Democratic predecessor.
5. That said, Trump’s friendly rhetoric helpful to Putin’s interests.
🐣 RT @anders_aslund 1. The US has 2 million anonymous companies;
2. The Supreme Court verdict on Citizens United allowed unlimited amounts of anonymous money in US election PACs.
3. There is $800 bn of dark Russian money abroad, mainly in the US & UK.
4. A US election cycle costs about $5 bn.
WaPo, Amber Phillips: More than half of House Democrats support an impeachment inquiry. So, why isn’t there one yet? http://wapo.st/2Zv4lyJ
🐣 RT @tribelaw #MoscowMitch is no slur but a well justified label. It was the @senatemajldr who kept @BarackObama from issuing a bipartisan warning that Putin was invading our election system in Oct 2016 and who lifted sanctions to let Putin’s oligarchs invest bigtime in Mitch’s Kentucky.
⭕ 2 Aug 2019
WaPo, Dana Milbank: McConnell’s new posture toward Moscow http://wapo.st/2YGdVBN ¤ #MoscowMitch
WaPo Editorial: A smart way to keep Putin out of the next U.S. election http://wapo.st/2LY4ibM
NYT, Quinta Jurecic: Look at the Mueller Report as a Detective Story. It Will Blow Your Mind. http://nyti.ms/31hHqaJ
// It may turn out to be a film noir. The investigators uncovered the plot, but the society is too rotten to do anything about it.
NYT: Trump Drops Plans to Nominate John Ratcliffe as Director of National Intelligence http://nyti.ms/2MyHiPW //➔ might be a good idea to vet these people
🔆 This❗️⋙ WaPo: Brittany Kaiser’s work with Cambridge Analytica helped elect Donald Trump. She’s hoping the world will forgive her. http://wapo.st/2MEMlyx
// She’d like to be remembered as a whistleblower and a human rights advocate. You decide
WaPo: A majority of House Democrats now backs impeachment, according to an analysis by The Washington Post http://wapo.st/2Ztcl3f
⭕ 1 Aug 2019
Newsweek: Vladimir Putin Praises Trump, Says Offer of Wildfire Help Could Herald Restoration of ‘Full-Format Relations’ Between Russia and U.S. http://bit.ly/2YCYtCh
USAToday: Donald Trump doubts Russian meddling in 2020 election, disputing Robert Mueller http://bit.ly/2GNFzm2
JustSecurity, Justin Hendrix: Trump’s Encouraging QAnon May Result in Violence—Just ask the FBI http://bit.ly/2YE72kk
// Newly revealed FBI memo warns about conspiracy theories’ causal connection to extremist violence
ArsTechnica, Kate Cox: FBI says “extremists” motivated by Pizzagate, QAnon are threats http://bit.ly/2KjS5ee
// For extremists, the Internet’s craziest conspiracies inspire deadly violence.
NYT: Justice Dept. Declines to Prosecute Comey Over Memos About Trump http://nyti.ms/2ZptFWQ
🐣 RT @Comey I love transparency. I just wait for facts before I talk about them. I’m confident the results of all IG reports will show honest public servants worked hard to protect this country from a threat this president and his enablers won’t acknowledge. And @ me next time, bruh.
⋙ 🐣 RT @RepMarkMeadows As the IG report on Comey approaches, we’re getting the sound of silence. No Comey tweets. No softball interviews. ¤ Must be tougher when you get questioned by a DOJ Inspector General. ¤ The truth is coming. His actions will come to light. And the verdict won’t be pretty.
DailyBeast, Julia Arciga: Majority of House Democrats Now Back Trump Impeachment Inquiry http://bit.ly/2yy43es
// Rep. Ted Deutch is the 118th Democrat to support the effort, bringing support for it to a symbolic milestone in the House.
⭕ 31 Jul 2019
TheHill: Dems push for review of Russian-backed project in Kentucky http://bit.ly/2SXhw9j “Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) is stepping up calls for a national security review of a Russian aluminum company’s plans for a mill in Kentucky”
Politico: Democrats agree to September legal arguments in effort to access secret Mueller evidence http://politi.co/2T5FjnH
Newsweek: Secret Russian Nuclear Accident Caused a Huge Radiation Cloud to Blanket Europe in 2017, Scientists Claim http://bit.ly/2Yz2FqM
WaPo, Jennifer Rubin: NeverTrumpers skewer ‘Moscow Mitch’ http://wapo.st/2KjN1X2
WEF: Which countries work the longest hours? http://bit.ly/2GFfxkU
● https://twitter.com/Auriandra/status/1156674681065410561?s=20/photo/1
Trump wants hardworking immigrants from countries like NORWAY, not lazy people from countries like MEXICO ⇊ ⇊
🐣 RT @DavidJollyFL For context, the case is DNC v. Russia Federation. The court ruled Russia is shielded from liability to a single party bc as a nation-state wrongdoer the remedy under law is sanctions or other actions by the US Govt; and Trump campaign use of leaked info is protected under 1A.
// DNC lawsuit
WIRED, Mark Laslo: Russia Is Going to Up Its Game for the 2020 Elections http://bit.ly/2YzezNd Interview with Senator Mark Warner (D-VA)
🐣 RT @NedPrice Trump has named an architect of the effort to discredit Mueller’s probe to one of the most impt roles on the National Security Council staff: Sr Director for Counterterrorism. The post is as crucial as it sounds, and this move is as dangerous as it sounds.
⋙ DailyBeast, Betsy Woodruff: Nunes Ally Kash Patel Who Fought Russia Probe Gets Senior White House National Security Job http://bit.ly/31dr4Qx
// Patel was one of the leading staffers pushing back against FBI investigations of Trump-Russia. He’s now senior director of the National Security Council’s terrorism directorate.
🐣 RT @ScottMStedman THIS is the kind of evidence I was looking for. We can now tie McConnell directly to the Deripaska KY deal.
🐣 RT @NatashaBertrand NEW: Two former top staffers to Mitch McConnell have lobbied Congress and Treasury on the development of a new Kentucky mill backed by Russian aluminum giant Rusal. McConnell’s office won’t say whether he’s been lobbied by them directly. w/@theodoricmeyer
⋙ Politico, Natasha Bertrand and Theodoric Meyer: Ex-McConnell staffers lobbied on Russian-backed Kentucky project http://politi.co/2SXCZPp
// Democrats are pushing the Trump administration to review the project, and they say McConnell indirectly helped facilitate it.
Politico, Josh Gerstein: Judge: Trump statements muddle Freedom of Information suit for FISA warrants http://politi.co/2ZlC0La
CNN, Jeremy Herb: Ratcliffe questioned intelligence community’s role in Russia investigation http://cnn.it/2LS2gK2
NYT/Reuters: Pro-Impeachment Ad With Mueller to Run During Democratic Debates http://nyti.ms/2ZoiP3p
⭕ 30 Jul 2019
TheGuardian: Secret texts cast light on UK’s early role in Trump-Russia inquiry http://bit.ly/2YC8xPW
// Senior MI5 and FBI officials shared concerns about ‘our strange situation’ in 2016
WarOnTheRocks, Evan Wilson: Don’t Call It a Comeback: Foreign Interference in U.S. Elections Has Been Here for Years http://bit.ly/2T9iE9G
💙 TheMoscowProject: How Moscow Mitch Protects Trump—and Russia http://bit.ly/2Kpxs05
🐣 RT @carolecadwalla NEW: Explosive new emails detail work Cambridge Analytica did for LeaveEU/UKIP. Brittany Kaiser, woman at centre of Netflix’s #TheGreatHack has handed over a whole bunch of new emails to DCMS committee. Oh dear, Arron Banks. Looks like it’s all coming home to roost… https://twitter.com/NYtitanic1999/status/1156652922677149696?s=20/photo/1-4
EmptyWheel, Marcy Wheeler: John Ratcliffe and Accountability for a President Who Lives in a Fox News Bubble http://bit.ly/2Ow5t43
AOL/YahooNews: New ad highlights Mueller testimony as impeachment push grows http://aol.it/2Yzp2wj
TheGuardian: Secret texts cast light on UK’s early role in Trump-Russia inquiry http://bit.ly/2YC8xPW
// Senior MI5 and FBI officials shared concerns about ‘our strange situation’ in 2016
FiveThirtyEight: A Pro-Impeachment Majority Among Democrats May Be Inevitable http://53eig.ht/317dG05
WaPo: House Democratic leaders face pressure to impeach Trump post-Mueller hearings http://wapo.st/2Yhzvgs
WaPo/Bloomberg, Billy House: Your Questions About U.S. Presidential Impeachment, Answered http://wapo.st/2GyQujl
⭕ 29 Jul 2019
Politico, Kyle Cheney: ‘I did meet with Putin’: Dem report highlights Flynn exchange after 2015 trip http://politi.co/30ZoJse
WaPo, David Ignatius: Trump’s intelligence shake-up could be his most dangerous move yet http://wapo.st/2GEyWme “Trump is governing these days with the destructive power of a sledgehammer.”
🐣 RT @maggieNYT Some aides said Trump expressed anger about border-related hearings and Cummings, but in reality, two ppl close to him said, he is angry that his government-employee relatives were subpoenaed by Cummings committee
⋙ NYT: Trump Widens War on Black Critics While Embracing ‘Inner City Pastors’ http://nyti.ms/2LLxRwU
WaPo: McConnell defends blocking election security bill, rejects criticism he is aiding Russia http://wapo.st/2YqVkpf
VanityFair, Eric Lutz: Trump’s New Director of National Intelligence Is a Partisan Hack http://bit.ly/2YigScw
// Dan Coats was ousted for disagreeing with Trump. John Ratcliffe, the president’s new pick to oversee the nation’s intelligence apparatus, is just another yes-man.
NYT, Michelle Goldberg: An Impeachment Inquiry Is Coming. It Might Have Already Begun. http://nyti.ms/2YuTlA9
// Robert Mueller’s testimony may have lacked thrills, but it marked a turning point in the case against the president.
MMFA: Rep. John Ratcliffe loves Fox’s Mueller conspiracy theories. Trump wants him to oversee U.S. intelligence. http://bit.ly/313b7vU
CJR, Jon Allsop: Dan Coats’s departure and the story of Russian meddling http://bit.ly/2YroeoZ
CommonCause, Isabel Giovannertu and Scott Swenson: Is Trump Following Russia’s Lead on Elections? http://bit.ly/2ZkxjRP
// President Trump has sided with Vladimir Putin over the US intelligence community about Russia’s influence on the 2016 election. With police cracking down on public dissent in Moscow and efforts in the US to curtail protest, engineer minority rule, consolidate media ownership and concentrate wealth into fewer and fewer hands, is Russia Trump’s model for America’s future?
AP: Doubts emerge about Trump pick for US intelligence chief http://bit.ly/2LNGQh5
NewYorker, David Rohde: Trump’s Message to U.S. Intelligence Officials: Be Loyal or Leave http://bit.ly/2LO1Moq
TheHill: House Democrats inch toward majority support for impeachment http://bit.ly/312xIbX
Politico: 2 top Dem senators give boost to impeachment effort http://politi.co/2Yqon08
// Patty Murray and Debbie Stabenow’s support for impeachment gives political cover for House Democrats contemplating backing an inquiry.
🐣 RT @kylegriffin1 The website of Trump’s DNI pick, John Ratcliffe, says that he “put terrorists in prison.” NBC News reports that there’s is no evidence Ratcliffe ever prosecuted a terrorism case.
⋙ NBCNews: Intel officials worry Trump’s pick for top spy will politicize the job http://nbcnews.to/2SNeNPL
// Although Ratcliffe’s website says he “put terrorists in prison,” there is no evidence he ever prosecuted a terrorism case.
DailyBeast, Will Sommer: Trump Intel Pick John Ratcliffe Started Theory of FBI Anti-Trump ‘Secret Society’ http://bit.ly/2MqUypU
// The congressman debuted the mysterious text messages on Fox News. It became a mini-scandal before the full context became known.
Newsweek: Fox News Analyst Warns Trump Is ‘Locking Down The Intelligence Community for His Purposes’ http://bit.ly/2OqZptA “with the nomination of GOP Representative John Ratcliffe to replace Dan Coats as director of national intelligence”
// “Mary Anne Marsh [is] a political analyst for Fox News”
WaPo, Michael Morell and Michael Vickers: Dan Coats is out. Should the Senate confirm John Ratcliffe? http://wapo.st/2Yv7FIK
🐣 RT @TimOBrien “Republican senators have flubbed this process from the get-go. They could’ve used their power of confirmation to insist that Trump run a professional White House and executive branch. They’ve largely chosen otherwise.” – @jbview
⋙ Bloomberg, Jonathan Bernstein: Trump’s Choice to Lead U.S. Intelligence is Not Qualified http://bloom.bg/2SRyuWr
// As the president intensifies his feud with the spy agencies, Senate Republicans should step in.
🐣 RT @NatashaBertrand Ratcliffe’s work w/Browder could represent a twist in the president’s desire to bring the intel community further under his control. ¤ It also resurfaces one of the biggest subplots of the Russia probe: the Russians’ lobbying of Trump campaign officials to undo the Magnitsky Act.
⋙ Politico, Natasha Bertrand: Trump’s intel pick collaborated with a fierce Russia foe http://politi.co/2KfdLbr
// GOP Rep. John Ratcliffe, the president’s nominee for director of national intelligence, once worked with a leading Putin critic on the Magnitsky Act — which Russians have been pushing to overturn.
CNN, Eliza Mackintosh: Finland is winning the war on fake news. What it’s learned may be crucial to Western democracy http://cnn.it/32TlsfT ¤ #longread
// May 2019?
EmptyWheel, Marcy Wheeler: Aspiring Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe Does Not Want DOJ’s Mob Experts Exchanging Information with Mob Experts http://bit.ly/2Zlhx9g
That he is so deeply ensconced in the frothy right is why Trump picked him for the job — because, to those who are equally ensconced in the echo chamber, he could appear to have damaged Robert Mueller last week. And of course, Trump will be perfectly happy to have someone who sees not what is, but what needs to be true to feed Trump’s own false claims.
But having picked Ratcliffe, Trump has given Democrats the perfect opportunity to turn frothy conspiracies on their head, to demonstrate the danger of them. Both before Ratcliffe’s eventual confirmation hearing and during it, Democrats will have abundant evidence — from Ratcliffe’s own performance in interviews where he repeatedly gets exposed as a fool — to demonstrate the dangers of appointing someone so deep inside an echo chamber he doesn’t even realize the entire premise of his questioning is that the US should not pursue as much information about threats as possible.
Sure, he’s likely to be confirmed anyway. But Democrats have the opportunity to lay out the costs of Republicans casting such a vote, to install someone who affirmatively objects to FBI getting information on urgent threats to oversee the intelligence community. And when Ratcliffe’s echo chamber beliefs serve to blow up — whether by feeding Trump what he wants to hear about North Korea or Iran or Russia — Democrats will then have the record that Republicans chose to put someone with a clear record arguing that the FBI should have less information about credible threats and not more.
🐣 RT @benjaminwittes Here’s your Monday morning radical proposition: the knowing, intentional, and serial stoking of racial tensions is an impeachable offense.
⋙ 🐣 RT @AshaRangappa_ Especially when it knowingly furthers a hostile foreign adversary’s ongoing covert operations in the country
⋙⋙ 🐣 RT @AshaRangappa_ People telling me it’s now “overt”: A covert operation is defined by the government denying its hand in the operation (which Russia does wrt it’s active measures). It’s more obvious to us now, yes, but it’s still covert from a legal/intel perspective.
TheBulwark, Molly Jong-Fast: The Young and Beautiful Lives of Dimwitted Villains http://bit.ly/316au4H Hope Hicks
🐣 RT @JohnBrennan Dan Coats served ably & with deep integrity. Ratcliffe showed abject subservience to Trump in Mueller hearings. The women & men in the Intelligence Community deserve a leader like Coats who puts nation first; not a servile Trump loyalist like Ratcliffe.
🐣 RT @NedPrice Ratcliffe’s disingenuous attack on Mueller wasn’t just an exercise in disinformation; it was an audition for DNI. Unsurprisingly, he passed. ¤ If confirmed, he’ll have tremendous capabilities to continue protecting and defending Trump over the Constitution.
🐣 RT @DavidPriess Let’s look quickly at the resumes of the five men who have served as Director of National Intelligence, from the position’s inception in 2005 until now, and compare them to the resume of new nominee John Ratcliffe. 1/7
📌 https://twitter.com/DavidPriess/status/1155685743219662848?s=20
🐣 RT @brianklaas With Barr and now Ratcliffe, Trump is putting loyal partisan hacks in key positions — the justice system and intelligence community — precisely when the president himself has committed a series of crimes and has invited attacks on American democracy from foreign adversaries.
🐣 RT @JillWineBanks The movie & the book show
1. Russia interfered to help Trump & is doing so now
2. Trump welcomed the help
3. Mueller did not exonerate 45
4. Evidence shows Trump obstructed the investigation
5. Only the OLC opinion prevented his indictment
IMO OLC is constitutionally unfounded.
⭕ 28 Jul 2019
NewYorker, Amy Davidson Sorkin: Robert Mueller’s Testimony and the Garbled Language of Politics http://bit.ly/2Ywkkzh
// The words the Democrats and the Republicans used may have been the same, but their meanings were not.
This is scary //➔ WashingtonExaminer: John Ratcliffe: AG William Barr will deliver justice to any Obama officials who committed crimes http://washex.am/2YdMorS
🐣 RT @matthewamiller When the Russians do it again in 2020, who will warn the American people? Barr? Ratcliffe? Whoever’s still playing musical chairs at DHS? Cabinet full of toadies.
🐣 RT @RodRosenstein It was a privilege to serve with Dan Coats, a patriot who understood that the executive branch oath requires us to distinguish governing from politicking. He protected national security and helped deter foreign election meddling and other efforts to undermine American interests.
🐣 RT @brianklaas Change in confidence in US president from Obama in 2016 to Trump in 2018 (Pew)
Germany: -76%
Sweden: -76%
France: -75%
Canada: -58%
Australia: -52%
UK: -51%
Japan: -48%
Russia: +8%
⋙ 🐣 RT @TheHill President Trump: “The Democrats are clowns. They’re being laughed at all over the world.” 💽 https://twitter.com/brianklaas/status/1155473098805862400?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @adamserwer Coats is getting ousted for taking steps to prevent foreign attacks on American elections if you want to know how things are going
⋙ NYT: Dan Coats to Step Down as Intelligence Chief; Trump Picks Loyalist for Job http://nyti.ms/2YtsE2S
🐣 RT @carlbildt Also @v_milov has been arrested in Moscow. He’s a highly respected representative of the liberal opposition. And a good friend.
WaPo, Fred Hyatt: Don’t get complacent. Things really are that bad under Trump. http://wapo.st/2Oz5DYK
USAToday, Laurence H. Tribe: We are finally on the path to Trump impeachment and saving what our Founders gave us http://bit.ly/2LMriKy
// Nancy Pelosi spared moderate Democrats a floor vote on impeachment, but she has unleashed her committee chairs to do exactly what needs to be done.
🐣 RT @shaneharris Dems already calling out Ratcliffe as a political operative, suggesting he’s not suited to be DNI. Concern on Hill Trump might not appoint deputy DNI Sue Gordon–who Dems like–as acting director. If he does that, “the Hill will raise holy hell,” a Congressional official said
🐣 RT @craigunger This is another dangerous moment: Trump is now consolidating power in intelligence just as he did with Barr in the judiciary.
⋙ 🐣 RT @selectedwisdom One of the last voices of sanity in the administration, a loss for the country “Dan Coats, Who Challenged President Trump, To Depart Top Intelligence Job” https://www.npr.org/696376152
🐣 RT @KenDilanianNBC John Ratcliffe, by one measure the second most conservative member of Congress, appears to believe that the Russia investigation was cooked up by Democrats who “committed crimes.” Now Trump reportedly is considering placing atop the US intelligence community.
🐣 RT @mccaffreyr3 DNI DIRECTOR DAN COATS is a splendid and experienced public servant. He has been objective and non political coordinating our intelligence agencies. The Russians are a determined US adversary and a malignant threat to our electoral system.
⋙ 🐣 RT @RichardHaass Sorry to learn the DNI stepping down. Dan Coats was willing to speak truth to power and tell this Potus what he needed to hear even if he didn’t want to hear it. Essential his successor be no less independent and committed to the institution of the ODNI.
🐣 RT @vermontgmg [Garrett Graff] Before becoming DNI, Jim Clapper had worked in U.S. intelligence for nearly fifty years and personally headed two of the nation’s 17 intel agencies. By comparison, John Ratcliffe was the mayor of Heath, Texas, pop., 8000.
🐣 RT @NatashaBertrand Coats’ resignation letter, dated today. He mentions his establishment of election security executive “to support the whole-of-government effort to address threats against our elections.” https://twitter.com/NatashaBertrand/status/1155640413161738243?s=20/photo/1-2
CNN, Dean Obeidallah: The next six weeks will be crucial on impeachment http://cnn.it/2SKdP6C
🐣 RT @PamKeithFL If you are wondering how the 2018 Blue Wave happened, Chris Wray & Dan Coates launched countermeasures that kept the Russians busy w/out telling 45. He saw that as a betrayal. So he’s placing a Trumper as DNI & using McConnell to block funding to the states. Do you get it now?
🐣 XT @real https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1155558122163003393?s=20
⋙ 🐣 @real Rep Cummings is not the mayor of Baltimore. His responsibility in Congress is to help draft legislation for the country as a whole, not specifically “for his district.” He has done so. As chair of the important Oversight Committee, he has a Constitutional mandate to OVERSEE YOU.
⋙ 🐣 RT @DavidJolly Careful chief. One big difference between you and Cummings is he’s never settled a race discrimination suit with the U.S. DoJ.
🐣 RT @SpeakerPelosi The departure of DNI Coats is bad news for the security of America. His successor must put patriotism before politics, and remember that his oath is to protect the Constitution and the American people, not the President.
🐣 RT @MSNBC Rep. Elijah Cummings: “I’m begging the American people to pay attention to what is going on. Because if you want to have a democracy intact for your children and your children’s children and generations yet unborn, we have got to guard this moment.”
⋙ MSNBC, MTP Daily: Cummings: ‘I’m begging the American people to pay attention’ http://on.msnbc.com/2GxE4s6
// 7/24/2019; Rep. Elijah Cummings (D-M.d.) talks to reporters following Robert Mueller’s testimony.
TheAtlantic, Kathy Gilsinan: Dan Coats Spoke Truth to Trump. Now He’s Out. http://bit.ly/2JZkrez
// The director of national intelligence won plaudits for plainly laying out the intelligence community’s assessments on issues ranging from Iran to Russia, putting him at odds with the president.
🐣 RT @Stengel We’ve also never had a presidential impeachment inquiry where the high crimes and misdemeanors pose a threat to our national security because the @potus is being manipulated by a hostile foreign power.
⋙ 🐣 RT @Susan_Hennessey I’d argue that a “failed” impeachment would set a far less dangerous precedent than the one which would be set by not even attempting to impeach for egregious and constitutionally destructive presidential conduct.
⋙⋙ 🐣 RT @NBCPolitics House Intel Chairman Schiff warns a failed impeachment fight could set wrong precedent. https://nbcnews.to/2SKSGth
🐣 RT @BillBrowder It’s looking more and more like Alexei Navalny, Putin’s most fierce critic has been poisoned with “undefined chemical substances”. Very bad news, if true.
⋙ 🐣 RT @Axios JUST IN: Russian opposition activist Alexei Navalny’s doctor says he is suffering from the effects of “undefined chemical substances” — not an allergic reaction, as has been reported.
⋙⋙ Axios: Leading Putin critic Alexei Navalny hospitalized with mysterious illness http://bit.ly/2SSdoHG
TheHill: No. 3 Senate Democrat calls for House to begin impeachment proceedings against Trump http://bit.ly/2Yd8GtO Senator Patty Murray (D-WA)
🐣 RT @PamKeithFL This is DEFCON 4 level dangerous. A GOP partisan will have full control over intelligence and other countermeasures to secure our elections.
⋙ TheHill: JUST IN: Trump announces Texas GOP lawmaker will be replacing Dan Coats as top intelligence official http://hill.cm/F4aBGEL
🐣 RT @BillKristol Note to Dan Coats, Jim Mattis and others who’ve served honorably: Thank you for your service. But there’s one more thing you owe your countrymen: A candid and public assessment of the character and capacity of the president whom we have to decide next year whether to re-elect.
🐣 RT @andrews_aslund Trump’s sacking of Coats is a natural next step in his consolidation of power. It makes no moral sense for decent “grownups” to work for Trump. They will only facilitate his road to corrupt fascism. It is time to wake up, republicans!
⋙ 🐣 RT @kylegriffin1 Still the best Coats moment:
MITCHELL: The W.H. has announced on Twitter that Vladimir Putin is coming to the W.H. in the fall.
COATS: Say that again?
MITCHELL: Vladimir Putin, coming to the—
COATS: Did I hear you?
MITCHELL: Yeah, yeah.
COATS: OK. That’s gonna be special.
💽 https://twitter.com/kylegriffin1/status/1155617657036640257?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @Mcatlady54 Bill Maher calls it a slow-moving coup. Trump is gradually replacing leaders of institutions that could expose him or hold him accountable. Especially law enforcement, intelligence, courts and justice.
🐣 RT @BobbyChesney The President does not get to pick an Acting Director of National Intelligence. 50 USC 3026(a)(6) provides that the Principal Deputy Director (in this case, the wonderful Sue Gordon) automatically serves in that capacity. See here: https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/50/3026
⋙ 🐣 RT @GenMhayden And what if he breaks the law.
USAToday: ‘I promise you, you’re wrong’: Fox News’ Wallace shuts down Mulvaney claim Mueller vindicated Trump http://bit.ly/2OrqYTI
🐣 While not a surprise (Coats had reportedly wanted to leave in the spring), this is something I’ve been dreading. Spent most of the day curled up in a fetal position. Trump owns both the DOJ and the IC now.
🐣 RT @Comey Thank you, Dan Coats, for serving our nation so well and for continuing the proud tradition of Directors of National Intelligence loyal only to the truth. Hopefully you won’t be the last. https://twitter.com/jseldin/status/1155664419789127680?s=20/photo/1
// Coats resignation letter
🐣 RT @JuliaDavisNews Coats argued for a view of Russia as an adversary & pushed for stronger ties with traditional American allies in Europe, nations that have been the focus of Trump’s ire as he sought closer relations with Moscow & wavered on Russia’s election interference.
⋙ 🐣 RT @JuliaDavisNews There was no greater point of friction between Trump and Dan Coats than #Russia. Time after time, the White House has sought to weaken Mr. Coats’s language regarding the Kremlin. https://nyti.ms/2JZmHmo
🐣 RT @WajahatAli What if Trump loses 2020 and decides to contest the election? Says it’s rigged by the Deep State? Doesn’t leave normally? Now he has his loyal capos as AG and heads of intelligence, purging DOJ, DHS and other agencies…
⋙ 🐣 RT @AmericanMystic Trump is consolidating his personal control over the intelligence community. Between loyalists Barr and Radcliffe, and pliant CIA and FBI directors, Trump is close to neutralizing intelligence and law enforcement as spoilers in his bid to amass unprecedented executive power.
⋙⋙ 🐣 RT @renato_mariotti Radcliffe harshly questioned Mueller during the recent hearing, falsely suggesting that he failed to comply with the Special Counsel regulations and cutting Mueller off when he tried to explain himself.
🔆 This❗️⋙ WaPo: Intelligence Director Coats to resign next month, Trump says http://wapo.st/2OoXCWd Trump said in a tweet that he would nominate Rep. John Ratcliffe (R-Tex.), a third-term congressman and prominent supporter, to replace Coats.
🐣 RT @repvaldemings The president will do anything he can to cover up the fact that he orchestrated a criminal coverup of his collusion during the campaign. We won’t be distracted. @amjoyshow
🐣✅ RT @Politifact Mueller testified twice that a president could be indicted after he or she leaves office. Four legal experts we spoke to agreed. http://bit.ly/32VLzmr
🐣 RT @kalendkyj This is why Putin’s criminal regime is trying to destroy Ukraine so hard. If democracy and rule of law succeeds in Ukraine – then Russians might think it is possible even in Russia! And that is the biggest danger for the mafia regime in the Kremlin
⋙ 🐣 RT @McFaul The contrast between Ukrainians voting in free and fair elections last weekend and Russians getting arrested for wanting free and fair elections this weekend is striking.
🐣 RT @CNNSotu “My personal view is that [Trump] richly deserves impeachment,” House Judiciary Chairman Rep. Jerry Nadler says. ¤ Nadler calls the Mueller hearing an “inflection point,” saying that “we now have to get further evidence…as we consider articles of impeachment.” #CNNSOTU 💽 https://twitter.com/CNNSotu/status/1155474562781458432?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @Susan_Hennessey I’d argue that a “failed” impeachment would set a far less dangerous precedent than the one which would be set by not even attempting to impeach for egregious and constitutionally destructive presidential conduct.
🐣 Not sure he’d be mentally capable of standing trial. His dementia will be even more advanced. And I’m not sure he’s ever known the difference between right and wrong.
🐣 Trump wants us to think about Cummings and Baltimore to switch us from thinking about Mueller and Russia and his own lies and treason. We have no choice but to respond to his racism, and we must, vehemently. But realize he’s playing us.
🐣 RT @Monaheart1229 Trump’s new way to change the subject from the words spoken out loud by Mueller last week @ his obstruction & HIS foreign election interference, is to go after people of color in Congress. I’m told that in reality, he’s fuming-VERY upset.. #SundayMorning
⭕ 27 Jul 2019
TheHill: ‘Mitch McConnell is a Russian’ trends after GOP senator blocks election security bills http://bit.ly/2SJTcHM
🐣 RT @tedlieu BORING! ¤ Also, the facts show that Russia attacked our 2016 election; the @realDonaldTrump campaign planned its strategy based on the attack; and @POTUS obstructed justice to stop the investigation into it. ¤ And why is Trump tweeting at close to midnight on Saturday about this?
⋙ 🐣 RT @real The real Collusion, the Conspiracy, the Crime, was between the Clinton Campaign, the DNC, Fusion GPS, Christopher Steele…..(and many others including Comey, McCabe, Lisa Page and her lover, Ohr and his wonderful wife, and on and on!). @replouiegohmert
🐣 RT @davidfrum “What made life under Caligula especially difficult was that he expected to be applauded, not just by his courtiers, but by the whole Roman public …. [as if] there was nothing he did not excel at.” – Robert Hughes, ROME: A Cultural, Visual, and Personal History, p. 100
NYT: Moscow Police Arrest More Than 1,000 at Election Protest http://nyti.ms/30Z4H0Y
🐣 RT @RepAdamSchiff Above all else, what Mueller revealed was Trump’s disturbing, dangerous & undeniable disloyalty to country. ¤ That’s worse than a crime. ¤ It’s a violation of our obligation of citizenship. A betrayal of our core values. ¤ Worse yet? The disloyalty continues.
🐣 RT @AJentlson 2020 will be about the presidential candidates, not House Dems. Their fate is tied to that of our nominee. House Ds’ role is a supporting one: keep the party unified & lay down covering fire. Impeachment does both. I wrote about it for @GQMagazine
⋙ GQ: Adam Jentleson: What Moderate House Democrats Are Getting Wrong About 2020 and Impeachment http://bit.ly/2Yp69Ib
// Adam Jentleson on the folly of tepid kitchen-table strategizing, and the right lessons Democrats can draw from recent electoral history.
🐣 RT @j363j 📌 (THREAD) https://twitter.com/j363j/status/1155082205326188547?s=20
35 reasons the #MuellerTestimony assists the case of #ImpeachTrump:
1.Mueller directly says that he didn’t exonerate Trump.
2.Mueller directly says that Trump wasn’t cleared of obstruction of justice.
⭕ 26 Jul 2019
Political Quarterly (Jul): How Russia’s army of trolls built its disinformation campaign http://bit.ly/2PgF8Hx
CNN: Lawmakers call on Trump to implement required Russia sanctions http://cnn.it/2Zn22hk
Vox, Aaron Rupar: The White House says Russia didn’t impact the 2016 election. That’s not exactly true. http://bit.ly/315PDyF
// Votes may not have been changed, but that doesn’t mean Russian interference didn’t have an impact on the outcome.
🐣💙 RT @SethAbramson (BREAKING NEWS THREAD) A historic legal analysis published by @Slate confirms what this feed asserts—the Mueller Report FOUND a criminal conspiracy between Trump’s campaign and the Kremlin but declined to charge it. Please RETWEET this thread explaining this explosive revelation. 📌 https://twitter.com/SethAbramson/status/1154793167960629251?s=20
… 🐣 RT @ CONCLUSION/ So if you wonder why Trump just gave Barr power to disclose classified intel to Trump transition official Nunes—and why Trump may be trying to make Nunes the Director of National Intelligence—that’s why. The threat to him has moved there, so he needs Barr/Nunes on it.
⇈ ⇊
Trumpcast Podcast: Which Volume of the Mueller Report are you? https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/trumpcast/id1093260018?i=1000445350108
// 7/25/2019
‘The reports of the death of Impeachment are greatly exaggerated’ ~ @HouseJudiciary
@nytimes @WashPostPR @washingtonpost @Politico @SpeakerPelosi @RepJerryNadlerr
MotherJones, Dan Friedman: Democrats Say Their Impeachment Inquiry Has Already Begun http://bit.ly/32U85vT
// “We’re crossing a threshold.”
Esquire, Charles Pierce: This Is an Impeach By Any Other Name http://bit.ly/2SHMfaa
// Jerry Nadler and Nancy Pelosi demonstrate that the House Democrats have changed their calculus.
Vox, Andrew Prokop: The Democratic divide over impeaching Trump, explained http://bit.ly/32WLVcs
// Support for an impeachment inquiry has risen within the party. But will it be enough?
≣ 💽 PBS: Why House Democrats are choosing now to launch impeachment investigation http://to.pbs.org/2yhBulC
WaPo, Joshua Matz: The House has already opened an impeachment investigation against Trump http://wapo.st/2YrVaBQ
// Forget the political optics. As a matter of law, the Judiciary Committee’s actions are clear.
NBCNews: Mueller fallout: Highest-ranking House Democrat to date calls for Trump impeachment http://nbcnews.to/2yir9WB
// Rep. Katherine Clark, vice chair of the House Democratic Caucus, backed beginning the process to remove the president from office.
DailyBeast, Sam Brodey: Nadler: We’re Pursuing a De Facto Impeachment Inquiry http://bit.ly/2Om400k
// The Judiciary Committee chairman resisted using the actual word. But he said his oversight efforts were, in effect, an effort to determine whether Trump should go.
NYT: Raising Prospect of Impeaching Trump, House Seeks Mueller’s Grand Jury Secrets http://nyti.ms/2Mfg8gK
// In a court filing, House Democrats said they need access to secret grand jury evidence because they are weighing whether to recommend impeaching President Trump.
🐣 RT @KristineCummins Nadler: “I should note that the committee could have not brought these lawsuits without the help and support of Speaker Pelosi – who is as dedicated to holding this president accountable for his crimes as any of us gathered here today.”
🐣 RT @B52Malmet Mitch McConnell is a Russian asset. Doesn’t mean he’s a spy, but as Dana Milbank writes “Let’s call this what it is: unpatriotic. The Kentucky Republican is, arguably more than any other American, doing Russian President Vladimir Putin’s bidding.”
🐣 RT @TimOBrien “McConnell has no shame. He is aiding and abetting Putin’s dismantling of Americans’ self-governance. A leader who won’t protect our country from attack is no patriot.”
⋙ WaPo, Dana Milbank: Mitch McConnell is a Russian asset http://wapo.st/2KbFEB5
🐣 RT @SethAbramson FACT: House Democrats have Trump dead-to-rights on the impeachable offense of obstruction and they know it. All the delay is to gather counterintelligence evidence, additional evidence of conspiracy, and bribery/money laundering evidence. Democrats think delays help them do this. 📌 https://twitter.com/SethAbramson/status/1154923308057595904?s=20
🔆 This❗️⋙ TheAtlantic: Why We’re Moving Forward With Impeachment http://bit.ly/2SIkK02 by Judiciary Reps Scanlon (Vice Chair), Cicilline, Jayapal, Escobar
// Our Constitution requires it. Our democracy depends on it.
🐣 RT @RepJerryNadler Today, @HouseJudiciary is filing a petition for 6e grand jury materials where we made clear to the court that we are considering impeachment, along with other options, under our Article I powers. Congress must hold this President accountable. http://bit.ly/2K4Lu7a
// link to court docs
WaPo: House panel asks court to enforce Mueller-related subpoenas, a step toward possible impeachment http://wapo.st/2YjWx1y
🐣 RT @HouseJudiciary We are intensifying efforts to hold @realDonaldTrump accountable as we move forward with our investigation. Today we made clear to the court that we are considering impeachment, along with other options, under Article I powers. No one is above the law. 💽 https://twitter.com/HouseJudiciary/status/1154858893094400001?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @pbump Trump’s insistence that the economy will get him reelected suffers from two big flaws.
1. Views of the economy overlap with baked-in partisanship.
2. Voters don’t think the economy would be any worse under a Democrat than a second Trump term.
⋙ WaPo, Philip Bump: Trump warns of economic disaster if he loses. Americans shrug. http://wapo.st/2GvW3iG
⋙ 🐣 Also, it was just announced the economy was under 3% last year, and only grew 2.1% last quarter. Not only are the trade wars failing (and rattling the stock market), but the tax cuts did not spur investment as promised.
🐣 RT @JoeNBC Why won’t #MoscowMitch let the Senate even take a vote on protecting American democracy from Russia’s ongoing attacks when Trump’s own FBI, CIA, DNI, DHS chiefs said Putin was trying to subvert our democracy? Even his GOP Intel Chairman said the same yesterday. Why #MoscowMitch?
⋙ 🐣 RT @JoeNBC Sanctioned Russian Oligarch’s Company to Invest Millions in New Aluminum Plant in Mitch McConnell’s State #MoscowMitch
⋙⋙ Newsweek (Apr): Sanctioned Russian Oligarch’s Company to Invest Millions in New Aluminum Plant in Mitch McConnell’s State http://bit.ly/2yeapj7
// 4/15/2019
⭕ 25 Jul 2019
🐣 RT @atrupar Trump says he has granted Attorney General William Barr the ability to share classified intelligence documents pertaining to the Russia investigation with Devin Nunes
💽 MSNBC, TheLastWord: Neal Katyal on how to prosecute a sitting president http://on.msnbc.com/2YlPncW
// Fmr. Acting Solicitor General Neal Katyal tells Lawrence O’Donnell how a prosecutor could get around the Justice Department rule that a sitting president cannot be indicted.
Politico, Renato Mariotti: Actually, Robert Mueller Was Awesome http://politi.co/2JS0zKj
// History will show that he had one big goal, and nailed it.
🐣 Mueller kind of deflated @KamalaHarris’s big Barr moment when he said he too had not read all of the underlying evidence (eg all of the FBI interviews etc)of his report either. More proof we really don’t need #AllDramaKamala.
TheHill: McConnell blocks two election security bills http://bit.ly/2y99IYu
🐣 Progressive Twitter and the podcasts agree that the MSM (eg @washingtonpost and @nytimes in particular) have not taken their obligation seriously to dig beyond the “optics” to the heart of the Mueller hearings. Good! They screwed up by accepting Barr’s gloss. This is just as bad.
🐣 RT @jayrosen_nyu Political journalists: Establishing what happened and conveying it to the public is basic to your mission. If what happened was established, but its gravity has not been absorbed by the public, that may not be your doing, but it is your mission that has failed— not “the optics.”
🐣 RT @chrislhayes The nightmare scenario, one which is not, to my mind, that remote, is that 2020 is very close and amidst recount/contestation of certain state tallies, evidence emerges of security breaches into the state voting systems, throwing the entire result into a legitimacy black hole.
NYT: Russian Hack of Elections System Was Far-Reaching, Report Finds http://nyti.ms/30UDRae
TheAtlantic, Todd Purdum: Robert Mueller and the Tyranny of ‘Optics’ http://bit.ly/2Y1WNXH
// The commentariat’s focus on performance over substance is the kryptonite of the modern media age.
NPR: Senate Intel Committee Unveils Election Security Report In Wake Of Mueller Hearings http://n.pr/2Zf2Ogi
⋙ 📔 NPR: Senate Intel Report on Election Interference [pdf] http://n.pr/2Y1wRLM 67p
⋙ 📔 NPR: Senate Intel Report on Election Interference [pdf] http://bit.ly/2Yh1Crn 67p
// 2nd is easier to read
🐣 RT @CarolynGracceMMPH The President walks out loud and proud in front of an altered seal that reads “45 Es Un Titere” (45 is a puppet) featuring the Russian Imperial Eagle clutching golf clubs. It’s the little victories that mean the most. #45IsAPuppet http://yhoo.it/2SCKwTE via @YahooFinance https://twitter.com/CarolynGraceMPH/status/1154446274013229056?s=20/photo/1
🐣💙 RT @SethAbramson (THREAD) Far and away the worst take on Mueller’s testimony is that we learned nothing new from it. In fact, the *new* facts we learned were jaw-dropping. This thread focuses *only* on 10 new things we now know. I hope you’ll RETWEET this for anyone you think might be interested. 📌 https://twitter.com/SethAbramson/status/1154441003622944768?s=20
1. A VAST TRUMP-RUSSIA COUNTERINTELLIGENCE PROBE IS ONGOING. It’s exponentially broader than Mueller’s probe, it covers “collusion” (a fair term in the counterintelligence sphere) and its findings are being kept from America *and* Congress. The fight to see them began yesterday.
2. FEDERAL LAW ENFORCEMENT CAN’T CONFIRM TRUMP ISN’T COMPROMISED BY RUSSIA. Because “compromise” is a counterintelligence issue, and compromised politicians are national security threats, and no one has seen any FBI counterintelligence report, we don’t know if Trump is a threat.
3. MUELLER DIDN’T INVESTIGATE ANYTHING TRUMP WAS ACCUSED OF BESIDES OBSTRUCTION. The non-obstruction allegations against Trump were aiding/abetting, bribery, money laundering, and illegal pre-election receipt of in-kind donations from non-Russians. Mueller looked at none of that.
4. THERE IS SUBSTANTIAL EVIDENCE TRUMP AIDED AND ABETTED COMPUTER CRIMES. Mueller testified—under oath—that Trump gave “hope” and a “boost” to WikiLeaks’ “criminal activity” after he knew such activity was afoot. The crime that describes—aiding/abetting—must now be investigated.
5. THERE IS SUBSTANTIAL EVIDENCE TRUMP COMMITTED THE FEDERAL FELONY OF MAKING FALSE STATEMENTS TO LAW ENFORCEMENT. Mueller testified—under oath—that Trump’s written answers to the FBI and the Special Counsel were “generally” *untruthful*, as the facts in Mueller’s report confirm.
6. TRUMP AND GOP CLAIMS OF “NO COLLUSION,” “NO OBSTRUCTION,” AND “NO EVIDENCE OF CONSPIRACY OR COORDINATION” ARE ALL FALSE. It isn’t news to anyone paying attention, but as much of America isn’t, many learned for the first time from Mueller that these GOP talking points are lies.
7. MUELLER SAID TRUMP COULD BE CHARGED WITH OBSTRUCTION POST-PRESIDENCY AND WOULD HAVE BEEN CHARGED NOW IF NOT FOR THE OLC. Mueller’s later (confusing) “walk-back” of the second claim—which many had taken as an accidental truth—didn’t erase the specter that he meant what he said.
8. ANY TRUMP CRIMES INVOLVING OTHER NATIONS ARE STILL UNREPORTED. Mueller’s testimony made clear that evidence involving nations besides Russia—whether past election interference or future election interference, past collusion or future collusion—went to FBI counterintelligence.
9. REPUBLICANS HAVE NO OBJECTIONS TO ANY OF THE DAMNING FACTS IN THE MUELLER REPORT. Media waited with baited breath for Republicans to contest the Report’s damning findings rather than just opine about what else Mueller could have looked at—and shockingly, the moment never came.
10. MUELLER ONLY CHOSE NOT TO INTERVIEW TRUMP FACE-TO-FACE BECAUSE HE ADJUDGED HE HAD ENOUGH EVIDENCE OF “CORRUPT INTENT” ON OBSTRUCTION. Mueller resolved a *longstanding* mystery: why didn’t he insist on keeping Trump to his public promise of a live interview? Well, now we know.
BONUS. TRUMP WITNESSES “IMPEDED” THE MUELLER INVESTIGATION. Mueller testified under oath—in answers to questions by Rep. Demings—that contrary to Trump and GOP claims that the White House facilitated campaign aides assisting Mueller, the opposite was true: they tried to stop him.
BONUS. MUELLER BELIEVES TRUMP AND HIS AIDES OPENED THEMSELVES TO KREMLIN BLACKMAIL. Mueller told Rep. Correa he “doesn’t disagree” that a series of acts answering to behavior by Trump and his aides would be sufficient to give the Kremlin leverage and blackmail material over them.
BONUS. MUELLER SAYS NOT REPORTING FOREIGN AID OFFERS IN A CAMPAIGN CAN BE A CRIME. Trump says it isn’t; the GOP is today fighting as hard as they can not to legislate on it—as they think Trump will do (may already have done) it—but Mueller told Rep. Himes it can be a crime *now*.
🐣 RT @pithywidow “The ‘failure’ is not of a prosecutor who found the facts but might be ill equipped to make the political case, but instead of a country that won’t read his report & a media obsessed with scoring contests rather than focusing on the damning facts at issue”
↥ ↧
WaPo, Jennifer Rubin: Mueller didn’t fail. The country did. http://wapo.st/2SDNhnG
WaPo, Jennifer Rubin: Mueller didn’t fail. The country did. https://t.co/4wlBTVnRqH pic.twitter.com/X3xjdQbisG
— 🇺🇸 Auriandra 🇺🇦 (@Auriandra) July 25, 2019
I worry that we — the media, voters, Congress — are dangerously unserious when it comes to preservation of our democracy. To spend hours of airtime and write hundreds of print and online reports pontificating about the “optics” of Mueller’s performance — when he confirmed that President Trump accepted help from a hostile foreign power and lied about it, that he lied when he claimed exoneration, that he was not completely truthful in written answers, that he could be prosecuted after leaving office and that he misled Americans by calling the investigation a hoax — tells me that we have become untrustworthy guardians of democracy.
WaPo: House panel votes to authorize subpoenas for all White House work communications sent via personal email, cellphone http://wapo.st/2SF1yRa
DailyBeast, Julia Davis: Russia Thought the Mueller Hearings Were Hilarious http://bit.ly/2OjsQhp
// Russian state television evaluated the content of the hearings more honestly than Republicans and their pet networks in the United States.
🐣 RT @engcrimerussia Newsweek places Putin “undermining democracy” on cover http://bit.ly/2YqwklS https://twitter.com/engcrimerussia/status/1154299243957510144?s=20/photo/1
⭕ 24 Jul 2019 ⋙ Mueller Testifies
🔆 This❗️⋙ CREW: It’s Time for an Impeachment Inquiry into Trump http://bit.ly/2MDvXhA
⋙ 📔 CREW: Report: The Case for a Trump Impeachment Inquiry http://bit.ly/2OCEvrK
NYT, Noah Bookbinder: Robert Mueller Said All He Needed to Say http://nyti.ms/2YizQzE
// He affirmed four instances of potential obstruction of justice. Now it’s up to Congress.
🐣 RT @nedprice It shouldn’t reflect on Mueller that he didn’t light himself on fire to dramatize a report detailing an attack on our democracy and a President’s efforts to obstruct the investigation. It should reflect on us that theatrics are needed to attract attention to something like this.
🐣 RT @cliffschecter [To RandPaul] “The senator from Kentucky is now working for Vladimir Putin” – GOP Senator/former presidential candidate John McCain, 3/17/2017
NBCNews: 10 key sections of Mueller’s report that came up during the hearings http://nbcnews.to/2K5a2wV
// Robert Mueller repeatedly answered questions by referring to his report during his testimony. Here’s what those sections of the report say.
VanityFair: Republicans use Mueller’s silence to push conspiracy theories http://bit.ly/2JT1r1A
WaPo: Mueller’s approach to question of whether Trump obstructed justice leaves both sides frustrated http://wapo.st/2YjcTqU
WaPo: How did Trump end up in front of a presidential seal doctored to include a Russian symbol? http://wapo.st/2SEHfDp
WaPo, Nicole Hemmer: The GOP’s questions to Mueller seemed bizarre — unless you watch Fox News http://wapo.st/2OhFInY
// Treating right-wing conspiracy theories as smoking guns shows that Republicans are mostly speaking to their base
🐣 RT @Neal_Katyal I gave a long interview to the @NewYorker tonight about Mueller’s testimony, discussing the excellent questioning by @RepAdamSchiff and @tedlieu and where we go from here.
⋙ NewYorker, Isaac Chotiner: Neal Katyal Has One More Question for Robert Mueller After His Testimony http://bit.ly/2YolKvK
🐣 RT @DNCWarRoom WATCH, as Mueller confirms:
a) Russia wanted to help Trump win
b) Russia informed the Trump campaign of their desire to help him win
c) Russia committed federal crimes in interfering in the 2016
d) Trump’s campaign BUILT THEIR STRATEGY around the byproducts of those crimes
💽 https://twitter.com/DNCWarRoom/status/1154085346780614660?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @ForeignAffairs Max Weber first delivered the lecture “Politics as a Vocation” in 1919, in a post-World War I Germany at risk of becoming a failed state. Robert Zaretsky writes that Weber’s ideas about politicians and power may resonate even more strongly today:
⋙ ForeignAffairs, Robert Zaretsky: Max Weber Diagnosed His Time and Ours http://fam.ag/2LGQty2
// A Political Ethic for a Disenchanted Era
🐣💙 RT @SethAbramson [MEGA-] (THREAD) This open thread provides live updates on former special counsel Bob Mueller’s Congressional testimony before the House Judiciary Committee and the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence. I hope you will retweet this thread for any you think may be interested. 📌 https://mobile.twitter.com/SethAbramson/status/1154008971751153665
TheGuardian, Sabrina Siddiqui: Mueller’s testimony on Trump and Russia: the biggest takeaways http://bit.ly/2JQfBQT
// The former special counsel explained Trump was not exonerated and warned of continuing election interference by Russia
🐣💽 RT @MSNBC WATCH: 9 minutes of key moments from the hours-long first Mueller hearing https://twitter.com/MSNBC/status/1154258334641471488?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @RepAdamSchiff Here’s what Mueller said:
➡️ Russia interfered in our election to help Trump.
➡️ Russians made numerous contacts with the campaign.
➡️ Campaign welcomed their help.
➡️ No one reported these contacts or interference to FBI.
➡️ They lied to cover it up.
MotherJones: Robert Mueller Is Human. But He Delivered For Democrats. http://bit.ly/2ZcVjGq
// Mueller helped paint a devastating picture of Trump, even if it took some coaxing.
🐣 RT @John_Sipher Nearly every top Trump campaign aide was involved in meetings with Russians. No offers of assistance were rebuffed. Nobody told authorities. Almost all lied about their contacts. Much of the campaign foreign policy team is in jail. Nobody has ever explained why they met Russians.
WaPo: Robert Mueller kneecaps President Trump’s no collusion, no obstruction mantra http://wapo.st/2Me5xmb
// Again
CNN: Burr breaks with Nunes: ‘Sound reasons’ for judges to approve FISA warrant http://cnn.it/2mLIPUV
WaPo: How did Trump end up in front of a presidential seal doctored to include a Russian symbol? http://wapo.st/2Mlprft
🐣 RT @MotherJones Mueller did not rail about Trump’s serious misconduct. But in the quiet way of an institutionalist who respects norms and rules, Mueller made it clear: Trump engaged in treachery. From @DavidCornDC:
⋙ MotherJones, David Corn: Mueller Reminds the Public: Trump Betrayed the United States http://bit.ly/2SDmhEY
// This is the narrative Trump and his GOP defenders have wanted to obstruct and smother.
WaPo, Max Boot: Mueller wins on the facts — but loses on TV http://wapo.st/2YgFAcr
💙💙 NYT: Mueller Warns of Russian Sabotage and Rejects Trump’s ‘Witch Hunt’ Claims http://nyti.ms/2K6TMf0
🐣 RT @CheriJacobus As a former Republican, what scares me the most is that the GOP isn’t fighting for anything they always pretended to be for. They’re about raw power, corruption, lies, lawlessness and lying to the rubes so that those in power can stay in power, again, solely for the power & loot.
🐣 RT @DavidCornDC .@Nunes is pushing a theory that while Russia was attacking a US election to help Trump it somehow also manipulated Dem. operatives to get them to orchestrate the Trump Tower meeting in order to entrap Trump’s team–and then did nothing with this info.
🐣 RT @BarbMcQuade The politics of this are frustrating. Let’s focus on the substance – Mueller found that Russia attacked America, Trump helped and then lied to cover it up. Mueller could not charge a sitting president with a crime. The process for addressing presidential misconduct is impeachment.
🐣 RT @davidaxelrod Nunes apparently employs a new strategy: deploy a mind-numbing blizzard of names and conspiracy theories in hopes that viewers turn off their TVs.
🐣 RT @ThePlumLineGS What Rep. Collins is now saying about the origins of the investigation is really about spreading rank disinformation, to game the press into putting a series of lies on an equal footing with the truth about what Mueller found:
What Rep. Collins is now saying about the origins of the investigation is really about spreading rank disinformation, to game the press into putting a series of lies on an equal footing with the truth about what Mueller found:https://t.co/COM6Tkj04m pic.twitter.com/gNDw4MrXAn
— Greg Sargent (@GregTSargent) July 24, 2019
⋙ WaPo: Trump’s new ‘Article II’ comments illustrate stakes at Mueller hearings http://wapo.st/2Z8HGbf
🐣 RT @RepAdamSchiff Mueller was asked, “Did you actually totally exonerate the president?” ¤ He responded simply, “No,” and said, “The president was not exculpated.”
When asked if it was true Trump could be charged when he leaves office, Mueller responded simply, “True.” ¤ That’s pretty clear cut.
🐣 RT @kylegriffin1 Schiff opening statement: “Your investigation determined that the Trump campaign – including Trump himself – knew that a foreign power was intervening in our election and welcomed it, built Russian meddling into their strategy, and used it.”
🐣 RT @tribelaw Much as I hate to say it, this morning’s hearing was a disaster. Far from breathing life into his damning report, the tired Robert Mueller sucked the life out of it. The effort to save democracy and the rule of law from this lawless president has been set back, not advanced.
⋙ 🐣 I thought Mueller was shaky but circumscribed by whatever constraints (external or internal) he had placed on himself. The Dems were great. The GOP was … entertaining?
🐣 RT @JohnHarwood Mueller tells GOP Rep Buck, who seems taken aback to hear it, that President Trump could be charged with obstruction of justice after he leaves office.
🐣 RT @BradMossEsq HOLY SHIT ¤ Mueller just said it. Mueller just said based on the facts Trump can be indicted once he leaves office! ¤ That’s it. It’s over. #muellerday
🐣 So Jordan is suggesting Mifsud may have been “Western Intelligence” who set up Papadopoulas with a false story about the Russians having Hillary’s e-mails. And that the whole Russian hacking may have been – who? Western IC, too? Am I getting this?
≣ NBCNews: Full transcript: Mueller testimony before House Judiciary, Intelligence committees http://nbcnews.to/30Pq1pw
≣ CNN: Read: Intelligence Chairman Adam Schiff’s opening statement before Mueller testimony http://cnn.it/2y7lLWf
At the outset and on behalf of my colleagues, I want to thank you, Special Counsel Mueller, for a lifetime of service to the country.
Your report, for those who have taken the time to study it, is methodical and it is devastating, for it tells the story of a foreign adversary’s sweeping and systematic intervention in a close U.S. presidential election.
That should be enough to deserve the attention of every American, as you well point out. But your report tells another story as well. For the story of the 2016 presidential election is also a story about disloyalty to country, about greed, and about lies.
Your investigation determined that the Trump campaign — including Trump himself — knew that a foreign power was intervening in our election and welcomed it, built Russian meddling into their strategy, and used it.Disloyalty to country. Those are strong words, but how else are we to describe a presidential campaign which did not inform the authorities of a foreign offer of dirt on their opponent, which did not publicly shun it, or turn it away, but which instead invited it, encouraged it, and made full use of it?
That disloyalty may not have been criminal. Constrained by uncooperative witnesses, the destruction of documents and the use of encrypted communications, your team was not able to establish each of the elements of the crime of conspiracy beyond a reasonable doubt, so not a provable crime, in any event. But, I think, maybe, something worse. A crime is the violation of a law written by Congress. But disloyalty to country violates the very obligation of citizenship, our devotion to a core principle on which our nation was founded, that we, the people, not some foreign power that wishes us ill, we decide, who shall govern, us.
This also a story about money, about greed and corruption, about the leadership of a campaign willing to compromise the nation’s interest not only to win, but to make money at the same time.
About a campaign chairman indebted to pro-Russian interests who tried to use his position to clear his debts and make millions. About a national security advisor using his position to make money from still other foreign interests. And about a candidate trying to make more money than all of them, through a real estate project that to him, was worth a fortune, hundreds of millions of dollars, and the realization of a lifelong ambition — a Trump Tower in the heart of Moscow. A candidate who, in fact, viewed his whole campaign as the greatest infomercial in history.
Donald Trump and his senior staff were not alone in their desire to use the election to make money. For Russia, too, there was a powerful financial motive. Putin wanted relief from U.S. economic sanctions imposed in the wake of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and over human rights violations. The secret Trump Tower meeting between the Russians and senior campaign officials was about sanctions. The secret conversations between Flynn and the Russian ambassador were about sanctions. Trump and his team wanted more money for themselves, and the Russians wanted more money for themselves, and for their oligarchs.
But the story doesn’t end here either. For your report also tells a story about lies. Lots of lies.
Lies about a gleaming tower in Moscow and lies about talks with the Kremlin. Lies about the firing of FBI Director James Comey, and lies about efforts to fire you, Mr. Mueller, and lies to cover it up. Lies about secret negotiations with the Russians over sanctions and lies about Wikileaks. Lies about polling data and lies about hush money payments. Lies about meetings in the Seychelles to set up secret back channels, and lies about a secret meeting in New York Trump Tower. Lies to the FBI, lies to your staff, and lies to our Committee.
And lies to obstruct an investigation into the most serious attack on our democracy by a foreign power in our history.
That is where your report ends, Mr. Mueller, with a scheme to cover up, obstruct and deceive every bit as systematic and pervasive as the Russian disinformation campaign itself, but far more pernicious since this rot came from within.
Even now, after 448 pages in two volumes, the deception continues. The President and his acolytes say your report found no collusion, though your report explicitly declined to address that question, since collusion can involve both criminal and non-criminal conduct.
Your report laid out multiple offers of Russian help to the Trump campaign, the campaign’s acceptance of that help, and overt acts in furtherance of Russian help. To most Americans, that is the very definition of collusion, whether it is a crime or not.
They say your report found no evidence of obstruction, though you outline numerous actions by the President intended to obstruct the investigation.They say the President has been fully exonerated, though you specifically declare you could not exonerate him.
In fact, they say your whole investigation was nothing more than a witch hunt, that the Russians didn’t interfere in our election, that it’s all a terrible hoax. The real crime, they say, is not that the Russians intervened to help Donald Trump, but that the FBI had the temerity to investigate it when they did.
But worst of all, worse than all the lies and the greed, is the disloyalty to country, for that too, continues. When asked, if the Russians intervene again, will you take their help, Mr. President? Why not, was the essence of his answer. Everyone does it.
No, Mr. President, they don’t. Not in the America envisioned by Jefferson, Madison and Hamilton. Not for those who believe in the idea that Lincoln labored until his dying day to preserve, the idea animating our great national experiment, so unique then, so precious still — that our government is chosen by our people, through our franchise, and not by some hostile foreign power.
This is what is at stake. Our next election, and the one after that, for generations to come. Our democracy.
This is why your work matters, Mr. Mueller. This is why our investigation matters. To bring these dangers to light.
≣ CNN: Read: Judiciary Chairman Nadler’s opening statement during Mueller testimony http://cnn.it/2Yi0jZk
Director Mueller, thank you for being here. I want to say just a few words about our themes today: responsibility, integrity, and accountability.
Your career, for example, is a model of responsibility.You are a decorated Marine officer. You were awarded a Purple Heart and the Bronze Star for valor in Vietnam. You served in senior roles at the Department of Justice and, in the immediate aftermath of 9/11, you served as Director of the FBI.
Two years ago, you returned to public service to lead the investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election.
You conducted that investigation with remarkable integrity.
For 22 months, you never commented in public about your work—even when you were subjected to repeated and grossly unfair personal attacks. Instead, your indictments spoke for you, and in astonishing detail.
Over the course of your investigation, you obtained criminal indictments against 37 people and entities.
You secured the convictions of President Trump’s campaign chairman, his deputy campaign manager, his national security advisor, and his personal lawyer, among others.
In the Paul Manafort case alone, you recovered as much as $42 million—so that the cost of your investigation to the taxpayers approaches zero.
And, in your report, you offer the country accountability as well.In Volume I, you find that the Russian government attacked our 2016 elections “in a sweeping and systematic fashion,” and that the attacks were designed to benefit the Trump campaign.
Volume II walks us through ten separate incidents of possible obstruction of justice where, in your words, President Trump attempted to exert undue influence over your investigation.
The President’s behavior included, and I quote from your report, “public attacks on the investigation, non-public efforts to control it, and efforts in both public and private to encourage witnesses not to cooperate.”
Among the most shocking of these incidents, President Trump ordered his White House Counsel to have youfired and then to lie and deny that it ever happened; he ordered his former campaign manager to convince the recused Attorney General to step in and limit your work; and he attempted to prevent witnesses from cooperating with your investigation.
Although Department policy barred you from indicting the President for this conduct, you made clear that he is not exonerated. Any other person who acted this way would have been charged with a crime. And in this nation, not even the President is above the law.
Which brings me to this Committee’s work. Responsibility, integrity, and accountability: these are the marks by which we who serve on this Committee will be measured as well.
Director Mueller, we have a responsibility to address the evidence you have uncovered. You recognized as much when you said “the Constitution requires a process other than the criminal justice system to formally accuse a sitting president of wrongdoing.”
That process begins with the work of this Committee.
We will follow your example, Director Mueller. We will act with integrity. We will follow the facts where they lead. We will consider all appropriate remedies. We will make our recommendation to the House when our work concludes.
We will do this work because there must be accountability for the conduct described in your report, especially as it relates to the President.
Thank you again, Director Mueller. We look forward to your testimony.
🐣 Pastor: Do you take this woman to be your lawful married wife?
Robert Mueller: I don’t NOT take her.
(Bill Maher)
🐣 RT @MateaGold Despite Trump’s claims, Mueller deputy Aaron Zebley has made no contributions to either political party, federal records show. More on his background here via @timelfrink_dc
⋙ WaPo: Ahead of hearing, Trump aims fury at an unlikely target: Mueller aide Aaron Zebley http://wapo.st/2JNmeDC
It’s awake (6:30ish):
🐣 RT @real Why didn’t Robert Mueller & his band of 18 Angry Democrats spend any time investigating Crooked Hillary Clinton, Lyin’ & Leakin’ James Comey, Lisa Page and her Psycho lover, Peter S, Andy McCabe, the beautiful Ohr family, Fusion GPS, and many more, including HIMSELF & Andrew W?
🐣 RT @real It was NEVER agreed that Robert Mueller could use one of his many Democrat Never Trumper lawyers to sit next to him and help him with his answers. This was specifically NOT agreed to, and I would NEVER have agreed to it. The Greatest Witch Hunt in U.S. history, by far!
🐣 RT @real So Democrats and others can illegally fabricate a crime, try pinning it on a very innocent President, and when he fights back against this illegal and treasonous attack on our Country, they call It Obstruction? Wrong! Why didn’t Robert Mueller investigate the investigators?
🐣 Which Republican has been tasked to confront “conflicted” Mueller over his Trump golf course fees? How about those photos showing Mueller hugging Comey? Or about how Mueller wept and begged for the FBI director post? @mattgaetz @Jim_Jordan @replouiegohmert @RepDougCollins
⭕ 23 Jul 2019
⋙ Jed Shugarman: Ask Mueller about Indicting a President: The Legal Error at the Heart of Cryptic Report http://bit.ly/2ZaIFrD “The OLC assumed courts would stop the clock, but the use of such a power, called “equitable tolling,” is unprecedented and unlikely in criminal cases”
TheHill: Pelosi, Democrats launch Mueller messaging blitz http://bit.ly/2YnYXjB
NewYorker, John Cassidy: What to Expect from the Mueller Hearings http://bit.ly/32Nr5w3
💽 MSNBC, RachelMaddow: Barr may have opened door to expanded Mueller testimony on Trump http://on.msnbc.com/2YoTYza
// Chuck Rosenberg, former senior Justice Department official, and Neal Katyal, former acting U.S. solicitor general, talk with Rachel Maddow about what it means that Robert Mueller aide Aaron Zebley will join in Mueller’s testimony to Congress, and how William Barr’s statements may have changed the context of how Mueller presents his investigation’s findings.
TheHill: Schiff tells Mueller that DOJ directive should have ‘no bearing’ on testimony http://bit.ly/30V0V8R “‘[I]he Department’s attempt to restrict your testimony finds no support in law, regulation, or Department policy,’ Schiff wrote Tuesday.”
Politico, Josh Gerstein: Trump transition adviser convicted on foreign-agent charges http://politi.co/2OgTZ4p Bijan Rafiekian, a former business partner of Michael Flynn, convicted on felony conspiracy and FARA charges in offshoot of Mueller probe
Politico: Pelosi’s impeachment blockade faces biggest test yet: Mueller http://politi.co/2XYhPpW
// The former special counsel’s testimony will likely move more Democrats to support removing Trump. Will that change Pelosi’s strategy?
TheHill: Schiff tells Mueller that DOJ directive should have ‘no bearing’ on testimony http://bit.ly/30V0V8R
WaPo Editorial: The administration’s last-minute attempt to bully Mueller is offensive http://wapo.st/2y8Icu9
TIME, Tessa Berenson: 5 Key Parts of Robert Mueller’s Report That Will Probably Come Up During His Testimony http://bit.ly/2OejlQs
Bloomberg, Noah Feldman: Justice Department Letter to Mueller Isn’t Legal Advice http://bloom.bg/2y84ig9
// An attempt to restrict what the former special counsel can say to Congress is mostly about policy, not law.
WaPo: Mueller’s longtime aide to counsel him at House committee hearing http://wapo.st/2JMNgee
// House Judiciary Committee Democrats agreed to allow Aaron Zebley, a former top deputy to Mueller, to sit beside him and advise him in his answers.
VanityFair, Alison Durkee: William Barr’s Deputy Warns Mueller to Keep His Mouth Shut http://bit.ly/2OfewXf
// Any information that’s not in the public Mueller report is off limits, according to Trump’s DOJ.
CNBC, Kevin Breuninger: Democrats poised to press Robert Mueller to answer questions about Trump that go beyond the Russia report http://cnb.cx/2LEdGkq
● Former special counsel Robert Mueller is set to answer questions in public on Wednesday.
● Democrats are hoping that Mueller’s public testimony will finally lead to the tidal wave of opposition to President Trump that the initial release of the Russia report failed to create.
● But their biggest obstacle might be Mueller himself.
Slate, Ben Mathis-Lilley: Don’t Try to Ask Robert Mueller “Good” Questions. Ask Him Effective Ones http://bit.ly/2GDU3oP
MotherJones, David Corn: Here’s the Bullshit That Republicans Are About to Throw at Mueller http://bit.ly/2Z73ynq
// Be prepared.
NYT: Mueller makes last-minute request for aide to appear with him during his testimony http://nyti.ms/2YkK8yp
// Aaron Zebley, a top aide on Mueller’s team, will sit alongside him as counsel, but is not expected to be sworn in before the House Judiciary Committee.
DailyBeast, Elaine Godfrey: Can Mueller Persuade America to Impeach? http://bit.ly/2JZ5lVj
// Pro-impeachment Democrats are once again putting all their eggs in the former special counsel’s basket.
WaPo, Harry Litman: Mueller’s greatest failing is Trump’s greatest triumph http://wapo.st/2JYVleL
🐣 RT @BillKristol A bit worried about Mueller?
⋙ 🐣 RT @real Just got back only to hear of a last minute change allowing a Never Trumper attorney to help Robert Mueller with his testimony before Congress tomorrow. What a disgrace to our system. Never heard of this before. VERY UNFAIR, SHOULD NOT BE ALLOWED. A rigged Witch Hunt!
📊 WaPo, Emily Guskin: How Americans view Mueller and impeachment, in five charts http://wapo.st/2Y27cm3 (various polls)
Majority opposes impeachment
●https://twitter.com/Auriandra/status/1153783769045716994?s=20 /photo/1
Republicans more positive since report released
● https://twitter.com/Auriandra/status/1153784129671987201?s=20/photo/1
Most say report findings won’t change vote
● https://twitter.com/Auriandra/status/1153784505380954112?s=20/photo/1
Sixty percent say Trump lied
● https://twitter.com/Auriandra/status/1153784815440711681?s=20/photo/1
Partisan split on whether Trump obstructed justice
● https://twitter.com/Auriandra/status/1153785162112487424?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @jonflan Mueller will write his own epitaph this Wednesday and either: [1] show himself to be a Trump toady, or [2] the man who remained faithful to his marine oath, semper fi, and call out a corrupt candidate Trump and his presidential administration.
🐣 RT @Mimirocah1 For months, Barr has attacked Mueller for not stating whether he would have charged Trump with obstruction if he were not POTUS. Now DOJ is trying to silence Mueller & prevent him from giving that opinion.
NBCNews, Mimi Rocah (6/6): What Barr’s ongoing smear campaign against Robert Mueller is really about http://nbcnews.to/32WVmIW
// Faced with the facts and the truth, Barr has done what many good defense attorneys do — attack the investigation and the investigator. But he’s not a defense attorney.
🐣 RT @JuaquinCastrotx The results of Mueller’s investigation:
-37 indictments
-7 convictions
-10 instances of obstruction
-Over 100 secret meetings with Russian operatives
If the avg American did any of this, they’d be in jail.
🐣 RT @moscow_project Starting now: Moscow Project Director @maxbergmann sits down with House Intelligence Chairman @RepAdamSchiff to discuss the Mueller report, tomorrow’s testimony, and how to protect future elections from foreign interference.
⋙ 💽 AmericanProgress: Rep Adam Schiff: Responding to the Mueller Investigation http://ampr.gs/32Oz9MO
⋙⋙ .@RepAdamSchiff answers his own prescient opening statement from March 20, 2017: “Is it possible that all of these events and reports are entirely unrelated, and nothing more than an unhappy coincidence?” ¤ The answer, very clearly: “No.”
⋙⋙ @RepAdamSchiff: “One of the challenges of representing the seriousness of what the Trump campaign did … is that we have learned about it in drips and drabs. If we hadn’t known about that Trump Tower meeting until the Mueller report, you can just imagine the explosion.”
McClatchy: Here’s how House Republicans plan to handle the Mueller hearings http://bit.ly/2M5UE68
NYT: Robert Mueller Is Testifying Tomorrow. Here’s What You Need to Know. http://nyti.ms/2LAGGJV
CNN, Jeremy Herb: Robert Mueller hearings: 10 things to watch for Wednesday http://cnn.it/2Gmsjok
ABCNews: Top House Democrat says Mueller testimony will be ‘deadly serious’ http://abcn.ws/2OaVDVf Rep David Cicilline (D-RI)
‼️Note ⋙ NYT/AP: Wray’s Testimony Tuesday Could Be Preview for Mueller Hearing http://nyti.ms/2Z8zrMk FBI Director Christopher Wray testifies before Senate Judiciary at 9:00am ET 7/23/2019 (CSPAN3)
USAToday, Michael Stern: Mueller testimony is Democrats’ last chance to move public opinion on Trump impeachment http://bit.ly/32HtS9Y
// Mueller’s testimony must be a stellar TV version of his report. The right questions could lead to drama, clarity and Mueller contradicting Trump.
✅ WaPo Factchecker, Glenn Kessler: President Trump’s love-hate relationship with the Mueller report http://wapo.st/30U6Ivw
TheWeek: Ex-solicitor general Neal Katyal thinks Robert Mueller’s ‘by-the-book’ nature will thwart Bob Barr’s efforts to ‘gag’ him http://bit.ly/2LytLIF plus: John Dean and Ari Melber
⭕ 22 Jul 2019
KyivPost/OCCRP (7/22): Meet the Florida duo helping Giuliani investigate for Trump in Ukraine http://bit.ly/2kXlrWT
// 7/22/2019
FiveThirtyEight (Jul): How To Read 2020 Polls Like A FiveThirtyEighter http://53eig.ht/2ZazqeU
// 7/22/2019
🐣 RT @JedShug Mueller made significant legal errors, but the right way to question and correct them is for members of Congress to hand over the microphone. It’s worked before. The Watergate & Iran Contra model: expert lawyers ask the questions. My piece in @politico:
⋙ 💙💙 Politico, Jed Shugerman: How Congress Can Exploit Mueller’s Legal Mistakes http://politi.co/2Miu0qz
// The investigator made important errors in his Trump report. To make them count on Wednesday, members need to take a lesson from Watergate and hand over the microphone.
Politico: Inside the preparations for Mueller’s history-making testimony http://politi.co/2StoRgC
// The former special counsel has relied on Jonathan Yarowsky, a veteran Beltway attorney who’s advised a president on impeachment and sparred with Bill Barr over independent prosecutors.
📊 Pew Poll: For the first time, majority of Republicans express confidence in the fairness of Mueller’s investigation http://pewrsr.ch/2JMAPPK
//➔ does this mean they’re open minded or that they’re bought the “no obstruction, no collusion” line?
● Trend https://twitter.com/Auriandra/status/1153718101965463558?s=20/photo/1
Alt HL: Confidence in Mueller surges among those who have heard “a lot”
//➔ if they heard “a lot” from Fox, major cognitive dissonance ⚠️in store
● Heard a lot https://twitter.com/Auriandra/status/1153720622276591616?s=20/photo/1
JustSecurity, Joshua Geltzer, Ryan Goodman and Asha Rangappa: 35 Questions for Congress to Ask Robert Mueller http://bit.ly/2Q7Kr9f (+ Questions from Readers) ⋙ This is a couple hundred questions, counting the subquestions, and most are open-ended
DailyBeast: Can Mueller Cut Through Barr’s ‘Fog of Propaganda’? http://bit.ly/2JMZwLX by Erin Banco, Sam Brodey, Asawin Suebsaeng and Betsy Woodruff
// Democrats fear Wednesday will be a nothingburger. Republicans fear it might spark a public outrage. Both sides can’t be right.
NYT Editorial: Ask Mueller Anything. The Facts Won’t Change. http://nyti.ms/2OfzepM
// But Americans could still learn a thing or two from the former special counsel’s testimony.
🐣 RT @matthewamiller One striking thing about DOJ’s letter to Mueller is how Barr has ignored the same guardrails in his discussions of the probe. DOJ’s position is it’s ok for Barr to talk about decisionmaking, findings that go beyond the report, etc. but Mueller can’t.
🐣 RT @mkraju DOJ warns Mueller that his testimony “must remain within the boundaries” of his public report and anything beyond that would be covered by executive privilege. It states view that DOJ believes Mueller’s testimony is “unnecessary”
DOJ warns Mueller that his testimony “must remain within the boundaries” of his public report and anything beyond that would be covered by executive privilege. It states view that DOJ believes Mueller’s testimony is “unnecessary” pic.twitter.com/ldxkqcn9oG
— Manu Raju (@mkraju) July 22, 2019
// Letter from DOJ to Mueller
TIME, James Banner Jr: Corruption, Cover-Ups and the Shocking Presidential History to Remember as Robert Mueller Testifies http://bit.ly/2XZvq0t James Banner is an historian
VanityFair, Eric Lutz: Will Mueller’s Testimony to Congress Change the Impeachment Calculus? http://bit.ly/2YbDiqT
TheGuardian, Sabrina Sidiqqui: Robert Mueller: ‘damning and explosive’ testimony expected before Congress http://bit.ly/2XZwrWi
// Former special counsel will publicly detail ties between Russia, Trump and his potential efforts to obstruct justice in investigation
LawfareBlog, Hadley Baker and Mikhaila Fogel: Mueller on Trump: Everything the Special Counsel’s Report Says the President Did, Said or Knew http://bit.ly/2OfJ8rm
🐣 RT @vermontgmg [Garrett Graff] THREAD: In advance of Mueller’s testimony this week, I wanted to round-up some of the best pieces about Mueller’s testimony and the questions he should be asked. So here’s your definitive guide to the best definitive guides to Mueller’s testimony: … 📌 https://twitter.com/vermontgmg/status/1153331059087384576?s=20
↥ ↧
WIRED, Garrett Graff: The Definitive Congressional Guide to Robert Mueller’s Mind http://bit.ly/2GrdMHZ
// Robert Mueller’s Testimony: What Congress Needs to Know
⋙ See under Entire Articles: WIRED Mueller’s Mind 7-22-2019
NPR, Phil Ewing: Will Robert Mueller’s Testimony Shift The Prevailing Winds In Washington? http://n.pr/2Yl6CiD
Vox: Trump talked about Mueller’s testimony for around 90 seconds. He packed in 6 lies. http://bit.ly/2YkOWnp
// “No obstruction … We had a total no-collusion finding.”
EmptyWheel, Marcy Wheeler: Congress Already Has Evidence Trump Lied Under Oath to Robert Mueller http://bit.ly/2Ysx764
NYT, Neal Katyal: With Three Simple Answers, Mueller Can Speak Volumes http://nyti.ms/2Y0trcc
// For those who have read it, the special counsel’s report speaks for itself. For those who haven’t, he can speak for it in Congress.
● First, did your report find there was no collusion?
● Second, did your report find there was no obstruction?
● Third, did your report give the president complete and total exoneration?But now we get to something interesting — the asterisk. Mr. Mueller’s testimony will occur under a greatly changed circumstance from when the report was finished. The attorney general has recently said, referring to Mr. Mueller, “I personally felt he could’ve reached a decision” about obstruction, and further said that “the opinion says you cannot indict a president while he is in office, but he could’ve reached a decision as to whether it was criminal activity.”
That compels Congress to ask Mr. Mueller two final questions: “First, when you were serving as special counsel, did Mr. Barr ever tell you that you could reach a decision about Mr. Trump’s criminality? Second, since Mr. Barr has now said that department policy allows you to reach a decision as to whether it was criminal activity, please do so. No one knows the facts better than you. We need you to. ”
The report speaks for itself. But in an era when our leaders have lied about it in the hope that Americans won’t read it, we need simple connect-the-dots questions clearly posed that will correct the record. Mr. Mueller’s report itself says that a sitting president cannot be indicted because it may “potentially pre-empt constitutional processes for addressing presidential misconduct.” Our Constitution outlines only one such process: an impeachment inquiry in the House. It’s time.
WaPo, John Podesta: Mueller’s testimony is vital — not just for 2016 but for the future, too http://wapo.st/2Yj50WK
USAToday: DOJ warns Robert Mueller not to veer from Russia report’s written conclusions at Capitol Hill hearing http://bit.ly/2Gsb2dA
“Any testimony must remain within the boundaries of your public report because matters within the scope of your investigation were covered by executive privilege, including information protected by law enforcement…and presidential communications privileges,” Associate Deputy Attorney General Bradley Weinsheimer wrote in a two-page letter to Mueller two days before his scheduled testimony before the House Judiciary and Intelligence committees.
🐣 RT @MarshallCohen Trump is recycling old lies about the Russia investigation. (1) Mueller did not have conflicts of interest. (2) The report did not say “no obstruction,” it was closer to the opposite. (3) The Strzok texts were not destroyed. (4) Mueller did not break the law, Trump made this up.
🐣 RT @Frankfigliuzzi1 This is what fear looks like: DOJ warns Robert Mueller not to veer from Russia report’s written conclusions at Capitol Hill hearing
⋙ USAToday, Kevin Johnson: DOJ warns Robert Mueller not to veer from Russia report’s written conclusions at Capitol Hill hearing http://bit.ly/2Gsb2dA
WaPo, Margaret Sullivan: The media is getting a second chance to cover Robert Mueller’s findings — and this time get it right http://wapo.st/2JIYQXU
WaPo, Ron Klain: Robert Mueller’s testimony seems destined to disappoint. But Democrats could make it worthwhile. http://wapo.st/2GmsSyk
🐣🚫 RT @ChrisAlbertoLaw BARR ALERT: Reviewed only a fraction of the 989 pages Barr sought to conceal from the public & bottom line: More than sufficient evidence to prosecute Trump for multiple felonies. Hello, @SpeakerPelosi & @HouseJudiciary. Slam dunk evidence of Trump’s “High Crimes & Misdemeanors.”
DailyBeast, Kevin Poulsen: Trump’s New Favorite Channel Employs Kremlin-Paid Journalist http://bit.ly/2Sw66ZG
// Kristian Rouz appears on segments for One America News Network—ironic given he is working for a Russian outlet fingered in the 2016 election attack.
Politico, Darren Samuelsohn and Natasha Bertrand: Inside the preparations for Mueller’s history-making testimony http://politi.co/2StoRgC
// The former special counsel has relied on Jonathan Yarowsky, a veteran Beltway attorney who’s advised a president on impeachment and sparred with Bill Barr over independent prosecutors.
CNN, Stephen Collinson: Mueller’s big moment is make or break for Democrats http://cnn.it/2xZjgFj
NYT, Sharon LaFraniere: 19 Questions We Have for Mueller About His Investigation http://nyti.ms/2JJ0Yik with context and links to report
● https://twitter.com/Auriandra/status/1153283184513228801?s=20/photo/1-2
1. Why didn’t you subpoena the president?
2. Do you believe President Trump cooperated with your investigation?
3. Do you think the president was candid in his responses?
4. If Mr. Trump were an ordinary citizen, would you have found that there was sufficient evidence to charge him with obstruction of justice?
5. You and Attorney General William P. Barr apparently differ on whether you could have, and should have, decided whether the president committed a crime. Mr. Barr has said he was surprised you did not. How do you respond?
6. Did you intend for your report to serve as a referral for Congress for possible impeachment proceedings?
7. Mr. Barr has at points cast Mr. Trump’s actions in a seemingly benign light, saying the president was “frustrated” by what he saw as an unjustified investigation that was hobbling his presidency. Do you agree with him? Do you feel he has accurately described your investigation to the public?
8. During your investigation, did you see any evidence to support Mr. Barr’s suspicions that federal investigators bent rules to go after Trump?
9. What did you write in the first letter you sent to Mr. Barr, and what did you tell him when you met?
10. Do you have any regrets about the makeup of your team? Did you leave the door open to President Trump’s accusations that the team was biased by including too many prosecutors who were registered Democrats or had given to Democratic causes?
11. At what point in your investigation did your team decide that you would not make a judgment about whether the president had obstructed justice?
12. Mr. Barr has said that at that point you should have “pulled up” — meaning, stopped investigating the president. How do you respond to that criticism?
13. Your report noted the importance of preserving evidence of possible obstruction of justice by the president. For what purpose? Were you contemplating possible prosecution of the president by future prosecutors, once he left office?
14. Were you surprised that Mr. Barr and Mr. Rosenstein decided that the evidence against the president did not amount to a prosecutable case? Were you surprised by how quickly they decided?
15. Of the 11 episodes involving possible obstruction of justice by the president, which did you consider the most troubling and why?
16. A number of witnesses had either encrypted or deleted electronic communications relevant to the investigation, including Steve Bannon and Erik Prince, who apparently deleted dozens of text messages they shared. Was it possible to recover these communications and if so, why didn’t the special counsel’s office make a greater effort to do so?
17. Do you believe you got to the bottom of whether the Trump campaign coordinated with WikiLeaks on releasing the emails that Russia stole from Democrats? Would such interactions have been legal? Ethical?
18. How many witnesses refused to cooperate? Who among them was particularly important to the investigation? To what extent did this hamper your work?
19. Did Donald Trump Jr. refuse to testify, citing his right not to incriminate himself?
NYDailyNews, Garry Kasparov: The demagogue and the Democrats: Trump spits in the face of American values; the opposition party has no clue how to respond http://bit.ly/2Z0M0t8
KyivPost, Alexei Bayer: Blame Russia for Trump’s racism, too http://bit.ly/2M3vKnv
NewYorker, Masha Gessen: The Weaponization of National Belonging, from Nazi Germany to Trump http://bit.ly/2xZdzY5
By turning unspoken assumptions into hateful rally chants, Trump is not merely destroying the norms of political speech but weaponizing them. He is cashing in on the easy trick of saying out loud what others barely dare to think. But his supporters are also enforcing the prohibition on his opponents’ taking part in the conversation—as when House Speaker Nancy Pelosi was reprimanded for calling Trump’s speech “racist” on the House floor. Trump has initiated a radical renegotiation of belonging in this country and then monopolized it. This is what happens first: a political force seizes the power to define themselves as insiders and certain others as intruders. This is done in the name of protection of the motherland, which the newly marginalized are said to hate. Everything else follows.
⭕ 21 Jul 2019
DailyBeast, David Lurie: Democrats Need to Reset the Trump Investigation After Mueller Testifies http://bit.ly/2JW6HQM
// An impeachment inquiry won’t help and could be counterproductive. There is another tool, though, used from Watergate to Benghazi and beyond.
TheHill, Morgan Chalfant: 10 questions for Robert Mueller http://bit.ly/2XW8IGy
● Would you have charged Trump if it weren’t for the OLC opinion?
● Why did your office write a letter to Barr objecting to his March 24 memo?
● Did you blame the media on your call with Barr?
● Did any Trump campaign contacts with Russia put national security at risk?
● Did your investigation exonerate Trump of ‘collusion’ and obstruction allegations?
● Should Congress initiate an impeachment inquiry?
● At what point did you know the investigation was not going to establish conspiracy between the campaign and Russia?
● What role did the Steele dossier play in the investigation?
● Why did you select people for your team who mostly donated to Democrats?
● Why didn’t you compel Trump to be interviewed?
NYT: In 88 Trips to Capitol Hill, Mueller Grew Weary of Partisanship http://nyti.ms/2Y6bnsc
// Dozens of hours of Robert S. Mueller III’s congressional testimony since 1990 reveal his complex relationship with legislators.
WaPo: Hostile witness or Democrats’ hero? Mueller’s past turns before Congress offer important clues http://wapo.st/32JPlio
Politico: Democrats to face off against a reluctant Mueller http://politi.co/2Y44FCZ
// House Democrats want the notably reserved former special counsel to help build a case against President Donald Trump.
Vox, Riley Beggin: What Democrats want from Robert Mueller’s upcoming testimony http://bit.ly/2GmOLOm
// Chairmen Adam Schiff and Jerry Nadler say they plan to use Mueller’s testimony to vividly bring his report to life.
💽 CNN: ‘Very substantial evidence’ Trump is ‘guilty of high crimes and misdemeanors,’ House Judiciary Chair Nadler says http://cnn.it/2XWFUh7
⭕ 20 Jul 2019
TheGuardian: Brexit funder Arron Banks threatens Netflix over Great Hack documentary http://bit.ly/2JGmswi
🐣 RT @hunte_ashley Everybody but especially Republicans must watch this. #MuellerReport in 5 minutes. 💽 https://twitter.com/hunte_ashley/status/1152718330052169728?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @NatashaBertrand “Barring some emergency, coming more from Bob Mueller than the Congress, I see no reason not to expect an appearance” from Mueller, @RepAdamSchiff says. But Barr doesn’t want Mueller to testify, Schiff adds, and committees are still having daily fights with DOJ. #AspenSecurity
WaPo: Democrats hope Mueller gives credence to their claim of an unlawful Trump http://wapo.st/2JJqFPT
⭕ 19 Jul 2019
🔄📔 DPLA: Enhanced Mueller Report Now Accessible to All http://bit.ly/32xSZfg
EmptyWheel, Marcy Wheeler: Democrats Are Setting Themselves Up to Fail on Mueller Hearings http://bit.ly/32DmnAJ
JustSecurity, Kate Martin: Presidential Abuse of Power Should Be Focus of Mueller Questioning http://bit.ly/2xY71J3
WaPo, Eric Beerbohm and Ryan Davis: Facts straight from Mueller’s mouth? They won’t put out the gaslighting fire http://wapo.st/30HBk35
// It’s almost impossible to change minds once the capacity to reason has been surrendered.
🐣 RT @latimes Mueller’s testimony will be televised, tweeted and almost certainly contentious. Here’s what to expect on Wednesday. [$paywall$] https://twitter.com/latimes/status/1152372564351733760?s=20
NPR, Tim Mak: Committee Democrats Prepare For Highly Anticipated Robert Mueller Hearings http://n.pr/2Y1jiqL
CNN: US spy chief Dan Coates names first election security coordinator http://cnn.it/2LvDvTR “Shelby Pierson will be the first Election Threats Executive and serve as Coats’s principal adviser [and] coordinating activities and initiatives across the intelligence community”
LawfareBlog, James Comey: What I Would Ask Robert Mueller http://bit.ly/2XYrB6F
If I were a member of Congress with five minutes to question Robert Mueller, I would ask short questions drawn from the report’s executive summaries.
Volume One: Russia
Did you find that there were a series of contacts between the Trump campaign and individuals with ties to the Russian government? (p. 5)
In particular, did you find that a Trump foreign policy advisor learned that the Russians had dirt on Hillary Clinton in the form of thousands of emails? (pp. 5-6)
Did you find that the Trump foreign policy advisor said the Trump campaign had received indications from the Russian government that it could assist the campaign through the anonymous release of information damaging to candidate Clinton? (p. 6)
Did you find that senior members of the Trump campaign met with Russian representatives at Trump Tower after being told in an email that the meeting was part of Russia and its government’s support for Mr. Trump? (p. 6)
Did you find that, despite the fact that candidate Trump said he had “nothing to do with Russia,” his organization had been pursuing a major Moscow project into the middle of the election year and that candidate Trump was regularly updated on developments? (vol 1, p. 5: vol 2, p. 19)
Support Lawfare
Did the Trump campaign report any of its Russian contacts to the FBI?
Not even the indications from the Russian government that it could assist the campaign through the anonymous release of information damaging to candidate Clinton?
Volume Two: Obstruction
Did you reach a judgment as to whether the president had committed obstruction of justice crimes?
Did you find substantial evidence that the president had committed obstruction of justice crimes?
For example, did you find that the president directed the White House counsel to call the acting attorney general and tell him the special counsel must be removed? (p. 4)
Did you find that the White House counsel decided he would rather resign than carry out that order? (p. 4)
Did you find that the president later directed the White House counsel to say he had not been ordered to have the special counsel removed? (p. 6)
Did you find that the president wanted the White House counsel to write a false memo saying he had not been ordered to have the special counsel removed? (p. 6)
Did you find that the White House counsel refused to do that because it was not true? (p. 6)
Did you find that the president repeatedly asked a private citizen—his former campaign manager—to deliver a message to the attorney general to restrict the special counsel to investigating only future campaign interference? (p. 5)
DailyBeast, Erin Banco: George Nader, Witness in Mueller Probe, Hit With New Charges of Sex Trafficking http://bit.ly/2M37cef
// The key cooperator is accused of having sex with a 14-year-old boy from Europe he allegedly flew to the U.S.
NBCNews: Mueller hearings to highlight ‘shocking evidence of criminal misconduct’ by Trump, Democrats say http://nbcnews.to/30JjD3g
// The former special counsel is set to appear before the Judiciary and Intelligence committees Wednesday.
⭕ 18 Jul 2019
NBCNews: FBI believed Trump was closely involved in hush-money scheme, unsealed documents show http://nbcnews.to/2OlFtIE
// The release of the previously redacted documents came one day after the judge in the case disclosed that prosecutors had concluded their probe into Cohen’s campaign finance crimes.
ABCNews: Trump administration invokes privilege again, blocks intel committee from classified Mueller docs, sources say http://abcn.ws/2SqOoqt
⭕ 17 Jul 2019
TheIndependent, Paul Nailer [UK]: I used to work in US intelligence advising presidents on risk. The biggest threat to our country today is the Republican Party http://bit.ly/2O6SNjS
// Donald Trump and his coterie of criminals have done more in two years to weaken the United States than the Soviet Union was able to achieve in decades
🐣 RT @EvanMcMullin There’s really no denying now that Trump’s movement, which has taken control of most of the Republican Party, is like any radical, far-right movement found in Europe—remnant racists from the last century, violent in word and deed, and fundamentally anti-freedom.
⋙ 🐣💽 RT @ABC Pres. Trump continued his now days-long attack on four Democratic congresswomen at his rally in North Carolina on Wednesday night, eliciting chants of “send her back” from the crowd. https://abcn.ws/32yeJYw
Pres. Trump continued his now days-long attack on four Democratic congresswomen at his rally in North Carolina on Wednesday night, eliciting chants of "send her back" from the crowd. https://t.co/V9Nf9ve5tf pic.twitter.com/OSf6hkEu4E
— ABC News (@ABC) July 18, 2019
🐣 RT @thedailybeast “Why is Donald Trump pleased by the controversy over his tweets? Because it’s made him realize more than ever before that he has the power to blow the country up over race,” writes @mtomasky
⋙ DailyBeast: Tweet Fight Means Trump Now Knows He Has the Power to Tear Us Apart—and He’s Itching to Do More of It http://bit.ly/2Y8fYOQ
// There’s something deeper going on here—deeper and terrifying if you think about it in historical terms.
🐣 RT @Mimirocah1 Except that Trump was 100% implicated in the scheme by Cohen & the SDNY clearly believed that to be true. Once again, Trump escapes charges only because he is the POTUS (now).
⋙ 🐣 RT @maggieNYT “We are pleased that the investigation surrounding these ridiculous campaign finance allegations is now closed. We have maintained from the outset that the President never engaged in any campaign finance violation.” Jay Sekulow on SDNY case closing.
HuffPo, Paul Blumenthal and Kevin Robillard: This Was Elizabeth Warren’s Plan All Along http://bit.ly/2Lqo13q
// The policy system she built in her Senate office now fuels her 2020 Democratic presidential bid.
🐣 RT @bmangh Boston Globe, John Kerry: Trump can’t hold a candle to Ayanna Pressley [$$] https://twitter.com/bmangh/status/1151628547221610496?s=20
🐣 RT @TomJChicago Look at the footage of Trump all over Jeffrey Epstein like a cheap suit. The body language stands out. It’s like Epstein has what Trump wants & stands there regally while Trump is on him like a puppy dog. Trump loves him more than Kim Jong Un. Sending Bat Signal to @DrGJackBrown
⋙ 💽 🐣 RT @atrupar Morning Joe dug up footage of Trump partying with Jeffrey Epstein at Mar-a-Lago in 1992 https://twitter.com/atrupar/status/1151468359227191298?s=20/photo/1
🐣 [Reply to Obama] ⚡️Help, Obi-Wan Obama. You’re our only hope.⚡️
🐣 RT @FrankFigliuzzi More of the iceberg tomorrow?
⋙ 💙🐣 RT @DeadlineWH “We have a federal judge saying this of a national importance… Who was directing these hush money payments? How much did the president know?.. The world is our oyster tomorrow and it’s only a matter of time” – @FrankFigliuzzi1 w/ @NicolleDWallace
🔆 This❗️⋙ CNN: Feds end investigation into Trump Org and hush money payments http://cnn.it/32pBldA
CNN reported Friday that the Manhattan US Attorney’s office had approached the end of its investigation of the Trump Organization and wasn’t poised to charge any executives involved in the company’s effort to reimburse Cohen for money he paid to silence one of the women. That payment constituted an illegal campaign contribution, according to prosecutors. Trump has denied the affair allegations.
“The campaign finance violations discussed in the Materials are a matter of national importance,” US District Court Judge William Pauley wrote in his decision. “Now that the Government’s investigation into those violations has concluded, it is time that every American has an opportunity to scrutinize the Materials.”
Pauley ordered a copy of the government’s July status report and copies of search warrant materials from the Cohen case to be filed publicly with very limited redactions by Thursday at 11 a.m. ET.
The conclusion of federal prosecutors’ investigation of the Trump company’s role in the Cohen matter marks a significant victory for the President’s family business, although it likely doesn’t come as a complete surprise. There had been no contact between the Manhattan US Attorney’s office and officials at the Trump Organization in more than five months, CNN reported Friday. …
The Trump Organization investigation was launched out of the Cohen case, in which he pleaded guilty to eight counts, including two counts of campaign-finance violations for orchestrating or making payments during the 2016 election to two women — adult-film actress Stormy Daniels and ex-Playboy model Karen McDougal — who alleged affairs with Trump. Cohen is now serving a three-year prison sentence.
After Cohen made the $130,000 payment to Daniels, he was reimbursed, prosecutors said in court filings, by the Trump Organization. The company’s executives authorized payments to him totaling $420,000, in an effort to cover his original payment, tax liabilities and reward him with a bonus, according to prosecutors, and they falsely recorded those payments as legal expenses in their books.
The criminal inquiry centered on whether those payments, like the hush money Cohen gave to Daniels, violated campaign-finance law.
The judge on Wednesday said he would allow the government to keep the redaction of an uncharged third party when it files its status report and would permit the search warrant materials to be filed with redactions of the names of law-enforcement investigators and people who did business with Cohen in connection to taxi medallions he owned.
🐣 RT @KlasfeldReports INBOX: Michael Cohen’s attorney Lanny Davis criticizes the closing of the campaign finance investigation. ¤ “Why is Michael Cohen … the only member of the Trump company to be prosecuted and imprisoned?” https://twitter.com/KlasfeldReports/status/1151608451648360448?s=20/photo/1
⋙ 🐣 RT @KlasfeldReports BREAKING: Prosecutors say they concluded parts of Michael Cohen spin-off investigations and agree to unseal new campaign finance information. ¤ Judge Pauley writes in an order that he will unseal that material tomorrow at 11 a.m. https://twitter.com/KlasfeldReports/status/1151505450191523841?s=20/photo/1
⋙ 🐣 RT @ “Accordingly, the Government is directed to file the July 15, 2019 status report and the Materials on the public docket on July 18, 2019 at 11:00 a.m.” ¤ Busy day tomorrow. That’s just after bail ruling on Jeffrey Epstein. cc: @CourthouseNews https://twitter.com/KlasfeldReports/status/1151505957643591685?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @ScottMStedman There is now credible evidence that #FaceApp is a Russian government operation to steal your data and possibly engage in espionage. Delete it immediately.
⋙ ForensicNewsNet #FaceApp is now in the same building as Skolkovo Ventures – a Russian government investment company into IT and tech. It appears that FaceApp is a Russian government funded operation to harvest data.
🐣 Listening to the Mueller testimony next week is going to require everyone to quickly master the art of multi-tasking. In truth, there will be two hearings. A Democratic hearing and a Republican hearing. @FrankFigliuzzi1 @NicolleDWallace @DeadlineWH
🔆 This❗️⋙ CBSNews: Judge says Michael Cohen hush-money probe is over, orders documents unsealed http://cbsn.ws/32x0LpJ
TheHill, David Webb: Questions for Robert Mueller http://bit.ly/2NYPH1x //➔ argues a political concern led Brennan to give dossier to Reid; ignores fact that the FBI had already opened an investigation.
In Michael Isikoff’s book, “Russian Roulette,” he explains that Christopher Steele’s own business partner didn’t believe the information in his reports was accurate. Likewise, Clinton vendor Glenn Simpson of Fusion GPS couldn’t use Steele’s increasingly outrageous reports because they weren’t sourced or documented.
Instead, to get the Steele info in play, they gave it to the FBI and then briefed national security reporters about the info to stir the pot, including the tip that the FBI was investigating the info. Isikoff took the bait and wrote one of the first stories at Yahoo News.
CIA Director John Brennan called then-Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) to download info and encouraged Reid to politicize the Russia-Trump connection in October. …
Two days later, Reid penned a letter to Comey demanding an investigation into Trump. Most information in Reid’s letter was sourced to public news reports, but one issue alluding to Carter Page — reporting falsely that he met with a high Kremlin official — was not public. It came from Brennan or the Clinton campaign or law firm Perkins Coie. At that point, Brennan was directly coordinating campaign messaging.
Since the subject was the obsession of the nation’s law enforcement institutions, intelligence agencies and national press corps, and the info was put into national circulation by the Clinton campaign and Steele Dossier, determining the original source and accuracy of that dossier should have been the first step of a thorough investigation.
There is no indication such an inquiry occurred in the Mueller report. Mueller assumed the accuracy of the report, started with it, and investigated Trump. He should have started with the dossier info and tested it first.
ThinkProgress, Casey Michel: Here are the major questions surrounding Robert Mueller’s congressional testimony http://bit.ly/2Z0oxZ6
// From subpoenaing Trump to other areas of Russian interference, Mueller’s testimony will likely be a blockbuster.
1. Will Mueller actually say anything new?
2. Why didn’t Mueller subpoena the president?
3. Why didn’t Mueller include more incidents of Russian interference efforts?
4. What does Mueller think of William Barr’s handling of the Mueller report?
5. How will the White House react to the testimony?
Politico: Why Democrats’ oversight machine is moving so slowly against Trump http://politi.co/2YT6Bja
// Lawmakers say they are building a record of White House resistance to testimony from Mueller witnesses — but angst on the left is growing.
⭕ 16 Jul 2019
Salon, Bill Curry: Last chance for impeachment: Next week Robert Mueller will shape history — but how? http://bit.ly/2NYiiUF
// Pelosi’s Congress will finally drag Mueller to the Hill next week. It’s a big moment in the quest to save democracy
CNBC: Roger Stone avoids jail, banned from major social media after judge rules Trump friend breached gag order in Mueller case http://cnb.cx/2XUhKyC
WashingtonExaminer: Devin Nunes raises alarm: Democrats may be ‘back channeling’ with Mueller to create a ‘narrative’ http://washex.am/2LnXhR4 //➔ (I doubt it)
🐣 RT @tribelaw Who’d be surprised if it turns out Stone and Manafort held the keys to the Trump-Assange-WikiLeaks-Putin conspiracy against the United States and our democracy — and that it’s Trump’s dangling of future pardons that kept those keys from turning? Not me.
🐣 RT @AmoneyResists Trump’s Impeachable Offenses: (Thread): ¤ #1.) Trump welcomed, aided and abetted Russia’s attack on America; then denied it even happened and took Putin’s word over our own intelligence agencies. 📌 https://twitter.com/AmoneyResists/status/1120555910630342657?s=20
⭕ 15 Jul 2019
💙💙 💽 https://twitter.com/SassBaller/status/1149529909980647426?s=20/photo/1
// anti-fascism US short film from the 1940s; propaganda
🐣 RT @20committee Hey, remember when I was “crazy” and “unhinged” for suggesting that Assange was in bed with Russian intelligence? ¤ Good times, those.
CNN: Exclusive: Security reports reveal how Assange turned an embassy into a command post for election meddling http://cnn.it/2JNBpvl
⭕ 14 Jul 2019
MercuryNews/WaPo, Eugene Robinson: After Mueller testifies, the impeachment question will demand an answer http://bayareane.ws/2Lj01zb
// Nancy Pelosi has to do what’s best for the country — Congress has the right, and the responsibility, to check a president
≣ NPR: Mark Bowden Talks Process Of Adapting Mueller Report Into Graphic Novel http://n.pr/30xITZX
LATimes, Doyle McManus: Pro-impeachment Democrats hope Mueller’s testimony will give them the sound bite they need http://lat.ms/2xQ0osl
🐣 RT @mccaffreyr3 Mike Haydon one of the finest public servants we have ever produced. Great experience and sound judgment. Enormous personal courage. I fully concur with his viewpoints on Trump. My anger is with the Republican Party leadership who can see the growing danger. https://twitter.com/ignatiuspost/status/1150200489461649415 …
⋙ 🐣 RT @ignatiuspost An extraordinary warning by ex-CIA Director Michael Hayden, bravely speaking as he recovers from a major stroke, of the damage that Donald Trump is doing to U.S. national security.
⋙⋙ Mediaite: Former CIA Director and Republican Michael Hayden: America May Not Survive a Second Trump Term http://bit.ly/30xbmzk
⭕ 13 Jul 2019
🚫 WitherspoonInstitute: The Cracks in the Edifice of Transgender Totalitarianism http://bit.ly/2LmBtVX
// conservative thinktank
TheAtlantic, Donald Ayer: Robert Mueller Must Finish the Job http://bit.ly/2SdC7FN Ayer is Former U.S. Deputy Attorney General under George H. W. Bush
// The special counsel should give us the benefit of his professional judgment on the legal significance of the facts he has found.
🐣 RT @benjaminwittes Whatever of one thinks of Lisa Page and Peter Strzok—I happen to think highly of them both but that is a conversation for another day—the specter of the President of the United States going on a campaign of defamation against civil servants is one of the great abuses of our time.
⋙ 🐣 RT @real This is one of the most horrible abuses of all. Those texts between gaga lovers would have told the whole story. Illegal deletion by Mueller. They gave us “the insurance policy.”
⭕ 12 Jul 2019
🐣◕ RT @mattdpierce This is one of the most mind-bending election charts I feel like I’ve seen. http://nyti.ms/2xMilb7
https://twitter.com/mattdpearce/status/1149816715955458048 /photo/1
// Evangelical vote share vs share of pop.; article by Edsall 7/3
SFGate: Kamala Harris continues fire on Joe Biden, jabs other rivals who ‘churn out plans like a factory’ http://bit.ly/2GbPt0t //➔ meanwhile Harris keeps changing hers
JustSecurity: Five Takeaways from Talking Feds’ Mueller Preview Panel http://bit.ly/2XK1RuN
● Congress: Don’t Swing for the Fences
● Mueller is Going to be a Reluctant Witness
● The GOP Strategy Will Likely Have Two Elements: Confuse and Delay
● Don’t Forget the Deputies
● The Stakes are Real, Act Like It
Politico: Mueller testimony delayed by one week http://politi.co/2xRst2d
🐣 RT @digby56 Well that certainly says it all. The Unitary Executive Front must be so pleased.
⋙ 🐣 RT @atrupar On Fox News, WH spox @hogangidley45 said the quiet part loud about Trump’s citizenship question executive order: “The president said, ‘listen, I’m not going to be beholden to the courts anymore.'” ¤ (Instead of asking any sort of follow-up Q @BillHemmer immediately changed topic)
🐣 RT @OpenSecretsDC Replacing Alex Acosta as acting Labor Secretary will be Patrick Pizzella. ¤ Pizzella’s long history as a lobbyist includes working with Jack Abramoff and work on behalf of a shell corporation connected to the Russian government ¤ http://crp.org/pizze by @jsscppr & @ReidChamplin
⋙ OpenSecrets: Acting Labor secretary Pizzella lobbied for Russian-connected front group, worked with Jack Abramoff http://bit.ly/2Y1mc2F
Politico: ‘This wasn’t just a briefing’: Pompeo grilled CIA analysts on Russia findings http://politi.co/2JJuyTL
// The DOJ is now reviewing those same findings after Mike Pompeo found no wrongdoing in how the agency concluded Russia wanted to help Trump in 2016.
Mediaite: Former CIA Director and Republican Michael Hayden: America May Not Survive a Second Trump Term http://bit.ly/30xbmzk
⭕ 11 Jul 2019
Alternet, Cody Fenwick: How lawmakers can use Robert Mueller’s testimony to expose the biggest scandal in the Russia investigation http://bit.ly/2xLkiVc
WaPo, Danielle Allen: Congress’s silence on the Mueller report will have the practical consequences of exoneration http://wapo.st/2XHNagv
NYT: House Democrats Approve Subpoenas for Who’s Who of Mueller Witnesses http://nyti.ms/2XKboBQ
Politico: Here Are 11 Questions We’d Ask Robert Mueller http://politi.co/2ScEatU
// After two years, Congress finally has him on the stand. Here’s our question list.
1. Why did you decide to end the investigation when you did?
2. Do you believe that your investigation, and the many criminal charges that resulted from it, will deter campaigns from accepting foreign “dirt” on their opponents in the future?
3. What would you have done differently?
4. What laws, policies or rules would you recommend changing in light of your investigation ?
5. In your report, you noted that Donald Trump satisfied all three elements required in a court of law to show that the president committed obstruction of justice. Yet you declined to recommend charges. Isn’t demonstrating that the president committed all the elements of a crime essentially the same as saying that he broke the law?
6. In your only public comments about the probe, in May, you stated: “The Constitution requires a process other than the criminal justice system to formally accuse a sitting president of wrongdoing.” Isn’t impeachment the only formal process?
7. Do you agree with how Attorney General William Barr characterized your 448-page report and your statements to him?
8. Why didn’t you push harder to interview Trump in person, and can you help us understand how significant it was that some witnesses lied to you, deleted or lost communications or pleaded the Fifth to deprive you of testimony?
9. At what point did you decide not to take a position on obstruction by the president, and did you or your office give Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein any indication before March 2019 that an inconclusive finding on that issue was a possibility? And how was it decided that Rosenstein could supervise the investigation despite his key role in the firing of FBI Director James Comey?
10. Trump’s most frequent public critique of your team was that it was made up of “angry Democrats” and “Trump haters.” Should you have paid more attention to the appearances and potential biases of people you hired, and were the duties of any attorneys or FBI agents limited out of conflict-of-interest concerns?
11. What’s next for you?
WSJ: House Judiciary Committee Authorizes Subpoenas to Ex-Trump Campaign Officials http://on.wsj.com/2LN1ddz
// Panel says it could target officials including Jared Kushner, John Kelly as well as National Enquirer publisher David Pecker
⭕ 10 Jul 2019
BrennanCenter: The Mueller Report Exposed Weaknesses in U.S. Democratic Institutions that H.R. 1 Would Address http://bit.ly/2xDM4TJ
// Russia’s interference in the 2016 election and the other abuses documented in the Mueller Report have exposed serious vulnerabilities in America’s democratic institutions. H.R. 1 addresses many of these problems, as documented below. Enacting this legislation would help blunt future attempts by Russia and others to undermine American sovereignty and the integrity of our government.
VanityFair, Eric Lutz: William Barr Is Still Trying to Bury the Mueller Report http://bit.ly/2XBn9e0
// In this case, by graciously offering the special counsel an out from testifying before Congress; also Aaron Zebley and James Quarles
CNN: Dems seek to navigate Mueller landmines http://cnn.it/2NPlzp6
Politico: Impeachment push freezes as Mueller testimony looms http://politi.co/2LeWGB0
// Many House Democrats are counting on the special counsel to renew momentum for impeachment — but there are doubts it will be enough.
🐣 RT @JillWineBanks You need public support to impeach but you need public hearings to get it. Start hearings now. Fight Trump obstruction by going to court to enforce subpoenas and refusals to answer questions. Bipartisan support will follow as it did in Watergate. #FactsMatter
⋙ 🐣 RT @RWPUSA Nixon had a 68% Gallup Poll approval rating in January 1973.
Members of Congress were not scared. They did their jobs.
The impeachment hearings changed everything.
By August 1974 he was gone.
DailyBeast, Jed Shugarman: Mueller Missed the Crime: Trump’s Campaign Coordinated With Russia http://bit.ly/2XC7foH
// The special counsel will testify before Congress next week. He needs to answer for historic legal and factual errors.
ACS, Barbara McQuade: Five Things to Watch for When Mueller Testifies http://bit.ly/2XHfGtM
1. The Russian attack on our country is a serious national security threat
2. Links between the Russian government and the Trump campaign
3. President Trump, his associates, and obstruction of justice
4. Mueller’s interaction with Attorney General William Barr
5. Will members of Congress attempt to discredit Mueller and the FBI?
Politico, Tim Alberta: ‘Mother Is Not Going to Like This’: The 48 Hours That Almost Brought Down Trump http://politi.co/2XEME2Y
// The exclusive story of how Trump survived the Access Hollywood tape.
⭕ 9 Jul 2019
DailyBeast, Erin Banco and Betsy Woodruff (7/9): Senate Intel Eyes Social Media Manipulators Who Pitched Team Trump http://bit.ly/2Lm1bds
// They worked on plans to use fake social media accounts to win Trump the election. No wonder the Senate’s Russia probe is interested in them.
Royi Burstien, the founder and ex-CEO of Psy Group, isn’t alone, according to two people familiar with the matter; the committee also sent an inquiry to Joel Zamel—a self-styled Mark Zuckerberg of the national-security world who reportedly owned Psy Group. The Israeli-Australian discussed Psy Group’s “Campaign Intelligence and & Influence Services Proposal” with Donald Trump Jr. during the campaign, and campaign staff also reached out to the company about social media manipulation to help Trump win the White House.
Zamel also attended meetings during the transition that included discussions about how to undermine and ultimately take down the regime in Iran, according to communications reviewed by The Daily Beast. Top Trump World power brokers, including Steve Bannon and Michael Flynn, were present for the talks. And a top Saudi spy, who has since taken the fall for the brutal murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi, participated in the talks as well.
The New York Times reported last year that former Trump campaign advisor Rick Gates reached out to Psy Group in 2016 about online manipulation plans. According to the Times, the plans, which had a price tag of about $3 million, included the possibility of Psy Group using online avatars to impact the vote. One of the proposals included intelligence officers who would use social media accounts to examine the political leanings of 5,000 delegates to the Republican National Convention, the Times reported.
In 2016, Zamel became increasingly connected to the Trump team and led conversations with transition officials and advisors, including Donald Trump Jr. and former Blackwater CEO Erik Prince, about his company helping other Middle Eastern players, such as Saudi Arabia, use economic, information, and military tactics for weakening the government in Tehran.
NYT, Frank Bruni: Joe Biden, Closet Republican http://nyti.ms/2xHaLP6 //➔ This headline is unfair: the point is about style, not policy. It’s worth a read. I for one, think we need to follow the breadcrumbs back to where we lost our way. It is not a small task.
// He’s the liberal Bob Dole, the looser Mitt Romney, the supposedly safe bet who’s owed a shot.
NYT: Justice Dept. Watchdog Is Preparing to Deliver Verdict on the Russia Investigation http://nyti.ms/2G5eIlf The Office of the Inspector General for the Department of Justice is led by Michael E Horowitz
Mr. Horowitz’s previous scrutiny of law-enforcement actions in 2016 has provided fodder to both Republican and Democratic critics. He found fault with the former F.B.I. director James B. Comey for public comments in 2016 about the investigation into Hillary Clinton’s private email server, but not with the decision to pass on charging her.
Mr. Horowitz also uncovered text messages between the F.B.I. employees Peter Strzok and Lisa Page criticizing then-candidate Donald Trump. He sharply rebuked the pair but said he had found no evidence that the pair had acted with bias in the Clinton investigation.
At the center of Mr. Horowitz’s current investigation is Mr. Steele and how the F.B.I. used his reporting in its investigation of the Trump campaign.
Mr. Horowitz is expected to answer whether Mr. Steele’s information played a role in opening the Russia investigation, code-named Crossfire Hurricane. Former law enforcement officials have insisted it did not, saying they opened the inquiry in July 2016. The Steele dossier did not reach the relevant agents until Sept. 19, 2016, nearly two months later, people familiar with the matter have said.
But the primary focus of the inspector general’s inquiry is the role that Mr. Steele’s information played in investigators’ effort to obtain court permission to wiretap Carter Page …
In August 2016, a month before agents on the Russia investigation received the Steele dossier, they had already started discussions with the Justice Department about seeking a wiretap order targeting Mr. Page, according to people familiar with the investigation’s timeline.
Mr. Steele’s information helped officials overcome bureaucratic reluctance stemming from fears that any leak of the existence of such a wiretap would be politically radioactive.
💙 🔊 MPR: Aspen Ideas Festival: ‘The Mueller report: Where do we go from here?’ [audio, 1hr] http://bit.ly/2G4pV5F Panelists: Garrett Graff, Neal Katyal and Theodore Olson
💙💙 🔆 This❗️⋙ Insider, Mark Bowden: We hired the author of ‘Black Hawk Down’ and an illustrator from ‘Archer’ to adapt the Mueller report so you’ll actually read it http://bit.ly/2XS7Lhn about 25 pages plus illustrations ~ Pretty Cool ‼️
WaPo, Philip Bump: Attorney General Barr would rather not have Mueller explaining what his report actually says http://wapo.st/30rfwss
LawfareBlog, Quinta Jurecic: How Congress Should Think About Mueller’s Testimony http://bit.ly/30x5mGR
LawfareBlog, Margaret Taylor: Alter the Committee Hearing Format for Mueller’s Testimony http://bit.ly/2Lk8zGf
NYT: Justice Dept. Tells Mueller Deputies Not to Testify, Scrambling an Agreement http://nyti.ms/32kTQjh
It is unclear what effect the Justice Department’s intervention will have on the men’s eventual appearances, but it raises the prospect that a deal lawmakers thought they had struck last month for testimony from Mr. Mueller, the former special counsel, and the two prosecutors could still unravel.
Both Mr. Zebley and Mr. Quarles have left the Justice Department and are now private citizens, meaning that the department most likely cannot actually block their testimony. But the department’s view — depending on how strongly it is expressed — could have a chilling effect on two longtime employees and give them cover to avoid testifying.
🐣 RT @mayawiley Big if true cuz this is the team sent to determine whether #FBI improperly initiated #CarterPage investigation: “investigators ultimately found Steele’s testimony credible and even surprising:” Trump dossier author Steele gets 16-hour DOJ grilling
⋙ Politico, Natasha Bertrand: Trump dossier author Steele gets 16-hour DOJ grilling http://politi.co/2YDEDYt
// The interview was contentious at first, according to two people familiar with the matter, but investigators ultimately found his testimony credible and even surprising.
Reuters: Trump ‘dossier’ author grilled by Justice Department watchdogs: sources http://reut.rs/30sIaJQ “… Horowitz’s investigators appear to have found Steele’s information sufficiently credible to have to extend the investigation. Its completion date is now unclear.”
WaPo, Philip Bump: Don’t blame the Seth Rich conspiracy on Russians. Blame Americans. http://wapo.st/2YIFhnJ
↥ ↧
YahooNews, Michael Isikoff: Exclusive: The true origins of the Seth Rich conspiracy theory. A Yahoo News investigation. http://yhoo.it/30m01BW
⭕ 8 Jul 2019
🐣 RT @JillWineBanks Finding way to ignore SCOTUS re citizenship census question, praising Epstein, and attacking Mueller — all in a days work for 45 and Barr. All a threat to rule of law and democracy.
LawfareBlog, Benjamin Wittes: If I Had Five Minutes to Question Robert Mueller http://bit.ly/2XuWcIQ “Ask only questions you know he can answer and whose answers you know will reasonably contribute to the thread you are developing”
This is not an investigative hearing. It is an exercise in political and legal theater, and you are trying to provide a compelling elucidation of Mueller’s work and findings. [Example:]
● You write that your “investigation did not identify evidence that any U.S. persons knowingly and intentionally coordinated with the IRA’s [Internet Research Agency’s] interference operations.” Is it fair for me to read that as saying you developed no evidence implicating the president in crimes related to the Russian social media campaign during the 2016 election?
● Your findings with respect to the Russian hacking and dissemination of Democratic emails are more complicated. But is it fair to say that you did not find evidence that anyone associated with the Trump campaign, including the president himself, participated in the Russian hacking operations themselves?
● With respect to possible conspiracy charges, you write something very different: that the investigation “did not establish that the contacts” between the campaign and the Russians “amounted to an agreement to commit any substantive violation of federal criminal law.” You also write that you “did not establish any agreement among Campaign officials—or between such officials and Russia-linked individuals—to interfere with or obstruct a lawful function of a government agency during the campaign or transition period.” The language “did not establish” implies to me something different from language like “did not identify evidence”; it implies to me that you did identify evidence to one degree or another, just not evidence sufficient to bring a criminal case. Is that a fair reading?
● So, in other words, when the evidence you found truly exonerates the president, the report says that clearly, and when the evidence you found is insufficient to prosecute, the report says that clearly too. Is that correct?
● With respect to obstruction of justice, you use different language still. You write, “[I]f we had confidence after a thorough investigation of the facts that the President clearly did not commit obstruction of justice, we would so state.” But, you write, “[W]e are unable to reach that judgment” in the face of “difficult issues that prevent us from conclusively determining that no criminal conduct occurred. Accordingly, while this report does not conclude that the President committed a crime, it also does not exonerate him.” Given that you elsewhere use language like “did not identify evidence” with respect to the IRA social media operations and “did not establish” with respect to conspiracy, is it fair for me to read your report as saying that the evidence you developed on obstruction, in contrast to your earlier conclusions, was strong enough that a finding of criminality was genuinely possible?
● Is it fair for me to read your statement that “if we had confidence … that the President clearly did not commit obstruction of justice, we would so state” as meaning that it would have been improper for you to render a “traditional prosecutorial judgment” on whether President Trump had violated the obstruction statutes precisely because it was possible that he had done so?
● You write that one factor in your decision not to evaluate this evidence is that “we recognize that a federal criminal accusation against a sitting President would place burdens on the President’s capacity to govern and potentially preempt constitutional processes for addressing presidential misconduct.” Am I correct that the constitutional process you are referring to here is the impeachment power?
● Yet you did not reach any conclusions as to whether President Trump committed impeachable offenses. Is that right?
● So it’s reasonable for me to conclude that you were deferring to Congress on the question of whether the facts your report describes do or do not constitute impeachable offenses?
● You also write that the investigation was appropriate to conduct, notwithstanding the fact that the president is not amenable to criminal indictment while in office because the Justice Department recognizes that “a President does not have immunity after he leaves office.” In fact, you say explicitly that “we conducted a thorough factual investigation in order to preserve the evidence when memories were fresh and documentary materials were available.” Is it fair for me to read this as deferring to future federal prosecutors the question of whether the president’s conduct described in your report constitutes criminal offenses?
● So, to summarize, I take your report to state that you found substantial evidence of presidential obstruction of justice, which you chose not to analyze, because you were deferring to Congress on questions of impeachment and to federal prosecutors after President Trump leaves office on questions of criminality. Is that a fair reading?
Politico/AP: Barr: Mueller’s Hill testimony will be ‘public spectacle’ http://politi.co/30llhrt “Barr says the Justice Department would support Mueller if he decides he ‘doesn’t want to subject himself’ to congressional testimony”
Politico: White House blocks ex-McGahn aide from answering more than 200 questions http://politi.co/2XFYfyV former White House aide Annie Donaldson, who served as then-White House counsel Don McGahn’s top deputy
⭕ 7 Jul 2019
🐣 Medicare and Medicaid are payment capped, based on a market-basket index, and pay below cost. The VA until recently was a closed system. The ACA limits profits. Large employers negotiate payments with insurers. The only people who pay full charges are the uninsured.
⋙ 🐣 If all healthcare providers adopted the best practices of stellar regional group practices like Mayo Clinic, Cleveland Clinic and Intermountain Health in Utah, quality would improve and costs would drop 20-30%. But, in fact, the Republicans have succeeded in squelching this info.
🐣 RT @BernieSanders The business model of our health care system is about making as much money as possible regardless of the suffering that profiteering creates. ¤ Our job: fight to save Philadelphia’s Hahnemann Hospital and pass Medicare for All to end the greed denying health care to millions.
⋙ 🐣 Medicare and Medicaid are payment capped, based on a market-basket index, and pay below cost. The VA until recently was a closed system. The ACA limits profits. Large employers negotiate payments with insurers. The only people who pay full charges are the uninsured.
🐣 RT @matthewamiller Suspect this means they couldn’t find any career lawyers willing to sign the briefs going forward, something that has become a pattern at this DOJ.
⋙ 🐣 RT @DelWilber BREAKING. New team of DOJ lawyers is taking over census case. No explanation provided https://twitter.com/DelWilber/status/1148019705329967104/photo/1
TheHill: Here are the key figures subpoenaed by Democrats in Trump probes http://bit.ly/32fWhna
🐣 RT @girlsreallyrule Reminder that Maureen Dowd has a divisive agenda here to help her get hits. Pelosi should not dismiss newcomers speaking truth to power, but let’s not allow Maureen Dowd’s breadcrumbs to wet our appetites to eat our own party up from the inside out.
Reminder that Maureen Dowd has a divisive agenda here to help her get hits. Pelosi should not dismiss newcomers speaking truth to power, but let's not allow Maureen Dowd's breadcrumbs to wet our appetites to eat our own party up from the inside out. https://t.co/QBgIB4mFjj
— Amee Vanderpool (@girlsreallyrule) July 7, 2019
TheHill: Amash says Pelosi is making a ‘moral’ and ‘strategic’ mistake on impeachment http://bit.ly/30nLZ2T
🐣 RT @JuliaDavisNews #Russia’s state TV continues to trash Trump’s parade: ¤ Top Kremlin propagandist, Dmitry Kiselyov, says that Trump embarrassed himself in every way — from not knowing American history, to rusty tanks and military vehicles with peeling paint.
⭕ 6 Jul 2019
🐣 RT @thehill Sen. Kamala Harris speaks in IA: “[President Trump] has predatory instincts and a predatory nature. & the thing about predators is this — predators by their nature Identify & then prey on the vulnerable… Predators are cowards. And we don’t need a predator in the White House.” 💽 https://twitter.com/thehill/status/1147727188998987776/photo/1
⋙ 🐣 Yes, there’s that, but what are your plans for wind power subsidies and ethanol levels in gasoline? Payments to soybean farmers? Lifting Trump’s tariffs? How would you bring back the Chinese buyers? How lift the commodity futures on pork bellies? How leep rural hospitals open?
NewYorker, Eren Orbey: Kamala Harris Takes Her Post-Debate Momentum to Iowa http://bit.ly/2FWesF0 //➔ what will Iowans, with among the oldest homes in the country, a black pop. of 3.4% and recent flooding, think of Harris’s plan for black home ownership?
● https://twitter.com/Auriandra/status/1147727360378179585/photo/1
NYT: Kamala Harris and Elizabeth Warren Introduce Racial Equity Plans http://nyti.ms/2JguvQe
RollingStone, Peter Wade: Russian State TV Laughs at Trump’s Fourth of July Parade http://bit.ly/2L4GLp1
// Commentators called the celebration “weak” and “low energy”
TheHill: Democrats test limits of oversight powers on Trump http://bit.ly/2XN1Vhf
CNBC: Here’s how lawmakers plan to grill Mueller during his public testimony http://cnb.cx/2Jj5PXj “Republicans will likely press the former FBI director to respond to accusations of political bias in the government and on his own investigative team”
WaPo, Michael Morell: Trump and Barr are crossing another line http://wapo.st/2JqI1zF “the Justice Department has no standing to review the CIA’s analytic judgment. The whole idea is inappropriate and dangerous”
// Michael Morell was the deputy director of the CIA from 2010 to 2013 and twice its acting director.
⭕ 5 Jul 2019
💽 MSNBC, Rachel Maddow Show: Trump attacks intel leaders alarmed by Russia’s support for Trump http://on.msnbc.com/2NDywCp
// Rachel Maddow looks at all of the people in senior positions in U.S. intelligence and the FBI who sought to understand the attack on the election by Russia and thwart it on behalf of the United States who ultimately found themselves part of a systematic series of attacks by Donald Trump and his supporting media.
💽 MSNBC, DeadlineWH: Mueller’s upcoming testimony has Team Trump preparing for battle http://on.msnbc.com/2XtZ4pw
// Former US Attorney Joyce Vance, former RNC Chairman Michael Steele, Princeton professor Eddie Glaude, Move On’s Karine Jean-Pierre, and MSNBC anchor Joy Reid on Trump and his allies preparing for Mueller’s open testimony on Capitol Hill
DailyBeast, Tom Schachtman: How to Bungle an Impeachment http://bit.ly/32n23nk Salmon P Chase, a signer of the Declaration
// Here’s how things can go wrong when your party controls the government, and the target is an ill-tempered, democracy-loathing rascal.
CommonDreams, Bill Blum: Here Are 10 Questions Congress Should Ask Robert Mueller http://bit.ly/2L74jJU
// Given the chance the lawmakers will soon have, here’s what I would ask
1. Why did it take a subpoena to persuade you to testify?
2. Has anyone, within or outside the Trump administration, pressured you not to testify?
3. Do you agree that the redacted portions of your report should be released to Congress and the public?
4. What is the difference between “collusion” and “conspiracy”?
5. Did you find any evidence that Russian interference affected the outcome of the presidential race?
6. If it’s wrong for other nations to meddle in our elections, isn’t it equally wrong for the U.S. to intervene in the elections of other nations?
7. Your report cites several instances of possible obstruction that are supported by “substantial evidence.” What do you mean by that term?
8. But for the Department of Justice’s position that a sitting president cannot be prosecuted, would you have recommended the indictment of Trump?
9. Is your report a road map for impeachment?
10. If no one is above the law, whose job is it to hold the president accountable?
MiddleEastEye: Dania Akkad and Ian Cobain: George Nader: How a convicted paedophile became key to an Emirati hook up with Trump http://bit.ly/2YD4jEG
// Former colleagues recall Nader, who is facing up to 40 years in prison on a child pornography charge, as a ‘village idiot’ who was obsessed with money
⭕ 4 Jul 2019
TheHill: Texas may cost Trump 2020 http://bit.ly/2FYCZJL
LawfareBlog, Mikhaila : The Mueller Report and the Limits of Theatrics http://bit.ly/2XqpJZ4
// Review of Robert Schenkkan‘s production “The Investigation” based on the Mueller Report
⭕ 3 Jul 2019
USAToday, Paul Brandus: It’s fine to talk to dictators, whether you’re Trump or Obama. But don’t embarrass America. http://bit.ly/2XPlju8
// Trump’s coziness with strongmen isn’t making America great again in the eyes of the world. Our favorability has dropped everywhere but in Russia.
Forbes, Pedro Nicolaci da Costa: Celebrating America’s First Independence Day Under A President Who Wishes He Were King http://bit.ly/2XG9Dda
🐣 Follow @280Report The Mueller Report in Tweets ♡ ི•̮͡• ᤢ ྀ ♡
🐣 RT @SethAbramson Tanks in the streets of DC. Concentration camps on our southern border. A POTUS who says he’s going to work with our enemies to gain reelection. An executive branch defying SCOTUS orders. America, on the eve of your birthday you’re much closer to closing up shop than you realize.
🐣 RT @JuliaDavisNews Oh, IDK… Bowing to Putin? Palling around with Kim Jong Un? Denigrating America’s place in the world? Spitting on our intelligence community? Kids in cages, moms told to drink from toilets? Tanks on the streets to celebrate our Independence à La Russe? https://twitter.com/JuliaDavisNews/status/1146422792398745601
⭕ 2 Jul 2019
TheNationalInterest, Dmitri Simes: Trump-Putin Meeting: Where Does Russia Go from Here? http://bit.ly/2YCpczF
// Moscow is betting that somewhere down the line, Washington will change its mind about Russia. All it has to do is wait.
🐣 RT @mkraju How members-turned-lobbyists patrol the Capitol, popping into prayer breakfasts, hanging in off-limit hallways and storing their luggage in senators’ offices — as David Vitter did a few days ago. He wouldn’t answer our questions about his work for a Russian oligarch. Our piece: 💽 https://twitter.com/mkraju/status/1146172576944676864/photo/1
🐣 RT @MollyMcKew Some days I wake up & wonder if I’m still asleep inside a troll farm matrix, trapped in endless looped memetic content about race wars/hatred of American flag on one side, vs near-Nazi tactics/fascist panderings on other. ¤ If we learn nothing from 2016, we’ll get what we deserve.
🐣 RT @nytopinion Donald Trump may be transforming American politics into a kleptocratic fascist reality show, but as least he’s humiliating John Bolton, writes @michelleinbklyn
⋙ NYT, Michelle Goldberg: The Welcome Humiliation of John Bolton http://nyti.ms/2KRZzI0
// A warmonger is the latest to lose his dignity to Donald Trump.
‼️ 🐣 RT @VickerySec Russia sucker punched the King (US) and has continued with a series of right jabs and left hooks. Everybody knows that if you are going to take a shot at the King, you had better kill him. Because there will not be a second chance, and you will not survive the inevitable revenge. 📌 https://mobile.twitter.com/VickerySec/status/1145998453811474434
⋙ 🐣 RT @VickerySec Translation: They are all-in with their chips on this. They have chosen to make this game zero-sum. Russia will either become *the* world power, or they will face the provoked destruction they will have rightly come to deserve.
⋙ 🐣 RT @VickerySec Don’t fool yourself into thinking all the little stuff is just petty squabbles. Look at the big picture and realize this is potential end-game content being played out. ¤ Our best defense is showing people what our adversaries are doing and proving those acts truly are effective.
↥ ↧
🐣 RT @VickerySec It’s a coordinated attack. Everyone must see it for what it is. You are being directly assaulted. The auditory bullets are aimed at each of our faces and the vocal bayonets are being thrust into each of us. ¤ The warfare medium is different, but the end result is equal.
⭕ 1 Jul 2019
Forbes, Zak Doffman: Pentagon Report Warns On Threat To U.S. From Russia’s Dangerous Global Influence http://bit.ly/2TyI8O1
// “Russian Strategic Intentions”
↥ ↧
PublicIntelligence: Joint Staff Strategic Multilayer Assessment: Russian Strategic Intentions http://bit.ly/2MjbWh1
// Summary dated 7/7/2019; 171p doc dated 5/6/2019
CNBC, Michael Ivanovitch: Trump is laying groundwork for a new world order built around the US, China and Russia http://cnb.cx/2XvKYZA
NYMag, Adam Raymond: Republicans Prepare to Badger Mueller at First Public Hearing http://nym.ag/2Xrteyp
OpenSecrets: Russia paid radio broadcaster $1.4 million to air Kremlin propaganda in DC http://bit.ly/2LtdUdg RM Broadcasting LLC aka Sputnik
// Florida-based company RM Broadcasting LLC has officially registered as a foreign agent with the Justice Department after a federal judge ordered it to do so in May.
The Russian government sent more than $1.4 million to a Florida-based company airing Kremlin propaganda in the nation’s capital over the last two years, according to recent foreign agent registration records.
U.S. District Court Judge Robin Rosenberg ruled that RM Broadcasting should be registered as a foreign agent under FARA due to its relationship with Rossiya Segodnya, the Russian government’s media enterprise that owns Sputnik International and was created by Vladimir Putin to advance Russia’s interests abroad.
🐣 RT @JuliaDavisNews Trump talks to Tucker Carlson about his desire to withdraw US troops and “get out of a lot of areas,” complains: ¤ “We’re the policeman for the whole world. You know, if you look at Russia, Russia doesn’t police the world. Russia has — you know, they police Russia.” ¤ @MatBabiak
📌 https://twitter.com/JuliaDavisNews/status/1145900890341236736
DailyBeast: Team Trump’s Game Plan to Destroy Mueller: Hound Him About ‘FBI Lovers’ http://bit.ly/2ROChmO
// GOP lawmakers, prominent allies, and legal advisers to Trump want to turn Mueller testimony into a hostile referendum on the “deep state” and zero in on Peter Strzok and Lisa Page.
WashingtonMonthly, Martin Longman: Why Robert Mueller Has to Become the Bad Guy http://bit.ly/2Xhuy1I
Given that Robert S. Mueller III’s findings supposedly amounted to “total exoneration” for President Trump, you might be puzzled to learn that Trump’s top allies are spending enormous amounts of time scheming about how to undermine the former special counsel’s credibility and cast doubt on those findings.
With Mueller set to testify to Congress on July 17, Politico reports that Trump’s leading Republicans defenders in the House are putting together a new battle plan that will finally expose the Mueller investigation once and for all as the fraud it has always been.
Politico: Trump’s House allies lie in wait for Mueller http://politi.co/2RPx1zx //➔ good luck with that: Mueller’s a decorated Marine
// Democrats aren’t the only ones in Congress dying to hear from the former special counsel.
TheBulwark, Kim Wehle: The American Public Needs to Hear These 10 Things from Robert Mueller http://bit.ly/2xxiWO1
// His appearance before two House committees can clear up the waters that Bill Barr has muddied.
● What facts show that the Russian government engaged in criminal activity with respect to the 2016 U.S. presidential election? (Recall that Mueller issued two voluminous conspiracy indictments on this subject. They are well-worth a read.)
● What facts, if any, show that the Russian government’s influence in the 2016 election had (or may have had) an adverse effect on the validity and weight of the millions of votes cast by individual Americans in the 2016 presidential election?
● What facts, if any, show that the Russian government is continuing to engage in ongoing criminal activity in connection with the upcoming 2020 presidential elections?
● In your professional judgment as a former FBI director, what steps must the United States take now to stop or minimize Russian interference in the 2020 presidential election?
● What is the legal difference between conspiracy and collusion? (Barr has irresponsibly muddied the waters here. Collusion is not a legal concept, period.)
● Why did you decline to reach a conclusion as to whether the Trump campaign colluded with Russia? (See above.)
● Does the law require that a person actually obstruct an investigation in order for that person to be guilty of the crime of obstruction of justice? (Again, Barr has irresponsibly muddied the waters here. The clear answer is no.)
● In your professional judgment, why does federal statutory law makes it a crime to obstruct justice? (The goal of this one is to explain why we penalize obstruction of justice, i.e., it keeps the criminal justice process legitimate and fair for the rest of us.)
● In your professional judgment, does Volume II of the report detail sufficient evidence of obstruction of justice to support an indictment by a grand jury and possible conviction of a private citizen for the crime of obstruction of justice? (This is a biggie.)
● Was it ever your expectation that Congress would investigate matters addressed in the report as part of its routine oversight prerogative and/or as part of an impeachment process? (This question aims to educate people on how and why the Constitution tasks Congress with something called impeachment.)
⭕ 30 Jun 2019
Politico (6/30): Russia beating U.S. in race for global influence, Pentagon study says http://politi.co/2LuFTt1
// A divided America is failing to counter Moscow’s efforts to undermine democracy and cast doubt on U.S. alliances, says the report, which warns of a surge in ‘political warfare.’
Axios: Report: U.S. is underestimating Putin’s “grand strategy” for Russian dominance http://bit.ly/2IZQgmY
⋙ WhitePaper (May): Russian Strategic Intentions [pdf] http://bit.ly/323vrP1 167p
A new report prepared for the Pentagon suggests that the U.S. is underestimating the scale of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s “grand strategy” for dominance on the world stage, and that inaction in the face of Russia’s malign influence activities poses a serious threat to U.S. national security.
“Contrary to conventional analysis, after two decades under Vladimir Putin, Russia represents an ideological challenge to the West, not just a political and military rivalry. Although NATO continues to possess impressive overmatch against Moscow, that edge is dwindling, and Western vulnerabilities in certain military areas are alarming. Moreover, the unwillingness of Western experts and governments to confront the ideological — as well as political and military — aspects of our rivalry with Putinism means that the threat of significant armed conflict is rising.”
ForeignPolicy, James Traub: Trump’s Ego Is Officially a Foreign Policy Crisis http://bit.ly/2IYiH4Q
// Throughout American history, a lack of presidential empathy has triggered international calamity.
🐣 RT @neal_katyal The author of this piece, Don Ayer, is just about the last person one would expect to use words like this. He is mild-mannered, conservative, deeply balanced. That he has this to say about Barr says a tremendous amount. It’s a must-read article.
🐣 RT @gtconway3d A *brutal* assessment of Bill Barr by Don Ayer, who served with Barr in the first Bush administration as Deputy Attorney General.
💙💙 ⋙ TheAtlantic, Donald Ayer: Bill Barr’s Dangerous Pursuit of Executive Power http://bit.ly/2xrKsvX
// He is using the office he holds to advance his extraordinary lifetime project of assigning unchecked power to the president.
Politico, Bryan Bender: Pentagon study: Russia outgunning U.S. in race for global influence http://politi.co/2LuFTt1
// A divided America is failing to counter Moscow’s efforts to undermine democracy and cast doubt on U.S. alliances, says the report, which warns of a surge in ‘political warfare.’
⭕ 29 Jun 2019
⭕ 28 Jun 2019
🐣💙 RT @StandUpAmerica Mueller said: “There were multiple systematic efforts to interfere in our election. And that allegation deserves the attention of every American.” ¤ We’re paying attention—are you? ¤ It’s time for an #ImpeachmentInquiryNOW. Text IMPEACH to 21333 if you’re with us. 💽 https://twitter.com/StandUpAmerica/status/1144607222619607040/photo/1
// great video of Mueller Report
🐣 RT @businessinsider From the report to the press conference to the forthcoming testimony — here’s what you need to know about Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s findings
💽 https://twitter.com/businessinsider/status/1144981346563104769/photo/1
NYT, Roger Cohen: Trump Fast-Forwards American Decline http://nyti.ms/2NiKLUF
// The “savaging of American diplomacy,” as seen by one of the State Department’s finest.
WaPo, Paul Waldman: Trump sucks up to Putin, embarrassing us yet again http://wapo.st/2RHHYTu
🐣 RT @matthewamiller Dead on. And I think the beginning of the 2020 cycle, marked by the first debates, is going to make the political system even more incapable of responding in real time, for better or worse. People will start giving up on checking him, and move on to replacement.
⋙ 🐣 RT @michelleinbklyn All the biggest Trump scandals are concentrated into this week. His administration is torturing children. He’s credibly accused of rape. He’s joking with Putin about murdering journalists. And our political system has lost the capacity to respond.
🐣 RT @JuliaDavisNews #Russia’s state TV finds it amusing that Trump was sucking on a mint, apparently concerned about the freshness of his breath, while waiting for Putin to arrive. ¤ #G20Summit #G20 https://twitter.com/JuliaDavisNews/status/1144621077760487425/photo/1
⋙ He told the guy on the Access Hollywood tape that he used breath mints because when ‘I see beautiful, I just start kissing them … ‘
♡ ི•̮͡• ᤢ ྀ ♡
🐣 RT @JenniferJJacobs Trump also bonded with Putin over a scorn for journalists. ¤ “Get rid of them. Fake news is a great term, isn’t it? You don’t have this problem in Russia, but we do.” ¤ “We also have,” Putin answered, in English. “It’s the same.” ¤ They shared a chuckle.
📌 https://twitter.com/JenniferJJacobs/status/1144523828921372672
↥ ↧
🐣 Dead Russian Journalists ● https://twitter.com/Auriandra/status/1144596043889336320/photo/1
Politico: Trump can’t help himself when it comes to Putin http://politi.co/2XFM8AR
// Every time the president has a chance to cast aside doubts about his relationship with the Russian leader, he does the opposite.
⭕ 27 Jun 2019
🐣 RT @peterbakernyt Asked by reporters if he would tell Putin not to meddle in the elections, Trump said, “Yes, of course.” He turned to Putin and, in a lighthearted way, said, “Don’t meddle in the election.” Then he wagged his finger and repeated, “Don’t meddle in the election.”
🐣 RT @McFaul Yes. I’ve been writing about this Putin plan for a while now. I call it the “Illiberal International.”
⋙ 🐣 RT @patti_foss Going a step further ~ Don’t you think this has been the plan between Putin & all far right nationalist leaders? A new alliance? This is same talking points of this admin. There’s a reason GOP is protecting Trump from all things Russia. Election interference just got in their way
🐣 RT @McFaul The liberal, democratic world has been here before— in the 1930s, 1950s and 1970s — when autocrats proclaimed our era over. Don’t bet against us just yet !
⋙ 🐣 RT @ Vladimir Putin says liberalism has ‘become obsolete’
⋙⋙ FT: Vladimir Putin says liberalism has ‘become obsolete’ http://on.ft.com/2XeVTGT
// In an exclusive interview with the FT, the Russian president trumpets growth of national populism
🐣 RT @rosshen69908962 The Mueller Report:
1. Paid for itself through Manafort
2. Found ample evidence of collusion, but not criminal conspiracy.
3. Found ample evidence of obstruction of justice
4, Called on Congress to deal with the evidence
5. Stated that DoJ policy made it impossible to indict
🐣 RT @Edsall Summary of the Mueller Report, for those too busy to read it all http://amzn.to/2xi8A49 … via @amazon
⭕ 26 Jun 2019
DailyBeast, Barbara McQuade: 10 Questions Congress Should Ask Mueller http://bit.ly/2Jef49J
// It’s not just about Trump. We need to know more about Russia and more about Barr.
🐣 RT @sarahcwestwood I asked President Trump whether he will ask Putin not to meddle in the 2020 election during their meeting. He said what he speaks to Putin about this week is “none of your business.”
WaPo, Jennifer Rubin: Four reasons Mueller’s agreement to testify is a big deal http://wapo.st/2RCiNlg
First, this is possibly the only way to dispel the notion that Mueller found “no collusion, no obstruction.” In fact, he didn’t look for “collusion,” which is not a crime, but came up short finding a criminal conspiracy. Nevertheless, he found that the president and his campaign welcomed Russian interference and thought it would help Trump win.
Second, while truth-telling is a benefit unto itself, Mueller’s testimony has the potential to move public sentiment. No matter what he says, he will not sway hardcore Trump supporters who believe nothing negative about their cult leader. However, it is not hard to imagine him shifting public opinion in the way that the Watergate hearings shifted public sentiment in favor of impeachment.
Third, Mueller’s testimony may both alleviate and increase pressure on Pelosi to begin impeachment hearings.
Fourth, while Mueller is unlikely to discuss his conversations with Barr, committee members and/or counsel can read portions of Barr’s original summary, testimony and news conference to Mueller and then ask if the statements are true. … Barr is unlikely to come off as a straight shooter after Mueller lays out the facts discussed in the report, facts that contradict Barr’s spin.
WaPo, Greg Sargent: How Mueller’s testimony could expose one of Trump’s biggest crimes http://wapo.st/2FAastB
Handled correctly, this could shine further light on one of Trump’s biggest crimes — by which I mean moral crimes: the degree to which Trump’s obstructive conduct actually did frustrate an investigation into a foreign attack on our political system, and how he obscured his own eagerness to work with Russia in spite of it, in various nefarious ways.
Schiff tells me that beyond whether criminality occurred, another big question is whether there were “conflicts of interest” that “resulted in U.S. policy favoring Russia against the interests of the American people.”
Trump’s refusal to sit for an interview. Mueller’s report explicitly states that the special counsel informed Trump’s lawyers that an interview was “vital” and in the public interest. Trump submitted written answers instead. But Mueller’s report says Trump claimed more than 30 times that he did not remember the information he was being asked about, which demonstrated the “inadequacy of the written format.”
Trump’s negotiations over a Trump Tower Moscow: Rep. Adam B. Schiff (D-Calif.), the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, tells me that Democrats will ask Mueller expansive questions about Trump’s negotiations over the real estate project in Moscow …
The Trump Tower meeting and Donald Trump Jr.’s refusal to be interviewed. The Mueller report states that Trump “declined to be voluntarily interviewed” by Mueller, who wanted to ask him in particular about the infamous Trump Tower meeting.
As Benjamin Wittes notes, this suggests Trump might have asserted his Fifth Amendment right to avoid self-incrimination and that as a result, Mueller might have been unsatisfied about what he could learn about Trump’s participation in the meeting.
Mueller could clarify that Trump’s refusal to testify impeded efforts to learn that — which would make both the meeting and that refusal to testify look more serious.
Other contacts between Trumpworld and Russia. The Mueller report established extensive connections between various Trumpworld figures and Russia that constituted efforts to conspire with Russian electoral sabotage. But the report also notes that some officials “affiliated with the Trump campaign lied” to investigators, which “materially impaired the investigation.”
McQuade tells me Democrats can ask Mueller: “What were the questions about links to Russia that you were unable to answer as a result of these obstructive acts?”
WaPo: Trump lashes out at Mueller, accusing him of a crime ahead of planned congressional testimony http://wapo.st/2ZLZwkk
A report made public in December said that the Justice Department inspector general could not recover texts from the phones assigned to Strzok and Page for their work with Mueller because by the time investigators requested the devices, they had been reset in preparation for others to use them.
The report detailed glitches that complicated the inspector general’s ability to recover and review messages exchanged during a five-month period ending the day Mueller was appointed.
But the inspector general wrote there was “no evidence” that Strzok and Page “attempted to circumvent” the FBI’s data-retention policies, and the “content of the text messages did not appear to be a factor” in whether and how they were retained.
🔆 This❗️⋙ NYRB, Murray Waas: Timeline of Deceit: From Trump’s Draft to Rosenstein’s Cover Story http://bit.ly/2RAy3PO
🐣 RT @JillWineBanks On this date in 1973, former White House Counsel John W. Dean began testifying before the Senate Watergate Committee, implicating top administration officials, including President Richard Nixon as well as himself, in the Watergate scandal and cover-up.
⭕ 25 Jun 2019
Politico Mag, Andrew Weiss: Trump’s Confused Russia Policy Is a Boon for Putin http://politi.co/2XsTZlW
// And it isn’t helped by the imminent departure of several staff with expertise on the subject.
NYT Mag, Sarah Topol: What Does Putin Really Want? http://nyti.ms/2RDyFEr
// Russia is dead set on being a global power. But what looks like grand strategy is often improvisation — amid America’s retreat.
WaPo: Mueller to testify to Congress in open session about his investigation http://wapo.st/2KEmcj8
NYT: Robert Mueller to Testify Before House Committees http://nyti.ms/2xbjF7a
🐣 RT @JakeSherman Remember what Robert Mueller said: “Any testimony from this office would not go beyond our report. … [T]he report is my testimony. I would not provide information beyond that which is already public in any appearance before Congress.”
⋙ 🐣 That’s fine. Many will be hearing what’s actually in the report for the first time.
MSNBC, 11th Hour: What questions should Congress ask Robert Mueller when he testifies? http://on.msnbc.com/ 2xfwptq
// What questions should members of Congress ask fmr. Special Counsel Robert Mueller when he testifies in July? Frank Figliuzzi, Jeremy Bash, and Joyce Vance give us their take.
⋙ 🐣 “Has AG Barr committed obstruction of justice in the way he represented the findings of the investigation to the public?”
🐣 RT @RepAdamSchiff Robert Mueller has agreed to testify before Congress pursuant to subpoena. ¤ Russia attacked our democracy to help Trump win. Trump welcomed and used that help. As Mueller said, that should concern every American. ¤ And now, every American will get to hear directly from Mueller.
🐣 RT @glennkirschner2 Executive privilege 1. Does not apply to Mueller as he was not an advisor to the president and 2. Was waived regarding every fact included in the Mueller report. Why? Because Trump said he’d let Barr decide if executive privilege should be invoked. It was not = waived. Period.
💽 MSNBC, 11thHour: What we can and cannot expect to hear from Mueller when he testifies to Congress http://on.msnbc.com/2LfyvBT
// What topics will Mueller answer questions about? What will he not be willing to discuss? We break down what we can expect when the former special counsel testifies on Capitol Hill in July. Frank Figliuzzi, Jeremy Bash, and Joyce Vance give us their take.
‼️ 🐣 RT @realDonaldTrump Presidential Harrassment!
🐣 RT @kylegriffin1 IT IS HAPPENING.
⋙ 🐣 RT @kylegriffin1 Breaking: Inbox: Today, House Judiciary Chair Nadler and House Intelligence Chair Schiff announced that Special Counsel Robert Mueller has agreed to testify pursuant to a subpoena before both the Judiciary and Intelligence Committees in open session on Wednesday, July 17, 2019.
🐣 RT @ewarren The Mueller report made clear that the president obstructed justice multiple times. If he were anyone else, he’d be in handcuffs. Attorney General Barr can try to cover for the president all he wants, but the American people deserve to hear the full truth from Mueller himself.
🐣 RT @MSNBC BREAKING: In response to subpoenas, Robert Mueller has agreed to testify publicly before Congress on July 17, House Judiciary and Intel Cmte. chairmen announce. [Letter:] https://twitter.com/MSNBC/status/1143690652271697920/photo/1
💙💙🐣 🔆 This❗️⋙ RT @RepJerryNadler I am pleased to announce that @HouseJudiciary and House Intel will have Special Counsel Robert Mueller testify in open session on July 17, pursuant to a subpoena issued this evening. http://bit.ly/2X7S9Xt We look forward to having Mr. Mueller testify, as do all Americans.
https://twitter.com/RepJerryNadler/status/1143685672148131840/photo/1
⋙ 🐣 But but but – what if Trump invokes Almighty Infinite Eternal Executive Privilege?
🐣 RT @BarbMcQuade Mueller noted that false and incomplete statements, deleted communciations and encrypted apps caused “gaps” in his investigation. What did Trump and his campaign conceal? My thoughts in @just_security
⋙ JustSecurity, Barbara McQuade: Did Trump and His Team Successfully Obstruct Mueller’s Investigation? http://bit.ly/2FK8NC7
🐣 RT @kyledcheney SCHIFF says a Mueller subpoena would likely be *two* subpoenas — one from Judiciary, one from Intel. Asked whether he and Nadler would make the decision separately, he said “We’re linking arms.” ¤ He declined to say if Mueller might actually *want* a subpoena
🐣 RT @JuliaDavisNews Bolton grins next to his Russian counterpart, Nikolai Patrushev, who claims that U.S. drone was shot down inside Iranian airspace and calls U.S. evidence “unprofessional” and of “poor quality.” Patrushev asserts that #Iran has always been and remains Russia’s ally and partner. 📌 https://twitter.com/JuliaDavisNews/status/1143493965540409344
⋙ Source 1: Haaretz: Contradicting Trump, Top Putin Adviser Says U.S. Drone Downed in Iranian Airspace http://bit.ly/2IJwuw3
// At first-ever trilateral meeting in Jerusalem, National Security Adviser Bolton says U.S. ready for Iran to engage in ‘real negotiations’
⋙ Source 2: Tass: Russian security chief slams attempts to put Iran on par with IS as inadmissible http://bit.ly/2YcHZl0
// Iran is a contributor to the fight against terrorism and the settlement of the conflict in Syria, according to the official
RFE/RL: Austrian Supreme Court Upholds U.S. Extradition Request For Ukrainian Tycoon Firtash http://bit.ly/2X52cYN
VIENNA — Austria’s Supreme Court has upheld a decision allowing a request by the United States to extradite Ukrainian tycoon Dmytro Firtash, the latest twist in the case for the oligarch who has been fighting against extradition since his 2014 arrest in Vienna.
Following the court ruling on June 25, a final decision will be made by the country’s justice minister on whether to follow through with the request.
U.S. authorities have been investigating Firtash, 54, since 2006 on suspicion of bribery and forming an organized crime group.
A former business partner of U.S. President Donald Trump’s ex-campaign chairman, Paul Manafort, and one of Ukraine’s wealthiest men, Firtash has been charged in a U.S. federal court in Chicago, as part of an alleged bribery scheme involving titanium supplies for aircraft giant Boeing.
He also was considered an important financier of the former ruling Party of Regions party, and was involved in hiring Manafort, then a U.S. political consultant and lobbyist, in 2005 to help rebuild the party after its then-leader, Viktor Yanukovych, was defeated for the presidency by Viktor Yushchenko following the 2004 Orange Revolution.
Firtash also had a brief partnership with Manafort in 2008, to invest in New York City real estate, though that deal never materialized.
Manafort was Trump’s campaign chairman in 2016, until he was fired that August, amid revelations about his extensive work in Ukraine.
⭕ 24 Jun 2019
TIME, Barbara McQuade and Joyce White Vance: These 11 Mueller Report Myths Just Won’t Die. Here’s Why They’re Wrong http://bit.ly/2ZJLfoi
Politico: These 3 lawmakers know the secrets in Mueller’s report http://politi.co/2NbHC9m //➔ Reps Val Demings (D-FL), Eric Swalwell (D-CA), John Ratcliffe (R-TX)
// They’ve got special access because they sit on both the Intelligence and Judiciary committees.
🔆 This❗️⋙ RawStory: AG Bill Barr killed 7 Robert Mueller investigations — 10 days after he submitted his report http://bit.ly/2FveFyR
🐣 We’re going to need impeachment hearings for the next 12 months to drown out the sounds of the circular firing squad. @SpeakerPelosi @LeaderHoyer @RepJerryNadler @RepAdamSchiff @RepCummings
💽 🔆 This❗️⋙ LawWorksAction.org: TheInvestigation: A Search for the Truth in Ten Acts http://bit.ly/2xdUHnL Video
// long: https://lawworksaction.org/the-investigation/
(Starts after 5 minutes or so)
⭕ 23 Jun 2019
🐣 RT @JillWineBanks Today is June 23, the anniversary of #Watergate’s #SmokingGunTape. I know because I was one of the prosecutors in the case how devastating it was. Today I see the #MuellerReport as the #SmokingGun of #Trumpgate. It proves obstruction of justice and calls for Congressional action.
🐣 RT @maggieNYT POTUS told @GStephanopoulos he read the Mueller report. He told @chucktodd he read the “conclusion.”
🐣 RT @Irenie_M Rep. Adam Schiff on Special Counsel Robert Mueller testifying to House leaders: “I hope that we’ll reach that decision this week because we want to have him come in during July … whether it is voluntary or involuntary by subpoena” #CNNSOTU
💽 https://twitter.com/Irenie_M/status/1142800245912477696?s=20/photo/1
⭕ 22 Jun 2019
⭕ 21 Jun 2019
🔄 🐣 RT @BarbMcQuade If you haven’t read the Mueller Report, watch the movie:
💙💙 ⋙ 🐣 RT @nowthisnews Exclusive: De Niro, @robreiner, @SophiaBush, @StephenKing, @jvn, and more are cutting through the Trump administration’s lies about the Mueller report
💽 https://twitter.com/BarbMcQuade/status/1142096240555044865?s=20/photo/1
Politico: Nadler: Hope Hicks testimony is huge gift in legal battle with Trump http://politi.co/31Qavv5
// In an exclusive interview, Judiciary Chairman Jerry Nadler also said Democrats would soon sue former White House Counsel Don McGahn.
NBCNews: Manafort and Hannity exchanged hundreds of text messages about Mueller-Russia probe http://nbcnews.to/2N3ayAo
// “The media is trying to split me with DT and family by lies and untruths,” Manafort wrote to Hannity in August 2017. “It is such a dirty game.”
🐣 RT @brhodes Iran incoherence and danger of unnecessary war. Children detained in horrific conditions. Rising risk of economic downturn. Constitutional norms gutted. It takes time for a President’s actions to become manifest in consequences. Now we see them unfolding before our eyes.
⭕ 20 Jun 2019
AlterNet: Andrew McCabe rains hell on ‘insanely stupid’ Trump in epic rant — then calls for impeachment hearings http://bit.ly/2Iu4eO3
WaPo, Ellen Weintraub: Foreign spending in our elections is a threat to our national sovereignty http://wapo.st/2J0KKiQ Weintraub is chair of the Federal Election Commission
🐣 RT @HouseJudiciary The President has said he is open to receiving information from a foreign adversary. In fact, by stating publicly that he would accept help from a foreign government, he may well have encouraged more foreign influence operations against our democracy.
🐣 RT @RepSwalwell And that is why @SenBlumenthal and I are serious about the Duty to Report Act. Protecting the integrity of our elections should not be a partisan issue. It is time for Congress to act now.
⋙ 🐣 RT @HouseInSession Former White House communications director Hope Hicks told the House Judiciary Committee privately that she believed President Donald Trump was “serious” when he said that he would accept information about a rival from a foreign source, said the panel’s chairman, Nadler.
⭕ 19 Jun 2019
🐣 RT @ScottMStedman This is batshit insane. The woman in charge of negotiating arms control with Moscow got married in 2017 and the person who officiated her wedding was…. Russian spy Maria Butina’s bf Paul Erickson.
⋙ 🐣 RT @JoshRogin Exclusive: State Department official Andrea Thompson, who is in charge of negotiations with Moscow, didn’t disclose ties to the boyfriend of Russian agent Maria Butina
⋙⋙ WaPo: State Department official didn’t disclose ties to the boyfriend of Russian agent Maria Butina http://wapo.st/2FliDKi
🐣 RT @MaddowBlog “The investigation includes a review of Deutsche Bank’s handling of so-called suspicious activity reports that its employees prepared about possibly problematic transactions, including some linked to President Trump’s son-in-law… Jared Kushner…”
⋙ NYT: Deutsche Bank Faces Criminal Investigation for Potential Money-Laundering Lapses http://nyti.ms/2WRAcaP
✅ WaPo FactChecker: Fact-checking President Trump’s reelection campaign kickoff http://wapo.st/2Flbae8
NYT, Peter Goodman: Globalization Is Moving Past the U.S. and Its Vision of World Order http://nyti.ms/2IqmTtR
DailyBeast, Michael Weiss: Trump Invited New Russian ‘Information’ About Opponents. Europe Knows Where That Leads. http://bit.ly/2IQmuQu
// The trouble with inviting foreign countries into your political system is that once they accept the invitation they never leave.
⭕ 18 Jun 2019
🐣 RT @TrinityResists Trump “won”
MI by 10,704 votes–16 EV
PA by 44,292 votes–20 EV
WI by 22,748 votes–10 EV
Combined Trump won* by a scant 77,744 votes—0.062%
Polls—Clinton will win
Russia—46 Electoral Votes installed him in the WH
GOP—We’ll do Nothing to secure elections
Trump—I’ll cheat again
⋙ WaPo, Henry Olsen: Trump’s chances in 2020 aren’t nearly as bad as people think http://wapo.st/2WQynQr
Newsweek, Karine Jean-Pierre: Democrats Can Both Impeach Trump and Win 2020 http://bit.ly/2WSpDEm
🔆 This❗️⋙ NBCNews, Barbara McQuade and Joyce Vance: Mueller’s report may be completed, but his work isn’t done. And that’s what we told Congress. http://nbcnews.to/2KZN9NB
// It seems like every day brings new allegations about the Trump administration’s conduct. The volume of them can be overwhelming, but we can’t allow ourselves to lose focus.
Politico: Dems to grill Hope Hicks on alleged Trump obstruction http://politi.co/2Zy5uFc
TheAtlantic, Peter Wehner: Trump’s Sinister Assault on Truth http://bit.ly/2MUme8q
// The president appears committed to destroying the very idea of facts.
Politico Playbook: Trump’s two worlds http://politi.co/2L0iLCr
🐣 RT @thedailybeast “Trump knows he won in 2016 by spewing racism and bigotry; now he’s behind in the 2020 polls and has the power of presidency to amplify his vicious messaging. This will be more hateful than anything we’ve seen yet, or than most of us have even imagined.”
⋙ DailyBeast, Dean Obeidallah: Trump’s 2020 Plan: Amplify White Supremacists and Promote Fear and Hate http://bit.ly/2XVgxIn
// We’ve seen this play before. But now it isn’t coming from a stunt candidate but from a sitting president desperate to avoid a humiliating rejection by American voters.
TheHill: Russia warns US is trying to ‘provoke war’ with Iran http://bit.ly/ 2KZaWNm
TheBulwark, Philip Rotner: How to Impeach Donald Trump http://bit.ly/2WOFQ2r
// The Republican Senate won’t do it. The Democratic House won’t do it. But there is a way, if Nancy Pelosi wants to do it.
… [R]un a stealthy, undeclared impeachment process. Call it an investigation, call it oversight, call it anything you want—but don’t call it impeachment. In fact, make a big show of being against impeachment because it would be so divisive, and such an obstacle to the House doing its real job of work for the American people. And while you’re doing that, call witnesses, force Trump to stonewall, and win one court battle after another.
Then wait until the presidential campaign is in full swing—when it’s too late to get to an impeachment vote—and announce that the president has left you no choice but to start a formal impeachment inquiry: We might not be able to remove, or even impeach him, but we owe a duty to the Constitution and to future generations not to turn a blind eye to his misconduct.
Never finish. ¤ Right up to the election.
⭕ 17 Jun 2019
💙💙💽 PBS: All of the Mueller report’s major findings in less than 30 minutes http://to.pbs.org/2XOhHbH
BusinessInsider, David Choi: Navy SEAL officer who oversaw the Bin Laden raid suggests Trump could learn about ‘integrity’ from Obama and Bush http://bit.ly/2WXqngA Retired US Navy Admiral William McRaven
Crooks&Liars, Susie Madrak: John Oliver Explains Why He’s Now In Favor Of Impeaching Trump http://bit.ly/2IqXDnr
// “I know that we’ve all become numb to Trump by this point, but moments like that really shock you out of your stupor and make you think, ‘Oh hang on, that guy’s got to be impeached.'”
🐣 .@SteveKornacki Hillary didn’t lose because of Trump’s successful campaigning, but because of Comey, Russia and Trump’s buying off his mistresses in the last couple of weeks, a crime for which he is an unindicted co-conspirator.
🐣 RT @JillWineBanks On this anniversary, we must learn Watergate’s lessons and see the danger of Trump and Barr’s repetitions of Nixon’s “if I do it, it’s not illegal.”
⋙ 🐣 RT @SpiroAgnewGhost Chilling to read this NYT op-ed from the 1st anniv. of Watergate, June 17, 1973, 46 yrs ago tmrw. ¤ Read it & compare to what we are living through now. This was 8 days before John Dean’s riveting, explosive testimony that revealed Nixon’s deep complicity in a massive cover up. https://twitter.com/SpiroAgnewGhost/status/1139998592330977280?s=20/photo/1
// 6/26/1973; NYT: “Subverting America”
🔆 This❗️⋙ Mediaite: Shock Fox News Poll: 50 Percent of American Voters Want Trump Impeached http://bit.ly/2ImMnIK It’s time! @SpeakerPelosi @LeaderHoyer @RepJerryNadler @RepAdamSchiff @RepCummings
● https://twitter.com/Auriandra/status/1140932036343083009?s=20/photo/1
// Poll: 6/9-12
🐣 RT @voxdotcom “The actual timeline of events in 2016 suggests that if anything, the FBI’s actions were a net positive for Trump’s campaign, not a negative. But that reality is inconvenient for Trump, so he’s trying to rewrite history.” — Vox’s Aaron Rupar
⋙ Vox, Aaron Rupar: Trump accidentally undercuts his own “deep state” FBI conspiracy theory http://bit.ly/2XSLjlf
// Trump thinks Obama had it out for him in 2016. George Stephanopoulos debunked that idea with one question.
WaPo, Dana Milbank: Trump’s mental gymnastics are incomprehensible http://wapo.st/2FhEtOI
🐣 RT @JoyceWhiteVance Calling this highly unusual doesn’t even begin to capture how strange it is for the no. 2 official at DOJ to intervene in a state custody issue.
⋙ NYT: Paul Manafort Seemed Headed to Rikers. Then the Justice Department Intervened. http://nyti.ms/2ZqGHD4
// The decision came after Attorney General William Barr’s top deputy sent a letter to state prosecutors. Mr. Manafort will now be held in a federal lockup while he faces state charges.
🐣 RT @DalaiLama Ideas may travel from the top down, but the movements that put them into effect have to work from the bottom up. I am encouraged to see young people trying to bring about positive change. Confident because their efforts are based on truth and reason—therefore they will succeed.
🐣 RT @brianklaas To put this into the US context, the equivalent would be 83 million Americans taking to the streets. https://twitter.com/brianklaas/status/1140636817320030209?s=20
// Hong Kong
🔆 This❗️⋙ 💽 Crooks&Liars: All Of The Mueller Report’s Findings In Under 30 Minutes! http://bit.ly/2Rl8GBq
// PBS does a national service, outlining the Mueller Report in a half hour video.
RollingStone, Jamil Smith: Please Stop Thinking This Will Be a Fair Election http://bit.ly/2FhfhrT
// President Trump declared his willingness to betray the country, and Republicans are ready to help
Politico, Anita Kumar: Inside Trump’s plan to battle the 15 investigations facing him http://politi.co/2IonlsE
// Unlike most other candidates who face allegations of wrongdoing, he hopes to use them as part of a strategy that he hopes will help win him re-election.
🐣 I just read that entire transcript of GeorgeS’s extended interview with Trump. He is seriously out of touch with reality, truly delusional, refuses to accept factual correction. His thinking is bizarre. I don’t know how anyone can stand to work for him. Scary.
NYT, Neal Katyal: Trump’s Abuse of Executive Privilege Is More Than a Present Danger http://nyti.ms/2ZxkmDN
// He’s probably making it harder for future presidents to govern.
Politico: Christie, Lewandowski and Manafort eyed as Dems’ new star witnesses http://politi.co/2Y1vOXW
// House Democrats are prepping a new oversight strategy to circumvent Trump’s stonewalling.
⭕ 16 Jun 2019
WaPo, Ron Fournier: Will impeachment backfire on Democrats? Not if they do it right. http://wapo.st/31IZStW
TheGuardian, Peter Stone: Barr’s ‘investigation of investigators’ sparks fears for efforts to thwart Russia http://bit.ly/2ZonjGW
// Investigation into Mueller report origins could hamper attempts to combat Kremlin meddling in 2020 election, ex-officials say
🐣 RT @jamilsmith What they lack in preparation, policy expertise, and adherence to any semblance of legal standards, this administration certainly makes up for with its empty machismo, transparent gaslighting, and consistent anti-intellectualism.
⋙ 🐣 RT @atrupar On Fox News Sunday, Mike Pompeo nearly blows a gasket when Chris Wallace asks him very straightforward questions regarding Trump’s comments about how he wouldn’t contact the FBI if he’s offered dirt on a 2020 opponent by a foreign government.
💽 https://twitter.com/JamilSmith/status/1140384079277203457?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @Justin_Halpern My dad was on the U.S.S Maddox, the boat that was “attacked” that started the Vietnam war. He said no one could understand why they were in the Tonkin gulf until one officer at breakfast goes “they sent us here to get blown up so they can start a war they really want to start.”
🐣 Trump seems to be a throwback to an earlier, more brutal, tribal age, before the emergence of systems of laws other than force and subjugation. Or something went drastically wrong with his upbringing. Some might say he’s Nietschean. It’s scary how many people fall in line.
Newsweek: Chris Christie: Trump ‘Really Thinks’ It’s Normal to Accept Dirt From Foreign Governments on Political Opponents http://bit.ly/2wWSaOL
⋙ 🐣 Trump doesn’t understand laws, norms or ethics and assumes those who say they are guided by them are just saying so to gain advantage or else are “suckers” or “losers.”
HuffPo: Trump Accuses New York Times Of Treason For Story On U.S. Attacks On Russian Power Grid http://bit.ly/2MQrrOm
// The newspaper shot back that Trump’s own officials made clear they had no security concerns about the article.
🐣 RT @peterdaou Wow. Half the country believes the Trump campaign coordinated with Russia to get him elected. ¤ The logical conclusion of that belief is that Trump isn’t a legitimate president.
⋙ 🐣 RT @JesseFFerguson New FOX NEWS poll.
Do you think Trump campaign coordinated w/ Russians during ’16 campaign?
YES: 50%
NO: 44%
March 2019
Yes: 44%
No: 42%
Jan 2017
Yes: 40%
No: 52%
**the more you know**
New FOX NEWS poll.
Do you think Trump campaign coordinated w/ Russians during '16 campaign?
YES: 50%
NO: 44%March 2019
Yes: 44%
No: 42%Jan 2017
Yes: 40%
No: 52%**the more you know** pic.twitter.com/STCrSwxgHY
— Jesse Ferguson (@JesseFFerguson) June 16, 2019
🐣 RT @tribelaw Linda Greenhouse: “Should the House Democrats take a cue from Tribe and proceed to impeachment despite the seeming impossibility that the Senate would vote—by the constitutionally required two-thirds majority—to convict Trump and remove him from office?”
⋙💙💙 NYRB, Linda Greenhouse: The Impeachment Question http://bit.ly/2wYlqVc
🐣 RT @joshscampbell The President accidentally undercuts the “Deep State” claim by admitting a leak about the FBI’s investigation before the election would have been fatal. ¤ “Had that gone out before the election, I don’t think I would have had enough time to defend myself.”
⋙ 🐣 He should thank Comey, McCabe, Strzok and Page, anyone of whom could have leaked it.
🐣 RT @ And how soon should we expect Trump to order Attorney General Barr to open an investigation of Pentagon officials based on this @nytimes reporting? Given that AG Barr has all the independence of a tapeworm, he will comply.
⋙ 🐣 RT @GlennKirshner2 Whereas this is a prudent move to protect our country from a reckless, lawless, Russia-controlled president, it further demonstrates the need for impeachment. We should not have to resort to a shadow “government within a government” to secure our nation.
⭕ 15 Jun 2019
ChicagoTrib/AP (Jun): Trump 2020 campaign secretly working with former Cambridge Analytica staffers http://bit.ly/2Zwu89S
🐣 RT @Comey Political candidates and elected officials should not talk about the future prosecution of any individual. Law enforcement decisions must be apolitical.
🐣 RT @RadioFreeTom It is hard to read this tweet in any way other than: “I am terrified that Vladimir Putin will read this story and believe it, so I will say that it is not true and attack the NYT for reporting it.” ¤ The President’s very personal fear of Putin is palpable.
⋙ 🐣 RT @real Do you believe that the Failing New York Times just did a story stating that the United States is substantially increasing Cyber Attacks on Russia. This is a virtual act of Treason by a once great paper so desperate for a story, any story, even if bad for our Country….. […] …..ALSO, NOT TRUE! Anything goes with our Corrupt News Media today. They will do, or say, whatever it takes, with not even the slightest thought of consequence! These are true cowards and without doubt, THE ENEMY OF THE PEOPLE!
🐣 RT @davidfrum The US military is not briefing the US president on major cyber warfare operations against a hostile foreign power because they do not trust the president not to betray those operations to that hostile foreign power.
🐣 RT @davidfrum If the military is wrong about the president, if he should be trusted, then we have here the worst breach of civilian supremacy over the military since … ever, right? ¤ But if the military is right … what do we have then?
⋙ 🐣 ⋙ 🐣 The military is split. Officers are skeptical of Trump, but the rank-and-file support him.
🐣 RT @MarkWarner The President is making it quite clear that he wants the Senate GOP to obstruct any attempt to prevent future foreign election interference.
⋙ 🐣 RT @ real https://twitter.com/MarkWarner/status/1139643602353688577?s=20
🐣 RT @tribelaw The ironclad case for impeachment is that every day he remains in power he is a mortal danger to the United States. Punish him later, through the criminal process. But begin the process of EXPELLING him immediately — by starting an #ImpeachmentInquiryNow
WaPo, Paul Kane: Pro-impeachment Amash insists he hasn’t changed but Republican Party has http://wapo.st/2XfKvK2
NewYorker, John Cassidy: The Stephanopoulos Interview Is Another Fine Mess for Trump http://bit.ly/2IkP9OJ
NYT: In Face-Off With Iran, Escalation May Depend on Who Prevails Inside Washington and Tehran http://nyti.ms/2XgGh4K
🐣 RT @SethAbramson (THREAD) This thread discusses the difference(s) between the OPPOSITION RESEARCH conducted by the Democrats in 2016 and the CRIMES committed by the GOP candidate for president during the 2016 campaign. I hope you’ll share this thread with anyone who you think might be interested. 📌 https://twitter.com/SethAbramson/status/1140076913202884608?s=20
🐣 RT @kasparov63 Asha gets to the core of Trumpism, and other aspects of crumbling democratic norms. People like Trump don’t ask WHY things are wrong if those things are useful to them personally. They look only at the consequences, good or bad.
📌 https://twitter.com/Kasparov63/status/1140018935787642880?s=20
⋙ 🐣 RT @AshaRangappa_ LINT. I didn’t see this question being asked or answered on TV, so beyond the question of “is it legal” to accept oppo research from a foreign government, let’s ask WHY it’s wrong. What are the practical and policy reasons we’d not want a presidential candidate to do this? 📌 https://twitter.com/AshaRangappa_/status/1139167644240793600?s=20
🐣 So now he knows (someone will point the article out to him like, say, Putin). Then what? What is the NYT trying to do? What are the sources trying to do? What if Trump shuts it down? This scares me.
🐣 RT @CarlBildt This is dangerous: US puts potentially crippling malware into the Russian energy grid. Russia is certain to do its utmost to prepare at least reciprocal capabilities against civilian infrastructure in Western countries.
🐣 RT @brianklaas Trump accused a newspaper of treason today. He once again used a Stalinist term to incite violence against the press. It won’t be a big story for even a few hours. That’s creeping authoritarianism. The unthinkable has become routine. And as he gets away with it, he grows worse.
⋙ NYT: U.S. Escalates Online Attacks on Russia’s Power Grid http://nyti.ms/2MNAKi8
Two administration officials said they believed Mr. Trump had not been briefed in any detail about the steps to place “implants” — software code that can be used for surveillance or attack — inside the Russian grid.
Pentagon and intelligence officials described broad hesitation to go into detail with Mr. Trump about operations against Russia for concern over his reaction — and the possibility that he might countermand it or discuss it with foreign officials, as he did in 2017 when he mentioned a sensitive operation in Syria to the Russian foreign minister.
Because the new law defines the actions in cyberspace as akin to traditional military activity on the ground, in the air or at sea, no such briefing would be necessary, they added.
🐣 RT @kylegriffin1 Fmr. U.S. ambassador to the U.N. Susan Rice: “I hope very much that the American people do not forget the difference between right and wrong, normal and absolutely abnormal, which is what we’re experiencing in these times.”
⋙ MSNBC, RachelMaddow: Rice: Trump shows ‘extraordinary disregard for our democracy’ http://on.msnbc.com/2ZriYmc
// Susan Rice, former national security advisor to President Obama, talks with Rachel Maddow about Donald Trump’s stated openness to receiving illegal foreign help to his campaign and the threat that poses to the United States.
🐣 RT @MalcolmNance What the hell? So Iran allegedly fired on a Reaper Drone? Why would this information be kept from us? Was the Reaper over Iranian waters? This makes the case for believing Trump even WORSE. #NotBuyingIt
⋙ 🐣 RT @sfrantzman New information from CNN says a US Reaper drone was fired on before the tanker attack incident, now in this timeline
⋙⋙ MiddleEastCenter: Timeline and details: June 13 Gulf of Oman tanker “attack” http://bit.ly/2RjJb3p
⭕ 14 Jun 2019
TheHill, Kristal Ball: This is just the start of American authoritarianism http://bit.ly/2XjjVQ7
WaPo, Max Boot: Trump sycophants jump to cover the president’s claim that he’ll break the law http://wapo.st/2WNHEbK
TPM, Nicole Lafond: The 6 Wildest Moments From Trump’s Latest ‘Fox And Friends’ Phone-In http://bit.ly/2Zvjsrp
🐣 .@JoyAnnReid Accepting anything of value from a foreign national to help win an election is already illegal. Proposed legislation nixed by Blackburn would have codified requirement to report any such offers to the FBI. Other bills would shore up voting systems, etc.
🐣 RT @kylegriffin1 FEC Chair Ellen Weintraub: “It’s actually a matter of black-letter law. It’s pretty straightforward. Anyone in the U.S. is not allowed to accept anything of value from a foreign national, particularly a foreign government, in connection with an election.”
⋙ MSNBC, MorningJoe: FEC chair: Entire US gov’t. must speak out http://on.msnbc.com/2XNAOzo
// FEC Chair Ellen Weintraub issued a statement Thursday on campaigns accepting foreign aid the day after the president said he’d consider taking information on opponents from other countries. Weintraub joins Morning Joe to discuss.
WaPo, Jennifer Rubin: Trump’s incoherent walk-back won’t help http://wapo.st/2MODMCZ
🐣 Trophy wife. Porn model. Gold digger. Illegally worked on tourist Visa. Chain migration. Plagiarist. Doesn’t do 10% of work other FLs have done. Worst FL ever.
🐣 How about reparations for the Irish immigrants who were considered subhuman and were starved out of Ireland. In America, they were considered less valuable than slaves because they weren’t property and were put to work digging canals and building railroads in the 1850s.
🐣 RT @atrupar In which Trump accuses former White House counsel Don McGahn of lying under oath. ¤ This clip is an illustration of how the coverup is ongoing.
💽 https://twitter.com/atrupar/status/1139598446137085959?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @TheHill Sen. Mitt Romney: “That would be simply unthinkable for a candidate for president to accept that involvement, to encourage it, to participate with it in any way, shape or form. It would strike at the very heart of our democracy.” http://hill.cm/ZgpTOJx
💽 https://twitter.com/thehill/status/1139593594837147649?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @BarbMcQuade Trump’s dispute of McGahn’s story of obstruction makes it more important than ever to question McGahn under oath before Congress and the public.
⋙ WaPo: Trump says McGahn ‘may have been confused’ when he said Trump directed him to pursue Mueller’s firing http://wapo.st/2ZrLGDz
Salon, Chauncey DeVega: Yale psychiatrist Bandy Lee: Trump’s mental health is now a “national and global emergency” http://bit.ly/2FcfRqy
// Dr. Bandy Lee convened experts to study the Mueller report. They conclude that Trump “can no longer see reality”
🐣 RT @kylegriffin1 FEC Chair Ellen Weintraub: “It’s actually a matter of black-letter law. It’s pretty straightforward. Anyone in the U.S. is not allowed to accept anything of value from a foreign national, particularly a foreign government, in connection with an election.”
⋙ 💽 MSNBC, MorningJoe: FEC chair: Entire US gov’t. must speak out http://on.msnbc.com/2XNAOzo
// FEC Chair Ellen Weintraub issued a statement Thursday on campaigns accepting foreign aid the day after the president said he’d consider taking information on opponents from other countries. Weintraub joins Morning Joe to discuss.
Politico [EU]: Russian groups targeted EU election with fake news, says European Commission http://politi.co/2wRsh2E
// Analysis finds ‘continued and sustained disinformation activity.’
🐣 RT @tribelaw “How could these most deadly foreign adversaries of republican government better gratify their desire to gain an improper ascendant in our councils . . . than by raising a creature of their own to the chief magistracy of the Union?” — ALEXANDER HAMILTON, 1788
🐣 RT @ABC EXCLUSIVE: Pres. Trump tells @GStephanopoulos he never suggested firing special counsel Robert Mueller—and what ex-White House counsel Don McGahn told Mueller “doesn’t matter.” https://abcn.ws/2Ie3Bb3
💽 https://twitter.com/ABC/status/1139466281864876032?s=20/photo/1
⭕ 13 Jun 2019
USAToday, Michael Stern: ‘I think I’d take it’ is the last straw. Nancy Pelosi, it’s time to impeach Trump. http://bit.ly/2IOv96a
// Don’t let an emboldened Trump commit ethical and criminal violations with no repercussions. It’s demoralizing for Democrats and politically risky.
NewYorker, Susan Glasser: Forget “No Collusion.” Trump Is Now Pro-Collusion http://bit.ly/2Iiqtq1
✅ WaPo FactChecker, Glenn Kessler (Apr): What the Steele dossier said vs. what the Mueller report said http://wapo.st/2wW296W
✅ PolitiFact (2018): The FBI, the Steele dossier and wiretapping, explained http://bit.ly/2oYc0oL
✅ PolitiFact: How pundits defended Trump’s ABC interview, and why it’s misleading http://bit.ly/2KkoZxI
🐣 RT @MSNBC Fmr. National Security Adviser Susan Rice on Pres. Trump: “The real question is if he’s not playing on America’s team, then whose interest is he serving? Is it just his own personal, political, and financial interests, or is it somebody else’s?”
⋙ MSNBC, MitchellReports: Susan Rice reacts to Trump saying he’d take foreign info on opponents http://on.msnbc.com/2Ig2BTJ
// The president says he would accept assistance from a foreign government in the upcoming 2020 election. Former National Security Advisor, Susan Rice, joins Andrea Mitchell to discuss.
TheHill: Trump campaign says it will handle foreign intel offers on ‘case by case basis’ http://bit.ly/2F9JcC7
🐣 RT @RussiaUN #Nebenzia: There’s a need to unite in order to achieve one of the most important goals of today – launch a regional dialogue aimed at establishing a security architecture in #PersianGulf, where now tension around #Iran is being artificially inflated. #LAS
https://bit.ly/2XL3fho)
WaPo: U.S. military intelligence steps up accusation against Russia over nuclear testing http://wapo.st/2IflPJd
// The new statement from the Defense Intelligence Agency amounted to a more direct accusation against Russia, which has vehemently rejected the accusations.
WaPo, Todd Stern: The real reason Nancy Pelosi is ducking impeachment http://wapo.st/2KiT8NH
In short, the time of reckoning is upon us. Of course, there are risks in moving forward, but the risks of not doing so are greater. Taking into account principle, precedent and politics, the House should open an impeachment inquiry, upholding its separate but equal power to do its sworn duty. Now is a moment for clarity, toughness and spine. History is watching.
Politico, Darren Samuelson and Natasha Bertrand: Trump smashed months of FBI work to thwart election interference http://politi.co/2x1UIex
// Trump’s willingness to accept foreign assistance has essentially invited overseas spies to meddle with 2020 presidential campaigns, undoing months of work, said law enforcement veterans.
NYT: Trump Assailed for Saying He Would Take Campaign Help From Russia http://nyti.ms/2IEpZcQ
🐣 RT @joshscampbell After the President suggests he might break the law, the Federal Election Commission reminds the world that breaking the law is in fact illegal. ¤ No word yet from the Justice Department.
⋙ 🔆 This❗️⋙ 🐣 RT @EllenLWeintraub [FEC Chair] I would not have thought that I needed to say this.
I would not have thought that I needed to say this. pic.twitter.com/T743CsXq79
— Ellen L. Weintraub (@ellenlweintraub on threads) (@EllenLWeintraub) June 13, 2019
// Statement Regarding Illegal Campaign Contributions From ForeignGovernments
“It is illegal to solicit, accept, or receive anything of value from a foreign national in connection with a U.S. election. … Any political campaign that receives an offer of a prohibited donation from a foreign source should report that offer to the Federal Bureau of Investigation.”
🐣 RT @SpeakerPelosi It should go without saying: if a foreign adversary offers a candidate any assistance, they shouldn’t only not accept it — they should report it to the FBI. #LawlessPresident
🐣 Iran, please rid us of this meddlesome president.
🐣 China, you’re our only hope. Please hack the @RNC and get dirt on Trump to release during our elections. It’s fine by him.
🐣 China, if you’re listening – @realDonaldTrump says it’s okay for you to interfere with our election.
TheAtlantic, David Frum: Trump’s Astonishing Confession http://bit.ly/2XFUnts
// The president said he would accept information from foreign countries if it were to help his presidential campaign.
WaPo: Gillibrand’s vilification of pro-life people proves how hopeless she is http://wapo.st/2XLbTwm
WaPo, Max Boot: Trump has bragged that he will break the law http://wapo.st/31ApuJx
CNN: Sen. Lindsey Graham on Trump comment: Accepting foreign political dirt a ‘mistake’ http://cnn.it/2KKILSt
Axios: Republican Senator Marsha Blackburn blocks bill requiring campaigns to alert FBI to foreign assistance http://bit.ly/2Rnq093
🐣 RT @TheHill Rep. Adam Schiff: “I don’t think they’re at all equivalent. In the one case, you have a candidate making a public appeal to a hostile foreign power to break the law on his behalf. That’s what Donald Trump did. Nothing Hillary Clinton did is even remotely like that.” 💽 https://twitter.com/thehill/status/1139259054117834753?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @stuartstevens I’ve dealt with oppo research for 30 plus years. Clinton campaign hired a firm that researched Trump’s business. He did business in Russia (lied about it.)That research is standard. Receiving information from intelligence service of hostile foreign power is totally different.
🐣 RT @vermontgmg [Garrett Graff] Today should mark the start of an all-out press by the DC media to force the GOP to accept or repudiate Trump’s comments on foreign interference. Trump isn’t the Dems’ problem; he’s the GOP’s problem.
🐣 Both John McCain and Christopher Steele himself gave the “Steel dossier” to the FBI. That’s how Comey got it.
🐣 [To @embolina95] Yes, you’re right. What House Dems are actually trying to require is reporting any foreign contacts of help to the FBI. It’s been a “norm” but not a law. Actual accepting help is currently illegal.
🐣 RT @LincolnsBible House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy in 2016: ‘There’s two people I think Putin pays: Rohrabacher and Trump’
⋙ LATimes: House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy in 2016: ‘There’s two people I think Putin pays: Rohrabacher and Trump’ – http://lat.ms/2WDedo2
// 2016
🐣 RT @tedlieu Hey @realDonaldTrump: ¤ Can you accept a campaign donation from the Queen, the Prince & leaders of foreign powers? NO. In the same way, you cannot knowingly accept campaign assistance of a material value from foreigners. It’s ILLEGAL under the Fed Election Campaign Act. ¤ Get it? https://twitter.com/tedlieu/status/1139171626141081600?s=20
WaPo, Aaron Blake: Trump just mused openly about committing what might well be a crime http://wapo.st/2Rhsfuj
// Donald Trump Jr. wasn’t charged for soliciting Russian help in 2016. What Trump Sr. describes now about accepting foreign help in 2020 is different in two key respects.
🐣 RT @JackiSchechner Steele went straight to the FBI. He was an ally, not a foreign adversary. ¤ Also, he told the FBI.
⋙ 🐣 RT @kenvogel LINDSEY GRAHAM STATEMENT: “It should be practice for all public officials who are contacted by a foreign government with an offer of assistance to their campaign … to inform the @FBI & reject the offer.” ¤ *BUT: Graham then goes on to criticize Democrats over the STEELE dossier. https://twitter.com/kenvogel/status/1139177918872072194?s=20/photo/1
Vox, Matthew Yglesias and Andrew Prokop: The Steele dossier, explained Republican senators want the author of the “pee tape” document arrested. http://bit.ly/2KfP2pJ
// 2/2/2018
Medium: Anti-Abortion Hypocrisy Has Never Been Clearer http://bit.ly/2WF7M3M
// If every fertilized egg is life, why don’t Republicans legislate IVF?
Esquire, Jack Holmes: The President Just Proudly Declared He Would Collude in 2020 http://bit.ly/2wStXZE
// Donald Trump said in public he will betray the country and the Constitution. Does he have to say it on a secret tape for the House of Representatives to act?
WaPo: Trump cites frequent meetings with foreign leaders to try to justify comments on accepting opposition research http://wapo.st/2KiyQEm
Hullabaloo, Heather Digby Parton: Russia, if you’re listening … http://bit.ly/2XDFzeV
// Trump believes that anyone who likes him and wants to help him win is his friend, regardless of their motives.
🐣 RT @juneday864 Seeing the predictable “whatabout-ism” re: the Steele dossier. For one thing, note — when Sen. John McCain received a copy of the Steele dossier, he *contacted the FBI.* https://twitter.com/juneday864/status/1139182441434927106?s=20
🐣 RT @RepAdamSchiff Sorry, Mr. President, wrong again. ¤ You eagerly took foreign help in the 2016 election and want it again. ¤ When a foreign national offered info relevant to our investigation — not election — we informed the FBI before and after the call. ¤ It’s called ethics. You should try it.
⋙ 🐣 RT @real … When @RepAdamSchiff took calls from another person, also very successfully purporting to be a Russian Operative, did he call the FBI, or even think to call the FBI? NO! The fact is that the phony Witch Hunt is a giant scam where Democrats,…
TheAtlantic, Peter Nicholas: Trump Didn’t Learn Anything From 2016 http://bit.ly/2KgqrkL
// Somehow the president hasn’t yet absorbed that embracing foreign interference in an election can bring about a world of hurt.
🐣 Trump’s statements make the GOP’s counter-narrative that there was no reason to open an investigation on him even more ridiculous. Of course there was. ¤ Trump has declared there is nothing wrong with colluding with an enemy to win an election.
WaPo, Greg Sargent: Trump just invited another Russian attack. Mitch McConnell is making one more likely. http://wapo.st/2XIvrlb
🐣 Trump is a “clear and present danger” to national security. He has violated his Oath of Office to defend the U.S. “against all enemies, foreign and domestic.” @SpeakerPelosi
⭕ 12 Jun 2019
Salon (6/12): Yale psychiatrist Bandy X. Lee on Trump: “His state has been steadily deteriorating for some time” based on the Mueller Report http://bit.ly/32cuLHu
// Lee recently prepared a definitive mental health analysis of the Mueller report, which is gathering signatures
Newsweek: Russia Wants U.S. to Know That If Iran Deal Fails, It Will Be Donald Trump’s Fault http://bit.ly/2IdrU90
🐣 RT @HeathaT Three things wrong in @GOPLeader claims here.
1. The dossier info was first paid for by a Republican, Paul Singer, not Dems.
2. John McCain turned the #SteeleDossier over to the FBI
3. The FBI investigation into Trump started before anyone had the dossier.
⋙ 🐣 RT @LizRNC The Dems paid a foreigner to travel the world trying to drum something up against @realDonaldTrump
“And when they could not find it, they made it up” [?]
They took the lies to the FBI, who never checked it, & used it to spy on Americans
“Where is the outrage there?” – @GOPLeader
🐣 RT @ScarletAvengers GOP Congressman @DavidJollyFL ¤ is calling on Congress and urging the impeachment of donald trump after the Stephanopoulos interview. ¤ Jolly exited the Republican Party a few months ago after having had enough of their sycophancy and their lack of moral standing on everything trump.
⋙ .@DavidJollyFL says Trump’s comments that he’d accept political dirt from a foreign power in the next election are an “impeachable moment.” ¤ Learn more: nbcnews.to/2RdLc0R #11MSNBC #11thHour 💽 https://twitter.com/11thHour/status/1139014384582369280?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @JoyceWhiteVance This, by definition, the end of democracy. If only the president can determine whether the president’s conduct breaks the law, Trump can be president forever.
⋙ 🐣 RT @bradheath Trump’s lawyers argue in a new D.C. Cir. brief that Congress does not have the power to investigate whether the president broke the law. They say only the executive branch – the people who work for the president – is allowed to determine whether the president broke the law. https://twitter.com/bradheath/status/1138194820252483584?s=20/photo/1
WaPo: As Democrats deepen probes, Trump accuses them of being ‘totally out of control’ http://wapo.st/2F6TrY2
NYT, Thomas Edsall: The Meritocracy Is Under Siege http://nyti.ms/2KN4fy6
// Are we merely reproducing privilege or is there something to salvage in the system we have now?
NYT: Justice Dept. Seeks to Question C.I.A. in Its Own Russia Investigation http://nyti.ms/2WGFzOH
– – – – – – – – – – –
🐣 RT @MarkWarner If the President and his campaign can’t be trusted to do the right thing and report foreign interference to the FBI, then we need to make it a legal requirement by passing my bill, the FIRE Act.
🐣 RT @stuartstevens Trump is telling every kid to cheat when you can get away with it, every employee to steal when no one’s looking, every American to cheat on taxes because you won’t get caught, every politician to betray America if it helps you win. Normalize this, Republicans. Have at it.
🐣 RT @JohnWDean How do we think Trump would react if a foreign government gave his opponent information about him? He’d go ballistic, and seek prosecution. But Donny doesn’t believe the law applies to him. No rules. This man is disgusting, duplicitous, and dangerous!
🐣 RT @gtconway3d Not fit to hold any office of public trust. Not fit to hold any position of private trust. Not fit to hold any position that requires him to put someone else’s interests above his own. That’s because, among other things, he’s a pathological narcissist.
🐣 RT @nealkatyal Not. Fit. To. Be. President.
🐣 RT @selectedwisdom Well – there you have it. Free-for-all In 2020. Criminals, foreign countries, anyone can do whatever they want to help their preferred candidates and candidates (according to the President) are free and clean of all liability. Russia gets an open door from President Trump.
🐣 RT @tribelaw Trump tells America: “I would gladly betray you to retain power.” What more does @SpeakerPelosi need to hear before starting an #ImpeachmentinquiryNOW? @Lawrence @RadioFreeTom @RepJeffries @RepJerryNadler @RepRaskin
🐣 RT @michelleinbklyn The failure to impeach leads directly to this
🔆 This❗️⋙ ABCNews: ‘I think I’d take it’: In exclusive interview, Trump says he would listen if foreigners offered dirt on opponents http://abcn.ws/2IdTd3b
– – – – – – – – – – –
WaPo: Trump says he’d consider accepting information from foreign governments on his opponents http://wapo.st/2KN6bXa
NYT: Trump Says ‘I’d Take It’ if Russia Again Offered Dirt on Opponent http://nyti.ms/2KdytuJ
🐣 RT @TheHill Former Prosecutor Andrew McCarthy: “I would just add that I think by taking the meeting, and I don’t think you need a lot of training for this, by taking the meeting, you’ve made yourself beholden to Putin in terms of however he wants to characterize it down the road.” 💽 https://twitter.com/thehill/status/1139029880253886465?s=20/photo/1
WaPo, George T Conway III and Neal Katyal: Trump just invited Congress to begin impeachment proceedings http://wapo.st/2WBRBsG
🔆 This❗️⋙ DailyBeast, Rick Wilson: Every Member of Team Trump Is Now Enabling Treason http://bit.ly/2F6FYPD
// On Wednesday, Trump confirmed he treats his oath to serve the United States faithfully with the same contempt he’s given to his wedding vows and business contracts.
🐣 What if @RepJerryNadler, @RepAdamSchiff, @RepCummings @RepMaxineWaters all threatened to resign their posts? @SpeakerPelosi @LeaderHoyer
🐣 RT @ForeignAffairs .@FareedZakaria writes that the question now is whether, as U.S. power wanes, the international system it sponsored—the rules, norms, and values—will survive. Or will America also watch the decline of its empire of ideas?
⋙ ForeignAffairs, Fareed Zakaria: The Self-Destruction of American Power http://fam.ag/2MKfVUS
// Jul-Aug 2019; Washington Squandered the Unipolar Moment
💙💙 🐣 RT @BarbMcQuade It’s clear America has not read the Mueller Report. People still gasp when they hear about conduct described in it. Mueller always intended for us to read the 8-page summaries. Read them here: 1) http://bit.ly/2WHuoFq 2) http://bit.ly/2Ib9ndA
🐣 RT @TheRickWilson If you’re wondering if the President of the goddamn United States just invited foreign intelligence agencies to hack and spy on his political opponents, he did.
🐣 RT @tribelaw Trump tells America: “I would gladly betray you to retain power.” What more does @SpeakerPelosi need to hear before starting an #ImpeachmentinquiryNOW? @Lawrence @RadioFreeTom @RepJeffries @RepJerryNadler @RepRaskin
🐣 RT @joshtpm “I don’t think in my whole life I’ve ever called the FBI. In my whole life. You don’t call the FBI. You throw somebody out of your office, you do whatever you do. Oh, give me a break – life doesn’t work that way.” #badaboombadabing
🐣 RT @joshtpm Told the FBI Director Says You Shouldn’t Take Foreign Info but Rather Call FBI, Trump Says “The FBI Director is Wrong.”
⋙ TPM: Trump Tells ABC: Sure, I’d Collude Again http://bit.ly/2WGFVF3
🐣 RT @CitizenWonk This is the 2020 Russia, if you’re listening moment
⋙ 🐣 RT @RepAdamSchiff When the Russians offered dirt on Clinton in 2016, the Trump campaign enthusiastically accepted. ¤ Today, the President made it clear he would do it all over again, saying everyone does it. ¤ No, they don’t. ¤ Trump does nothing if not project his own lack of ethics onto others.
🐣 They think everyone thinks like them. If not, they’re weak or a sucker. No idea of law, ethics or morality. It‘s a mobster’s worldview.
🐣 If the @FBI had closed it’s counter-intel investigation into Trump, it’s time to reopen it. @RepAdamSchiff
CNN: George Conway: Trump sends ‘invitation to commence impeachment proceedings’ http://cnn.it/2Rb04gF
🐣 RT @SethAbramson Trump just told us he’d try to steal the 2020 election by getting assistance from other countries, including hacked materials. He JUST TOLD US. If he’s allowed to run in 2020, the election is a joke before it begins. THIS is what happens when you don’t hold criminals accountable.
🐣 RT @20committee Unlike our 45th President, I do not use the T-word casually. ¤ But, it now fits Donnie — like a glove. Based on his very own words. ¤ In our politics, the worst American without secret foreign encumbrances is preferable to the best American with them.
🐣 RT @joshscampbell Just incredible. The President says “the FBI Director is wrong” in claiming that a campaign approached by a foreign government should notify authorities.
💽 https://twitter.com/joshscampbell/status/1138942347989794816/photo/1
🐣 RT @stuartstevens It’s interesting. Trump just called every Congressman a traitor. The Republican elected officials who think they will be remembered for anything other than the stance they took to Donald Trump are in a fantasy. He’s our George Wallace. The bills Wallace signed are long forgotten.
⋙ 🐣 RT @caitlyncollins Two of Trump’s reasons for why someone shouldn’t call the FBI if they’re offered information on opponents from foreigners: ¤ “The FBI doesn’t have enough agents to take care of it.” ¤ “But you go and talk, honestly to congressmen, they all do it.”
🐣 I guess this is the point where we just lay back and let it happen. No one is going to help. What a nightmare. @SpeakerPelosi
🐣 RT @kylegriffin1 John Brennan: “This is the definition of a craven and unethical politician … We have somebody in the Oval Office who is not opposed to having foreign governments influence the campaigns and the candidacies of the individuals who aspire to gain our public trust.” @hardball
🐣 Too much “oh, he just does that,” not enough outrage. We’ve become numb, people. Even @RepAdamSchiff on @maddow.
🐣 RT @DavidJollyFL An impeachable moment.
🐣 .@Maddow nails it. #Impeach for collusion.
🐣 RT @McFaul Would love to hear from one Member of Congress from the Republican Party denounce the president’s remarks today. It’s a national security issue, not a partisan issue.
🐣 RT @matthewamiller At some point there’s just not much left to say about Trump. He’s unfit for office, disloyal to the nation, and violates his oath right in front of us over and over again. You either care enough to do something about it or you don’t.
🐣 RT @MSNBC “Two years to get that admission. Two years of the Mueller report and now we have the president’s motive: ‘There is nothing wrong’ with taking dirt from the Russians” ¤ — @HardballChris on President Trump’s comments on accepting foreign help in 2020
⋙ MSNBC, Hardball: Trump: If foreigners offered info for 2020, ‘I think I’d take it’ http://on.msnbc.com/2F7NYAd
// In a stunning admission, the President told ABC News that he has no problem accepting dirt on a political opponent from a foreign power. In fact, Trump denied that foreign help should even be considered election interference.
🐣 Trump has violated his Oath of Office to protect the United States “from all enemies, foreign and domestic.” @SpeakerPelosi It’s time! @RepJerryNadler @RepAdamSchiff @SpeakerPelosi @LeaderHoyer @RepAdamSchiff @RepCummings
🐣 RT @matthewamiller Trump’s belief that campaigns shouldn’t call the FBI if approached by a foreign government is about as unpopular a proposition as you can find in this country.
⋙ 🐣 RT @LawWorksAction 84% of voters — including 75% of Republicans — support Congress passing legislation that would require candidates for federal office and their campaigns to report any contacts with foreign governments or foreign entities to the FBI.
84% of voters — including 75% of Republicans — support Congress passing legislation that would require candidates for federal office and their campaigns to report any contacts with foreign governments or foreign entities to the FBI. https://t.co/Op5ehKP1oQ https://t.co/bNfoZ3H3fH
— Keep Our Republic (@keep_republic) June 12, 2019
🐣 When Trump says “Norway,” he means “Russia.” When he says “maybe” he’d call the FBI, he means he wouldn’t. See, we’re ALL learning his “code.”
🐣 RT @RadioFreeTom [Tom Nichols] If any USG employee with a clearance declared “Why yes, I’d talk to a foreign agent and not talk to the FBI,” not only would that person be in violation of security requirements, but the people around that person would be required to report him or her as a security threat.
🐣 RT @RadioFreeTom [Tom Nichols] How does Chris Wray not resign now that the President has made clear that he would not inform him of further Russian interference? Or Haspel? Or Coats?
🐣 RT @tribelaw Trump tells America: “I would gladly betray you to retain power.” What more does @SpeakerPelosi need to hear before starting an #ImpeachmentinquiryNOW? @Lawrence @RadioFreeTom @RepJeffries @RepJerryNadler @RepRaskin
⋙ 🔆 This❗️⋙ 🐣 RT @RadioFreeTom [Tom Nichols] “I would take help from a foreign adversary against U.S. citizens running against me and not notify the FBI” is about as clear a violation of the oath to protect and defend the Constitution, against all enemies foreign and domestic, as there could be.
🐣 RT @20committee [John Schindler] Remember 12 JUN 2019. Today was the day a sitting President announced he would accept clandestine help from a hostile power to stay in office. ¤ Translation for the cheap seats: Donald J. Trump, our 45th president, admitted that he is a traitor. On camera.
⋙ 🐣 RT @ EXCLUSIVE: Pres. Trump tells @GStephanopoulos he wouldn’t necessarily alert the FBI if approached by foreign figures with information on his 2020 opponent: “It’s not an interference. They have information. I think I’d take it.” http://abcn.ws/2IdTd3b
USAToday (2018): Fact-checking Donald Trump: What the law says on collusion http://bit.ly/2MNmRjW ● https://twitter.com/Auriandra/status/1138960758014992385?s=20/photo/1
The Federal Election Campaign Act, enshrined in the federal code, prohibits foreign nationals, either “directly or indirectly” from making “a contribution or donation of money or other thing of value” to a campaign. It also makes it illegal for a person to “solicit, accept, or receive a contribution or donation” from a foreign national.
Provisions of the U.S. Code, 18 USC §371, “makes it a federal crime for two or more people to conspire ‘to commit any offense against the United States, or to defraud the United States, or any agency thereof in any manner or for any purpose. Agreeing (colluding) with someone for a perfectly lawful purpose, like arranging a game of golf or tennis, is not a crime. But colluding with the Russians, i.e. agreeing to cooperate, encourage or assist them in any way in pursuing anything they were doing that was illegal, is most certainly a crime.” – Stephen Schulhofer
🐣 RT @SethAbramson Trump just did a “Russia, if you’re listening”—except a) he can’t claim he was joking; b) it involves data stolen by governments all around the world, not just Russia; and c) he can’t say he didn’t know what he proposed was illegal. ¤ This can’t stand—we’re not America if it does.
🐣 RT @TheRickWilson I have changed my position on impeachment. ¤ I think it is no longer sufficient.
⋙ 🐣 RT @Libericks
First, Trump secured Clinton’s defeat
When foreigners helped him to cheat;
Then nothing was done
About how he won;
So this time, it’s wash/rinse/repeat.
🐣 RT @tribelaw This legal argument is totally preposterous. It goes even further than saying the president is above the law. It says only the president can investigate whether the president has broken the law. Game over! That’s insane. Actually it’s perfectly logical — in a dictatorship.
⋙ 🐣 RT @bradheath Trump’s lawyers argue in a new D.C. Cir. brief that Congress does not have the power to investigate whether the president broke the law. They say only the executive branch – the people who work for the president – is allowed to determine whether the president broke the law. https://twitter.com/bradheath/status/1138194820252483584/photo/1
🐣 RT @BadJohnBrown I don’t see how hiring an international spy to get Russians to give dirt on your opponent is, from a technical legal perspective, so different from a willingness to hear dirt on your opponent from a Russian. Either way, you have no idea the motives behind giving you the info.
⋙ 🐣 A conservative media org hired FusionGPS to do oppo research. A lawyer for the DNC picked up the contract. The assignment was given to an employee, Steele. The DNC didn’t know who was assigned. Trump’s own aberrant behavior led Steele to the Russians. Steele, alarmed, went to FBI
⋙ 🐣 (2) But the FBI had already opened a case on Trump, after his national security advisor, George Papadopoulos, told an Australian diplomat that the Russians had e-mails from the Clinton campaign.
🐣 .@SpeakerPelosi It’s time‼️
🐣 RT @HardballChris Trump just defended foreign interference in elections. He gave George more than the Mueller report gave us. He showed motive.
🐣 RT @EvanMcMullin If Trump has learned anything since 2016, it’s not that welcoming Kremlin assistance is unethical, unAmerican or illegal. Rather, it’s that he and Moscow can get away with it. And if we’re unwilling to show him otherwise before 2020, free and fair elections in America may vanish.
⋙ EXCLUSIVE: Pres. Trump tells @GStephanopoulos he wouldn’t necessarily alert the FBI if approached by foreign figures with information on his 2020 opponent: “It’s not an interference. They have information. I think I’d take it.” abcn.ws/2R8UZp2
💽 https://twitter.com/ThisWeekABC/status/1138936855414607873?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @mkraju Schiff today: “Once James Comey was fired, we no longer continued to get Gang of 8 briefings on this constellation of counterintelligence investigations and we not have had one since, which is a real problem.”
🔆 This❗️⋙ 🐣 RT @digby56 So Trump tells ABC that he would accept dirt on his opponent from a foreign government again and when the news is shared on Fox, right wing robot Mollie Hemingway says this proves the necessity to investigate Hillary Clinton. ¤ I’m not kidding. Then they cut to commercial.
TheHill: Amash breaks with GOP in Barr, Ross contempt vote http://bit.ly/2KJL3Bb
Dkos: Quinnipiac Poll: 69% of voters say prosecuting a sitting president (e.g., Trump) should be allowed http://bit.ly/2KeoOEb
≣ NatRev, Andrew McCarthy: Testimony: The Lessons of the Mueller Probe http://bit.ly/2wOe9qL
↥ ↧
💽💙💙 CSPAN: House Intel Committee on Mueller Report Lessons Learned http://cs.pn/2F6RPNN
🐣 RT @HouseJudiciary It is important to hear from Hope Hicks, who was a key witness for the Special Counsel. Ms. Hicks understands that the Committee will be free to pose questions as it sees fit, including about her time on the Trump Campaign and her time in the @WhiteHouse.
🐣 RT @TheHill Rep. Jerry Nadler: “We are facing a Constitutional crisis. We have a President who believes he is above the law, which he is not, and refuses to be held accountable, which he will be.” 💽 https://twitter.com/thehill/status/1138804394797830146?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @TheHill Rep. Adam Schiff: “For those who have not yet read the Mueller report, and most have not, they might be astonished to learn that a finding of no collusion, much less a finding of no obstruction, is nowhere to be seen on any page or in any passage of the Mueller report.” 💽 https://twitter.com/thehill/status/1138834594399236096?s=20/photo/1
NYT: Trump Asserts Executive Privilege on Census Documents Ahead of House Committee Contempt Vote http://nyti.ms/2MKXgrX
🐣 RT @emptywheel Out of the country. Is this a fair summary: Trump is abusing Presidential power to hide evidence the GOP plans to chest on elections for the next decade, but Democrats don’t think that merits impeachment inquiry?
Politico: Trump looks to squash Amash http://politi.co/2X6AZc7
// The president has discussed with aides backing a primary challenge against the lone Republican impeachment supporter.
⭕ 11 Jun 2019
TheHill: Fox News’s Shep Smith tells viewers ‘everyone in America’ should read Mueller report http://bit.ly/2KMipQ2
📔 FreeRussiaFoundation: Misrule of Law: How the Kremlin Uses Western Institutions to Undermine the West http://bit.ly/2KHDbjC
💽 MSNBC, TheBeatWithAri: Watch AG Barr defender confronted by Mueller’s obstruction facts http://on.msnbc.com/2X56zai
// MSNBC Chief Legal Correspondent Ari Melber moderates a fiery debate between John Malcolm, a conservative former DOJ official and witness at Chairman Nadler’s Obstruction hearing and former federal prosecutor John Flannery. Malcolm blames Mueller for putting Barr in a “difficult” situation while Flannery argues Malcolm believes “the president can do anything” and “basically be a monarch”.
WaPo, Ashley Parker: Trump doesn’t want to be impeached — but he is fascinated by ‘the I-word’ http://wapo.st/2WzH78u
WaPo, John Sipher: Trump’s conspiracy theories about intelligence will make the CIA’s job harder http://wapo.st/2wPhZjC
// Enlisting the attorney general to attack the intelligence community is a mistake.
🔆 This❗️⋙ WaPo: House votes to enforce Barr and McGahn subpoenas http://wapo.st/2KQJZM7 //➔ this means all House committees can take their subpoenas directly to court without going through the DOJ whose leadership (Barr) is compromised
🐣 RT @JRubinBlogger The stars of the hearing were the two unflappable law professors who explained in direct and concise opening statements, and in their answers, the essential facts of the Mueller case that Trump has tried to either ignore or flat-out lie about
// Barb McQuade, Joyce Vance
⋙ WaPo, Jennifer Rubin: The House begins to tell the story of Trump’s criminality http://wapo.st/ 2XbjE1S
🐣 RT @BarbMcQuade And a summary of my testimony to Congress: Trump committed multiple acts of obstruction of justice. His efforts harmed national security by shielding from scrutiny an attack on our country by a foreign adversary. Mueller couldn’t charge but Congress can impeach.
≣ TheHill: Read: Biden to label Trump an ‘existential threat to America’ in Iowa remarks http://bit.ly/2Ia2vNH //➔ beautiful. read it all (you don’t need Scribt, it scrolls); a MorningConsult poll (6/3-9) has Biden at 37% in the primary (next closest 19%)
// transcript
⭕ 10 Jun 2019
TheHill, Bill Nettles: Congress really needs to hold President Trump accountable http://bit.ly/2X3eDIt
Axios, Zachary Basu: John Dean draws 6 parallels between the Mueller report and Watergate http://bit.ly/2ZgpVX9
1. Mueller report: When Trump learned that his national security adviser Michael Flynn had lied to the FBI about his Russian contacts, he told FBI director James Comey in the Oval Office: “I hope you can see your way clear to letting this go, to letting Flynn go.”
⋙ Watergate: When Nixon learned of his re-election committee’s involvement in the Watergate break-in, he told his chief of staff H. R. Haldeman to have the CIA ask the FBI not to continue the investigation for the sake of the country.2. Mueller report: Trump admitted in a television interview that he fired Comey because of the Russia investigation.
⋙ Watergate: Dean compared this to the Saturday Night Massacre, in which Nixon fired his attorney general and deputy attorney general for refusing to carry out an order to remove special prosecutor Archibald Cox.3. Mueller report: After the press reported that White House counsel Don McGahn had threatened to resign over Trump’s order to fire Mueller, Trump directed McGahn to create a false paper trail in order dispute the stories.
⋙ Watergate: Dean wrote that this incident was much like “Nixon’s attempt to get me to write a phony report exonerating the White House from any involvement in Watergate.” Dean also said that Nixon sought to influence his testimony after he began cooperating with prosecutors.4. Mueller report: In addition to McGahn, Trump also pressured former campaign aide Cory Lewandowski and White House chief of staff Reince Priebus to get Attorney General Jeff Sessions to unrecuse himself and take control of the Mueller investigation.
⋙ Watergate: Dean said that Nixon attempted to exert control over the Watergate investigation through his former counsel John Ehrlichman and top DOJ official Henry Petersen.5. Mueller report: After news broke of Donald Trump Jr.’s meeting with Russians at Trump Tower, the president dictated a misleading statement that characterized the meeting as about adoptions.
⋙ Watergate: After the Watergate break-in, Nixon’s aides drafted a false press release that claimed the burglars were not operating “on our behalf or with our consent.” Tapes later revealed that Nixon knew the statement was false and suspected that his attorney general had approved the operation.6. Mueller report: There is evidence that Trump may have “dangled pardons or offered other favorable treatment to Michael Flynn, Paul Manafort, Michael Cohen and Roger Stone” in return for their silence.
⋙ Watergate: Nixon also dangled presidential pardons to keep witnesses from fully testifying, which he admitted was improper in a conversation with Dean.The bottom line, according to Dean: Neither the Watergate investigation nor the Mueller probe established that Nixon or Trump conspired to commit the underlying crime (Russian interference in one case and the DNC break-in in the other). Yet Dean argues that “events in both 1972 and 2016 resulted in obstruction of the investigations.”
🐣 RT @OversightDems BREAKING: Chairman @RepCummings schedules vote to hold #AGBarr & #SecretaryRoss in contempt for blocking #Census2020 investigation. We will proceed with criminal and civil actions to enforce the bipartisan subpoenas. Read the report here: https://bit.ly/2K9mSN2
[Statement:] https://twitter.com/OversightDems/status/1138203365295427585/photo/1
🐣 The House already investigated how the investigation started. It found (even under the GOP) that it started with George Papadopoulos telling the Australian ambassador the Russians had dirt on Hillary Clinton.
💙🐣 RT @RepMGS A timeline of President Trump’s efforts to get Don McGahn to manufacture evidence and change the story. #CoverUp – at Judiciary Committee Hearing Room https://twitter.com/RepMGS/status/1138177797552259077/photo/1
Newsweek: Mueller Report is ‘Sufficient to Obtain a Guilty Verdict’ on Donald Trump, Law Professor Tells Congress http://bit.ly/2X0cygi
🐣 RT @moscow_project .@JoyceWhiteVance on Trump’s efforts to limit Mueller to investigating future interference: ¤ “We essentially have a president saying, ‘Maybe I’ve robbed banks in the past, but I don’t want you to look at that. I just want you to investigate whether I rob any banks in the future.'”
📊 Dkos, Markos Moulitsas: Civiqs Poll: National support for impeachment is now even, and the reason is Republican Justin Amash http://bit.ly/2XCZTgi
⋙ Reg voters 47/47 ● https://twitter.com/Auriandra/status/1138185972607258624/photo/1
⋙ Indies 44/47 ● https://twitter.com/Auriandra/status/1138186267504644097/photo/1
// 5/16/2017-6/8/2019
TIME: Watergate Star Witness Calls Mueller Report a ‘Roadmap’ for Investigating Trump http://bit.ly/2wNahGG
🐣 RT @cspan Rep. @Jim_Jordan: “What were you thinking about when you said he’s incapable of accomplishing anything?” ¤ John Dean: “Mr. Jordan, I think that under the parliamentary rules of the house I’m refrained from addressing a full answer your question.”
🐣 RT @ProudResister 25-year Federal Prosecutor and Law Professor @JoyceWhiteVance: ¤ “If anyone other than a president of the United States committed this conduct he would be under indictment today for multiple acts of Obstruction of Justice.” ¤ #ImpeachmentInquiryNow
🐣 RT @kylegriffin1 John Dean, asked by Jim Jordan about his Twitter criticism of Trump, says that he cannot describe his thoughts: “Mr. Jordan, I think that under the parliamentary rules of the House, I am refrained from addressing the full answer to your question.” Laughter breaks out.
❤️❤️🐣 RT @jentaub Here we go. The Mueller Report hearing begins. Chairman Nadler gaveling in a bit late. 2:12 p.m. [Livetweet] 📌 https://mobile.twitter.com/jentaub/status/1138146971091423233
NYT: Pelosi and Schumer Are Playing Too Nice http://nyti.ms/2IBEazh
// Maybe they are right to be cautious, but keeping the base at a distance could make it easier for Trump to win again.
DailyBeast: Former U.S. Attorney Tells Congress Trump Committed ‘Multiple Crimes’ http://bit.ly/2X1xXG6
// ‘If anyone other than a sitting president had committed this conduct, I am confident that he would be charged with crimes.’
🐣 Heritage’s John Malcolm: The President is Above The Law (essentially). ¤ I’m glad we cleared that up.
🐣 RT @CAPaction “By seeking to curtail the investigation, President Trump committed an act that threatened the national security of this country…That allegation deserves the attention of every American.” ¤ @BarbMcQuade
🐣 RT @moscow_project @JoyceWhiteVance sums it up: “If you or I had committed this conduct, we would have been charged by now.”
🐣 RT @kylegriffin1 Joyce Vance: If Trump were not president, “the facts contained in [the Mueller] report would be sufficient to prove all of the elements necessary to charge multiple counts of obstruction … I would be personally willing to try the case and indict the case.”
🐣 🔆 This❗️⋙ @HouseJudiciary hearing on the Mueller report begins at 1:00pm CT
// John Dean, Joyce White Vance, Barbara McQuade ✛ John Malcolm from Heritage Foundation
💙🐣 RT @BillKristol Republican members of Congress announce they will hold the president accountable for obstruction of justice. [Wategate] 💽 https://twitter.com/BillKristol/status/1138093913561075714/photo/1
WaPo, Paul Waldman: The intriguing stones Robert Mueller left unturned on Trump http://wapo.st/2R2tayB
🐣 RT @JuliaDavisNews #Russia’s state TV describes Trump as a self-proclaimed master of the deal, with no deals to speak of. “You will laugh, but Trump doesn’t have a single ratified deal under his belt. He’s only destroying existing deals & agreements,” says top Kremlin propagandist Dmitry Kiselyov.
HouseJudiciary: Nadler Reaches Agreement with DOJ for Mueller Report Evidence of Possible Presidential Obstruction http://bit.ly/2IxhaBv
// House Judiciary Committee to Obtain Key Evidence Underlying Special Counsel Investigation
⭕ 9 Jun 2019
NYT: Justice Dept. Agrees to Turn Over Key Mueller Evidence to House http://nyti.ms/2wNB3P6
NYT: People Are Trying to Figure Out William Barr. He’s Busy Stockpiling Power. http://nyti.ms/2F4sVyh
// Is he the operator who spun the then-secret Mueller report? Or the straight shooter who later disclosed portions that were damaging to President Trump?
Newsweek: George Conway Says Trump’s Poor Mental Health Would Get Him Fired From All Other Jobs http://bit.ly/2F3QGq6
ABCNews: Case opened: Democrats begin public airing of Mueller report http://abcn.ws/2KCRKFb
TheHill: Democrats needle Trump with Watergate witness http://bit.ly/2wHAEOi
NYT: Trump Lawyer’s Message Was a Clue for Mueller, Who Set It Aside http://nyti.ms/31lg2cQ
// John M. Dowd, President Trump’s former lawyer, insinuated in a voice mail message that if Michael T. Flynn provided sensitive information about the Mueller investigation to Mr. Trump’s lawyers, the president would treat him favorably.
WaPo, EJ Dionne: Give Trump an ultimatum on his stonewalling http://wapo.st/2I7yHkN
⭕ 8 Jun 2019
USAToday, David Ayer: Congress and Mueller need to step up and protect America from presidents like Trump http://bit.ly/2MBcqjA
// Congress should pass laws to prevent dangerous norm-smashing by Trump and potential like-minded successors. And Mueller must talk to counteract Barr.
NYT Editorial: The Mueller Report Sounded the Alarm on Election Attacks. Will Congress Act? http://nyti.ms/2Ixiq7L
// Beyond his findings of presidential misconduct, the special counsel made it clear that lawmakers cannot ignore the ongoing risk to the nation.
RT @ForeverLogical Lindsey Graham on removing Bill Clinton from office: “You don’t even have to be convicted of a crime to lose your job in this constitutional republic if this body determines your conduct as a public official is clearly out of bounds in your role.”
💽 https://twitter.com/ResisterSis20/status/1137334668947283969?s=20/photo/1
// 4/18/2018
⭕ 7 Jun 2019
DailyBeast, Erin Banco and Asawin Suebsaeng: House Dems Preparing Investigation of Rudy Giuliani for Ukraine Shenanigans http://bit.ly/2WuuXCp
// The president’s lawyer says he welcomes the scrutiny and plans to turn it to his advantage.
WaPo, Randall Eliason: Was Mueller’s dodge on obstruction a blunder — or brilliant? http://wapo.st/2XvCSMw
CNN: Judge orders FBI to reveal more parts of Comey memos http://cnn.it/2WoCa23
🐣 RT @kenvogel A businessman charged with hiring MIKE FLYNN as part of an illegal US lobbying scheme to extradite an Erdoğan critic is at large & wanted by the @FBI. ¤ But his lawyers on Thursday filed a motion to block federal prosecutors from exposing his communications
⋙ Politico: Flynn’s Turkish lobbying client surfaces, through lawyers, in Virginia case http://politi.co/2MzOZXQ
🐣 RT @kenvogel UPDATE: Judge orders continued detention for GEORGE NADER, a business partner of TRUMP fundraiser ELLIOTT BROIDY & a MUELLER witness, citing some powerful foreign connections (see below). NADER is scheduled for a preliminary hearing on Monday on child pornography charges.
⋙ 🐣 RT @BBuchman_CNS In phones recovered by FBI after his arrest Monday, they found texts between between Nader and Emirati Crown Prince Mohammad bin Zayed as well as Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. His contact list included ambassadors to Russia, Qatar and UAE. 📌 https://twitter.com/BBuchman_CNS/status/1137081975540465664
NYT, Quinta Jurecic: 4 Disturbing Details You May Have Missed in the Mueller Report http://nyti.ms/2Zjp7kB
// Some troubling-to-outright-damning episodes have been lost in the noise around its release.
Politico, Natasha Bertrand: New subpoena for Roger Stone’s former aide offers glimpse at ongoing investigation http://politi.co/2I2XXZj Andrew Miller
🐣 RT @neal~katyal Rep. Amash nails it. His thread below should be read alongside Elizabeth Warren’s statement this week about the Mueller Report. Law truly can be separate from politics. There are right and wrong answers. Amash and Warren are providing them. Barr is not.
⋙ 🐣 RT @justinamash As you can see from the attached tweet, I initially fell for Attorney General Barr’s March 24 letter of principal conclusions—but then I read Mueller’s report.
📌 https://twitter.com/justinamash/status/1137094407625302017
SSRN, Jack Balkin (Yale 2017): Constitutional Rot http://bit.ly/2I3m0aD
// 11/2/2017; Can It Happen Here?: Authoritarianism in America, Cass R. Sunstein, ed. (2018, Forthcoming) Yale Law School, Public Law Research Paper No. 604
WaPo, Greg Sargent: Trump’s latest eruption at Pelosi reveals a terrible truth about this moment http://wapo.st/2MC52nS
It should be impossible to watch these diatribes in full without quickly realizing that this isn’t ordinary political dishonesty — some level of artifice is an inevitable feature of politics — but rather is something much more insidious. What’s notable is the sheer comprehensiveness of the effort to create an alternate set of realities whose departure from the known facts seemingly aims to be absolute and unbridgeable.
But this absurd duality should be understood as a feature of this kind of Trumpian disinformation. It won’t do to note its self-contradictory nature. The whole point is to wield this kind of absurdity as an instrument of power. It’s to use an alternate reality to supplant and extinguish good faith efforts to discern actual reality — to blot out the possibility of shared agreement on facts that are in front of all our noses through the sheer insistence that the alternate reality is supreme. The alt-reality doesn’t have to be proved as the true one; just established as the dominant one.
… [I]t’s a particularly galling irony that the refusal to treat this disinformation for what it is itself helps contribute to a badly misleading picture of one of the most basic realities about our current political moment. We are still not reckoning adequately with what’s happening.
🐣 RT @ddale8 In his Fox interview at the cemetery in France, Trump told a new lie about NATO — saying Stoltenberg “made a speech the other day, he said, without Donald Trump maybe there would be no NATO.” ¤ NATO pointed me to their Stoltenberg speech transcripts, which include no such remark. 📌 https://twitter.com/ddale8/status/1137018528350031872
🐣 RT @KyleDCheney .@RepAdamSchiff: “Our Committee’s goal will be to explain to the American people the serious counterintelligence concerns raised by the Mueller Report, examine the depth and breadth of the unethical and unpatriotic conduct it describes, and produce prescriptive remedies…”
https://twitter.com/kyledcheney/status/1137030279938416641/photo/1
🐣 I want to see Mueller and Barr testify on the same panel. Sitting next to each other. @RepJerryNadler @RepAdamSchiff @SpeakerPelosi @LeaderHoyer @RepSwalwell
NYT, Timothy Egan: Trump Destroys American Greatness From Within http://nyti.ms/2WUaZ3x
// From the Justice Department to the military, the president is corroding and destabilizing the institutions of democracy.
━━━━━━━▼ Disputed
💙💙 🐣 RT @emptywheel Note on John Solomon’s latest propaganda.
1) He claims KK’s [Konstantin Kilimnik’s] Ukraine ties have not been addressed in court docs by Mueller. That claim reveals he doesn’t know the court docs, bc it has.
2) Manafort had those docs (he got it in discovery). That’s where this comes from.
📌 https://mobile.twitter.com/emptywheel/status/1136967791418982401
It may be more telling that Manafort’s sharing this w/Solomon rather than, say, the NYT. ¤ Also note: ABJ looked at this, and said it had no bearing on FBI’s representation that KK is spooked up w/Russia (as anyone who knows anything abt spooks would tell you).
Also, for those who’re so obsessed with Solomon’s propaganda about Kilimnik: what explanation do you have for Victor Boyarkin, who was sanctioned along with everyone else involved in the 2016 operation? He was the one KK was handing data to.
⋙ EmptyWheel, Marcy Wheeler: “I Have Been Sending Everything to Victor:” On Paul Manafort’s Treasury-Sanctioned Meeting Planner, Viktor Boyarkin http://bit.ly/2Mw3R9w
// 5/18/2019
↥ ↧
🐣 RT @MuellerSheWrote This is a DoJ leak. Let’s ask @jsolomonReports why the DoJ would allow Mueller to indict Kilimnik if he were an asset in this case. Who would want to put a witness against Trump’s life in danger? I’ll give you two guesses.
⋙ 🐣 RT @TheHill John Solomon: “Key figure that Mueller report linked to Russia was a State Department intel source” http://hill.cm/jb5oFba
↥ ↧
🐣 RT @SethAbramson This is a BIG DEAL: ¤ (1) It appears the Trump administration has already started leaking classified intel to conservative media, which is a crime; ¤ (2) Given that Kilimnik is in a gated GRU compound, this leak is intended to not just “burn” him as a US asset but to get him killed. 📌 https://twitter.com/SethAbramson/status/1136853934625120256?s=20
(3) My immediate reaction to this is that this is an *entirely new scandal* Congress will have to investigate, as not only is it a Valerie Plame-style “outing” scandal, but also pretty clearly an attempt to get a potential witness against Trump arrested and/or killed by Moscow.
(4) “Outing” Kilimnik as a double- or even triple-agent is the quickest way for Team Trump to ensure that (a) he can’t pass any more intel about Manafort (the man Trump said he is *most* worried about flipping on him) to the USIC and (b) he’s permanently unavailable as a witness.
(5) We already know Trump participated in this effort to have a potential key witness in the case against him made unavailable, as Trump gave Barr the power to declassify intel. That doesn’t mean DOJ can leak to media and doesn’t mean selective declassification can’t be a crime.
(6) Also, understand that Solomon has consistently misled his readers about the facts of the Trump-Russia investigation and is doing so here. Kilimnik is important to the Mueller Report almost exclusively as a conduit between Manafort and Deripaska, which no one questions he was.
(7) Kilimnik could have been, for all I know, the best asset the State Department had ever developed outside the context of the intel community. It would’t change the fact that he was a conduit between Manafort and the Kremlin, and that Manafort believed him to be precisely that.
(8) Understand moreover that we’re talking about State here, not one of our intelligence services. We also don’t know if the GRU was permitting Kilimnik to supply this information. And I find it hard to believe that State would let Mueller indict someone they considered an asset.
(9) The point is that Solomon, on behalf of the administration, is muddying the waters here. Kilimnik committed a crime against America and no one is contesting that, which means at *best* he was a triple-agent feeding the State Department info he’d been *permitted* to pass on.
(10) It’s for this reason that even if you took everything Solomon says as true, the upshot *wouldn’t* be that Kilimnik somehow didn’t commit a crime but that the Trump administration is leaking sensitive data to media to burn (and to possibly get killed) witnesses against Trump.
(11) So, the key questions now are:
1. Who leaked to Solomon? Was it illegal?
2. Was the data leaked classified?
3. Was the purpose of the leak to “out” a person legally qualifying as a US asset for the purposes of obstruction of justice?
4. Did Trump and/or Barr know about it?(12) Ancillary questions:
5. Did Solomon just get Kilimnik arrested/killed? Does he or whoever leaked to him have any liability on those grounds? Is Kilimnik still alive?
6. If the Kremlin in fact takes no action, wouldn’t it suggest that they had permitted him to do all he did?(13) Additional ancillary questions:
7. What effect does this possible collusion between Solomon and the Trump team have on other witnesses in the Trump-Russia scandal or in US intel-gathering generally? Should Solomon’s article be read as a threat to other witnesses or sources?(14) For all that, I do want to return to the key point: nothing in this report changes anything for anyone who’s actually read the Mueller Report, who’s read the indictment against Kilimnik, or who understands a foreign government could *permit* this sort of conduct by an agent.
(15) And I want to again underscore the big-picture point on the other side of the ledger: Trump and his administration, likely with the AG’s aid, are willing to destroy our diplomatic institutions and intelligence-gathering capabilities—and get people killed—to save Trump. /end
(PS) A reader notes that the source of some of this information could have been Manafort’s attorneys, or filings in the Manafort cases in DC and Virginia. My sense from the Solomon piece is that he has received additional information above and beyond what is in the public record.
━━━━━━━▲
⭕ 6 Jun 2019
NBCNews, Mimi Rocah: What Barr’s ongoing smear campaign against Robert Mueller is really about http://nbcnews.to/32WVmIW
// Faced with the facts and the truth, Barr has done what many good defense attorneys do — attack the investigation and the investigator. But he’s not a defense attorney.
ABCNews: House Democrats prepare to hold Barr in contempt, fast track lawsuits against Trump officials http://abcn.ws/2XtH8Mw
LATimes, Sridhar Pappu: The women of MSNBC are reshaping the television landscape http://lat.ms/2QTAInm
// Nicolle Wallace, Andrea Mitchell, Hallie Jackson, Stephanie Ruhle and Katy Tur
🔊 Bloomberg: Here’s the Audio of a Trump Lawyer’s Voicemail for Michael Flynn’s Camp http://bloom.bg/2Kz7WY3
↥ ↧
🐣 RT @DeadlineWH “I heard a federal crime. I heard obstruction, I heard witness tampering. The question is, who put John Dowd up to this? How much was President Trump involved in this? This is smoking gun evidence.” – @LawProfButler w/ @NicolleDWallace
💽 https://twitter.com/DeadlineWH/status/1136753517388058624/photo/1
✅ WaPo FactChecker, Glenn Kessler: Trump’s parade of false claims overseas http://wapo.st/2IuaV11
EmptyWheel, Marcy Wheeler: Mike Flynn Assumed the FBI Agents Interviewing Him Would Be Trump Supporters http://bit.ly/31bqMKA
◕ 🐣 RT @wef The world’s 7.5 billion people, in one chart https://wef.ch/2I5hE3a #population https://twitter.com/wef/status/1136732083118907392/photo/1
// world population by country
WaPo, Jennifer Rubin: Forget impeachment. Tee up prosecution. http://wapo.st/2wGURDW
⭕ 5 Jun 2019
NBCNews: They watched Russia try to sway voters in 2016. Now, they have 45 ideas to avoid a repeat http://nbcnews.to/2Kxwoch
// McFaul; A report from former government officials and researchers at Stanford University says the U.S. should do more to stop foreign election meddling before 2020.
Newsweek: House Democrats Plan Event to Examine Donald Trump’s Allegedly Deteriorating Mental Health http://bit.ly/2MuThiZ
NYT, Ian Prasad Philbrick: The Articles of Impeachment Against Donald J. Trump: A Draft http://nyti.ms/2K2Pwzf adapted from Nixon’s
🐣 RT @maddowblog Schiff: “But on those fundamental questions you’ve been asking and we have been asking: What happened to the counterintelligence investigation? What were the findings from that investigation? We still can’t get an answer.”
💽 https://twitter.com/MaddowBlog/status/1136451938999033856/photo/1
🐣 RT @RonKlain If you thought you had heard every angle on the impeachment question, I encourage you to read this thought-provoking proposal from @Tribelaw. It’s potentially a game changer.
🐣 RT @gtconway3d It’s not a modest proposal—it’s brilliant. Nothing in the Constitution dictates the procedure by which the House decides whether to pass a bill of impeachment. No reason why it can’t hold a trial for the American people to see. Let the chips fall where they may.
⋙ 🐣 RT @tribelaw Here’s my modest proposal for #ImpeachmentInquiryNow: I want it to build a bridge on which the #ImpeachTrumpNow advocates and the #NoImpeachment crowd can meet — and move forward together to protect constitutional democracy. In the June 6 @washingtonpost
⋙⋙ 🔆 This❗️⋙ WaPo, Laurence Tribe: Impeach Trump. But don’t necessarily try him in the Senate. http://wapo.st/31diEt6
… [T]o think of the House of Representatives as akin to a prosecutor or grand jury is misguided. The Constitution’s design suggests a quite different allocation of functions: The Senate, unlike any petit (or trial) jury, is legally free to engage in politics in arriving at its verdict. And the House, unlike any grand jury, can conduct an impeachment inquiry that ends with a verdict and not just a referral to the Senate for trial — an inquiry in which the target is afforded an opportunity to participate and mount a full defense.
… Following its [Nixon] impeachment proceedings, the House Judiciary Committee drafted particularized findings less in the nature of accusations to be assessed by the Senate — which of course never weighed in, given Nixon’s resignation — than in the nature of determinations of fact and law and verdicts of guilt to be delivered by the House itself, expressly stating that the president was indeed guilty as charged.
The House, assuming an impeachment inquiry leads to a conclusion of Trump’s guilt,
could … [embody] its conclusions of criminality or other grave wrongdoing in a condemnatory “Sense of the House” resolution far stronger than a mere censure. The resolution, expressly and formally proclaiming the president impeachable but declining to play the Senate’s corrupt game, is one that even a president accustomed to treating everything as a victory would be hard-pressed to characterize as a vindication.By resolving now to pursue such a path, always keeping open the possibility that its inquiry would unexpectedly lead to the president’s exoneration, the House would be doing the right thing as a constitutional matter. It would be acting consistent with its overriding obligation to establish that no president is above the law, all the while keeping an eye on the balance of political considerations without setting the dangerous precedent that there are no limits to what a corrupt president can get away with as long as he has a compliant Senate to back him. And pursuing this course would preserve for all time the tale of this uniquely troubled presidency.
⇈ ⇊
Comment [Response to “misterjag” asking why Mueller report isn’t enough]:
● It would lay out the findings of the Mueller report in “movie version.” Most people don’t have time to read the 450 page report and the Barr disinformation version was out way ahead of the true findings.
● It would give the House prosecutorial tools it otherwise doesn’t have (to function as a grand jury).
● It could include wrong-doing that may not be criminal but could constitute “high crimes and misdemeanors”, that is not included in the scope of the Mueller report (eg paying off porn stars, emoluments, possible money laundering, etc) and “obstruction after the fact” ~ since the release of the report (such as contempt of Congress, refusing to respond to any requests for information by Congress).
NBCNews: Nadler ‘confident’ Mueller will testify before Congress, prepared to issue subpoena http://nbcnews.to/2MGl3cK
// We want him to testify openly … and we’ll make that happen,” the House Judiciary Committee chairman said of the former special counsel on Wednesday.
Politico: Pelosi tells Dems she wants to see Trump ‘in prison’ http://politi.co/2Z8PpG0
// She also clashed with Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerry Nadler, who pressed her to begin impeachment proceedings.
NBCNews: Russian trolls who interfered in 2016 U.S. election also made ad money, report says http://nbcnews.to/2WQ0uy9
// Some accounts were set up months in advance. And some trolls used fake accounts to make money, researchers found.
Politico, Natasha Bertrand: Senate Intelligence Committee summons mysterious British security consultant http://politi.co/2MyGrAq
… [T]he Senate Intelligence Committee sent a letter to a British security consultant named Walter Soriano asking for a voluntary, closed-door interview and documents with various Russia probe figures dating back to June 2015.
The letter, obtained by Politico, offers yet another window into the panel’s secretive — but largely bipartisan — two-year-old investigation, and reveals the investigators’ interest in what, if any, role Israel may have played in attempts to manipulate the 2016 election.
🐣 I’d like to see Mueller and Barr testify ~ on the same day, sitting next to each other. @RepJerryNadler @SpeakerPelosi @LeaderHoyer @RepAdamSchiff
🐣 No president has EVER been convicted in the Senate. The point is the stigma of impeachment, especially for Trump who has claimed the value of his “brand” is worth $4B. @RepJerryNadler @SpeakerPelosi @LeaderHoyer @RepAdamSchiff
⭕ 4 Jun 2019
🐣 RT @mccaffreyr3 Trump is no longer lying. He was always an impulsive con man and a huckster. But he is now seriously struggling with reality. His close staff and the Senate are enabling him. Some for fear of retribution. Others for self gain. We are on dangerous ground.
⋙ 🐣 RT @mitchellreports .@RichardEngel: there’s something deeply disturbing about Pres Trump claiming that he saw thousands of people here who were celebrating him and welcoming his arrival…There weren’t thousands of people out there greeting him. There were several thousands protesters.
DailyBeast, Nico Hines: Boris Johnson Blanks Trump Meeting on Day of Extraordinary Snubs for the President http://bit.ly/2IiNKqt
// Trump kept on touting him as his pick for Britain’s next PM, but the Brexit champion nixed the chance to meet the president, joining opposition pols and royals in snubbing him.
WaPo: House should begin Trump impeachment inquiry, Harry Reid says http://wapo.st/2WbSvap
💙💙 JustSecurity, Ryan Goodman (Apr): Guide to the Mueller Report’s Findings on “Collusion” http://bit.ly/2Ku9PVF
// 4/29/2019
NBCNews: Senator: Oligarch linked to Kremlin earned millions while fighting extradition to U.S. http://nbcnews.to/2KpZhqM
// Dmytro Firtash has been under indictment in Chicago since 2014. He was also involved in a failed business deal with ex-Trump campaign chair Paul Manafort.
Sen. Roger Wicker, R-Miss., wrote in an April 2018 letter obtained by NBC News that Dmytro Firtash had served as a “direct agent of the Kremlin” and was using the money earned from ongoing “corruption” to delay his extradition to Chicago, where he has been under federal indictment since 2014.
“This corruption undermines Ukrainian reform efforts that the United States strongly supports,” Wicker wrote to then-Attorney General Jeff Sessions. He asked Sessions about the status of Firtash’s extradition case.
The contents of Wicker’s letter, which was obtained by NBC News after Freedom of Information Act litigation with the Justice Department, have not previously been reported.
🐣 RT @JRubinBlogger The hearing will be as much storytelling as fact-finding. The committee and the country actually have the facts in the Mueller report; now the House has to help Americans find those facts and appreciate their importance.
⋙ WaPo, Jennifer Rubin: The House Judiciary Committee gets it, we hope http://wapo.st/311bR5A
🐣 RT @JuliaDavisNews Kremlin spokesman Peskov said he doesn’t know what Trump meant by claiming: “Russia has informed us that they have removed most of their people from Venezuela.” ¤ Peskov said that Russia did not inform the US of such a thing and “Russian specialists continue to work in Venezuela.” https://twitter.com/JuliaDavisNews/status/1135933149282742277/photo/1
↥ ↧
🐣 RT @real Russia has informed us that they have removed most of their people from Venezuela.
🐣 RT @mkraju New letter: DOJ has agreed to work with House Judiciary on producing a limited set of documents related to Mueller’s report if the House does NOT move forward with the vote next week to hold Bill Barr in contempt of Congress, per @LauraAJarrett.
GQ, Adam Jentleson: The Political Costs of Not Impeaching Trump http://bit.ly/2WJQlmE
// Democrats are ceding legitimacy to Trump’s claims of exoneration by giving him a pass.
🐣 RT @TheBeatWithAri “That is just a flat contradiction. Barr three months ago, to get his job, saying one thing and now saying something absolutely different as an Attorney General.” ¤ @neal_katyal shows how AG Barr blatantly contradicted himself
💽 https://twitter.com/TheBeatWithAri/status/1135928215262978050/photo/1
⭕ 3 Jun 2019
🐣 RT @JillWineBanks Let me me clear. The prohibition on indicting a sitting president is NOT law and NOT in the Constitution. It is an opinion from inside the DOJ that has survived 45 years but that I believe is not legally or constitutionally correct.
🐣 RT @kylegriffin1 Steny Hoyer: “This Admin’s systematic refusal to provide Congress with answers and cooperate with Congressional subpoenas is the biggest cover-up in American history, and Congress has a responsibility to provide oversight on behalf of the American people.”
⋙ WaPo: House to vote June 11 on whether to hold Barr, McGahn in contempt http://wapo.st/2HSTqsg
🐣 RT @RonaldKlain Jared is no longer a campaign official. He is a senior WH official with a security clearance, and if he has an SCI clearance, there are especially clear rules on this. Does anyone at the WH follow any rules?
⋙ 🐣 RT @AlexMillerNews Jared Kushner says he doesn’t know how he’d react if the Russians contact him again. “I don’t know, it’s hard to do hypotheticals.” Senator @MarkWarner says campaigns should be REQUIRED to report foreign contacts within a week.
Jared Kushner says he doesn't know how he'd react if the Russians contact him again. "I don't know, it's hard to do hypotheticals." Senator @MarkWarner says campaigns should be REQUIRED to report foreign contacts within a week.
Our story here. https://t.co/Y5bvkFfg9i— Alex Miller (@AlexMillerNews) June 3, 2019
WaPo, Neal Katyal: Barr’s zealous defense of Trump makes it impossible to trust his legal judgment http://wapo.st/2HT6FZV
// The attorney general contradicted himself on how far Mueller’s report could have gone.
Politico: House Dems set Barr contempt vote on Mueller report for next week http://politi.co/2QHzOKt
// The move is a crucial step for Democrats seeking to accelerate their obstruction of justice investigation against Trump.
🐣 RT @drothkopf Folks, the Queen is trolling Trump hard here, with remarks underscoring the importance of the alliances and the international institutions Trump is working so hard to undermine and dismantle. This is really quite an extraordinary reproach from her to him.
⋙ 🐣 RT @TheHill Queen Elizabeth: “As we face the new challenges of the 21st Century, the anniversary of D-Day reminds us all that our countries have achieved together.” #TrumpUKVisit
🔆 This❗️⋙ WaPo, Max Boot: Here are seven reasons Trump should be impeached http://wapo.st/2KjFzwS (Entire article:)
Special counsel Robert S. Mueller III’s presentation last week, although it contained no new information, has renewed pressure to impeach President Trump. You can debate whether impeachment makes sense politically, but there is no doubt that it is justified legally and morally. There is already more than enough evidence for at least seven articles of impeachment – four more than President Richard M. Nixon would have faced had he not resigned in 1974 .
Article 1. Donald J. Trump, in violation of his oath to preserve, protect and defend the Constitution, and to take care that the laws be faithfully executed, has obstructed the administration of justice:
1. He attempted to fire Mueller. The Mueller report found “substantial evidence . . . that the President’s attempts to remove the Special Counsel were linked to the Special Counsel’s oversight of investigations that involved the President’s conduct.”
2. Trump attempted to curtail Mueller’s investigation. Mueller found “that the President’s effort to have [Attorney General Jeff] Sessions limit the scope of the Special Counsel’s investigation to future election interference was intended to prevent further investigative scrutiny of the President’s and his campaign’s conduct.”
3. He ordered White House counsel Donald McGahn to falsify the record to conceal his attempts to fire Mueller. Mueller found that Trump “acted . . . in order to deflect or prevent further scrutiny of the President’s conduct.”
4. He fired FBI Director James B. Comey, Mueller found, because of “Comey’s unwillingness to publicly state that the President was not personally under investigation.” Moreover, Mueller wrote, by firing Comey “the President wanted to protect himself from an investigation into his campaign,” because he knew “that a thorough FBI investigation would uncover facts about the campaign and the President personally that the President could have understood to be crimes or that would give rise to personal and political concerns.” Trump showed awareness of guilt by advancing “a pretextual reason to the press and the public for Comey’s termination.”
5. He tried to dissuade Michael Flynn, Paul Manafort, Michael Cohen, Roger Stone, and other witnesses from cooperating with the government. The non-cooperation of Manafort and Stone, in particular, made it impossible to establish the exact nature of the relationship between the Trump campaign and the Russian government.
Article II. Donald J. Trump, in violation of his oath to preserve, protect and defend the Constitution, and to take care that the laws be faithfully executed, failed to defend America from foreign election interference. As a candidate, he welcomed Russian intervention in the 2016 election and refused to notify the proper authorities of contacts between his campaign and representatives of Russia and WikiLeaks. As president, he denied that the Russian attack had even occurred, accepted Russian President Vladimir Putin’s false denials of responsibility, and showed no interest in determining the full scale of the attack. He repeatedly called the Russia investigation a “hoax” and a “witch hunt” even though Mueller determined “that there were multiple, systematic efforts to interfere in our election” and that “the matters we investigated were of paramount importance.”
Article III. Donald J. Trump, in violation of his oath to preserve, protect and defend the Constitution, and to take care that the laws be faithfully executed, attempted to investigate and prosecute his political opponents. On three occasions, Mueller found, Trump asked the Justice Department to initiate investigations of Hillary Clinton. More recently, Trump and his attorney, Rudolph W. Giuliani, attempted to initiate an investigation of Joe Biden.
Article IV. Donald J. Trump, in violation of his oath to preserve, protect and defend the Constitution, and to take care that the laws be faithfully executed, failed to produce papers and testimony as duly directed by Congress. Trump obstructed at least 20 inquiries relating to his taxes, business records, the Mueller investigation and other matters.
Article V. Donald J. Trump, in violation of federal campaign finance laws, conspired with his attorney Michael Cohen in order to conceal alleged relationships with adult film actress Stormy Daniels and Playboy playmate Karen McDougal before the 2016 election.
Article VI. Donald J. Trump, in violation of his oath to uphold Article 1, section 9 of the Constitution (“No money shall be drawn from the treasury, but in consequence of appropriations made by law”), attempted to misuse his emergency powers to spend funds on a border wall that Congress did not appropriate.
Article VII. Donald J. Trump, in violation of his oath to uphold the emoluments clauses (which forbid the president from accepting benefits from foreign and state governments without the permission of Congress) retains ownership of a global business empire which allows him to benefit from dealings with foreign and state governments.
That Trump is guilty of these offenses – and more – is not necessarily an argument for moving forward with impeachment. That could backfire politically if it results, as it surely would, in a failure to convict by the Republican-controlled Senate. But don’t pretend, as do 249 out of 250 Republican members of Congress, that there is insufficient evidence to even open an impeachment inquiry. Trump has committed more criminal and unconstitutional conduct than any previous president in U.S. history. If they refuse to impeach him, members of Congress will violate their own oaths to “support and defend the Constitution of the United States.”
NBCNews: House to hold hearing on Mueller report, ‘presidential obstruction and other crimes’ http://nbcnews.to/2JXbBz9
// One of the witnesses in the June 10 Judiciary Committee hearing is slated to be John Dean, a key figure in the Watergate scandal.
🐣 RT @JuliaDavisNews Nader helped arrange a meeting in the Seychelles in January 2017 between Erik Prince, a Trump supporter who founded the private security firm Blackwater, and a Russian official close to Russian President Vladimir Putin.
⋙ WaPo: Figure linked to Trump transition charged with transporting child pornography http://wapo.st/2JV1BGF George Nader acted as a “liaison between Trump supporters, Middle East leaders, and Russians interested in making contact with the incoming administration in early 2017”
🐣 RT @HouseJuduciary [Dems] Russia attacked our elections to help @realDonaldTrump win, Trump and his campaign welcomed this help and the President then tried to obstruct the investigation into the attack. Mueller confirmed these revelations and has now left Congress to pick up where he left off.
TheGuardian Editorial: The Guardian view on Trump’s state visit: the president is not welcome http://bit.ly/2WIWK1m
// Hobnobbing with the royals will boost the president’s ego. But this is not the greatest danger of rolling out the red carpet now
📊 WaPo, Greg Sargent: Will support grow for impeaching Trump? Data on Nixon offers a clue. http://wapo.st/2Wj2P5q //➔ Nixon approval over time (Watch Independents) / Views on impeachment over time
● Approval https://twitter.com/Auriandra/status/1135625806678581250/photo/1
● Impeachment https://twitter.com/Auriandra/status/1135626206949322752/photo/1
WaPo: Trump urges customers to drop AT&T to punish CNN over its coverage of him http://wapo.st/2WhYOOu
🐣 .@MuellerSheWrote A.J., I thought Michael Isikoff was very condescending in that interview. Clearly you had a more accurate, nuanced view of the Mueller/Barr dynamic than he laid out. Unfortunate. I don’t think he’d have done such a lazy analysis on @msnbc
🐣📊RT @stucam7771 In a 2016 Pew Research poll, 84 percent of people in Germany, Britain, France, Canada and Sweden believed the American president (Obama) would “do the right thing in world affairs.” ¤ One year later, under Trump, that number had fallen to 16 percent… https://twitter.com/stucam7771/status/1135471841697554432
💙 NewYorker, Jane Mayer: How Russia Helped Swing the Election for Trump http://bit.ly/2HQWpkV
// 9/24/2018; Book by Kathleen Jamieson Hall; A meticulous analysis of online activity during the 2016 campaign makes a powerful case that targeted cyberattacks by hackers and trolls were decisive.
⭕ 2 Jun 2019
WaPo, EJ Dionne: Dear Robert Mueller: Your report can’t speak for itself http://wapo.st/312xceR
WaPo, Jennifer Rubin: If the administration defied a court order, all bets are off http://wapo.st/2XlNxcn
🐣 RT @ForTheRuleOfLaw The fact that this material is being treated as new when it has been available for weeks is indicative of a vast failure on the part of American institutions.
⋙ TheAtlantic, Quinta Jurecic: Mueller Counted on Institutions to Grapple With His Report. They Didn’t. http://bit.ly/2QBnYlf
// Neither Congress nor the press did enough to tell the American people what they needed to know.
🐣 $4B of Trump’s claimed billions is his “brand.” Of course he doesn’t want to be impeached.
⭕ 1 Jun 2019
CNN, Marshall Cohen: 5 areas where Barr and Mueller don’t agree, in their own words http://cnn.it/2QGNoOj
🐣 RT @justinamash I swear an oath to support and defend the Constitution, not an oath to do the bidding of one man or one political party. We have a constitutional republic to uphold liberty and the Rule of Law, not a direct democracy to serve some at the expense of others.
🐣 RT @tribelaw The Nixon history refutes any idea that the constitutional functions of impeachment and trial are as neatly separated between the House and Senate as the roles of grand jury charge by indictment and petit jury trial to verdict and sentencing would suggest. Just ask @JohnWDean!
💙💙 TheGuardian, David Smith: ‘No idea too lunatic’: how Trump’s shock troops attack US democracy http://bit.ly/2XtKjn6
// An army of supporters amplify the president’s wildest claims, encouraging his conspiracy-minded tendencies
🐣 RT @Amy_Siskind Trump and his regime have stonewalled Congress and said they have no authority over him, and now also ignored a court order. Usurping the legislative and judicial branch. What is left folks? We have arrived: we are living in an authoritarian regime, not a democracy.
🐣 RT @tribelaw An impeachment inquiry can & should be structured to end not only with a referral to the Senate but with a VERDICT on whether the president COMMITED SERIOUS FEDERAL CRIMES. If the House finds him guilty, nothing the Senate does or fails to do will remove the stain.@DonnyDeutsch
Newsweek: Donald Trump Won’t Leave White House ‘Voluntarily’ If He Loses 2020 Election, Predicts GOP Candidate William Weld http://bit.ly/2QCtML6
🐣 RT @ruthbenghiat Correct: many authoritarians consolidate power after a few years of testing public tolerance for repression, co-opting the right people for the job “My Attorney General,” indoctrinating the public (Fox, Sinclair), and securing military and paramilitary (Pentagon, ICE, militias).
⋙ 🐣 RT @waltshaub It will get worse. Trump and his allies will escalate their power grab rapidly over the next 17 months. If you’re wondering how this ends, whether Americans have what it takes to fight nationalist authoritarianism, ask yourself what sacrifices you’re currently making to fight it.
⭕ 31 May 2019
💙 🐣 RT @WaltShaub Heed the signs and don’t underestimate the threat to our republic from within:
-Trump obstructed justice
-A McConnell-packed SCOTUS says precedent can be changed more easily than previously thought
-AG Barr is an open partisan and slow-motion Saturday Night Massacre beneficiary
📌 https://twitter.com/waltshaub/status/1134616070789226496?s=20
🐣 RT @bulldoghill [Bill Barr:] “…any AG in this period is going to end up losing a lot of political capital and I realize that and that’s one of the reasons that I…was persuaded that I should take it on because I think at my stage in life, it really doesn’t make any difference.” https://twitter.com/bulldoghill/status/1134450659057700866
🐣 RT @joelockhart The more you watch Bill Barr the more you see how thoroughly corrupt he is. He’s doing interviews in the middle of his investigation of the investigators giving details about how much he’s found, without any evidence revealed. He’s become the Joseph McCarthy of our time. 📌 https://twitter.com/joelockhart/status/1134584932695719936
🐣 John Meacham on @The11thHour “Passion and ideology have taken over from reason and probity”
🐣 RT @robreiner Trump & Barr have been controlling the false narrative of “exoneration”. Once the public is made aware of the mountain of criminality clearly laid out in the Mueller report, the calls for Impeachment will hit critical mass.
⋙ MSNBC, MorningJoe: Rob Reiner: Mueller report ‘biggest pile of criminality’ http://on.msnbc.com/2QEMy4D
// Director Rob Reiner discusses a new video for NowThis News where Robert De Niro and federal prosecutors explain the key findings in the Mueller report.
🐣 RT @rgoodlaw Barr vs. Barr
May 1 to Congress: “We accepted the Special Counsel’s legal framework for purposes of our analysis…in reaching our conclusion”
May 31 to CBS: “We didn’t agree with …a lot of the legal analysis in the Report…So we applied what we thought was the right law.”
💽 https://twitter.com/rgoodlaw/status/1134418730258010114/photo/1
Salon: Citing his “serious mental illness,” multiple psychiatrists call for President Trump to be impeached http://bit.ly/2XhGO3n
// “Mental illness . . . renders him psychologically incapable of competently discharging the duties of president”
🐣 RT @TomJChicago 1 We are awaiting release of the Flynn information ordered by Judge Sullivan. Being that it’s after 3pm on Friday & still nothing, implies it’s a Big Kahuna Burger. Why did Judge Sullivan ask if Flynn’s conduct “rises to the level of treasonous activity?”
📌 https://twitter.com/TomJChicago/status/1134540140817342464?s=20
… 7 Back to the riddle of why Sullivan couldn’t understand why Flynn wasn’t charged with treason. Flynn must have delivered something big. Remember Mueller oversaw John Gotti’s takedown & approved the deal w/ Sammy the Bull Gravano for witness protection after he had whacked 30 ppl
NYT: Mueller Played by the Rules. Trump Made New Ones. http://nyti.ms/2HOekZt
// The special counsel led an investigation that was disciplined, quiet, and by the book — and the president seized the opportunity.
NYMag, Jonathan Chait: In Terrifying Interview, William Barr Goes Full MAGA http://nym.ag/2EXRfC7
🐣 RT @lrozen “Dowd called the Mueller report a ‘baseless, political document designed to smear & damage the reputation of counsel & innocent people.’”
⋙ 🐣 RT @ryanjreilley John Dowd told me the controversy over his voicemail to Michael Flynn’s attorney was “nonsense.” Full story:
⋙⋙ HuffPo: Trump Lawyer John Dowd Asked Flynn Attorney To Spill On Mueller Probe ‘For The Country’ http://bit.ly/2HQ0gPr
// “So… uh… you know, then-then, you know, we need some kind of heads up.”
NYT: Justice Dept. Keeps Wiretaps Secret in Flynn Case, Rejecting Judge’s Order http://nyti.ms/2Z1Gzdc
🐣 RT @NeeraTanden I believe defying court orders is grounds for impeachment. And it’s pathetic that the GOP who call themselves constitutionalists
🐣 RT @tribelaw In Trump’s and Barr’s America, it looks like the Executive Branch has finally claimed it can defy not only the Legislative Branch but the Judicial Branch as well. Isn’t that called a dictatorship? Please tell me what I’m missing here.
🐣 RT @samstein This appears to be a legit (not saying the others aren’t) crisis point.
⋙ WaPo: Justice Department fails to comply with court order to release transcripts of Michael Flynn’s conversations with Russian ambassador http://wapo.st/2wuEWs3
Politico, Kyle Cheney: Schiff to intel community: Share info on Barr’s attempts to declassify docs http://politi.co/2KhU5oX
TheHill: New York theatre companies to hold 24-hour live reading of Mueller report http://bit.ly/2YXWBVh
🐣 RT @jeremyherb NEW: @RepAdamSchiff sent letters to heads of ODNI, CIA, FBI and NSA taking aim at the new DOJ review of the Russia probe, asking them to provide his committee with any materials requested by Barr, and to tell the panel if they object to any decision Barr makes to declassify info https://twitter.com/jeremyherb/status/1134519923320004610/photo/1-3
CNN: Schiff seeks to keep tabs on Barr’s review of Russia probe http://cnn.it/2WdXlJ4
🐣📊 RT @TrinityResists Nixon—
B4 Watergate hearings:
Approval—48%
For impeach—19%
After hearings:
Approval—24%
For impeach—57%
Listen to the experts & those who were there (@JillWineBanks) ¤ When impeachment hearings commenced, people paid attention & GOP changed their minds.
Nixon—
B4 Watergate hearings:
Approval—48%
For impeach—19%After hearings:
Approval—24%
For impeach—57%Listen to the experts & those who were there (@JillWineBanks)
When impeachment hearings commenced, people paid attention & GOP changed their minds.https://t.co/7qrY1VWEws
— Trinity (@TrinityResists) May 31, 2019
// Watergate polling
NewYorker, Susan Glasser: Trump and Bibi’s Bad Week http://bit.ly/2Xh9Obx
// They’re both at war with those who would investigate them. But are they winning or losing?
EmptyWheel, Marcy Wheeler: On Nine Different Occasions, Bill Barr Was Unable to Offer Any Evidence of Irregularity in Russia Investigation http://bit.ly/2wuZXmH
WaPo, James Hohman: The 2020 impeachment debate passes a tipping point in the aftermath of Mueller’s speech http://wapo.st/2wvV0d7
WaPo, Philip Bump: Attorney General Barr stokes the conspiracy fires http://wapo.st/30ZwwHi
🐣 RT @joshscampbell Barr tells CBS the FBI’s investigation into the Trump campaign crossed “a serious red line.” ¤ Left unsaid is how he will be able to conduct an independent & objective review of the FBI’s work when he’s already accused them of wrongdoing from the start. [ ⋙ NatRev https://twitter.com/joshscampbell/status/1134494216657104896 ]
MotherJones: A New Right-Wing Disinformation Campaign: Biden Was Part of a Deep State Plot Against Trump http://bit.ly/30XepBL
// The evidence? The veep attended meetings about Russia’s attack on the 2016 election.
🐣 RT @JillWineBanks Wow. There is so much wrong w Barr’s words. If Mueller accused 45 without indicting: he’d be doing what Comey did to Hillary. More important, did Barr forget Watergate and Clinton precedent of referring evidence to Congress for impeachment instead of indicting for crime??
⋙ 🐣 RT @CBSThisMorning NEW: Attorney General Barr tells @JanCBS he “personally felt” Special Counsel Robert Mueller “could’ve reached a decision” on obstruction of justice by President Trump.
⭕ 30 May 2019
WaPo, Donna Edwards: Democrats need to repackage the Mueller report for TV http://wapo.st/2IfgWP6
TheAtlantic, Quinta Jurecic: Mueller Counted on Institutions to Grapple With His Report. They Didn’t. http://bit.ly/2QBnYlf
// Neither Congress nor the press did enough to tell the American people what they needed to know.
AP: Trump erupts after special counsel says he’s not exonerated http://bit.ly/30ZuBmb
NYMag, Jonathan Chait: Conservatives Stunned by Mueller Suggesting Trump Is Not Innocent http://nym.ag/2JLA5ve
NYT: Trump Accuses Mueller of a Personal Vendetta as Calls for Impeachment Grow http://nyti.ms/2Xhaduz
WaPo, Eugene Robinson: If Trump doesn’t warrant impeachment, who does? http://wapo.st/2QA7c5T
Politico: Schiff: ‘There’s been an epidemic of cowardice in the GOP’ http://politi.co/30WFaX1
🐣 RT @BillKristol Here it is, from Republicans for the Rule of Law, and soon (in a shorter version) coming as an ad to TV set near you: Senior GOP lawyers on Trump’s obstruction of justice. 💽 https://twitter.com/BillKristol/status/1134137830299590656/photo/1
WaPo, Jennifer Rubin: Helping Russia help Trump is precisely what Trump did http://wapo.st/2KlVw5P
DailyBeast: Team Trump Now Wants Mueller to Testify Before Congress in Hopes of a Grilling http://bit.ly/2W8oSqA
// The president has said he doesn’t want the special counsel to talk on the Hill. But after Mueller’s statement Wednesday, Trump’s team is itching for it.
🐣 RT @EvanMcMullin You cheered as Russians hacked your rivals and pushed disinfo to 100 million Americans before winning the Electoral College by just 70,000 votes in states Manafort had highlighted to Moscow. It matters in a close race and you’d likely have lost otherwise. You’re their stooge now. https://twitter.com/EvanMcMullin/status/1134088168112889856
🐣 RT @BillKristol Trump: “To me it’s a dirty word: the word impeach. It’s a dirty, filthy, disgusting word and it has nothing to do with me.” ¤ Federalist #65: Impeachment is “a bridle in the hands of the legislative body upon the executive servants of the government.”
DailyBeast, Stuart Stevens: Trump-Drunk Republicans Are Choosing Russia Over the Constitution http://bit.ly/2VY7ZP6
// Almost every Republican elected official in Washington knows Donald Trump is unfit to be president—yet almost all of them are silent.
Vox, Aaron Rupar: Trump thinks the courts might save him from impeachment. It doesn’t work like that. http://bit.ly/2Kn4qQz
// The president is profoundly confused about the Constitution.
NYT, Michael Tomasky: Mueller Is Admirably Apolitical. That’s the Problem. http://nyti.ms/2wwxeh2
// He is serving a vision of America that no longer exists.
🐣 RT @selectedwisdom Somehow our country’s decision to impeach or not impeach does not rest on whether the President did right or wrong, but instead on how popular the President is and how well the economy is doing. #DeathOfDemocracy
🐣 RT @IndivisibleNet Robert De Niro and over 1,000+ former federal prosecutors say the 448 pages of the Mueller report all point to the conclusion that Donald Trump committed felony obstruction of justice. 💽 https://twitter.com/IndivisibleNet/status/1134224271943725057/photo/1
🐣 RT @ThePlumLineGS The real story of Mueller’s remarks: He has wrecked the entire foundation of Trumpworld’s narrative about 2016. ¤ The story is that Mueller laid waste to one side’s lies, not that both sides are “locked in partisan combat” over his findings.
⋙ WaPo, Greg Sargent: Mueller destroyed one of Trump’s biggest lies. Trump just helped him do it. http://wapo.st/2W38ZS6
WaPo, Jennifer Rubin: If Americans won’t read Mueller’s report, spoon-feed it to them http://wapo.st/2Z1Gh67
As we have suggested, with or without Mueller, the House Judiciary Committee must educate the public through hearings that, in essence, put on TV what Rep. Justin Amash (R-Mich.) got down in a series of 280-character tweets. Here’s a suggested schedule (if Mueller testifies, he could be asked about each of the items below, with other witnesses and full evidence presented subsequently):
Day 1: Russia interfered to help Trump. Trump and lots of his allies sought such help. This was a betrayal of our democracy.
Day 2: How Trump, by inviting such help and then denying the inescapable conclusion that Russia helped him, undermined national security.
Day 3: What is obstruction, why is it a big deal and what do you have to prove?
Days 4-13: Each day is devoted to a different category of obstruction.
Day 15: What is the Office of Legal Counsel memo and why did Mueller not indict?
Day 16: What kinds of cases with far less evidence than this one have been prosecuted for obstruction.
Day 17: Impeachment doesn’t require evidence (let alone conviction) of a crime. However, in this case, there are impeachable actions that are not crimes (e.g., inviting Russian interference) and actions that are crimes (See Days 4-13).
Day 18: A highlight reel of the Bill Clinton impeachment, during which Republicans made impassioned speeches about the necessity of removing a president who has obstructed justice.
🐣 RT @EvanMcMullin You cheered as Russians hacked your rivals and pushed disinfo to 100 million Americans before winning the Electoral College by just 70,000 votes in states Manafort had highlighted to Moscow. It matters in a close race and you’d likely have lost otherwise. You’re their stooge now.
⋙ 🐣 RT @real Russia, Russia, Russia! That’s all you heard at the beginning of this Witch Hunt Hoax [ … ]
🐣 RT @gtconway3d So here you finally admit that “Russia helped me get elected.” Well, that’s what the investigation was about. The investigation found plenty of evidence that Russia did just that. It thus wasn’t a “Witch Hunt” or “Hoax.” So why did you repeatedly try to obstruct it? https://twitter.com/gtconway3d/status/1134068577873661957/photo/1
TheAtlantic, Quinta Jurecic: Mueller Indicted the Media http://bit.ly/2HK7zrA
// American institutions have failed to grapple with or accurately convey the information contained in the special counsel’s report.
🐣 RT @Morning_Joe ‘Mueller would not have come out & made statement he made yesterday, he would not have written the letter he sent to AG Barr after completing the report if he wasn’t concerned about the way the results of his team had been misrepresented by the AG’s original comments.’–McCabe 💽 https://twitter.com/Morning_Joe/status/1134064819617841153/photo/1
🐣 RT @brianklaas “I had nothing to do with Russia helping me to get elected.” A tweet in which the President of the United States (probably inadvertently) acknowledges that his election victory was helped by the Kremlin’s attack on American democracy.
“I had nothing to do with Russia helping me to get elected.” A tweet in which the President of the United States (probably inadvertently) acknowledges that his election victory was helped by the Kremlin’s attack on American democracy. https://t.co/mEb1iEyVGe
— Brian Klaas (@brianklaas) May 30, 2019
NBCNews, Kurt Bardella: Robert Mueller’s statement made the Democrats look like cowards http://nbcnews.to/2MfYX0j
// Trump sees a Democratic Congress reluctant to wield the impeachment power voters gave it in the midterms. And he may be right.
⭕ 29 May 2019 ~Mueller Speaks!
Politico, Eliana Johnson: Mueller remarks put Barr back into harsh spotlight http://politi.co/2I948Kj
// Democrats and some Republicans saw a statement that ‘contradicts’ and even ‘rebuke[s]’ Trump’s attorney general.
FiveThirtyEight, Amelia Thomson-DeVeaux: How To Think About Mueller’s Statement http://53eig.ht/2QKi5SV
● Mueller quietly rebuked Barr, repeating that he did not exonerate the president
● Mueller may have realized congressional testimony could undermine his credibility
● Congress is now in the driver’s seat
MotherJones, David Corn: Mueller Reminds the Nation That Trump Betrayed the USA http://bit.ly/2YXnQiP
// Treachery is not always a crime.
NYT, Charles Blows: Democrats, Do Your Damned Duty! http://nyti.ms/2KfWD6P
// Doing what is right on impeachment should not be a mere option.
🐣 What we really need is ♫ “The Mueller Musical”
🐣 RT @vermontgmg [Garrett Graff] FWIW, simply getting Mueller to read the key parts of his report out loud to Congress would be important to the national debate. So Dems on Capitol Hill should take him at his word—and accept him simply restating the report in his own voice.
🐣 RT @EricHolder No one in America is above the law. For the sake of our democracy we must have the ability to hold accountable the most powerful person in this nation.
No one in America is above the law. For the sake of our democracy we must have the ability to hold accountable the most powerful person in this nation. https://t.co/ODGHuiBQnp
— Eric Holder (@EricHolder) May 30, 2019
🐣 RT @neal_katyal THREAD. Today’s Mueller conference was devastating to Trump. Here’s why 1.First, as I’ve said for a long time,“cant indict a sitting President” has obvious pitfalls for Trump. Every scholar who says this says the remedy for such a President is impeachment
📌 https://mobile.twitter.com/neal_katyal/status/1133891098781335552
DailyBeast, Michael Tomasky: Mueller Means We’re Headed for the Apocalypse http://bit.ly/2EEiQI8
// Impeachment hearings are all but inevitable now. Trump’s removal from office, however, is anything but.
DailyBeast, Justin Baragona: Sean Hannity: Mueller ‘Doesn’t Know the Law’ and ‘He’s Full of Crap’ http://bit.ly/2wsuUb9
// But Attorney General William Barr ‘has the final say and we already know his answer,’ the Fox News star said.
WaPo, Rosalind Helderman: On question of obstruction, Mueller hewed to untested Justice Department opinions and ‘principles of fairness’ http://wapo.st/2YWS4m8
JustSecurity, Ryan Goodman: Mueller’s Message: The Obstruction That Nearly Halted Criminal Case Against Russians http://bit.ly/2WdSwiJ
🐣 RT @neal_katyal The prohibition on indicting a sitting President, such that it exists, is always waivable. Sounds like the WH Press Secretary is saying the President is willing to waive it. Excellent. Game on. If not, Trump must be asked why he won’t waive, since he’s so sure he’s in the clear
⋙ 🐣 RT @TheHill Sarah Sanders: “If Bob Mueller had determined that there was a crime, he would’ve had a moral obligation to report it, to put that into his report — he didn’t.”
🐣 RT @ryanhillMI The Democrats didn’t brag about trying to end the investigation to a hostile foreign power! ¤ “I just fired the head of the F.B.I. He was crazy, a real nut job, I faced great pressure because of Russia. That’s taken off.” https://twitter.com/RyanHillMI/status/1133898250254200838/photo/1
🐣 RT @RWwatchMA “My first reaction was that he was really taking it directly to the President. Secondly, he was taking it right to the attorney general, and telling them that they were spinning it.”-@JohnWDean, ex-Nixon White House Counsel, on #MuellerStatement #mapoli 💽 [CNN] https://twitter.com/RWwatchMA/status/1133928873937293312/photo/1
🐣 RT @maddowblog Imagine if, at the outset, Mueller had just said publicly what he finally was allowed to say publicly today about his investigation and his report. Imagine that had been how we learned about what Mueller found and what he did and what the Congress is expected to do.
⋙ 🐣 Something about truth and pants … 🤔
🐣 RT @harrylitman From #Robert DeNiro (my ex boss, but that’s another story) in @nytimes “Your life has been a shining example of bravely and selflessly doing things for the good of our country. I urge you to leave your comfort zone and do that again.”
⋙ NYT: Robert De Niro: Robert Mueller, We Need to Hear More http://nyti.ms/2IcwcfU //➔ what if Robert De Niro reads the report to the Judiciary Committee
// You said that your investigation’s work “speaks for itself.” It doesn’t.
🐣 RT @CuomoPrimeTime “The President of the United States would be in handcuffs, criminally charged, but for the fact he is the sitting President,” says Senate Judiciary Committee member Democratic Sen. Richard Blumenthal, reflecting on Robert Mueller’s words today. http://cnn.it/2YYq951 💽 https://twitter.com/CuomoPrimeTime/status/1133905754363236352/photo/1
🐣 RT @samstein Laura Ingraham literally just compared Mueller to a “mean girl” and her guest called him a “jerk” who needed to get the last word. https://twitter.com/samstein/status/1133919362715475968
🐣 RT @DavidCornDC Mueller says the Russian attack on the 2016 election was serious and aimed to damage one presidential candidate (and we know whom). Yet @parscale still says this is a “hoax.” What unpatriotic and irresponsible gaslighting. #Deplorable
Mueller says the Russian attack on the 2016 election was serious and aimed to damage one presidential candidate (and we know whom). Yet @parscale still says this is a "hoax." What unpatriotic and irresponsible gaslighting. #Deplorable https://t.co/n32PArfB0W
— David Corn (@DavidCornDC) May 29, 2019
Politico, Anita Kumar: ‘No obstruction’ no more: Mueller statement prompts shift in Trump talking points http://politi.co/30S0j4B
// Trump and his aides were far more careful than usual to say that Barr — not Mueller — cleared the president in the Russia probe.
🐣 RT @TheHill Sen. Mark Warner: “We saw earlier where the secretary of Homeland Security wanted to have a meeting on election security and at the cabinet level in the White House. And that was turned down because it might offend the sensibilities of Donald Trump.”
💽 https://twitter.com/thehill/status/1133912158666985472/photo/1
🐣 RT @stuartpstevens It will forever astound me that we have the first serious, documented case of extensive efforts by a hostile foreign power to influence America’s choice of Commander in Chief and most Republicans are “we won, so it doesn’t matter.” It’s the most anti-American stance possible.
🐣 RT @BarbMcQuade Allow me to translate for Robert Mueller – no hoax, no witch hunt, no exoneration. Your turn, Congress. My thoughts in @thedailybeast
⋙ DailyBeast: Mueller’s Seething Message: This Isn’t a Hoax, This Is a Crime http://bit.ly/2JL8Voa
// The special counsel is too reserved to say what he really means: Russia attacked America and Trump broke the law.
Lawfare, Benjamin Wittes: Mueller Bows Out: What Does Congress Do Now? http://bit.ly/2WdAcX9
WaPo, Dana Milbank: An invitation to impeach, in Mueller-speak http://wapo.st/2Wc1NrV
WaPo Editorial: Mueller should have said this weeks ago http://wapo.st/2MgGhxk
DailyBeast, Adam Rawnsley: After Mueller: 5 Big Unresolved Questions About the Trump-Russia Investigation http://bit.ly/2Qvur10
// Could the president be charged later? What happened to the counterintelligence probe? The end of the special counsel’s work is just the beginning for some aspects of the saga.
🐣 RT @joshcampbell On Mueller’s reluctance to go before Congress, @JeffreyToobin: “Too bad! Most witnesses don’t want to testify in front of Congress… But the point is Congress needs the information.” 💽 https://twitter.com/joshscampbell/status/1133868699654340608/photo/1
🐣 RT @rgoodlaw Shorter and less subtler Bob Mueller (would have been this): ¤ First, don’t say it’s an exoneration, because we would have cleared the President if we could. ¤ Second, it is not for the criminal justice system, but for Congress to accuse a sitting President of wrongdoing. 📌 https://twitter.com/rgoodlaw/status/1133755613173944320
🐣 RT @maddow Mueller today: “The Constitution requires a process other than the criminal justice system to formally accuse a sitting President of wrongdoing.” ¤ “The criminal justice system”. ¤ Isn’t this Mueller saying it wasn’t AG Barr’s call whether or not to charge Trump?
🐣 RT @john_sipher This is great but it’s also part of the problem. Yes the report is damming but it’s complicated and hard to read. It’s lawyer speak with double negatives. The 9/11 commissioners hired Harvard historian Ernest May to write a readable product. Trump is hoping it’s too hard to read.
⋙ 🐣 RT @asharangappa_ Mueller just told everyone to read his damn report. I read the footnotes for you — and summarize the best ones here
⋙⋙ TIME: What Happens Next with the Mueller Report? The Answer May Lie in the Footnotes http://bit.ly/2EDUy0L
// 5/3/2019
WaPo, Philip Bump: Trump’s mantra was once ‘no collusion, no obstruction.’ It isn’t anymore. http://wapo.st/2wtUU5W
WaPo, Dan Balz: Mueller says he couldn’t charge Trump, tosses the question to Congress http://wapo.st/2WdGV3v
WaPo, Marc Fischer: Mueller speaks for the ‘only time.’ Many Americans didn’t hear an ending. http://wapo.st/30W0Pym
WaPo: Mueller’s statement highlights key differences with Barr on investigation of President Trump http://wapo.st/2HJjeXR
NYT Editorial: Decoding Robert Mueller http://nyti.ms/2QxcU8y
// In short: No exoneration. (And please don’t make me testify!)
VICE, Greg Walters: Mueller Pretty Much Just Told Congress: Impeach or Go Home http://bit.ly/2EE5xra
// “He basically implored Congress to act”
CNN, Chris Cillizza: A translation of Mueller’s legalese, for non-lawyers http://cnn.it/2YXgUlU
🐣 RT @page88 [Virginia Heffernan] Mueller today issued a clear reproof to Barr. Mueller left no doubt that, contrary to Barr’s claims, the Office of the Special Counsel declined to indict Trump *because DOJ regulations prohibit it*. ¤ And now spokespeople from DOJ and OSC are aiming to blow that clarity.
🐣 RT @matthewamiller Totally normal. I put out joint statements with people who reported to me (Peter works for Kerri) all the time when I ran OPA.
🐣 RT @qjurecic Ironically, what this really does is drive home just how slippery and dishonest Barr was in his wording
🐣 RT @rickhansen The locution in that first sentence alone tells you that this was a heavily negotiated statement
⋙ 💙🐣 RT @ryanjreilly Joint Special Counsel / DOJ statement on the role of the OLC opinion. https://twitter.com/rickhasen/status/1133876382491172865/photo/1
🐣 Reminder: NO President has ever been convicted in the Senate, but 3 Presidents have forever been tainted by impeachment. That is the punishment.
🐣 RT @rgoodlaw This reads like an open letter to the GOP. ¤ Powerful words by former Defense Secretary William Cohen, who as a young Republican member of House was among the first to break with his party and put country first in Watergate investigations.
⋙ WaPo, William S Cohen: When will the Republican silence on Trump end? http://wapo.st/2K9lUjb “William S. Cohen is a former Republican congressman, senator and defense secretary who served on the House Judiciary Committee in 1974 during the Watergate impeachment inquiry.”
🐣 RT @renato_mariotti I agree with Chris Christie—today Mueller flatly contradicted Barr and made it clear that Congress would need to decide whether Trump obstructed justice. ¤ Barr should have to explain why he lied to Congress. That is a federal crime.
Reuters: Democratic lawmaker Nadler accuses Trump of lying, doesn’t rule out impeachment http://reut.rs/2MiUKcl
🐣 RT @tribelaw Mueller messed up by using a double negative. He meant to say: “DOJ policy would’ve prohibited us from calling Trump guilty even if we were convinced he’s guilty as sin. We could’ve said he was innocent if we concluded he was. But we didn’t: the evidence didn’t clear him.”
🐣 RT @normornstein Bill Barr should be disbarred and removed from office. He has violated his oath to be Attorney General of the United States, lied about fundamental things, and is unfit both for office or to practice law.
🐣 RT @McFaul Mueller said today, “If we had had confidence that the president clearly did not commit a crime, we would have said so.” Can Trump officials & surrogates please stop insulting our intelligence by claiming Mueller investigation found no evidence of obstruction. We are not idiots.
🐣 RT @JRubinBlogger Perhaps Nadler will stage a show-and-tell series of hearings in which he can feed the public the full story in manageable bites. One is struck that we get the government we deserve. Citizenship requires effort. Without it, autocrats run wild.
⋙ WaPo, Jennifer Rubin: If Mueller surprised you, you haven’t read his report http://wapo.st/2wroPvt
≣💽 NYT: Full Transcript and Video of Mueller’s Statement on Russia Investigation http://nyti.ms/2QwKprA
WaPo: Mueller was pointed: His report doesn’t say what Trump and Barr have claimed http://wapo.st/2YVRZ1P
🐣 RT @AshaRangappa_ Mueller Report: References impeachment (VolI. I, fn. 2) and future prosecution after POTUS leaves office (Vol. II, fn. 4) and says he investigated the President “to preserve evidence when memories were still fresh and documentary materials were available” (Vol. II, pp. 1-2)
⋙ 🐣 RT @matthewamiller Bill Barr on April 18: “Well, special counsel Mueller did not indicate that his purpose was to leave the decision to Congress. I hope that was not his view, since we don’t convene grand juries and conduct criminal investigations for that purpose.”
🐣 RT @danpfeiffer I am very sympathetic to the political concerns of the House Leadership and the consultant class, but it’s becoming clear that dodging an impeachment inquiry would be a grave moral, constitutional, and political mistake.
🐣 RT @JuliaDavisNews The United States believes #Russia may be conducting low-level nuclear testing in violation of a moratorium on such tests, the head of the Defense Intelligence Agency said. https://twitter.com/JuliaDavisNews/status/1133741590059638784
🐣 RT @RiskyLiberal https://twitter.com/RiskyLiberal/status/1133804138494668800
// Mueller report summary chart; obstruction chart; obstruction of justice chart
🐣 RT @kylegriffin1 Nadler: “The Special Counsel has clearly demonstrated that Pres. Trump is lying about the Special Counsel’s findings, lying about the testimony of key witnesses in the Special Counsel’s report, & is lying in saying that the Special Counsel found no obstruction and no collusion.”
🐣 ⚡️@SpeakerPelosi It’s time!⚡️ @RepJerryNadler @RepAdamSchiff @RepCummings @SenFeinstein @MarkWarner
🐣 Clinton’s approval ratings went up because people thought his “crimes” were personal and trivial. Trump is the most criminal, decadent, unethical and incompetent person ever to hold the office, which he helped Russia to steal. @SpeakerPelosi @RepJerryNadler @RepAdamSchiff
DailyBeast: Mueller: My Hands Were Tied on Charging Trump http://bit.ly/2MvgTnZ
// by Justin Miller, Betsy Woodruff, Adam Rawnsley; Special counsel breaks more than two years of silence and reveals why he didn’t accuse the president of breaking the law.
🐣 RT @JoeNBC 1. “Charging the president with a crime was not an option that we could consider.” ¤ 2. “If we had had confidence that the president clearly did not commit a crime, we would have said so.” ¤ Res ipsa loquitur.
💙🐣 RT @AriMelber New document from Mueller’s office contrasts Barr’s assertion about how Mueller determines if there “was an obstruction of justice” — to Mueller’s different explanation:
https://twitter.com/AriMelber/status/1133792145230434306/photo/1
🐣 RT @McFaul Mueller said today, “If we had had confidence that the president clearly did not commit a crime, we would have said so.” Can Trump officials & surrogates please stop insulting our intelligence by claiming Mueller investigation found no evidence of obstruction. We are not idiots.
🐣 RT @petsa16 Are you hearing them on Fox? They actually interpreted Mueller correctly. Saying Congress was encouraged to impeach and Barr misrepresented the report in a couple of ways. Plus, it’s all in the report.
💙🐣 John Meacham: “Mueller brought a book to a Twitter fight”
🐣 RT @NancyPelosi Despite Department of Justice policy to the contrary, no one is above the law – not even the President. Read my full statement here:
⋙ Speaker.gov: Pelosi Statement on Special Counsel Mueller’s Press Statement Reiterating the President’s Obstruction https://tinyurl.com/y37ncfpk
💙💙 TheAtlantic, David Frum: What the Mueller Report Actually Said http://bit.ly/2WtO0Mx
// The special counsel pointed back to the words of his report. Here are its key findings.
🐣 Phone Numbers: Nancy Pelosi: 202-225-4965 ¤ Jerry Nadler: 202-225-5635 ¤ Adam Schiff: 202-225-4176
TheBulwark: Mueller Refuted Three Bad Arguments About the Special Counsel Investigation http://bit.ly/2XeToA7
// Trump fans and Trump critics will both find reason to be unhappy.
TPM, Josh Marshall: Fuller Take on Mueller http://bit.ly/2VUo6gx https://twitter.com/Auriandra/status/1133781406159638529/photo/1
The entire statement was stayed very, very close to the report. But the emphases are significant. Mueller slowed to a crawl noting the key points of his findings: that there was insufficient evidence to bring charges of conspiracy against members of the Trump campaign and that they did not charge the President with obstruction because they were not allowed to do so. On point one the shortcoming was evidentiary; on point two, they just weren’t allowed to.
Mueller briefly sketched out the argument contained in the introduction to volume 2 of his office’s report: they were barred from indicting the President and believed that fairness counseled them not to make a explicit accusation the President could not defend himself against in court. As with the report itself, if you’re paying attention it’s clear that investigators believe President Trump did obstruct justice on multiple occasions and that they could likely prove it beyond a reasonable doubt if they were allowed to do so. …
The most consequential part of the statement, however, is likely this line: “And second, the opinion says that the constitution requires a process other than the criminal justice system to formally accuse a sitting president of wrong doing.” In other words, the constitutional process for holding the President accountable for his crimes is impeachment.
TheNation: Robert Mueller Just Told Congress To Do Its Damn Job http://bit.ly/2Xd4fut
🐣 If not Trump, what president? ¤ If not this Congress, which? ¤ If not now, never.
WaPo: Mueller says accusing Trump of a crime ‘not an option’ under Justice Dept. guidelines http://wapo.st/2I6H52y
🐣 RT @mitchellreports Jeremy Bash on Mueller: He was making the constitutional plea to the nation and the congress to read the report, focus on its findings and do its job. I agree with the sentiment this will build pressure in house and in the congress more generally for impeachment.
AP: Mueller: Special counsel probe did not exonerate Trump http://bit.ly/30Pcuz3
🐣 Mueller’s not wanting to testify and pointing to his report can be taken as meaning: Congress, you have all you need. @SpeakerPelosi @RepJerryNadler
NYT: Mueller, in First Comments on Russia Inquiry, Declines to Clear Trump http://nyti.ms/2Kdp85k
🐣 RT @BillKristol Nadler: “Given that Special Counsel Mueller was unable to pursue criminal charges against the President, it falls to Congress to respond to the crimes, lies and other wrongdoing of President Trump—and we will do so.” ¤ This doesn’t say formal impeachment inquiry…but comes close.
🐣 RT @RepMaxineWalters Mueller made clear Trump is NOT exonerated and that AG Barr is a liar. Mueller did his job now it’s time for Congress to do its job. No more hiding behind the special counsel. Enough is enough. It’s time to #ImpeachTrump. We can’t wait for 2020. The time is NOW!
🐣 No hoax. No witch hunt. No coup. Case NOT closed. It goes to Congress.
🐣 RT @JudyWoodruff Robert Mueller: “…after that investigation, if we had confidence the President did not commit a crime, we would have said so. We did not say so…”
🐣 RT @RepJerryNadler Read my statement following Special Counsel Robert Muller’s press conference this morning on the conclusion of the investigation into President Trump and his associates: https://twitter.com/RepJerryNadler/status/1133759926822723584/photo/1
🐣 RT @JoeNBC If Mueller will do no more than read his report before Congress, then that is what Democrats should have him do with 50 million Americans watching. ¤ The report is damning and Americans who will not read it need to learn of its contents.
🐣 RT @Peter_Wehner Robert Mueller’s interpretation of his report is fundamentally different than what Bill Barr told us. I would suggest that between the two, Americans would be wise to trust the interpretation and integrity of the author of the report.
🐣 RT @BeschlossDC Nadler just now: “Given that Special Counsel Mueller was unable to pursue criminal charges against the President, it falls to Congress to respond to the crimes, lies and other wrongdoing of President Trump–and we will do so.”
🐣 RT @DavidCornDC Remember, Barr said that there was no strong case of obstruction and that he and Rosenstein decided there was no obstruction. That is NOT what Mueller just said.
🐣 RT @tribelaw Mueller said: READ MY REPORT. It says I COULDN’T indict a sitting president. If my office could’ve concluded he was innocent of collusion or obstruction, we would’ve. We couldn’t so we didn’t. Only Congress can hold him accountable. The ball is in their court now.
🐣 RT @EvanMcMullin Mueller made clear today that it is up to Congress to hold the president accountable for his crimes. Indeed it is. We cannot allow a president to hold himself above the law and expect to be free. Congress must use its constitutional powers to publicly consider impeachment now.
🐣 .@SpeakerPelosi It’s time. Ball’s in your court. ~ Robert S Mueller III
💙 🐣 RT @matthewamiller Bill Barr on April 18: “Well, special counsel Mueller did not indicate that his purpose was to leave the decision to Congress. I hope that was not his view, since we don’t convene grand juries and conduct criminal investigations for that purpose.”
⋙ 🐣 RT @matthewamiller Bob Mueller today: “And second, the opinion says that the Constitution requires a process other than the criminal justice system to formally accuse a sitting President of wrongdoing.”
🐣 RT @McFaul Mueller statement today puts more pressure on Congress to act.
🐣 RT @MuellerSheWrote The most interesting part of that statement was about gathering evidence on obstruction while it’s fresh so you can get the facts, but also so you can prosecute co-conspirators. #MuellerPressConference
🐣 Mueller said Barr was acting “in good faith” ONLY with regard to deciding to release most of the report (which would have been at Mueller’s recommendation). Very delimited; not a general statement.
🐣 RT @TheRickWilson “If we had had confidence that the president clearly did not commit a crime, we would have said so.”
🐣 RT @JoeNBC Mueller says that he did not conclude whether the president committed a crime because Justice guidelines did not allow him to reach that conclusion.
🐣 RT @DavidJolly Robert Mueller could not be more clear that he believes Congress needs to step up now, explicitly saying that charging a sitting President with a crime requires a process other than the criminal justice system allows. ¤ There is no other reason for his statement today.
🐣 RT @kylegriffin1 Robert Mueller is expected to make a lengthy and substantial statement, a Justice Department official tells NYT.
⋙ NYT: Robert Mueller to Make Statement on Russia Investigation http://nyti.ms/2JQyaG3
DailyBeast, Clint Watts: The Kremlin’s Strategy for the 2020 U.S. Election: Secure the Base, Split the Opposition http://bit.ly/2WczuJU
// Americans may be on to the Kremlin’s tricks now, but Putin is getting a helping hand this time around: Conservative media and even the White House are spreading disinfo for him.
🐣 RT @davidfrum Mueller statement: “Can’t any of you people read?”
🔆 This❗️⋙ 🐣 RT @AriMelber Breaking: Bob Mueller to speak at 11am today
https://twitter.com/AriMelber/status/1133728387791560704/photo/1
⭕ 28 May 2019
🐣 RT @DavidPriess “Every fiber of Mueller’s being likely rejects the spectacle such public testimony would become,” says @joshscampbell here, “but this is another one of those rare instances where public confidence in our institutions of justice is on the line.”
⋙ CNN, Josh Campbell: Why Mueller needs to get in the hot seat http://cnn.it/2EzSrv9
WaPo: Amash defends call for Trump’s impeachment, says Congress ‘has a duty to keep the president in check’ http://wapo.st/2WmB4rV
💽 MSNBC, MTPDaily: Former Republicans question what happened to their party http://on.msnbc.com/2X7aH6e Charlie Sykes and George Will
🐣 RT @kylegriffin1 James Comey: “There was no corruption. There was no treason. There was no attempted coup. Those are lies, and dumb lies at that. There were just good people trying to figure out what was true, under unprecedented circumstances.”
⋙ WaPo, James Comey: No ‘treason.’ No coup. Just lies — and dumb lies at that. http://wapo.st/2Wrn8gd
It is tempting for normal people to ignore our president when he starts ranting about treason and corruption at the FBI. I understand the temptation. I’m the object of many of his rants, and even I try to ignore him.
But we shouldn’t, because millions of good people believe what a president of the United States says. In normal times, that’s healthy. But not now, when the president is a liar who doesn’t care what damage he does to vital institutions. We must call out his lies that the FBI was corrupt and committed treason, that we spied on the Trump campaign, and tried to defeat Donald Trump. We must constantly return to the stubborn facts.
And there’s the first problem with Trump’s whole “treason” narrative. If we were “deep state” Clinton loyalists bent on stopping him, why would we keep it secret? Why wouldn’t the much-maligned FBI supervisor Peter Strzok — the alleged kingpin of the “treasonous” plot to stop Trump — tell anyone? He was one of the very few people who knew what we were investigating.
We investigated. We didn’t gather information about the campaign’s strategy. We didn’t “spy” on anyone’s campaign. We investigated to see whether it was true that Americans associated with the campaign had taken the Russians up on any offer of help. By late October, the investigators thought they had probable cause to get a federal court order to conduct electronic surveillance of a former Trump campaign adviser named Carter Page. … [A]ll without revealing our work, despite the fact that it was late October and a leak would have been very harmful to candidate Trump. Worst deep-state conspiracy ever.
But wait, the conspiracy idea gets dumber. On Oct. 28, after agonizing deliberation over two terrible options, I concluded I had no choice but to inform Congress that we had reopened the Clinton email investigation. I judged that hiding that fact — after having told Congress repeatedly and under oath that the case was finished — would be worse than telling Congress the truth. It was a decision William Barr praised and Hillary Clinton blamed for her loss 11 days later. Strzok, alleged architect of the treasonous plot to stop Trump, drafted the letter I sent Congress.
And there’s still more to the dumbness of the conspiracy allegation. At the center of the alleged FBI “corruption” we hear so much about was the conclusion that Deputy Director Andrew McCabe lied to internal investigators about a disclosure to the press in late October 2016. McCabe was fired over it. And what was that disclosure? Some stop-Trump election-eve screed? No. McCabe authorized a disclosure that revealed the FBI was actively investigating the Clinton Foundation, a disclosure that was harmful to Clinton.
There is a reason the non-fringe media doesn’t spend much time on this “treason” and “corruption” business. The conspiracy theory makes no sense. The FBI wasn’t out to get Donald Trump. It also wasn’t out to get Hillary Clinton. It was out to do its best to investigate serious matters while walking through a vicious political minefield.
But go ahead, investigate the investigators, if you must. When those investigations are over, they will find the work was done appropriately and focused only on discerning the truth of very serious allegations. There was no corruption. There was no treason. There was no attempted coup. Those are lies, and dumb lies at that. There were just good people trying to figure out what was true, under unprecedented circumstances.
WaPo, Jennifer Rubin: House Democrats should follow Justin Amash’s lead http://wapo.st/2JJTrkA
USAToday, Kevin Kruse: Democrats need to get past impeachment jitters. It’s not 1998 and Trump is no Clinton. http://bit.ly/2Xa4dUl
🐣 RT @gtconway3d “43 percent of Republicans and Republican leaners would like to see Trump get a primary challenge next year. That 43 percent number is up by 6 percent from the 37 percent level right after last year’s midterm elections. This is a high number on the ascent.”
⋙ TheBulwark, Bill Kristol: New Poll Data Shows Trump Is More Vulnerable to a Primary Challenge Than Ever http://bit.ly/2HFb0zQ
🐣 RT @Mimitocah1 These threads by @justinamash are some of the most compelling & devastating summaries of the Mueller report & Barr’s corrupt acts. It’s not just that he’s a Republican saying it, it’s that he’s saying it with such detail & support for his conclusions. More of this please.
🐣 RT @brianklaas Amash continues to speak out with clarity. Here he documents the many ways that Barr behaved like Trump’s political hack, a man far more interested in being a toady than serving the American people. And, unfortunately, Barr’s spin — fueled by Trump’s lies — has fooled millions.
⋙ 🐣 RT @justinamash Attorney General Barr has deliberately misrepresented key aspects of Mueller’s report and decisions in the investigation, which has helped further the president’s false narrative about the investigation. 📌 https://twitter.com/justinamash/status/1133410107461689345
WaPo: Amash accuses Barr of deliberately misrepresenting Mueller’s report to protect Trump http://wapo.st/2I4jeAI
NYT: Trump Undercuts John Bolton on North Korea and Iran http://nyti.ms/2QtCzPv
JustSecurity, Michael Stern: How Impeachment Proceedings Would Strengthen Congress’s Investigatory Powers http://bit.ly/2X958Ed
⭕ 27 May 2019
WaPo, Eugene Robinson: Tune out President Trump’s propaganda machine http://wapo.st/2VSksnt
WaPo: European Greens surge as voters abandon old parties over climate http://wapo.st/2X9XYQn
Vox, Sean Illing (Dec): How fascism works ~ A Yale philosopher on fascism, truth, and Donald Trump. http://bit.ly/2SnrqzF //➔ Jason Stanley author of book “How Fascism Works ~ The Politics of Us and Them”
NYRB, Christopher Browning: The Suffocation of Democracy http://bit.ly/2O8INWU
// 10/25/2018; history repeats Nazi Germany
🐣 RT @robreiner Won’t let us see his taxes, his grades, his health records, his finances.
Won’t testify or let anyone from his administration or family testify. This ignorant lying racist narcissist’s entire life has been one massive coverup.#TrumpDoesCoverUps
🐣 RT @kylegriffin1 Jill Wine-Banks: “We must have public hearings. With the testimony of witnesses who can be evaluated by all Americans, I fully anticipate Trump’s support will further erode. Public hearings made a difference in the case of Nixon.”
https://twitter.com/kylegriffin1/status/1133040182322712576/photo/1
[ ◕ How public opinion changed during Watergate ]
⋙ JustSecurity, Jill Wine-Banks: The Balance Has Shifted: The Data on Impeachment Favor Moving Ahead http://bit.ly/2McirmF
🐣 RT @JRubinBlogger The New York Times gives home page to Trump’s juvenile nicknames for the candidates, including the racist Native American slur directed at Warren, This serves no purpose other than to highlight his name-calling and reinforce his abusive conduct.
🐣 RT @JRubinBlogger Instead of learning from the mistakes of 2016 — when Trump was allowed to spew his racism and falsehoods at length on live TV coverage of rallies — the media risk a repeat by simply recycling his slurs and lies. Do better, please.
🐣 RT @JRubinBlogger Sanders falsely insists the FBI was guilty of “unprecedented obstruction and corruption.” Not challenged on her exaggerations, distortions and outright lies, although she in essence concedes Trump has already made up his mind, issued his verdict
🐣 RT @JRubinBlogger Republicans who repeat blatantly untrue talking points should not go unchallenged. That assists Trump in his war on the truth. Republicans would like to bury an already-completed IG report that found Strzok and Page did not influence the investig
⋙ WaPo, Jennifer Rubin: The press must do better http://wapo.st/2YRDP1W
🐣 RT @brianklaas This is an important bit of analysis: far-right gains make an easy headline, but when it comes to the actual process of governing, it’s not going to be the Brexit Party or Le Pen who are dictating terms in the EU Parliament, largely because Green/Liberal parties surged too.
⋙ 🐣 RT @NPRinskeep Interesting talk with @carlbildt on @MorningEdition. Centrists lost their majority in EU parliament. Far right gained in places. Yet liberals, Greens also gained. Bilt sees the centrists governing in coalition with the liberals: suggesting parliament leaning more left than right.
⭕ 26 May 2019
WaPo, James Downie: Why are Democratic leaders still foot-dragging on impeachment hearings? http://wapo.st/2ECIk8W
History.com, Becky Little (2018): Watergate: How John Dean Helped Bring Down Nixon http://bit.ly/2MdPNBm
// 10/16/2018, If not for the former White House counsel, Nixon might never have resigned.
🐣 RT @TomJChicago 1 Trump’s insane tweets from Japan are more examples of his corroded mind in free fall. Public awareness of Trump’s dementia is steadily rising as his condition steadily worsens. This will accelerate as he crumbles on camera for the world to see. Eventually, everyone will see it. 📌 https://twitter.com/TomJChicago/status/1132646906579116032
NYMag, Frank Rich (2017): Just Wait ~ Watergate didn’t become Watergate overnight, either. http://nym.ag/2wndOvb
// 6/26/2017
Politico, Renato Mariotti: Why Trump’s Stonewalling Legal Strategy Will Keep Failing http://politi.co/2YIo8dk
// If he’s trying to run out the clock on the subpoenas, the weakness of his strategy might actually be speeding things up
Politico, Zach Dorfman: The Spy Case That Made Adam Schiff a Russia Hawk http://politi.co/30GL6mZ
// Three decades before he railed against the Trump campaign, the future congressman prosecuted an FBI agent who was seduced by a Soviet spy.
#TheBlacklist @NBCBlacklist
⭕ 25 May 2019
WaPo, Dan Balz: For Pelosi, the biggest test awaits: Impeach or not impeach? http://wapo.st/2K5kFBC
Reuters: China says U.S. demand on its state-owned enterprises is ‘invasion’ on economic sovereignty http://reut.rs/30MkzVp
// state capitalism #TheBlacklist @NBCBlacklist
Dkos, Mark Sumner: Former DNI James Clapper makes it clear that Trump would not have won without Russia’s help http://bit.ly/2W7f84v
BusinessInsider, Sonam Sheth: Spy agency veterans are horrified at Trump’s decision to grant AG Barr sweeping power to declassify Russia intelligence: ‘Lives are on the line’ http://bit.ly/2Qo87Gp
🐣 RT @CharlesPPierce To those people whose caution on impeachment is based on the lack of a “narrative,” I say you can’t craft a narrative with five different narrators: i.e. five committees chasing 10 crimes. The Watergate narrative was set by the Ervin committee. One committee telling one story. /1 📌 https://twitter.com/CharlesPPierce/status/1132321644079452161
⋙ 🐣 Watergate didn’t have a LOUDER counter-narrative running constantly
🐣 RT @SethAbramson (NOTE) There was *such* an effort by the FBI to hurt Trump pre-election that it:
(1) Illegally leaked info to his campaign
(2) Broke protocol to reopen a case against his opponent
(3) Immediately fired/reassigned anyone biased against him
(4) Told no one it was investigating him
🐣 RT @MaxBoot Trump is now surrounded by lickspittles who will affirm, on command, that he is an “extremely stable genius.” Every abuse of power, when left unchecked, leads to a bigger abuse. My @PostOpinions column:
⋙ WaPo, Max Boot: Trump’s latest assault on democracy http://wapo.st/2K548gI
🐣 Pete Buttigieg is the candidate most like Obama, smart, eloquent, witty and Center Left, but Black people don’t like him. Explain please.
🐣 RT @MonmouthPoll NATIONAL POLL: 67% say former WH counsel Don #McGahn should appear before Congress. Only 20% say he should not. ¤ 73% say Robert #Mueller should appear too. ¤ Majority say these should be public hearings.
⋙ Monmouth.edu: McGahn, Mueller Should Testify http://bit.ly/2QqtVkF
// Trump rating stable; less than half say Russia ‘definitely’ interfered in 2016
WaPo: Bolton says North Korea is violating UN resolutions and refusing talks http://wapo.st/2W1p9QE
💽 MSNBC, AMJoy: Trump impeachment optics scare Democrats expert says http://on.msnbc.com/2K2SvXF
// Donald Trump is not facing impeachment because House Democrats are apparently afraid of the optics Slate Senior Editor Dahlia Lithwick tells AM JOY. Lithwick joins Joy Reid to discuss what she believes will be the destructive aftermath for America if the president is not impeached.
ForeignAffairs, Joe Biden (Jan 2018): How to Stand Up to the Kremlin http://fam.ag/2YMhfro
// Jan-Feb 2018; Defending Democracy Against Its Enemies
⭕ 24 May 2019
◕ WaPo, Dana Milbank: Trump is twice as extreme as his predecessors in the past century. That’s dangerous. http://wapo.st/2W5MNvj “Such rhetoric is a hallmark of totalitarianism.”
● https://twitter.com/Auriandra/status/1132785956749217794/photo/1
NYT: Barr Got More Power to Review the Russia Inquiry. Here’s What We Know About Its Origins. http://nyti.ms/2K2Fg9B
USAToday, Brian Ott: Donald Trump really is ‘crying out’ for impeachment. It’s the ultimate victim card. http://bit.ly/2JHA8Z9
// Impeachment would help Trump paint himself as a victim of the system he oversees. Voters must reject this dangerous, self-serving rhetoric in 2020.
WaPo, Carlos Lozada: What would Mueller say? http://wapo.st/2HC7vKw
// Past special prosecutors explained themselves – and they all faced the same problems
LawAndCrime: Calls for Mueller’s Public Testimony Intensify After It’s Revealed That He Wants to Avoid ‘Political Spectacle’ http://bit.ly/2KctzgL
WaPo, Dana Milbank: Trump is twice as extreme as his predecessors in the past century. That’s dangerous. http://wapo.st/2HEdy1q
// Previous presidents wouldn’t recognize Trump’s language. Fascists would.
WaPo, Barry McCaffrey: Pardoning convicted troops would tell the world America no longer has a disciplined military http://wapo.st/2X5RNMZ
NBCNews, Jonathan Allen: Trump turns the full force of the government on perceived political enemies http://nbcnews.to/2QpTWkf
// Analysis: The president is wielding power in ways not seen in the United States in generations — if ever.
WaPo, Robert Litt and Benjamin Wittes: 20 questions Mueller will actually be able to answer http://wapo.st/2MckPJY
🐣 RT @Lawrence In 2016 in a private Republican leadership meeting Kevin McCarthy said he thinks Putin pays Trump.
⋙ 🐣 RT @TheHill Rep. Kevin McCarthy: “When I watched the leadership of this new Socialist Democratic Party, some things really concerned me. If we’re serious about solving problems, I think the actions of the Speaker were irresponsible.” 💽 https://twitter.com/thehill/status/1131986972984074240/photo/1
DailyBeast, David Lurie: Trump’s Public Enemies List Is an Impeachable Offense http://bit.ly/2wiWJ5p
// What he and William Barr are doing is potentially worse than anything in the Mueller Report.
KansasCityStar, Tom Coleman: Former GOP Rep. Tom Coleman: Trump, Pence are illegitimate. Impeach them http://bit.ly/2W3cQTX
🐣 RT @ProudResister Let’s be clear about something: Nobody in Congress including @SpeakerPelosi has ANY experience stopping a fascist autocrat from destroying our democracy because this has never happened before. We’re living in extraordinary times that call for extraordinary measures. #ImpeachTrump
🐣 RT @EricHolder This “investigation” (based exactly on what basis) is the height of irresponsibility and politically interferes with both the DOJ/the Intelligence Community. This is a dangerous precedent. I know the IC and DOJ will stand strong and minimize the damage
⋙ WaPo, Shane Harris: Barr could expose secrets, politicize intelligence with review of Russia probe, current and former officials fear http://wapo.st/2Madc6V
🐣 RT @davidfrum It’s not an “investigation.” It’s selective declassification by Trump’s ultra-political AG in order to tell a false story, conducted at the same time that the president’s private lawyers are fighting in court to suppress subpoenas to tell the true story
🐣 RT @JohnBrennan Young people everywhere: Please do not emulate Mr. Trump’s very immature behavior. Find others of honesty, integrity, & decency to be your role models. And always try to do what you know is the right thing, even when doing what is right is both unpopular & difficult.
🐣 RT @MaxBoot I’ve never criticized Robert Mueller before. I have the highest respect for his integrity. His report is a meticulous chronicle of presidential criminality & misconduct. But he will fail in his duty to the American people if he fails to testify about his findings in open session.
Newsweek, Alexandra Hutzler: Donald Trump Gives William Barr Power to Declassify Intelligence Information in ‘a Corrupt Act of Political Retribution,’ Experts Say http://bit.ly/2QjX8xE
💽 MSNBC, AllIn: Former CIA Director: Barr investigation an “outrageous” move http://on.msnbc.com/2K22hcx
// Former CIA Director John Brennan says President Trump doesn’t care about the national security concerns of the intelligence community.
WaPo Editorial: On Julian Assange, the administration throws smart and careful out the window http://wapo.st/2W0bY2E
Politico, Natasha Bertrand: Trump puts DOJ on crash course with intelligence agencies http://politi.co/2wk5sV6
// National security veterans fear a declassification order could trigger resignations and threaten the CIA’s ability to conduct its core business — managing secret intelligence and sources.
NYT: Trump Circumvents Congress to Sell Weapons to Middle East Allies http://nyti.ms/2YPVqHv
🐣 I’m not sure cheerfulness on the part of tv anchors is appropriate for the times. It is comforting, yes, but is it a good thing for people to feel comforted in these times of crisis? Some are better than others. @msnbc @cnn @chrislhayes @maddow @JoyAnnReid @NicolleDWallace
🐣 RT @mitchellreport .@realDonaldTrump says after giving AG Barr power to declassify secrets he hopes they’ll “see how the hoax or witch-hunt started” says it was attempted coup. So he already has dictated the outcome of this probe before it starts?
⋙ 🐣 RT @jayeglee1 The coup is every move that 45 has made and is making. The coup is his dismantling of the govt. The coup is the enthralled gop office holders everywhere trying to overturn settled law. The coup is 45 violating the emoluments clause + still in office.
🐣 My undergraduate major was American Studies. I have to be honest with you. Right now I am terrified.
WaPo, Karen Tumulty: Pelosi is a dangerous foil for a president who operates on impulse http://wapo.st/2JCsSO8
🐣 RT @AshaRangappa_ Remember that the characterization of HRC as being “sick” and “weak” during the campaign was a Russian disinformation talking point which Trump gleefully parroted at every opportunity. He has no qualms about spreading disinformation, no matter the source.
⋙ 🐣 RT @tribelaw Trump’s retweet of a doctored video making it look like Pelosi is slurring her words is so far beneath contempt that words fail me. That his cheap trick might actually fool tens of millions of people is staggering. Nobody so lacking in character belongs in public office.
🐣 RT @CREWcrew President Donald Trump won’t release White House visitor logs, he refuses to hand over his tax returns, he made staffers sign non-disclosure agreements and he’s balking at congressional investigators.
⋙ Politico, Andrew Restucchia: Trump’s ‘most transparent president’ claim looks cloudy http://politi.co/2JDKEka
// A personally accessible president has approved several precedent-breaking retreats from public disclosure.
🐣 RT @McFaul Want to know what the United States should do to protect our 2020 presidential election from outside interference? Come to the conference on June 6th @FSIStanford. And if you can’t make it, download the paper that day.
⋙💙💙🐣 RT @FSIStanford The Cyber Policy Center’s first report “Securing American Elections: Prescriptions for Enhancing the Integrity and Independence of the 2020 U.S. Presidential Elections and Beyond,” will be presented at our June 6 event. Register now! http://stanford.io/2Hf8wIx #StanfordCyberPolicy
WaPo: Some federal prosecutors disagreed with decision to charge Assange under Espionage Act http://wapo.st/2M7rNzP
NYT, Adam Goldman: Barr Got More Power to Review the Russia Inquiry. Here’s What We Know About Its Origins. http://nyti.ms/2K2Fg9B
PoliticusUSA/MSNBC: Trump Just Accused The UK and Australia Of Spying On Him http://bit.ly/2W22dko
🐣 RT @nahaltoosi I *think* this is Dan Coats’ way of telling Bill Barr, “Tread carefully, buddy.” https://twitter.com/nahaltoosi/status/1132004403848908802/photo/1
🐣 RT @MalcolmNance The national situation is on fire because Mueller pulled his punches. Trump feels like he is freely empowered to act as a dictator. We have to stick together & focus to #SaveDemocracy by making a massive wave in 2020.
⋙ 🐣 RT @ShadowThorin Kudos to @MalcolmNance for continuing to sound the alarm each day. I don’t know how he keeps up his energy. I am so mentally/physically/emotionally exhausted with trying to educate Americans on the immediate threats to our democracy, it takes all I have to get out of bed.
🐣 RT @CIAspygirl Barr’s malfeasance undermines our national security & his inexcusable actions will debilitate CIA’s ability to do their job. When sources disappear so will the vital intelligence they provide…intelligence that keeps our nation safe. This damage will be felt for decades to come.
⋙ 🐣 RT @amyfiscus Barr wants to know more about the CIA’s informants in Russia and what they passed along about the 2016 interference. Sources are among the CIA’s most closely held secrets
⋙⋙ NYT: Trump Gives Attorney General Sweeping Power in Review of 2016 Campaign Inquiry http://nyti.ms/2YNCHwi
🐣 RT @20committee The only reason for POTUS to make the AG, not the DNI, the declassification authority for IC documents is because you have a political agenda which the DNI will try to block on grounds of integrity and nonpartisanship. ¤ That is all.
🐣 RT @john_sipher If this is a legitimate effort to learn about the trustworthiness of the intel. Easy, There are established processes. If it is an effort to find scapegoats to help with partisan deflection (like Trump did with FBI), then leadership needs to fall on its sword and refuse to play.
⋙ 🐣 RT @AshaRangappa_ Make no mistake: If Barr discloses the identities of CIA and CI sources providing information on Russia he is disabling our intelligence capacities *to Russia’s advantage*. It puts sources providing intelligence in danger and cripples the ICs ability to recruit new sources 1/
📌 https://twitter.com/AshaRangappa_/status/1131915717476007936
WaPo, Paul Waldman: Trump extends his corruption into the intelligence agencies http://wapo.st/2JEriLw
🐣 RT @tribelaw Abusing declassification authority to pursue and punish a president’s political enemies is a classic “high Crime and Misdemeanor.” It belongs on the agendas of both @RepAdamSchiff’s & @RepJerryNadler’s House Committees. Open the #ImpeachmentInquiryNow!
⋙ NYT: Barr’s Newfound Power Could Prompt Clash Between Justice Dept. and C.I.A. http://nyti.ms/30JpoP2
🐣 RT @tribelaw Trump’s risking our national security to wreak vengeance on those responsible for investigating his alleged wrongdoing to (a) win the presidency, (b) obstruct inquiry into how a foreign power may have helped him win, and (c) cover up that obstruction is itself clearly impeachable
⋙ 🐣 RT @MalcolmNance WARNING: We are in grave danger. Trumps says he declassified all allied intelligence fm FBI, GCHQ, MI6, AVID & ASIS for AG Barr to get revenge. This is the end of the 5-EYES relationship. No one will EVER share intelligence with us again. #Imoeach to Save our Nation’s Security.
WaPo, Aaron Blake: Trump just gave William Barr carte blanche to declassify information. What could go wrong? http://wapo.st/2weYcKa
// A lot
🐣 RT @JoyceWhiteVance This is a danger sign. Barr, who is willing to use criminal investigations as political tools, can now decide to selectively release classified information to further the WH’s false narrative. But he won’t file a motion asking a judge to turnover grand jury material to Congress
⋙ 🐣 RT @justinjm1 Trump authorizes Barr to reveal whatever he wants about the Russia investigation, yet they refuse to reveal the full Mueller Report and evidence
🐣 RT @cm_merlin [Barr and Mueller] 💽 https://twitter.com/cm_merlin/status/1131892778055753733/photo/1
Replying to @cm_merlin @MarkWarner and 3 others
💥 Mueller Objected to Barr Brief
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/30/us/politics/mueller-barr.html …
💥 Barr Undercut by Ignorance
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2019/05/01/barrs-conclusions-are-undercut-by-his-lack-familiarity-with-details-muellers-probe/ …
💥 10 Trump Actions on Obstruction
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2019/04/18/trump-actions-mueller-spotlighted-potential-obstruction/ …
💥 Smears & Attacks
https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2019/05/barr-trump-mueller-order-investigation-biden-ukraine.html …
🇷🇺 Barr Russia & Alfa-Bank Ties
https://www.newsweek.com/so-many-conflicts-so-little-time-1396435 …
🐣 Which can only mean Trump is the nation’s a$$hole
⋙ 🐣 Mediaite: Lindsey Graham Decries Two Year Investigation Into Trump as ‘Political Rectal Exam’ http://bit.ly/2HXjW2q
🐣 RT @gtconway3d Politically, of course, he’d be better off if he’d just shut up about it, just as he would have been far better off if he’d never fired Comey, never tried to obstruct Mueller, and never tweeted the words “Witch Hunt.” But he’s a pathological narcissist. He can’t help it.
⋙ 🐣 “Extreme hedonism” ~ term used by book by those psychologists to describe living only in the moment, inability to think ahead, to be strategic
🐣 RT @AltUSPressSec When an aspiring autocrat seizes control of the law enforcement and intelligence functions of the State, the battle is nearly lost. ¤ The current situation must be treated with the seriousness it demands. @TeamPelosi @SpeakerPelosi
📌 https://twitter.com/AltUSPressSec/status/1131853232966381568
⭕ 23 May 2019
Forbes, Dan Alexander and Richard Behar: The Truth Behind Trump Tower Moscow: How Trump Risked Everything For A (Relatively) Tiny Deal http://bit.ly/2X5tzTe
TheAtlantic, Quinta Jurecic: Impeachment Is a Refusal to Accept the Unacceptable http://bit.ly/2QnE5Tj
// Taking action against Trump is a rejection of the idea that nothing matters.
🐣 RT @AshaRangappa_ Make no mistake: If Barr discloses the identities of CIA and CI sources providing information on Russia he is disabling our intelligence capacities *to Russia’s advantage*. It puts sources providing intelligence in danger and cripples the ICs ability to recruit new sources 1/ 📌 https://twitter.com/AshaRangappa_/status/1131915717476007936
Newsweek, Tom Porter: Evidence Russia Tipped Election for Trump ‘Staggering,’ Says Former U.S. Intel Chief James Clapper http://bit.ly/2HBtTDQ
WaPo, Catherine Rampell: The Trump administration’s war on statistics isn’t slowing down http://wapo.st/2WqcJkN
🐣 RT @sarahkendzior This is very serious. If Trump can imprison and yes, even execute these former officials he will. He needs them gone because they know about his crimes. ¤ I’m a critic of some of them (esp Comey) but obviously this is sick and evil and they need protection. Where’s the protection?
⋙ 🐣 RT @ShelbyKStewart More hate, more unhinged incitement of violence toward U.S. citizens. Someone needs to replace his dog-whistle with a ball-gag and straitjacket. Stat. ¤ Trump suggests death penalty punishment for Comey, Page, Strozk and McCabe
🐣 RT @davidfrum Trump’s so-called investigation … *is* the cover-up. Latest in @TheAtlantic about tonight’s grim news
⋙ TheAtlantic, David Frum: Trump’s Cover-Up Accelerates http://bit.ly/2M2QD3L
// The president directs his attorney general to declassify information—raising the prospect of selective disclosures.
🐣 RT @JoyceWhiteVance National security takes a back seat to Trump demands that Barr gin up an investigation into public servants at DOJ & FBI. Also today, Trump called prosecutors killers & accused people by name of treason after a reminder the punishment is execution. There’s no way this ends well.
⋙ 🐣 RT @SpyTalker Trump issues order demanding that CIA, ODNI etc “promptly” cooperate with Barr in “Review of Intelligence Activities Relating to the 2016 Presidential Campaigns.”
⋙⋙ 🐣 RT @PoolReports Subject: Memorandum on Agency Cooperation with Attorney General’s Review of Intelligence Activities Relating to the 2016 Presidential Campaigns http://bit.ly/2JE8v39
🐣 RT @justinhendrix Anyone that thinks we will have a free and fair election in 2020 is not paying attention.
🐣 RT @EvanMcMullin This is truly a dangerous abuse of power. Barr will selectively release sensitive information, as he did with Mueller’s report, to shape a favorable narrative for Trump and impede the intelligence community’s ability to collect intel on foreign threats that assist the president. 📌 https://twitter.com/EvanMcMullin/status/1131754489046716416
⋙ 🐣 RT @PhilipRucker Just in: Trump has directed U.S. intelligence agencies to cooperate with the Justice Department’s review of the origins of the Russia investigation (the “spying” probe) and has given AG Barr authority to declassify information as he sees fit.
🐣 RT @rebeccaballhaus Nancy Pelosi: “I pray for the president of the United States. I wish that his family or his administration or staff would have an intervention for the good of the country.”
🐣 RT @rgoodlaw May Day
—Espionage indictment of Assange imperils freedom of press
—Executive order gives Attorney General Barr unprecedented power to go after perceived enemies in intel community
—POTUS names specific people in answer to question who has committed treason punishable by death
⋙ 🐣 RT @arupar REPORTER: Sir, the constitution says treason is punishable by death. You’ve accused your adversaries of treason. Who specifically are you accusing of treason?
TRUMP: A number of people. If you look at Comey, McCabe, if you look at Strzok, his lover Lisa Page… 💽 https://twitter.com/atrupar/status/1131672516622209024/photo/1
🐣 RT @PhilipRucker House Judiciary Chairman Nadler tells @maddow that Robert Mueller wants to testify but only in private with a transcript released to the public. Nadler says Mueller doesn’t want to participate in a televised open hearing that could be a spectacle.
🐣 RT @emptywheel Three things happened in quick succession today: ¤
1) DOJ criminalized core journalistic activities as espionage ¤
2) Trump made his AG the fact-finder where independent ones had found nothing ¤
3) Trump started tweeting obvious fakes abt his adversaries
🐣 RT @djrothkopf He’s not “a president.” He is something we have never seen before in the US. His title is president. But this behavior is that of a demented autocrat–as are his attacks on the press & the rule of law.
🐣 RT @wildonnelly Barr, who is acting in the best interests of Trump, and with no regard for the national security of the United States, has been given power over all of the intelligence agencies to declassify their material, even if they object because it would jeopardize their sources & methods.
⋙ 🐣 RT @costareports “Stripping the intel leaders of their ability to control information about sources and methods, and handing that power to political actors, could cause human agents to question whether their identity will be protected,” Jeremy Bash tells Post. “This is dangerous territory.”
🐣 RT @RepAdamSchiff While Trump stonewalls the public from learning the truth about his obstruction of justice, ¤ Trump and Barr conspire to weaponize law enforcement and classified information against their political enemies. ¤ The coverup has entered a new and dangerous phase. ¤ This is un-American.
🐣 RT @mcfaul Biden behind it all? This is just crazy stuff. What has become of our republic? So depressing to watch. I have tried hard to keep believing that we Americans are better than this, or can be better than this again. I’m losing faith.
⋙ 🐣Terrifying day
⋙ 🐣 RT @joshtpm Trump Advisor Lewandowski: Biden behind Steele Dossier; Comey, McCabe, Strzok and Page will all be on trial “March or April of the next year.”
💽 [Fox] https://twitter.com/joshtpm/status/1131712683026341896/photo/1
🐣 RT @MuellerSheWrote I hate Assange, & I just got points for my fantasy indictment draft, but charging him for publishing docs as a media outlet? & I’m worried about what precedent Trump’s justice department is trying to set with this charge & how it could affect the press.
⋙ 🐣 And now Barr gets to selectively declassify and create the official narrative. Personally, I am terrified. I don’t know if we can survive another 18 months.
🐣 RT @chrislhayes There’s an inescapable plummeting, almost annihilating sadness to these that I can’t quite escape. The depth of need and brokenness.
⋙ 🐣 RT @kylegriffin1 Here is a 7+ minute video, from ABC, of Trump calling on multiple senior aides to defend him and vouch for his ‘calm’ demeanor in the infrastructure meeting with Democrats after Nancy Pelosi said that he’d had a temper tantrum.
💽 https://twitter.com/kylegriffin1/status/1131658573300359169/photo/1
⋙ 🐣 I hear you. The few times I can fathom his psyche at all, it’s these moments. But in the end, he’s still incredibly dangerous to us all. Empathy is an indulgence we cannot afford.
🐣 Trump keeps opening barn doors and letting horses out while Dems keep going to the authorities for permits for rounding them up. Before Dems get the permits all the horses will be long gone.
🐣 RT @selectedwisdom Basically AG Barr can selectively declassify any bits he chooses about the origins of the Russia investigation, but he can’t declassify portions of the Mueller report? Am I understanding this correctly?
🐣 RT @matthewamiller Whoa. So Barr has the sole authority to declassify info related to the Trump investigation over the objections of the original classifying authority – CIA, NSA, etc. A huge accumulation of power and discretion to the AG that I believe is unprecedented.
⋙ 🐣 RT @AaronBlake BREAKING: Trump orders the declassification of certain intelligence to assist in William Barr’s review of intelligence activities relating to the 2016 presidential campaigns https://twitter.com/AaronBlake/status/1131715883175436288/photo/1
NYT: Assange Indicted Under Espionage Act, Raising First Amendment Issues http://nyti.ms/30CfxKR
TheIndependent, Molly Jong-Fast [UK]: If Trump is right, he has temper tantrums. If Nancy Pelosi is right, he pretends to have temper tantrums. Neither is acceptable http://ind.pn/2X5AMTo
// Was this supposed meltdown just a distraction from another instance of incompetence? Does it even matter?
🐣 RT @Natasha Bertrand Here is the indictment, which was just posted online a couple minutes ago:
⋙ Politico: [Indictment] http://politi.co/2X3p0Zq
↥ ↧
🐣 RT @Natasha Bertrand BREAKING: A grand jury in the Eastern District of Virginia has returned an 18-count superseding indictment against WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, DOJ officials tell us. He’s been charged with violating the Espionage Act. Story TK.
🐣 RT @lawfareblog Testimony by Robert Mueller risks becoming a political circus. But, Bob Bauer argues here, Mueller could use the opportunity to reflect on his experience operating under the current legal regime for special counsels:
⋙ Lawfare, Bob Bauer: The Perils and Opportunities of Mueller’s Testimony http://bit.ly/2JYtHAg
DailyBeast: Pelosi: Trump’s Family, Staff Should Stage an ‘Intervention’ for ‘Good of the Country’ http://bit.ly/2WlAGK6
🐣 The GOP stands for two things: 1) tax cuts for the wealthy, 2) judges to ensure #1. Everything else is just stoking fear and hate to rile up the base.
🔄💙💙 🐣 RT @justinamash Mueller’s report describes a consistent effort by the president to use his office to obstruct or otherwise corruptly impede the Russian election interference investigation because it put his interests at risk.
📌 https://twitter.com/justinamash/status/1131605784742256640
🐣 Kellyanne was presenting herself as a conduit. Pelosi is the Speaker of the House, third in the succession, head of the Article 1 Branch. She should not have to communicate via staff after the current resident disrespectfully storms out on her.
Politico, Natasha Bertrand: FBI search warrants detail Michael Cohen Russia ties http://politi.co/2QiNGKT
// Newly unsealed warrants reveal how closely the special counsel’s team was tracking the foreign entanglements of Trump’s most loyal fixer.
🐣 RT @DomajorReminor #TrumpMustResign Since Donald Trump admits at the Rose Garden that he knew about the Trump Tower meeting when his son called him after & most likely before it took place, are we going to ignore this when Trump stated countlessly he knew nothing about the Trump Tower meeting?
⭕ 22 May 2019
EmptyWheel, Marcy Wheeler: Bill Barr’s Bullshit Claim that Trump Obstructed the Investigation Out of Frustration and Anger http://bit.ly/2QwXtxg
ProPublica: Why Did Deutsche Bank Keep Lending to Donald Trump? — “Trump, Inc.” Podcast http://bit.ly/2HEwrRz
// The bank kept writing checks even after Trump defaulted on loans worth hundreds of millions and sued it. Now Congressional investigators are going to court to uncover the financial records behind their relationship.
Lawfare, Jonathan Shaub: Testimonial Immunity, Executive Privilege and the President’s Authority Over Former Officials http://bit.ly/2wnmmC0
Esquire, Charles Pierce: The President* Has Done Too Many Things, and Too Many People Know About Them http://bit.ly/2EoATSD
This president* is going to be impeached by the House of Representatives. It is now unavoidable. He’s done too many things and too many people know about them. This is going to be one helluva summer. And it’s building now like a thunderstorm over the mountains, and there’s no way to stop it.
DailyBeast, Sam Stein and Sam Brodey: Pelosi to Impatient Dems: We’ve Got Trump on the Ropes http://bit.ly/2Mf7tge
// ‘Even this impeachment inquiry is the same f*cking process,’ said one senior Democratic aide. ‘You will still end up in the courts.’
Bloomberg: Mueller Probed Cohen Ties to Oligarch’s Cousin, Filings Show http://bloom.bg/2Wn416S
● Warrants from 2017 cited 1,000 texts, calls with Intrater
● Prosecutors asked if payments tied to Russia sanctions plan
WaPo Editorial: Judges must move quickly to hold Trump accountable http://wapo.st/2HwMvVr
🐣 RT @danpfeiffer The discourse over Pelosi’s “coverup” comment is so dumb. ¤ Trump is literally a named co-conspirator in an actual coverup for which his lawyer is currently sitting in jail. [ … ]
🐣 RT @tribelaw For any president to refuse to perform his Art II responsibilities unless Congress abandons its Art I duties is a gross dereliction of duty, itself an impeachable course of conduct that seeks to hold the American people hostage.
Politico, John Bresnahan and Burgess Everett: Why Pelosi is so good at infuriating Trump http://politi.co/2HxhtNg
// The speaker stands firm against the president like few others.
🐣 RT @SpeakerPelosi Democrats went to the White House with a clear goal: making progress on an infrastructure deal #ForThePeople. It would appear that @realDonaldTrump, on the other hand, was aiming to hold this widely-supported bipartisan effort hostage in an effort to double-down on his cover-up.
🐣 RT @SpeakerPelosi Congress has a clear, urgent duty to uncover the truth for the American people – a duty we will not abandon in the face of @realDonaldTrump’s unprecedented cover-up. This is about patriotism, not politics. #FollowTheFacts
⋙ Speaker.gov: Pelosi Statement on Recent Progress of Democrats’ Oversight Efforts to Hold the President & Administration Accountable http://bit.ly/30AKlM6
CNN, Marshall Cohen: Trump spreads false claims about Mueller as Democrats start tightening the screws http://cnn.it/2wg8NV2
🐣 RT @kylegriffin1 Rex Tillerson told members of the House Foreign Affairs Committee that Vladimir Putin out-prepared Trump during a key meeting in Germany, WaPo reports. ¤ Tillerson also said Kushner’s general lack of knowledge of history exposed him to being outmaneuvered.
🐣 RT @gtconway3d A sixth-grader could out-prepare Trump.
⋙ WaPo: Putin out-prepared Trump in key meeting, Rex Tillerson told House panel http://wapo.st/2VI2Mej
🐣 RT @vaso_gk_ [butt pics] /photo/1-4] https://twitter.com/vaso_gk_/status/1130826682271784960/photo/1
#TheBlacklist
WaPo, Philip Bump: The various coverups of Donald ‘I don’t do coverups’ Trump http://wapo.st/2EshOix
WaPo, Jennifer Rubin: Pelosi goads Trump into another temper tantrum http://wapo.st/2VLfeK0
🐣 RT @mmurraypolitics Fact-checking Trump’s Rose Garden comments from today. ¤ CLAIM: “I think most of you would agree, I’m the most transparent president probably in the history of this country.” ¤ FACTS: No tax returns, no Mueller sit-down, objecting to McGahn’s House testimony
TPM, Josh Kovensky: Judge Told Trump Attorneys Their Case To Block Subpoenas Isn’t ‘Serious’ https://tinyurl.com/y3tymdfm
The judge drew special attention to the question of timing during his ruling, saying that “any delay in the proceedings may result in irreparable harm to the Committees.”
He added that the law in the matter was “well-settled.”
“Courts have long recognized a clear public interest in maximizing Congress’s power to investigate,” Ramos intoned.
🐣 RT @kylegriffin1 Nancy Pelosi: “We do believe that it’s important to follow the facts. We believe that no one is above the law, including the President of the United States. And we believe the President of the United States is engaged in a cover-up.”
💽 https://twitter.com/kylegriffin1/status/1131202001998680064/photo/1
📊 TheHill: Monmouth University Poll: 60 percent say Trump should not be reelected http://bit.ly/2QgIQ0H //➔ just 37% say he should be
🐣 RT @BarbraSteisand Trump just gave his self-pitying, Nixonian “I am not a crook” speech in the Rose Garden.
⋙ CNBC: ‘I don’t do cover-ups’: Trump lashes out at Democrats after canceling White House infrastructure sit-down http://cnb.cx/2JxFlTf
🐣 RT @stengel This is @potus essentially saying he is holding the American people hostage until lawful investigations of him are suspended. The concept of governing is completely alien to him.
⋙ 🐣 RT @peterbakernyt Trump marched into the room, refused to shake any hands or sit and laced into Pelosi for accusing him of a coverup. After just three minutes, he left, and told reporters he could not work with Democrats until they end “phony investigations.” @katierogers
⋙⋙ NYT: Trump Walks Out on Pelosi and Schumer After 3 Minutes http://nyti.ms/2VTv7TI
🐣 RT @stengel This is @potus essentially saying he is holding the American people hostage until lawful investigations of him are suspended. The concept of governing is completely alien to him.
⋙ 🐣 RT @peterbakernyt Trump marched into the room, refused to shake any hands or sit and laced into Pelosi for accusing him of a coverup. After just three minutes, he left, and told reporters he could not work with Democrats until they end “phony investigations.” @katierogers
⋙⋙ NYT: Trump Walks Out on Pelosi and Schumer After 3 Minutes http://nyti.ms/2VTv7TI
🐣 RT @kylegriffin1 Judge Ramos said that the Trump clan’s arguments “are not sufficiently serious as it relates to Supreme Court precedent” dealing with the question of turning over documents to Congress. ¤ The judge disagreed that the demand for the documents lacks a legitimate legislative purpose.
🐣 RT @ReutersPolitics JUST IN: New York judge rules Trump financial records may be provided to Democratic lawmakers by Deutsche Bank, Capital One
WaPo: Trump abruptly ends infrastructure meeting with Democrats after Pelosi says he is ‘engaged in a coverup’ http://wapo.st/2LZY5N8
🐣 RT @pbump There’s no way Trump planned this Rose Garden event on the spur of a moment. There’s a professionally printed sign on the podium making his case!
JustSecurity, Stephen Gillers: When Is a “Literally True” Statement False and a Crime http://bit.ly/2HQOMJZ
🐣 RT @chrislhayes “I don’t do coverups” is in “I’m not a crook” territory
🐣 RT @PhilipRucker “I don’t do cover-ups,” Trump says, making no mention of the hush money payments to a porn star and a Playmate to secure their silence about his affairs in the weeks before 2016 election
⋙ 🐣 RT @feliciasonmez Trump cites Pelosi’s statement this morning on a “cover up.” “Instead of walking in happily to a meeting, I walk in to look at people who said I was doing a cover-up. I don’t do cover-ups. You people know that probably better than anybody,” Trump says to reporters.
🐣 “Cover up” for sure, but with the added novelty that it is done by messages conveyed to his base in lies about what is in the Mueller Report, while he actively prevents Congress from getting to the facts and getting the real findings out to the country.
⭕ 21 May 2019
NYT: Austria Chancellor Faces Prospect of No-Confidence Vote as Coalition Unravels http://nyti.ms/2JZOeo8
The governing coalition, an alliance between Mr. Kurz’s conservatives and the far-right Freedom Party, began to unravel on Saturday, when a video emerged showing the far-right party’s leader discussing an exchange of favors with a woman claiming to be a Russian oligarch’s niece.
Slate, Elizabeth Gotein: Trump Is Considering Deputizing the Military as a Civilian Police Force. That Is Terrifying. http://bit.ly/2VX1a59
It should go without saying that the presence of undocumented immigrants within the United States does not justify invocation of this potent emergency power. There is no uprising taking place, no breakdown of civil order. For better or for worse, immigration officers are fully capable of carrying out deportations and are doing so at record-setting rates.
🐣 RT @samstein Tillerson told lawmakers that Jared was a menace at State while he was there.
🐣 RT @Kris_Sacrebleu “Tillerson reached out to the committee-expressed a willingness to meet, a comm aide said. In a more than 6-hour mtg, he told members and staffers that the Trump admin actively avoided confronting Russia about allegations of interference in the election”
⋙ DailyBeast, Erin Banco: Rex Tillerson Secretly Meets With House Foreign Affairs Committee to Talk Trump http://bit.ly/2W0eJkA
// The former secretary of state talked with lawmakers about his time with the president and the frictions he had with the president’s son-in-law.
🐣 RT @jptrb So, Mitch McConnell and Rand Paul lifted sanctions on Russian oligarch Oleg Deripaska for a 200mil investment in Kentucky by ex senator David Vitter. In exchange Mitch have Vitter’s wife a lifetime judgeship after she lost her nomination. This lawless nonsense has to stop!
↥ ↧
NYT: Democrats Seek Review of Russian Investment in Kentucky http://nyti.ms/2EpsmP9
// Oleg Deripaska
DailyBeast, Jay Michaelson: The Secrets of Leonard Leo, the Man Behind Trump’s Supreme Court Pick http://bit.ly/2HIkhGm
// A Catholic fundamentalist who controls a network of right-wing groups funded by dark money has put three justices on the court. He’s about to get a fourth.
WaPo: A conservative activist’s behind-the-scenes campaign to remake the nation’s courts http://wapo.st/30x4G4R
// Leonard Leo helped conservative nonprofits raise $250 million from mostly undisclosed donors in recent years to promote conservative judges and causes
WaPo: Confidential draft IRS memo says tax returns must be given to Congress unless president invokes executive privilege http://wapo.st/2QeAmY5
🐣 RT @LisaHagan7 He literally said this shit. This is a democracy not a dictatorship, he needs to go ASAP. https://twitter.com/LisaHagan7/status/1130949457850314753/photo/1
Bloomberg, Timothy O’Brien: Trump’s Constitutional Conflicts Are Exposed http://bloom.bg/2K0VuzM
// The president loves the Constitution when it helps stop his advisers from testifying, less so when it’s used to demand the disclosure of his finances.
🐣💽 RT @TheBeatWithAri “80-90% of the committee is on board to go forward” with impeachment ¤ @RepCohen on House Judiciary Committee
https://twitter.com/TheBeatWithAri/status/1130958562136600576/photo/1
WaPo, Jennifer Rubin: Here’s what the House Judiciary Committee should do http://wapo.st/2YCfz3u
Lawfare, Quinta Jurecic: The House Is Right to Move Toward an Impeachment Inquiry http://bit.ly/2QhjkZc
NBCNews: New York lawmakers pass bill aimed at weakening Trump’s pardon power http://nbcnews.to/2wdIkYc
// The measure, which creates a narrow exception to the state’s double jeopardy law, now goes to Democratic Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s desk.
DailyBeast, Rick Wilson: Pelosi’s Strategy Is Working, And Trump Is One Step Closer to Being F*cked http://bit.ly/2HwTKwU
// Democrats who want impeachment yesterday aren’t paying attention. Between McGahn, the ruling on taxes, and Cohen, the Resistance has had a banner week.
CNN: First on CNN: Justice Department willing to hand over counterintelligence if Schiff backs off ‘enforcement action http://cnn.it/2YIuSHV
Politico, Darren Samuelson: I Watched 20 Hours of Robert Mueller Testifying. Here’s What Congress Would Be In For. http://politi.co/2WcvyYN
// The former FBI head hasn’t talked in public for two years—but when he did, he knew his Russia threats and didn’t suffer fools gladly.
🔊 TheAsset: The Sistema http://apple.co/2VHucki
🐣 RT @gtconway3d Well, then, let’s conduct a little thought experiment here. If any other president had done any fraction of what Trump has done, what would have happened? Or if Trump were a Democrat, what would Republicans be saying? We know what they’d be saying, and they’d be right.
⋙ 🐣 RT @rebeccaballhaus Bill Barr, under fire for appearing to protect Trump, tells WSJ’s @sgurman he’s protecting the presidency, not the president. “I felt the rules were being changed to hurt Trump.”
⋙⋙ WSJ: Barr Says He Is Fighting for the Presidency, Not Trump http://on.wsj.com/2QhK23Z
// The attorney general, who has faced criticism, is in the front lines of the president’s battles against Congress
WaPo: Mueller and House Democrats at impasse over how much of his testimony would be public http://wapo.st/2JT8DuR
// Robert S. Mueller III and House Democrats have been unable to reach an agreement on how much of the special counsel’s expected congressional testimony would be public, and how much would take place in private, according to people familiar with the matter.
WaPo, Jennifer Rubin: Trump stonewalls, and a court slaps him down http://wapo.st/2QbSMsm
🐣 RT @kylegriffin1 Rep. Jamie Raskin, a member of the Judiciary and Oversight Committees: “I think that overwhelming evidence has been presented to us in the Mueller report, and outside of it too, of high crimes and misdemeanors, and we should launch an impeachment inquiry.”
⋙ WaPo: A top Democrat warns: If we don’t confront Trump, he’ll grow more lawless http://wapo.st/2WWmeVP Rep Jamie Raskin (MD)
WaPo, Jennifer Rubin: Trump stonewalls, and a court slaps him down http://wapo.st/2QbSMsm
NYMag, Jonathan Chait: Just This Week, Trump Has Already Committed 5 More Impeachable Acts http://nym.ag/2Hs9GjI
🐣 RT @bradheath Former White House counsel Don McGahn defied a congressional subpoena and skipped a hearing today where lawmakers had planned to press him on President Donald Trump’s efforts to thwart the investigation of Russian interference in the 2016 election.
⋙ USAToday: Don McGahn, former White House counsel, defies House subpoena and skips hearing on Russia probe http://bit.ly/2K08Mwq
⭕ 20 May 2019
TheMoscowProject: What The Trump Campaign Knew and When They Knew It http://bit.ly/31udngM
WaPo, James Hohman: The Koch network is reorganizing under a new name and with new priorities http://wapo.st/2K3g7eW
🐣 RT @RonKlain Trump can be beaten, but as this smart piece from @paulwaldman1 suggests, it will be an uphill fight. I’d add one more thing to Paul’s list of Trump advantages: many of Trump’s negatives are self-inflicted, and can be self-corrected at any time.
⋙ WaPo, Paul Waldman: Why Trump actually has many advantages in 2020 http://wapo.st/2JFakNj
🐣 RT @OkCallMeAl I’ve Muellered this over McGahn and McGahn the past few days and I’m Cohen to go out on a limb and say, Barring any illegal congressional Sessions, where crass and Rudy politicians act in a Conway and Flood the media, then the next few weeks are going to Sekulow hard for Trump. 😂
🐣 RT @RonaldKlain One important thing here: many pundits have been saying that if the House Dems fight Trump in court, Trump will simply be able to run out the clock. This ruling shows that the courts can act quickly, and are likely to do so.
🐣 RT @tribelaw This WH position can’t POSSIBLY be the law when the House is exercising its power to investigate whether the president has committed impeachable offenses. The OLC/Cipollone view would rip the Impeachment Power root and branch out of the Constitution.
NYT, Cristian Farias: How a Lone Republican Set an Example for Democrats on the Mueller Report http://nyti.ms/2VP4Ci8
// Representative Justin Amash read the special counsel’s findings and saw impeachable offenses.
🐣 RT @tribelaw “It is … not fathomable that a Constitution that grants Congress the power to remove a President for reasons including criminal behavior would deny [it] the power to investigate him for unlawful conduct— even without formally opening an impeachment inquiry,” Judge Mehta wrote.
🐣 RT @tribelaw The serious felonies Trump seems to be orchestrating against McGahn and his firm are codified in 18 U.S. Code § 1513, which criminalizes retaliating against a prospective witness in a lawful investigation — like that being undertaken by the House Judiciary Committee
🐣 RT @tribelaw Trump’s effort to exact that price itself constitutes a federal felony and would be yet another impeachable offense
⋙ Politico, Greg Sargent: Republicans who don’t protect Trump’s corruption will pay a very steep price http://politi.co/2QcKJM9
CNN: READ: Nadler warns McGahn about consequences of failing to appear before committee http://cnn.it/2Jv1mlB
// full letter
⇈ ⇊
PoliticusUSA: Jerry Nadler links Trump and criminal activity http://bit.ly/2EngNs1
// partial text of Nadler letter
⇈ ⇊
🐣 RT @RepJerryNadler Read my statement on the White House blocking Don McGahn from testifying tomorrow to @HouseJudiciary on evidence of obstruction of justice by President Trump: https://twitter.com/RepJerryNadler/status/1130586951562743809/photo/1
// letter
🐣 RT @ Susan_Hennessey This was the identical argument Nixon gave for trying to block the Watergate tapes from being released.
⋙ 🐣 RT @mkraju Trump on blocking Don McGahn’s testimony: “As I understand it they’re doing that for the office of the presidency for future presidents. As I understand it it’s a very important precedent. The attorneys say they’re doing it not for me, they’re doing it for the future.”
🐣 RT @NatashaBertrand Reps. David Cicilline (D-R.I.), Jamie Raskin (D-Md.), and Joe Neguse (D-Colo.) — all members of the Democratic leadership — pushed to begin impeachment proceedings during a leadership meeting in Pelosi’s office, said the sources.
⋙ Politico: Pelosi clashes with fellow Dems in closed-door debate on impeachment http://politi.co/2YET5im
TIME: House Panel Releases Transcripts of Michael Cohen’s Closed-Door Interviews http://bit.ly/2EiDPA4
WaPo: Cohen told lawmakers Trump attorney Jay Sekulow encouraged him to falsely claim Moscow project ended in January 2016 http://wapo.st/30AkCDm
WaPo: Judge upholds House subpoena demanding years of Trump’s financial records http://wapo.st/2w8Fu6Z
Politico: Some Republicans unsettled by Trump’s sweeping claims of immunity http://politi.co/2VCggbh
// Veteran lawmakers are increasingly alarmed over the president’s claim that Congress can’t police him.
WaPo, Aaron Blake: Justin Amash dismantles Barr’s and the GOP’s defenses of Trump http://wapo.st/2JPdEVe
🐣 RT @Mimiricah1 Excellent thread with some of the highlights of Trump’s worst conduct in Vol II of Mueller Report but as the author says – no substitute for reading it @GOP #ReadTheMuellerReport
⋙ 💙💙🐣 RT @charsachson I finished reading/listening to the Mueller Report. With the footnotes and redactions, it didn’t take a long as I thought it would. One cannot come away from reading this document without an understanding of Trump’s misconduct. ¤ Here are some excerpts: 📌 https://twitter.com/charsachson/status/1130487668863672320
🐣 Failing to begin impeachment now against such egregious violations means impeachment as a remedy will die. At least when brought against Republicans. Republicans will not fail to impeach Democrats for things as trivial as lying about sex. Or Benghazi. Or “Her Emails.”
💙💙🐣 RT @justinamash People who say there were no underlying crimes and therefore the president could not have intended to illegally obstruct the investigation—and therefore cannot be impeached—are resting their argument on several falsehoods:
📌 https://twitter.com/justinamash/status/1130533752508157954
NYT, Ryan Goodman: How Trump’s Stonewalling Puts Our Democracy at Risk http://nyti.ms/2HDKfLa
// Congress needs the full Mueller report to do its job of protecting our elections from foreign adversaries.
⭕ 19 May 2019
NBCNews (5/19): Deutsche Bank employees reportedly flagged suspicious transactions involving Trump and Kushner http://nbcnews.to/2ZnJbGT
// Tammy McFadden, a former Deutsche Bank employee, said she reviewed transactions that involved Kushner’s company and Russians in the summer of 2016.
NYT: Deutsche Bank Staff Saw Suspicious Activity in Trump and Kushner Accounts http://nyti.ms/2w9Kx71
⭕ 18 May 2019
💙💙🐣 RT @justinamash Here are my principal conclusions:
1. Attorney General Barr has deliberately misrepresented Mueller’s report.
2. President Trump has engaged in impeachable conduct.
3. Partisanship has eroded our system of checks and balances.
4. Few members of Congress have read the report.
📌 https://twitter.com/justinamash/status/1129831615952236546
🐣 RT @waltshaub If this were the real Rosenstein, I’d ask him if he sees irony in uttering such words after begging Trump not to fire him, drafting a phony memo for the slow motion Saturday Night Massacre, helping Barr draft propaganda and staring blankly at the camera as Barr deceived America.
⋙ 🐣💽 RT @rjrosenstein “If you ask me, one of the main problems in Washington, DC, is that everybody is so busy running around trying to protect their reputation instead of protecting the republic, which is what they are supposed to be doing.” May 15, 2017
https://twitter.com/RJRosenstein/status/1130204587229679616/photo/1
⭕ 17 May 2019
🐣 RT @Comey The president claiming the FBI’s investigation was “TREASON“ reminds me that a Russian once said, “A lie told often enough becomes the truth.” That shouldn’t happen in America. Who will stand up?
🐣 RT @matthewamiller this is dead on
⋙ 🐣 RT @Comey The AG should stop sliming his own Department. If there are bad facts, show us, or search for them professionally and then tell us what you found. An AG must act like the leader of the Department of Justice, an organization based on truth. Donald Trump has enough spokespeople.
🐣 RT @selectedwisdom Barr is being political & doing all the things he chastised Comey & others for. His job isn’t to raise questions, it’s to answer them. Until such time as he has evidence of wrongdoing, he should not raise questions of wrongdoing or discuss investigation
⋙ WSJ: Barr Says Review of Origins of Russia Probe Could Lead to Rule Changes http://on.wsj.com/2Q5UZpa
// ‘Government power was used to spy on American citizens,’ Barr says
⭕ 16 May 2019
🐣 RT @kylegriffin1 Nancy Pelosi blasts the White House letter rejecting Congress’ demands: “That letter that came from the White House was a joke, beneath the dignity of the presidency of the United States, in defiance of our Constitution. Shame on them.”
⋙ NBCNews: Pelosi blasts White House letter rejecting Congress’ demands: ‘A joke’ http://nbcnews.to/2YxotiL
// “Shame on them,” the House speaker said.
WaPo, Daniele Allen: Stop calling impeachment a political decision http://wapo.st/2JGnWae
TIME: Michael Flynn Told Special Counsel About Efforts to Influence His Cooperation, Court Filing Shows http://bit.ly/2VtNeL5
💙💙 EmptyWheel, Marcy Wheeler: The Scope and Results of the Mueller Report http://bit.ly/2QdxIlu
CNBC: Robert Mueller will decide if he wants to testify to Congress, Attorney General William Barr says http://cnb.cx/2JoYFlx
C-Span: Democratic News Conference and Reading of Mueller Report http://cs.pn/2w5lUbM
Politico: Prosecutors: Person ‘connected to’ Congress tried to influence Flynn’s cooperation with Mueller http://politi.co/2LO7Cac
Dkos/Bloomberg: Ukraine’s Prosecutor Says Rudy is Full of **it. http://bit.ly/2Ho1H7q
🐣 RT @JoyceWhiteVance Almost as though Trump’s AG is scoffing at a co-equal branch of government & tempting it to hold him accountable.
⋙ 🐣 RT @ “Did you bring your handcuffs?” AG Barr asked Speaker Pelosi today. ¤ She smiled and indicated that the Sergeant at Arms was present should an arrest be necessary.
⋙⋙ NBCNews: Did you bring your handcuffs?’ AG Barr ribs Pelosi about contempt finding http://nbcnews.to/2wczrhP
// The attorney general joked about the House Judiciary Committee’s finding that he should be held in contempt of Congress.
JustSecurity, Joshua Geltzer, Ryan Goodman and Asha Rangappa: What Congress Should Ask Robert Mueller When He Testifies http://bit.ly/2Q7Kr9f
⭕ 15 May 2019
Bloomberg, Leonid Bershidsky: Mueller Wasn’t the Main Problem Between Trump and Putin http://bloom.bg/30hPcl8
// The two still don’t have anything to offer each other.
WaPo, Aaron Blake: The many problems with Trump’s legal claim that Congress can’t investigate him http://wapo.st/2YD54wU
📊 Vox: MorningConsult/Politico Poll: A majority of voters want Mueller to testify in front of Congress http://bit.ly/2Q55NUy 56% do, 19% don’t
// Lawmakers are still trying to nail down a date for the special counsel’s hearing.
🐣◕ RT @RiskyLiberal https://twitter.com/RiskyLiberal/status/1128889882439507968/photo/1
// impeachment hearings and support for impeachment
🐣 RT @gtconway3d .@walterdellinger nails it: “Mueller’s … investigation fully established not merely crimes, but the betrayal of the president’s office: a failure to defend the country’s electoral system from foreign attack and acts of interference with justice that shred the rule of law.”
⋙ WaPo, Walter Dellinger: Democrats’ obsession with redaction is obscuring the obvious: Trump committed high crime http://wapo.st/2VvsQt3
⭕ 14 May 2019
NYT: Skeptical U.S. Allies Resist Trump’s New Claims of Threats From Iran http://nyti.ms/2VWAPDJ
WaPo, David Ignatius: Foreign adversaries have figured Trump out http://wapo.st/2VmoZ1j
WaPo, Dana Milbank: Trump’s not claiming executive power. He’s going for divine right. http://wapo.st/2Q4fgvo
🐣 RT @brhodes DoJ investigating Trump’s opponents. A European neo-fascist getting red carpet treatment in Oval. War plans for Iran. All out trade war with China. These are all things happening right now.
🐣 RT @Lawrence By publicly tampering with a Senate witness, @LindseyGrahamSC violated his oath of office. In any previous Senate, the Ethics Committee would begin a Graham investigation today that would lead to his expulsion.
⭕ 13 May 2019
WaPo, Philip Bump: The House could take subpoena enforcement into its own hands. Will it work? http://wapo.st/2W314bs
// inherent contempt
🐣 RT @coton_lover Kevin McCarthy @GOPLeader “There’s two people I think Putin pays, “Rohrabacher & Trump.” #Lawrence https://twitter.com/coton_luver/status/1128131225288228866/photo/1
🐣 RT @matthewamiller I would like to hear someone at DOJ say what evidence of wrongdoing justifies this third probe. Such a gross politicization of the deparrment and a huge abuse of power by Barr.
⋙ NYT: Barr Assigns U.S. Attorney in Connecticut to Review Origins of Russia Inquiry http://nyti.ms/2vXZ05S
🐣 RT @atrupar REPORTER: “If you’re so transparent, why continue to block these House Democrats looking for information?” ¤ TRUMP: “Because they’re looking for things they’re not entitled to.” https://twitter.com/atrupar/status/1128011411186159618/photo/1
TheAtlantic, David Frum: Trump Is Angry That the FBI Won’t Endorse His Theory of Victimhood http://bit.ly/2LHapSv
// The president has already fired an FBI director and an acting director. Now he’s gunning for the present director, Chris Wray.
Trump got extra angry Sunday night. Uncheered by Mother’s Day, the president launched into a sequence of rage tweets that included the line: “The FBI has no leadership.” Trump has fired one FBI director, James Comey, for looking into the Russia matter. He fired an acting director, Andrew McCabe, for the same apparent reason. Apparently, he is now gunning for the present director, Chris Wray.
Why is Trump angry? Trump disjointedly tweeted over linked messages: “The Director is protecting the same gang…..that tried to……..overthrow the President through an illegal coup. (Recommended by previous DOJ) @TomFitton @JudicialWatch”
Trump wants the FBI to endorse his own theory of victimhood—and it won’t. Worse, the FBI was embedded in the Mueller investigation. The FBI received, and still holds, whatever information the investigation gathered about Russia’s interference in the 2016 election, including potential answers to the all-important question: Why? Why was Vladimir Putin so eager to help Trump into the presidency? Why did Russia care so much, and run such risks for him?
The answer may be indicated in an underappreciated pair of sentences on page 76 of Volume II of the Mueller report: “As described in Volume I, the evidence uncovered in the investigation did not establish that the President or those close to him were involved in the charged Russian computer-hacking or active-measure conspiracies, or that the President otherwise had any unlawful relationship with any Russian official. But the evidence does indicate that a thorough FBI investigation would uncover facts about the campaign and the President personally that the President could have understood to be crimes or that would give rise to personal or political concerns.”
So long as the FBI remains in independent hands, the president will remain gripped by those concerns.
What Trump means by leadership is compliance. He wants an FBI director who serves him personally the way Attorney General Barr has served him personally. So long as the FBI retains its integrity, Trump feels unsafe. He cannot close the case, because he keeps hearing scratching sounds from inside. He cannot move on, because he keeps looking back in fear. His next move? He’s already telegraphing it: another attack on the independence of law enforcement.
Trump today welcomed Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán to the White House. I keep thinking on this trip of the shrewd insight offered by a Budapest observer when I visited Hungary in 2016: “The benefit of controlling a modern state is less the power to persecute the innocent, more the power to protect the guilty.” Trump holds that power, and he is determined to wield it.
🐣 RT @SenFeinstein The Constitution is clear: Congress appropriates funds, not the president. We’ve sent a letter to the Defense Department opposing the transfer of $1.5 billion for President Trump’s unnecessary border wall. Campaign promises shouldn’t be put ahead of the needs of our military. https://twitter.com/SenFeinstein/status/1127942886526541825/photo/1-2
🐣 RT @RepAdamSchiff Read this article about Hungary under Viktor Orban, and then ask why the leader of the free world would fête this aspiring dictator at the White House. ¤ Rather than reward Orban for crushing Hungary’s democracy, we should be pressing him to reject the path to autocracy.
⋙ TheAtlantic, Franklin Foer: Viktor Orbán’s War on Intellect http://bit.ly/2HhgTTN
// June 2019 issue; As the Hungarian prime minister systematically undermined his own country’s education system, one institution stood defiant: a university in the heart of Budapest, founded by George Soros.
🐣💽 RT @RepAdamSchiff President Trump will stonewall every request for oversight, while blaming Democrats for the delay. ¤ We will press on, because if we don’t, Trump will escape scrutiny and we won’t be able to hold future presidents accountable for abuse of power, malfeasance or corruption. https://twitter.com/RepAdamSchiff/status/1128003927029559296/photo/1
⭕ 12 May 2019
🐣 RT @ianbassin It’s telling that the very last line of the Mueller Report ends with “no person in this country is so high that he is above the law.” And then cites to U.S. v. Nixon. Then it ends. Methinks Mueller ending with that was not happenstance.
WaPo Editorial: President Trump’s penchant for secrecy is about to be tested in court http://wapo.st/2WDPDE7
WaPo, EJ Dionne: Protect the Constitution, Democrats — and health care, while you’re at it http://wapo.st/2LG7nOb
TheHill: George Conway slams Trump for viewing Mueller probe ‘purely in terms of your own ego’ http://bit.ly/2VTQMdP
WaPo: Trump takes aim at McGahn, says he ‘had a much better chance of being fired than Mueller’ http://wapo.st/2LE25mq
🐣 RT @tribelaw Read this brilliant thread by @gtconway3d
⋙ 🐣 RT @gtconway3d Think of it. The Russia investigation was a legitimate investigation, with a legitimate basis, into how a hostile foreign power tried to interfere with and undermine our democracy. It was in the best interests of the nation—in the interests of all Americans, no matter who … 📌 https://mobile.twitter.com/gtconway3d/status/1127544265243070464
⭕ 11 May 2019
WaPo: Trump and his allies are blocking more than 20 separate Democratic probes in an all-out war with Congress http://wapo.st/2W2oMEL
WaPo, Aaron Blake: The GOP’s increasing embrace of Trump’s Russia conspiracy theory http://wapo.st/2E3qUC0
Lawfare, Jack Goldsmith: The Mueller Report’s Weak Statutory Interpretation Analysis http://bit.ly/2Hmyit5
WSJ: Mueller’s Restrained Approach to Politics May Clash With Democrats’ Agenda http://on.wsj.com/2HesD9A
// Democrats want the special counsel to explain why he avoided conclusions on obstruction of justice; any testimony unlikely this week
WaPo, Paul Kane: Time works against Democrats in Trump investigations. So does a lack of shame on the other side. http://wapo.st/2PYgc4p
⭕ 10 May 2019
NewYorker, Isaac Chotiner: A Constitutional Scholar on the Purpose of Impeachment http://bit.ly/2Q1CXoc
MotherJones: The FBI’s Former Top Lawyer Says the Russia Probe Was Not About Trump http://bit.ly/2HfUN4b
// “It was about what Russia was, and is, doing and planning.”
WashingtonMonthly, Nancy LeTourneau: Why Trump and Barr Are Attempting to Silence Robert Mueller http://bit.ly/2PYEADb
WaPo, Jamie Raskin: Congress isn’t just a co-equal branch. We’re first among equals. http://wapo.st/2HdQhTz
🐣 RT @Billbrowder Horrible news. One of Russia’s most outspoken independent journalists and critics of the Putin regime dies at the age of 59 in freak motorcycle accident in Moscow.
⋙ DailyMail: Anti-Putin journalist dies in mysterious motorbike accident days after criticising Russian authorities over fatal plane crash http://dailym.al/2W15q2P
🐣 RT @AmoneyResists Trump’s Impeachable Offenses: ¤ (Thread):
#1.) Trump welcomed, aided and abetted Russia’s attack on America; then denied it even happened and took Putin’s word over our own intelligence agencies.
📌 https://mobile.twitter.com/AmoneyResists/status/1120555910630342657
🐣 RT @brhodes Why is a combatant commander speaking at an ideological think tank hyper focused on conflict with Iran?
⋙ 🐣 RT @FDD .@CENTCOM Commander General McKenzie at @FDD today: ¤ “Let me be perfectly clear: the long-term, enduring, most significant threat to stability in CENTCOM’s areas of responsibility is #Iran.” ¤ Full remarks and #CMPP conference video here:
⋙⋙ 💽 FDD: Rising to the Threat: Revitalizing America’s Military and Political Power http://bit.ly/2vPtBCC
// 5/8/2019; Foundation for Defense of Democracies
🐣 RT @ShannonBream BREAKING: @RudyGiuliani just told me exclusively he’s no longer going to Ukraine. The trip is off.
🐣 RT @CREWcrew There have been five meetings between President Trump and Vladimir Putin where no note takers were present and no official U.S. record of the meetings exists. This is violation of the law and we’re suing.
⋙ CREW: Trump and Kushner Broke the Law in Meetings with Putin and Saudis http://bit.ly/2Vf7L5N
// 5/5/2019
🐣 RT @rgoodlaw .@ThePlumLineGS asks pertinent question: Why are they blocking it? ¤ “Schiff thinks Barr and the White House are” blocking FBI from briefing Committee on “findings of the FBI’s counterintelligence investigation, which isn’t documented in the Mueller report”
⋙ WaPo, Greg Sargent: The big unanswered question at the core of Trump’s corruption http://wapo.st/2vT6CH0
🐣 RT @JoyceWhiteVance If we’re talking about financial transactions that look a little sketchy & merit investigation, the sudden investment in an aluminum plant in Kentucky by Deripaska following relief from Russian sanctions supported by KY Senators would raise my eyebrows as a prosecutor.
⋙ CNN: Russia’s Rusal was sanctioned by the US. Now it’s investing $200 million in a Kentucky mill http://cnn.it/2JxqQhk
🐣 According to Jim Baker, former chief counsel for the FBI, much of what was not found to be criminal conspiracy by Mueller, was likely handed off to FBI CounterIntelligence, eg possible “Compromat” like Trump Tower Moscow (on @maddow)
🐣💽 RT @TheHill James Comey: “This president, because he is an amoral leader, shapes those around him and that shaping sometimes pushes out someone who is a strong person of integrity… but far more often it shapes and bends and pulls in weaker souls.”
https://twitter.com/thehill/status/1127011689050677248/photo/1
🐣 RT @mcfaul In chatting with many Ukrainians of all political persuasions at #UkraineAtStanford conference today, I heard overwhelming disapproval of @RudyGiuliani planned mission to Kyiv.
🐣 RT @JillWineBanks I think this is good language. The scope of 45’s stonewalling is unparalled and a step toward authoritarian takedown of our democracy so it is a constitutional crisis. End stage crisis is if docs aren’t produced as subpoenaed. Collapse is when court order to do so is ignored.
⋙ 🐣 RT @AmanirinaK I beluevevthis defiance is the crisis. If he doesn’t comply with court orders (or the Supreme Court rules in his favor) is a constitutional collapse. This is the crisis. That’s the collapse.
🐣 RT @Politico Trump told POLITICO on Friday that it would be “appropriate” for him to speak to Attorney General Bill Barr about launching an investigation into his potential 2020 rival, Joe Biden
⋙ Politico: Trump: Discussing Biden probe with Barr would be ‘appropriate’ http://politi.co/2VU8e1Q
// Rudy Giuliani, the president’s personal attorney, is urging Ukraine to investigate Joe Biden, raising questions about whether Donald Trump would pressure his attorney general to do the same.
Politico, Darren Samuelson and Josh Gerstein: Here’s why Democrats may rethink impeaching Trump http://politi.co/303eBPo
// Judges have repeatedly ruled that Congress has a greater claim to sensitive documents when it can point to an ongoing legal matter, like impeachment.
🐣 RT @theintercept Rumors that Joe Biden abused his power as vice president to protect his son’s business interests in Ukraine in 2016 are “absolute nonsense,” according to Ukraine’s leading anti-corruption activist, writes @RobertMackey.
NBCNews: Sen. Chris Murphy calls for probe into Giuliani efforts in Ukraine on behalf of Trump http://nbcnews.to/2VXFViS
// “These actions are entirely improper and could be illegal,” Murphy said of Giuliani’s reported actions.
DailyBeast, Lawrence Robbins: William Barr’s Legal Ideas Would Have Let Richard Nixon Off the Hook, Too http://bit.ly/2Vj2SsF
// Unlike Trump, Nixon, by all accounts, actually was innocent of the activities at the heart of the underlying investigation in Watergate.
DailyBeast: WSJ: Trump Asked Ex-White House Counsel Don McGahn to Publicly Clear Him of Obstruction After Mueller Report http://bit.ly/2JeWMHU
// Within a day after the Mueller report was released, according to the Wall Street Journal.
WSJ: Don McGahn Rebuffed White House Request to Say Trump Didn’t Obstruct Justice http://on.wsj.com/2HbSejs
// After release of the Mueller report, the president sought to have the former White House counsel say that he didn’t believe the president’s push to dismiss the special counsel constituted a crime
NYT, Jamelle Bouie: The Senate Is as Much of a Problem as Trump http://nyti.ms/2JhsaWm
// If Democrats don’t do something about it, winning the presidency in 2020 won’t be enough.
NYT: White House Asked McGahn to Declare Trump Never Obstructed Justice http://nyti.ms/2vOL5z3
// in the past month; he wouldn’t
🐣 RT @SenBlumenthal First Don Jr.’s “I love it” & now this. Despicable, unpatriotic, & a blatant violation of campaign finance law. Failing to hold the president accountable for the facts uncovered by the Mueller report will result in more of this. My Republican colleagues need to wake up.
⋙ NYT: Rudy Giuliani Plans Ukraine Trip to Push for Inquiries That Could Help Trump http://nyti.ms/2Yj9qZX
🐣 RT @JRubinBlogger a group of elected leaders who uniformly invite foreign intervention in our election should be permanently disqualified from holding office. They have violated their oaths in the most egregious manner possible and cannot be entrusted with power again
⋙ WaPo, Jennifer Rubin: Trump will betray his country — again http://wapo.st/2VumaQt
🐣 RT @RepJerryNadler Yes, that is exactly what makes this a “constitutional crisis” — never before have we had a President stonewall the American people across the board and refuse every effort at holding the Administration accountable.
⋙ 🐣 RT @nytdavidbrooks One amendment to my column today. If Nadler believes the “constitutional crisis” is over Trump’s blanket refusal to cooperate with Congress (rather than the narrow subject of redaction) then is he correct.
🐣 RT @kylegriffin1 House Judiciary Chairman Jerry Nadler on Giuliani’s Ukraine trip: “We have come to a very sorry state when it is considered OK for an American politician, never mind an attorney for the president, to go and seek foreign intervention in American politics.”
⋙ NBCNews: Giuliani says he’s going to Ukraine to meddle in probes in hopes of helping Trump http://nbcnews.to/2JxvWdF
// The Trump lawyer told The New York Times he’s not meddling in an election, “we’re meddling in an investigation.” Democrats called the scheme “immoral.”
WaPo: ‘There was no attempted coup’: FBI’s former top lawyer Jim Baker defends Russia probe http://wapo.st/2HeWv4m
WaPo: House committee subpoenas Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin and IRS Commissioner Charles Rettig over Trump tax returns http://wapo.st/2Vau0K8
🔊 LawFare Podcast: Jim Baker on the Russia Investigation https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-lawfare-podcast/id498897343#episodeGuid=48d907b95e2a4597b2de091e23000a1f Excellent
WaPo, Philip Bump: The Deep State strikes back: Former FBI leaders rebut questions about the Russia investigation http://wapo.st/30csRFG
🐣 RT @tribelaw “Ukraine, if you’re listening . . . Oh, hell, why don’t you just go there and get their help face-to-face, Rudy?” — not a quote from Trump, but sounds about right, doesn’t it?
⋙ NYT: Rudy Giuliani Plans Ukraine Trip to Push for Inquiries That Could Help Trump http://nyti.ms/2VcNlKH
⭕ 9 May 2019
🐣 RT @ColinKahl Echoes of Cheney’s visits to CIA to shape intelligence before the Iraq war.
⋙ NBCNews: Trump’s top intelligence and military advisers held unusual meeting at CIA on Iran, officials say http://nbcnews.to/2vOjbTM
NYT, Paul Krugman: Trump Is Terrible for Rural America http://nyti.ms/2YoCuj0
// His biggest supporters are his biggest victims.
NBCNews, Jonathan Allen: Pelosi’s Trump impeachment approach is coming together http://nbcnews.to/2JuvD3e
// Analysis: The president’s recent actions have helped Pelosi start to resolve the conflicts in her caucus — and unite them around a deliberate, relentless investigative approach.
🐣 RT @matthewamiller This story about the administration firing the ambassador to Ukraine this week after she took on the prosecutor Giuliani has been buddying up to merits a lot more scrutiny in light of tonight’s NYT story.
⋙ ForeignPolicy: U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine Recalled in ‘Political Hit Job,’ Lawmakers Say http://bit.ly/2Ypgi8n
// Marie Yovanovitch stepping down as ambassador follows attacks from both right-wing media figures in the United States and a senior Ukrainian official.
🐣 RT @kylegriffin1 Democrats are considering holding a package of contempt votes in the House and sending them to the courts as a single package, Nancy Pelosi’s spokesman tells NBC News.
⋙ NBCNews: Pelosi: U.S. in constitutional crisis, several contempt charges being weighed http://nbcnews.to/2He2PJp
// “This is very methodical. It’s very Constitution-based,” she said Thursday of the House’s investigative push. “It’s not about pressure — it’s about patriotism.”
🐣 RT @kylegriffin1 Richard Blumenthal on what should be done if Donald Trump Jr. does not comply with the Senate Intelligence Committee subpoena: “If he fails to comply with a lawful subpoena, he has no privilege, prison is the only answer.” @MSNBC
🐣 RT @nytimesworld The two Russian defendants convicted of plotting to overthrow the government of Montenegro are suspected agents of the same Russian spy agency accused of hacking the U.S. presidential election and carrying out a nerve agent attack in England
⋙ NYT: Two Suspected Russian Agents Among 14 Convicted in Montenegro Coup Plot http://nyti.ms2Yincfl/
🐣 RT @AltUSPressSecy “We’re not meddling in an election, we’re meddling in an investigation.” ¤ That sounds illegal because it is. ¤ It’s soliciting illegal foreign campaign contributions by pressuring foreign law enforcement in a country reliant on U.S. aid to fight Russia.
⋙ NYT: Giuliani Plans Ukraine Trip to Push for Inquiries That Could Help Trump http://nyti.ms/2VcNlKH
NYT Editorial: Constitutional Collision Course http://nyti.ms/2HfrHQY
// Is President Trump daring the Democrats to impeach him?
NYT, Michelle Goldberg: If This Is a Constitutional Crisis, Act Like It http://nyti.ms/2Yf5uJC
// Democrats in Congress need to deploy all their powers, including impeachment.
Vox, Ella Nilsen: The tense negotiations over whether Robert Mueller can testify before Congress, explained http://bit.ly/2VWDDka
// Democrats desperately want to hear from Mueller. They fear Trump will block him from testifying.
Politico: Trump goes on a new tear against Mueller http://politi.co/2LNibKH
// The president unloads to reporters about his still-festering irritation with the Russia investigation.
NYT: Trump Suggests Mueller May Testify; Pelosi Declares ‘Constitutional Crisis’ http://nyti.ms/2VrwZmr
🐣 RT @MarshallCohen JUST NOW: @Comey says he believes Trump obstructed justice on at least a few of the 10 episodes that Mueller investigated. And Comey says he agrees with the 800+ former federal prosecutors who said Trump would’ve been charged if not for presidential immunity. #ComeyTownhall
🐣 RT @joshscampbell Good people will debate @Comey’s actions and the impossible decisions he faced, but one thing is clear: he’s an honorable leader. Folks fault him for being “sanctimonious,” but in an era where politicians lie to us daily, perhaps being moored to values isn’t such a bad thing. 💽 https://twitter.com/joshscampbell/status/1126684441353408516/photo/1
CNN: Comey says it’s possible the Russians have something compromising on Trump http://cnn.it/2HcmP0l
Politico: Burr holds firm despite GOP anger over Don Jr. subpoena http://politi.co/2VokeJg
// The Senate Intelligence chairman has no plans to withdraw the subpoena for the president’s son.
🐣 RT @MuellerSheWrote Seems as though @maddow is on board with our feeling that congress should open an impeachment inquiry so they have more leverage to obtain the materials they need as part of their oversight role. Seems @RepAdamSchiff is coming on board, too. #ImpeachmentInquiry
WaPo: Decision to subpoena Donald Trump Jr. sets off a Republican firefight http://wapo.st/307NnHr
CNN: Judge fast-tracks fight over congressional subpoena of Trump financial records http://cnn.it/2DZ8iTs hearing set for May 14
Judge Amit Mehta plans next week to weigh the major legal issues raised in President Donald Trump’s challenge of a congressional subpoena for his accounting firm’s records, according to an order issued Thursday — putting the case on an even faster track than it previously looked to be.
Congress has subpoenaed Trump and his business’ accounting records from the firm Mazars USA, and Trump’s personal legal team sued to stop the records from being turned over.
A hearing is now scheduled for May 14.
📊 Reuters: Americans’ support for impeaching Trump rises: Reuters/Ipsos poll http://reut.rs/2YirNOE 45%, up 5% since mid-April, but “more than half said multiple congressional probes of Trump interfered with important government business”
DailyBeast: Judge Napolitano: Barr’s ‘Foolish Attempt’ to Sanitize Mueller Report Was ‘Dumb and Insulting’ http://bit.ly/30a2qjW
// ‘It was misleading, it was disingenuous, it was even deceptive,’ the Fox News senior judicial analyst said.
WaPo: Trump, Democrats are locked in a constitutional showdown over Mueller’s report http://wapo.st/2JakOE5
NYT: Trump Suggests Mueller May Testify; Pelosi Declares ‘Constitutional Crisis’ http://nyti.ms/2VrwZmr
🐣 RT @JeffMerkley President Trump’s brazen attempts to curtail press access to the White House should alarm us all. This is a direct attack on freedom of the press. This is what authoritarian regimes do. It’s un-American and not representative of our democracy.
🐣 RT @SpeakerPelosi Trump and his Administration’s decision to ignore the oath of office has triggered a constitutional crisis. It’s appalling that the Administration is an obstacle to protecting our elections & getting the truth for the American people. #FreeMueller
⭕ 8 May 2019
🐣 RT @WaltShaub This ludicrous distortion of executive privilege is nothing but a delay tactic. The Mueller report isn’t advice to the President, which is what the privilege is meant to protect. But I guess Trump’s efforts to conceal the report show he finally understands how bad it is for him.
🐣 RT @peterbakernyt Three weeks ago, Hoyer said “impeachment is not worthwhile at this point.” Today he said “if the facts lead us to that objective so be it.” @SherylNYT
⋙ NYT: Facing a Trump Stonewall, Democrats Struggle for Options to Compel Cooperation http://nyti.ms/2DZwW6z
NYT: Facing a Trump Stonewall, Democrats Struggle for Options to Compel Cooperation http://nyti.ms/2DZwW6z
🐣 RT @JamilSmith “Warren is comprehensively treating Trump both as a severe threat to the rule of law in his own right, and as inextricably linked to a deeper pathology — the GOP’s drift into comfort with authoritarianism.” @ThePlumLineGS, with a smart read of the field.
WaPo, Greg Sargent: Only one 2020 Democrat fully grasps the threat Trump poses http://wapo.st/2Ww5YLf
DailyBeast, Hanna Trudo: Former National Security Adviser H.R. McMaster: Some Trump Advisers Are a ‘Danger to the Constitution’ http://bit.ly/2JtBMwu
// In a rare speech, the former national security adviser suggested two distinct groups of advisers are actually acting against the president.
WaPo: Trump, Democrats are locked in a constitutional showdown over Mueller’s report http://wapo.st/2Wypu9E
WaPo, Jennifer Rubin: Trump tries to obliterate the first branch of government http://wapo.st/2DSjAsT
🐣💙 RT @maddowblog Neal Katyal on the special counsel’s “break glass in case of emergency” option: If an A.G. or a president were to try to squelch a special counsel from testifying, the special counsel could resign and then testify. (This appears to be Rep. Nadler’s expectation.) 💽 https://twitter.com/MaddowBlog/status/1126305270492291073/photo/1
// special counsel also should not be employed now in gov, reputation spotless, and older
DailyBeast, David Cay Johnston: Trump’s Tax Leak Hints at Potential Fraud Investigations http://bit.ly/2LG54ee
// Congress must investigate fully now that we know Trump was faking his wealth and may have been vulnerable to foreign espionage and fraudulent money-generating schemes.
🐣 RT @LeahMcElrath Things are going to keep getting worse for at least the next 21 months.
It’s critical to find a place within yourself that empowers you to observe without absorbing.
(I say this to myself too.)
This is hard. ¤ You are not crazy. ¤ You are not alone.
We are our greatest strength.
🐣 RT @CAPaction “The president has stated that his administration will oppose all subpoenas and—in fact—virtually all document requests. Witnesses are refusing to show up at hearings. ¤ This is unprecedented. If allowed to go unchecked, this obstruction means the end of congressional oversight.”[ – @RepJerroldNadler]
💽 https://twitter.com/CAPAction/status/1126132553419767808/photo/1
🐣 RT @SpeakerPelosi Is this what it looks like when you have nothing to hide? #FreeMueller
⋙ NYT: House Panel Approves Contempt for Barr After Trump Claims Privilege Over Full Mueller Report http://nyti.ms/2PQRxP8
🐣 RT @RepAdamSchiff BREAKING: House Intel just subpoenaed DOJ for all counterintelligence and foreign intelligence materials in the probe, the full report, and underlying evidence. ¤ DOJ has responded to our requests with silence and defiance. ¤ Congress needs the material. We will not be obstructed.
📊 Politico/MorningConsult Poll: Little support for Barr’s handling of Mueller report http://politi.co/2JrnEnn
// Fewer than 3 in 10 voters, 29 percent, approve of the way Barr has handled the release of the report, the poll shows.
🐣 RT @maggieNYT Person close to @DonaldJTrumpJr on the Senate Intel subooena
https://twitter.com/maggieNYT/status/1126249005288165378/photo/1
WaPo, Dana Milbank: The White House revoked my press pass. It’s not just me — it’s curtailing access for all journalists. http://wapo.st/2JczaUv
🐣 RT @kylegriffin1 “Could you hold the Secretary of Treasury Steven Mnuchin in contempt? Some Democrats have even raised the prospect of arresting the Treasury Secretary if he does not comply…” ¤ Nancy Pelosi: “We do have a little jail down in the basement of the Capitol.” ¤ Via CSPAN
Axios: Scoop: Senate Intel subpoenas Trump Jr. over Russia matters http://bit.ly/2Lven0a
WaPo: Pelosi says Trump is ‘becoming self-impeachable’ http://wapo.st/2HbQLIR
🐣 RT @rgoodlaw Schiff confirms Trump-Russia intelligence info “is being withheld, and noted that on this matter, there may be a divide among intelligence professionals on one side, and Barr and the White House on the other. ’I think the FBI is willing to be more forthcoming,’ Schiff said.”
⋙ WaPo: Schiff: The case for impeachment hearings is getting stronger http://wapo.st/2Henpt4
Vox, Ella Nilsen: The House Judiciary vote on contempt of Congress and what it means for William Barr, explained http://bit.ly/2PUSA0o
// Democrats will vote on whether to hold the attorney general in contempt of Congress. Here’s how that would work.
Law&Crime: ‘Torture Memos’ Author John Yoo: Trump’s ‘Blanket’ Denial of Congressional Subpoenas Would Be ‘Unprecedented’ http://bit.ly/2V9Nw9D
⭕ 7 May 2019
WaPo: FBI director tells Congress he has no evidence of ‘spying’ on Trump campaign http://wapo.st/2H7UwzU
DailyBeast: DOJ to Ask White House to Invoke Privilege Over Entire Mueller Report http://bit.ly/2VnAevg
// The DOJ has a new plan if the House moves ahead with its session to hold Bill Barr in contempt.
⋙ 🐣 Starting to make me wonder about what’s in those redactions ~ apparently Mueller’s team wasn’t happy with all of them.
🐣 RT @kylegriffin1 Nadler responds to the DOJ: “This is, of course, not how executive privilege works. The White House waived these privileges long ago … The Department’s legal arguments are without credibility, merit, or legal or factual basis. Worse, this kind of obstruction is dangerous.”
🐣 RT @AngryWHStaffer I’ve never seen such partisan bullshit from DOJ. Ever. ¤ DOJ says if Congress holds Barr in contempt, they’re going to recommend the WH invokes privilege over the entire Mueller report… 90% of which is already public, making that threat not only frivolous, but impossible. https://twitter.com/AngrierWHStaff/status/1125965160525520896/photo/1-2
🐣 RT @JohnWDean Trump and the GOP have taken us into the era of “constitutional hardball,” a form of political combat that may destroy our democracy. If you’d not noticed, here is a background article: link Lawfare (2018): http://bit.ly/302AVsv
🐣 RT @tribelaw Read this @JRubinBlogger piece to see what @Mimirocah1, @JoyceWhiteVance, and I agree Barr has all but invited SDNY, the AG of NY, and the Manhattan DA to do to Trump
⋙ WaPo, Jennifer Rubin: Barr has set himself up — and Trump — for embarrassment http://wapo.st/2POOyXs
TheHill: House Democrats threaten salaries of Trump officials who block interviews http://bit.ly/2vJvTmP
“Please be advised that any official at the Department who ‘prohibits or prevents’ or ‘attempts or threatens to prohibit or prevent’ any officer or employee of the Federal Government from speaking with the Committee could have his or her salary withheld pursuant to section 713 of the Financial Services and General Government Appropriations Act,” Cummings wrote in the letters.
WaPo Editorial: The Trump administration is in contempt of Congress http://wapo.st/2LtowKY
NYT, Neil Eggleston and Joshua Geltzer: The Court Handling Trump’s Lawsuit Must Move at Breakneck Speed http://nyti.ms/2JchsAD
// The president deserves his day in court. But the American people deserve that day to come quickly.
NYT Editorial: Sorry, Steve Mnuchin. Congress Has a Right to See Trump’s Tax Returns. The Treasury secretary is defying the law and Supreme Court precedent. http://nyti.ms/2PR8MzX
NYT, Adam Liptak: Clash Between Trump and House Democrats Poses Threat to Constitutional Order http://nyti.ms/2H4KbUg
⭕ 6 May 2019
WaPo, Brian Klaas: It’s time to start impeachment hearings. Today. http://wapo.st/2DTQSYC
// If Donald Trump weren’t president, he’d probably be in jail.
WaPo, Charles Lane: America is facing a legitimacy crisis http://wapo.st/2V9aeil
WaPo, David Kendall: Mueller’s conclusion was a dereliction of his duty http://wapo.st/2V7x0a6
… [T]he failure to draw any conclusion on whether the president obstructed justice was a massive dereliction of the special counsel’s duty, and the report’s explanation of this failure is both incoherent and illogical.
In leaving Barr — who lacks the independence that the special counsel role was designed to preserve — to render judgment on the evidence and the law, Mueller abdicated his duty. Congress should now interview Mueller and his senior staff. Each of the 10 instances of possible obstruction should be reviewed and the following question asked and answered: Allowing for the differences between the president and a private citizen, had analogous conduct been engaged in by the citizen, would a grand jury indictment have been sought for obstruction of justice?
This would provide, albeit belatedly and bootlessly, a knowledgeable and neutral judgment on the president’s conduct during the Russia investigation.
VanityFair, Alison Durkee: Even Trump’s Advisers Are Worried By What He Said About Mueller http://bit.ly/2DW28Uh
Politico: House Republicans want Mueller to testify despite Trump opposition http://politi.co/2vKYW9m
🐣 RT @kylegriffin1 Neal Katyal on letter from 400+ prosecutors: “I’ve never seen anything quite like it … if this were anyone else but a sitting president, this person would be labeled a felon and staring down the barrel of a federal indictment. That is really a remarkable thing.” @TheBeatWithAri
NYT Editorial: Let Robert Mueller Testify http://nyti.ms/2ZTedmu
// Enough with William Barr’s obfuscation.
Politico: Surprised advisers downplay Trump’s tweet about Mueller testimony http://politi.co/2Jn21EI
// But legal experts say a White House effort to block the special counsel from speaking to Congress would lead to ‘uncharted waters.’
NYT, Scott Shane: A Reimagined Spy Museum in Washington Doesn’t Flinch From the Darker Side http://nyti.ms/2H3bzlH
// Built for $162 million, the museum features flashy interactive exhibits but also grapples with intelligence failures, out-of-control surveillance and torture.
🐣 RT @harrylitman From SCOTUS in US v Bryan: “A subpoena has never been treated as an invitn to a game of hare and hounds, in which the witness must testify only if cornered at the end of the chase. If that were the case, then, indeed, the great power of testimonial compulsion would be a nullity.”
NYT: Trump Denies Democrats His Tax Returns and Prepares for a Contempt Showdown http://nyti.ms/2ZWxdRf //➔ correction: “Trump Denies CONGRESS His Tax Returns … ” @nytimes
🐣 RT @tribelaw Watching Cohen go off to prison for crimes that Individual #1 directed him to commit so that Individual #1 could become POTUS — while Individual #1 lounges in the White House disobeying his oath and corrupting everything — just feels so wrong. So not what America is all about.
🐣 RT @AshaRangappa_ The legislative purpose of the law under which the Ways & Means Committee is requesting Trump’s tax returns was passed in the wake of the Teapot Dome scandal — the entire purpose of the law
⋙ 🐣 RT @RVAwonk Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin says the Dept. will not release Trump’s tax returns, arguing that the request by Congress “lacks a legitimate legislative purpose.” Axios link http://bit.ly/302kwUY
TPM/ABC: Report: Barr Still Thinks Mueller Should Testify, Despite Trump’s Opposition http://bit.ly/2GW7Bek
NBCNews: Mnuchin rejects Hill request to hand over Trump tax returns http://nbcnews.to/2H5vPV5
// The Treasury secretary’s move raised the stakes in the fight between the administration and Congress over the documents, making a legal battle to obtain them all but certain.
🐣 RT @kylegriffin1 More than 370 former federal prosecutors who worked in Republican and Democratic administrations have signed on to a statement asserting that Mueller’s findings would have produced obstruction charges against Trump — if not for the office he held.
⋙ WaPo: Trump would have been charged with obstruction were he not president, hundreds of former federal prosecutors assert http://wapo.st/2POwooH
WaPo, Greg Sargent: Trump’s new effort to muzzle Mueller gives away his big scam http://wapo.st/2H4NU4j
CNN, Stephen Collinson: Trump warns presidency is being stolen amid Mueller angst http://cnn.it/2VKcpgt
⭕ 5 May 2019
WaPo: Claiming two years of his presidency were ‘stolen,’ Trump suggests he’s owed overtime http://wapo.st/2VNon99
NBCNews, Kurt Bardella: Trump’s subpoena obstruction has fractured the Constitution’s system of checks and balances http://nbcnews.to/2WmWVfo
// Millions of Americans voted in favor of a stronger check on power by ushering in a new Democratic majority in the House. That mandate is being ignored.
🐣 RT @SethAbramson Curatorial journalism is coming to the Mueller Report—and when it does, America will discover counterintelligence connections in the Report that lay bare the entire Kremlin strategy for gaining influence over Trump’s Russia policy during the election. I’m writing the summary now.
Law&Crime, Alberto Luperon: There’s Nothing Trump Can Do to Stop Mueller from Testifying http://bit.ly/2PQ6wJ4
RCP: CNN’s Brian Stelter: Donald Trump Is The Infowars President; “Fear-Mongering And Conspiracy Theorizing” http://bit.ly/2DSHtAr
EmptyWheel, Marcy Wheeler: Why Didn’t Mueller Hold Counterintelligence Suspect Mike Flynn Responsible for Sanctions Call? http://bit.ly/2Vij5CX
// There’s a problem with the way the Mueller Report describes events pertaining to Mike Flynn.
Salon, Travis Gettys: Mueller report says “thorough FBI investigation” might have implicated Trump in criminal conspiracy http://bit.ly/2H6fTAK
// One section offers a strong suggestion that Mueller believed he was investigating a possible criminal conspiracy
RollingStone, Peter Wade: Trump’s Trying to Poison the Jury (AKA the Electorate) for Mueller’s Testimony http://bit.ly/2VLhGEl
// The president is back to attacking Mueller and his team as “Trump Hating Angry Democrats”
NYMag, Jonathan Chait: Trump Scared to Let Robert Mueller Testify, Despite ‘Exoneration’ http://nym.ag/2Wrd0kl
NewYorker, Jeannie Suk Gerson: Robert Mueller’s and William Barr’s “Baby” and the History of Presidential Obstruction http://bit.ly/2Wq9lmJ
🐣 RT @neal_katyal Great piece: “This early in our current process, it is a mistake to presume that no Republican lawmaker…will,,,vote against Mr. Trump….televised hearings would demonstrate that Mr. Trump not only lacks respect for the rule of law, but for Congress”
⋙ NYT, James Reston: Trump’s Other Impeachable Offense http://nyti.ms/2POxWiP
// As Nixon learned, Congress will not abide a president who defies its subpoenas.
🐣 RT @johnwdean johnwdean Trump would love a world war because he thinks it would help him get re-elected. Problem is this dumbo could blow up the planet!
⋙ 🐣 RT @JohnWDean Meanwhile … https://twitter.com/jonathanvswan/status/1125204882259161090/photo/1
// U.S. sends carrier group as “message” to Iran
🐣 ◕ RT @mattyglesias The precise moment when Trump took over and fixed the economy https://twitter.com/mattyglesias/status/1125149747344441344/photo/1
// jobs added chart; non-farm payrolls, nonfarm payrolls
🐣 The Public Option is really Obamacare. Medicare-For-All is a contradiction in terms. Medicare is designed so you pay into it for 50 yrs, then get benefits. To access Medicare now, you’d pay-as-you-go, like any other plan on the exchanges (though it wld be federally administered).
🐣 The two “radical” ideas I’m behind this election cycle are: 1. @ewarren’s wealth tax to address Inequality, and 2. major action on Climate Change. Both address existential threats. Apart from that, I’m an Obama/Biden Democrat.
◕ Forbes: Two Charts Show Trump’s Job Gains Are Just A Continuation From Obama’s Presidency http://bit.ly/2Yb3mT9 https://twitter.com/Auriandra/status/1125220275224764417/photo/1-2
// 10/30/2018, jobs, unemployment
WaPo: In reversal, Trump says Mueller ‘should not testify’ before Congress http://wapo.st/2H4gTXd
WaPo: House Democrat says Mueller and Judiciary Committee tentatively agree on May 15 for his testimony on Russia investigation http://wapo.st/2H2Q719
// Rep. David N. Cicilline (D-R.I.)
⭕ 4 May 2019
Lawfare, Jack Goldsmith: Thoughts on Barr and the Mueller Report http://bit.ly/2PLXsFj
🐣 RT @AshaRangappa_ Great piece by @john_sipher — and especially in light of Trump’s pooty call yesterday, a great primer on the national security threat that was underlying, but not explicit, in Mueller’s report
⋙ TheAtlantic, John Sipher: The Russia Investigation Will Continue http://bit.ly/2VgZ9R8
// Sipher is a “Retired 28-year veteran of the CIA’s National Clandestine Service”; Counterintelligence agencies must find it hard to believe the cupboard is already bare.
NBCNews, Fred Wertheimer: Nancy Pelosi has set House Democrats on a road that may lead to Trump’s impeachment http://nbcnews.to/2DPU3jZ
// Today’s House investigation of Trump mirrors the initial approach taken by the Senate Watergate Committee — with a few key differences.
🐣 RT @oneunderscore_ [Ben Collins] The president this morning retweeted:
– An overt Qanon account tweeting a conspiracy between Islam and “the elites”
– A white nationalist who once shot road flares out of a boat toward immigrants trying to enter Europe
– An InfoWars video; two tweets from an InfoWars reporter
🐣 RT @JohnWDean If Trump starts investigating the investigators — meaning Mueller & Co. — the policy of not indicting a sitting president must be canceled. Trump should be indicted for obstruction of justice — which is ongoing. Do it by every attorney in the DOJ walking out if it is not done!
Newsweek: Adam Schiff Says Donald Trump ‘Betrays Our National Security’ After President Discussed ‘Russian Hoax’ With Putin http://bit.ly/2VdcXMm
CNN: DOJ attorneys defend Mueller’s ability to investigate Trump in Roger Stone filing http://cnn.it/2vCZDSr
WaPo: ‘Investigate the investigators’ is new Trump rallying cry to counter Mueller report http://wapo.st/2Jj5dB9
⭕ 3 May 2019
NYPost: Trump appears at odds with aides over Russia’s role in Venezuela http://nyp.st/2YbaNKd
NYT, Liam Brennan: The Truth About ‘Spying’ on the Trump Campaign http://nyti.ms/2LphAi0
// The counterintelligence methods used by the F.B.I. are common — and were a legitimate response to reports of Russian interference.
Politico, Kyle Cheney: Prosecutors: No need to prove Russian conspiracy to charge Stone with obstruction http://politi.co/2Y0HvxM
Vox, Li Zhou: Trump and Putin talked about the Mueller report — but not Russian meddling in 2020 http://bit.ly/2ZWAPm1
// It’s the latest example of Trump’s reluctance to acknowledge Russian interference.
💽 MSNBC, TheBeatWithAri: Mueller Insider: He will reveal Trump’s criminal obstruction http://on.msnbc.com/2PL42Md
// Bob Mueller’s team is speaking directly to the House Judiciary committee about potential congressional testimony just days after Trump’s Attorney General Bill Barr trashed the Mueller report, ripped Mueller’s work and slammed his professionalism.
DailyBeast: Trump’s New Favorite Network Embraces Russian Propaganda http://bit.ly/2vEO25k
// One America News Network has no qualms with playing the mouthpiece for Kremlin-hatched conspiracy theories. And one of its most loyal viewers lives in the White House
DailyBeast, Justin Baragona: Trump Gave Putin ‘Green Light’ to Meddle in 2020 Election, Ex-FBI Boss Says http://bit.ly/2IZ2628
// ‘It’s troubling to think the president is finding comfort in our adversary,’ former FBI Assistant Director for Counterintelligence Frank Figliuzzi said on MSNBC.
TheAtlantic, David Graham: Trump’s Surreal Phone Call With Vladimir Putin http://bit.ly/2Y5HSqW
// Once more, the president has failed to press the Russian president on electoral interference.
WaPo, Max Boot: This nation is at the mercy of a criminal administration http://wapo.st/2vCdZCz
🐣 RT @Evan_McMullin Here the President flaunts the danger he and the Russians pose to our democracy. He believes he’s free to embrace this foreign enemy and signal his consent for its illegal assistance because he won’t be held accountable. It’s up to all of us and Congress to ensure he’s wrong. link to https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1124359594418032640
WaPo, Aaron Blake: Trump echoes Putin on Venezuela — and contradicts his own secretary of state http://wapo.st/2Lmeawo
WaPo: Trump says he and Putin discussed outcome of Mueller probe as part of hour-long phone conversation http://wapo.st/2VCNwDq
WaPo: Watergate had the Nixon tapes. Mueller had Annie Donaldson’s notes. http://wapo.st/2LmX9SQ
⭕ 2 May 2019
Slate Ben Mathis-Lilley: A Republican Senator Gave the Best Explanation Yet of Why Mueller’s Report Doesn’t “Exonerate” Trump http://bit.ly/2JjHfG2 Ben Sasse (R-NE)
Slate, Dahlia Lithwick: Mueller Can’t Get Away With Silence Anymore http://bit.ly/2Y971Ro
// The rift between the special counsel and Attorney General William Barr is too obvious to ignore.
TheAtlantic, Quinta Jurecic: All of the Impeachable Offenses http://bit.ly/2ZVISzD
// Focusing on the Mueller report alone risks leaving out the obvious.
BBC, Anthony Zurcher: Mueller report: Five looming legal battles between Congress and Trump http://bbc.in/2Wp17eJ
🐣 RT @HouseJudiciary [Dems] The challenge we face is that if we don’t stand up to @realDonaldTrump together, today, then we risk forever losing the power to stand up to any President in the future.
🐣 RT @SpeakerPelosi Nobody is above the law – especially not the attorney general. AG Barr’s decision to lie to Congress is deadly serious. #NoOneAboveTheLaw
TheAtlantic, Benjamin Wittes: The Catastrophic Performance of Bill Barr http://bit.ly/2VHBCYX
// The attorney general misled the public in seven key ways.
WaPo: Trump finds in Barr the attorney general — and shield — he long sought http://wapo.st/2GMMmLW
🐣 RT @selectedwisdom FBI: 1) knows Russia hacked 2) receives intel Aussies about Russia, emails, Trump campaign member 3) Manafort becomes campaign manager from nowhere 4) former target Russia intel shows up on Trump campaign & in Moscow – this is what the FBI should do
⋙ NYT: F.B.I. Sent Investigator Posing as Assistant to Meet With Trump Aide in 2016 http://nyti.ms/2GUI31h
// Papadapoulos
Politico: White House lawyer Emmet Flood mocks Mueller report as ‘law school exam paper’ http://bit.ly/2WfRsaa
// letter dated 4/19/2019; In a five-page letter, a top White House lawyer argued that Trump should be able to stop officials from talking to Congress about the report. http://politi.co/
Flood took issue specifically with the 182-page section of the report that detailed a dozen instances in which Trump might have obstructed justice. He blasted the document for laying “raw evidentiary material combined with its own inclusive observations on the arguable legal significance of the gathered content.”
“This species of public report has no basis in the relevant regulation and no precedent in the history of special/independent counsel investigations,” Flood wrote.
He also questioned the notion suggested by “some commentators” that Mueller’s work was in effect a guide for congressional investigators with the power to impeach Trump, arguing that the special counsel in his capacity as a temporary DOJ official “should not be in the business of creating ‘road maps’ for the purpose of transmitting them” to Congress.
CNN, Stephen Collinson: Barr ensures Congress can’t stop Trump now http://cnn.it/2vzyMXj
⭕ 1 May 2019
AP, Michael Balsamo: Trump depicted in Mueller report feared being called a fraud http://bit.ly/2Vnj9Sh
NYT Editorial: Bob Mueller’s Extraordinary Letter to Bill Barr http://nyti.ms/2Jb0WzJ
// The special counsel publicly upbraided the attorney general for his sketchy summary of the Trump investigation.
🐣 RT @kylegriffin1 Chris Wallace: Some opinion people who appear on this network, who may be pushing a political agenda. But, you know, we have to deal in facts. And the fact is that this letter from the special counsel … was a clear indication that the [special counsel] was upset, very upset.
🐣 RT @AshaRangappa_ Barr denies that report was intended for Congress. Mueller literally says in his report that his investigation was to gather facts while evidence was available and memories were fresh IN ORDER THAT IT MAY BE USED IN A CONGRESSIONAL IMPEACHMENT PTOCEEDING OR FUTURE PROSECUTION
🐣 RT @JoyceWhiteVance Barr, responding to Sen Blackburn, says all of the allegations about Trump & Russia have been proven false. This isn’t true. Mueller only said investigation DID NOT ESTABLISH a conspiracy & discussed difficulty obtaining testimony because of 5th amendment/misleading or lying etc.
🐣 RT @Yamiche Senator Hirono laying into AG Barr saying: You used every advantage of your office to make it seem like President Trump was cleared. You put the power of your office behind a “public relations” push for President Trump. You lied to Congress. ¤ “You knew you lied and now we know.”
🐣 RT @lawrence Warning: watching this video or retweeting it could upset Lindsey Graham. A lot.
⋙ 🐣 RT @TheLastWord .@Lawrence caught Lindsey Graham complaining about FBI officials saying the same negative things about Donald Trump in 2016 that Lindsey Graham was saying about Donald Trump in 2016. #lastword #msnbc
💽 https://twitter.com/TheLastWord/status/1123785826574446594/photo/1
💙💙 Politico: Clinton: ‘China, if you’re listening, why don’t you get Trump’s tax returns?’ http://politi.co/2XVxz8E
// Turnabout, she hypothetically suggests to MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow, might be fair play.
🐣 💙💙 RT @sbg1 [Susan Glasser] AG Barr now admits under questioning from Sen Durbin that he had already been working on decision saying Trump did not commit obstruction — before receiving the Mueller report or having anyone look at it.
🐣 RT @JRubinBlogger Now we know that although Mueller raised a red flag in writing with Barr, the attorney general and Deputy Attorney General Rod J. Rosenstein proceeded with a news conference that was even more outrageously partisan than the letter
⋙ WaPo, Jennifer Rubin: Now we know why William Barr is afraid to face House Democrats http://wapo.st/2VDsoNk
TheBulwark, Charlie Sykes: We Should Not Have Been Surprised About Bill Barr http://bit.ly/2UXjVjr
// William Safire had his number 27 years ago.
WaPo, AaronBlake: William Barr’s ‘snitty’ slip-up gives away his game http://wapo.st/2WiDrsp
🐣 RT @okayblu_ @CNN @donlemon chyron says Mueller asked Barr to release his summaries FIVE times.
🐣 RT @selectedwisdom Could someone ask AG Barr, “if no collusion & no reason for FBI to start an investigation with regards to Russia & Trump campaign, could you offer what indicators of foreign influence of a Presidential campaign would prompt a preliminary inquiry or full investigation by FBI?”
⋙ 🐣 If a Dem does it, investigate. If GOP does it, don’t. Easy as pie.
♡ ི•̮͡• ᤢ ྀ ♡
🐣 RT @maddowblog Here is Hillary Clinton’s hypothetical about a candidate calling on China to hack Trump’s taxes, and why Republicans putting partisanship over national security is a dangerous thing. 💽 https://twitter.com/MaddowBlog/status/1123772841814560769/photo/1
// China, if you’re listening
WIRED, Garrett Graff: Trump’s World Still Faces 16 Known Criminal Probes http://bit.ly/2Vz4enf
1. The 2016 Russian election attack
2. Wikileaks
3. Middle Eastern influence
4. Paul Manafort’s activities
5. The Trump Tower Moscow project
6. Russia-Trump Campaign contacts
7. Presidential obstruction of jusice
8. Campaign finance violations and Trump Organization finances
9. Inauguration funding
10. SuperPAC funding
11. Foreign lobbying violations
12. Russian spy Maria Butina
13. Russian Internet Research Agency accountant Elena Alekseevna Khusyaynova
14. Turkish influence
15. Trump Organization tax fraud
16. Trump Foundation fraud
17. Violations of the emoluments clause
WaPo: William Barr has shamelessly corrupted the debate over the Mueller report http://wapo.st/2UUQWgm
WaPo, Editorial: William Barr torched his reputation. His testimony compounded the damage. http://wapo.st/2IVUmhw
💙💙 DailyBeast, Michael Tomasky: The GOP’s Just a Racket Now, and Trump Is Its Godfather, Barr Its Wartime Consigliere http://bit.ly/2PDzdZI
// We see now with a new and oddly liberating clarity that these next 18 months may well be the most consequential and frightening time in living history.
NYT: William Barr Hearing: Highlights of His Testimony http://nyti.ms/2PIY0fe
NYT: Barr Defends Handling of Mueller Report Against Withering Rebukes http://nyti.ms/2LjJSdB
🐣 If the Mueller Report is Barr’s “baby,” he performed a late-term abortion.
🐣 RT @tribelaw ”Of course, to stay, you must be seen as on his team, so you make further compromises. You use his language, praise his leadership, tout his commitment to values.
And then you are lost. He has eaten your soul.”
⋙ NYT: James Comey: How Trump Co-opts Leaders Like Bill Barr http://nyti.ms/2GMF8Yn //➔ Barr was rotten to start with
// Accomplished people lacking inner strength can’t resist the compromises necessary to survive this president.
DailyBeast: Mueller Asked Barr Twice to Release Report’s Summaries http://bit.ly/2ISu6EA
🐣 Barr didn’t want to put out Mueller’s summaries because he knew people would read them, whereas few people have lives where they can drop everything and read a 440-page report. Plus it bought time.
🐣 RT @AshaRangappa_ Barr is once again gaslighting in front of Congress. By claiming that he had a “responsibility” to determine whether the president committed obstruction, he is flouting the basis for Mueller not doing so in the first place: DOJ policy not to indict a POTUS. So is he repealing it?
NYT: Trump Wants to Block Deutsche Bank From Sharing His Financial Records http://nyti.ms/2J9d84i
≣ WaPo: Special Counsel Mueller’s letter to Attorney General Barr [ pdf ] http://wapo.st/2J8w6ru
WaPo, Amber Phillips: 6 questions Congress should ask Attorney General Barr about the Mueller report http://wapo.st/2UVI5Lb
🐣 RT @JoyceWhiteVance Mueller’s letter seems to say he believed Barr’s actions damaged the public’s confidence in DOJ (of which the Special Counsel is a part). In no other administration could Barr stay on as AG. But with this one, it’s almost a qualification for the position.
WaPo: ‘I don’t know’: Barr’s professed ignorance prompts calls for his resignation after Mueller letter http://wapo.st/2vxwvf2
🐣 RT @BillKristol We at Republicans for the Rule of Law worked to protect the Mueller investigation, and he produced a report whose veracity is unchallenged. With his letter, Mueller made a final effort to safeguard the truth. It’s now up to Congress to consider his findings without fear or favor. 💙 💽 https://twitter.com/BillKristol/status/1123531819440328710/photo/1
🐣 Apart from “context, nature, and substance,” what’s left?
1. nature: the basic or inherent features of something, especially when seen as characteristic of it.
2. A matter of substance, as distinguished from a matter of form, with respect to pleadings, affidavits, indictments, and other legal instruments, entails the essential sufficiency, validity, or merits of the instrument, as opposed to its method or style.
≣💙💙 AP: Text of special counsel’s letter to attorney general http://bit.ly/2WjoZAn
// Mueller letter March 27, 2019
I previously sent you a letter dated March 25, 2019, that enclosed the introduction and executive summary for each volume of the Special Counsel’s report marked with redactions to remove any information that potentially could be protected by Federal Rule of Criminal Procedure that concerned declination decisions; or that related to a charged case. We also had marked an additional two sentences for review and have now confirmed that these sentences can be released publicly.
Accordingly, the enclosed documents are in a form that can be released to the public consistent with legal requirements and Department policies. I am requesting that you provide these materials to Congress and authorize their public release at this time.
As we stated in our meeting of March 5 and reiterated to the Department early in the afternoon of March 24, the introductions and executive summaries of our two-volume report accurately summarize this Office’s work and conclusions. The summary letter the Department sent to Congress and released to the public late in the afternoon of March 24 did not fully capture the context, nature, and substance of this Office’s work and conclusions. We communicated that concern to the Department on the morning of March 25. There is new public confusion about critical aspects of the results of our investigation. This threatens to undermine a central purpose for which the Department appointed the Special Counsel: to assure full public confidence in the outcome of the investigations. See Department of Justice, Press Release (May 17, 2017).
While we understand that the Department is reviewing the full report to determine what is appropriate for public release — a process that our Office is working with you to complete — that process need not delay release of the enclosed materials. Release at this time would alleviate the misunderstandings that have arisen and would answer congressional and public questions about the nature and outcome of our investigation. It would also accord with the standard for public release of notifications to Congress cited in your letter. See 28 C.F.R. 609(c) (“the Attorney General may determine that public release” of congressional notifications “would be in the public interest.”).
Sincerely yours,
Robert S. Mueller, III
Special Counsel
⭕ 30 Apr 2019
Newsweek: Hitler Was Incompetent and Lazy—and His Nazi Government Was an Absolute Clown Show http://bit.ly/2VW2hSF
TheMoscowProject: Trump’s Russia Cover-Up By the Numbers – 251 contacts with Russia-linked operatives http://bit.ly/2ycY959
💙💙 CNN: 77 lies and falsehoods Mueller called out http://cnn.it/2J3VOxg
🐣 RT @neal_katyal Bill is right. The whole point of the Special Counsel regulations was to provide the public with confidence about an independent investigation, and to force sunlight if the AG tried to interfere. We know the latter has happened. There is only one branch of govt now that can act.
⋙ 🐣 RT @BillKristol Mueller’s report, read without Barr’s coloring, invites the House at least to consider impeachment. Now that Barr’s coloring has been, as it were, erased, how can the House avoid its responsibility? What’s at this point to be gained by trying fastidiously to avoid the dread word?
DailyBeast: Schiff Hires Ex-Chief of FBI Financial Crimes Section as House Intel Probes Trump’s Finances http://bit.ly/2VAQloj
// Patrick Fallon jumps from the upper echelon of the bureau to Congress as Democrats ramp up investigations of president’s finances.
🐣 RT @kylegriffin1 Fmr. acting U.S. solicitor general Neal Katyal: “We are seeing interference by the attorney general becoming a matter of public record … everything Barr has done has now set up Congress to investigate … they have no choice.” @TheLastWord
DailyBeast, Rick Wilson: Bill Barr’s Not Your Average Trump Stooge. He’s 100 Times Worse. Will Democrats Do Anything About It? http://bit.ly/2PI5jno
// Bob Mueller found out the hard way that the attorney general isn’t the average Trump stooge. Time is running dangerously short, and Democrats still don’t get it.
🐣 RT @Delavegalaw I have no illusions that Barr will be charged with making a false statement to Congress in violation of 18 USC 1001. But it was helpful of him to answer in a full sentence. “I don’t know whether Mueller supported my conclusion” stands on its own as a knowingly false statement.
Salon, Bob Cesca: Robert Mueller wasn’t Superman: Straight-arrow prosecutor no match for Trump crime family http://bit.ly/2JcEndU
// Bill Maher is right: We needed a direct assault on the criminal in the White House and got legalistic nuance
Returning to the word “exploitative” for a moment, this is perhaps the best way to describe how Barr and Trump handled Mueller in the end. Surely by design rather than by coincidence, they each exploited Mueller’s even-keeled Boy Scout reputation. They were too easily able to superimpose their own spin on Mueller’s report, thanks to his inability to clearly define the upshot of his probe for the benefit of increasingly distracted American voters. As a quick glance at social media will more than confirm, we’re not wired for nuance in this country. Not any more. Nuance allows those without moral compasses to sashay between the collapsing rubble, rocket-launching a sortie of lies several times around the world before the truth gets its pants on. It’s happening more often these days and the lies are kicking nuance’s ass.
Incapable of X-ray vision and superhuman strength, Mueller seems to have proceeded with an anachronistic sense of normalcy, as if his investigation were happening in the shadow of a normal president, as if Trump weren’t on the verge of a Putin-style power grab, as if the congressional Republicans hadn’t devolved into nothing more than party-first whores for Trump.
Vox: Mueller to Attorney General Barr: You “did not fully capture” my report http://bit.ly/2vwpM5m
// For the soft-spoken special counsel, that is quite the statement.
🐣 RT @BillKristol Mueller’s report, read without Barr’s coloring, invites the House at least to consider impeachment. Now that Barr’s coloring has been, as it were, erased, how can the House avoid its responsibility? What’s at this point to be gained by trying fastidiously to avoid the dread word?
🐣 RT @joshtpm JustSecurity just released AG Barr’s prepared remarks for tomorrow’s testimony. He doubles down on his claim that he was obliged to short circuit presenting the report for Congress’s by declaring President Trump innocent.
Text Block: https://twitter.com/joshtpm/status/1123440686953586695/photo/1
⋙ JustSecurity: Unsealed Documents in Special Counsel Mueller’s Investigation [Updated] http://bit.ly/2GKcaZg
⋙⋙ pdf: http://bit.ly/2Y3WC9Z
🐣 RT @BescholossDC Nixon’s Attorney General, John Mitchell, was convicted and went to prison for perjury, conspiracy and obstruction of justice.
https://twitter.com/BeschlossDC/status/1123380268381896704/photo/1
🐣 RT @tribelaw In Mueller v. Barr, my money is on Mueller.
🐣 RT @CitizenWonk Rosenberg on Mueller Barr letter: ‘You don’t go to paper lightly’ http://dlvr.it/R3qtw0 https://twitter.com/CitizenWonk/status/1123446489005555712/photo/1
🐣 RT @MuellerSheWrote “The T is in brackets. That means the whole front part of that sentence is missing. I’ll bet you a million Beans the full sentence begins with ‘although’.”
TextBlock: https://twitter.com/MuellerSheWrote/status/1123378806587183104/photo/1
// Deceptive editing
🐣 RT @NicoleDWallace The debate about the politics of impeachment being bad for democrats blows my mind – imagine if impeachment were viewed as politically popular- Dems would be accused of commencing impeachment hearings for political gain. Dems should take politics out and do the right thing.
🐣 Now I understand: It wasn’t a golf simulator Trump had installed in the White House ( WaPo: http://wapo.st/2IRvtDl ) ~ It was a guillotine. Explains both Rosenstein and Barr.
🐣 RT @tribelaw We now know why the legendary Bill Safire years ago called Bill Barr the “Coverup General.”
🐣 RT @DanRather We need to hear from Mueller, in person, directly, and in full. Full stop.
Politico, Natasha Bertrand et al: Mueller complained to Barr about Russia report memo http://politi.co/2DCjTaT
DailyBeast, Erin Banco and Sam Stein: Mueller’s Willing to Testify, but Trump DOJ Is Holding It Up: Dems http://bit.ly/2Y1nNCf
// The special counsel has indicated he’s fine going up the Hill. But the Trump administration is getting in the way, Dems say.
🐣 RT @HouseJudiciary JUST IN: @HouseJudiciary Chairman @RepJerryNadler Statement on Mueller’s Letter to the Attorney General.
⋙ Medium, House Judiciary Dems: Chairman Nadler’s Statement on Mueller’s Letter to the Attorney General http://bit.ly/2J2zYKN
🐣 .@SpeakerPelosi It’s time.
🐣 RT @yamichealcindor Department of Justice Spokesperson Kerri Kupec’s lengthy response to Mueller letter news. https://twitter.com/Yamiche/status/1123381631736340481/photo/1
🐣 RT @SpeakerPelosi Attorney General Barr misled the public and owes the American people answers. It’s time for DOJ to release the full report & all underlying docs — and finally allow Mueller to testify. Americans deserve the facts. Barr must stop standing in the way.
🐣 RT @SenSchumer In light of Mueller’s letter, the misleading nature of Barr’s 4/10 testimony & 4/18 press conference is even more glaring. ¤ Barr must bring the letter with him when he testifies in the Senate tomorrow. ¤ And it’s time for Mueller to testify publicly. Now.
🐣 RT @RepCummings Barr misled Congress and the American people to protect the President. ¤ There must be consequences. ¤ We must see the letter, get the full report and docs, and hear directly from Mueller.
🐣 RT @selectedwisdom There you have it. Makes sense that Mueller would take issue. Barr’s characterization didn’t match the report. And really makes me question what happened with Rosenstein
⋙ 💙💙 NYT: Mueller Objected to Barr’s Description of Russia Investigation’s Findings on Trump http://nyti.ms/2ZNAceE
🐣 RT @RepJerryNadler I note with interest AG Barr’s 4/10 Senate testimony. “Q: Did Bob Mueller support your conclusion? A: I don’t know whether Bob Mueller supported my conclusion.” Now it appears that Mueller objected in this 3/27 letter.
⋙ 🐣 RT @ 🐣 RT @RepJerryNadler Mueller has written a letter objecting to Barr’s summary of his report because it “did not fully capture the context, nature and substance of the investigation.” I have demanded the letter & Barr must answer for this. Mueller must be allowed to testify.
⋙ ⋙ 🔆 This❗️⋙ 💙💙 WaPo: Mueller told the attorney general that the depiction of his findings failed to capture ‘context, nature, and substance’ of probe http://wapo.st/2IO0Dvm
⭕ 29 Apr 2019
JustSecurity, Ryan Goodman (Apr): Guide to the Mueller Report’s Findings on “Collusion” http://bit.ly/2Ku9PVF
// 4/29/2019
Politico, Natasha Bertrand: Mueller report reveals Kushner’s contacts with a ‘pro-Kremlin’ campaign adviser http://politi.co/2DDoN7D
// Dimitri Simes, who runs a Washington think tank, offered advice on Russia policy and even peddled rumors about the Clintons.
TheAtlantic, Benjamin Wittes: Five Things I Learned From the Mueller Report http://bit.ly/2WcG1jJ
// A careful reading of the dense document delivers some urgent insights.
⭕ 28 Apr 2019
🐣 RT @davidaxelrod Former acting AG @SallyQYates didn’t hold back on @MeetThePress: In her 30 yrs as prosecutor, Yates said, she tried cases of obstruction on far less evidence than case laid out by Mueller against @POTUS. Were he not president, Yates said, Trump likely would’ve been indicted.
NBCNews, MTP: Full Sally Yates: ‘Robert Mueller paints a devastating portrait’ http://nbcnews.to/2GPA0UB
// In an exclusive interview with Meet the Press, Former United States Deputy Attorney General, Sally Yates, talks to Andrea Mitchell about the Special Counsel’s investigation into obstruction of justice over the Russia investigation.
💽 RollingStone, Peter Wade: Watch Hillary Clinton Read the Mueller Report Aloud, Including Trump’s ‘I’m F-cked’ Quote http://bit.ly/2WhjPFa
// “It would take a long time to record that… It would take lots and lots of lozenges,” she said of recording an audiobook of the document
WaPo: Attorney general may withdraw from Mueller report hearing over terms of his testimony, House Democrats say http://wapo.st/2GMCLoq
NYT: Barr Threatens Not to Testify Before House, but Democrats May Subpoena Him http://nyti.ms/2INA7SU
💙💙 DailyBeast, Mimi Rocah and Renato Mariotti: If Trump Weren’t President, He Would Already Be Charged http://bit.ly/2UYPxdz
// The Mueller Report contains a case against the president as strong as many we saw working as federal prosecutors.
⭕ 27 Apr 2019
WaPo: Trump views the Supreme Court as an ally, sowing doubt about its independence among his critics http://wapo.st/2IL4xp3
DailyBeast, Sam Brodey and Betsy Woodruff: Trump’s Stonewalling Pushes House Democrats Towards Impeachment http://bit.ly/2GMDzLf
// “Trump’s opacity is moving some members into the impeachment camp,” one Democratic lawmaker tells The Daily Beast. “Translation: it’s always the cover-up that gets ‘em.”
⭕ 26 Apr 2019
WaPo, Steve Vladeck: Trump isn’t just defying Congress. He’s rejecting the whole idea of oversight. http://wapo.st/2DyniaH
NYT: FBI Warns of Russian Interference in 2020 Race and Boosts Counterintelligence Operations http://nyti.ms/2GKsaLV
🔆 This❗️⋙ WaPo: ‘I can land the plane’: How Rosenstein tried to mollify Trump, protect Mueller and save his job http://wapo.st/2UHq6rX
CBSNews: Trump’s comments after Mueller report release could be used by Congress http://cbsn.ws/2vpK0gZ
🐣 RT @MuellerSheWrote Open an impeachment INQUIRY. That way, you can GET THE GRAND JURY MATERIALS under rule 6e. If you don’t have enough, you DONT HAVE TO IMPEACH. If you do not even TRY, you send a message to future presidents and our enemies that we DONT CARE if you steal our elections.
NYMag, Andrew Sullivan: The Appeasement of Donald Trump http://nym.ag/2GB66SY
EmptyWheel, Marcy Wheeler: Why Did Mueller Include the June 9 Meeting Statement in His Obstruction Case? http://bit.ly/2DAF9y5
TheBulwark, Charlie Sykes: Did Trump’s Attempts to Obstruct Actually Work? http://bit.ly/2VtQ6eT
// Let’s go to the report.
DailyBeast, Betsy Woodruff: Russian Agent Maria Butina Sentenced to 18 Months in Prison: ‘I Destroyed My Own Life’ http://bit.ly/2GLbyE6
// The government says she illegally courted U.S. figures, including conservatives and NRA leaders, on behalf of Moscow.
CNN, John Avlon: The intriguing leads and compelling questions buried in the Mueller report http://cnn.it/2IVEDxW
💙💙 NYRB, Murray Waas: Mueller Prosecutors: Trump Did Obstruct Justice http://bit.ly/2PvVadb
Vox, Andrew Prokop: How to get away with obstructing justice https://tinyurl.com/y3bqfyk5
// What President Trump did — and didn’t do — according to the Mueller report’s second volume.
🐣 RT @ZemanLynnZ So these are Conservative Values now @JohnCornyn ?
https://twitter.com/ZemanLynnZ/status/1121442391175471104/photo/1
// Trump values
Newsweek, Brian Ott: Unwitting or Not, Donald Trump is Still Complicit in Russia’s Attack on America http://bit.ly/2UGQL87
Politico: The fight to unveil Mueller’s final mysteries http://politi.co/2IKXwUV
// Redacted passages could shed light on who Donald Trump asked to look into WikiLeaks’ plans, or what happened after Donald Trump Jr. rejected a voluntary interview with Mueller.
⭕ 25 Apr 2019
CNN, Julian Zelizer: Trump’s stonewalling of Congress is a constitutional crisis http://cnn.it/2IVb6EA
Politico: ‘He needs to let it go’: Trump’s allies urge him to shut up about Mueller http://politi.co/2VxitbU
WaPo: Rosenstein fires back at critics over Mueller report http://wapo.st/2ZKKQD0
WaPo: George Conway slammed Trump as ‘Deranged Donald,’ and a new nickname was born http://wapo.st/2DB6PTd
Politico: Trump: Russia investigations an attempted ‘coup’ http://politi.co/2GHu4Nk
WaPo: Stymied by aides, Trump sought out loyalist to curtail special counsel — and drew Mueller’s glare http://wapo.st/2ZCd7vd
WaPo, Eric Wemple: How Fox News distorts the news: A Mueller case study http://wapo.st/2UYKtWo
🐣 RT @joshtpm Trump: “The biggest problem with Mueller …He didn’t mention Strzok & Mccabe & Comey & the lies and the leaks and overthrow and the whole thing with the Hillary Clinton got a win 100 million to 1 two lovers, two sick lovers, especially the one. I mean, these were like children.” 💽 https://twitter.com/joshtpm/status/1121613325610160128/photo/1
⋙ Anyone remember when Ivan goes insane in The Brothers Karamasov? You can only understand it if you’ve read the book up to that point.
DailyBeast, Asawin Suebsaeng: ‘Gonna Give Them Hell’: How Trump and His Lawyers Plotted for Months to Make Democrats Pay http://bit.ly/2DxukNe
// It’s what President Trump wanted to do all along anyway.
DailyBeast, Justin Baragona: Trump to Hannity: Russia Investigation ‘Was a Coup’ and ‘Attempted Overthrow’ of Government http://bit.ly/2Zwjgcx
// In the same breath, the president boasts about how his 2017 Obama wiretapping claims ‘blew up’ while admitting they were based only on a ‘little bit of a hunch.’
NYT, Elizabeth Drew: The Danger in Not Impeaching Trump http://nyti.ms/2Zz59Db
// It may be risky politically, but Congress has a responsibility to act.
🐣 RT @costareports In conversations today w/ several Trump advisers, it was clear that Trump is the one driving this standoff with Congress. No “whisperer,” as one put it. Just a man alone, eyeing the TV, and urging everyone from Cipollone to Giuliani to take a hard line.
🐣 RT @PhilipRucker “This was a coup. This was an attempted overthrow of the United States government,” Trump says of the Russia investigation to adviser & Fox host Hannity.
JustSecurity, Joshua Geltzer, Ryan Goodman and Asha Rangappa: What Congress Should Ask Bill Barr When He Testifies http://bit.ly/2GInTJ9
🐣 RT @CNN One week after the redacted Mueller report’s release, here’s a look at claims the Trump administration has made over the report and how they measure up to what the report actually says
⋙ CNN: Fact check: White House vs. the Mueller report, one week out http://cnn.it/2vkAvzH
🐣 ◕ RT @TrumpRussiaTies Strictly speaking, he meets all criteria for obstruction in four out of ten instances. ¤ But, as far as Presidents are concerned, aren’t ALL such instances Impeachable offenses, “out of the gate”? We don’t hold presidents to the same legal standard as you or me, but a HIGHER one. https://twitter.com/TrumpRussiaTies/status/1121435743866564608/photo/1
// cool obstruction chart
🐣 RT @AshaRangappa_ But be honest: Who among us hasn’t been $10 million in debt to a Russian oligarch and decides to work for a U.S. presidential campaign for free to help them win so they will lift sanctions against said oligarch so he won’t kill you and succeeds even though you end up in jail?
Axios: Mueller report sparked an increase in Russian misinformation http://bit.ly/2Pv9PWf
NewYorker, Adam Gopnik: Another Look at Impeachment, After the Mueller Report http://bit.ly/2XHlCU1
Vox, Aaron Rupar: Why Trump’s tweets about Don McGahn and the Mueller report could backfire http://bit.ly/2Pu4tKM
// Trump sought to refute one of the Mueller report’s most damaging revelations. He created new problems for himself in the process.
WashingtonExaminer: Putin just made a move on Ukraine. Trump needs to respond http://washex.am/2XEcijG
NYT, Jed Shugerman: The Trump Campaign Conspired With the Russians. Mueller Proved It. By the standards of a potential impeachment inquiry, the evidence is clear. http://nyti.ms/2IWAFFk
NYT, Ken Dilanian and Tom Winter: Mueller report shows Trump campaign left itself wide open to Russians, officials say http://nyti.ms/2L31WIU
// “The Russians found a group of people who were not intelligence savvy” and didn’t listen to U.S. intel officials, said a CIA veteran.
NBCNews: Trump claims he never told McGahn to fire Mueller, but they say otherwise http://nbcnews.to/2KZPWaT
// In an interview with Mueller, McGahn recalled Trump telling him “Mueller has to go” and “call me back when you do it.”
🔆 This❗️⋙ FoxNews: Judge Andrew Napolitano: Did President Trump obstruct justice? http://fxn.ws/2L6izDt //➔ I almost never rec #FoxNews, but this condemnation of Trump is brutal
Vox, Andrew Prokop: What Donald Trump actually did in 2016, according to the Mueller report http://bit.ly/2ZByKMu
// And where the special counsel found no evidence of Trump’s involvement.
⭕ 24 Apr 2019
💙💙 ◕ Medium, Charles Franklin (Aug 2018): Nixon, Watergate and Partisan Opinion http://bit.ly/2PrRxFb damaging news reports and Senate hearings had greatest impact; Popularity among GOP never fell beneath 50%
● https://twitter.com/Auriandra/status/1121313737477062656/photo/1
// 8/12/2018; Nixon approval
AmericanLawyer, Vivia Chen: Seven Funny Takes from the Mueller Report http://bit.ly/2USyauV
// Cheer up! There’s plenty of material in there for a comedy show that could give “Veep” a run for its money.
Salon, Kenneth McCallion: Yes, Trump, Mueller’s report means the end of your presidency http://bit.ly/2UV7QjO
// The crisis in the presidency is real and immediate and requires immediate action
Vox, Aaron Rupar: Trump’s tweets are getting more unhinged http://bit.ly/2UAJXc9
// After the Mueller report’s release, Trump tweeted that he’s “never been happier.” Then things took a turn.
NYMag, Jonathan Chait: With Mueller Gone, the Threat of a Lawless President Is Very Alive http://nym.ag/2PwdPWu
CJR, Michiko Kakutani: Don’t rely on the coverage. Read the Mueller report. http://bit.ly/2vhRnqK
// Columbia Journalism Review
💙💙 TheHill, Allan Lichtman: 21 questions for Robert Mueller http://bit.ly/2IWnbcO
NYT, Peter Baker: Victor or Victim? Trump’s Changing Response to Mueller Report http://nyti.ms/2GGdu0z
NYT: Mueller Report Reveals Trump’s Fixation on Targeting Hillary Clinton http://nyti.ms/2GJ9Fb3
// President Trump repeatedly asked Attorney General Jeff Sessions to prosecute Hillary Clinton
🔆 This❗️⋙ WaPo: Hillary Clinton: Mueller documented a serious crime against all Americans. Here’s how to respond. http://wapo.st/2GA7Vzf
TheAtlantic, David Graham: Trump Refuses to Defend the United States http://bit.ly/2IEf457
// The president won’t take action to protect elections from foreign meddling, because he finds it politically and personally unpalatable.
WaPo: Trump says he would ask Supreme Court to intervene if Democrats move to impeach him http://wapo.st/2GzWN5o
Lawfare, Michael Hayden and David Priess: What Mueller Got Right http://bit.ly/2DIcQOj
🐣 RT @tribelaw In Walter Nixon v US, 506 US 224 (1993), the Supreme Court held that the Court has no role to play in the process or review of impeachment hearings or trials even when a federal judge rather than the president is the subject. When it’s the president the Framers were even clearer.
DailyBeast, Betsy Woodruff: Maria Butina Cooperated With the Feds. Now They Want to Throw the Book at Her. http://bit.ly/2Ppdapu
// The Russian agent had been hoping for a speedy deportation. But prosecutors want her to stay behind bars for doing damage they say can aid the Kremlin for ‘years to come.’
DailyBeast, Chris Jacobus: Mueller Wasn’t Going to End Trump. Impeachment Hearings Can—If Democrats Have the Stones to Do It http://bit.ly/2VqjliB
// Those who’ve read the Mueller report get that it shows Trump obstructing justice. But only a handful of Americans have read it. Live hearings, though, would be must-see TV.
Politico: ‘This is risky’: Trump’s thirst for Mueller revenge could land him in trouble http://politi.co/2IVrs0a
// Team Trump’s bellicose tweets and public statements in the last few days could expose the president to fresh charges of witness intimidation and obstruction of justice.
⭕ 23 Apr 2019
💙💙 NYRB, David Cole: An Indictment in All But Name http://bit.ly/2IVaQFu
CNBC: Hillary Clinton on Trump: ‘Any other person who had engaged in those acts would certainly have been indicted’ for obstruction of justice http://cnb.cx/2UXxSCX
Slate, William Saletan: Mueller Proved Comey Told the Truth http://bit.ly/2GCX4Wv
// And the president lied.
WaPo, Aaron Blake: The 5 crimes Mueller suggests Trump could be charged with http://wapo.st/2Xyibiy
CNN, Shanlon Wu: Robert Mueller made a big mistake http://cnn.it/2IRr6r7
// Robert Mueller’s failure to reach a decision about whether President Donald Trump should be prosecuted for obstruction of justice was a mistake that failed both his mission and our country.
ArsTechnica: Twitter shuts down 5,000 pro-Trump bots retweeting anti-Mueller report invective http://bit.ly/2Dx8XeI
// Bots were tied to account formerly used for pro-Saudi messaging.
NYT, Daniel Hemel and Eric Posner: The Surprising Place Mueller Found Resistance to Trump http://nyti.ms/2GyCeql
// The strongest pushback against the president came from his own branch of government.
Politico, Andrew Restuccia: Mueller report exposes diminishing power of Trump denials http://politi.co/2GtsyNM
// The report has reignited a media debate about how seriously to take the White House’s statements of fact.
🐣 RT @BillKristol The third Article of Impeachment against Richard Nixon charged him with failing “without lawful cause or excuse to produce papers and things as directed by duly authorized subpoenas issued by the Committee on the Judiciary of the House of Representatives.”
Politico: What you missed in the Mueller report http://politi.co/2Dtz2LS
// Darren Samuelson, Kyle Cheney and Natasha Bertrand; POLITICO dived back into the report and its 2,000-plus footnotes to unearth a few details that have not gotten much attention.
1. Who didn’t get prosecuted
2. Don Jr. dodges a voluntary Mueller interview
3. Annie Donaldson took devastating notes
4. Mueller hampered by missing and deleted messages
5. Sekulow needed an attorney to deal with Mueller
6. There was a second “scope memo”
7. The Mueller-FBI counterintelligence partnership — revealed
8. The mystery endures over what Carter Page was doing in Moscow
9. Cohen mistakes Putin operative for Olympic weightlifter
10. A little more is learned about the mysterious overseas professor
TheAtlantic: The Mueller Report Was My Tipping Point http://bit.ly/2GuL3kP
// I was a Trump transition staffer, and I’ve seen enough. It’s time for impeachment.
NYT, Charlie Savage: Did Trump Obstruct Justice? Mueller Didn’t Say, but Left a Trail to the Answer http://nyti.ms/2Du4hqb
// The special counsel stopped short of declaring whether acts by the president were illegal attempts to impede the investigation. But his report is a detailed map to conclusions.
WaPo: Trump says he is opposed to White House aides testifying to Congress, deepening power struggle with Hill http://wapo.st/2DtwOfe
NYT, Adam Liptak: Is Obstruction an Impeachable Offense? History Says Yes http://nyti.ms/2UQFQhb
⭕ 22 Apr 2019
TheAtlantic: Impeachment Is Not the Answer. At Least Not Yet. http://bit.ly/2W8V91z
// In the wake of the Mueller report, Democrats should probe—not launch a formal inquiry.
WaPo, Paul Waldman: No bottom: Republicans show they’ll defend just about anything Trump does http://wapo.st/2GALJWW
NBCNews, Evan McMullin: Trump welcomed the Russian attack and obstructed resulting investigations, an impeachable offense http://nbcnews.to/2ZoiNcl
// What kind of patriotic American wouldn’t reject and report a foreign offer to collaborate against our country?
🐣 RT @AshaRagappa_ There’s a concept in Hinduism called “dharma,” which means “duty.” Your dharma is to always do *the next right thing*, without attachment to the consequences (karma). When you follow your dharma, good karma naturally flows from it. When you don’t, it doesn’t. ¤ Congress 👀☝🏽
NYT, Jamelle Bouie: The Lure of Impeachment http://nyti.ms/2XF8MWz
// We need congressional action to cure our body politic as much as we need it for our moral health.
NYT, Paul Krugman: The Great Republican Abdication http://nyti.ms/2IL9k97
// A party that no longer believes in American values.
WaPo, Adam Schiff: Congress must ensure that Trump is working for the American people — not foreign interests http://wapo.st/2Dtsxsx
WaPo, Ashley Parker and Josh Dawsey: Constraints on presidency being redefined in Trump era, report fallout shows http://wapo.st/2GAUe4p
WaPo, Eugene Washington: Democrats must seize and define this moment. Otherwise, Trump will. http://wapo.st/2PqaUhU
WaPo, Dana Milbank: Mueller’s findings: Too stupid to conspire. Too incompetent to obstruct. http://wapo.st/2KTtVux
DeadlineHollywood: John Oliver Probes Most “Incredible” Details Of Mueller Report, Savages “Dishonest Hack” Bill Barr http://bit.ly/2UPTRMi
NYMag, Barb McQuade: Mueller Exposed Trump’s Biggest Betrayal http://nym.ag/2Viq0LD
WashingtonMonthly, Nancy LeTourneau: The Mueller Report Didn’t Absolve Trump of Collusion http://bit.ly/2Pox1VT
PBSNewsHour: AP fact check: Trump, AG Barr spread untruths about Mueller report http://to.pbs.org/2KX81Xn
RollCall: Mueller report: Russia hacked state databases and voting machine companies http://bit.ly/2VWfaIm
// Russian intelligence officers injected malicious SQL code and then ran commands to extract information
VICE, Matt Lasio: Republicans are about to go full Benghazi over the Mueller report http://bit.ly/2W0BAID
USAToday: Mueller report: 5 things to know about Russian interference in U.S. elections http://bit.ly/2UQqPMo
CNN: John Oliver goes long on the Mueller report http://cnn.it/2GroFIX
NBCNews, MTP: The Mueller report makes a damning case about Trump’s dishonesty http://nbcnews.to/2UCsPTG
ABC, Allison Pecorin: 10 best footnotes of the Mueller report http://abcn.ws/2W1x6kW
1. Those tapes: Footnote 112 (Volume II pg 27-28) describes conversations between Trump associates about rumored video recordings of the candidate in a Russian hotel room with prostitutes
2. Dossier diss: Footnote 117 (Volume II pg 28) describes Former FBI Director James Comey and Former Director of National Security James Clapper exchanging emails in 2017 about Trump’s request that they discredit the Steele Dossier
3. Congressional choices: Footnote 1091 (Volume II pg 178) suggests Congress can either craft new rules to stop a president from trying to thwart an investigation, or pursue impeachment as a drastic measure
4. Considering charges: Footnote 1278 (Volume I pg 176) describes how the office of the special counsel considered whether to bring charges on the grounds that the dissemination of stolen Democratic National Conventions emails could constitute trafficking in or the receipt of stolen property
5. Early warning: Footnote 155 (Volume II pg 32) suggests Former National Security Adviser Flynn was on “thin ice” even before he began to take criticism for his calls to Russian ambassador Sergey Kislyak report broke. This is largely because of a guidance that then President-Elect Trump got from President Obama
6. Paragons of loyalty: Footnote 297 (Volume II pg 51) shows Trump pointed to Eric Holder and Robert Kennedy for how he felt an AG should act
7. An alternative theory: In Footnote 500 (Volume II pg 77) the special counsel explores whether Trump might have fired Comey to protect other conduct that could come to light because of the probe, including Michael Cohen’s campaign finance violations
8. Russian visas: Footnote 363 (Volume I pg 76) describes Cohen texts discussing plans to send Trump’s passport information to a Russian associate. The information was never sent, but the texts show Cohen’s travel plans forming.
9. The Trigger: Footnote 465 (Volume I pg 89) lays out how the Russia investigation began, when an unpaid policy adviser, George Papadopoulos, told a representative from a foreign government that the Russian government had damaging information on Hillary Clinton
10. Stubborn witness: Footnote 489 (Volume I pg 92) reveals that former Trump policy adviser George Papadopoulos wouldn’t help decipher his own handwriting.
WaPo, Max Boot: My former party’s reaction to the Mueller report fills me with disgust http://wapo.st/2VmaUVv
WIRED, Garrett Graff: 14 Mueller Report Takeaways You Might Have Missed http://bit.ly/2W1GqoK
1. This was as much a counterintelligence investigation as a criminal one.
2. Jerome Corsi isn’t out of the woods.
3. Anyone demanding the unredacted version of the report is stalling.
4. The Trump campaign really wanted Hillary’s emails.
5. The Trump Tower Moscow Project was a big deal.
6. Mueller never understood why Paul Manafort shared polling data with Russian intelligence asset Konstantin Kilimnik.
7. Donald Trump runs his White House like a Mafia boss.
8. Maria Butina and the National Rifle Association aren’t mentioned at all.
9. Mueller goes to great lengths to demolish William Barr’s theory of obstruction.
10. Google was a problem for everyone.
11. The US has an important political and policy question ahead: Is accepting known help from a foreign power something we want to prohibit in campaigns?
12. The Atlanta traveler might still matter.
13. Sergey Kislyak was perhaps totally irrelevant.
14. Mueller was deeply conservative in his approach.
Politico/MorningConsult Poll: Trump approval sinks 5 points to 39% after Mueller report, tying all-time low http://politi.co/2UMTLVs
NYT: Trump and Allies Ramp Up Attacks as McGahn Emerges as Chief Witness in the Mueller Report http://nyti.ms/2Ps12V0
⭕ 21 Apr 2019
WaPo, EJ Dionne: What House Democrats should do now http://wapo.st/2UBhMKn
🐣 RT @eliehonig Before the Report came out, Barr said the OLC memo against indicting a sitting president had no impact on Mueller’s decision. Then the Report came out and we saw that the OLC memo was the main -perhaps only- thing standing between Trump and indictment. Anyone want to defend Barr?
🐣 RT @AnnTelnaes “He conducts himself like a New Jersey mob boss who is unconcerned about asking the people around him to conduct unethical or legally challenging behaviour… Truth and accuracy just don’t factor into his thought process at all.”
⋙ TheGuardian, David Smith: Teflon Don: how Trump the mafia boss fought the law … and won http://bit.ly/2GyyPbW
// After Mueller, the president is being compared to mobsters from John Gotti to Tony Soprano. And yet he remains in office
🐣 RT @gtconway3d .@tribelaw: “Despite … President Donald Trump’s boasts, the Mueller report doesn’t come close to exonerating the president of wrongdoing. Instead, it invites Congress to initiate impeachment proceedings. It’s time for Congress to heed that invitation.”
⋙ USAToday, Lawrence Tribe: I’ve warned that impeachment talk is dangerous, but the time has come: Laurence Tribe http://bit.ly/2KTJSAW
Lawfare, Quinta Jurecic: Obstruction of Justice in the Mueller Report: A Heat Map http://bit.ly/2UyFWVX
🐣 The country needs to learn what happened so it doesn’t happen again and so safeguards can be put in place. Also, it may get Trump to ‘watch himself.’ Begin impeachment hearings or appoint a commission. Either way, we must learn from this history.
WaPo: Democrats will meet in the next few weeks to discuss impeachment, Schiff says http://wapo.st/2INiykX
⭕ 20 Apr 2019
LATimes, Andrew Coan: Donald Trump is no Richard Nixon. He’s worse http://lat.ms/2UP2ZRi
NYT: Catching Up on the Mueller Report: What’s Next? http://nyti.ms/2DpYUIq
WaPo: Armed with Mueller report, Democrats confront challenge of Trump’s messaging machine http://wapo.st/2PlV7AI
Lawfare, Susan Hennessy, Quinta Jurecic: The Mueller Report Demands an Impeachment Inquiry http://bit.ly/2VdEOuZ
WaPo: How a legal dispute between Mueller and Barr drove the end of the special counsel’s probe http://wapo.st/2Pm7We9
⭕ 19 Apr 2019
◕ NYT (Apr): See Which Witnesses the Mueller Report Relied on Most [Interactive] http://nyti.ms/2YGnGfn
● https://twitter.com/Auriandra/status/1157184399018024960?s=20/photo/1
NYT, Charlie Savage: How Barr’s Excerpts Compare to the Mueller Report’s Findings http://nyti.ms/2GpoBtn
WaPo, Ron Klain: Robert Mueller failed to do his duty http://wapo.st/2Jh0dhr
💙💙 Lawfare, Benjamin Wittes: Notes on the Mueller Report: A Reading Diary http://bit.ly/2ZxgPGw
💙💙 WaPo: What’s in the Mueller report http://wapo.st/2IDoNsr
Politico Mag: The Surprises in the Mueller Report http://politi.co/2GBPYSn
// So what did we really learn about Trump, Russia and the power of the presidency? Some of the nation’s top legal minds unpack the document of the decade.
🐣 RT @gtconway3d .@walterdellinger: “In the face of an unprecedented attack on American democracy by a hostile foreign power, Donald Trump and those who worked for him both as a candidate and a president failed to defend the United States. For this alone, he is unfit to hold office.”
⋙ WaPo, Walter Dellinger and Samantha Goldstein: While the Russians attacked, Trump looked the other way http://wapo.st/2UObJH6
WaPo, Michael McFaul: Russia attacked us. The Mueller report still doesn’t give us the full story. http://wapo.st/2L5YkWm
WaPo, Neal Katyal and Joshua Geltzer: Barr tried to exonerate Trump. That’s not how the special counsel rules work. http://wapo.st/2PomLNt
// The attorney general isn’t supposed to be rebutting the special counsel.
WaPo: Timeline: The who, what, where of the sprawling Mueller investigation http://wapo.st/2VbjAhu
// Key events from the report and court filings in chronological order
WaPo, Daniel Hemel: Mueller’s biggest bombshell? Trump told the White House counsel to lie. http://wapo.st/2IzTleS
// It’s as close to the definition of obstruction of justice as anyone could ask for
NYT, Charlie Savage: How Barr’s Excerpts Compare to the Mueller Report’s Findings http://nyti.ms/2GpoBtn
// Attorney General William P. Barr sent a letter to Congress last month citing brief fragments from the Mueller report. Now that the document is public, his selections are coming under scrutiny.
DailyBeast, David Lurie: Mueller Report Has a Hidden Message for Barr http://bit.ly/2Pls3sY
// Special Counsel’s Office went out of its way to say the attorney general is dead wrong about obstruction of justice.
RollingStone, Tim Dickinson: Re-Read Bill Barr’s Infamous Letter With Full Quotes From the Mueller Report http://bit.ly/2IxFsxw
// Context is everything. Trump’s attorney general is a partisan hack
NewYorker, Isaac Chotiner: Neal Katyal on Whether the Mueller Report Went Far Enough http://bit.ly/2DpuHcp
WIRED, Garrett Graff: Mueller Report Fallout Pressures Democrats to Impeach Trump http://bit.ly/2DoRFk4
TheIntercept, James Risen: William Barr Misled Everyone About the Mueller Report http://bit.ly/2UNtfLK
Politico, Natasha Bertrand: 5 unresolved mysteries about Russian meddling in Mueller’s report http://politi.co/2KU03yd
// Even in a 448-page report, the special counsel left several big questions unaddressed or only partially answered.
1. Did a secret computer link exist between the Trump Organization and Moscow’s Alfa Bank?
2. Did Cambridge Analytica have ties to Russia or WikiLeaks?
3. What was the NRA’s relationship with the Trump campaign and Russia?
4. What did WikiLeaks know about the source of the stolen emails?
5. What about the infamous video tape alleged in the Steele dossier?
USAToday, Tom Nichols: Mueller report: Donald Trump failed us as commander in chief http://bit.ly/2DrW7OX
WaPo, Jacqueline Alemany: Power Up: Mueller’s report shatters White House alternative universe http://wapo.st/2VWexyB //➔ oh yeah?
USAToday: Donald Trump lashes out at ‘Crazy Mueller Report;’ calls probe a ‘big, fat, waste of time’ http://bit.ly/2UIaqto
CNN, Marshall Cohen: 4 times Barr twisted and cherry-picked Mueller’s report http://cnn.it/2IvhCm4
🐣 RT @ewarren To ignore a President’s repeated efforts to obstruct an investigation into his own disloyal behavior would inflict great and lasting damage on this country, and it would suggest that both the current and future Presidents would be free to abuse their power in similar ways.
🐣◕ RT @KevinMKruse It’s worth remembering how public opinion changed on Nixon’s impeachment. ¤ A month into the Ervin Committee hearings, the percentage supporting Nixon’s removal was still down in the teens. ¤ A majority didn’t want him removed until late July 1974. He resigned two weeks later. https://twitter.com/KevinMKruse/status/1119347084187115521/photo/1
NYT, Asha Rangappa: How Barr and Trump Use a Russian Disinformation Tactic http://nyti.ms/2KPVepx
// They were able to define “collusion” to benefit themselves. Don’t let them twist meanings again with their “spying” investigation.
WaPo, Carlos Lozada: The Mueller report isn’t just a legal document. It’s also the best book on the Trump White House so far. http://wapo.st/2UveAjk
WaPo, Greg Sargent: Democratic equivocation over impeachment is a moral and political disaster http://wapo.st/2XtbkXK
WaPo: After Mueller report, Democrats divided over end game — investigate Trump or impeach http://wapo.st/2W400AI
WaPo, Max Boot: To impeach or not to impeach? That is now the question. http://wapo.st/2Dq8KtK
NYT Editorial: The Great Russian Heist of 2016 http://nyti.ms/2Uo5BQU
// The Mueller report is a good reminder of how important it is to prevent foreign interference in American elections.
🐣 RT @AriMelber Some parts of this are simple: ¤ The Mueller Report and James Comey’s testimony under oath both document Trump ordering illegal prosecution of political opponents. ¤ That is huge. ¤ Comey and Sessions resisted. ¤ If Trump gets away with it, what happens if there’s a next time?
NYT Editorial: Mr. Mueller’s Indictment http://nyti.ms/2KLW2M2
// The special counsel’s report reveals a pattern of deceit and dysfunction. What comes next is up to Congress.
NYT, Joshua Geltzer and Ryan Goodman: Mueller Hints at a National-Security Nightmare http://nyti.ms/2UuRYiW
// The missing piece of the report is a counterintelligence investigation that should set off alarm bells about our democracy and security.
DailyBeast: Mueller Report: Assange Smeared Seth Rich to Cover for Russians http://bit.ly/2XxNGtd
// Julian Assange repeatedly blamed Seth Rich, the murdered DNC staffer, for Russia’s leaks. The Mueller report shows that Assange was lying from the start.
🐣 RT @RadioFreeTom The gaslighting from Trump and his minions is at thermonuclear levels, demanding that you all reach the *opposite* conclusions that are obvious in Mueller’s report. Wherever it says “the Russians,” they want you to read “American journos and spies who lied about the Russians.”
WaPo, Philip Bump: Actually, the Mueller report showed that Russia did affect the vote http://wapo.st/2GxAGOo
Politico Mag, Renato Mariotti: The Obstruction Case Against Trump that Barr Tried to Hide http://politi.co/2UusBh4
// Even with redactions, Mueller’s report is clear Trump undermined the Russia investigation.
USAToday: Donald Trump denounces ‘Crazy Mueller Report,’ calls statements about him ‘fabricated’ and ‘untrue’ http://bit.ly/2UIaqto
🐣 Very practically, it would be better for Dems for the next year for headlines to be about the depths of the Mueller report and the wrongdoing of the Trump admin than on the Dems’ circular firing squad and GOP cries of “Socialism!”
🐣 Unfortunately, the legal and ethical intricacies of the actual (redacted) Mueller Report will have difficulty competing with the “No collusion! No obstruction!” rallying cries of Trump (and Barr).
⭕ 18 Apr 2019 Mueller Day
🐣 RT @ForeverLogical Lindsey Graham on removing Bill Clinton from office: “You don’t even have to be convicted of a crime to lose your job in this constitutional republic if this body determines your conduct as a public official is clearly out of bounds in your role.”
💽 https://twitter.com/ResisterSis20/status/1137334668947283969?s=20/photo/1
≣ DOJ: Attorney General William P. Barr Delivers Remarks on the Release of the Report on the Investigation into Russian Interference in the 2016 Presidential Election http://bit.ly/2vBDaVv
// Barr press conference on redacted Mueller Report
––
“… if we had confidence after a thorough investigation of the facts that the President clearly did not commit obstruction of justice, we would so state. Based on the facts and the applicable legal standards, we are unable to reach that judgment. Accordingly, while this report does not conclude that the President committed a crime, it also does not exonerate him.”
– Mueller Report
🔆 This❗️⋙ Lawfare: Full Text of the Mueller Report’s Executive Summaries http://bit.ly/2IFLewq
CNN: Mueller investigated rumored compromising tapes of Trump in Moscow http://cnn.it/2VWCfe5
TheBulwark, Charlie Sykes: This Is What Obstruction Looks Like http://bit.ly/2GukVI2
WaPo Editorial: The Mueller report is the opposite of exoneration http://wapo.st/2Gxqi9w
WaPo, Paul Farhi: Mueller report suggests the ‘fake news’ came from Trump, not the news media http://wapo.st/2Gu5bod
LATimes: Mueller report suggests Congress should judge whether Trump obstructed justice http://lat.ms/2ZkOuTR
🐣 RT @selectedwisdom [Clint Watts] Attorney General Barr just became the Dick Cheney of the Trump era.
NYT: Democrats Draw Closer to a Dicey Question: Whether to Impeach Trump http://nyti.ms/2UHtc46
🐣 RT @kylegriffin1 Schumer and Pelosi tonight: “Barr deliberately distorted significant portions” of Mueller’s report. The “report paints a disturbing picture of a president who has been weaving a web of deceit, lies and improper behavior and acting as if the law doesn’t apply to him.”
🐣 RT @AriMelber Barr claims a defense for Trump to obstruction is he “was frustrated & angered by a sincere belief” the probe undermined him ¤ Anger is not a defense to corrupt intent ¤ Sincerity is the only valid part- a person who intends to cooperate, not obstruct, can claim that’s their intent
NYMag, Jonathan Chait: Trump Beat the Rap, but Mueller Uncovered a Historic Scandal http://nym.ag/2UpKpKu
🐣 RT @KlasfeldReports #AlwaysReadTheFootnotes MUELLER, p. 390, footnote 1991: “A possible remedy through impeachment for abuses of power would not substitute for potential criminal liability after a President leaves office.”
https://twitter.com/KlasfeldReports/status/1118909536302190592/photo/1
WaPo: Burr appears to have given White House information about FBI’s probe, Mueller report says http://wapo.st/2VUA62i
Politico, Josh Gerstein and Darren Samuelsohn: Barr v. Mueller: Friends pitted against each other http://politi.co/2vdoo7o
// Despite close ties, the attorney general and special counsel face increasing scrutiny of their disagreements on the Trump probe.
DailyBeast, Asawin Suebsaeng, Betsy Woodruff and Lachlan Markay: Team Trump: The Mueller Report Is Vindication—and Riddled With ‘Lies’ http://bit.ly/2Znq0ZZ
// On Mueller Thursday, Trumpworld looked to have it both ways: embracing the special counsel’s findings while slagging them, too.
DailyBeast, Will Sommer: QAnon Believers Crushed After Mueller Report Fails to Lead to Hillary Clinton’s Arrest http://bit.ly/2UK96Gh
// QAnon fans thought Mueller would take down the Democrats. Instead, Sebastian Gorka made fun of them.
NYT: Excerpts and Analysis From the Mueller Report http://nyti.ms/2UuyQRX
// The Justice Department released a redacted version of the special counsel’s report on Thursday. Times reporters uncovered the biggest findings and shared excerpts and analysis.
🐣 RT @peterbakernyt “Surely one of the most damning insider accounts ever written about a Presidency in modern times,” writes @sbg1. Not just another bestselling book based on anonymous sources; it’s based on sworn testimony, contemporaneous notes, e-mails, and records.
⋙ NewYorker, Susan Glasser: The Mueller Report Won’t End Trump’s Presidency, But It Sure Makes Him Look Bad http://bit.ly/2XnOdxt
WaPo: George Conway: Trump is a cancer on the presidency. Congress should remove him. http://wapo.st/2UrLyAW
🐣 RT @AngryWHstaff Barr: I didn’t get the impression Mueller wanted to kick this to Congress. ¤ Mueller: ¤ “We concluded that Congress has the authority to prohibit a President’s corrupt use of his authority in order to protect the integrity of the administration of justice”
🐣 RT @JRubinBlogger The ‘respectable’ right that still defends Trump is shilling for a thug, a reflexive liar, a man who used Putin to put him in power. They’ve jettisoned their intellect and lost respect among peers. They end their careers disgraced. The right needs new publications, new leaders
🐣 RT @RepAdamSchiff The House Intelligence Committee has formally invited Special Counsel Mueller to testify on the counterintelligence investigation. ¤ After a two year investigation, the public deserves the facts, not Attorney General Barr’s political spin.
https://twitter.com/RepAdamSchiff/status/1118898255142715394/photo/1
🐣 RT @EricLiptonNYT Again and again and again and again, Mueller report is confirming the accuracy (in great detail) of stories by The NYT and WashPost, as reporters helped inform the public of the events related to the investigation in real time.
Politico: An annotated guide to the redacted Mueller report http://politi.co/2VXbmXm
// Here’s POLITICO’s rolling analysis of the hotly anticipated document.
Politico, Natasha Bertrand: When Trump won, Putin deployed his oligarchs http://politi.co/2DlTdep
// After an election marred by Moscow’s attempts to buoy Donald Trump’s candidacy, the Russian president wanted to cash in.
WaPo, Dan Balz: Mueller’s report paints a damning portrait of Trump’s presidency http://wapo.st/2ZkpCvn
TheAtlantic, Yoni Appelbaum: The Mueller Report Is an Impeachment Referral http://bit.ly/2UHnAXz
// The special counsel has concluded he can neither charge nor clear the president. Only Congress can now resolve the allegations against him.
🐣 RT @JakeSherman NEW.. PELOSI announces Monday conference call in letter to democrats and says this: https://twitter.com/JakeSherman/status/1119031095616573441/photo/1
// 💙💙 “The Mueller report states: ‘We conclude Congress has authority to prohibit the president’s corrupt use of his authority in order to protect the integrity of the administration of justice,’ which ‘accords with our constitutional system of checks and balances and the principle that no person is above the law.’ Congress will not be silent.”
🐣 RT @MikeDorning BREAKING: Mueller said he lacked confidence to clear Donald Trump of obstruction of justice but suggested Congress could take action on at least 10 instances where the president sought to interfere with the probe.
DailyBeast, Erin Banco: Mueller Exposes Erik Prince’s Lies About His Rendezvous with a Top Russian http://bit.ly/2XqosN0
// The Blackwater founder repeatedly misled Congress about his infamous meeting in the Seychelles. What happens to the Trumpworld associate now?
🐣 RT @desiderioDC NEW: Nadler has formally invited Mueller to testify before the House Judiciary Committee — “no later than May 23.”
⋙ 🐣 RT @RepJerryNadler It is clear Congress and the American people must hear from Special Counsel Robert Mueller in person to better understand his findings. We are now requesting Mueller to appear before @HouseJudiciary as soon as possible.
https://twitter.com/RepJerryNadler/status/1118877752843808768/photo/1
NYT: A Portrait of the White House and Its Culture of Chaos http://nyti.ms/2VP7M1o
🔆 This❗️⋙ LawfareBlog: Document: The Mueller Report http://bit.ly/2vcgNpN
🔆 This❗️⋙ DOJ: Document: The Mueller Report [Scrollable] https://www.justice.gov/storage/report.pdf
WaPo: The Mueller report, annotated http://wapo.st/2V4ovRn
🐣 RT @TheLeadCNN Former WH counsel John Dean: “I looked on my shelf for the Senate Watergate Committee report, I looked at the Iran Contra report. I also looked at the Ken Starr report … In 400 words [sic], this report from the special counsel is more damning than all those reports about a President.”
// words or pages?
🐣 RT @TeamPelosi It’s clear AG Barr is acting as Trump’s personal attorney, not America’s. ¤ Our country demands and deserves full transparency. That’s why we must hear directly from Mueller. #MuellerReport 💽 https://twitter.com/TeamPelosi/status/1118902422808690688/photo/1
🐣 RT @TeamPelosi It’s clear AG Barr is acting as Trump’s personal attorney, not America’s. ¤ Our country demands and deserves full transparency. That’s why we must hear directly from Mueller. #MuellerReport
WaPo: Paranoia, lies and fear: Trump’s presidency laid bare by Mueller report http://wapo.st/2KLv1Ix
NYT: The Mueller Report Is 448 Pages Long. You Need to Know These 7 Key Things. http://nyti.ms/2GtjHga
1. Trump did try to sabotage the investigation. His staff defied him.
2. So many lies. So many changed stories.
3. Fake news? Not so much.
4. No obstruction? Not so fast.
5. Evading an F.B.I. interview proved a successful strategy.
6. No conclusive evidence of conspiracy, but lots of reason to investigate.
7. Imagine reading this report cold.
💙💙 NYT: In Highly Anticipated Report, Mueller Reveals Trump’s Efforts to Thwart Russian Inquiry http://nyti.ms/2IuFhD2
CNN: Democrats outraged as Trump team shapes Mueller report rollout http://cnn.it/2V71PzQ
HuffPo: House Democrats Call For Barr To Cancel Mueller Report News Conference http://bit.ly/2Xpwq9s
// Committee chairs slammed the attorney general for planning an “unnecessary” press conference before the Mueller report’s release to Congress.
🐣 RT @gtconway3d Good morning! Happy Complete and Total EXONERATION Day!!
🐣 RT @kylegriffin1 Schumer and Pelosi call for Mueller to testify publicly: “The only way to begin restoring public trust in the handling of the Special Counsel’s investigation is for Special Counsel Mueller himself to provide public testimony … The American people deserve to hear the truth.”
USAToday: The Mueller report becomes public Thursday. Here are six things to look for. http://bit.ly/2ItrdcY
● Links between Trump campaign and Russia
● Evidence of obstruction
● Trump, Moscow and Michael Cohen
● Russian efforts to sway the election
● So many other mysteries
● Redacted information
NYT: What to Watch Ahead of Mueller Report Release http://nyti.ms/2GoxD9M
⭕ 17 Apr 2019
WaPo Editorial: Barr’s redactions on the Mueller report don’t deserve the benefit of the doubt http://wapo.st/2ZlLuGz
WaPo: On eve of Mueller report’s release, Nadler accuses Barr of protecting Trump http://wapo.st/2XtxqcH
Vox, Andrew Prokop: The last-minute drama about the Mueller report’s release, explained http://bit.ly/2IHgLOG
// We learned that William Barr will give a pre-report press conference — and that DOJ has briefed the White House.
NewYorker, David Rohde: William Barr Prepares to Release a Redacted Mueller Report http://bit.ly/2PiHnXb
Setting up a potential constitutional crisis between Congress and the Presidency, the Attorney General, William Barr, is expected on Thursday to release a redacted version of the special counsel Robert Mueller’s nearly four-hundred-page report on Russian interference in the 2016 election. Whether Barr has chosen to make most of Mueller’s account public or to excise large parts of it will likely spark a legal battle between House Democrats and the Trump Administration—and define Barr’s legacy as Attorney General. The report’s contents could impugn or embolden a triumphalist President, as he trumpets a reëlection narrative that he was the victim of an attempted “coup” by rogue elements in the F.B.I. and other intelligence agencies.
It will take hours, if not days or weeks, for politicians, pundits, and legal experts to fully digest the significance of the careful legal language employed by Mueller and his team. But a visceral, visual impression of the report could quickly emerge after its release. Barr has said that the redactions will be color-coded, with each color signifying the reason for the excision—for example, that the text contained material that is classified. (The report could look like “color-coded Swiss cheese,” a former Justice Department official told me.) If Democrats can display page after page showing redacted text, the public distrust of government, which the President has relentlessly stoked, could turn against his Attorney General.
A second former Justice Department official predicted that Mueller, based on his past work, wrote the report in a way that maximized the amount of material that could be made public. That official believes that Mueller tried to play the role of a neutral fact-finder. “I have confidence that they did a thorough investigation, that they laid it out,” the official told me. “I think it will be done with an eye toward public confidence, in the thoroughness of the job that was done.” A striking aspect of the more than thirty indictments that the special-counsel’s office handed down in the course of its investigation is that they read as narratives, rendered in vivid detail and with a minimum of impenetrable legalese. The report, based on evidence obtained through five hundred interviews, five hundred search warrants, and twenty-eight hundred subpoenas, will chronicle, in unprecedented fashion, all known Russian activities and how the Trump campaign might have reacted to them. Regardless of the report’s impact on Trump’s political standing, a central outcome should be that it aids in the establishment of a fact-based history of events in 2016 that, much as the 9/11 Commission Report did, dispels the false conspiracy theories advanced by both the left and the right. Whether the public is able to fully absorb and judge Mueller’s work, though, depends on the extent of Barr’s excisions.
Politico: ‘Keep your mouth shut’: Dems erupt over Barr’s Mueller report rollout http://politi.co/2Xo9cAa
// Lawmakers are accusing the attorney general of trying to spin Mueller’s findings.
DailyBeast: Mueller Report Rollout Won’t Have Mueller http://bit.ly/2Gj5rVR
// The attorney general will hold a press conference to discuss Mueller’s work without him there and before Congress gets the report.
DailyBeast, Rick Wilson: The Mueller Report is the Tip of a Big, Slimy, Trump-Shaped Iceberg http://bit.ly/2ZbiZLM
// Even after Bill Barr has performed his sycophantic redactions, we’ll have a report that will tell us a lot—but will still only scratch the surface.
🐣 RT @maddow Per @RepJerryNadler, Barr tomorrow is planning to:
— hold his own press conference about Mueller,
— without Mueller there,
— well before anyone will be allowed access to even Barr’s redacted version of Mueller’s findings.
Why? Where’s Mueller?
⋙ 🐣 RT @RepJerryNadler I’m deeply troubled by reports that the WH is being briefed on the Mueller report AHEAD of its release. Now, DOJ is informing us we will not receive the report until around 11/12 tomorrow afternoon — AFTER Barr’s press conference. This is wrong. #ReleaseTheReport
⋙⋙ 🐣 RT @RepJerryNadler Attorney General Barr wrote to me on April 1: “I do not believe it would be in the public’s interest for me to attempt to summarize the full report.” I agree. So why is the AG holding a press conference tomorrow morning to go over the Mueller report? #ReleaseTheReport
⋙⋙⋙ 🐣 RT @kylegriffin1 Chuck Todd: “Why do we need to hear from Bill Barr when his job is to simply to facilitate the Mueller report?” #MTPDaily
🐣 RT @gtconway “Robert S. Mueller III has lived his life governed not by a sense of entitlement but of duty. Distinctly apolitical, he [is] driven by his all too uncommon values: honor, integrity, humility, service. He is the inverse image of the man he would ultimately come to investigate.”
⋙ 🐣 RT @SallyQYates Robert Mueller ¤ On the eve of the release of the (redacted) Mueller report, some thoughts about the man who wrote it.
⋙⋙ TIME 100: Robert Mueller by Sally Yates http://bit.ly/2GtWla8
🐣 RT @GlennKesslerWP Barr news conference at 9:30 am, Mueller report released at 11 am: In the annals of pathetic efforts to spin apparently bad news in Washington, this ranks near the top.
🐣 RT @DavidCornDC Memo to Everyone: As outrageous as Barr’s spin plot may be, focus on the heart of the matter: the Russian attack, how Trump & his gang aided & abetted the attack by denying it was happening, how Trump’s refusal to acknowledge the attack has put the US at risk, and obstruction.
💙💙 WaPo: Mueller report will be lightly redacted, revealing detailed look at obstruction of justice investigation http://wapo.st/2KMW0Uo
WaPo: 3 ways the Mueller report still threatens Trump http://wapo.st/2Gt8gFi
🐣 RT @RepCummings This is outrageous. The AG is supposed to be an independent beacon of truth and justice. Instead, Barr is debasing the rule of law, degrading our democratic institutions, and decimating any trust the American people have left in this Administration. #ReleaseTheReport
⋙💙💙 NYT: White House and Justice Dept. Officials Discussed Mueller Report Before Release http://nyti.ms/2v6vZVk
WaPo, Philip Bump: The normal person’s guide to the Mueller report http://wapo.st/2VPxPWr
⭕ 16 Apr 2019
DailyBeast, Kevin Poulsen: Mueller Report: Assange Smeared Seth Rich to Cover for Russians http://bit.ly/2GPSAL3
// Julian Assange repeatedly blamed Seth Rich, the murdered DNC staffer, for Russia’s leaks. The Mueller report shows that Assange was lying from the start.
Slate, Ben Mathis-Lilley: Hope May Be for Dummies, but I Still Hope the Mueller Report Solves Russiagate’s Original Mystery http://bit.ly/2Dl4z2p
WaPo, Paul Waldman: Trump’s greatest fear: His underlings told Mueller the truth http://wapo.st/2V2BkLU
Politico, Josh Gerstein: Judge: Barr sowing public mistrust with Mueller report handling http://politi.co/2XlSKAF
// ‘The attorney general has created an environment that has caused a significant part of the public … to be concerned,’ a district court judge said.
The attorney general has created an environment that has caused a significant part of the public … to be concerned about whether or not there is full transparency,” U.S. District Court Judge Reggie Walton said during a hearing Tuesday afternoon on a Freedom of Information Act suit demanding access to a report detailing the findings of special counsel Robert Mueller.
Walton, an appointee of President George W. Bush, did not elaborate on what actions or statements by the attorney general have generated those perceptions.
NBCNews: White House officials concerned about being exposed by Mueller report http://nbcnews.to/2UmVAn8
// Some of the dozen-plus officials interviewed by Mueller are concerned about president’s “wrath” if they are seen as a source of damaging information in Thursday’s report.
⭕ 15 Apr 2019
NYT: The Rematch: Bernie Sanders vs. a Clinton Loyalist http://nyti.ms/2UKJIR2 Neera Tanden
🐣 RT @MuellerSheWrote In honor of Nixon’s attempt to have the White House tapes interpreted by the famously hard-of-hearing Sen. John Stennis – known as the Stennis Compromise – I am calling the redacted Mueller report release this Thursday the “Barr Compromise”. #BarrCompromise #ReleaseTheFullReport
🐣 RT @MSNBC In 1989, AG Barr refused to release a DOJ legal opinion, choosing to release a summary report instead. It was later revealed that Barr mischaracterized parts of the opinion in that summary.
TPM, Tierney Sneed: DOJ Expected To Release Public Version Of Mueller Report On Thursday http://bit.ly/2PdjgcD
🐣 RT @tribelaw As this @rgoodlaw report reveals, we’re reliving the duplicity Barr practiced 30 years ago. As @RonaldKlain put it, he’s building a wall around Trump not brick by brick, but Barr by Barr. Trump really has found his Roy Cohn. They deserve each other.
⋙ 💙 JustSecurity, Ryan Goodman: Barr’s Playbook: He Misled Congress When Omitting Parts of Justice Dep’t Memo in 1989 http://bit.ly/2UFRFa3
NPR, Ron Elvin: Mueller Report Release Will Likely Escalate Tensions Between Trump and Congress http://n.pr/2UzU6uG
💙💙 Politico, Darren Samuelsohn: The Insiders’ Guide To the Mueller Report http://politi.co/2IDyGFA
// How experts and political operatives are gearing up to read the juiciest Washington info dump in two decades.
⭕ 14 Apr 2019
🐣◕ RT @Tam_Resist Because neither Mueller or Barr claimed *45 didn’t conspire/collude or obstruct justice. ¤ #trumpRussiaCollusion ¤ #ObstructionOfJustice ¤ #ReleaseTheFullMuellerReport https://twitter.com/Tam_Resist/status/1117716495314956288/photo/1
// levels of proof
HuffPo: George Conway Reveals The Key Phrase To Watch For In Full Mueller Report http://bit.ly/2IxvITe
// “Look for these words.”
WaPo: Barr’s spy talk emboldens Trump’s allies ahead of Mueller report’s release http://wapo.st/2Xei5MC
Axios, Jonathan Swan: Behind the scenes: The White House prepares for Mueller week http://bit.ly/2GlZ6KG
NYT: Emboldened by His Attorney General, Trump Confronts Mueller Report Head-On http://nyti.ms/2UXm42H
💙💙🐣 RT @gtconway3 A chilling thread. It’s worth going through all fifty parts.
⋙ 🐣 RT @TimothyDSnyder 0/50 Why we do think that Mr. Trump owes a debt to Mr. Putin? Here are fifty reasons. All of the facts are a matter of public record, and all of the sources can be found in my book The Road to Unfreedom. #RoadToUnfreedom
📌 https://twitter.com/TimothyDSnyder/status/1117433512863371267
YahooNews: Hillary Clinton remembers Nixon investigation: ‘We deserve to see the Mueller report’ http://yhoo.it/2UCGD56
Alternet/Dkos: Trump’s team ‘significantly concerned’ about the Mueller report — particularly former White House counsel Don Mcgahn’s testimony: ABC’s Jon Karl http://bit.ly2GcgWi3/
CNN, Marshall Cohen: 9 unanswered questions for the Mueller report http://cnn.it/2IiJqtJ
1. Will we learn anything new on collusion?
2. Did Mueller see “collusion” as a crime?
3. What about obstruction of justice?
4. How did Mueller assess Trump’s statements and tweets?
5. Were Trump Jr. or Kushner investigated but never charged?
6. Will Mueller offer ethical or moral conclusions?
7. How many related investigations are ongoing?
8. How did Mueller investigate the Russians?
9. Which countries assisted the investigation?
⭕ 13 Apr 2019
⭕ 12 Apr 2019
Politico Mag, Renato Mariotti: What Will Really Matter in the Mueller Report http://politi.co/2v78gV6
WaPo, Harry Litman: William Barr’s testimony was a terrible self-inflicted wound http://wapo.st/2ICHADg
🐣 RT @djrothkopf Something broke in America this week. We have been spiraling downward since Trump’s election, but this week, we crossed a line. The President and his men began asserting that they were above the law–and effectively no one in our system did anything to stop them. 📌 https://twitter.com/djrothkopf/status/1116811681462616065
🐣 RT @matthewamiller This makes me want to jab hot needles into my eye. The FBI obtained all of Hillary Clinton’s emails, reviewed them, and the FBI director attacked her at a press conference. He then disclosed a further probe into her right before the election. But, yes, Trump was treated unfairly.
⋙ 🐣 RT @TheHill Sen. Lindsey Graham: “It is spying but it’s lawful if it was appropriately done. There is no doubt. They didn’t do this to Clinton — they did this to Trump. We’re going to find out why.”
WaPo, Aaron Blake: Rod Rosenstein stuck his neck out for Trump. Now he’s doing it again for William Barr. http://wapo.st/2G7FWqG
TheHill, David Tafuri: Does Mueller report anticipate campaign finance crimes related to Trump’s Russia contacts? http://bit.ly/2UxsNRv
WaPo: Inside the Russian effort to target Sanders supporters — and help elect Trump http://wapo.st/2Z8L5as
FiveThirtyEight, Amelia Thomson-Deveaux: Obstruction Of Justice Could Still Threaten Trump Politically http://53eig.ht/2X7GgfW
WaPo: W. Samuel Patten sentenced to probation after steering Ukrainian money to Trump inaugural http://wapo.st/2X4bdl1
WSJ: Rod Rosenstein Defends Justice Department Handling of Mueller Report [Interview] http://on.wsj.com/2G8ap7X
// Deputy attorney general rebuts Democrats’ suggestions that William Barr is trying to mislead
⭕ 11 Apr 2019
ChicagoSunTimes, Rick Jasculca: William Barr’s outrageous claim that the government ‘spied on’ Trump’s campaign http://bit.ly/2Z7o4ot
💽 MSNBC, MTP Daily: Why Assange’s arrest is a huge moment in the Russia investigation http://on.msnbc.com/2UQ6upI
// Former Assistant U.S. Attorney Mimi Rocah, New York Times Washington Correspondent Charlie Savage and former FBI Executive Assistant Director Bob Anderson join MTP Daily to discuss Julian Assange’s arrest and its connection to the Mueller investigation.
Bloomberg: Comey Says Trump’s Silence Invites Another Russia Election Hack http://bloom.bg/2UfxMBs
● Ex-FBI chief faults attorney general over ‘spying’ comments
● FBI, Justice Department conducted ‘court-ordered surveillance’
TheAtlantic, Conor Friedersdorf: A President Falsely Charging ‘Treason’ Is What the Founders Feared http://bit.ly/2DeFR3H
// Trump’s accusations violate his oath of office.
NYT: Comey Defends Trump Campaign Surveillance: ‘I Have Never Thought of That as Spying’ http://nyti.ms/2GiYfKy
NYT: After Arrest of Julian Assange, the Russian Mysteries Remain http://nyti.ms/2UQzAFh
ForeignPolicy (2017): WikiLeaks Turned Down Leaks on Russian Government During U.S. Presidential Campaign http://bit.ly/2UuxPhT
// The leak organization ignored damaging information on the Kremlin to focus on Hillary Clinton and election-related hacks.
// 8/17/2017
TheWeek, Joel Mathis: William Barr just proved he’s Trump’s loyal foot soldier http://bit.ly/2uWNOWO
WashingtonExaminer: Devin Nunes sends Trump-Russia investigation criminal referral notification to DOJ http://washex.am/2UaWQK2
Nunes, the ranking member of the House Intelligence Committee, has been teasing a referral of Justice Department and FBI officials for months. During a Fox News interview on Sunday, Nunes said his referral will target eight people and place them into three categories. The first, which Nunes described as “straight-up referrals,” covered five individuals whose “crimes are lying to Congress, misleading Congress, leaking classified information.” Two others related to “charges of conspiracy to lie to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court” and the last to a “global leak referral.”
Nunes’ letter did not identify who was was subject to the referral, nor did it identify the alleged crimes.
In recent weeks, House Judiciary Committee ranking member Doug Collins, R-Ga., released transcripts of the private interviews of former FBI agent Peter Strzok, former FBI lawyer Lisa Page, Justice Department official Bruce Ohr, his wife and former Fusion GPS contractor Nellie Ohr, former Trump campaign aide George Papadopoulos, former top FBI official Bill Priestap, and former FBI general counsel James Baker.
NBCNews: Comey on Barr’s ‘spying’ claim: ‘I don’t know what the heck he’s talking about’ http://nbcnews.to/2UxLuVa
// The former FBI director led the investigation into Russian election interference and any possible Trump campaign involvement until the president fired him.
Vox, Alex Ward: The expected redactions in the Mueller report, explained http://bit.ly/2uYsMHc
// [Redacted].
DailyBeast, Betsy Woodruff and Erin Banco: Decision to Go After Assange Came During Trump’s War on Leakers http://bit.ly/2U7U08x
// “There was renewed interest under the new administration to revisit issues of what qualifies as the media and to look back at the Assange case.”
DailyBeast, Rick Wilson: Bill Barr Is the Most Dangerous Man in America http://bit.ly/2UvBhJd
// The banality of the AG’s droning Hill testimony hides its evil purpose: to protect the president, not the rule of law.
DailyBeast, David Cay Johnston: Here’s the Law That Requires Steven Mnuchin to Turn Over Trump’s Taxes, or Lose His Office and Go to Prison http://bit.ly/2UxLi8G
// The law is clear, and it leaves no wiggle room. The consequences for breaking it include removal from public office and up to five years in prison.
🐣 RT @tribelaw It’s hard to call someone in Trump’s orbit even more dishonorable than Trump himself, but Bill Barr might meet that test: unlike the totally unmoored and immoral Trump, this Attorney General clearly knows better. He has to know how badly he is betraying the rule of law.
WaPo: WikiLeaks’ Assange arrested in London, accused by U.S. of conspiring in 2010 computer hacking attempt http://wapo.st/2P4nuDm
🐣 🔆 This❗️⋙ RT @BBC Julian Assange: Wikileaks co-founder arrested in London
⭕ 10 Apr 2019
USAToday/AP: Pelosi doesn’t ‘trust’ William Barr’s handling of Mueller report, questions his independence http://bit.ly/2X5eyjT
WaPo: Trump says he was the target of ‘an attempted coup’ with Mueller investigation http://wapo.st/2D64kZ6
JustSecurity, Ryan Goodman: What the President May Now Fear Most in Mueller Report http://bit.ly/2P5Mzh9
// “Mueller’s Road Map” for the Southern District of New York prosecutors
CNN, Jeremy Herb: Barr: Mueller did not ask for conclusion on obstruction of justice http://cnn.it/2KApmFs
TheWeek, Chris Mitchell: Did Barr shutter the Mueller probe? http://bit.ly/2v3U4Md
LawFareBlog, Quinta Jurecic and Benjamin Wittes: Memo to the Press: How Not to Screw Up on the Mueller Report http://bit.ly/2uYQHGH
[ In February ] … Our proposals were simple:
● People should be prepared to accept Mueller’s prosecutorial judgments, we argued.
● They should accept the factual record described in the report.
● They should not assume the report covers more than it, in fact, conveys—there being a lot of legal questions about President Trump’s behavior that lie outside the scope of the Mueller investigation.
● Nonprosecution decisions do not necessarily resolve questions of morality, ethics or impeachability—in other words, the judgments of history, journalism and Congress are not determined by whether Mueller finds the president’s conduct indictably criminal.When we made these suggestions, we were candidly not anticipating what turned out to be an important intervening event: the release of Attorney General William Barr’s letter describing the top-line prosecutorial judgments Mueller had reached without releasing any of the underlying factual or analytic work product. The lag between the Barr letter and the still-impending release of the report itself has been a period in which the press has no capacity to apply the principles we laid out—or any others—because it has no capacity to read the document at all. Yet it is nonetheless awash in an aggressive spin campaign by the president and his allies as to what Mueller supposedly found, and an aggressive push as well from congressional Democrats to focus on procedural demands for the report’s release. Lost in the shadow boxing of this period is, well, the report itself. …
TheHill: Pelosi: ‘I trust Mueller’ over Barr http://bit.ly/2Ud64VS
WIRED, Garrett Graff: William Barr Sends Troubling Signals Ahead of Mueller Report Release http://bit.ly/2UrshER
DailyBeast, Barbara McQuade: Barr Sounds More and More Like Trump’s Roy Cohn http://bit.ly/2DaPlgg
// The attorney general contradicts himself on Mueller and obstruction and starts talking like a true-believer on intelligence agencies ‘spying’ on the Trump campaign.
🐣 RT @JohnWDean Spying? Really, with no evidence. We’re watching Bill Barr’s reputation as a careful attorney go down the drain. His spying testimony before the Senate today could have been given by Sean Hannity. His embracing GOP conspiracy theories is embarrassing. He’s now untrustworthy!
🐣 RT @JoyceWhiteVance Bottom line: Cabinet member may think they work for the President, but ultimately, they work for us. Barr is supposed to be our attorney, charged with protecting our rights.
⋙ 🐣 RT @JRubinBlogger It’s important for the House to educate the public on the obligations of Cabinet members and to give Cabinet members second and third thoughts about defying the law. It’s also important for voters to see if and how Republican senators defend Barr’s conduct
⋙ ⋙ WaPo, Jennifer: William Barr, Trump toady http://wapo.st/2X120Kj
🐣 RT @SenBlumenthal AG Barr must retract his unfounded, irresponsible claim that American law enforcement ‘spied’ on the Trump Campaign. The only spies interfering in the 2016 campaign were Russian ones. 📌 https://twitter.com/SenBlumenthal/status/1116062484945887236
🐣 RT @tonyschwartz Trump will do anything & everything possible to command dictatorial and authoritarian powers comparable to Putin and Kim Jong-Un. He will stop at nothing if he thinks he can get away with it. He will do anything to prevail. We are at unimaginable risk.
WaPo, Paul Waldman: William Barr is doing exactly what Trump hired him to do http://wapo.st/2UGqUkY
TPM, Josh Marshall: Let’s Stop Pretending http://bit.ly/2UchUjn
Bill Barr basically openly embraced the President’s discredited claim that the Obama administration “spied” on his campaign. He later seemed to partly backtracked and then tried to suggest that by “spying” he might just mean court approved surveillance as part of a counter-intelligence investigation. But that’s really just caviling. He’s embracing the President’s conspiracy theories and pushing ahead with what can only be called a retributive new investigation of the origins of the Russia probe.
What’s clear is that Barr used the word “spying” with the full knowledge that that would be interpreted as illicit surveillance of a US political campaign by the US government. He then got cute and said that “spying” is okay if it’s done through proper law enforcement and intelligence procedures. This is all BS. He knows the meaning of the word. He particularly knows its meaning in this political context. This is meant to back up Trump’s claims that the Russia probe was in fact a dirty trick and “treason” as the President put it this morning. Here are the headlines the President wanted and got …
https://twitter.com/joshtpm/status/1116014152022208512/photo/1-3
🐣 RT @RVAwonk Rep. Adam Schiff on AG Barr’s “spying” comment today: ¤ “This partisan talking point may please Donald Trump, who rails against a ‘deep state coup,’ but it also strikes a destructive blow to our democratic institutions. The hardworking men & women at the DOJ & FBI deserve better.”
🐣 RT @AshaRangappa_ To recap: Barr is opening an investigation into whether the FBI opened an investigation with no evidence based on no evidence that the FBI actually did anything wrong. Is…is that right?
🐣 Barr: “I’m trying to land this plane.”❓Maybe he’s trying to get the report out before Trump squelches it.
🐣 RT @TeaPainUSA Trump on Bob Mueller…
Last week: “behaved honorably”
Today: “guilty of treason”
You reckon Trump read the Mueller Report in the past few days? (Hint: YES)
🐣 RT @mkraju “Absolutely not,” Sen. Mark Warner tells me about whether he’s ever been told that there was spying on the Trump campaign. Barr “almost seems to be endorsing one of these theories that has been debunked time and time again,” Warner said, calling it “disrespectul” to DOJ employees
🐣 RT @MCNBC Leon Panetta on DHS shake-up: “He’s looking for people that can find ways either around the law and or simply not abide by the law as it is.”
⋙ MSNBC, MitchellReports: Leon Panetta: President Trump weakening his White House by undermining top officials http://on.msnbc.com/2Iam0qn
// Today is the first day on the job for President Trump’s new Acting Homeland Security Secretary after a dramatic house cleaning. Former Secretary of Defense and CIA Director Leon Panetta joins Andrea Mitchell to talk about impact of the DHS purge on America’s security.
🐣 RT @MCNBC Leon Panetta on DHS shake-up: “He’s looking for people that can find ways either around the law and or simply not abide by the law as it is.”
⋙ MSNBC, MitchellReports: Leon Panetta: President Trump weakening his White House by undermining top officials http://on.msnbc.com/2Iam0qn
🐣 RT @Amy_Siskind This sounds like someone who knows what the full report says already, and is working to discredit it before the American people see it: Trump said the probe was “started illegally” and that “every single thing about it” was “crooked.”
⋙ NBCNews: Trump blasts Mueller investigation as ‘attempted coup’ http://nbcnews.to/2I9yrmn
// “This was an attempted coup. This was an attempted take down of a president. And we beat them,” Trump said.
🐣 RT @DavidJolly Though styles are different, Trump might as well have nominated Giuliani to be Attorney General. Same outcome as Barr.
🐣 RT @MalcolmNance WARNING: Now the REAL Trump-Russia scandal. Barr is now openly preparing to cover up Trump & Russia’s malfeasance by investigating Obama admin & FBI for doing their duty detecting an insider attack on the country. The DOJ is now a Dictator’s Weapon. [More] https://twitter.com/MalcolmNance/status/1115998739204911105
🐣 RT @RepJerryNadler These comments directly contradict what DOJ previously told us. I’ve asked DOJ to brief us immediately. In the meantime, the AG still owes us the full Mueller report. #ReleaseTheReport
⋙ NBCNews AG Barr says he thinks government “spying did occur” on President Trump’s campaign, though “the question is whether it was predicated, adequately predicated. I’m not suggesting it wasn’t.”
⋙⋙ NBCNews: Barr says he thinks the government spied on the Trump campaign http://nbcnews.to/2GgbtrB
// Before the attorney general’s Senate testimony, the president praised Barr for “getting started on going back to the origins of exactly where this all started.”
🐣 RT @Amy_Siskind We are in serious trouble. Trump has control of the head of our Justice Department. This has broad and terrifying implications.
⋙ 🐣 House Judiciary has got to call Mueller in to testify asap so we can see how deep the rot goes.
🐣 RT @JoyceWhiteVance Barr is concerned the Trump campaign wasn’t briefed. Leaving aside the fact FBI did brief on the threat of Russian interference, Barr should be troubled that the campaign never picked up the phone & told the FBI about any, let alone all, of the outreach it had from Russians.
🐣 RT @RepAdamSchiff In two years, post-Watergate rules have been obliterated. After Trump, a president under investigation can:
Fire the FBI Director leading the probe,
Fire the Attorney General not protecting him,
and appoint one who will.
It’s the most profound attack on rule of law in decades.
🐣 RT @EricHolder When there is a predicate, a legitimate basis, it’s called “investigating” not “spying”. I am confident that the people at DOJ/FBI conducted themselves in an appropriate way. No evidence to suggest otherwise.
⋙ 🐣 RT @matthewamiller Just an outrageous thing for the AG to say. First, there is zero evidence of this. Second, it’s under investigation by the DOJ IG and he should wait until that’s done. Third, how about defending the people who work for him rather than repeating right-wing conspiracy theories?
⋙ ⋙ 🐣 RT @kyledcheney BIG: Barr says he’s forming a team to review the origins of the Trump-Russia probe because: “I think spying did occur.” He said “spying on a political campaign is a big deal”
⭕ 9 Apr 2019
Politico, Darren Samuelson and Josh Gerstein: Barr redactions could spark more displeasure from Mueller’s team http://politi.co/2IaADu4
// Some see recent reports about ‘frustration’ with William Barr among Mueller’s investigators as a warning to the attorney general.
DailyBeast, Erin Banco: Bill Barr: I’m Not Giving Congress Full Mueller Report http://bit.ly/2VyaVCA
// The AG said a redacted version could come within a week. But he’s not giving in to congressional demands for the whole copy.
Politico: Newly released testimony: Former top FBI lawyer says agency concerned Trump obstructed justice http://politi.co/2KmcSAV
WaPo, Max Boot: Trump is trashing the rule of law to stay in power http://wapo.st/2UPFPcM
🐣 RT @DeadlineWH “Barr is handling this about as wrong as you can handle any kind of PR or credibility situation… it’s getting harder and harder for me to give him the benefit of the doubt, I’m hoping he’s going to do the right thing” – @FrankFigliuzzi1 w/ @NicolleDWallace
⋙ 💽 https://twitter.com/DeadlineWH/status/1115376662445723649/photo/1
🐣 RT @gtconway3 He hates that legalistic insistence on obeying the law.
⋙ 🐣 RT @tripgabriel President Trump is said to have seethed over the legalistic refusals of his top immigration officials — now being purged — to do what he said was necessary
⋙⋙ NYT: Trump Signals Even Fiercer Immigration Agenda, With a Possible Return of Family Separations http://nyti.ms/2G4tI1L
🐣 RT @RepJerryNadler Congress is—as a matter of law—entitled to each of the categories AG Barr proposed to redact from the Special Counsel’s report. Full release of the report to Congress is consistent with both congressional intent and the interests of the American public. http://bit.ly/2U2aYFe
https://twitter.com/RepJerryNadler/status/1115651148193595393/photo/1-3
🐣 RT @MalcolmNance One of my best side jokes ever: Christening Stephen Miller the title of #BabyGoebbels!
🐣 RT @AmySiskind I suspect this is one reason we have acting-everythings in Trump’s cabinet: he is paranoid and stacking positions with loyalists, not competence.
⋙ Mediaite, Karen Meyer: Former FBI General Counsel: Two Members of Trump’s Cabinet Were Open to Using 25th Amendment Against Him http://bit.ly/2IawuGq
🐣 RT @JuliaDavis Is it because Mueller’s team prepared their own summaries and he didn’t want to give the appearance of endorsing the Barr letter by reviewing it?
⋙ 🐣 RT @caitlaincollins Barr says Mueller was given the opportunity to review the four-page summary he released, but Mueller declined.
🐣 RT @BarbMcQuade Mr. #Barr, do I need to write you a 19-page memo? Two provisions of Rule 6(e) permit disclosure. Rule 6(e)(3)(D) and 6(e)(3)(E)(i). Read more here:
⋙ JustSecurity: How Barr May Interpret What It Means to Withhold “Grand Jury Information” http://bit.ly/2JXSHJk
// A three-level game for concealing Mueller’s findings
⋙ 🐣 RT @rgoodlaw #Barr to @RepEdCase: “Until someone shows me a provision in 6(e) that permits its release, Congress doesn’t get 6(e)” grand jury material.
@marty_lederman and @BarbMcQuade have got the answer
Two provisions—under Rule 6(e) itself—permit sharing grand jury info with Congress
1/3 https://twitter.com/rgoodlaw/status/1115647228033622023
🐣 RT @JoyceWhiteVance 1st Impression: Barr is focused on getting a heavily redacted version of Mueller’s Report to the public & unconcerned with getting material to Congress; unwilling to even make a motion to release grand jury. He’s going to fight Congress every inch of the way.
🐣 RT @tribelaw I agree with @LHSummers here. The law is clear that the Treasury Secretary has no authority to prevent IRS from complying with a § 6103 request by Congress for the tax returns of any individual, including POTUS.
⋙ 🐣 RT @RHSummers Today’s @washingtonpost — The IRS chief must release Trump’s tax returns — and Mnuchin must not stop
⋙⋙ WaPo: The IRS chief must release Trump’s tax returns — and Mnuchin must not stop him http://wapo.st/2VzW22C
🐣 RT @RepAdamSchiff Today we learned:
Barr still won’t commit to giving Congress the full unredacted Mueller report,
Barr won’t request court approval to give us grand jury material, and
Barr won’t even say if the White House has seen, or been briefed on, the report.
Trump got his Roy Cohn.
⋙ 🐣 RT @SenateDems Attorney General Barr stopped answering questions the moment he was asked about his interactions with the Trump White House. ¤ His stonewalling and foot-dragging must stop. #ReleaseTheReport
🐣 RT @MarshallCohen Lowey (D) smartly asks: Who is factually accurate? Trump when he says the report was “total exoneration,” or Mueller who wrote that the the report “does not exonerate” Trump on obstruction? Barr smartly dodges, twice, so he doesn’t have to say on national TV that Trump is wrong.
🐣 RT @maddow Why won’t Barr answer if the white house has been given the report or briefed on it? He attested to that earlier, but not now.
⭕ 8 Apr 2019
Politico: Trump’s DHS purge floors Republicans http://politi.co/2OYrRja
// Even GOP allies of the president are distressed by the chaos unleashed on federal immigration policy.
TheBulwark, Kim Wehle: What to Expect in the Battle Over the Mueller Report’s Grand Jury Material http://bit.ly/2I6Nldh
// For one, Congress will score some victories.
BusinessInsider, Sonam Sheth: Mueller prosecutors’ decision to break their silence after 2 years speaks volumes about their feelings on the final Russia report http://bit.ly/2KlZAVc
MSNBC, DeadlineWH: Trump’s weekend tweet storm suggests bad news ahead of Mueller report release http://on.msnbc.com/2G4yFYn
NYMag, Ed Kilgore: Remembering the Starr Report As We Await the Mueller Report http://nym.ag/2FY3m1w
Politico: House GOP calls on Dems to bring in Mueller to testify http://politi.co/2Us1Kae Rep. Doug Collins, the top Republican on the House Judiciary Committee, called Monday for Democrats to immediately bring special counsel Robert Mueller to the Capitol
PBS: Read Barr’s prepared remarks for House budget hearing (Mueller isn’t mentioned) http://to.pbs.org/2FYmn3Y
NBCNews, Michael Conway: The Mueller report won’t stay secret forever. How William Barr redacts it will determine his place in history. http://nbcnews.to/2Us1jN8 (Former counsel, U.S. House Judiciary Committee)
// Watergate showed that a president’s redactions rarely last forever, and can come back to bite him.
Politico: Democrats crafting Mueller response if report drops during recess http://politi.co/2X2T4nV
WaPo, Philip Lacovara and Lawrence Tribe: The full Mueller report could be released — if the House opens preliminary impeachment hearings http://wapo.st/2FZNnA3
One of the exceptions to grand jury secrecy is disclosure “preliminary to or in connection with a judicial proceeding.” To authorize disclosure of the Watergate grand jury information, the special prosecutor’s office argued that the House had authorized its Judiciary Committee to conduct a formal impeachment inquiry and that such an inquiry could be fairly analogized to a “grand jury” investigation and thus a judicial proceeding. Both the district court and the court of appeals agreed, and the Judiciary Committee obtained both the report and the underlying evidence.
Significantly, the appeals court decision several days ago reaffirmed that exception. All three judges agreed that an impeachment inquiry falls within the “exception for judicial proceedings” and “coheres” with other rulings about the proper scope of grand jury secrecy.
NYT, Vicki Divoli: Subpoena Isn’t the Only Way to Get the Mueller Report http://nyti.ms/2Vtwzb8
// By law, the House and Senate Intelligence Committees should already have certain investigative materials relating to Russian election meddling.
NPR: House Judiciary Leaders Unite In Call For Mueller Hearing; Unclear If He’d Appear http://n.pr/2I7tLgN
Axios: FBI confirms Comey was a witness in Mueller investigation http://bit.ly/2Ga9ftE
WaPo: ‘I’ve been battling Nadler for years’: Feud between Trump, Democrat rooted in decades-old New York real estate project http://wapo.st/2uWlWlA
RCP, Maria Bartiromo: Devin Nunes: Obama’s DOJ/FBI’s Abuse of Power Against Trump [Interview] http://bit.ly/2uV0nSz
NYT/Reuters: U.S. House Judiciary Chair Seeks Any Mueller Summaries on Trump-Russia Probe Report http://nyti.ms/2U61lp3
Reuters, Nathan Layne: Factbox: Five things to look for in Mueller’s Trump-Russia report http://reut.rs/2FYggg2
Vox, Andrew Prokop: What we know about Mueller’s case against Trump on obstruction of justice http://bit.ly/2UrYifM
// Recent leaks suggest tension between Attorney General Barr and members of Mueller’s team.
⭕ 7 Apr 2019
CNN: Nunes sending eight criminal referrals to Attorney General William Barr http://cnn.it/2UCYqZj
Appearing on Fox’s “Sunday Morning Futures,” Nunes said five of the referrals are related to lying to Congress, misleading Congress and leaking classified information.
The other referrals, Nunes said, are allegations of lying to the FISA court that approves foreign surveillance warrants, manipulating intelligence and what he described as a “global leak referral,” which Nunes said wasn’t tied to one individual.
Crooks&Liars: Al Jazeera’s Mehdi Hasan Shreds Trump Lawyer’s Ridiculous Argument On Release Of Mueller Report http://bit.ly/2U2xnSL
// Al Jazeera’s Mehdi Hasan laid waste to Trump attorney Jay Sekulow’s ridiculous assertion that the Mueller report supposedly totally exonerates Trump.
🐣 RT @ProudResister We learned two important details from Mueller’s team this week, but with the barrage of news and all the distractions you probably missed it:
1. Mueller report includes evidence that Trump obstructed justice.
2. Mueller report shows the Trump campaign was manipulated by Russia.
🐣 RT @CNNpolitics House Intelligence Chair Adam Schiff says he still sees evidence of collusion: “What we’re talking about here is the difference between conduct that rises to the level of criminality and conduct that is deeply unethical, unpatriotic and corrupt that may not be criminal” #CNNSOTU 💽 https://twitter.com/CNNPolitics/status/1114879524490100737/photo/1
TheGuardian: Nadler: Barr is ‘biased’ and Mueller’s Trump-Russia report must be released http://bit.ly/2YYI1hk
WIRED: The Quest for Mueller’s Report Tops This Week’s Internet News Roundup http://bit.ly/2uT8vmt
VOA: Powerful House Democrat Calls AG Barr ‘Biased’ http://bit.ly/2Kh092y House Judiciary Committee chair Jerry Nadler
// House Judiciary Committee chair Jerry Nadler said Democrats need to see the complete report issued by special counsel Robert Mueller because Attorney General William Barr is biased.
“He is someone who is an agent of the administration, is an appointee, a political appointee of the president whose interests he may very well be protecting,” Nadler said on CBS’s Face the Nation Sunday. Barr is “a biased defender of the administration.”
CBS: Nadler says Congress “entitled to see all” of Mueller report, vows court fight for grand jury testimony http://cbsn.ws/2UodURI
NBCNews: Nadler assures ‘some’ of Mueller’s report wouldn’t leak; Giuliani fine with full release http://nbcnews.to/2IpA0fx
// “The committee has a very good record of protecting information which it decides to protect,” Nadler said.
Politico: Giuliani: Let Congress see the Mueller report http://politi.co/2D1HX6N Rudy Giuliani wants the full Mueller report to go to Congress — because “believe me, there was nothing there.”
// on Face The Nation
NYT: Congress Waits as Barr Blacks Out Parts of Mueller Report http://nyti.ms/2OY2NsQ
NewYorker, Jeffrey Toobin: William Barr’s Choices http://bit.ly/2IgY8kk
// Since Barr became Attorney General, he has narrowed the range of information about the Mueller report that he says he will allow the public to see.
WaPo: Scrutiny and suspicion as Mueller report undergoes redaction http://wapo.st/2UmcXcv
⭕ 6 Apr 2019
🐣 RT @tribelaw The April 5 DC Circuit ruling narrowly reading the exceptions to Rule 6(e) on grand jury secrecy heightens the need to call Mueller to testify. He can be trusted to describe his findings without ever disclosing a “grand jury matter,” meaning grand jury testimony or exhibits.
⋙ 🐣 RT @tribelaw This split DC Circuit decision (4/5/19) doesn’t bode well for getting a court to authorize release of 6e grand jury material in the Mueller report to the House. There’s a circuit conflict, but I wouldn’t expect this Supreme Court to reverse CADC here. http://bit.ly/2VuH1iv
HillReporter, Chris Walker: Former Mueller Prosecutor Suggests Mueller Report Is Bad For Trump http://bit.ly/2VrrQ9T
Politico, Gabby Orr: Trump lashes out at Mueller probe as release of report approaches http://politi.co/2FWuLRz
Bloomberg, Brooke Sample: Bill Barr Gets Mueller’s Team Talking: Weekend Edition http://bloom.bg/2WTOqs9
TheGuardian: Trump: Mueller report a ‘total waste of time’ – but it proves no collusion http://bit.ly/2TYCcwl
Slate, Daniel Politi: Trump Says He Hasn’t Read Mueller Report but Knows it Fully Clears Him http://bit.ly/2UFCAV1
⭕ 5 Apr 2019
Politico Mag, Deana El-Mallawany: What a Decades-Old Grand Jury Probe Just Revealed About the Mueller Report http://politi.co/2uNs7bB
// A federal court decision on Friday shows how Congress can finally get its hands on the special counsel’s work.
Axios: Michael Cohen attorneys release new Trump allegations http://bit.ly/2I1GyRU
WaPo, Jennifer Rubin: William Barr’s stunt has backfired http://wapo.st/2TZfnbO
Newsweek, Frank Snepp: Barr’s Mueller Report Summary is Like Witnessing a Murder and Being Told it Never Happened http://bit.ly/2Igopz4
WaPo, Marcy Wheeler: We already knew Barr’s summary was too easy on Trump. Public records prove it. http://wapo.st/2IfQwOP
// Court filings and congressional testimony show the attorney general left out a lot of Mueller’s findings.
JustSecurity: Norms Watch: Damage to Democracy and Rule of Law in March 2019 http://bit.ly/2Uwwpm9
JustSecurity, Luppe Lippen: What Has Bill Barr Done to Earn the Benefit of the Doubt? http://bit.ly/2OTBa46
🐣 RT @MSNBC .@JoeNBC: “It’s not up to the attorney general to decide what classified information Nancy Pelosi is grown up enough to see. It’s not up to the attorney general to decide whether the chairman of the Judiciary Committee can handle classified information.”
⋙ MSNBC, Joe: Barr needs to let Congress see the full report http://on.msnbc.com/2FRLKVa
// Amid reporting that some members of Mueller’s team are unhappy with AG Barr’s summary of their work, Democrats are demanding that DOJ produce all communications between Barr and special counsel Robert Mueller. The panel discusses.
🐣 RT @BradMossEsq Two thoughts:
1) @BuzzFeedNews is largely vindicated. Their reporting was on-point, although they oversold the “direction” angle a bit.
2) This isn’t enough to prove suborning perjury. Cohen has little credibility and the corroborating evidence isn’t strong enough (yet).
⋙ 🐣 RT @JasonLeopold NEW: Michael Cohen’s attys sent a memo to Congress summarizing for the 1st time his testimony to Mueller’s team ¤ Attys say Cohen was “encouraged” to lie to Congress by Trump abt the Moscow Project, alleging the president suborned perjury while in office
⋙⋙ BuzzFeedNews: In New Documents, Cohen Says Trump “Instructed” Him To Lie http://bit.ly/2uPxvea
// In a memo submitted to Congress, the president’s former lawyer asks for time to help congressional investigators review new evidence.
TheGuardian: Barr invited to meet DoJ officials on day[!] he submitted memo critical of Mueller http://bit.ly/2IfpcR2
// Revealed: The attorney general, then a private lawyer, called the special counsel’s obstruction of justice inquiry into Trump ‘fatally misconceived’
TheExpress [UK]: Julian Assange to be expelled from Ecuadorian embassy in London WITHIN HOURS say WikiLeaks http://bit.ly/2UeX73r [adds “or days”]
// Julian Assange, the fugitive computer programmer, is set to be expelled from the Ecuadorian embassy in London “within hours”, a “high-level” source claims. [adds “or days”]
⭕ 4 Apr 2019
TIME, Simon Shuster: How Putin Built a Ragtag Empire of Tyrants and Failing States http://bit.ly/2Kh7wqP
TheAtlantic, Russell Berman: ‘Dozens’ of Whistle-Blowers Are Secretly Cooperating With House Democrats http://bit.ly/2OSsWJk
// The number of anonymous tipsters reporting wrongdoing from inside the federal government has spiked during the Trump presidency, the House Oversight Committee says.
NewYorker, Sean Wilentz: The “Reputational Interests” of William Barr http://bit.ly/2WNpqCF
Politico Mag, Matthew Miller: The Barr-Shaped Cloud Over the Justice Department http://politi.co/2UjMjRm
// The attorney general has made a total hash of the Mueller report, undermining the very department he runs.
🐣 RT @20committee Anybody foolish enough to push AG Barr’s 4-pager as the Last Word on the SCO investigation into Trump and the Russians is going to be sorely disappointed….rather soon.
🐣 RT @krassenstein BOOM! ¤ NBC News is reporting that a “US Official” tells them that “evidence of collusion” is “very compelling” in the Mueller report. ¤ It’s almost as if the last 2 weeks were all part of a Trump/Barr/GOP coverup.
WaPo, Greg Sargent: ‘Complete and total exoneration’? Team Mueller: Nope, not so much. http://wapo.st/2uLpGGj
🐣 RT @tribelaw Yes. Barr’s foot-dragging is inexcusable. Why he decided to become a lackey for this corrupt bully of a president is just beyond comprehension. When I worked with him years ago, he seemed to be a man of integrity. Now he’s willingly harming America and the rule of law. Go figure.
⋙ 🐣 RT @neal_katyal This is absurd. Barr has had 13 days to go to court &ask to have the grand jury material released, as Jaworski did in Watergate (+other sp prosecutors). He hasn’t even bothered. That laconic pace poorly contrasts with his clearing of Donald Trump of obstruction charges in 48 hrs.
⋙⋙ 🐣 RT @KellyO New from Department of Justice on Barr letter and Mueller report.
https://twitter.com/KellyO/status/1113817501425655813/photo/1
Politico, Jack Shafer: Week 98: Mueller’s Long Game http://politi.co/2K8qWy5
// Reports the special counsel’s investigators disliked Trump’s victory lap seem intended to force their work into the open.
RollingStone, Tim Dickinson: What We’re Learning From the Mueller Investigation Leaks http://bit.ly/2uPeBUE
// The special counsel’s team is breaking its silence, suggesting Attorney General William Barr slanted the truth on Trump, and that Mueller’s final report contains damning details
Politico, Anita Kumasi and Andrew Restuccia: Barrage of setbacks spoils Trump’s post-Mueller reset http://politi.co/2G4uP33
// A claimed ‘exoneration’ after the Russia probe seemed to promise a fresh start for the president. No such luck.
Slate, Ben Mathis-Lilley: Reports: Mueller Team Lived in Magic Fantasy World, Expected Trump to Handle Its Conclusions in Good Faith http://bit.ly/2FPTB5v
WaPo: Potentially damaging information in Mueller report ushers in new political fight http://wapo.st/2TWRDFm
🐣 RT @MaxBoot The Mueller report. Trump’s taxes. Security lapses at Mar-a-Lago. Kushner’s security clearance. Far from being “exonerated,” Trump is still awash in scandals because he presides over one of the most unethical and inept administrations in history. Me:
WaPo, Max Boot: Trump claims he’s been ‘exonerated.’ But the truth is catching up. http://wapo.st/2Vnu89Z
WaPo, Aaron Blake: The plot just thickened on William Barr and the Mueller report http://wapo.st/2TYktW3
Politico, Kyle Cheney: Dems ratchet up pressure on Barr over Mueller probe http://politi.co/2WLrwmz
// Democrats are asking for more material after reports indicate some members of Mueller’s team are unhappy with the attorney general’s summary of their work.
Politico, Darren Samuelson: Barr’s legacy on the line as Mueller team fumes http://politi.co/2FZNT24
// Legal experts and lawmakers say the attorney general is mishandling the special counsel’s report.
NBCNews: Some on Mueller team say evidence against Trump stronger than Barr disclosed http://nbcnews.to/2IeKGNY
// Three officials say a dispute within Mueller’s office was one reason he didn’t make a call on the question of whether Trump had obstructed justice.
USAToday Editorial: AG William Barr and Congress must negotiate in good faith over Mueller report http://bit.ly/2K3dY4x
🐣 So, now Trump can just blame it on the “12 Angry Democrats,” which is probably why the delay. Mueller himself must clear this up ➔ time for him to testify @RepAdamSchiff
⭕ 3 Apr 2019
🐣 RT @essenviews Don McGahn ex-White House lawyer admits he’s heavily cited in Mueller report: McGahn says he spent two years being shouted down as Trump would fly into a rage when told that something was illegal or it couldn’t be done because the law barred him from it.
⋙ [RawStory] https://twitter.com/essenviews/status/1115103267174772736
CrookedMedia, Brian Beutler: Why the Mueller Report Coverup Can’t Be Allowed to Succeed http://bit.ly/2KhU7yN
TheGuardian, Andrew Gawthorpe: Trump wants to distract us from the Mueller report. We can’t let him http://bit.ly/2Kfww1D
// As the president targets healthcare and immigration, Democrats must stand firm in seeking Mueller’s full findings
NYT/Reuters: Explainer: Can Democratic Subpoenas Force the Release of Mueller’s Trump-Russia Report? http://nyti.ms/2OMrVCy
Politico: NATO chief calls for confronting Russia in speech to Congress http://politi.co/2HYCLVo
// NATO Secy Genl Jens Stoltenberg
Vox, Andrew Prokop: Some Mueller team members aren’t happy with Barr’s description of their findings http://bit.ly/2UrtTh8
// A New York Times report describes behind-the-scenes dissent. Here’s what we know.
🐣 RT @maddow “Summaries were prepared for different sections of the report, with a view that they could made public. ¤ The report was prepared ‘so that the front matter from each section could have been released immediately — or very quickly,’ the official said. “
💙💙 WaPo: Limited information Barr has shared about Russia investigation frustrated some on Mueller’s team http://wapo.st/2OUccSd
But members of Mueller’s team have complained to close associates that the evidence they gathered on obstruction was alarming and significant.
“It was much more acute than Barr suggested,” said one person, who, like others, spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the subject’s sensitivity.
USAToday, Tom Nichols: NATO saved us and the world. No one should take it for granted — especially Donald Trump. http://bit.ly/2G0OJf6
🐣 RT @AshaRangappa_ 😂😂😂 “POTUS is being manipulated by a foreign power but is too dumb to meet the specific intent requirement of the U.S. criminal code” is literally where we are right now 😭😭😭 https://twitter.com/calder_walton/status/1113639687900495879
↥ ↧
NYRB, Michael Weiss: What Russia Understands about Trump http://bit.ly/2n6rg1Z
// 8/2/2019
🐣 RT @matthewamiller Wow. Mueller’s team went nearly two years without a single leak. They must be quite frustrated with what Barr is doing for this to make it out now.
🐣 RT @juliaioffe I am shocked, shocked, shocked.
🐣 RT @neal_katyal Whatever one might have thought appropriate 2 weeks ago re public suppression of Mueller Report, Barr himself has created a situation where it now must come out in full. He released his weird summary/nonsummary letters&took it upon himself to clear POTUS
🐣 RT @MaddowBlog You mean to tell me that maybe the Mueller report isn’t exactly as exciting and positive and exculpatory for the president as the Trump administration and conservative media and Congressional Republicans would have you believe? ¤ Really? Who could have seen this coming? 💽 https://twitter.com/MaddowBlog/status/1113617643544641536/photo/1
🐣 RT @AshaRangappa_ ya think?
🐣 RT @TheRickWilson Remember that victory lap all the Trump people were taking? ¤ Yeah. This is exactly what I expected.
🐣 RT @gtconway3 (shocked face)
🐣 RT @kylegriffin1 Fmr. Assistant FBI Director Frank Figliuzzi: “If this is indeed the first leakage we’re seeing from the special counsel’s team, we need to stand up and pay attention to that … That tells us they are not happy with what the attorney general is doing.” @allinwithchris
🐣 RT @AriMelber NYT: *Mueller investigators* view Barr’s take on Mueller findings as inaccurate & downplaying Trump’s actions (per sources) ¤ If entire Report helped Trump, Barr could have released much more of it ¤ Instead he shared 4 quotes & his own take on obstruction.
🐣 RT @kylegriffin1 Mueller’s investigators had already written multiple summaries of the report, NYT reports. Some Mueller team members believe Barr should have included more of their material in his memo laying out their main conclusions, according to government officials familiar with the probe.
🐣 RT @davidfrum Barr and Trump have goaded Mueller’s team to do something that has not happened in 2 years: talk to the press about perceived misrepresentation of their work
🔆 This❗️⋙ 💙💙 NYT: Some on Mueller’s Team See Their Findings as More Damaging for Trump Than Barr Revealed http://nyti.ms/2HXZ91n
… Some members of Mr. Mueller’s team are concerned that, because Mr. Barr created the first narrative of the special counsel’s findings, Americans’ views will have hardened before the investigation’s conclusions become public.
Summaries were prepared for different sections of the report, with a view that they could made public, the official said.
The report was prepared “so that the front matter from each section could have been released immediately — or very quickly,” the official said. “It was done in a way that minimum redactions, if any, would have been necessary, and the work would have spoken for itself.”
Mueller’s team assumed the information was going to be made available to the public, the official said, “and so they prepared their summaries to be shared in their own words — and not in the attorney general’s summary of their work, as turned out to be the case.”
Some members of Mueller’s team appear caught off guard by how thoroughly the president has used Barr’s letter to claim total victory, as the limited information about their work has been weaponized in the country’s highly polarized political environment, according to people familiar with their responses.
Their frustrations come as polls show many Americans have already drawn conclusions about the special counsel findings — even though only a handful of words from the report have so far been released.
On Wednesday night, Rep. Adam B. Schiff (D-Calif.), chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, questioned why Barr did not release the special counsel’s summary material.
“It’s been my assumption that a 400-page report has an executive summary already, and so of course it begged the question, ‘Why did Barr feel the need to release his own summary?’ ” he said on MSNBC. “Why didn’t he release a summary produced by Bob Mueller itself instead of trying to shape it through his own words?”
NBCNews: Barr’s letter says Mueller couldn’t prove obstruction — but that doesn’t make Trump innocent http://nbcnews.to/2IgIa9Z
// In contrast with Nixon’s White House, Trump’s White House is unlikely to produce a smoking gun tape. But do we need one?
📊 MorningConsult Poll: Most Voters Still Believe Russia Has Compromising Information on Trump http://bit.ly/2OLJano
// Opinions on Mueller probe largely unchanged as more voters hear news
CNBC: House panel votes to authorize subpoena for unredacted Mueller report http://cnb.cx/2WIjAm3
● The House Judiciary Committee votes to authorize a subpoena for an unredacted copy of special counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia report, along with all of the evidence from the two-year investigation.
● The vote on the resolution passed the Democrat-led panel on a 24-17 party line vote following an occasionally heated markup hearing Wednesday morning.
● It sets up a fight between congressional Democrats and President Donald Trump, whose attorney general, William Barr, has already committed to redacting some parts of the nearly 400-page report.
NPR, Philip Ewing: What Else Could Robert Mueller’s Report Reveal About Trump And Russia? http://n.pr/2YQ5wZV
EmptyWheel, Marcy Wheeler: The Parallel Tracks of Disclosure on Why Manafort Shared Campaign Polling Data with His Russian Co-Conspirator http://bit.ly/2HWKsf2
⭕ 2 Apr 2019
VanityFair, Bess Levin: Trump Suddenly Having Second Thoughts About People Seeing the Mueller Report http://bit.ly/2YJHCyY
CNN, Amanpour: Comey: Russia succeeded beyond its wildest dreams [Video] http://cnn.it/2Uuu5Mr
// Former FBI Director James Comey discusses Russian interference in the 2016 election and how he thinks Russians could impact the 2020 presidential elections.
FiveThirtyEight, Nate Silver: Why Trump Hasn’t Seen A Post-Mueller Boost In The Polls http://53eig.ht/2VmhXKs
// At least not yet.
NYMag, Jonathan Chait: I Wrote an Article Suggesting Trump Was Compromised by Russia. I Was Right. http://nym.ag/2VmhoQQ
⭕ 1 Apr 2019
JustSecurity, Barbara McQuade: How Barr May Interpret What It Means to Withhold “Grand Jury Information” http://bit.ly/2JXSHJk
// A three-level game for concealing Mueller’s findings
⋙ 🐣 RT @ Seriously? The guy who tried to open a secret back channel to Russia, using a Russian diplomatic facility is finally being scrutinized? Only two years in. Impressive.
// reply to @kylegriffin1 https://twitter.com/kylegriffin1/status/1112769173795586051
📊 PPP Poll: Opinions Unchanged About Trump and Russia, Voters Care More About Health Care and Tax Plan Anyway http://bit.ly/2TQLomq
WaPo, Philip Bump: Most Republicans don’t accept a basic Mueller finding: That Russia tried to interfere in the 2016 campaign http://wapo.st/2UaDCZJ
RCP: Noam Chomsky: Trump-Russia Collusion Claims “A Bad Joke” http://bit.ly/2JYyKlF
Politico, Josh Gerstein: Press group asks judge to lift grand jury secrecy in Mueller report http://politi.co/2TKqbe0
TheAtlantic, Benjamin Wittes: Bill Barr Has Promised Transparency. He Deserves the Chance to Deliver. http://bit.ly/2YHeSqF
// Judge the attorney general by what he ultimately sends to Congress.
NYT, Jerrold Nadler: The House Must See the Whole Mueller Report http://nyti.ms/2I2QXvT
// Someday, Trump will not be in office. Congress needs a full accounting of his misdeeds to ensure they don’t happen again.
DailyBeast, Marlowe Stern: John Oliver Exposes Fox News’ Mueller Report ‘Exoneration’ Lies http://bit.ly/2UpTXch
// The late-night host can’t understand why all of Trump’s cronies on Fox News insisted that he’d been “exonerated” when the Mueller report says the exact opposite.
WaPo: House Judiciary plans vote this week to subpoena Mueller’s report http://wapo.st/2CYh2ZV
WITF: AP FACT CHECK: Trump’s exaggerations about the Russia probe http://bit.ly/2JVhpKk
NewYorker, Steve Coll: The Media and the Mueller Report’s March Surprise http://bit.ly/2I5pNo0
// 4/8/2019 issue
NBCNews: NY’s attorney general is one of the most powerful in the nation. That should worry Trump. http://nbcnews.to/2JVQn5T
// Letitia James; The state’s chief legal officer, who is investigating the president and his company, has the ability to render a “judgment of corporate death” for business fraud.
⭕ 31 Mar 2019
NYT: The Criminal Investigations That Sprouted From Mueller http://nyti.ms/2TUBQaj
● https://twitter.com/Auriandra/status/1113782328910929920/photo/1
Forbes, Steve Denning: Why Barr’s Delay In Releasing The Mueller Report Is Unprecedented And Unreasonable http://bit.ly/2TNvtFB
Vox, Amanda Sakuma: SNL cold open roasts the Mueller report roll out http://bit.ly/2CYgvHp
// Robert DeNiro reprises his role as Mueller.
MotherJones, Noah Lanard : Even Fox News Isn’t Buying Trump’s “No Obstruction” Lie About the Mueller Report http://bit.ly/2JRgw5A
// “Why is the president telling Americans something that is not true?”
WaPo, Harry Litman: A ‘road map’ for the coming fight over the Mueller report http://wapo.st/2CQR4at
VanityFair, Abigail Tracy: “This Is Spy-Hunting”: Inside the Dark Heart of the Mueller Report http://bit.ly/2U7DTgb
// Robert Mueller’s secret counter-intelligence findings may be the key to understanding the Russiagate scandal and its implications for U.S. national security. And yet the public may never see them.
MSNBC, AMJoy: Trump seen as giving Russia what it wants by experts http://on.msnbc.com/2UpumjG
// Right-leaning media and many in the GOP are using the Barr summary to defend Donald Trump, with little to no commentary on the main focus of the Mueller report—possible collusion with Russian inference. Joy Reid and her panel discuss how the U.S. is likely still vulnerable to attacks from Russia in the 2020 elections.
TheGuardian, Michael Paarlberg: Enough collusion talk. It’s time to focus on Trump’s corruption http://bit.ly/2V9Lw21
// If there is a silver lining to the confusion and disappointment of Russiagate, it is that we can now pay attention to the real fleecing
NBCNews: Most Americans don’t think Trump is in the clear yet on Russia, new poll finds http://nbcnews.to/2COfbql
// President Trump’s approval remains stable and a third of voters say they don’t know whether the summary of Mueller’s findings clears him of wrongdoing in a new NBC News/WSJ poll.
WaPo, EJ Dionne: It’s Trump who’s obsessed with Russia http://wapo.st/2HQVrGC
⭕ 30 Mar 2019
Politico Mag, Renato Mariotti: William Barr Can’t Hide the Mueller Report http://politi.co/2JXFP5W
// Congress has constitutional duties the public does not have, which is why a redacted version of the 400-page document cannot possibly be sufficient.
CNN, Katelyn Polantz: The release of the Mueller report is coming. How redacted will it be? http://cnn.it/2FKlUC6
AlJazeera: Trump, Russia and the Mueller report: Is it really case closed? http://bit.ly/2FNxRY6
// Russiagate skeptic Aaron Mate and Trump biographer David Cay Johnston debate the conclusions of the Mueller report.
⭕ 29 Mar 2019
Politico, Walter Dellinger: How the Mueller report can still threaten Trump’s legitimacy http://politi.co/2CJY8FM
WaPo: Sally Yates: William Barr should release the full Mueller report as soon as possible http://wapo.st/2YB4Kja
🐣 RT @john_sipher “Trump supporters are doing a victory dance over the fact that he isn’t a Russian agent, just a Russian stooge.
⋙ WaPo, Michael Gerson: Trump may not be a Russian agent. He’s just a Russian stooge. http://wapo.st/2JPjPtY
MotherJones, David Corn: Here’s the Real Trump-Russia Hoax http://bit.ly/2HNggCQ
// It’s Trump defenders and lefty Russiagate skeptics claiming there is no scandal.
🐣 RT @BillKristol Read the third graph: Barr’s letter wasn’t a summary of the report but of its principal conclusions (he doesn’t mention the digression in which he gave his own conclusion). A hedge against the fact the report is more damning than one might have thought from Barr’s earlier letter?
WaPo: Mueller report will be delivered by ‘mid-April, if not sooner,’ attorney general tells Congress http://wapo.st/2FJLmJx
🐣 RT @NatashaBertrand Barr also says they’re redacting material that could compromise sources and methods, indicating the presence of findings from the counterintelligence probe. Barr confirms that the report is nearly 400 pages, and says his memo was “not an exhaustive recounting” of Mueller’s probe.
🐣 RT @NatashaBertrand Barr’s redaction of “information that would unduly infringe on the…reputational interests of peripheral third parties” may prompt some arguments. @RepSwalwell just said on @MSNBC that he doesn’t consider Trump Jr. or Jared Kushner, for example, to be “peripheral third parties.”
⋙ 🐣 RT @NatashaBertrand JUST IN: Barr says Mueller “is assisting” DOJ in process of making redactions to the report—including grand jury material and “information that would unduly infringe on the…reputational interests of peripheral third parties.” No plans to submit to White House prior to release. https://twitter.com/NatashaBertrand/status/1111710076425912321/photo/1-2
// Barr’s letter
🐣 RT @matthewamiller This is the biggest news in the letter. Though not ironclad, would seem to indicate Trump won’t assert exec priv over WH documents and WH staff interviews, which must be a significant part of the obstruction section.
⋙ 🐣 RT @NatashaBertrand Important note: Barr says DOJ has “no plans” to submit the report to the White House for an executive privilege review, because Trump has said publicly that he intends to defer to him. https://twitter.com/NatashaBertrand/status/1111711613948780545/photo/1
🐣 RT @JRubinBlogger Barr realizes that he and Trump carried the nothing to see, just move along WAY too soon and must craft a narrative to defend himself from the legitimate complaint that he inserted himself and tried to exonerate Trump politically. I wonder if Mueller threatened to go public
TheAtlantic, Natasha Bertrand: Even Congress Might Not Get the Full Mueller Report http://bit.ly/2uzTiXq
// And the public could be left with a shell of Mueller’s original findings.
⭕ 28 Mar 2019
🐣 RT @warrenleichtTV Republicans tried to take Schiff down this morning. It boomeranged. Over a million viewers have now watched Schiff meticulously lay out the case for collusion, and how the Republicans have betrayed us all by their complicity in covering it up. #IStandWithSchiff [link to CSpan]
🐣 RT @ABCpolitics NEW: “I’m so proud of the work of Chairman Adam Schiff,” Speaker Pelosi says after GOP members of House Intel Committee call for his resignation. ¤ “I think they’re just scaredy-cats. They just don’t know what to do.” https://abcn.ws/2FA0aca
WaPo: Democrats say they will accuse Barr of a ‘coverup’ if he delivers incomplete Mueller report http://wapo.st/2Oyta88
WaPo: A Mueller mystery: How Trump dodged a special counsel interview — and a subpoena fight http://wapo.st/2uz778w
WaPo, David A. Fahrenthold and Jonathan O’Connell: How Donald Trump inflated his net worth to lenders and investors http://wapo.st/2WuAK6I
🐣 RT @kylegriffin1 DO YOU BELIEVE TRUMP ACTED ILLEGALLY?
64% Probably
32% Probably not
DO YOU BELIEVE TRUMP ACTED UNETHICALLY?
72% Probably
25% Probably not
Pew Research poll
Slate, Ben Mathis-Lilley: Good News! The Saudi Arabia Nuclear Plan Originally Proposed by Michael Flynn and Some Russians Is Alive and Well. http://bit.ly/2FuCsxS
DailyBeast, Justin Baragona: Fox’s Judge Napolitano: Schiff ‘Is Correct’ That Mueller Report Will Show Evidence of Trump-Russia Collusion http://bit.ly/2V8LkjH
// ‘In that report will be evidence of the existence of a conspiracy, not enough evidence to prove the existence beyond a reasonable doubt,’ the Fox judicial analyst declared.
💽 CSpan: House Intelligence Hearing on Russian Interference Tactics http://cs.pn/2Wr1GnO //➔ entire hearing w Schiff speech
// Michael McFaul, the former U.S. ambassador to Russia, and a former CIA Russian operations chief are among the witnesses at a House Select Committee on Intelligence hearing about Russia’s election interference tactics.
🐣 RT @AltCyberCommand I got the #MuellerReport right here: Trump’s pals transacted with Russian intermediaries, but Trump didn’t directly: he has ass-kissing criminals in his orbit who don’t ask, and we couldn’t talk to him. Re: obstruction, it’s in the open: do your job or ruin the country, Congress.
🐣 RT @atrupar Wow — after all Republican members of the House Intel Committee file a letter asking @RepAdamSchiff to resign over Russiagate, Schiff ticks through the major pieces of evidence indicating collusion and says, “you might think it’s OK… I don’t think that’s OK!”
https://twitter.com/atrupar/status/1111259975714828289/photo/1
🐣 RT @atrupar SCHIFF: “You might think it’s OK that [Flynn] secretly conferred with a Russian ambassador about undermining US sanctions & then lied about it to the FBI. You might say that’s all OK — that’s just what you have to do to win… I think it’s corrupt & evidence of collusion.”
CNN: House intelligence Republicans call on Chairman Adam Schiff to resign http://cnn.it/2V0rtmF
⭕ 27 Mar 2019
WaPo, Max Boot: Russia or no Russia, Trump is still a lousy president http://wapo.st/2V52RJn
VanityFair, Emily Jane Fox: “She Was Not Involved”: E-mails Show Ivanka’s Lawyer Asked for Changes to Michael Cohen’s Congressional Testimony http://bit.ly/2HYb7qU
// A previously unreported e-mail exchange alleges how attorney Abbe Lowell suggested changes to Cohen’s testimony that would distance Ivanka from the Moscow Tower deal.
NYT, Max Frankel: The Real Trump-Russia Quid Pro Quo http://nyti.ms/2Yxp4ly
// The campaign and the Kremlin had an overarching deal: help beat Hillary Clinton for a new pro-Russian foreign policy.
MorningCall: Attorney General William Barr’s summary didn’t answer these 16 questions. Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s report could http://bit.ly/2WwL3Hx
1. Why didn’t Mueller reach a finding on whether Trump tried to obstruct justice?
2. Why did Mueller let Trump submit written answers, rather than sitting for an interview?
3. Without interviewing the president, how is it possible to make a decision about obstruction of justice?
4. Barr’s letter suggests some instances of potential obstruction weren’t made public. Are there any clues about what they are?
5. Whom did Mueller’s team interview?
6. How wide-ranging is Mueller’s report?
7. What conclusions did Mueller draw from the Trump campaign’s offer of pro-Russian policy position regarding sanctions relief and Ukrainian peace plan that would be favorable to the Kremlin – at a time when Trump was negotiating to build a Trump Tower in Moscow?
8. What unreported lines of investigation did Mueller spin off?
9. What was Mueller’s standard of proof?
10. What evidence did Mueller gather about the Trump team’s efforts to establish a back channel with Russia?
11. What about the infamous Trump Tower meeting?
12. What did Mueller conclude about then-Trump campaign chairman Manafort’s campaign-season meeting with a Russian suspected of ties to the country’s intelligence service?
13. What did Mueller conclude about longtime Trump ally Roger Stone’s interactions regarding WikiLeaks?
14. What happened to the draft charges against Jerome Corsi, the political gadfly who allegedly acted as an intermediary between Stone and WikiLeaks?
15. Will we ever know if Russia’s sabotage attempts swayed the 2016 election?
16. Did Mueller recommend ways to prevent foreign interference in future U.S. elections?
WaPo: Attorney general expected to miss deadline for giving Mueller report to Congress, will not commit to releasing it in full http://wapo.st/2WmBP0m
Vox, Alex Finley: Why Trump’s “no collusion” victory lap is premature http://bit.ly/2CSmZYj
// Foreign intelligence operations are not meant to leave traces behind that could be used in a courtroom.
Politico: Mueller grand jury ‘continuing robustly,’ prosecutor says http://politi.co/2TEEIHZ
// The revelation — while laced with uncertainty — indicates that the ongoing cases Mueller handed off could still feature significant developments.
CNN: Grand jury investigation started by Mueller ‘continuing robustly,’ prosecutor says http://cnn.it/2FFcolc
NBCNews: Comey: Mueller findings show Trump lied about FBI, his attempt to destroy the agency failed http://nbcnews.to/2HKmUde
// The former FBI director spoke to NBC News in his first on TV interview since the special counsel ended his investigation.
EmptyWheel, Marcy Wheeler: The Roger Stone Indictment Proves Barr’s Memo Understates Trump Flunkies’ Complicity http://bit.ly/2HSc2ce
// “it’s crystal clear that Barr cynically limited his discussion of the report to obscure that Mueller had, indeed, found that the campaign “coordinated” on the hack-and-leak for purposes of influencing the election”
NYMag, Jonathan Chait: Here Are All the Unsolved Questions the Mueller Report Can Answer http://nym.ag/2TZZ7fU
Vox, Andrew Prokop: Mueller’s many loose ends http://bit.ly/2HWyxNa
// What comes next now that the probe is finished.
⭕ 26 Mar 2019
BrennanCenter: Still Waiting for the Mueller Report http://bit.ly/2UgPcBP
// The need for the entire report to be made public has only been made more urgent by President Trump’s recent series of attacks on the very idea of the investigation.
Eighty-eight words. That’s all we have of the Mueller report. After 22 months of near-total silence, Robert Swan Mueller, III, has spoken — just not to us. Last Friday, he submitted a report of unknown length on his investigation into Russian interference with the 2016 election to Attorney General William Barr. Barr in turn has deigned to make public a few extracts of the report, sprinkling a bit of it into his own letter to Congress.
The crux of the Mueller report, as conveyed by Barr, lies in two sentences. The first, that the investigation “did not establish” that the Trump campaign conspired or coordinated with the Russian government. As to whether the president obstructed justice when he tried to derail the investigation, Mueller notes that “while this report does not conclude that the President committed a crime, it also does not exonerate him.”
With his feral flair for spin, President Donald Trump moved quickly to ignore the actual conclusions and market the Barr letter with its grand total of 88 words from Mueller as a “complete and total exoneration.” Or as one Twitter wag put it: “Classic Trumpian paradigm: ‘I got away with it = I didn’t do it.’”
Pay particular attention to two of Mueller’s phrases: “did not establish” and “did not exonerate.” Lawyers will know that those two phrases actually hint at the opposite of a complete Trump vindication. The first suggests that there was in fact some proof — just not enough to establish criminal wrongdoing beyond a reasonable doubt. We do not know how much evidence Mueller uncovered, but his wording intimates more than the bare minimum. Otherwise, he would have simply said there was no case to be made. He is, after all, a famously direct and to the point man. As for “did not exonerate,” that’s as close as a prosecutor gets to saying, “You were in the wrong, but we can’t convict.”
Esquire, Jack Holmes: The Fox News-Trump Machine Wants to See Retribution, Not the Actual Mueller Report http://bit.ly/2FxscVI
// The symbiosis is in overdrive, trying to replace the actual report with The Barr Letter.
Slate, Dahlia Lithwick: Mueller Did His Investigation for a World We Don’t Inhabit http://bit.ly/2TyKoTW
// His report was predicated on caring about facts. Our world is about who can claim victory the quickest.
WaPo, Paul Farhi: Rachel Maddow, the left’s powerhouse on cable, won’t let the Mueller probe go. http://wapo.st/2U2hnVE
NBCNews, Julia Ainsley: James Comey says he is confused by Mueller’s decision on obstruction http://nbcnews.to/2JKmGEB
// The entire rationale for a special counsel is to make sure the politicals aren’t making the key charging decisions,” the former FBI chief said.
🐣 RT @NewsHour “It’s clear that Bob Mueller found substantial evidence of obstruction,” says @PreetBharara
⋙ 🔊 PBS: Preet Bharara on ‘troublesome language’ in Barr summary of Mueller report (transcript, audio) http://to.pbs.org/2FIb53R
WaPo, George Conway III: Trump is guilty — of being unfit for office http://wapo.st/2UZ8FEi
WaPo: ‘Undoubtedly there is collusion’: Trump antagonist Adam Schiff doubles down after Mueller finds no conspiracy http://wapo.st/2UaM5LL
Politico: Graham to speak with attorney general about releasing Mueller report http://politi.co/2U472sF //➔ bet he’ll even help him redact it!
🐣 RT @BarbMcQuade Odd that (1) #Mueller would reach no conclusion on obstruction and (2) AG would decide the issue for him. This defeats the whole purpose of a special counsel, which is to avoid conflicts of interest by those in the executive branch chain of command.
NBCNews: AG Barr to release Mueller report in ‘weeks not months’ http://nbcnews.to/2FBeyC6
// There are no plans to give a copy of the report to the White House in advance of the public release, a Justice Department official said.
🐣 RT @EricHolder On obstruction component of Mueller Report: DOJ seems to be substituting its judgment for the Special Counsel’s. DOJ did not have to weigh in. Not consistent with precedent. Not a best practice – Trump’s DOJ now appears to have cleared him. The report must be made available.
TheAtlantic, Natasha Bertrand: The Critical Part of Mueller’s Report That Barr Didn’t Mention http://bit.ly/2WtCZY1
// The special counsel’s most interesting findings about Trump and Russia might be in the counterintelligence portion of his report.
NYT: Mueller’s Investigation Erases a Line Drawn After Watergate http://nyti.ms/2FBGjL4
… Under the theory that Mr. Trump’s legal team advanced, the Justice Department and the F.B.I. work for the president and therefore a president can order investigations opened or closed, fire prosecutors, grant pardons or otherwise use his constitutional power even if it seems overtly self-interested or political.
It was that view that Attorney General William P. Barr embraced in a 19-page memo he drafted last year as a private citizen and sent unsolicited to the White House months before Mr. Trump appointed him to lead the Justice Department. And it was that same view that informed Mr. Barr’s decision on Sunday to make the ruling that Mr. Mueller would not and declare that Mr. Trump had not obstructed justice.
⭕ 25 Mar 2019
NationalReview, Yuval Lenin: The Barr Letter Interlude http://bit.ly/2U0my8B
NYT: After Mueller Report, News Media Leaders Defend Their Work http://nyti.ms/2HSzxlv
WaPo: Sen. Lindsey Graham says he told John McCain to give Trump-Russia dossier to FBI http://wapo.st/2FvXDQf //➔ recuse! @
WaPo, Margaret Sullivan: Serious journalists should be proud of — not bullied over — their Russia reporting http://wapo.st/2HEBHGd
DailyBeast, Paul Zeidenberg: It’s Not Barr’s Call to Clear Trump. Show Us the Mueller Report. http://bit.ly/2HSxfCV
// What’s the point of an independent special counsel if the president’s hand-picked attorney general makes his own conclusion? Time for Congress to step up.
WaPo: Dispute erupts over Mueller’s findings on Trump, Russia and obstruction of justice http://wapo.st/2WnVbSL
// Zapotosky
💙💙 NYT: Barr’s Declaration on Trump Puts Justice Dept. Back in Political Crucible http://nyti.ms/2HU3Vfi
// Charlie Savage etc
🐣 RT @SethAbramson (NEW) The *twenty* active Trump investigations, many addressing multinational collusion:
✅SDNY, ✅EDNY, ✅EDVA, ✅USAO-DC, ✅NYCDA, ✅NYAG, ✅NJAG, ✅MDAG, ✅DCAG, ✅SCO, ✅FBI, ✅CIA, ✅HPSCI, ✅SSCI, ✅HJC, ✅HOC, ✅HFSC, ✅HWMC, ✅NDCA ✅XXX*
(*A “mystery” jurisdiction Gates is testifying in.)
🐣 RT @emptywheel Things the Barr letter does not absolve Trump of:
1) Conspiring with Wikileaks.
2) Conspiring with Russians who are not members of the government on the hack-and-leak
3) A quid pro quo trading help for policy considerations
MSNBC, The Beat With Ari: Holder: Barr burying Mueller report, just ‘beginning’ obstruction http://on.msnbc.com/2TyswZa
In an exclusive interview with MSNBC anchor Ari Melber, Former Attorney General Eric Holder makes news by saying Trump Attorney General Bill Barr is handling the Mueller report in the “wrong” way, which is troubling and departs from clear precedent. Pressed by Melber, Holder adds that Congress must get the Mueller Report and decide any obstruction case against Pres. Trump – not his handpicked A.G. Holder adds that this is the beginning or “middle” of the process, not the end.
💙💙 🐣 RT @MaddowBlog You knew it would be this kind of night, didn’t you?
https://twitter.com/MaddowBlog/status/1110352867930660864/photo/1
// Maddow’s 15 Questions
NYMag, Sarah Jones: The Mueller Report Was Never Going to Take Down Donald Trump http://nym.ag/2TvE3c0
NewYorker, Susan Glaser: “Trump Wins!”: The President, the Mueller Report, and Our New Political Normal http://bit.ly/2FAw0Xm
NPR, Philip Ewing: Next Steps And Big Unanswered Questions As The Nation Moves Into Post-Mueller Era http://n.pr/2TyhK5a
Vox, Zack Beauchamp: Robert Mueller and the collapse of American trust http://bit.ly/2TYdRff
// The reaction to AG William Barr’s Mueller letter reveals a disturbing truth about America.
Politico, Darren Samuelson Josh Gerstein: What just happened? The questions behind the Mueller report http://politi.co/2FrLewJ
// Here’s what Mueller said to Barr, what the attorney general said to Congress, and what it all means.
NBCNews: House committee chairs demand full Mueller report by April 2 deadline http://nbcnews.to/2CDrvtc
// In a letter to Attorney General Barr, the Democratic lawmakers said his summary of the special counsel’s report “is not sufficient for Congress.”
USAToday, Tom Nichols: Even after Mueller, we still don’t know what’s really going on with Trump and Russia http://bit.ly/2FwFQZl
// Trump’s exoneration may rest entirely on Mueller’s caution and prudence, the very qualities that kept his investigation from turning into a witch hunt.
WaPo: Dispute erupts over Mueller’s findings on Trump, Russia and obstruction of justice http://wapo.st/2Yq4aF0
🐣 RT @Neal_Katyal I have no idea whether the below is true. If it is, it will be a serious condemnation of Barr and his rush to judgment, as well as of Trump’s claim of total exoneration. Yet another reason why the American people must see Mueller’s full report and why Mueller & Barr must testify
⋙ 🐣 RT @NoahShachtman “A source with direct knowledge of the investigation told The Daily Beast that Mueller intended to make a case to Congress, believing that legislators, and not the DOJ, are ’empowered to weigh the lawfulness of a president’s conduct.'”
[below] DB gloats https://twitter.com/NoahShachtman/status/1110003397724377088
🐣 RT @AriMelber Impt: ¤ AG Barr argues he is the decider & there’s no obstruction by Trump, even though Mueller did not exonerate Trump & no one else has seen the Report. ¤ Former AG Holder tells MSNBC that’s “wrong,” Congress decides, & this is the “beginning” or “middle” of the Mueller process.
⋙ 🐣 RT @TheBeatWithAri “I think we’re really at the beginning, maybe the middle of this whole process” ¤ @EricHolder on “obstruction question”
💽 https://twitter.com/TheBeatWithAri/status/1110307147353636871/photo/1
⋙ 🐣 RT @TheBeatWithAri “I think” Mueller “thought there was too much evidence to decline” prosecution, but “he could not indict” a sitting President ¤ @EricHolder on Mueller report 💽 https://twitter.com/TheBeatWithAri/status/1110305116207415296/photo/1
WaPo, Greg Sargent: Trump won with illicit help. He abused his power. His AG is blocking a full reckoning. http://wapo.st/2UfAdYG
Bloomberg: Sater Eyed Trump Moscow Tower to Launder Cash, BTA Bank Says http://bloom.bg/2Fzvnh5
🐣 RT @JuliaEAinsley Breaking: @KenDilanianNBC reports that the FBI is prepared to brief the Gang of 8 on the findings of Mueller’s counterintelligence investigation into Trump (i.e. whether the president is under the influence of a foreign power)
🐣 RT @BillKristol There were “multiple offers from Russian-affiliated individuals to assist the Trump campaign” which didn’t result in coordination “with the Russian government.” But they weren’t rejected out of hand. They weren’t reported to the FBI. And Trump and associates lied about them.
⋙ 🐣 RT @real “The Special Counsel did not find that the Trump Campaign, or anyone associated with it, conspired or coordinated with the Russian Government in these efforts, despite multiple offers from Russian-affiliated individuals to assist the Trump Campaign.”
🐣 Going forward, Dems must propose legislation to criminalize corruption of the sort that Mueller could not prosecute because the law is unclear or non-existent. “Awful but lawful” should become a thing of the past @RepAdamSchiff @RepCummings @SpeakerPelosi
DailyBeast, Michael Tomasky: Trump Outruns the Law, Again http://bit.ly/2TruIlr
// I honestly thought that once he entered this realm, the realm of public service and accountability, the law would catch up with him. So far, no good.
🐣 RT @Politico Robert Mueller’s nearly two-year-long probe concluded without finding adequate evidence to show that officials with Trump’s 2016 campaign aided Russian attempts to interfere with the election
⋙ Politico: Mueller finds no Trump-Russia conspiracy http://politi.co/2CBIPPj
// Attorney General William Barr says the special counsel did not take a clear position on whether the president obstructed justice.
⭕ 24 Mar 2019
CNN, Eli Watkins: Barr authored memo last year ruling out obstruction of justice http://cnn.it/2Jzq44X
TheAtlantic, Franklin Foer: The Mueller Probe Was an Unmitigated Success http://bit.ly/2YhSvI6
// The scandal is how much corruption it exposed—and how much turns out to have been perfectly legal.
DailyBeast, Erin Banco: House Intel Committee Considers Calling Mueller http://bit.ly/2UTlBLZ
// Democrats say the panel’s mission is broader than that of the special counsel, who was looking for crimes, and they want more information than was in a summary.
LawfareBlog: What to Make of Bill Barr’s Letter http://bit.ly/2JA85LX
// By Mikhaila Fogel, Quinta Jurecic, Susan Hennessey, Matthew Kahn, Benjamin Wittes
CNN: Takeaways from the Mueller report summary http://cnn.it/2YecMya
● No collusion
●. No exoneration for obstruction
● Trump was never interviewed
● The political fight is just beginning
● Barr’s summary ramps up calls for full report
● There’s a lot more information to come
🐣 RT @JillWineBanks Totally agree. Barr took over the decision on whether Trump committed obstruction and his decision was totally predictable based on his volunteered audition memo to the DOJ and White House. He decided before knowing any facts that 45 could never be guilty of obstruction.
⋙ 🐣 RT @JohnWDean It appears AG William Barr’s take on obstruction prevailed. Barr’s signaled what he would do before he was hired. So in reading William Barr’s letter on the Mueller Report, don’t for his unsolicited memo to Trump on Obstruction of Justice
⋙⋙ ACLU: William Barr’s Unsolicited Memo to Trump About Obstruction of Justice http://bit.ly/2HWxAV4
NYT Editorial: No Collusion, No ‘Exoneration’ http://nyti.ms/2U9KXrJ
// A Trump-friendly attorney general’s letter doesn’t do justice to the special counsel’s investigation. Release his whole report.
NYT, Neal Katyal: The Many Problems With the Barr Letter http://nyti.ms/2Ylx2y0
// By unilaterally concluding that Mr. Trump did not obstruct justice, the attorney general has made it imperative that the public see the Mueller report.
🐣 RT @NoahShachtman “A source with direct knowledge of the investigation told The Daily Beast that Mueller intended to make a case to Congress, believing that legislators, and not the DOJ, are ’empowered to weigh the lawfulness of a president’s conduct.'”
⋙ DailyBeast: Trumpworld Gloats About Mueller: The ‘Fat Lady Has Sung’ http://bit.ly/2HRSIfs
// by Asawin Suebsaeng, Sam Brodey and Erin Banco; Republicans say the report is a slam dunk for the president—while Democrats claim the fight has only just begun.
🐣 RT @RepCummings After reading the Attorney General’s four-page summary of the Special Counsel’s findings, Chairmen Nadler, Schiff and I reiterate our call for the release of the Special Counsel’s full and complete report and all underlying documents. See our statement:
⋙ OversightComm: Joint Statement of Judiciary Chair Nadler, Intelligence Chair Schiff and Oversight Chair Cummings http://bit.ly/2YldZDP
🔆 This❗️⋙ WaPo: Mueller did not find the Trump campaign conspired with Russia, attorney general says http://wapo.st/2Wnhw2U
🔆 This❗️⋙ NYT: Mueller Finds No Trump-Russia Conspiracy, but Stops Short of Exonerating President on Obstruction http://nyti.ms/2HGc9Iz
⭕ 23 Mar 2019
NYT: As Mueller Report Lands, Prosecutorial Focus Moves to New York http://nyti.ms/2Cvk7Aj
🐣 RT @TeaPainUSA BOOM! #SDNY just hired Audrey Strauss, the attorney that beat Trump’s original fixer, Roy Cohn, to lead the investigation against Trump’s inner circle. This may explain why Mueller didn’t indict Don Jr. in D.C. ¤ Tea Pain games out “Mueller’s Final Move.”
⋙ TeaPainUSA: Mueller’s Final Move http://bit.ly/2FnVdmN
Since Mueller plays by the book, his primary directive would be for a case to be tried where the venue is “proper.” Ask yourself the simple question, “Where did the bulk of the alleged Trump-Russia conspiracy take place?” and you have your answer: “New York City.” It would be silly for Mueller to prosecute Trump, Kush and the rest of Team Treason in D.C. when the crime took place in New York, right?
Simply put, this is “smart!” If Mueller prosecuted Diaper Donnie, Trump could pull the plug on Mueller’s charter and we’d litigate it in the courts until doomsday just to get the case back on track. But placin’ the venue in the purview of the Sovereign District of New York is a stroke of genius, safely away from Trump’s pryin’ baby hands. It’s frugal because SDNY is budgeted for just such actions. It’s expedient because SDNY is fully staffed and ready to roll. The venue is proper and, dang it, it’s just plain smart.
News broke tonight that the SDNY replaced the lead attorney on the Michael Cohen case with Audrey Strauss, famous for her defeat of Roy Cohn, lawyer for the Gambino crime family and Trump family attorney till his death. What’s the chances the SDNY decided to bring in the one attorney that beat Trump’s lucky charm, Roy Cohn? Tea Pain’s Grandpa Virgil always said, “Don’t believe in coincidences, Tea Pain, cause they take a heap of plannin’!”
Politico: Congress waits another day for Mueller findings http://politi.co/2OqTrWc
// The Justice Dept. said it would not transmit a summary of the special counsel’s findings Saturday, fueling Democrats’ urgent pleas to release the entire document.
WaPo: The battle over the Mueller report begins as Trump allies claim victory http://wapo.st/2uqrYL9
🐣 RT @JohnWDean Trump and his minions think they dodged a bullet. I have a notion — only a recurring though — that Mueller delivered a bomb to AG Barr, who is now trying to figure out how to tell Trump in a way that doesn’t cause him to start World War III. Barr knows he works for a psycho.
Politico: Pelosi tells Dems she’ll reject highly classified briefing on Mueller findings http://politi.co/2UYx5hj
NYT: Mueller Delivers Report on Trump-Russia Investigation to Attorney General http://nyti.ms/2OmFb0v Special Counsel does not recommend new charges
⭕ 22 Mar 2019
WaPo Editorial: Mueller has submitted his report. Now Barr must share it with the rest of us. http://wapo.st/2UayBje
WaPo, Neal Katyal: I wrote the special counsel rules. The attorney general can — and should — release the Mueller report. http://wapo.st/2TT8Mod
LawfareBlog, Benjamin Wittes: Very Quick Thoughts on the End of the Mueller Investigation http://bit.ly/2JAvehp
TheAtlantic, Natasha Bertrand: What Mueller Leaves Behind http://bit.ly/2Tqa5px
// The attorney general says he may be able to advise Congress of the special counsel’s principal conclusions as early as this weekend.
DailyBeast, Barbara McQuade: Mueller Is Done, but the Trump Investigations Are Just Heating Up http://bit.ly/2UaqxPu
// Congress can go further than he could against the president. Meanwhile, prosecutors are digging into him in New York and associates like Roger Stone elsewhere. This isn’t over.
🐣 RT @brhodes My take on the Mueller report is that I’d like to read the Mueller report before having a take on it.
💙💙 NYT: Mueller Delivers Report on Russia Investigation to Attorney General http://nyti.ms/2OmFb0v
🔆 This❗️⋙ WaPo [5:02pm ET]: Mueller report sent to attorney general, signaling his Russia investigation has ended http://wapo.st/2JuEEL8
MotherJones: We Already Know There Was Collusion http://bit.ly/2Fk2tQA
// 10 must-reads about Trump and Russia while you wait for the Mueller report.
Reuters: Turn in your smartphones! How Mueller kept a lid on Trump-Russia probe http://reut.rs/2Cx8atX
NYT/Reuters: Why an Unbuilt Moscow Trump Tower Caught Mueller’s Attention http://nyti.ms/2TQ6qXg
NYT, David Leonhardt: While You Wait for Mueller http://nyti.ms/2Fthocl
// Do lawbreaking, lying to the public and colluding with a foreign enemy add up to innocence?
PBS: Trump steps up effort to discredit Mueller’s Russia report http://to.pbs.org/2WhZbUC
EmptyWheel, Marcy Wheeler: There’s a Decent Chance Jon Karl’s Source Is Being or Was Investigated for Obstruction http://bit.ly/2HDU2TM
Politico, Michael Kruse: Can Trump Survive Mueller? http://politi.co/2Ts192V
// People predict the president will collapse under the stress of the Mueller investigation. But Trump has teetered on the brink before and never succumbed.
🐣 Mood https://twitter.com/Auriandra/status/1109012336210268160/photo/1
The Second Coming
William Butler Yeats, 1919
Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again; but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?
⭕ 21 Mar 2019
NYT, Scott Shane: Glimpses of the Mystery That Is the Mueller Investigation http://nyti.ms/2CInQe3
// Here are some pieces of the jigsaw puzzle. The full picture is missing
🐣 RT @Barb!cQuade Mueller report does not seem imminent because 1 redactions in Cohen search warrants allowed for 60 more days, 2 update on Gates’s sentencing delayed 60 days, 3 pending GJ battles with Stone associate Andrew Miller and unknown co. and 4 reports that Rosenstein will stay longer.
🐣 RT @JoyceWhiteVance 1. Trump is going to spin the Mueller Report as a) proof that he’s innocent, b) evidence of no collusion & most importantly c) that any investigation in the House is an unjustified witch hunt. He’ll do this literally no matter what the report says.
📌 https://mobile.twitter.com/JoyceWhiteVance/status/1108461544449499136
⋙ 🐣 RT @JonLemire With Washington on pins and needles waiting for Mueller, a look at the shifting hopes for the report from Republicans and Democrats alike
⋙⋙ AP: Shifting hopes as Republicans and Democrats await Mueller http://bit.ly/2OlrPS1
WaPo, Aaron Blake: 3 possible outcomes for the release of the Mueller Report http://wapo.st/2TXquGB
NewYorker, Adam Davidson: The Chaos That Could Come with the Mueller Report http://bit.ly/2Tr33Bf
DailyBeast, Asawin Suebsaeng and Spencer Ackerman: Trump White House Lawyers Plan To Tell House Judiciary to ‘Go F*ck Themselves’ http://bit.ly/2Cwcqd4
// House Democrats want documents from the White House they think can shed light on internal corruption. You’ll never guess how the White House is responding.
DailyBeast, Betsy Woodruff: Feds Who Took Down Cohen Could Face Deutsche Bank
Dilemma http://bit.ly/2U2DISe
// Two officials have history with Deutsche Bank that could raise questions for ethics experts.
DailyBeast, Michael Tomasky: Don Jr. Is Right About One Thing: Brexit and Trump’s Election Were Built on the Same Lie http://bit.ly/2Cu9tda
// They were the two great manifestations of the false consciousness of our era: that whatever has gone wrong can be blamed on liberals and only conservatives can put things right.
NBCNews: The Mueller report: Here are 10 questions that remain unanswered in the Russia probe http://nbcnews.to/2FoNJjd
// First Read is your briefing from “Meet the Press” and the NBC Political Unit on the day’s most important political stories and why they matter.
WaPo, Philip Bump: A visual guide to the dead ends and murky contacts in the Trump-Russia collusion question http://wapo.st/2uoBnCA
Bloomberg: Mueller Laid Out the Dots. His Report May Show If They Connect http://bloom.bg/2YeEPO4
🔊 ProPublica: Meet Trump’s Other Partners on His Attempted Moscow Tower — “Trump, Inc.” Podcast http://bit.ly/2Jwd3tc
// In this week’s episode, we explore some of Donald Trump’s partners — including a developer with no site and no funding — and find one reason Trump might’ve needed to enlist help from the very top of Russia’s government.
Politico: White House rebuffs Dem request for docs on Trump-Putin talks http://politi.co/2TmUMOG
// Key House chairmen have not ruled out issuing subpoenas to try to force the White House’s compliance.
NYT: Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump Use Private Accounts for Official Business, Their Lawyer Says http://nyti.ms/2Cy0pnl
🐣 RT @tribelaw This is a serious national security scandal. The White House MUST comply with these demands.
⋙ Cummings Letter to Cipllloni [White House Counsel] http://bit.ly/2WhBdZT
🐣 RT @brianklaas Cool, so I imagine this will be a national scandal that dominates the headlines for the next 6 months right?
⋙ 🐣 RT @NPR JUST IN: Jared Kushner’s attorney told the House Oversight Committee that Kushner uses private apps and personal email to communicate about official White House matters with foreign leaders — a violation of a law governing White House records and official policy.
NYT: James Comey: What I Want From the Mueller Report I am rooting for a demonstration to the world that the United States justice system works. http://nyti.ms2YeCCSM/
I have no idea whether the special counsel will conclude that Mr. Trump knowingly conspired with the Russians in connection with the 2016 election or that he obstructed justice with the required corrupt intent. I also don’t care. I care only that the work be done, well and completely. If it is, justice will have prevailed and core American values will have been protected at a time when so much of our national leadership has abandoned its commitment to truth and the rule of law.
I am rooting for a demonstration to the world — and maybe most of all to our president and his enablers — that the United States has a justice system that works because there are people who believe in it and rise above personal interest and tribalism. That system may reach conclusions they like or it may not, but the apolitical administration of justice is the beating heart of this country. I hope we all get to see that.
⭕ 20 Mar 2019
AP FACT CHECK: Trump attacks Russia probe as biased http://bit.ly/2U05mzb
Vox, Andrew Prokop: Trump’s legal jeopardy goes far beyond Mueller http://bit.ly/2Fp6AvM
// We don’t know what Mueller will find, but here’s an overview of the president’s other legal woes.
TheAtlantic, Natasha Bertrand: The Enigmatic Russian Paying Maria Butina’s Legal Bills http://bit.ly/2HwmQxA
// Alexander Ionov, the founder of the NGO, called the Anti-Globalization Movement, began raising money for the suspected Russian agent through a fundraising website in 2018.
USAToday, Crystal Hayes and Ashley Shaffer: Your guide to what you can and can’t expect from Robert Mueller’s final report on Trump, Russia investigations http://bit.ly/2Fh3LvH
CNN, Stephen Collinson: New Mueller probe revelations explain Trump’s rage http://cnn.it/2YcAafq
⭕ 19 Mar 2019
WaPo, Elijah Cummings: The White House hasn’t turned over a single piece of paper to my committee http://wapo.st/2WgHMMl
💙💙 Politico: Mueller’s old boss delays departure as probe wraps up http://politi.co/2FoJS76
// Rod Rosenstein has long provided comfort to lawmakers and legal observers worried about President Donald Trump trying to meddle with the probe.
NYT, Michelle Goldberg: Who Do Jared and Ivanka Think They Are? http://nyti.ms/2ug5kF5
// A new book probes the Kushner family’s secrets.
WIRED, Garrett Graff: The Evidence That Could Impeach Donald Trump http://bit.ly/2JyDbDs
⋙ See under Entire Articles: Wired Graff Evidence 3-19-2019
NewYorker, Eric Lach: The Michael Cohen Search-Warrant Documents and Keeping Up with the Trump-Russia Probe http://bit.ly/2ULDX18
NBCNews: Schiff: Real question is if Trump is under the influence of a foreign power http://nbcnews.to/2FnT9MQ
// Whether Mueller will answer that question is unclear. But House Intel Chair Adam Schiff said he is steering his probe in a new direction to focus on it.
Reuters: Key Senate panel split on Trump-Russia collusion: sources http://reut.rs/2JpK1vj
Vox, Alvin Chang: The 3 Trump-Russia ties we know about http://bit.ly/2YcsKZw
// What Robert Mueller’s investigation has revealed thus far.
DailyBeast, Asawin Suebsaeng: Gawker-Killing Lawyer Charles Harder is Repping Trump in Alva Johnson’s Sexual Misconduct Lawsuit http://bit.ly/2CrW6tG
// The attorney has become a go-to counselor in Trumpworld when trying to suppress claims about its members, including the president.
DailyBeast, Betsy Woodruff: Indicted Oligarch Dmytro Firtash Praises Paul Manafort, Says Trump Has Third-Grade Smarts http://bit.ly/2ufKBkL
// The Ukrainian mogul, a background presence in the story of Russian influence in U.S. elections, praised Manafort’s savvy but dismissed Trump in an interview with The Daily Beast.
DailyBeast, Justin Miller: Mueller Went After Cohen Soon After He Took Over Russia Probe http://bit.ly/2ThEeYb
// Beginning in July 2017, FBI agents working for Mueller sought and obtained three warrants to search Cohen’s communications.
DailyBeast: Rosenstein Agrees to Hang On at DOJ ‘a Little While Longer,’ Fox Reports http://bit.ly/2UQiSTz
🔆 This❗️⋙ WaPo: Mueller team cites ‘press of other work’ in seeking delay until April 1 over request to open Manafort records http://wapo.st/2Ogmuvg
WaPo: The real reason the Trump administration is constantly losing in court http://wapo.st/2OdEW7S
🔆 This❗️⋙ WaPo: Mueller team cites ‘press of other work’ in seeking delay until April 1 over request to open Manafort records http://wapo.st/2Ogmuvg
⭕ 18 Mar 2019
CNBC, John Harwood: George Conway, husband of Trump advisor Kellyanne Conway, has an urgent warning about the president’s mental health http://cnb.cx/2HC3pmd
● Kellyanne Conway’s husband, George Conway, was once seemingly on his way to a top role in the Trump administration.
● Now he has become one of the president’s most outspoken critics, even as his wife holds a key role in the White House.
● On Monday, George Conway tweeted warnings about the president’s mental health. Kellyanne Conway responded: “No, I don’t share those concerns.”
CNN: White House expects to see Mueller findings before they go to Congress http://cnn.it/2TXuWoB
DailyBeast, Nico Hines: Cambridge Analytica Secrets Allegedly Covered Up by Trump Campaign Veterans http://bit.ly/2THHTn8
// The High Court in London heard that former insiders, including Rebekah Mercer, were pulling the strings of “biased” officials responsible for the fate of the company.
🐣 RT @gconway3d Agree with this, but would add that *all* Americans should be thinking seriously *now* about Trump’s mental condition and psychological state, including and especially the media, Congress—and the Vice President and Cabinet.
⋙ 🐣 RT @BillKristol To Republicans who’ve been inclined to acquiesce in a Trump re-nomination in 2020: Read his tweets this morning. Think seriously about his mental condition and psychological state. Then tell me you’re fine with him as president of the United States for an additional four years.
🐣 RT @JohnJHarwood “Mr. Trump told Deutsche Bank his net worth was about $3 billion, but when bank employees reviewed his finances, they concluded he was worth about $788 million, according to documents produced during a lawsuit”
⋙ NYT: A Mar-a-Lago Weekend and an Act of God: Trump’s History With Deutsche Bank http://nyti.ms/2Fg1b93
🐣 RT @selectedwisdom [Clint Watts] This is a really big deal. Doesn’t just affect military but also civilian operations- Norway says it proved Russian GPS interference during NATO exercises | Article [AMP] | Reuters
⋙ Reuters: Norway says it proved Russian GPS interference during NATO exercises http://reut.rs/2W8BVZl
Vox, Aaron Rupar: Trump uses bad poll question to claim half of America thinks Mueller’s on a “witch hunt” http://bit.ly/2FbCWco //➔ Two questions for the price of one!
// The president capitalizes on a poorly framed question in an outlier poll.
JustSecurity: Why it’s a mistake to be a-waitin’ “the” Mueller Report (and why you should instead focus on two other reports) http://bit.ly/2O9NzAg
PolitiFact, John Kruzel: Is WikiLeaks Russia’s ‘useful idiot,’ its ‘agent of influence,’ or something else? http://bit.ly/2TWfCIS
NYT: Trump Administration Proposes $86 Billion Spy Budget to Take On Russia and China http://nyti.ms/2TIPGkK
DailyBeast, Asawin Suebsaeng and Spencer Ackerman: Trump’s Lawyers on House Judiciary Dems’ Document Request: You Get Nothing http://bit.ly/2Od2biD
// The House Judiciary Committee set a Monday deadline for 81 people, government agencies and private organizations to submit material
DailyBeast, Kevin Poulsen: Russian Tycoon Named in Trump Dossier Lost His Slander Suit, Then Lost His Secrets. http://bit.ly/2Oe6F8m
// The Steele dossier’s tale of Aleksej Gubarev using porn to hack Democrats had been banished to the fringes of the Russiagate narratives—until his own lawsuit gave it fresh oxygen.
NYMag, Adam K. Raymond: Everything Trump Attacked Over a Wild Weekend on Twitter http://nym.ag/2O9MpEU
Reuters: Why an unbuilt Moscow Trump tower caught Mueller’s attention http://reut.rs/2FkgChY
⭕ 17 Mar 2019🍀
TIME, Olivia Waxman: What Historians of Fascism Think About the Suspected New Zealand Shooter’s Declaration of Extremism http://bit.ly/2OaPMM1
WSJ Editorial: Releasing the Mueller Report http://on.wsj.com/2Jlp9Fq
// Disclosure should include the FBI and FISA documents too.
● Text Block: https://twitter.com/Auriandra/status/1107572397341851648/photo/1
As the House vote shows, Mr. Barr probably has no choice but to release nearly all of the report. Congressional Democrats have already threatened subpoenas, and while the Administration might have a legal case to resist them, that would feed charges of a cover-up. Once Congress has the report, it is sure to leak, perhaps selectively without proper context.
The better course is for Mr. Barr to release the report and everything else that is relevant to the Russia probe. That includes investigative materials that accompany the report, and all documents related to the FBI counterintelligence investigation that began in 2016.
RollingStone, Peter Wade: Trump’s Sensitivity Boils Over in Twitter Rant Over ‘SNL’ Rerun http://bit.ly/2Hqheol
// “Should Federal Election Commission and/or FCC look into this?” the president tweeted
SkyNews, Deborah Haynes: New evidence of Russian election meddling puts Trump on the spot http://bit.ly/2UIdods
HillReporter, Brian Krassenstein: Trump Suggests That SNL Is ‘Colluding’ with ‘of course Russia’ http://bit.ly/2udOE0Z
WaPo, Martin Lederman: Why there may be much less — and much more — to the Mueller report than people expect http://wapo.st/2FjKmvu
CNBC: Trump attacks the late Sen. John McCain over his involvement in the Russia investigation http://cnb.cx/2UFLG0J
⭕ 16 Mar 2019
Bloomberg: Did Trump’s Team Collude With Russians? http://bloom.bg/2uad1MW
// Key Clues From Mueller’s Probe
NYT Editorial: ‘The President … Is Not Above the Law’ http://nyti.ms/2Hp66bm
// A New York court rules that the Constitution does not shield President Trump from allegations of misconduct before he took office. The case has echoes of Paula Jones’s suit against President Clinton.
🐣 RT @vermontgmg [Garrett Graff] Man, the Russian official who died in a DC hotel really hurt himself as he beat himself to death. Amazing how thoroughly he beat himself—almost as if, you know, he didn’t do it himself….
⋙ 🐣 RT @Mike_Eckel couple notable/important sections from the Lesin autopsy files, including toxicology report and diagram of fractured neck bone. https://twitter.com/Mike_Eckel/status/1106911777655320576/photo/1
⋙⋙ RFE/RL: Exclusive: Washington Autopsy Files Reveal Lesin Sustained Broken Bone In Neck http://bit.ly/
Mikhail Lesin, the former Russian press minister who turned up dead in a Washington hotel room in 2015, sustained a fracture to a neck bone just below the jaw line “at or near the time” of his death, according to documents released by the city’s medical examiner that provide new details about his final days.
The finding does not provide clear-cut evidence of foul play in Lesin’s death; another statement in the documents suggests the bone could have been damaged “after death” — possibly during the autopsy.
That detail, however, and others contained in the 149-page file released exclusively to RFE/RL offer the most precise scientific description to date about Lesin’s death, which officials ruled accidental and said was caused by blunt-force injuries amid excessive alcohol consumption.
Once a powerful media adviser to President Vladimir Putin, Lesin fell out of favor with the Kremlin elite sometime around 2012 and had lowered his public profile before he was discovered dead in the Dupont Circle Hotel, located a few blocks from the White House, on November 5, 2015. …
⭕ 15 Mar 2019
💙💙 TheAtlantic, Natasha Bertrand: Mueller Might Not Be Done With Manafort Yet http://bit.ly/2VZtGi5
// The disgraced operative still needs to answer for his ties to a suspected Russian spy.
… Mueller might not be quite done with Manafort yet, former prosecutors tell me. Court documents and pre-sentence hearings that dealt with the breach of Manafort’s plea deal suggest that prosecutors might have more ammunition to go after the 69-year-old on matters that go directly to the question of a conspiracy with Russia, rather than the financial crimes and violations of foreign-agent laws that he’s been charged with to date.
… [Q]uestions remain about Manafort’s interactions with Russians during the campaign—questions that go to the main focus of the Mueller investigation into a potential election conspiracy.
The first clue that Mueller’s interest in Manafort goes beyond his financial crimes came early last month, when one of the top prosecutors on Mueller’s team, Andrew Weissmann, said in a closed-door hearing that a meeting Manafort had in August 2016 goes “very much to the heart of what the special counsel’s office is investigating.” (Manafort’s deputy Rick Gates was also at the meeting, The Washington Post said, citing court records. A status update for Gates, who has been cooperating with Mueller, is due on Friday.) During that meeting Manafort provided internal Trump-campaign polling data to Kilimnik and discussed a “Ukraine peace plan” favorable to Russia. Mueller was appointed in May 2017 to investigate “any links and/or coordination between the Russian government and individuals associated with” Trump’s campaign, as his appointment memo described it; Jackson agreed that the topic of Manafort’s meeting was at “the undisputed core of the Office of Special Counsel’s investigation.”
The topics discussed during the August 2 meeting might be the closest thing to a “smoking gun” of collusion that has been revealed so far. A footnote in a court filing submitted by Manafort’s attorneys last month, first noticed by the national-security journalist Marcy Wheeler, indicates that Manafort and his deputy sent 75 pages of polling to Kilimnik and that Kilimnik sent at least six emails to the pair discussing the data. Richard Westling, Manafort’s lawyer, denied that Manafort had lied about the content of the August 2 meeting and said that while the data that Manafort shared with Kilimnik was “very detailed” and “relevant” to a meeting the campaign had had earlier in the day, it would not have been useful to the suspected Russian spy. “It frankly, to me, is gibberish,” Westling said. “It’s not easily understandable.” Jackson shot back: “That’s what makes it significant and unusual.”
“It’s hard to imagine that something so explosive and central to the mission of his investigation wouldn’t be addressed either in charges against someone (Manafort or others) or in a report,” Mimi Rocah, a former federal prosecutor in the Southern District of New York, wrote in an email. “And the fact that the special counsel hasn’t brought it out but it was only revealed inadvertently, reinforces the idea that [Mueller] is saving it for something else.”
That “something else” could be anything from a line in Mueller’s report to an entire conspiracy charge. “My money is on Mueller including the Manafort efforts as part of the ‘case’ alleging Trump campaign collaboration with the Russians,” Patrick Cotter, a former federal prosecutor who specialized in organized crime, told me in an email. “The question then is, what is the best way to make that case? For myself, I believe a RICO [Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act] indictment would be the appropriate vehicle to bring such a case: charge the campaign as the ‘racketeering enterprise’ and name Trump, Manafort and the rest of the gang as members of the enterprise … straight out of the mob prosecution playbook.”
Cotter, who is familiar with Mueller’s by-the-book style but has no direct knowledge of his internal plans, said Mueller is more likely to take the “safer route”—laying out all the facts that would support such a case in a report, “but not actually charging the legally plausible but politically nuclear formal criminal case.” Any RICO indictment against the campaign for a conspiracy with Russia “would be the new definition of bold and cutting edge.” The former federal prosecutor Jeffrey Cramer agreed that Mueller could bring a conspiracy case and name Manafort and others as unindicted co-conspirators—but if the evidence doesn’t rise to the level of proof beyond a reasonable doubt, it will likely just be outlined in the report. …
“Our standard is not whether there is proof beyond a reasonable doubt,” [Representative Adam Schiff, the Democratic chairman of the House Intelligence Committee] said, “but whether there is a risk to national security.”
DailyBeast, Anna Nemtsova: Trump’s Breitbart Biker Threat Came From the Putin Playbook—Then Tweet Deleted After Mosque Massacre http://bit.ly/2HGkz1M
// Trump told Breitbart there could be biker violence against leftists. Sounded even worse after New Zealand mosque massacre manifesto called him “a symbol of renewed white identity.”
NPR, Carrie Johnson: As End Nears To Mueller Era, D.C. Lawyers Fear Lasting Politicization Of Justice http://n.pr/2TJkFwn
NYMag, Jonathan Chait: No Collusion? Paul Manafort’s Partner Is Still Helping Mueller http://nym.ag/2Y1z5XH
Politico: Trump says ‘there should be no Mueller report’ http://politi.co/2UFRNCq
CNN, Marshall Cohen and Kevin Collier: Unsealed documents shed new light on efforts to verify Trump-Russia dossier http://cnn.it/2TLDWNH
TheHill: Deripaska sues Trump admin over Russia sanctions http://bit.ly/2HtP3oP
Reuters: Mueller, in U.S. court filing, says multiple probes continue http://reut.rs/2JfNlsw
USAToday, David Jackson: As Russia report nears, Donald Trump taunts Robert Mueller http://bit.ly/2HogRum
BBC: Russia-Trump troll suspect defends internet job http://bbc.in/2JpAioq Sergei Polozov is among 13 Russians named in the Mueller indictment, which alleges a systematic Russian state effort to influence US voters.
DailyBeast: Mueller Asks for 60-Day Delay on Filing Rick Gates Report http://bit.ly/2XX5gYB
⭕ 14 Mar 2019
WaPo, Robert Kagan: The strongmen strike back http://wapo.st/2TIwJPa
// Authoritarianism has reemerged as the greatest threat to the liberal democratic world — a profound ideological, as well as strategic, challenge. And we have no idea how to confront it.
WaPo, Philip Bump: What the Strzok-Page ‘insurance policy’ text was actually about http://wapo.st/2Hr3LfX
WaPo: FBI’s Peter Strzok told Congress election tampering was a ‘far graver threat’ than Clinton email scandal, new transcript says http://wapo.st/2XYaJyd
WaPo: Documents shed light on Russian hacking of Democratic Party leaders http://wapo.st/2XRM7Hg
NYT: Tech Firm in Steele Dossier May Have Been Used by Russian Spies http://nyti.ms/2FftyFT
TIME, Molly Ball: Nancy Pelosi Doesn’t Want to Talk About Impeachment. The Democrats May Not Be Able to Resist It http://bit.ly/2TNYBQV
// March 25 issue
DetroitNews/AP: Ex-FBI Agent Peter Strzok: “There was no conspiracy” at the agency to prevent Trump from becoming president http://bit.ly/2FbZQ4m
WaPo: U.S. military to test missiles banned under faltering nuclear pact with Russia http://wapo.st/2CjhS2O
USAToday: Senate blocks resolution calling for public release of Robert Mueller’s report after House voted 420-0 http://bit.ly/2u8IX4v Sen Lindsey Graham (R-SC) insisted on including an amendment to also appoint a new special counsel to investigate the investigation
✅ PolitiFact: The Pants on Fire claim that two courts backed Trump’s claim of no collusion with Russia http://bit.ly/2F6MaXn 🔥👖🔥
Reuters: Top Mueller prosecutor to leave Russia probe: reports http://reut.rs/2OcbwY1 Andrew Weissmann
TheIndependent [UK]: Mueller investigation: US House passes resolution calling for Trump-Russia report to be made public http://ind.pn/2W021O6 Vote: For 420, Against 0, “Present” 4
// Vote seen as critical demand from Democrat-controlled House to review full report
🔊 TheIntercept, Mehdi Hasan: Interview with Erik Prince: Perjury, and the Secret Trump Tower Meeting – The Intercept [ transcript, audio ] http://bit.ly/2O4tJGN from Deconstructed podcast
Vox, Andrew Prokop: The past 24 hours in Trump investigation news, explained http://bit.ly/2HDStEm
// Mueller tea leaves, new Cohen drama, new Manafort charges, and more.
CNN, Stephen Collinson: Explosive revelations in Russia saga add up to a bad day for Trump http://cnn.it/2UCc2AP
⭕ 13 Mar 2019
WaPo: In newly released transcript, former FBI lawyer Lisa Page fires back on charges that anti-Trump bias affected Trump and Clinton probes http://wapo.st/2F2tIit
WashingtonMonthly, Martin Longman: A Lot of #TrumpRussia News All At Once http://bit.ly/2JbQlGy
AP, Vladimir Isachenkov: Russia mocks US collusion probe ahead of Mueller’s report http://bit.ly/2CjAGii
Vox, Aaron Rupar: Manafort’s lawyer lied that a judge found no collusion. Protesters shouted him down. http://bit.ly/2O4zrZ0
// “Liar! That’s not what she said!”
Politico: Schiff says impeachment still possible even if Russia probe clears Trump http://politi.co/2u6sCgt
CNN, Stephen Collinson: Manafort sentencing highlights Russia probe looming over Trump http://cnn.it/2J95xUR
Reuters: Not so fast: Mueller still investigating pivotal Russia probe issues http://reut.rs/2TBB3zF
DailyBeast: Kenneth McCallion: Trump Knew Just What He Was Getting With Manafort: A Crook http://bit.ly/2UzSVrb
// Judge Ellis credited Manafort with an “otherwise blameless life.” That couldn’t be more wrong.
DailyBeast, Julia Arciga and Adam Rawnsley: Judge Amy Berman Jackson Gives ‘Sorry’ Manafort Tongue-Lashing but Not Maximum Sentence http://bit.ly/2TDhjf4
// The sentences in his two cases now add up to 7.5 years in prison.
DailyBeast, Asawin Suebsaeng: Giuliani Ally Bob Costello: We Weren’t Dangling a Pardon to Michael Cohen. We Were Referencing Garth Brooks Lyrics. http://bit.ly/2T0jLac
// Things keep getting weirder.
WaPo: Manafort indicted in New York state, charges that fall outside Trump’s pardon power http://wapo.st/2HhSPS2
WaPo: Whitaker ‘did not deny’ talking to Trump about Cohen, top Democrat says http://wapo.st/2XWO4lS Judiciary Chair Rep Jerrold Nadler
NYT: Prosecutors Seek Records on Cohen’s ‘Back Channel’ With Giuliani http://nyti.ms/2T7aJIo “Some very positive comments about you from the White House. Rudy noted how that followed my chat with him last night.”
NYT: Paul Manafort’s Prison Sentence Is Nearly Doubled to 7½ Years http://nyti.ms/2UBMSCa
🐣 RT @ NormOrnstein It is really time for bar associations to step up and sanction appropriately this kind of conduct
⋙ 🐣 RT @walterdellinger It is shocking to hear Manafort’s attorney announce, “Two courts have ruled that there is no evidence of collusion…” That is just false. Judge Jackson expressly said that was not before the court. What is happening to our country?
🐣 RT @brianklaas Trump’s entourage:
Campaign chair: felon
Deputy campaign chair: felon
Personal lawyer: felon
Foreign policy adviser: felon
National security adviser: felon
Longtime confidante: awaiting trial
🐣 RT @jimsciutto Breaking: Paul Manafort sentenced to an additional 43 months in prison, on top of the 47-month sentence he received last week. He will serve a total of 7.5 years.
🐣 RT @AriMelber BREAKING: Paul Manafort just indicted on new state charges in NY – these are crimes that CANNOT be pardoned by Pres. Trump
TheAtlantic, David Graham: The Two Audiences for Paul Manafort’s Sentencing http://bit.ly/2VYxdx1
// His lawyers seemed to be appealing as much to Donald Trump as they were to Judge Amy Berman Jackson—but she seemed to have a message for the president, too.
🐣 RT @mateagold “Court is one of those places where facts still matter,” Jackson said, adding at another point: “If the people don’t have the facts, democracy can’t work.”
⋙ WaPo, Aaron Blake: Paul Manafort’s judge strongly rebukes Manafort’s — and Trump’s — ‘no collusion’ refrain http://wapo.st/2J8rByV
⋙ 🐣 Maybe, but 10 steps outside the court, they still don’t
⭕ 12 Mar 2019
Salon, Lucian Truscott IV: Russian spies were all over the 2016 race. They were working for one candidate: Donald Trump http://bit.ly/2u6tD8h
// Vladimir Putin had spies on the ground and online, he got them in early and he used them often all for one purpose
WaPo, Aaron Blake: Paul Manafort’s judge strongly rebukes Manafort’s — and Trump’s — ‘no collusion’ refrain http://wapo.st/2TQu8Sg
💽 MSNBC, 11thHour: Amb. Burns: Trump’s kindness towards Putin seen as weakness by Russians http://on.msnbc.com/2JchGbs
// As a former U.S Ambassador to Russia, William Burns witnessed first-hand the personality and working style of Russian President Vladimir Putin. From his standpoint, President Trump’s tendency to placate Putin is perceived as weakness to the Russian leader, not strength. Amb. Burns, the author of a new book, talks with Brian Williams about this new era of diplomacy.
Politico, Max Bermann and Ned Price: Why Trump Should Release the Full Mueller Report http://politi.co/2HvjJ8a
// If the president truly has nothing to hide, he should push for complete transparency—and demand it now.
CNN, Jeremy Herb: Lisa Page explains why she and Strzok talked ‘insurance policy’ about Trump http://cnn.it/2XXHCea
When former FBI lawyer Lisa Page and former FBI agent Peter Strzok discussed a so-called “insurance policy” involving then-candidate Donald Trump and the Russia investigation in 2016, they were discussing how quickly to proceed with the probe, Page told lawmakers last year.
Page told House lawmakers in a closed-door interview that the text message about an “insurance policy” if Trump won the 2016 election — which Republicans have cited to point to the anti-Trump bias the investigators exhibited — was a reference to the fact that the FBI’s counterintelligence investigation into whether members of Trump’s team were colluding with Russia would take on a greater significance if he was in the White House.
“If he is not elected, then, to the extent that the Russians were colluding with members of his team, we’re still going to investigate that even without him being President, because any time the Russians do anything with a US person, we care, and it’s very serious to us,” Page said.
“But if he becomes President, that totally changes the game because now he is the President of the United States,” she continued. “He’s going to immediately start receiving classified briefings. He’s going to be exposed to the most sensitive secrets imaginable. And if there is somebody on his team who wittingly or unwittingly is working with the Russians, that is super serious.”
Page was speaking to the House Oversight and Judiciary Committees as part of last year’s Republican-led investigation into the FBI and Justice Department’s handling of the investigations into Hillary Clinton and Trump and Russia.
The transcript of Page’s two-part interview in July 2018 was released publicly Tuesday by the top Republican on the House Judiciary Committee, Rep. Doug Collins of Georgia. Last week he released Justice Department official Bruce Ohr’s interview transcript, and has said he plans to continue to release more of the panel’s interviews conducted last year.
The Nation, Aaron Maté: A Skeptic’s Guide to the Russiagate Fixation http://bit.ly/2F2mZ82
// Robert Mueller has yet to allege collusion, and Democrats who accuse Trump of being a Kremlin conspirator are silent when his policies escalate tensions with Russia.
NPR, Tim Mak: Adam Schiff: Evidence Available Already Shows That Trump Should Be Indicted http://n.pr/2VTJq6a
Newsweek: Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago Club Hosted a Russian Wanted for Tax Fraud at a Party Last Year http://bit.ly/2CeYfcg
NYT: Mueller Report Has Washington Spinning (and It’s Not Even Filed) http://nyti.ms/2F0R5J1
Reuters, Richard Cowan: Ticking clock may save Trump from impeachment in Congress http://reut.rs/2HqiB5P
USNews, Paul Shinkman: Trump Proposes Cutting Key Fund to Deter Russian Aggression http://bit.ly/2HAzYB5
// The European Deterrence Initiative, started in the aftermath of Russia’s intervention in Ukraine, would be slashed 10 percent, according to the Pentagon’s budget proposal.
DailyBeast, Elizabeth Drew: Nancy Pelosi’s Impeachment Blunder: It’s Not About Bipartisanship http://bit.ly/2HqTEqG
// The Speaker is correct—impeachment has to be bipartisan. But the lesson of 1974 is that building bipartisan support takes time.
DailyBeast, Nelson W. Cunningham: Mueller May Drop Second Report That Can’t Be Buried http://bit.ly/2O3x49a
// The special counsel isn’t only looking for crimes: He continues the counterintelligence investigation that started with suspicious Trump-Russia contacts in 2016.
USAToday, Bart Jansen: What happens after Robert Mueller delivers his report? Congress braces for legal and political battles. http://bit.ly/2EUgy6X
🐣 They impeached Clinton for lying about a blow job, for Pete’s sake! If THIS GUY gets a pass, what’s the message? ➔ Only Democrats can be impeached going forward. Ignoring Trump’s blatant “high crimes and misdemeanors” is ignoring the Constitutional mandate to prevent tyranny.
⭕ 11 Mar 2019
🐣 RT @JamieJBartlett I’m completely obsessed by click farms – where thousands of machines are lined up to generate fake engagement.
💽 https://twitter.com/JamieJBartlett/status/1105151495773847552/photo/1
🐣 RT @MalcolmNance It’s quite possible @SpeakerPelosi is okay 12D Chess but if we tell Trump we won’t play the card AT ALL unless it’s fully bipartisan then he has won a resounding victory. The Constitution did not say criminals get a pass because elections. It’s a trial. Convince the jury!
Wonkette: Trump Inauguration: When The Money Keeps Rolling In, You Don’t Ask HOW http://bit.ly/2F5RlaZ
WashingtonMonthly, Nancy LeTourneau: On the Trump-Russia Conspiracy, Follow the Laundered Money http://bit.ly/2Hz8PhV
Reuters, Will Dunham: Mueller navigates dangerous currents in probing Trump-Russia nexus http://reut.rs/2EXrAsj
// nice bio of Mueller
🐣 RT @mkraju House Intelligence Chairman Adam Schiff tells me he agrees with Pelosi on impeachment: “If the evidence isn’t sufficient to win bipartisan support for this, putting the country through a failed impeachment isn’t a good idea.”
NYT: New York Attorney General Opens Investigation of Trump Projects http://nyti.ms/2J6sOqs
The New York attorney general’s office late on Monday issued subpoenas to Deutsche Bank and Investors Bank for records relating to the financing of four major Trump Organization projects and a failed effort to buy the Buffalo Bills of the National Football League in 2014, according to a person briefed on the subpoenas.
The inquiry opens a new front in the scrutiny of Deutsche Bank, one of the few lenders willing to do business with Donald J. Trump in recent years. The bank is already the subject of two congressional investigations and was examined last year by New York banking regulators, who took no action.
The new inquiry, by the office of the attorney general, Letitia James, was prompted by the congressional testimony last month of Michael D. Cohen, President Trump’s former lawyer and fixer, the person briefed on the subpoenas said. Mr. Cohen testified under oath that Mr. Trump had inflated his assets in financial statements, and Mr. Cohen provided copies of statements he said had been submitted to Deutsche Bank.
The inquiry by Ms. James’s office is a civil investigation, not a criminal one, although its focus and scope were unclear. The attorney general has broad authority under state law to investigate fraud and can fine — or in extreme cases, go to court to try to dissolve — a business that is found to have engaged in repeated illegality.
Reuters: Mueller probe already financed through September: officials http://reut.rs/2EZ1Agi
Special Counsel Robert Mueller and the team he assembled to investigate U.S. President Donald Trump and his associates have been funded through the end of September 2019, three U.S. officials said on Monday, an indication that the probe has funding to keep it going for months if need be.
WaPo Mag: Nancy Pelosi on Impeaching Trump: ‘He’s Just Not Worth It’ http://wapo.st/2u5hsII
// In a wide-ranging interview, the country’s most powerful Democrat says Trump is unfit to be president — “ethically,” “intellectually” and “curiosity-wise” — but impeachment would be too divisive.
⭕ 10 Mar 2019
DailyBeast, Erin Ryan: The Exclusive Guide to Spinning Trump’s Bullsh*t http://bit.ly/2Uwd80R
// It’s not so hard to turn the president’s moral and political failings into actual virtues. Here’s how.
DailyBeast, Erin Banco and Asawin Suebsaeng: Trump Pushes Team to Stick Up for ‘Brave’ Paul Manafort http://bit.ly/2VXXvjj
// Manafort is facing a tough judge, and a possible 10-year sentence. But his perils have produced one potential advantage: the increasing sympathies of the man who could pardon him.
Newsweek: Jared Kushner Is ‘Beating Heart’ of ‘Corrupt and Deeply Evil’ Trump Administration, Harvard Law Professor Laurence Tribe Says http://bit.ly/2TElfLO
MSNBC, AMJoy: House Intel Committee focusing on Trump Tower Moscow deal http://on.msnbc.com/2TpCqBg
// Donald Trump was named by Rep. Adam Schiff on Sunday as a key figure who should testify before a grand jury as part of the Russia investigations. Joy Reid and her panel discuss the next moves of the House Intel Committee.
NewYorker, Adam Gopnik: The Pros and Cons of Impeaching Trump http://bit.ly/2XT5P5k
// Real and reasonable arguments among congressional Democrats—and, indeed, among the public—range from the practical to the procedural.
NBCNews: Ex-FBI official McCabe says he was ‘shocked’ by Manafort’s sentence http://nbcnews.to/2J3l6NO
// “I think it was an incredibly lenient sentence,” the former acting FBI director told CBS’s “Face the Nation.”
⭕ 9 Mar 2019
DailyBeast, Lloyd Green: Democrats Already Know The Right Way to Impeach a President http://bit.ly/2NY2qxS
// Last time around, the committee “stuck to matters that Americans would regard as impeachable offenses, not purely personal issues or disagreements about policy.”
Politico, Jack Shafer: Week 94: Trump Treats Manafort’s Light Sentence Like an Acquittal. For Himself. http://politi.co/2IZklVU
// The president ignores the inconvenient evidence Mueller has already presented of collusion.
NYT, Quinta Jurecic: Will There Be Smoking Guns in the Mueller Report? http://nyti.ms/2SUXfiT
// I’ve followed the investigation closely. Here’s what I’ll be looking for
⭕ 8 Mar 2019
WaPo, Carole Applebaum: The more we learn about Brexit, the more crooked it looks http://wapo.st/2TECe0i
// Russia meddling in Brexit; Arron Banks
… now, with only a few days left until Britain is due to face the consequences of that vote, the Brexit story suddenly looks even more familiar: One of its protagonists turns out to have much deeper Russian business connections than previously suspected. He also tried to conceal them.
The protagonist in question is Arron Banks, the most important funder of both the pro-Brexit UK Independence Party (UKIP) and Leave.EU, one of several organizations that campaigned to get Britain out of the European Union …
🐣 RT @NatashaBertrand Cohen said the last time he spoke to Trump was “within 2 months” of the April FBI raid—and that the conversation is “actually something that’s being investigated right now by the Southern District of New York.” Meanwhile, Trump just admitted to speaking to Cohen about pardons.
⋙ UROCKlive1 Good thing none of these guys are smart criminals.
MotherJones, David Corn and Dan Friedman: Robert Mueller Has Raised Big Trump-Russia Questions. Will His Report Answer Them? http://bit.ly/2UtjspM
// Here are some of the key mysteries the special counsel has surfaced.
NYT: Trump Falsely Claims That Manafort Judge Declared There Was ‘No Collusion’ With Russia http://nyti.ms/2H8sW6W
WaPo, Greg Sargent: Here’s the Democratic answer to Trump’s corruption and plutocracy http://wapo.st/2H84nXM
WaPo: Manafort’s ‘mind-boggling’ 47-month sentence prompts debate over judicial system’s ‘blatant inequities’ http://wapo.st/2TBIB4t
DailyBeast, Barbara McQuade: Manafort Got Off Easy for Now but Mueller’s Not Done Yet http://bit.ly/2IYEFa8
💙💙 TheAtlantic, Franklin Foer: Russian-Style Kleptocracy Is Infiltrating America http://bit.ly/2STz9oK
// March 2019 issue; When the U.S.S.R. collapsed, Washington bet on the global spread of democratic capitalist values—and lost.
⭕ 7 Mar 2019
MSNBC, 11thHour: Ken Dilanian: Some intel experts think Manafort was essentially a Russian asset http://on.msnbc.com/2TDAMvn
// NBC News National Security Reporter Ken Dilanian details how Paul Manafort’s legal troubles began with his past work before joining the Trump campaign.
💙⏳ Axios: Timeline: Every big move in the Mueller investigation http://bit.ly/2Euh3H9
DailyBeast, Michael Tomasky: GOP Panics as Trump Sh*t Gets Serious http://bit.ly/2XLJXsL
// Republicans know where this is going. That’s why they’ll say anything to delay or deny the coming moment of truth.
Newsweek: Russia Responds to Mueller’s Trump Investigation Latest News: ‘What Does This Have to Do With’ Us? http://bit.ly/2VGgiza
FiveThirtyEight: Is The Russia Investigation Really Another Watergate? http://53eig.ht/2UqISof … work in progress …
● https://twitter.com/Auriandra/status/1104034818864676864/photo/1
// By Amelia Thomson-DeVeaux and Julia Wolfe
Nearly two years after special counsel Robert Mueller was appointed to investigate possible Russian interference in the 2016 election, he appears to be nearing the end of his work. We don’t know what new information we’ll gain from Mueller’s report, but here’s how his investigation currently stacks up to other special counsel investigations.
NPR, David Welna: A Dark View Of Russia From U.S. NATO Commander http://n.pr/2UmR0pO “there’s no place today on the NATO-Russia border where Russia does not have military superiority”
// quote from former NATO nuclear policy chairman and George W. Bush administration special adviser Franklin Miller told the House Armed Services Committee; article focus on appearance this week before the Senate Armed Services Committee, NATO Supreme Allied Commander Europe Gen. Curtis Scaparrotti sounded an alarm about Russia’s aims in the lands west of its border with Europe.
VanityFair, Tina Nguyen: Who’s Afraid of Ivanka Trump? http://bit.ly/2XM6Mwz
// While House Democrats ready an all-out investigatory assault on Donald Trump, some are having second thoughts about targeting his kids—particularly his golden child, Ivanka Trump.
YahooFinance, Rick Newman: ‘Country bumpkins’: 5 business problems with Trump’s Russia project http://yhoo.it/2VJKidB
🐣 RT @craigunger Yes. And, when I say the context is even more damning, I mean that McCarthy & Paul Ryan “had just come from meeting Ukrainian prime minister, Volodymyr Groysman, who had come into power saying he was committed to stamping out corruption and strengthening ties to the EU.
⋙ 🐣 RT @Delavegalaw Why has no reporter directly asked Kevin McCarthy, on air, about his June 2016 statement: “[T]here’s two people, I think Putin pays– Rohrabacher and Trump…[laughter] …swear to God.” And why not ask everyone in that conversation, including Paul Ryan, what they found so funny?
DailyBeast, Erin Banco: Cohen: Trump Organization Stiffed Me $1.9 Million After I Flipped for Feds http://bit.ly/2TmqeRK
// President’s ex-lawyer claims his old employer broke an agreement to protect him after he made moves to plead guilty.
DailyBeast, Sam Stein: Eric Holder Says Next Democratic President Should Consider Court Packing http://bit.ly/2NOCl49
// The former attorney general made the comments Thursday during a chat with the Yale Law National Security Group.
DailyBeast, Rick Wilson: Paul Manafort Gets a 47-Month Taste of What’s Coming for Trump’s Tools http://bit.ly/2Tulqt5
// Trump will always lie. He will always throw you under the bus. He will always shift the blame. He will always promise you everything and leave you hanging.
DailyBeast, Will Sommer: Conspiracists Clash as Jerome Corsi Sues InfoWars’ Alex Jones http://bit.ly/2HkE4wU
// Corsi used to work for Infowars. Now he’s warring with it.
DailyBeast, Julia Arciga: Manafort Sentence Irks Lawyers of Petty Criminals Serving Harsher Prison Terms http://bit.ly/2H5rDph
// “Saw a kid get 15 years today for stealing lawnmowers,” one lawyer wrote.
TheHill: Mueller team warns Russia may try to use ‘sensitive’ documents in troll farm case against US http://bit.ly/2NLG6Hq
Alternet/Salon, Lucian Truscott IV: Putin’s long con: Follow Trump’s Russia scandal back to a beauty pageant and it starts to make real sense http://bit.ly/2H7lhWE
WaPo, Paul Waldman: Many people involved in the Russia scandal thought Trump might pardon them. Why? http://wapo.st/2Uy9u6w
💙💙 NYT: House Democrats Are Flooding Trump World With Demands. Here’s a Guide to the Investigations. http://nyti.ms/2u4jNE9
// A handful of key House committees will lead the scrutiny of the president, his businesses, campaign and administration.
💙 Axios, Jim VandeHei and Mike Allen: The biggest political scandal in American history http://bit.ly/2IZJ10J
NYMag, Jonathan Chait: Mueller’s Case for Collusion: A Preview http://nym.ag/2C8oXTM
🐣 RT @RepSpeier Manafort’s sentencing is a gross injustice. Ignoring sentencing parameters and claiming Manafort “led a life otherwise blameless” suggests Judge Ellis is patently ignorant of the basic facts of the case. And angling for a presidential judicial appointment.
⋙ NYT: Paul Manafort Is Sentenced to Less Than 4 Years in 1 of 2 Cases Against Him http://nyti.ms/2XGsulD
🐣 RT @AOC Paul Manafort getting such little jail time for such serious crimes lays out for the world how it’s almost impossible for rich people to go to jail for the same amount of time as someone who is lower income. ¤ In our current broken system, “justice” isn’t blind. It’s bought.
🐣 I just hope the Manafort sentence isn’t a foreboding of injustices to come.
💽 MSNBC, Hardball: Ari on Manafort sentencing: Justice system ‘doesn’t operate with equal force for everyone’ http://on.msnbc.com/
// On Paul Manafort’s 47 month sentence, Ari Melber says that “”We all remember what we learn about our legal system in America. It does not operate with equal force for everyone. And Paul Manafort got the special, clubby, Washington, elite, friendly treatment for an individual with stacks and stacks of crimes.”
💙💙🐣 RT @ActiveMeasuresDoc Judge Ellis thinks representing authoritarian dictators, torturers, coups, mobsters, hatching a plot to attack US Marines overseas, back-channeling about a US election with Russian intelligence, laundering money, committing bank fraud, ripping off HUD makes you blameless. #NYAG
🐣 RT @RepAdamSchiff The statement by Paul Manafort’s lawyer after an already lenient sentence — repeating the President’s mantra of no collusion — was no accident. It was a deliberate appeal for a pardon. ¤ One injustice must not follow another.
🐣 RT @AriMelber Paul Manafort’s lenient 4-year sentence — far below the recommended 20 years despite extensive felonies and post-conviction obstruction — is a reminder of the blatant inequities in our justice system that we all know about, because they reoccur every week in courts across America
🐣 RT @FranklinFoer This is outrageous. Manafort spent a career lobbying for arms for clients who burned children alive; he represented gangsters who broke democracies and whose thievery destroyed health systems. He literally created corruption as we know it in Washington.
⋙ Manafort gets only 47 months.
⭕ 6 Mar 2019
🐣 RT @costareports Just spoke with Lanny Davis, who says the @rebeccaballhaus story has it right. In his words to Post tonight: “During the period of the joint defense agreement, Michael was certainly open to the possibility of a pardon and it was dangled” by Trump legal team.
WaPo: Michael Cohen told a representative to ask Trump’s team about pardon, lawyer Lanny Davis says https://tinyurl.com/y3xls7mw after Trump’s representatives “dangled” the possibility of pardons “in their public statements”; they reached out to Giuliani
Wonkette, Evan Hurst: Meet Daniel Goldman, The Dashing Young Buck Adam Schiff Just Hired To Kick Trump’s Ass https://tinyurl.com/yx8gxerg
NBCSanDiego: Source: Leaked Documents Show the U.S. Government Tracking Journalists and Immigration Advocates Through a Secret Database http://bit.ly/2XIAmCU
RawStory, Bob Brigham: ‘Donald Trump is not above starting a civil war’: Donny Deutsch predicts there won’t be a peaceful transition of power http://bit.ly/2NL9WMb
🐣 RT @tribelaw Nothing could be more dangerous to democracy than a demagogue who claims there’s no way he can be legitimately voted out of office — that any defeat would be fraudulent. That’s where Trump seems to be heading, partly to fend off indictment.
⋙ CNN, Chris Cillizza: Donald Trump is laying the groundwork to de-legitimize the 2020 election http://cnn.it/2To0kNs good lord
Even as the 2020 race begins in earnest, President Donald Trump is already suggesting that Democrats cannot beat him fairly — raising the specter that if he loses next November, he will suggest that the election was not legitimate.
“The Democrats in Congress yesterday were vicious and totally showed their cards for everyone to see,” Trump tweeted Tuesday, referring to House Democrats’ launching of a broad-scale investigation into him. “When the Republicans had the Majority they never acted with such hatred and scorn! The Dems are trying to win an election in 2020 that they know they cannot legitimately win!”
Politico: The Mueller report no one’s talking about http://politi.co/2TwokgR
// Justice Department rules require an accounting of any time supervisors told the special counsel “no” during his work.
WaPo: Michael Cohen gives Congress new documents during testimony http://wapo.st/2XAsIdM “According to people familiar … , the changes were plentiful. But one … said the changes were not substantive and that there had been no direct changes made to Cohen’s original claims”
USAToday, Elizabeth Holtzman: Don’t cover up Mueller’s Trump-Russia investigation. We need to know everything he finds. http://bit.ly/2Ca57HK
// Presidents have no right to control investigations or commit crimes. Americans must see Mueller’s report to judge his conclusions and Trump’s deeds.
🐣 RT @kylegriffin1 Michael Cohen has reportedly provided the House Intelligence Committee with new documents showing edits to the false written statement he delivered to Congress in 2017 about the Trump Organization’s pursuit of the Trump Tower Moscow project.
⋙ CNN: Cohen gives documents to House panel on Trump attorney alleged changes to 2017 testimony http://cnn.it/2ITHBVn
⭕ 5 Mar 2019
ProPublica, Eric Umansky: Six Tips for Preparing for the Mueller Report, Which May or May Not Be Coming http://bit.ly/2uhXR8g
// Here’s what to keep in mind while waiting for special counsel Robert Mueller’s report.
WaPo, David Ignatius: The completion of the Mueller report almost guarantees division http://wapo.st/2Tiw2ff
Law&Crime: What to Expect from House Dems’ New Lawyer Hire in ‘Aggressive’ Trump Campaign Probe http://bit.ly/2tQSMDJ Daniel S Goldman, Assistant U.S. Attorney in the Southern District of New York (SDNY) from 2007 to 2017
🐣 RT @Mimirocah1 I see lots of talk about SDNY indicting Trump Org as a Racketeering Enterprise. FYI to charge a RICO, SDNY would need approval from the Organized Crime & Gang Section at Main Justice which reports up. Not all charges they could bring would need approval, but RICO would.
🐣 RT @NormOrnstein From all the NY state investigations, the SDNY probes and Mueller, it is becoming clear that the Trump Organization and its affiliates have operated as a criminal enterprise for decades. Most disturbing is that they got away with it for decades. How many other businesses have?
Bloomberg, Mark Gongloff: Don’t Hide the Mueller Report http://bloom.bg/2Uhu7E2
// Don’t set a bad, partisan precedent. The public has a right to know.
Politico: House Intel hires former Russian mob prosecutor to lead Trump probes http://politi.co/2IW9CLS
Reuters: Beyond the report: Mueller’s Russia probe designed to live on http://reut.rs/2ENtZaf
TIME, Abigail Abrams: You Have Questions About Robert Mueller’s Investigation. Here Are the Answers http://bit.ly/2TkO94e
CNN, Marshall Cohen: Trump says he joked about wanting Russian help in 2016. The facts tell a different story. http://cnn.it/2tSGwms
NewYorker, Adam Entous (6/182018): Donald Trump’s New World Order http://bit.ly/2IPMp8R unholy alliances
// 6/18/2018 issue; How the President, Israel, and the Gulf states plan to fight Iran—and leave the Palestinians and the Obama years behind.
📊 WaPo: Quinnipiac Poll: Most Americans think Trump committed crimes, believe him less than admitted liar Michael Cohen http://wapo.st/2NN3IvC brutal
🐣 RT @selectedwisdom I heard the Kenyan birth certificate is on a Swift Boat loaded down with printouts of Clinton emails driven by JFK’s assassin, UFO’s provide air cover “Jerome Corsi Backtracks on Seth Rich, Doubles Down on Birtherism”
⋙ DailyBeast: Jerome Corsi Backtracks on Seth Rich, Doubles Down on Birtherism http://bit.ly/2HlC1J7
// The conspiracy theorist says he hasn’t backed down completely about the slain DNC staffer. Meanwhile, he now also wants to see “official 1961 birth records from Kenya.”
🐣 RT @eliehonig Judge Jackson to Roger Stone, summarized: “Now you’ve ticked me off one too many times. I’m going to revoke your bail and send you to jail. But I also won’t let you go down as some bogus First Amendment martyr.”
⋙ WaPo: Judge orders Roger Stone to explain imminent release of book that may violate gag order http://wapo.st/2SL7A0X
OversightComm: Chairman Cummings Issues Statement on White House Refusal to Produce Documents and Witnesses on Security Clearance Abuses http://bit.ly/2TfEZpz
● Text Block: https://twitter.com/Auriandra/status/1103021673425575937/photo/1
“The White House appears to be arguing that Congress has no authority to examine decisions by the Executive Branch that impact our national security—even when the President’s former National Security Advisor has pleaded guilty to lying about his contacts with foreign government officials. There is a key difference between a president who exercises his authority under the Constitution and a president who overrules career experts and his top advisors to benefit his family members and then conceals his actions from the American people. The White House’s argument defies the Constitutional separation of powers, decades of precedent before this Committee, and just plain common-sense. The White House security clearance system is broken, and it needs both congressional oversight and legislative reform. I will be consulting with Members of the Committee to determine our next steps.”
CNBC: Trump and White House accuse House Judiciary panel of conducting an ‘abusive’ probe that distracts from agenda of ‘killing babies after they’re born’ http://cnb.cx/2UquDjm
// President Donald Trump tears into a sweeping new investigation launched by Democrats on the House Judiciary Committee.
● The president’s denunciation comes hours after the White House blasts the probe as “disgraceful and abusive” and accuses Democrats of trying to “distract from their radical agenda” of “killing babies after they’re born,” among other inaccurate claims.
● Chairman Jerry Nadler, D-N.Y., says that the House committee has sent letters requesting documents to 81 people and entities related to the president.
Politico: White House tells Dems it won’t hand over Kushner security clearance docs http://politi.co/2HgIy7B
TheHill, Kris Kolesnik: Cummings shows how oversight should be done – and that’s bad news for Trump http://bit.ly/2SIP9tO
CNBC: Judge slams Roger Stone over book criticizing Robert Mueller, demands he comply with gag order http://cnb.cx/2SIOAAc developing …
● A federal judge on Tuesday blasted Roger Stone over his new book that criticizes special counsel Robert Mueller, and demanded Stone explain his efforts to comply with a gag order that bars him from bad-mouthing Mueller.
● Judge Amy Berman Jackson, in a court filing, said, there “s no question that the order prohibited and continues to prohibit the defendant from making any public statements, using any medium, concerning the investigation.”
🐣 RT @gtconway3d • 33% of Republicans think Trump committed crimes before taking office;
• Voters think Trump is dishonest by a margin of over 2 to 1 (65%-30%), including 26% of Republicans;
• 22% think he is a good role model for children; 71% do not, including 37% of Republicans …
🐣 RT @ThePlumLineGS New Quinnipiac poll:
Trump approval: 38-55
Committed crimes before becoming president: 64-24
Committed crimes while president: 45-43
Believe Cohen over Trump: 50-35
Congress should investigate Cohen claims: 58-35
This is so RISKY!!!
⋙ 📊 Quinnipac Poll: 64 Percent Of U.S. Voters Say Trump Committed A Crime; President Gets Mixed Grades For North Korea http://bit.ly/2EOg17U Approval 38%, Disapproval 55% //➔ So, 9% don’t care if he committed a crime?
🐣 RT @tribelaw .@JRubinBlogger is right: “Political watchers might think we ‘know’ what Trump has done, but a news report . . . is not the same as laying out all the available evidence in front of the American people through sworn testimony and documentary evidence.”
🐣 RT @JRubinBlogger Under Rs, House chairmen repeated that there is no evidence of wrongdoing — and then refused to look. They saw their obligation was to protect Trump, and did it rather well. Now Congress will look at the facts, and let the chips fall where they may.
⋙ WaPo, Jennifer Rubin: Congress is obligated to follow the facts http://wapo.st/2TtzK4Z
NYT’s Peter Baker: “Trump says it’s a fishing expedition. One reason it’s a fishing expedition is there are a lot of fish in the pond.” on @msnbc
🐣 RT @tedlieu .@RepDonBeyer & I have made a criminal referral of Jared Kushner to @TheJusticeDept. ¤ Making false statements or omitting material info on SF-86 security form is punishable by up to 5 years in prison. More info at @politico huddle. Here’s the letter: https://politi.co/2C7nzAM .
🐣 RT @NatashaBertrand House Intel has also hired Diana Pilipenko–a Russian& Ukrainian speaker w/ expertise in anti-corruption, anti-money laundering, and sanctions–to help investigate Trump’s finances. She was previously at Center for American Progress and Deloitte managing corporate investigations.
WaPo: House intelligence panel hires former racketeering and organized crime prosecutor to run Trump probe http://wapo.st/2C6w2V7
🐣 RT @matthewamiller So smart. Not just because Dan knows investigations, but because he knows how DOJ works. One reason Senate Judiciary’s investigation into the Bush US attorney firings was the most successful oversight probe in recent memory is SDNY alum @PreetBharara was counsel.
⋙ NewYorker, Jeffrey Toobin: Adam Schiff Hires a Former Prosecutor to Lead the Trump Investigation http://bit.ly/2ENBwWw Daniel Goldman is a former Asst US Atty for SDNY is “a veteran prosecutor with experience fighting Russian organized crime”
Representative Adam Schiff, the chairman of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, has hired a veteran prosecutor with experience fighting Russian organized crime to lead his investigation of the Trump Administration. Last month, according to a committee source, Daniel Goldman, who served as an Assistant United States Attorney in the Southern District of New York from 2007 to 2017, joined the committee’s staff as a senior adviser and the director of investigations.
The hiring of Goldman, who will be joined by three other former federal prosecutors on Schiff’s staff, underlines Schiff’s decision to conduct an aggressive investigation of the Trump campaign’s ties to Russia during the 2016 Presidential campaign. In the rough division of labor among the various committees in the House of Representatives, Schiff’s panel is tackling the most provocative and, so far, most elusive subject related to the President: whether so-called collusion occurred between the Trump campaign and Moscow. In public comments, Schiff has suggested that Trump’s interest as a private citizen in building a tower in Moscow led him to curry favor with Vladimir Putin, the Russian President. American intelligence agencies long ago concluded that the Russian government made significant efforts, through the hacking of e-mails and use of social media, to help elect Trump over Hillary Clinton. The question of whether the Trump campaign facilitated, assisted, or knew about these efforts has been at the heart of the investigation by the special counsel, Robert Mueller—and will also be central to Schiff’s inquiry.
🔊 NPR, Tim Mak: Elderly Trump Critics Await Mueller’s Report — Sometimes Until Their Last Breath http://n.pr/2IScvxp
💽 ABCNews: Former Trump White House lawyer calls Mueller ‘American hero,’ says probe is no witch hunt http://abcn.ws/2EO8fLa
// On Congressional investigations into the White House: “It’s never gonna be over”
⭕ 4 Mar 2019
MSNBC, MTPDaily: Full McFaul: Russia believed ‘their work was helping Trump to win’ http://on.msnbc.com/2TjDAOD
// Former US Ambassador to Russia Michael McFaul joins MTP Daily to discuss Trump saying that his 2016 call for Russia to hack Hillary Clinton’s emails was “a joke” and what Russians were really up to in that summer of 2016.
TheAtlantic, Graeme Wood: Will John Bolton Bring on Armageddon—Or Stave It Off? http://bit.ly/2IUzFD8
// The national security adviser could be our best hope for protecting the world from Donald Trump’s impulses.
// April 2019 issue
💽 MSNBC, Rachel Maddow Show: Nadler: ‘Our job is to protect the rule of law in this country’ http://on.msnbc.com/2UlibRH full interview w Rep. Jerry Nadler (D-NY), chairman of the House Judiciary Committee
// Rep. Jerry Nadler, chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, talks with Rachel Maddow about the stack of document requests sent out today as a first installment in a wide range of investigations into the Donald Trump administration.
💙🐣 RT @SethAbramson (THREAD) This thread is a guided tour of the 81 PERSONS from whom the House Judiciary Committee is now seeking documents in contemplation of possible impeachment proceedings down the line. These names tell us much about where Congress is headed. I hope you’ll read on and retweet.
📌 https://twitter.com/SethAbramson/status/1102619649802420225?s=20
NBC/Reuters: Another study finds no link between autism and measles, mumps and rubella vaccine http://nbcnews.to/2XCyKL6
// A large new study finds kids who got no childhood vaccines were more likely to be diagnosed with autism than kids who did get recommended vaccinations. http://nbcnews.to/
WSJ: Lawyer for Cohen Approached Trump Attorneys About Pardon http://on.wsj.com/2HfK4Hc “Mr. Trump has repeatedly declined to rule out pardoning his former aides being investigated by special counsel Robert Mueller and New York federal prosecutors.”
// Possibility of presidential pardon was broached and dismissed after April FBI raid on Cohen’s premises
Politico: Christie: Trump family’s lack of honesty about security clearances is ‘not defensible’ http://politi.co/2HfJo4C
TheHill: #BREAKING: Trump attorney general won’t recuse himself from overseeing Mueller probe http://hill.cm/9N9LT3x
🐣 RT @Hardball “We don’t want to just rely upon what Michael Cohen said … we need input from everyone who has information.” @RepTedDeutch on the House Judiciary Committee requesting documents. #Hardball https://twitter.com/hardball/status/1102721995257585664/photo/1
// list of 81 people who got letters
WaPo, James Comey: Republicans are wrong. Transparency is possible in the Mueller investigation. http://wapo.st/2INwYDo
💙💙 🔆 This❗️⋙ WaPo, Philip Bump: The 81 people and organizations just looped into the Trump probe — and why they were included http://wapo.st/2SJrw41
🐣 RT @HouseIntel @HouseIntel, @HouseForeign and @OversightDems just requested documents and testimony from the White House and State Department related to communications between President Donald Trump and President Vladimir Putin. ¤ Read the full letters here: http://bit.ly/2SELVY8
https://twitter.com/HouseIntel/status/1102641695475359745/photo/1-2
According to media reports, President Trump, on multiple occasions, appears to have taken steps to conceal the details of his communications with President Putin from other administration officials, Congress, and the American people. …
These allegations, if true, raise profound national security, counterintelligence, and foreign policy concerns, especially in light of Russia’s ongoing active measures campaign to improperly influence American elections. In addition, such allegations, if true, undermine the proper functioning of government, most notably the Department’s access to critical information germane to its diplomatic mission and its ability to develop and execute foreign policy that advances our national interests. Finally, these allegations present serious concerns that materials pertaining to specific communications may have been manipulated or withheld from the official record in direct contravention of federal laws, which expressly require that Presidents and other administration officials preserve such materials.
🐣 RT @NatashaBertrand None of the witnesses contacted by House Judiciary today were hit with brand new document requests that haven’t been asked of them before, by either the special counsel, SDNY, or Congress. Mueller and SDNY were aware these requests were going out.
TheAtlantic, Natasha Bertrand: The House’s Latest Move Could Be a Big Threat to Trump’s Presidency http://bit.ly/2EMfWS2
// A sweeping new probe launched by the House Judiciary Committee could be the most revealing yet about the president’s alleged misconduct.
DailyBeast, Julia Arciga: Jerome Corsi, InfoWars Retract and Apologize for Spreading Seth Rich DNC Murder Conspiracy Theory http://bit.ly/2tODYFE
NBC: House Democrats prepare case to request Trump tax returns http://nbcnews.to/2ThFUWC
// Democrats are crafting a request to send to the IRS and say they will “take all necessary steps” to obtain the president’s returns.
🐣 RT @NatashaBertrand 🚨OH boy. The government has notified Judge Amy Berman Jackson of Roger Stone’s Instagram story from yesterday, where he shared an image that claimed he was framed. https://twitter.com/NatashaBertrand/status/1102689081585217542/photo/1
CNN, Stephen Collinson: Impending Mueller report may just be the beginning of Trump’s investigation woes http://cnn.it/2IQlChT
Newsweek: Donald Trump Knows Walls Are Closing In As Mueller Report Looms, Ex-Presidential Adviser David Gergen Says http://bit.ly/2XChOo4
JerusalemPost: Russia slams Trump’s ‘deal of the century http://bit.ly/2tLVkTQ “Lavrov, in an interview Sunday with the Kuwait News Agency, charged that unilateral US steps have had a ‘significant negative impact’ on the Mideast diplomatic process.”
Reuters: House panels seek details on Trump communications with Russia’s Putin http://reut.rs/2VCX51v they want to interview translators and other staff involved in their conversations
Politico: Trump-Russia dossier author Christopher Steele backs out of public appearance http://politi.co/2TfTYzR
// His planned remarks at an upcoming conference would have been his first in years.
WaPo, Jennifer Rubin: ‘Impeachable’ and ‘illegal’ aren’t interchangeable http://wapo.st/2ELOvYy
Politico: These are all the Trump associates targeted in House Judiciary’s wide-ranging probe http://politi.co/2NITkVt
🐣 RT @thedailybeast BREAKING: The House Judiciary Committee sent 80+ letters and document requests to nearly all of Trumpworld—including Eric Trump, Donald Trump Jr., and the NRA
⋙ DailyBeast: Trump Sons, Bannon, Assange, McGahn on House Dems List http://bit.ly/2NHRSmj
WaPo, Greg Sargent: Democrats are set to take a big step toward impeaching Trump http://wapo.st/2NFgxIh
🐣 RT @RVAwonk Wow. Per @JaneMayerNYer, Roger Ailes tipped off Trump about debate questions ahead of the first GOP primary debate in 2015.
⋙ 🐣 Another thing Trump accused Hillary of. Donna Brazile told HRC one ? that she herself thought of, that’s all. Trump: #Imrubberyoureglue
TheAtlantic, Orly Lobel: Trump’s Extreme NDAs http://bit.ly/2TAlx6t
// His nondisclosure agreements are draconian.
DailyBeast, Erin Banco and Betsy Woodruff: Team Trump Keeps Pushing Deal to Send Nuclear Tech to Saudis http://bit.ly/2J0m0e6
// Congress raised ‘grave concerns’ about the Trump administration’s past attempts to send nuclear technology to the Saudis. But Team Trump isn’t done trying.
🐣 RT @matthewamiller Remember when the Obama WH briefly tried to treat Fox News like the arm of the GOP they are rather than a real journalistic outlet and mainstream journalists rallied to their defense? I hope people realize the cover they give Fox when they pretend journalism is practiced there.
↥ ↧
🐣 RT @AshaRangappa_ So far, Trump got help winning the election in the form of information distortion from Russia, The National Enquirer, and Fox News. Anyone else? ¤ (Also, is he capable of doing anything without cheating???)
🐣 RT @gtconway3d If proven, such an attempt to use presidential authority to seek retribution for the exercise of First Amendment rights would unquestionably be grounds for impeachment.
🐣 RT @JaneMayerNYer New from me: Fox News HAD the story of Trump’s hush money payoffs to Stormy Daniels BEFORE the election but killed it because the reporter said she was told, “Good reporting Kiddo, but Rupert Murdoch wants Donald Trump to win. So set it aside.” Reporter sued, is bound by an NDA.
💙💙 NewYorker, Jane Mayer: The Making of the Fox News White House http://bit.ly/2HdETaL
// 3/11/2019 issue; Fox News has always been partisan. But has it become propaganda?
🐣 RT @tribelaw No DOJ policy prevents the indictment of the Trump Organization for felony racketeering — even if Trump himself remains at most an unindicted co-conspirator. Memo to SDNY: Use RICO!
💙 NYT: How Giuliani Might Take Down Trump http://nyti.ms/2tP0fDB
// The parallels between the Mafia and the Trump Organization are striking, and Giuliani perfected the template for prosecuting organized crime.
⭕ 3 Mar 2019
Slate, Michael Politi: Schiff: There Is “Direct Evidence” of Trump Collusion With Russia http://bit.ly/2IQFeCI
NBC: House, Senate panels looking at whether pardon was discussed with Michael Cohen http://nbcnews.to/2Tzmegl
// Congress wants to know if any effort was made by anyone linked to the White House to keep Cohen from flipping on the president.
Politico: Warner: ‘Enormous amounts of evidence’ of possible Russia collusion http://politi.co/2EIMvQO Sen Mark Warner (D-VA)
ABCNews (ThisWeek): Chairman Jerrold Nadler says over 60 entities and individuals close to White House are getting document requests from House Judiciary Committee Monday http://abcn.ws/2Xzc1j0
TheHill/ABC: House Judiciary chair: ‘It’s very clear’ Trump obstructed justice http://bit.ly/2XACpJp Rep Jerrold Nadler (D-NY)
It’s very clear that the president obstructed justice. It’s very clear,” Nadler said on ABC’s “This Week,” before pointing to how Trump has referred to special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation as a “witch hunt” more than 1,000 times.
“He tried to protect [former national security advsor] Michael Flynn from being investigated by the FBI. He fired [former FBI Director] James Comey in order to stop the ‘Russia thing’ as he told NBC News,” Nadler continued. “He’s intimidated witnesses in public.”
But Nadler said that lawmakers weren’t pushing to launch an impeachment process because they still need to sort out evidence and make a case to the American people.
📊 TheHill: NBC/WSJ Poll: 58% believe Trump hasn’t been truthful about the Russia probe http://bit.ly/2VzS6yG
🐣 RT @FaceTheNation House Intel Committee Chairman @RepAdamSchiff says his committee is looking into @realDonaldTrump’s personal businesses, including allegations that “Russians have been laundering money through the Trump Organization.”
💽 https://twitter.com/FaceTheNation/status/1102234139015692299/photo/1
WaPo: House Judiciary chairman says he will launch probe of Trump’s ‘abuse of power’ http://wapo.st/2VxGYSF Rep Jerrold Nadler (D-NY)
Reuters, Andy Sullivan: Ostrich jacket, fake rallies, therapy dogs and other odd scenes in Trump-Russia probe http://reut.rs/2C26AzP
BBC: Donald Trump launches furious attack on Robert Mueller http://bbc.in/2VveFnX
NBC, Steve Vladeck: Mueller report and Trump-Russia investigation must push Congress to protect future special counsels http://nbcnews.to/2GXyZvg
// Those who fail to study history are doomed to repeat it.
⭕ 2 Mar 2019
Law&Crime: Senate Intel Committee Now Investigating Trump’s Various Trips to Russia http://bit.ly/2UmiQCE
TIME: President Trump Calls Robert Mueller’s Russia Investigation ‘Bullsh–‘ in CPAC Speech http://bit.ly/2HhXthM
TheAtlantic, Natasha Bertrand: Michael Cohen’s Road Map for Democrats http://bit.ly/2tP6W8q
// After the former Trump attorney’s testimony last week, House Oversight Chairman Elijah Cummings says that “all you have to do is follow the transcript.”
Cohen testified that Trump had foreknowledge of WikiLeaks’ plans to release embarrassing Democratic emails in 2016; that Trump implicitly asked Cohen to mislead Congress about the Trump Tower Moscow negotiations that continued throughout the election; and that Trump, while president, reimbursed the hush-money payments Cohen made to a porn star on Trump’s behalf just days before his election victory in violation of campaign-finance laws.
The focus on Trump’s business dealings isn’t arbitrary, veteran investigators have explained. Rather, it’s “essential” to any real understanding of an individual’s network, Andrew McCabe, the former deputy director of the FBI, told me in a recent interview. “I think people think of following the money simply as a way of uncovering whether somebody’s been involved in money-laundering, or a financial crime, which is of course important,” McCabe said. “But on a much more fundamental level, it’s a way of understanding relationships and networks, to understand who the person that I’m interested in is connected to, who they’re communicating with, and who they’re receiving money from or giving money to.”
“That is all association evidence,” McCabe continued. “And it goes to proving the existence of an organization—or, as RICO [the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act] would say, an enterprise.”
NewYorker, Isaac Chotiner: A BuzzFeed Reporter Explains His Controversial Reporting on Michael Cohen and Donald Trump http://bit.ly/2VrJUAi “Cohen himself made it clear in his testimony that he and Trump both understood this to be explicit, that he should lie to Congress”
NPR, Shannon Von Sant: Trump Slams Russia Investigation And Green New Deal At CPAC http://n.pr/2GVCXUV
TheGuardian, Walter Shapiro: Trump is a national security risk – and still Republicans back him http://bit.ly/2NL0bxT
// The Great Jared Kushner Clearance Caper is just the latest affair to prove this presidency is a danger to America
🐣 RT @tribelaw I strongly agree with @EricColumbus that there are compelling reasons in addition to DOJ’s non-indictment policy for full disclosure of Mueller’s factual findings and the underlying evidence, but the misguided non-indictment policy is a decisive reason in itself
⋙ 🐣 RT @EricColumbus Many people say that Mueller’s report should be made public because Trump isn’t indictable as a sitting president. But this is an incomplete argument — for one thing, that might not be why Mueller doesn’t indict him. 1/
📌 https://twitter.com/EricColumbus/status/1100430354362654720
TheHill, Jonathan Turley: The revenge of Rod Rosenstein http://bit.ly/2SCUEu3
ReasonMag/LATimes, Matt Welch: No Magic Bullet for Trump/Russia Investigation http://bit.ly/2XycQZu “[I]t took just 11 short words … to ensure that our long national nightmare will not, in fact, soon end: ‘Mr. Trump did not directly tell me to lie to Congress’.”
// Cohen testimony underscores that Americans are going to have to take responsibility for their own response to the president’s behavior, rather than wait for some mega-revelation
TheAtlantic, Yoni Appelbaum: Impeach Donald Trump http://bit.ly/2EkUphO
// March 2019 issue; Starting the process will rein in a president who is undermining American ideals—and bring the debate about his fitness for office into Congress, where it belongs.
YahooNews/Reuters, Jan Wolfe: Explainer: In Trump-Russia probe, when does collusion become a crime? http://yhoo.it/2EIAGdu
Politico Mag, Jack Shafer: Week 93: Cohen Reveals Russia Scandal Gems Amid the Mudslinging http://politi.co/2NFh2SG
// But Mueller will ultimately determine whether the convicted liar’s accusations against Trump are the real thing or fake.
⭕ 1 Mar 2019
VICE, Greg Walters: Michael Cohen implicated Trump in at least 11 different felonies http://bit.ly/2NCgBZ7
🔆 This❗️⋙ DailyBeast, Kevin Poulsen: Wikileaks Veteran: I ‘Cooperated’ With Feds ‘in Exchange for Immunity’ http://bit.ly/2TaFJwh
// Chelsea Manning, David House; A grand jury probe that began nine years ago is ongoing. And one of Julian Assange’s old crew is now talking. “I’m on the street… not in an embassy,” he tells The Daily Beast.
🐣 RT @nytdavidbrooks This is how moral corrosion happens. Supporting Trump requires daily acts of moral distancing, a process that means that after a few months you are tolerant of any corruption. You are morally numb to everything.
⋙ NYT: Morality and Michael Cohen http://nyti.ms/2EGrPZH
// Wednesday’s testimony and the crisis of American conscience.
🐣 Excuse me. it’s not “the crisis of American conscience.” It’s the crisis of the Republican conscience.
🐣 RT @EvanMcMullin A good foreign intel officer could own Kushner in months. His financial vulnerabilities, greed, situational ignorance, dubious foreign contacts, ethical disregard, self-importance and dismissal by more seasoned officials make it too easy. That’s why he shouldn’t have a clearance.
WaPo Editorial: Trump intervened to get Kushner a top-secret clearance. Congress should investigate. http://wapo.st/2UgOIIy
WaPo, Jennifer Rubin: Nepotism rules exist for a reason. Jared Kushner shows why. http://wapo.st/2BUfmQv
WaPo: Two days in July: As Republicans convened in Cleveland, did Trump receive a heads-up about WikiLeaks? http://wapo.st/2TuWn9i
NYT, Timothy Egan: After Cohen, Republicans Are Now Trump’s Fixers http://nyti.ms/2BUeCeb “doing his dirty work, issuing threats and ditching long-held principles like so many empty beer bottles thrown from a car”
// G.O.P. lawmakers who started by making excuses for the president’s most repulsive personal traits have now moved on to bedrock principles. They are headed for a reckoning.
NYT, John Dean: I Testified Against Nixon. Here’s My Advice for Michael Cohen. http://nyti.ms/2H8T8xr “[A]ll Americans are affected by the growing authoritarianism that made Mr. Trump president. These people who facilitated his rise will remain long after Mr. Trump is gone.”
// My appearance before Congress helped take down a president. Will the same thing happen to Trump?
DailyBeast, Michael Daly: The Day President Trump Signed Michael Cohen’s Hush-Money Check http://bit.ly/2NCmCoJ
// The guy known for delaying payment, if he paid at all, kicked the can on signing sanctions against Russia, even as he made sure his fixer was covered.
Vox, Jen Kirby: The brewing fight over making the Mueller report public, explained http://bit.ly/2EGofis
// The special counsel is expected to deliver his final conclusions to the attorney general. What happens next will depend a lot on Bill Barr.
NYT, David Leonhardt: Questions for Trump http://nyti.ms/2Es1bT2
// We need more information.
● What role did Allen Weisselberg, an executive at the Trump Organization, play in reimbursing Michael Cohen for hush payments made to a porn star who claimed to have had an affair with Trump? The answer could help clarify Trump’s role in making and covering up the payments.
● Did Trump commit fraud by misrepresenting his wealth in documents provided to financial firms? Both Weisselberg’s testimony and Trump’s tax returns could shed light.
● “Was there Russian money coming into the Trump Organization or into Mr. Trump’s personal finances, and was he inflating the numbers [to] get loans?” in the words of Eric Swalwell, a California Democrat. That is, did the Russians have leverage over Trump in 2016?
● Did Donald Trump Jr. lie to Congress in 2017 about Trump’s business ventures in Russia? And what role did he play in the hush-money payments to Stormy Daniels, the porn star with whom Trump allegedly had an affair?
● Did Jay Sekulow, a Trump lawyer, and Abbe Lowell, who represents Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner, review and edit Cohen’s false testimony about Trump’s business dealings in Russia? Cohen claimed so on Wednesday, and Sekulow has denied it. Lowell has not commented.
● Can Rhona Graff, Trump’s longtime secretary, confirm Cohen’s allegation that Roger Stone called Trump in 2016 to discuss WikiLeaks-hacked Democratic emails?
● Did Donald Trump Jr. confer with his father about the June 2016 Trump Tower meeting with several Russians? If so, did the president commit perjury by reportedly claiming otherwise in written answers to the special counsel Robert Mueller?
● Did Trump use his now-defunct charitable foundation to avoid paying taxes?
● Did Trump lie about his taxes being under audit as an excuse to avoid releasing his tax returns?
● What does Felix Sater, a Russia-born former business associate of Trump’s who was part of talks to build a Trump Tower in Moscow, know about Trump’s business dealings in Russia?
● And beyond Cohen’s testimony: What do Trump’s tax returns show about his activities in Russia? What other potential crimes are prosecutors — either in New York or at the Justice Department — investigating?
TIME, Renato Mariotti: Why the Mueller Report Might Disappoint Almost Everybody http://bit.ly/2XuKH5m
Politico Mag, Nahal Toosi: Inside the Chaotic Early Days of Trump’s Foreign Policy http://politi.co/2GQ6uPO
// Former top national security officials detail a climate of fear, incompetence and hostility to facts in a White House that wasn’t ready to run the world.
⭕ 28 Feb 2019
NewYorker, Susan Glasser: Donald Trump Went to Vietnam, and Michael Cohen Made It Hell http://bit.ly/2T7Wubb
// On a humiliating twenty-four hours for the President.
… In seven hours of testimony, Trump’s former personal lawyer and fixer testified that the President had paid hush money to cover up an affair with a porn star and produced signed checks to prove it; that he had known in advance about the WikiLeaks dump of hacked Democratic e-mails during the 2016 campaign; that he had engaged in a wide array of questionable and possibly illegal business practices; and that he had lied to the public about doing business in Russia throughout his race for the Presidency. With so much alleged wrongdoing to contemplate, Cohen’s claim that Trump was both a Vietnam draft-dodger and an inveterate liar about it was almost a throwaway.
It was a weak performance from a President who, after the events of the last day, had never seemed weaker. Trump has touted himself a dealmaker, but this week was a reminder that he has a better record of blowing up deals than making them. He has defied laws of political gravity for so long that he thought he was immune to them. He has lied so flagrantly and for so many years without consequence that he thought he could always do so. Rarely has a President been so publicly humiliated, in different settings by such different actors, in such a short span of time. You’d never know it to listen to Trump, though; he is not one to accept or even acknowledge the political predicament his own misjudgment has landed him in.
🐣 RT @Mimirocah1 And apparently Trump called Gaetz to thank him for this potentially criminal conduct.
⋙ 🐣 RT @ harrylitman “Gaetz’s conduct satisfied the statutory elements of 18 U.S.C. § 1512 (b). Moreover, given his powerful perch, it more strongly presented the evil the statute was designed to prevent.”
⋙⋙ WaPo, Harry Litman: Did Matt Gaetz illegally intimidate Michael Cohen? http://wapo.st/2IKrvNO
WSJ, Peggy Noonan: Michael Cohen Makes History http://on.wsj.com/2NAVxSS
Text Block: https://twitter.com/Auriandra/status/1101338787144187905/photo/1
// There’s no precedent for such an attack on the essential nature of an American president.
None of these charges were new, precisely. They have been made in books, investigations and interviews both on and off the record. What is amazing though is that such a rebuke—such an attack on the essential nature of a president, and by an intimate—has no equal in our history. I don’t think, as we talk about Mr. Cohen’s testimony, we fully appreciate this. John Dean said there was a cancer growing in the presidency. He didn’t say Richard Nixon was the cancer. He didn’t say the president was wicked and a fraud.
This is bigger than we think, and history won’t miss the import of this testimony.
–
We close with Mr. Cummings, in his 23rd year in the House. He put a fair-minded face on the hearing. His closing remarks were powerful and humane, and seemed targeted not only at Mr. Cohen but perhaps at the newer members of Congress.We are here to improve our democracy, he said.
To Mr. Cohen: “If I hear you correctly, it sounds like you’re crying out for a new normal—for us getting back to normal. Sounds to me like you want to make sure our democracy stays intact.”
Then, more broadly: “The one meeting I had with the president, I said, ‘The greatest gift we can give to our children is making sure we give them a democracy that is better than the one we came upon.’” He hoped all of us can get “the democracy we want,” and pass it on to our children, “so they can do better than we did.”
Politico: Dem chairman threatens subpoena over Kushner security clearance http://politi.co/2EobOX1
// House Oversight Committee chair Rep Elijah Cummings
VanityFair, Emily Jane Fox: “Oh My God”: The Inside Story Behind Cohen’s Final Deposition http://bit.ly/2Ueaf4K
// Cathartic musings on a legal pad, a trip to the basement, and a eureka moment all led Cohen, Trump’s disgraced former lawyer, to a moment of public triumph.
🐣 RT @DeadlineWH “Mueller has been essentially hands-off with the kids… my imagination runs wild about whether or not that…has been done in coordination with SDNY…Don Jr is at the top of the family list as someone who is totally exposed criminally” – @FrankFigliuzzi1 w/@NicolleDWallace 💽 https://twitter.com/DeadlineWH/status/1101249661581574145/photo/1
🐣 RT @matthewamiller People who have never worked in government may not understand what a big deal this Kushner story is. Aside from the security risk and the lies, it is such an insult to every public servant who jumps through a million hoops to do things the right way with zero margin for error.
🐣 RT @gtconway3d And this order came from a president who could never, ever, ever be approved for a security clearance himself.
🐣 RT @sbg1 [Susan Glasser] Big deal alert: The President of the US ordered the government to give a security clearance to his son in law. And then lied about it.
⋙ 🐣 RT @tackettdc “Mr. Trump’s decision in May so troubled senior administration officials that” John Kelly “wrote a contemporaneous internal memo about how he had been “ordered” to give Mr. Kushner the top-secret clearance” @maggienyt @nytmike @anniekarni
⋙⋙ 🔆 This❗️⋙ NYT: Trump Ordered Officials to Give Jared Kushner a Security Clearance http://nyti.ms/2BWnkJ0
● Text Block: https://twitter.com/Auriandra/status/1101250664041234432/photo/1
// by Maggie Haberman, Michael S. Schmidt, Adam Goldman and Annie Karni
Mr. Trump’s decision in May so troubled senior administration officials that at least one, the White House chief of staff at the time, John F. Kelly, wrote a contemporaneous internal memo about how he had been “ordered” to give Mr. Kushner the top-secret clearance.
The White House counsel at the time, Donald F. McGahn II, also wrote an internal memo outlining the concerns that had been raised about Mr. Kushner — including by the C.I.A. — and how Mr. McGahn had recommended that he not be given a top-secret clearance. …
In May 2018, the White House Counsel’s Office, which at the time was led by Mr. McGahn, recommended to Mr. Trump that Mr. Kushner not be given a clearance at that level. But the following day, Mr. Trump ordered Mr. Kelly to grant it to Mr. Kushner anyway, the people familiar with the events said.
💙💙 WaPo/Bloomberg, Laurence Arnold: Your Guide to Understanding the Trump-Russia Saga http://wapo.st/2H8GePW
Vox, Andrew Prokop: What Michael Cohen’s testimony means for the Russia investigation http://bit.ly/2XxUJT8
// Cohen offered intriguing new information — but he clearly hasn’t made Mueller’s case.
Politico: Trump’s inner circle sustains collateral damage in Cohen hearing http://politi.co/2VrtfNb
// The president’s former attorney mentioned some of Trump’s children and close business associates in his House testimony.
DailyBeast, Spencer Ackerman: House Intel Will Call Trump Org Moneyman Allen Weisselberg To Testify http://bit.ly/2IJDafA
// The intelligence committee has indicated for months it intends to follow Trump’s money. Allen Weisselberg keeps the Trump Organization’s receipts.
🔊 Lawfare Podcast: Listen to Bonus Edition: Michael Cohen vs. the Committee with No Bull http://apple.co/2UdnvGS Michael Cohen testimony excerpts (without the clamor); about 1hour
Axios: Cummings: House Oversight will seek interviews with Trump Jr., Ivanka http://bit.ly/2IJ6yTr
🐣 RT @krassenstein BOOM! ¤ House Oversight Committee will seek testimony under oath from Ivanka Trump & Don Jr. ¤ Perjure yourselves or give up yourselves and your father. ¤ You decide!
💙💙 NYT, Marcy Wheeler: Did Cohen Give a Peek at the Mueller Report? http://nyti.ms/2tFyJZ5
// The special counsel is still hiding events that lie at the core of his investigation — events that involve the president directly.
Even before Michael Cohen appeared before the House Oversight Committee to begin testifying Wednesday, he delivered explosive new information. Several days before WikiLeaks published Democratic National Committee emails on July 22, 2016, Roger Stone called Donald Trump and — on a speaker phone that permitted Mr. Cohen to hear — told the presidential candidate that “he had just gotten off the phone with Julian Assange,” who told him that “within a couple of days, there would be a massive dump of emails that would damage Hillary Clinton’s campaign.” According to Mr. Cohen, the president expressed happiness about the prospect “to the effect of ‘Wouldn’t that be great.’”
The detail is remarkable not just because it undercuts the president’s claims that Mr. Stone never provided him such details. It’s also a testament to how much critical information the special counsel, Robert Mueller, has kept hidden even in the most provocative of his “speaking indictments.” Even after months of investigation and voluminous indictments and sentencing memos, he’s still hiding events that lie at the core of his investigative mandate — events that involve the president directly.
With virtually every charging document in the Russia investigation, Mr. Mueller’s team has provided far more detail than necessary and, in the process, sketched out the framework of what the investigators found. The description of the lies of a former campaign adviser, George Papadopoulos, disclosed that the campaign first learned Russians were planning to dump emails from Mrs. Clinton in April 2016, before the Democrats figured out they had been hacked. Even as Russians were dangling those emails, another filing from Mr. Mueller shows, other Russians were pitching a ridiculously lucrative real estate deal that depended on the involvement of President Vladimir Putin. Indeed, that same filing revealed that Mr. Cohen took steps to travel to St. Petersburg, possibly to meet with Mr. Putin, around the same time that Donald Trump Jr. met with Russians asking for sanctions relief. Mr. Mueller’s description of Michael Flynn’s lies explained how Mr. Flynn persuaded the Russians to hold off on any response to President Barack Obama’s imposition of sanctions in retaliation for Russia’s election interference.
Each of those documents nods to Mr. Trump’s involvement. …
Mr. Mueller’s public filings have laid out a broad framework showing that Russians dangled a real estate deal and dirt on Hillary Clinton while asking for a range of sanctions relief. If Mr. Mueller were to charge this quid pro quo as a conspiracy or describe it as one in a report, it wouldn’t matter whether Mr. Trump knew of all the events that furthered the conspiracy. Because of the way conspiracy law works, it’s enough to show that Mr. Trump willingly entered into the conspiracy and took overt acts to pursue its objectives.
WaPo, Jennifer Rubin: The mob analogy got a whole lot stronger http://wapo.st/2SC0YC4
Text Block: https://twitter.com/Auriandra/status/1101162897286328322/photo/1
● Everything goes through Trump (including the details of the hush-money reimbursement payments)
● By Cohen’s estimate, Trump used him more than 500 times to threaten and intimidate people.
● Tactics such as “catch and kill” and inflating or deflating his wealth are standard Trump tactics, Cohen says.
● Trump is a pathological liar in Cohen’s telling, looking him in the eye to inquire about the Moscow Tower deal and going out to tell crowds the same day “No Russia deals.”
● Trump used lawyers to shield himself from detection (e.g., Jay Sekulow edited Cohen’s false testimony, the hush-money payments went through Cohen). Lawyers are there not to advise as to legality but to enable Trump’s allegedly illegal acts.
● Protecting Trump requires finessing testimony, scaring witnesses and flat-out perjury.
TheAtlantic, Elaina Plotte and Laine Godfrey: The Real Significance of Michael Cohen’s Testimony http://bit.ly/2tIjwpW
// The response to his appearance on the Hill could offer a preview of the Mueller report’s aftermath if the findings are anything less than earthshaking.
DailyBeast, Asawin Suebsaeng and Will Sommer: Rudy Giuliani and Trumpworld Raged as ‘Career Criminal Liar’ Michael Cohen Spilled Secrets http://bit.ly/2UcWMds
// It was former Trump fixer Michael Cohen’s turn in the barrel on Wednesday.
DailyBeast, Barbara McQuade: The Case Against Trump Has Never Been Stronger After Cohen Testimony http://bit.ly/2Vq789V
// The president’s ex-fixer credibly accuses him of felonies that, pending more evidence, should result in impeachment and indictment.
🐣 RT @McFaul Trump has held three major summits – Singapore, Helsinki, and Hanoi –with two autocratic enemies of the United States, Kim Jong Un and Putin, and struck out 3 times. Hoping 4th big summit produces better results … any positive results!
⭕ 27 Feb 2019 Cohen Testifies
NewYorker, John Cassidy: Michael Cohen’s Damning Portrayal of Trump as a Lying, Racist Crook http://bit.ly/2T5atyy
TheGuardian, Jon Swaine: Michael Cohen’s explosive allegations suggest danger for Trump on two fronts http://bit.ly/2Tqwaby
// Trump’s ex-fixer hints Mueller may have proof of coordination with Russia and again alleges campaign finance violations
WaPo, Max Boot: Here are five felonies Trump committed — if Cohen is telling the truth http://wapo.st/2Styw5a
1. Conspiracy to defraud the United States. Cohen testified that he was present in July 2016 when Trump took a call on the speakerphone from Roger Stone, who said “that he had just gotten off the phone with Julian Assange and that Mr. Assange told Stone that, within a couple of days, there would be a massive dump of emails that would damage Hillary Clinton’s campaign.” According to Cohen, Trump replied, “Wouldn’t that be great.” (Stone has denied that account, in possible violation of a judge’s gag order.) Trump cannot claim that he did not know where the leaked emails ultimately came from: It had been public knowledge since mid-June 2016 that Russian hackers had penetrated the Democratic National Committee.
2. Lying to the FBI and the Justice Department. According to CNN, Trump, in his written testimony to special counsel Robert S. Mueller III, claimed “that Roger Stone did not tell him about WikiLeaks, nor was he told about the 2016 Trump Tower meeting between his son, campaign officials and a Russian lawyer promising dirt on Hillary Clinton.” Cohen contradicted those assertions.
3. Suborning perjury. Cohen testified that Trump encouraged him to lie to Congress about his attempts in 2016 to build a Trump Tower in Moscow and that his personal lawyers reviewed the mendacious testimony.
4. Violating campaign finance laws. Cohen testified that Trump told him to pay off a porn star and reimbursed him for doing so. Cohen even produced a check Trump signed while he was president and another one that was signed by Donald Trump Jr., implicating the president’s son in this felony, as well.
To these four offenses, one may add: 5. Bank, wire and tax fraud. Cohen testified that Trump inflated his assets to win bank loans and deflated them to reduce his taxes — precisely the kind of scheme for which Trump’s former campaign manager, Paul Manafort, is now facing lengthy prison time. And Cohen added that he knew of other offenses that federal prosecutors are still investigating.
TheAtlantic, David Graham: The Day Trump Lost Control of the Conversation http://bit.ly/2Sy021c
// Michael Cohen showed he’d learned some tricks from his former mentor.
NewYorker, Isaac Chotiner: A Legal Editor on What We Learned from Michael Cohen’s Congressional Testimony http://bit.ly/2SyaENL Interview with Lawfare’s Quinta Jurecic
WSJ Editorial: Cohen in the Colosseum http://on.wsj.com/2Nxabuo
// The legal fixer unloads on his former boss, with little new information
● Text Block: https://twitter.com/Auriandra/status/1101115283446616064/photo/1
The day was above all a reminder that Americans elected a President in 2016 who had spent decades in the sleazier corners of New York business and tabloid life. He surrounded himself with political rogues like Mr. Stone, legal hustlers like Mr. Cohen, and even brought in a Beltway bandit from central casting, Paul Manafort, as his campaign chairman for a time.
Republicans knew all this when they nominated Mr. Trump, and now he and the GOP will pay a political price as Democrats marinate in that blue past in hearing after hearing. Character does matter, especially in Presidents.
🐣 RT @CNN Sen. Kamala Harris this week mischaracterized a 2008 policy she supported that led to undocumented minors who were arrested for suspected felonies being turned over to Immigration and Customs Enforcement before they had been convicted of crimes https://cnn.it/2EcJ8jy
🐣 RT @vermontgmg [Garrett Graff] Incredible to see all the hubris drained from Cohen. I’ve been personally screamed at by Cohen on the phone before and know how much bravado he once had. This is a man with nothing left, with no reason to lie or obfuscate at all. Humbling, in its way.
DailyBeast, Adam Rawnsley and Sam Brodey: Forget Cohen: Allen Weisselberg is the Trump Exec Who Could Take Down the Donald http://bit.ly/2TqLDIG
// As Michael Cohen testified, the name of another member of the Trump Organization came up at least 35 times as his partner in hushing up Trump’s mistress problem.
🐣 RT @RobertBReich The testimony of Michael Cohen alone suggests the president could be guilty of:
—Conspiracy to defraud the United States.
—Lying to the DOJ & the Special Counsel.
—Campaign finance violations.
—Encouraging perjury.
—State & local tax fraud.
Let that sink in.
🐣 RT @gconway3d “[I]t is the truth they fear, and it is the truth — the fundamental reality of the world as it actually is — that they feel compelled to destroy. This is the central organizing principle of the Republican Party now … annihilating truth to defend Mr. Trump ….”
⋙ 🐣 RT @Peter_Wehner “Republicans on the committee tried to destroy the credibility of Cohen’s testimony, not because they believe that his testimony is false, but because they fear it is true.” My latest @nytimes piece
⋙⋙ NYT, Peter Wehner: Republicans Sink Further Into Trump’s Cesspool http://nyti.ms/2GPQ2iD
// What they left out of their questioning of Michael Cohen says more about the degradation of my former party than anything they said.
🐣 RT @tonyschwartz Republicans say we can’t listen to Cohen because he has told lies. Trump has told more than 9000 lies since becoming president. Why do they consider him credible when they know he isn’t?
🐣 Wow. Full page – four column – NYT headline. https://twitter.com/Auriandra/status/1100928129349156866/photo/1
⋙ NYT: Michael Cohen Accuses Trump of Expansive Pattern of Lies and Criminality http://nyti.ms/2EC7ftG
Michael D. Cohen, who represented Mr. Trump for a decade, told Congress that the president lied to the American public about business interests in Russia during the 2016 campaign and lied to reporters about stolen Democratic emails. Mr. Trump also told Mr. Cohen to lie about illegal hush payments to cover up alleged sexual indiscretions, the lawyer charged.
The allegations, aired at a daylong hearing before the House Oversight and Reform Committee, exposed a dark underside of Mr. Trump’s business and political worlds in the voice of one of the ultimate insiders. Perhaps no close associate of a president has turned on him in front of Congress in such dramatic fashion since John Dean testified against President Richard M. Nixon during the Watergate scandal.
“He is a racist. He is a con man. And he is a cheat,” Mr. Cohen said of the president. Mr. Cohen, who has pleaded guilty to lying under oath to Congress, among other crimes, said he did so to protect Mr. Trump. “I am not protecting Mr. Trump anymore,” he said.
🐣 RT @voxdotcom “You spoke about how the president and his attorney put you and your family in danger by calling you a liar and a rat and disparaging you in public. I understand your fear, Michael. I have family too.” —Stormy Daniels
⋙ Vox: Stormy Daniels thanks Michael Cohen for his “courage, at long last” http://bit.ly/2SwDPkn
// Daniels responded to Cohen’s testimony, asking if he “believed her now” when she said the president’s words put her danger.
💽 MSNBC, TheBeatWithAri: Smoking gun? Cohen testifies on clues Trump mislead Mueller http://on.msnbc.com/2Xut31Q
// MSNBC Chief Legal Correspondent, Ari Melber, breaks down how the most devastating claim made by Michael Cohen during his public testimony before the House Oversight Committee, is relevant to the Mueller probe. Melber walks through how Michael Cohen’s allegation that Trump was aware of the Wikileaks email dump before it happened, could potentially contradict Trump’s own written answers to Special Counsel Mueller.
🐣 Cohen said both that Trump would do anything to win, including getting help from Russia AND that he didn’t think he’d win. So would Trump Tower Moscow be a consolation prize if he lost? The Russians wanted sanctions relief. He couldn’t deliver unless he was president. Confused.
⋙ 🐣Maybe Trump Tower Moscow is still in the mix.
🐣 RT @chrislhayes It takes an extremely strenuous effort of pretending to be stupid to not see that *obviously* Trump knew the Russians were illegally trying to help him and he welcomed that help and encouraged it every chance he got. That’s just the clear, public record of known facts.
TheBulwark, Kim Wehle: The Five Biggest Takeaways from Michael Cohen’s Testimony http://bit.ly/2SwfXNQ
// What Cohen had to say about the president—and what our system of democracy should do about it all.
1) Cohen testified that, in connection with a possible purchase of the Buffalo Bills football team, Trump knowingly provided false information to Deutsche Bank regarding his assets. He also said that Trump provided false information to insurance companies and devalued assets for purposes of his tax liability. If Cohen is accurate, it could amount to federal felonies for bank, insurance, and tax fraud.
2) Cohen testified that he last spoke with the White House in the weeks following the FBI’s raid of his hotel room and office in April 2018, but declined to provide specifics of those communications on the request of the Southern District of New York, which he indicated is investigating the matter. Cohen also said that he is aware of other wrongdoing by Trump that is under investigation by the SDNY.
3) Cohen testified that Trump’s lawyers reviewed and made edits to Cohen’s prior prepared testimony to Congress. That’s the testimony that gave rise to his guilty plea for lying to Congress about the timing of the Trump Tower Moscow negotiations. Cohen said, in addition, that the changes made by Trump’s lawyers related to the length of time that the Trump Tower Moscow negotiations stayed alive—precisely the issue that Cohen lied to Congress about.
4) Cohen testified that in or about May 2017, he met with Trump in the White House. At that meeting, Trump allegedly made clear to Cohen what he wanted Cohen to say to Congress—i.e., “no Russia,” “no collusion,” “no involvement,” “no interference,” “it’s all a witch hunt,” and “this has to end.” Cohen also said that Trump asked him to tell the press and the public that Trump was “not knowledgeable” about the payments made to Stormy Daniels to silence her regarding their sexual affair in the run-up to the 2016 election.
5) Cohen provided granular details about how he hid the hush money payment to Stormy Daniels—including lying to Melania Trump—and made very clear that Trump had knowledge of and even directed the crime. Cohen entered into the congressional record a cancelled $35,000 check bearing Donald Trump’s signature, which Cohen said was reimbursement for the payment he made to Daniels. According to prosecutors from the SDNY, Cohen’s payment—made on behalf of “Individual 1” (aka Trump)—amounted to a crime under the federal campaign finance laws.
MotherJones, David Corn: How Cohen’s Testimony Backs Up the Case That Trump Helped Russia Attack the 2016 Election http://bit.ly/2GQfwMV
// The issue is not collusion—it’s aiding and abetting.
TheAtlantic, Franklin Foer: A Moral Indictment of Trump http://bit.ly/2T4kXyc
// Michael Cohen’s testimony was a reminder that this presidency isn’t normal.
🐣 RT @JuliaDavisNews In recent months researchers have discovered that North Korea has as many as 20 undisclosed ballistic missile sites.
⋙ NYT: Cohen Testimony Raises Questions About Trump’s Financial Disclosure http://nyti.ms/2EAZtQK
🐣 RT @bradheath Cummings said his office worked “very closely” with federal prosecutors in New York and the special counsel, and he thinks “there is another shoe to drop.”
DailyBeast: Cohen Made Trump Look Like a Gangster http://bit.ly/2ICt9kf
// by Spencer Ackerman, Sam Brodey, Justin Miller; From paying hush money to expecting subordinates to lie, Cohen told Congress his ex-boss acts like a career criminal. He might’ve stayed loyal if Trump upheld his end of the deal.
🐣 RT @matthewjdowd My take: 1. Elijah Cummings is a patriot. 2. I have criticized and never been a fan of Michael Cohen and have actually been on the receiving end of his tirades, and I found him eminently credible today and believe he has tremendous remorse. Really bad day for Pres.Trump and GOP.
🐣 RT @samstein So Michael Cohen is saying that there won’t be a peaceful transfer of power if Trump loses. ¤ #gulp
🐣 RT @kylegriffin1 Elijah Cummings just told reporters that the Oversight Committee “probably will” talk with Trump Org. CFO Allen Weisselberg.
🐣 RT @JRubinBlogger for all the complaints of her grandstanding, AOC had a purpose to the line of questioning, got public reports damaging to Trump in and made clear Weisselberg and other witnesses are key to Trump organiz illegality. It will be all this that will be Trump’s downfall
🐣 RT @JoyceWhiteVance The conundrum Republicans don’t seem to understand that they face when they condemn Cohen for being a felon is that he pleaded guilty to conduct that Trump participated in and of which he is also guilty.
🐣 RT @ScottMStedman What matters about the alleged Trump-Stone phone call:
-Trump told Mueller in writing he never discussed WikiLeaks w Stone
-“Within a couple of days” the WikiLeaks emails would drop. They did drop in 3 days.
What doesn’t matter:
-WikiLeaks already posted that they had emails!
🐣 RT @JohnBrennan Committee Republicans are making no effort to find truth. They are failing their Constitutional responsibilities by covering up the corruption of a sitting President. What is happening to the soul & integrity of the once storied Republican Party?
🐣 RT @RBReich So far Cohen has confirmed that Trump:
–Knew ahead of time about the release of hacked emails
–Committed fraud by devaluing assets for property taxes
–Abused his charity for personal gain
–Paid off a mistress, committing election fraud
When will it be enough for the GOP?
🐣 RT @DavidCornDC By the way, not one House Republican during this whole long day defended Trump on any of the many particulars. Not on a single point.
🐣 RT @EricHolder Mark Meadows just doesn’t get it. To use a black woman essentially as an exhibit was, at best, insensitive. Jim Jordan’s focus on Rod Rosenstein is classic obfuscation. Yes, Cohen has lied. He’s a criminal. But he was a chief aide to your President. Awful day for Republicans
🐣 RT @chrislhayes Michael Cohen’s three clients are
1) Trump
2) Elliott Broidy, who he also arranged mistress hush payments for. (They met each other working on the RNC Finance Committee)
3) Sean Hannity
🐣 RT @matthewamiller Not new, but so striking to watch how, with the exception of Amash, no GOP member is even remotely interested in direct evidence of criminality by a sitting president. Just couldn’t care less.
🐣 RT @AriMelber Wow Rep. Cummings going right up to the line of detailing how in prison terms, Trump labeling Cohen a “rat” puts him in potentially direct physical danger when he reports to prison.
BuzzFeedNews: Roger Stone Says Michael Cohen Is Lying, After Stone Was Ordered Not To Comment On The Mueller Investigation http://bit.ly/2En3YwK
// Cohen said in his prepared remarks that Stone told Trump in a call in July 2016 that Stone had talked to Assange and there would be an email dump damaging to Hillary Clinton’s campaign.
🐣 RT @maggieNYT Big – Cohen says Trump asked him to say that Trump wasn’t knowledgable of Cohen’s payments to Daniels. This was Feb 2018, when Trump was president for a year already. He says Trump called him to direct him to mislead the public.
🐣 RT @muellertimepodcast Cohen is annihilating these Republicans. This is unbelievable. Speechless #CohenTestimony
🐣 RT @JohnJHarwood Cohen to GOP committee members trying so hard to shield Trump: “i’m responsible for your silliness because i did the same thing you’re doing now – for 10 years”
⋙ 🐣 RT @JohnJHarwood in many years of covering Congress i can’t remember a comeback that effective from a witness to hostile lawmakers
⋙ 🐣 RT @gtconway3d Jordan just got body-slammed.
ABCPolitics Chris Christie on Michael Cohen testimony: “There hasn’t been one Republican yet who’s tried to defend the president on the substance. I think that’s something that should be concerning to the White House.” https://abcn.ws/2EkiLIL
💽 https://twitter.com/ABCPolitics/status/1100807228603359233/photo/1
USAToday: ‘He was telling me to lie.’ Michael Cohen delivers searing testimony about President Trump http://bit.ly/2T1TDRl
TheBulwark, Kim Wehle: Michael Cohen’s Testimony Is Really About Impeachment http://bit.ly/2Srhogt
// Forget the racism and bluster and vanity. This is about high crimes and misdemeanors.
DailyBeast, Rick Wilson: Michael Cohen Is Trump’s Worst Nightmare: A Loser With Nothing to Lose http://bit.ly/2TkzYLA
// The ‘fixer’ is a perfect exemplar of Trump’s world: corrupt and corrupting, venal and vicious, he is the true picture of the ‘best people’ with whom Trump surrounds himself.
🐣 RT @MaxBoot A reminder that Mueller has vouched for Cohen’s truthfulness since he turned state’s evidence. https://twitter.com/MaxBoot/status/1100760212171034630/photo/1
🐣 RT @CNNPolitics This is the check Michael Cohen is providing to Congress, dated Aug. 1, 2017, for $35,000. It doesn’t show what the payment was for, but Cohen will testify the check was signed by Trump to reimburse “illegal hush money I paid on his behalf” https://cnn.it/2EeWsnB https://twitter.com/CNNPolitics/status/1100740857739857920/photo/1
🐣 RT @JRubinBlogger Cohen testimony blockbusters: 1. Trump knew about WikiLeaks/dumps of stolen emails and approved Stone’s contacts 2. paid off Cohen during pres. 3. Trump lawyers vetted false Cohen testimony (now THEY have criminal liability) 4. Trump continued involvement in Moscow deal/lies
🐣 RT @NatashaBertrand Great catch by @ScottMStedman: Trump told Mueller in writing that Roger Stone did not tell him about WikiLeaks, per CNN. But Cohen now says Stone told Trump about the impending WikiLeaks release in July 2016. If Mueller can prove Cohen’s story…
⋙ CNN (2018): Exclusive: Two key answers from Trump to Mueller http://cnn.it/2RmwLqw
// 11/29/2018
⭕ 26 Feb 2019
🔆 This❗️⋙ NYT: Michael Cohen Plans to Call Trump a ‘Con Man’ and a ‘Cheat’ in Congressional Testimony http://nyti.ms/2BSib4w
⋙ 💙💙 ≣ NYT: Michael Cohen Testimony to House Committee on Oversight and Reform [pdf] http://bit.ly/2VmPsMn 20p
🔆 This❗️⋙ WSJ: Cohen to Testify That Trump Engaged in Criminal Conduct While in Office http://on.wsj.com/2TjElXg
// President’s ex-lawyer will tell House committee he witnessed Trump’s ‘lies, racism and cheating,’ role in hush payments, says a person familiar with his plans
💙 Politico: Mueller scores big win as court rejects challenge to his appointment http://politi.co/2U6dBqw
🐣 RT @CNNpolitics Michael Cohen ahead of his public congressional testimony on Wednesday: “I look forward to tomorrow, to being able to, in my voice, to tell the American people my story and I’m gonna let the American people decide exactly who’s telling the truth” https://cnn.it/2Thh1t5
🐣 RT @maddow Here’s a nice narrative on it from the Justice Department: http://bit.ly/2ExKBCp
Politico: Trump’s inner circle might escape Mueller charges — but still won’t be safe http://politi.co/2IE8iNM
// Federal prosecutors and Democratic committees are just getting started.
🐣 RT @NicolleDWallace The entire WH strategy is to call him a liar. Let that sink in. Trump is near 10k lies in office. People close to him say he doesn’t even know when he’s lying anymore. Cohen has tapes. Cohen has one way to lessen his sentence: tell the truth.
⋙ NYT: On Eve of Michael Cohen’s Testimony, Republican Threatens to Reveal Compromising Information http://nyti.ms/2H32hrq
🐣 RT @AOC In case you missed it, while the GOP is calling paying a living wage “socialism,” a Republican Senator full-on quoted National Fascist Party leader and Hitler ally Benito Mussolini like it’s a Hallmark card.
⋙ 🐣 RT @JohnCornyn “We were the first to assert that the more complicated the forms assumed by civilization, the more restricted the freedom of the individual must become.” Benito Mussolini
🐣 RT @danpfeiffer If you think Matt Gaetz is a creation unique to the Trump era, you haven’t been paying attention to the escalating stupidity of Republican politics for the last decade
Wonkette: Michael Cohen’s Going To F*ck Trump On Live TV Tomorrow, And HE’S BRINGING RECEIPTS http://bit.ly/2XpKMax
TheAtlantic, Rep Adam Schiff (D-CA): America Must Stand as a Bulwark Against Autocracy http://bit.ly/2H4UXvo
// The House Intelligence Committee’s first hearing will focus on the rise of authoritarianism and the threat to liberal democracy around the world.
DailyBeast, Sam Stein and Maxwell Tani: CNN Assures Dems: Sarah Isgur Won’t Have Editorial Control in Any 2020 Coverage http://bit.ly/2NwmUxc
// The cable channel continues damage control over hiring a long-time Republican operative for a high-ranking editorial gig.
WaPo: Cohen plans scathing testimony about Trump, Russia and Stormy Daniels http://wapo.st/2H9ilYu
NYT: Planned in Michael Cohen’s Testimony: A Litany of Accusations Against Trump http://nyti.ms/2H32hrq
// Maggie Haberman
Among the most explosive and potentially damning aspects of Mr. Cohen’s testimony will be providing evidence of potential criminal conduct since Mr. Trump became president, according to the person familiar with the plans.
Mr. Cohen will describe in what was called “granular detail” the plan to pay Ms. Daniels, which he will say was initiated by Mr. Trump, the person familiar with the testimony plans said. Mr. Cohen has pleaded guilty to a federal campaign finance-related charge in connection with that payment. Prosecutors have implicated Mr. Trump, identifying him as “Individual 1,” in connection with that charge in documents filed in the case.
He will also discuss how long Mr. Trump continued to ask about plans for a Trump Tower project in Moscow after the Iowa caucuses had taken place in February 2016. Mr. Cohen pleaded guilty last November to lying to Congress in testimony in 2017 about the duration of time over which the Moscow project discussions took place.
Mr. Cohen was paid $35,000 a month under what was described by Mr. Trump’s lawyer, Rudolph W. Giuliani, as a retainer agreement, some of which was a reimbursement for the payment to Ms. Daniels. There was never a retainer agreement signed between Mr. Cohen and Mr. Trump or the Trump Organization, the person familiar with the payments said.
The person briefed on Mr. Cohen’s plans said he is planning to bring documents that will illustrate his claims. The person familiar with the plans indicated that Mr. Cohen will present other documents beyond the financial statements, but the person did not specify what those might be. The documents will be shared in a way for the viewing public to see them, the person said.
He is prepared to describe Mr. Trump making racist statements, as well as lying or cheating in business. Last fall, Mr. Cohen told Vanity Fair that Mr. Trump frequently used racist language, telling the magazine that his former boss said during the 2016 campaign that “black people are too stupid to vote for me.”
He will also describe the president inflating or devaluing his net worth, referring to a financial statement of Mr. Trump’s that Mr. Cohen has in his possession, the person said. Those financial statements cannot be independently verified without Mr. Trump’s tax returns, which he has never made public, the person said.
WaPo: New Michael Cohen testimony may undermine Trump’s spin on Mueller http://wapo.st/2SZFaFx
When Cohen, Trump’s longtime personal fixer, publicly appears before the House Oversight Committee on Wednesday, he will testify to the following things, according to reports in The Post, the Wall Street Journal and the New York Times:
● Cohen will “for the first time publicly accuse the president of criminal conduct while in office related to a hush-money payment to a porn star.”
● Cohen will “offer ‘very specific details’ — some of which have not yet been made public — about arranging the hush-money payments at Trump’s direction.”
● Cohen will “discuss how long Mr. Trump continued to ask about plans for a Trump Tower project in Moscow after the Iowa caucuses had taken place in February 2016.”
● Cohen is “expected to recount racist remarks Mr. Trump allegedly made to him, including instances in which Mr. Trump allegedly questioned the intelligence of African-Americans.”
WaPo: 20 questions that Michael Cohen could answer for lawmakers when he testifies on Capitol Hill this week http://wapo.st/2UaFOfE
⋙ See under Entire Articles: WP 20?s for M Cohen 2-26-2019
1. You pleaded guilty to lying to Congress about a possible Trump Tower project in Moscow. In a memo for your sentencing, your attorney wrote, “Furthermore, in the weeks during which his then-counsel prepared his written response to the congressional Committees, Michael remained in close and regular contact with White House-based staff and legal counsel to Client-1.” (Client-1 refers to Trump.)
Who are the “White House-based staff and legal counsel to Client-1” that you remained in contact with, and what instruction did they give you about your testimony?
2. BuzzFeed News reported that Trump directed you to lie to Congress, and that you told the special counsel as much. Describe any conversation you and Trump had about your testimony. Did he direct you to lie, and did you tell that to the special counsel’s office?
3. Do you believe Trump obstructed any investigation, and do you have evidence to prove that?
4. Were you ever offered a pardon in exchange for being silent?
5. Can you provide more information about the frequency and substance of your conversations with Trump about the Trump Tower Moscow project after January 2016?
6. Can you provide any further information about the frequency and substance of your discussions with Trump family members regarding the Trump Tower Moscow project?
7. What campaign official did you talk to about possible travel to Russia?
8. Please describe any contact you had with the Russian government about Trump Tower Moscow or other topics during the 2016 campaign.
9. You have repeatedly denied the allegation contained in the so-called “Steele dossier” that you traveled to Prague during the campaign to meet with Russian operatives. Here today, under oath: Did you or anyone else associated with Donald Trump travel to Europe during the campaign to meet with anyone associated with the Russian government or acting on its behalf?
10. To your knowledge, was President Trump ever informed by his son Donald Trump Jr. or anyone else before his son took a meeting with a Russian lawyer in June 2016?
11. Do you believe that President Trump or anyone associated with his campaign coordinated with a Russian effort to interfere in the U.S. election?
12. According to court documents, two Trump Organization executives were involved in 2017 with approving your reimbursement for money paid to adult-film actress Stormy Daniels before the 2016 election. The two executives agreed to describe monthly payments to you as legal services, the documents say, though you were no longer working for the company as a lawyer. Who were those two executives, and do you have reason to believe they knew at the time that that description was not accurate?
13. How many times did you discuss payments to Karen McDougal and Stormy Daniels with President Trump before and after the 2016 election? Describe each of those conversations to the best of your memory.
14. Did you ever discuss payments to McDougal and Daniels with other members of the Trump family? With other campaign officials? Describe those conversations.
15. According to AMI’s non-prosecution agreement, you met with AMI publisher David Pecker and a member of the Trump campaign in August 2015 to discuss how AMI could assist the campaign by buying and burying negative stories about President Trump’s relationships with women. Was the campaign member President Trump? Please describe what occurred at that meeting.
16. AMI’s agreement with the government also indicates that David Pecker agreed at that meeting to keep you apprised of any such stories when they arose. Please describe each instance you can recall where Pecker reached out to discuss a possible negative story regarding President Trump? Are you aware of other instances during the campaign when you helped arrange for people with potentially negative information to be paid for their silence? Please describe any such instances.
17. What role, if any, did you play in the March 2016 AMI stories alleging, without evidence, that Sen. Ted Cruz had engaged in extramarital affairs? How about in the AMI story that suggested Senator Cruz’s father could have played a role in assassinating President John F. Kennedy?
18. Stormy Daniels has said that in 2011, when In Touch magazine was preparing to publish a story about her alleged affair with Donald Trump, a man threatened her and her infant daughter in a parking lot in Las Vegas. Do you believe that episode occurred, and were you involved in any way?
19. In January 2018, you produced a letter purportedly from Daniels, denying an affair with the president. Did you discuss that statement with the president before writing and releasing it?
20. You have admitted that you lied the last time you testified before Congress, and you will be going to prison for that. Why should we believe you now?
⭕ 25 Feb 2019
🐣 RT @RonaldKlain They impeached Nixon for less. Really they did. We’ve just become numb to the daily disclosures.
⋙ 🐣 RT @RobertMaGuire The House Judiciary Committee believes it has evidence that Trump asked Whitaker whether Berman, a Trump appointee, could un-recuse and regain control of his office’s investigation into Trump’s former lawyer and his real-estate business
⋙⋙ WSJ: House Investigators Probe Trump Contact With Matthew Whitaker http://on.wsj.com/2UaRaR4
// Interest centers on a U.S. attorney’s office inquiry into Michael Cohen, Trump Organization
WaPo: U.S. Cyber Command operation disrupted Internet access of Russian troll factory on day of 2018 midterms http://wapo.st/2NwZCat
The U.S. military blocked Internet access to an infamous Russian entity seeking to sow discord among Americans during the 2018 midterms, several U.S. officials said, a warning that the group’s operations against the United States are not cost-free.
The strike on the Internet Research Agency in St. Petersburg, a company underwritten by an oligarch close to President Vladimir Putin, was part of the first offensive cyber campaign against Russia designed to thwart attempts to interfere with a U.S. election, the officials said.
“They basically took the IRA offline,” according to one individual familiar with the matter who, like others, spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss classified information. “They shut ‘em down.”
VanityFair, Abigail Tracy: Mueller Appears After Something Really Big: Reading Between the Lines in Advance of the Special Counsel’s Report http://bit.ly/2TjjmnA
⋙ See under Entire Articles: VF Tracy Mueller Smthg Big 2-25-2019
WaPo, Michael Gerson: Trump’s ideology isn’t populism. It’s catastrophism. http://wapo.st/2EctPHV
DailyBeast, Erin Banco: Manafort’s Lawyers in Sentencing Memo: He’s no Murderer, Mafioso or Madoff http://bit.ly/2BT1RQV
// What the special counsel called crimes that went to “the heart of the criminal justice system,” his attorneys called pretty much business as usual.
Newsweek: Trump Administration Asked Russia for Advice on North Korea Summit Between Donald Trump and Kim Jong Un, Kremlin Claims http://bit.ly/2VjkB3p
Reuters, Nathan Layne: What happens if Mueller finds Trump fingerprints in Russia conspiracy? http://reut.rs/2Nxx8ha
AP: Russia: US asks for advice on North Korea talks http://bit.ly/2GJdxd7
POGO: 26 Former GOP Lawmakers: Honor Your Oath and Protect the Constitution http://bit.ly/2U7s6tZ
Politico: 58 ex-national security officials to denounce Trump’s emergency declaration http://politi.co/2Nttxkb
NYT: It’s Mueller’s Investigation. But Right Behind Him Is Andrew Goldstein. http://nyti.ms/2tzCdwa
WaPo: This courthouse is the closest you can get to Mueller’s probe, one wall away from its secrets http://wapo.st/2H1ew7L
MSNBC, Steve Benen: Trump falsely denies 2016 phone calls between his team and Russia http://on.msnbc.com/2T3CyXf
🐣 RT @BillKristol “What is the endgame of embracing nativism and xenophobia?…What is the endgame of accepting mendacity, deception, and corruption?…Does anyone think if those battles are not fought out now we can wait for eight years and then simply clean up the mess?”
⋙ TheBulwark, Charlie Sykes: What’s the Endgame of Trumpism? http://bit.ly/2BOiMnK
// Not everything turns on the next political cycle.
DailyBeast, Sawin Suebsaeng and Erin Banco: Trump to Legal Team: Stay for Coming Legal Hellscape http://bit.ly/2H412YX
// The president has made private admissions that federal investigations bedeviling his first term in office will be haunting him for possibly years to come.
DailyBeast, Anna Nemtsova: Here’s How Putin’s Russia Is Rebuilding the Iron Curtain http://bit.ly/2ViK6C4
// Hardliners in the Kremlin and the military imagine they can return to the supposed glory days of the Soviet Union by trapping people and money inside Russia’s borders.
NewYorker, Jeffrey Toobin: Andrew McCabe’s Countdown to the Mueller Report http://bit.ly/2T32O3J
// 3/4/2019 issue
Politico: House Democrats target Trump’s personal finances http://politi.co/2EuNbJo
// Why did Deutsche Bank lend money to Trump business when others refused?
⭕ 24 Feb 2019
Bloomberg: Mark Niquette and Ben Brody: Trump Talks Up Potential Progress With North Korea Before Summit http://bloom.bg/2GKirX8
● Pompeo says talks take time and third summit may be needed
● China and Russia have been helpful with sanctions, Trump says
TheGuardian: Schiff threatens to call Mueller to testify if Trump-Russia report not made public http://bit.ly/2BLTMxx
// Top Democrat will be watching Attorney General William Barr to see if he were ‘to try to bury any part of this report’
⭕ 23 Feb 2019
WaPo, Dan Keating and Aaron Steckelberg: When Mueller closes up shop, what will the people be told? http://wapo.st/2XqBT0a
EmptyWheel, Marcy Wheeler: On Mueller’s Choice Not to Elaborate on Paulie’s Lies http://bit.ly/2BOd9pA
That leads me to believe he’s certain he will be able to provide a report in some public form, presumably in the same kind of detail he has presented in all his other statements. He doesn’t need to avail himself of this opportunity to do so.
I don’t know what that means about what form the report will take. I don’t know what that means about what it will show with regards to criminal conduct (except that, presumably, we’ll get the details that remain hidden about the August 2 meeting and communications with Trump’s people).
But it does make it clear that even given the opportunity to follow past practice at a time when, according to most reporting, the investigation is substantially done, Mueller chose not to avail himself of that opportunity, instead just pointing to materials that hide the most important details to protect the investigation. …
I believe it suggests that Mueller plans to and believes he can present the details about that August 2 meeting somewhere else.
💙💙 🐣 RT @benjaminwittes Manafort docs! ¤ Get yer Manafort docs here! ¤All 800 pages of ’em! ¤ Get yer mentencing memo! ¤ Get yer exhibits! ¤ Manafort docs on @lawfareblog!
⋙ ≣ Lawfare: Document: Special Counsel Files Manafort Sentencing Memo http://bit.ly/2tznxgj
🐣 RT @juliaioffe Today is Defender of the Fatherland Day (formerly Red Army Day) in Russia. Some Russians are marking it with good humor, congratulating us with this defender of the fatherland. https://twitter.com/juliaioffe/status/1099400040668372992/photo/1
// poster Trump in Russian uniform
DailyBeast, Jeffrey Isaac: America, Socialism Is Actually Nothing to Be Afraid Of http://bit.ly/2TbWMgn
// The word scares people, but there’s a long history of reform in this country that is socialist, and some unlikely figures (Teddy Roosevelt!) embraced that reform.
DailyBeast, Erin Banco and Kevin Poulsen: This Hotline Could Keep the U.S. and Russia From Cyber War http://bit.ly/2GZkW7t
// U.S. intelligence officials are looking to Washington-Moscow hotline as a last-ditch crisis channel that might just prevent a cataclysmic online showdown.
DailyBeast, Adam Rawnsley: How Manafort’s Work for the ‘Torturer’s Lobby’ Came Back to Haunt Him http://bit.ly/2U3VUHV
// Prosecutors used Manafort’s past brushes with foreign lobbying rules to show he’s a witting, repeat offender
DailyBeast, Adam Rawnsley and Erin Banco: Mueller Memo Outlines Paul Manafort’s ‘Repeated and Brazen’ Life of Crime http://bit.ly/2U4VelL
// The much-awaited sentencing memo is one of the most sweeping and detailed documents to be filed in the Russia investigation.
USAToday, Bart Jansen: ‘His criminal actions were bold’: Prosecutors urge harsh sentence for Paul Manafort in court memo http://bit.ly/2EaWLjz
CNBC: Ex-Trump campaign boss Paul Manafort ‘repeatedly and brazenly’ broke the law, special counsel Mueller says in massive 800-page filing http://cnb.cx/2U2gfxi
● Former Trump campaign boss Paul Manafort “repeatedly and brazenly” broke the law, special counsel Robert Mueller said in a court filing unsealed Saturday.
● In the massive 800-page document, Mueller said that federal sentencing guidelines suggest Manafort get between 17 and nearly 22 years of incarceration when he is sentenced in the D.C. court on March 13.
● But Mueller did not recommend that Judge Amy Berman Jackson impose a particular prison sentence on the longtime Republican operative. Jackson can sentence Manafort to a maximum of 10 years in prison due to statutory maximum requirements.
WaPo: Drawing to a close http://wapo.st/2SUSUBm
// illustrated by Steve Brodner; An illustrated guide to the many, many people in the Russia investigation’s orbit
HuffPo/AP: Court Records Follow Mueller’s Uncovering Of Russian Election Interference http://bit.ly/2E9xxBV
// Indictment by indictment, guilty plea by guilty plea, Mueller indirectly revealed his Russia investigation.
NYT, Ken Vogel and Andrew Kramer: Russian Spy or Hustling Political Operative? The Enigmatic Figure at the Heart of Mueller’s Inquiry http://nyti.ms/2SW4Rqd
// Konstantin Kilimnik
Vox, Andrew Prokop: Mueller issues new sentencing memo for Paul Manafort http://bit.ly/2tzh8BN
// The special counsel issued a scathing memo.
🔆 This❗️⋙ WaPo: Paul Manafort a ‘hardened’ and ‘bold’ criminal, Mueller prosecutors tell judge http://wapo.st/2IyafLE
TheAtlantic, David Graham: Americans Don’t Need the Mueller Report to Judge Trump http://bit.ly/2txe1un
// The fevered speculation about when the special counsel will conclude his work overshadows how much the public already knows about the president and Russia.
⭕ 22 Feb 2019
TheNation, Lev Golinkin: Neo-Nazis and the Far Right Are On the March in Ukraine http://bit.ly/2GGUf8g
// Five years after the Maidan uprising, anti-Semitism and fascist-inflected ultranationalism are rampant.
MotherJones, Hannah Levintova: Italian Investigators Just Uncovered a Major Russian Election Meddling Plot http://bit.ly/2Ea45vt
// A new magazine report details a plan to back far-right politics with a Kremlin-owned oil company’s sales.
Commentary, Noah Rothman: Would Republicans Go to War for NATO? http://bit.ly/2E57zzz
// Is Trump’s Pro-Putin Rhetoric Leading the GOP to Abandon NATO?
Salon/Alternet, Alex Henderson: 6 events to watch in special counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia investigation http://bit.ly/2E4D10H
// These are the events to watch out for in connection with Mueller’s probe and other Trump-related investigations
🐣 RT @RepAdamSchiff Here’s our simple message to Attorney General Barr: ¤ When Special Counsel Robert Mueller completes the investigation, make his report public. And turn the evidence over to Congress. Without delay and to the maximum extent permitted by law. ¤ Our letter: https://twitter.com/RepAdamSchiff/status/1099065515153211392/photo/1-3
🔆 This❗️⋙ NYT: Cohen Gave Prosecutors New Information on the Trump Family Business http://nyti.ms/2E3RdHh
EmptyWheel, Marcy Wheeler: Yesterday Noel Francisco Raised the Stakes on the Mystery Appellant http://bit.ly/2Erjzgk
🐣 RT @Clara_Resists Per @RepJerryNadler, “Attorney General Barr must make Special Counsel Mueller’s report public, plain and simple.” ¤ Americans deserve–and demand–full #transparency. This isn’t a partisan issue. ¤ #MuellerReport
Text Block: https://twitter.com/Clara_Resists/status/1099095873827393536/photo/1
// Americans agree report findings should be made public: 92% Democrats, 88% Independents, 80% Republicans
Newsweek: Russia Responds to Donald Trump’s Latest Syria Move: ‘We Do Not Understand’ http://bit.ly/2U4JfES they’re not alone
// background on US and Russia in Syria
NYT: Will the Mueller Report Be Made Public? It’s Largely Up to the New Attorney General http://nyti.ms/2GEVK6Q
CNBC: Robert Mueller won’t submit report to attorney general next week, DOJ official tells NBC News http://cnb.cx/2STS3k9
● Special counsel Robert Mueller will not deliver a report to the attorney general next week, as was previously reported by multiple outlets, a senior Department of Justice official told NBC News on Friday.
● Attorney General William Barr was preparing to announce the completion of Mueller’s investigation into any links between President Donald Trump and Russia as soon as next week, CNN reported Wednesday.
● In a letter to Barr dated Friday, the chairs of six influential House committees suggested that withholding evidence uncovered by Mueller could be the means for a “cover-up.”
Wonkette, Evan Hurst: A Brief Love Letter To Attorney General Bill Barr, In Advance Of The Mueller Report: F*CKING GIVE IT! http://bit.ly/2IweqYk
Salon, Heather Digby Parton: Mueller report coming soon, and the world is waiting: But when will we get to see it? http://bit.ly/2IwBAOl
// William Barr can keep the report under wraps, at least at first. Congress, the media and the public must demand it
NPR, Philip Ewing: Here’s What May Happen When The Mueller Investigation Is Completed http://n.pr/2Sgb0IM
CNN, Chris Cillizza: The White House’s new argument against collusion with Russia is nonsensical http://cnn.it/2XiUzPB
Vox, Andrew Prokop: 9 questions about the Mueller report you were too embarrassed to ask http://bit.ly/2TYXr1P
// What might the Mueller report look like? What will be covered in it? Will we get to see it?
TheGuardian, Sabrina Siddiqui: ‘Even Nixon wasn’t like him’: Trump’s bid to upend Russia inquiry unprecedented, experts say http://bit.ly/2BJofvV
// Democrats have compared Trump’s fixation on the federal inquiry to Watergate, but legal experts say it’s worse than that
CNN, Katelyn Polantz: Mueller could tell all in last major court filing in Paul Manafort’s case http://cnn.it/2U1Q49Z “could”
NYT: New York Prosecutors Expected to Charge Manafort, Guarding Against Trump Pardon http://nyti.ms/2NkMvJu
Bloomberg: New York Has Prepared Paul Manafort Charges If Trump Pardons Him http://bloom.bg/2XjiLRO
● Cy Vance has been investigating ex-Trump aide since 2017
● District Attorney sees way to avoid double jeopardy protection
WashingtonMonthly, Nancy LeTourneau: Devin Nunes Was Trump’s Mole Inside the Gang of Eight http://bit.ly/2TXMU7c
WaPo, Philip Bump: The slowly written Mueller report that’s sitting in plain sight http://wapo.st/2TYQ1vv
NYT/AP: Mueller Report Looming, New Attorney General in Hot Seat http://nyti.ms/2U1zKWT
⭕ 21 Feb 2019
BBC, Anthony Zurcher: Trump-Russia inquiry: What might ‘Mueller report’ look like? http://bbc.in/2EoKQ2O
WaPo, Greg Sargent: No excuses. Only full disclosure of Mueller’s findings will do. http://wapo.st/2GG7Ahb
TheAtlantic, Kathy Gilsinan: The Impossible Job of Speaking Truth to Trump http://bit.ly/2STzixd
// How do you offer intelligence to a president who’s not interested—and keep your job?
JustSecurity, Ryan Goodman and Asha Rangappa: Stop Using the Word “Collusion”—How to Frame the Critical Question at the Heart of Trump-Russia http://bit.ly/2XeLw24
VanityFair, Abigail Tracy: “Merely the End of Chapter One”: The Mueller Report, Rumored to Drop Next Week, Is Only the Beginning of Trump’s Hell http://bit.ly/2EpfYPH
// The president’s legal vulnerability doesn’t begin or end with the special counsel. “There are so many loose threads,” says a former top Justice official. “So whatever the report says, it is highly likely the investigations will continue.”
Vox, Andrew Prokop: Robert Mueller’s “collusion” case so far, explained http://bit.ly/2V5N7Fw
// Court filings about Cohen, Manafort, and Stone have alleged scandalous activities during the 2016 campaign.
Slate, Ben Steinberg: Antitrust Law Could Help Mueller Prove That Trump Officials Conspired With Russia http://bit.ly/2Vdj92i
USAToday: Mueller’s Russia investigation: Trump’s legal team braces for report, hasn’t talked with special counsel in ‘weeks’ http://bit.ly/2SicgLh
CNN: Senate investigators pursue Moscow-based former Trump associate http://cnn.it/2E4JMQb
// Senate investigators want to question Moscow-based American businessman David Geovanis with longstanding ties to President Donald Trump after witnesses told them he could shed light on the President’s commercial and personal activities in Russia dating back to the 1990s, multiple sources have told CNN.
WaPo: Adam Schiff: An open letter to my Republican colleagues http://wapo.st/2E0G8H6
Special counsel Robert S. Mueller III may soon conclude his investigation and report. Depending on what is in that report and what we find in our own investigations, our nation may face an even greater challenge. While I am alarmed at what we have already seen and found of the president’s conduct and that of his campaign, I continue to reserve judgment about what consequences should flow from our eventual findings. I ask you to do the same.
If we cannot rise to the defense of our democracy now, in the face of a plainly unconstitutional aggrandizement of presidential power, what hope can we have that we will do so with the far greater decisions that could be yet to come?
NYT, Jamelle Bouie: Sanders Has an Advantage, and It’s Not About Economics http://nyti.ms/2ST2pkr
// He has put forward a foreign policy vision that pits democratic peoples everywhere against illiberalism at home and abroad.
NYT, Neal Katyal: The Mueller Report Is Coming. Here’s What to Expect. http://nyti.ms/2E27lcz
// A concise report will probably act as a “road map” to investigation for the Democratic House — and to further criminal investigation by other prosecutors.
WaPo: Stephen Miller’s claim that ‘thousands of Americans die year after year’ from illegal immigration http://wapo.st/2Vce8aw
Salon, Lucian Truscott IV: Trump isn’t colluding with Russians — he’s conspiring with Putin http://bit.ly/2EkagOU
// Trump’s Russia collusion didn’t stop with the election — but what he’s done since taking office is even worse
⭕ 20 Feb 2019
💙💙 WIRED, Garrett Graff: 7 Scenarios for How the Mueller Probe Might End http://bit.ly/2NtNhnx
⋙ See under Entire Articles: WIRED 7 Scenarios 7-20-2019
💽 MSNBC, TheBeatWithAri: Why Mueller could ask AG Barr to indict Trump in office http://on.msnbc.com/2Xh7QrK
In a special report, MSNBC Chief Legal Correspondent, Ari Melber, breaks down a central question in modern American politics: Can a sitting President be indicted? Melber examines how the constitution’s core remedy for a President who commits “high crimes or misdemeanours” is through Congress and the power of impeachment, but that this doesn’t legally mean a sitting President cannot be indicted. Melber also walks through how both the Special Counsel in the Watergate investigation and Ken Starr, in the investigation of Bill Clinton, have both argued that a President could, in fact, be indicted while in Office and that while DOJ guidelines recommend against it, if Mueller thought there was a public interest requirement to indict Trump, he could ask Attorney General Bill Barr for an exception.
🐣 RT @SpeakerPelosi Michael Cohen will come before the @OversightDems & @HouseIntel Committees next week. Congress has an independent duty under the Constitution to conduct oversight of the Executive Branch, and any efforts to intimidate family members or pressure witnesses will not be tolerated.
WaPo: Trump trains his sights on McCabe as the Mueller report on Russian interference looms http://wapo.st/2SPCmun
AVNews: Andrew McCabe tells Stephen Colbert that Trump-Russia is “more suspicious every day” http://bit.ly/2tu1AiO
CNN: Justice Department preparing for Mueller report as early as next week http://cnn.it/2E5lUfc
DailyBeast, Barbara McQuade: Trump May Be Committing Obstruction of Justice in Plain Sight http://bit.ly/2VbMHxA
// Trump may be attempting to negate the ability of prosecutors to prove an essential element of an obstruction charge: corrupt intent.
DailyBeast, Asawin Suebsaeng: Trump Is Beyond Obsessed With Andrew McCabe http://bit.ly/2E4VkTs
// The president despises the man who he believes tried to remove him via a coup.
DailyBeast, Spencer Ackerman: Coast Guard Officer Accused of Racist Mass-Murder Plot, Kept ‘Hit List’ of Democrats and MSNBC Hosts http://bit.ly/2VbKIt3
// Lt. Christopher Paul Hasson hoarded guns and drugs and wrote about ‘kill[ing] almost every last person on the earth’ in pursuit of a white homeland in America.
🐣 RT @selectedwisdom [Clint Watts] President Trump – Master Checkers player. North Korea and KJU move to develop weapons targeting U.S., and you talk regime change and war. What are you going to do now that you opened the doors to Russia doing this?
⋙ 🐣 RT @AP BREAKING: President Vladimir Putin warns new Russian weapons will target US if it deploys missiles to Europe. https://twitter.com/AP/status/1098171635151110145
NYT: White House Panel Will Study Whether Climate Change Is a National Security Threat. It Includes a Climate Denialist. http://nyti.ms/2BMWdzI
WaPo, Aaron Blake: Matthew Whitaker’s testimony about Trump trying to influence the Cohen inquiry was cagey. Now we might know why. http://wapo.st/2Ta6ksc
// Whitaker told lawmakers Trump never pressured him to take any action related to the SDNY investigation of Michael Cohen. A New York Times report tells a different story.
WaPo, Philip Bump: How little of Mueller’s work can the Trump administration get away with releasing? http://wapo.st/2Sc7nna
WaPo: Justice Department preparing for Mueller report in coming days http://wapo.st/2XdT8lr
🐣 Listening to Andrew McCabe is the opposite of Trump: completely clear, factual, detailed, straight-forward. No spin. So refreshing. @Morning_Joe
WaPo: Putin warns new weapons will target U.S. if missiles are deployed in Europe http://wapo.st/2SLPKzy
⭕ 19 Feb 2019
Politico: Nancy Pelosi to Europe: Trump is not the boss http://politi.co/2XgM8nN
// The house speaker underlined ‘power of the purse’ belongs to Congress, not the president.
💙💙 WaPo: What we learned about Trumpworld outreach to Russia since Mueller’s investigation began http://wapo.st/2twkXYE
// And what we still don’t know.
WaPo: Trump grows frustrated with DNI Coats, leading some to fear he might be fired http://wapo.st/2T4xOzC
// Director of National Inteligence
🐣 RT @keithboykin Andrew McCabe says he told “The Gang of 8” that the FBI had opened a investigation into Donald Trump, and no one objected. The Gang of Eight:
1. Richard Burr
2. Mitch McConnell
3. Devin Nunes
4. Nancy Pelosi
5. Paul Ryan
6. Adam Schiff
7. Chuck Schumer
8. Mark Warner
ABCNews: Bernie Sanders raises $4 million in less than 1 day of presidential campaign http://abcn.ws/2V7Siom
// The senator from Vermont announced his campaign on Tuesday.
Esquire, Charles Pierce: This Is Count After Count on a Bill of Impeachment http://bit.ly/2T2cz1o
// A New York Times report is full of Trumpian abuses of power and assaults on the rule of law.
💽 MSNBC, 11thHour: Jeremy Bash: Both Russia and Trump are trying to undermine our democracy http://on.msnbc.com/2SWSCJt
// MSNBC National Security Analyst Jeremy Bash reacts to the latest New York Times report on the president’s efforts to stymie the Russia investigation.
NYT: Justice Clarence Thomas Calls for Reconsideration of Landmark Libel Ruling http://nyti.ms/2BJCgKi //➔ First Amendment and Freedom of the Press At risk
DailyBeast: Fox’s Judge Napolitano: Trump’s Call to Whitaker Sure Looks Like ‘Attempted Obstruction’ of Justice http://bit.ly/2InJnOo
// The judge said Trump’s reported call to Whitaker was ‘an effort to use the levers of power… for a corrupt purpose to deflect an investigation into himself or his allies.’
DailyBeast: Devin Nunes Alum Scott Glabe Joins Trump White House http://bit.ly/2T5DGsi
// Scott Glabe joins Kash Patel as another Nunes aide who has recently joined the Trump’s White House team.
DailyBeast: CNN Staffers ‘Demoralized’ by Hiring of GOP Operative Sarah Isgur to Edit 2020 Coverage http://bit.ly/2DW9PZR
// The former Jeff Sessions flack has zero journalistic experience and yet she is tasked with guiding CNN’s 2020 reporting. CNN staffers and media critics alike are not pleased.
DailyBeast: Former FBI Director Andrew McCabe: ‘It’s Possible’ Trump Could Be a Russian Asset http://bit.ly/2NewCo0
// The former FBI chief told CNN’s Anderson Cooper that Trump is actively ‘undermining the role of law enforcement.’
TheGuardian: Trump-Russia: FBI had ‘backup plan’ to save investigation evidence –as it happened http://bit.ly/2EjK1IB
// Plan created after Comey firing to ensure information would survive firings or reassignments of top officials
💙◕📋 NYT, Larry Buchanan and Karen Yourish: Trump Has Publicly Attacked the Russia Investigation More Than 1,100 Times http://nyti.ms/2T2HSsN
USAToday: Andrew McCabe: Top lawmakers were told the FBI was investigating Trump and ‘no one objected’ http://bit.ly/2SMoIIr
CNN, Chris Cillizza: 1 sentence that explains Donald Trump and the Russia investigation http://cnn.it/2U3WOEB
The New York Times published a 4,536-word opus on President Donald Trump’s two-year-long (and running!) attempt to thwart the multiple investigations into his 2016 presidential campaign and its ties to Russia.
The entire thing is worth reading. It’s chock-a-block with news — like that Trump reportedly asked acting Attorney General Matthew Whitaker to install an ally to oversee the Southern District of New York investigation into Michael Cohen!! — and insights into the world (and White House) of Donald Trump.
Amid all those words, one sentence in the piece stood out to me as deeply important when it comes to thinking about Trump, the investigation and what special counsel Robert Mueller knows.
Here’s the sentence:
“The episode was among the first of multiple ham-handed efforts by the president to carry out a dual strategy: publicly casting the Russia story as an overblown hoax and privately trying to contain the investigation’s reach.”
The “episode” specifically referred to in the quote is Trump, in the midst of a meeting on how to handle the departure of national security adviser Michael Flynn, latching onto a rumor that then-Speaker Paul Ryan had said that the President had fired Flynn. No one in the meeting knew the real
story and, as the Times piece makes clear, Trump didn’t shed any light on it or really seem to care what the truth was. He quickly convinced himself that the idea of him firing Flynn would put any concerns about undue Russian influence on his 2016 campaign behind him. So he instructed then-White House press secretary Sean Spicer to go sell that line to the press. …The reason that sentence above is so important is because it reveals the conundrum at the center of Trump’s ongoing response to the various investigations into his campaign and White House: Why, if he is totally innocent — as he has declared many, many times — is he working so damn hard over such a long time to influence, obfuscate and seemingly obstruct federal investigations? …
💙💙 ≣ HouseOversightComm: Multiple Whistleblowers Raise Grave Concerns with White House Efforts to Transfer Sensitive U.S. Nuclear Technology to Saudi Arabia http://bit.ly/2TW0Oql
NPR: In potential violation of the law, Trump Officials Tried To Rush Nuclear Technology To Saudis, House Panel Finds http://n.pr/2V7i8sC
CNN: Trump asked Whitaker if he could put prosecutor in charge of Cohen probe http://cnn.it/2GQ8gQg
🐣 RT @RepAdamSchiff Dangling pardons. Attempting to get a prosecutor to unrecuse. Threatening a cooperating witness. False public statements. Encouraging congressional allies to investigate the investigators to protect him. ¤ All of it a pattern of obstruction. All of it dangerous to the rule of law.
⋙ 🔆 This❗️⋙ NYT: Intimidation, Pressure and Humiliation: Inside Trump’s Two-Year War on the Investigations Encircling Him http://nyti.ms/2ttTMgU
// President Trump’s efforts have exposed him to accusations of obstruction of justice as Robert S. Mueller III, the special counsel, finishes his work.
🔆 This❗️⋙ DNI (1/23/2019): National Intelligence Strategy NATIONAL INTELLIGENCE STRATEGY of the United States of America 2019 [pdf] http://bit.ly/2RNzddZ //➔ acc to Chris Ruddy of NewsMax, DNI Dir Coats is being axed for sharing this w the public @mitchellreports
https://twitter.com/Auriandra/status/1097916877593108480/photo/1
🔆 This❗️⋙ TheAtlantic, Natasha Bertrand: Andrew McCabe Couldn’t Believe the Things Trump Said About Putin http://bit.ly/2TWlb6Z interview
// The former deputy director of the FBI explains why the bureau felt obligated to investigate the president—and how the Mueller probe might end.
⭕ 18 Feb 2019
BylineTimes, Peter Jukes (Feb): Explosive Report Exposes the Molten Core of the Brexit, Trump, Russia Scandal http://bit.ly/2YePZpH
// The Digital, Culture, Media and Sport Committee’s final report on disinformation and fake news reveals new evidence and calls for new investigations into dark data, dark money and Russian influence in British elections.
NBC, Frank Figliuzzi: Andrew McCabe worried Trump was a potential national security threat. America should listen to his warning. http://nbcnews.to/2V7mK28
// FBI agents are trained to identify and mitigate threats. McCabe’s new book suggests he had identified just such a potential threat — in the Oval Office.
🐣 RT @DeadlineWH NEWS: MSNBC National Security Analyst Jeremy Bash tells us more than 40 national security officials will sign joint declarations explaining why Trump’s actions undermine national security and his declaration doesn’t meet the test of an emergency w/ @NicolleDWallace 💽 https://twitter.com/DeadlineWH/status/1097636340311695361/photo/1
🐣💽 RT @MedicalPedia How your Body heals https://twitter.com/Medicalspedia/status/1097792725221556224/photo/1
Newsweek: ‘Something Bizarre and Sinister’ About Donald Trump’s Relationship With Russia, CNN Analyst Warns http://bit.ly/2SIpK8c Jeffrey Toobin
Vox, Andrew Prokop: Former Deputy FBI Director Andrew McCabe vs. President Trump, explained http://bit.ly/2tsG9yw
// The 25th Amendment, “I believe Putin,” a leak investigation, and more.
USAToday: From the 25th Amendment to Vladimir Putin: Five takeaways from Andrew McCabe’s 60 Minutes interview http://bit.ly/2BItbRR
TheHill: McCabe: Trump ‘may have’ committed a crime in blocking Russia probe
http://bit.ly/2GQV1yU
NPR: Andrew McCabe, Ex-FBI Deputy, Describes ‘Remarkable’ Number Of Trump-Russia Contacts http://n.pr/2XcgyHK
🐣 RT @20committee When your crazy words give your top counterintelligence officials reason to wonder if you, the new POTUS, are loyal to a hostile foreign power, not the USA, that’s not an “attempted coup” — it’s “pondering one’s constitutional obligations per one’s oath as a USG employee.”
EmptyWheel, Marcy Wheeler: Four Sentences: What the Legal System Has Said about the Suspect Loyalty of Trump’s Aides http://bit.ly/2V6u5is
🐣 RT @Amy_Siskind Notice that Trump allies Alan Dershowitz and Lindsey Graham have both raised the specter of a “coup” against him in recent days. Almost as if they are priming the country for an alternative truth. ¤ Also note there is concern that both of these men may be compromised/blackmailed.
🐣 RT @VladisKrebs The #TrumpRussia investigation is not a “WITCH” hunt — it is a “WHICH” hunt! ¤ WHICH people and orgnizations were key to connecting Putin associates and Trump associates during the 2016 US Presidential election and subsequent transition?
◕ ⋙ TheNetworkThinkers: Paths to Putin http://bit.ly/2V4xe21
// connectivity charts
NYT: Graham Vows to Investigate Whether ‘Bureaucratic Coup’ Tried to Oust Trump http://nyti.ms/2GvVNC2
DailyBeast: Trump Accuses McCabe and Rosenstein of Plotting Treason Against Him http://bit.ly/2TVJim4
🐣 RT @JuddLegum Trump tweets, last 24 hrs:
1. My deputy attorney general is a criminal
2. I’m being targeted by an “illegal coup”
3. The people investigating me should be jailed
4. Television networks that air jokes about Republicans should face “retribution”
🐣 RT @Amy_Siskind It’s worth observing how shocked we would have been to hear the contents of McCabe’s “60 Minutes” interview in 2017, but how unimpactful and unsurprising it feels today. We are that frog in water coming to boil, degree by degree.
🐣 RT @JF991 In the last 5 days:
– Kremlin media calling for larger invasion of Ukraine, prepping domestic audience.
– Fringe GOP think tank calling for larger invasion of Ukraine
– Kremlin funded anti-Ukraine “protest” in Germany
– Today in central (Russian controlled) Donetsk, 3 bombs
⋙ 🐣 RT @ChristopherJM Reports of 3 explosions, cause unknown, in central Donetsk city. RBK cites Russian state media citing Moscow-backed separatist authorities as saying occurred near 7 Pushkin Blvd, not far from offices of authorities and hotel where @OSCE_SMM known to stay.
≣ TIME: Read the Full Transcript of Former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe’s ’60 Minutes’ Interview http://bit.ly/2SFAlRB
🐣 RT @brianklaas In the last 72 hours, Trump has declared a national emergency over a manufactured crisis to bypass Congress, called for “retribution” against a comedy show for making fun of him, used Stalinist rhetoric to attack the press, and suggested those who investigate him should be jailed
DailyBeast, Ankit Panda: U.S. Intelligence: Russia Tried to Con the World With Bogus Missile http://bit.ly/2TVcuJW
// The Russians hyped a cruise missile launch earlier this year. But a briefing by the CIA and a second agency determined that it was essentially a hoax.
⭕ 17 Feb 2019
DailyBeast, Matt Wilstein: Fox News’ Chris Wallace Hammers Stephen Miller: How Is This a ‘National Emergency?’ http://bit.ly/2V4JEah
// Trump admitted he ‘didn’t need to do this,’ Chris Wallace asked his guest, so ‘how does that justify a national emergency?’
DailyBeast, Michael Tomasky: The Dumb, the Selfish and the Cynical Are Who Keeps Trump’s Support From Collapsing http://bit.ly/2EeS9dt
// Thirty percent of the country is with him no matter what. Who’s in the other 10 percent of his support?
NYT: Rift Between Trump and Europe Is Now Open and Angry http://nyti.ms/2tsVSh3
WaPo, Anne Applebaum: An off-key Pence sings from the Trump hymnal to a stony European reception http://wapo.st/2GONJeM
🐣 RT @tonyschwartz Trump is upping the intensity of his attacks on the Mueller investigation, which suggests he’s increasingly fearful. He’s determined to do anything he can to attack Mueller’s credibility. What he can’t attack are facts. They will show that Trump has committed countless crimes.
🐣 RT @shimonpro “I don’t care. I believe Putin” ¤ ANDREW MCCABE: Intelligence officials in the briefing responded that that was not consistent with any of the intelligence our government possesses to which the president replied, “I don’t care. I believe Putin.”
🐣 RT @tribelaw Speechless.
⋙ 🐣 RT @real “These guys, the investigators, ought to be in jail. What they have done, working with the Obama intelligence agencies, is simply unprecedented. This is one of the greatest political hoaxes ever perpetrated on the people of this Country, and Mueller is a coverup.” Rush Limbaugh
🐣 RT @60Minutes “I believe I was fired because I opened a case against the President of the United States,” says McCabe, who lost his job just a day before he would have been able to collect his full pension. He is considering suing the government over this. https://cbsn.ws/2GwLWLZ
🐣 RT @60Minutes McCabe says his notes from his conversations with President Trump and Rod Rosenstein have been turned over to special counsel Robert Mueller. “Those memos are in the custody of the special counsel’s team.”
💽 🔆 This❗️⋙ CBS: Andrew McCabe “60 Minutes” interview http://cbsn.ws/2NcxNUP
Former Acting FBI Director Andrew McCabe talks President Trump investigation and taking over for James Comey during the Russia investigation — full transcript – CBS News
DailyBeast, Allison Quinn: Andrew McCabe on Trump’s ‘Bizarre’ Job Interview, ‘Astounding’ Putin Comments http://bit.ly/2BGbBxY
// The former acting FBI director says Trump was almost “gleeful” after firing Comey and unleashing “chaos” on the FBI, but the version of events he was selling was “not reality.”
CNN: Russia bristles as fresh US sanctions loom http://cnn.it/2tr1A2Y
CBS, 60Minutes: McCabe says possible “inappropriate relationship” between Trump, Russia prompted probe http://cbsn.ws/2Gtd0vX
NYPost: Trump told Rosenstein to include Russia in letter firing Comey http://nyp.st/2GwdEsr
Bloomberg: Trump Wanted Russia in Memo Firing Comey, Former FBI Leader Says http://bloom.bg/2X9pTQB
● McCabe said Trump took Putin’s word about N. Korean missiles
● Former acting FBI director makes comments on ‘60 Minutes’
CNN/60Minutes: Former acting FBI director Andrew McCabe: Trump’s ‘own words’ prompted counterintelligence investigation http://cnn.it/2S94cwn
Politico/CNN: ‘Evidence in plain sight’ of Trump collusion with Russia, Schiff says http://politi.co/2SWdiRO
TheHill: “The United States will never give up on our allies. We need you and I hope you think you need us.” ¤ Yesterday, former VP Joe Biden spoke at the Munich Security Conference in Munich, Germany. 💽 https://twitter.com/thehill/status/1097103617721581569/photo/1
TheGuardian: Mueller questions Cambridge Analytica director Brittany Kaiser http://bit.ly/2BDtSM8
// Second former employee of controversial data firm to be questioned by special counsel’s inquiry into Russia collusion
⭕ 16 Feb 2019
🐣 RT @kasparov63 Having Russian officials speak the Munich Security Conference is like having a medical conference on fighting cancer and inviting tobacco companies to explain why cancer isn’t really a problem.
⋙ 🐣 RT @chessninja You don’t negotiate with your cancer, you remove it before it kills you. It’s a self-destructive fantasy that Putin’s damage can be limited by giving him what he wants.
Newsweek: Roger Stone Communicated With WikiLeaks and Russian Hackers: Mueller http://bit.ly/2TT2ml8
NYT, Dwight Garner: In ‘The Threat,’ Andrew McCabe Issues the Latest Warning Call About Trump’s America http://nyti.ms/2BHbsKK
WaPo Editorial: Pompeo and Pence send a poor message with their bumbling tour of Europe http://wapo.st/2SRY0NS
🐣 RT @Kasparov63 Obviously. The problem is that Trump doesn’t see that as a problem. The question is why
⋙ 🐣 RT @RFERL: German Chancellor Angela Merkel has warned that a hasty U.S. pullout from Syria runs the risk of strengthening the roles of Russia and Iran in the Middle East. http://ow.ly/mLIi30nIRPp
Bloomberg: Nuclear Fears Haunt Leaders With U.S.-Russian Arms Pact’s Demise http://bloom.bg/2IwqQ2v
● Arms-race specter raises alarm at global security conference
● Looming standoff revives memory of 1962 Cuban missile crisis
NYT, Nick Kristof: ‘The Trump-Russia Story’: Cue the Stage Lights http://nyti.ms/2GqJoPy
// In this drama, the stakes are enormous.
Politico Mag, Jack Shafer: Week 91: Mueller’s Case for Collusion Comes Into View http://politi.co/2GtVh7o
// The special counsel has begun to draw sharper lines between Russia, Wikileaks, Roger Stone and the Trump campaign.
Politico: Dems prepare to force Trump to reveal private talks with Putin http://politi.co/2NbrAIP
// Key chairmen met with the House general counsel in a bid to put any subpoena fight on firm legal ground.
🐣 RT @BillBrowder BREAKING: Russian judge orders Mike Calvey kept in custody until April 13th. Based on my experience with the Russian criminal justice system, this is an ominous sign that his ordeal is just beginning. His business rivals want something big from him
⋙ Reuters: Russian court orders Baring Vostok’s Calvey to be kept in custody until April 13 http://reut.rs/2EcEvXX
⭕ 15 Feb 2019
DailyBeast, Adam Rawnsley And Erin Banco: 69-Year-Old ‘Unrepentant Crook’ Paul Manafort Looking at Decades In Prison http://bit.ly2Een1dM/
// The recommendation for a long sentence came as he’s still facing sentencing in a separate case where a judge voided his plea deal after he lied to investigators.
Politico: Cummings: 2 Trump attorneys may have lied about Cohen payments http://politi.co/2BGYVHc
Reuters: U.S. investigators probing years of WikiLeaks activities: sources http://reut.rs/2tqSt2s
🐣 RT @JohnWDean Aiding and abetting Russia to win an election for Trump is treason. Not surprising from a man who worships Nixon and lies to make a living. But the ultimate dirty trick in presidential politics failed and he has been caught! He’s not nearly as smart as he thinks. Bye-bye, Roger!
⋙ CNN: BREAKING: Special counsel prosecutors say they have communications of Roger Stone with WikiLeaks https://cnn.it/2Ece4BL
NPR: Senate Panel Launches Bipartisan Probe Into Think Tank Linked To Butina, Torshin http://n.pr/2DMBQ68
Politico: Mueller: Guidelines call for Manafort to get up to 24.5 years in prison for Virginia convictions http://politi.co/2trl6wt
// Prosecutors made a clear reference to Manafort’s time atop Trump’s 2016 campaign, noting his ‘repeated misrepresentations to financial institutions were brazen’ during that time.
🐣 RT @MaddowBlog At the cost of potentially dying in prison, Paul Manafort lied to cover up the (or “a”) channel of communication between the Trump campaign when he was chairman and Russian intelligence during the time that Russia was interfering in the U.S. presidential election to help Trump. 💽 https://twitter.com/MaddowBlog/status/1096600498042478594/photo/1
🐣 RT @McFaul If they can arrest Calvey, they are not afraid to arrest anyone. To my Americans friends still doing in business in Russia, it’s time to come home.
⋙ Meduza: Here’s what we know so far about the criminal case against one of Russia’s biggest foreign investors, U.S. citizen Michael Calvey. (Venture capitalists are calling it a disaster for Russia.) http://bit.ly/2X7hsFC
🐣 RT @juliaioffe Oh, look! The guy who created Novichok—and has been publicly contradicting the Kremlin’s denial of its existence—is now under police investigation for alleged pedophilia (this after he was hit by a car and survived).
📌 https://twitter.com/juliaioffe/status/1096537987649859584
⋙ BBC: Разработчику “Новичка” в Анапе устроили анонимную травлю http://bbc.in/2T1u16k
WaPo: Special counsel calls Manafort’s crimes ‘serious, longstanding, and bold’ but recommends no specific sentence http://wapo.st/2X4GBk6
🐣 RT @awprokop Just out: Mueller says that in Russian hacker investigation, several search warrants were executed “on accounts that contained Stone’s communications with Guccifer 2.0 and with Organization 1” (WikiLeaks). Warrants discussed further in sealed addendum 📌 https://mobile.twitter.com/awprokop/status/1096520849052626944
CNN: Special counsel prosecutors say they have communications of Stone with WikiLeaks http://cnn.it/2tmo7OD
Reuters: U.S. judge issues gag order in trial of former Trump adviser Roger Stone http://reut.rs/2S61yrp
📊 FiveThirtyEight: WaPo Poll: Independents Trust Mueller, Which Could Be Bad News For Trump http://53eig.ht/2GLhMnN overall 57/36% think Mueller is mostly interested in uncovering the truth
The poll also suggests that independents may be the deciding factor in whether the public supports Trump’s impeachment, if it comes to that. Per the Post poll, if Mueller’s report finds that Trump obstructed justice by trying to undermine the Russia investigation, Americans believe — 65 percent to 29 percent — that Congress should impeach Trump and try to remove him from office.1 And if the report concludes that Trump authorized his campaign staff to collude with Russia, Americans support impeachment and attempted removal by a similar margin: 61 percent to 33 percent.
Vox, Andrew Prokop: Why Mueller said Roger Stone’s case is “related” to his Russian hacker indictment http://bit.ly/2SDo2F2
// Stone is disputing this and asking for a different judge.
WaPo: ‘They deserve to know if Donald Trump is an agent of the Russian Federation’: Democratic senator makes case for Trump being compromised http://wapo.st/2TSy4yP Sen Robert Menendez (D-NJ)
🐣 RT @SenJeffMerkley Looking forward to voting for a resolution nullifying this fake emergency declaration. Defending the Constitution and the role of Congress in deciding how taxpayer dollars are spent shouldn’t be partisan. Hope my #GOP colleagues will rise to the occasion.
🐣 RT @EvanMcMullin This emergency declaration is unlike those before. First, the facts show that there’s no border “invasion” or “crisis,” regardless of prudent security needs. Second, Congress has already decided in accordance with its authorities and after much consideration against this.
TheAtlantic, Noah Rothman: Trump Crosses the Rubicon http://bit.ly/2GJKJjP
// His national-emergency declaration is setting a precedent that all Americans, but conservative Americans in particular, will long regret.
🐣 RT @lisamurkowski We know that the threat of cyberattacks by our foreign adversaries and other sophisticated entities is real and growing, and the consequences of a successful cyberattack would be widespread and devastating.
KyivPost [UKR]: Kremlin media pundits beat drums of war http://bit.ly/2Igr7X6
Russian state media and less official propaganda outlets have gone into overdrive in their efforts to criticize and negatively characterize Ukraine as the country approached and started its election period. The Kremlin-controlled Rossiya 1 TV channel, RT (formerly known as Russia Today) and Sputnik have been leading the charge.
But beyond the usual disinformation or anti-Ukrainian propaganda, an increase in fiery rhetoric on state television that advocates for war and, in some cases, the total destruction of Ukraine, has also been noticed by concerned observers.
Through newspapers and online media, the Kremlin is also increasingly pushing its agenda, ideology and banging the drum for aggressive neo-colonialism.
Vladislav Surkov, a top aide and strategist for President Putin, published a lengthy op-ed in the Russian newspaper Nezavisimaya Gazeta on Feb. 11 where, among other things, he championed Russia as an expansionist power and called for “Putinism” to become Russia’s official ideology.
He also said that the ideology should be exported to neighboring countries, and that Russian expansionism doesn’t only require economic and military aggression.
Surkov also admitted, in an extraordinary and revealing article, that Russia interferes in foreign countries, but appeared to boast that it was actually “far more serious” than many know.
Russia had “started an information counter-offensive,” he wrote in the op-ed.
“Foreign politicians believe that Russia interferes in elections and referendums worldwide” but in fact “it interferes in their brains and they don’t know what to do with their altered state of consciousness,” he further stated.
“Surkov’s text should be taken very seriously,” wrote Ukrainian journalist and news editor Volodymyr Yermolenko, in a Feb. 13 response for the Atlantic Council think-tank.
“It epitomizes how Russian elites think and how we should expect Moscow to behave, even beyond the Putin era. The key element is expansion, which isn’t limited to military power or geopolitics. It also wants to export its ideology and political model.”
As Russian pundits and officials openly discuss an all-out invasion of Ukraine and the destruction of its statehood in the country’s state-owned media, western experts say that Putin should be made more aware of the cost of such actions.
“Putin will continue to seriously consider and plan for overt Russian military action against Ukraine unless he is convinced the price to pay would be too high,” wrote Steven Hall, an American security analyst and former CIA chief focused on Russia in a Feb. 14 tweet.
🐣 RT @SpeakerPelosi .@realDonaldTrump’s actions clearly violate the Congress’s exclusive power of the purse, which our Founders enshrined in the Constitution. The Congress will defend our constitutional authorities in the Congress, in the Courts, and in the public, using every remedy available.
DailyBeast: Top U.S. General Joseph Votel: Trump Is Wrong on Syria and ISIS http://bit.ly/2BBtRbO
⭕ 14 Feb 2019
VanityFair, Bess Levin: William Barr’s Son-in-Law Just Landed a Job Advising Trump on “Legal Issues” http://bit.ly/2T2k9Jl
// Tyler McGaughey’s work will intersect with the Russia investigation
DailyBeast, Betsy Woodruff and Spencer Ackerman: Boyfriend’s Email: Butina ‘Manipulated’ Russian Spy Agency for NRA Trip http://bit.ly/2N5XlTu
// According to her boyfriend, Russian agent Maria Butina had major sway with the FSB officers ‘assigned’ to her.
DailyBeast, Barbara McQuade: Mueller May Find ‘No Collusion,’ but Still Find Crimes http://bit.ly/2tqVyPO
// Sen. Richard Burr’s comments were trumpeted by the president. He shouldn’t be so sanguine about semantics.
💙 WaPo Editorial: Trump’s presidency enters a new imperial phase — and Mitch McConnell just rolls over http://wapo.st/2GphK5L
🐣 RT @brianklaas The president’s former campaign chairman, a convicted felon, secretly passed campaign data to a man with links to Russian intelligence and lied about his contacts with him to try to cover it up but don’t worry because Trump keeps tweeting NO COLLUSION so I’m sure it’s fine.
🐣 RT @GlennKirschner You know what sounds like collusion? A three-way meeting with Gates, Manafort and Russian Op Kilimnik in a smoky cigar bar during the height of the presidential campaign. AND they they were careful to leave by three separate doors = consciousness of guilt! No collusion my . . .
⋙ 🐣 RT @sasss31 #ConsciousnessofGuilt the one and only @glennkirschner2 breaking it down succinctly and precisely on the implications 💽 https://twitter.com/sasss31/status/1095864059348410369/photo/1
🐣 RT @TheDemCoalition Here’s a photo we found of Senator Lindsey Graham & Alan Dershowitz with a billionaire who made his fortune off Russian oil. He gave Graham’s campaign & PAC $870,500. He also gave McConnell’s PAC $3.5M, Rubio’s PAC $1.5M & $1M to Trump’s inaug, which Mueller’s now investigating. https://twitter.com/TheDemCoalition/status/1096077537711738880/photo/1
🐣 RT @IlvesToomas WHAT??!?!?!?! Counterintelligence head of a NATO country under arrest?
⋙ EuropeanViews: Belgian Counterintelligence Chief Suspected of Spying for Russia http://bit.ly/2SUWBWI
// Belgium’s intelligence service ADIV has been plagued by a long-standing conflict between its intelligence and counter-intelligence departments.
h
🐣 RT @SethAbramson This is the husband of Trump’s Director of Strategic Communications saying “Mueller will be gone soon” because of the new AG William Barr, implying that Trump will soon order Barr to fire Mueller or Barr will do it on his own initiative.
⋙ 🐣 RT @mschlapp Tomorrow will be the first day that President Trump will have a fully operational confirmed Attorney General. Let that sink in. Mueller will be gone soon.
💽 MSNBC, MTP Daily: Brennan and Wittes: ‘Russians could do potential damage’ in Trump-Russia investigation http://on.msnbc.com/2BC2G0q
// Former CIA Director John Brennan and Lawfare’s Ben Wittes join to discuss Andrew McCabe’s take that Trump can’t be trusted. McCabe wrote that people have forgotten how far we’ve strayed from “normal standards of presidential accountability.”
RFI/RL: U.S. Judge Orders Officials To Turn Over Lesin Autopsy Records http://bit.ly/2UXgGZV
A Washington judge has ordered the city medical examiner to turn over dozens of autopsy records and other files in the investigation of Mikhail Lesin, the former Russian press minister who was found dead in a D.C. hotel room under suspicious circumstances more than three years ago.
Once a powerful media adviser to President Vladimir Putin, Lesin fell out of favor sometime around 2012 and had largely been out of sight before his body was found in the Dupont Circle Hotel. Despite the official conclusion that his death was “accidental,” suspicion has focused on whether he was killed to keep him from sharing information with the Justice Department.
NYT: Trump’s Face-Saving Way Out of Political Crisis Raises Fears Over Rule of Law http://nyti.ms/2XcMz2G
🐣 RT @FiveThirtyEight The act of declaring a national emergency to build a wall is even more unpopular than the wall itself. https://53eig.ht/2SP9l18
https://twitter.com/FiveThirtyEight/status/1096247563815010307/photo/1
// poll: 4 polls, avg 32/65%
🐣 RT @PaulaChertok “No President in US history has EVER been suspected of having ANY kind of relationship w/ a (hostile) foreign power”—@carlbernstein. THIS is the backdrop to every conversation & debate about Trump. It can’t be repeated enough #TrumpRussia #McCabe #FBI #Mueller #RussiaProbe #AC360
https://twitter.com/PaulaChertok/status/1096247487042473984/photo/1
RollingStone, Andy Kroll: Why Does Paul Manafort Keep Lying About Russia? http://bit.ly/2BxP06r
// A judge ruled that Trump’s former campaign chairman lied to Mueller’s investigators, shredding his plea deal
NBC: Ex-FBI official McCabe speaks out, comes under fire from both Trump and DOJ http://nbcnews.to/2EcJSqh
// Trump attacked McCabe on Thursday, calling him “a big part of the Crooked Hillary Scandal & the Russia Hoax — a puppet for Leakin’ James Comey.”
Axios: House Democrats may target Ivanka Trump in their Russia probe http://bit.ly/2TSpGiQ
CNBC, Kevin Breuninger: FBI’s Andrew McCabe feared he would be fired before Trump investigations were on ‘solid ground’ http://cnb.cx/2SBTeVq
● Former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe feared that he might be ousted before the obstruction-of-justice and counterintelligence investigations into President Donald Trump’s Russia ties were “on absolutely solid ground.”
● McCabe said that he launched the probes a day after speaking with Trump in May 2017, in a conversation following the firing of former FBI Director James Comey.
● Eight days after Comey was fired, special counsel Robert Mueller was appointed to carry out the investigations into Russia’s interference in the 2016 election.
Slate, Ben Mathis-Lilley: Robert Mueller Might Be Wrapping Things Up. Has He Proved a Conspiracy Between Trump and Russia? http://bit.ly/2Gs6dme
WaPo, David Ignatius: We’re entering a new phase of the Trump-Russia investigation http://wapo.st/2V1HU1D
💙 NYT Editorial: A Trump-Made Emergency http://nyti.ms/2GHLdqJ
// The president decides that fulfilling a campaign promise is more important than respecting the separation of powers.
🐣 RT @PaulaChertok McCabe’s book confirms Putin has been calling the shots on North Korea. As I said in this thread, Trump was parroting Kremlin talking points and even language on NK, as he’s done re NATO, Ukraine, Crimea, Montenegro, Afghanistan, etc. Russia is dictating Trump’s foreign policy
⋙ 🐣 RT @PaulaChertok [Jun 2018] Thread on the Trump show at #G7. A “10” it was not. He came with a list of “grievances”—something Putin & Lavrov do! He also tried to humiliate & threaten our allies. …You gotta wonder not IF Russia’s moles have infiltrated this admin, but how many. (The Trudeau detail OMG) 📌 https://twitter.com/PaulaChertok/status/1005529550107729921?s=20
🐣 RT @kylegriffin1 House Judiciary chair Jerry Nadler: “This is a gross abuse of power that cannot be tolerated … I will fully support the enactment of a joint resolution to terminate the President’s emergency declaration … and intend to pursue all other available legal options.”
WaPo, Greg Miller: Andrew McCabe’s disturbing account of working for Sessions and Trump http://wapo.st/2GO1mLv
🐣 RT @RBReich Authoritarians throughout history have used manufactured crises to circumvent the legislative process and consolidate their own power. We must remain vigilant. These are perilous times for our democracy.
TheAtlantic, Elizabeth Gotein: What the President Could Do If He Declares a State of Emergency http://bit.ly/2S1TOe5
// Jan-Feb Issue; From seizing control of the internet to declaring martial law, President Trump may legally do all kinds of extraordinary things.
💙 TheAtlantic, Natasha Bertrand: The Senate’s Russia Probe Is Facing a Reckoning http://bit.ly/2Ie0Okm
// Meanwhile, the Democratic-led House committee is gearing up for a reinvigorated inquiry.
🐣 RT @RepAdamSchiff Trump is declaring a national emergency to bypass Congress, to build a wall we don’t need, to address a crisis that doesn’t exist, by claiming an authority he doesn’t have. ¤ If that sounds like nonsense, it’s because it is. It’s also plainly unconstitutional.
🐣 RT @SpeakerPelosi Declaring a national emergency would be a lawless act, a gross abuse of the power of the presidency and a desperate attempt to distract from the fact that @realDonaldTrump broke his core promise to have Mexico pay for his wall.
Politico: McCabe says he opened investigations into Trump to put Russia probe ‘on solid ground’ http://politi.co/2X2iH94
Politico: Trump shocks GOP with emergency declaration http://politi.co/2N5KEbu
// Senate Republicans were stunned to learn Trump is ignoring their warnings against such a move.
🐣 RT @kasparov63 [2016] The point of modern propaganda isn’t only to misinform or push an agenda. It is to exhaust your critical thinking, to annihilate truth.
Medium, Scott Stedman: Amid Mueller scrutiny, Swiss parent company of Psy Group scrubs online presence http://bit.ly/2S0cd6N
BuzzFeedNews, Alberto Nardelli: A Longtime Friend Of Vladimir Putin’s Has Been Invited To Speak At An EU-Funded Conference http://bit.ly/2DPSyld
// Some EU officials view the invitation to Vladimir Yakunin, who is the target of US sanctions, as the latest example of the EU’s foreign policy chief being too soft towards Russia.
🐣 RT @benjaminwittes The man has a story to tell. And whatever Andrew McCabe may have done, nobody will ever take away from him that he led the FBI with dignity and honor at a moment of true crisis, surrounded by people at the White House and DOJ who lacked dignity and honor.
⋙ 🔆 This❗️⋙ TheAtlantic, Andrew McCabe: Every Day Is a New Low in Trump’s White House http://bit.ly/2SzolRp
// The president steps over bright ethical and moral lines wherever he encounters them. Everyone in America saw it when he fired my boss. But I saw it firsthand time and time again.
🐣 .@SenatorBurr spoke the eqivalent of “if it doesn’t fit, you must acquit,” only the “jury” in this case is the American people @MarkWarner Why?
CNN, Stephen Collinson: Manafort bombshell deepens mystery in Russia probe http://cnn.it/2GnJDLn
🐣 RT @WendySiegelman Significance of Sam Patten plea deal isn’t clear to most people yet – Konstantin Kilimnik (ex-GRU) worked for Patten in Russia 2001-2003 before Kilimnik worked for Manafort, Patten & Kilimnik formed company in 2015 & Patten contracted on shady Cambridge Analytica deals since 2014
📌 https://twitter.com/WendySiegelman/status/1035670357619998720
⭕ 13 Feb 2019
🐣 RT @kylegriffin1 A bipartisan group of senators have introduced a bill that would impose stiff new sanctions on Russia over its meddling in U.S. elections and aggression against Ukraine, the latest congressional effort to push Trump to ratchet up D.C.’s response to Moscow.
⋙ SenateCommFR: Senators Introduce Bipartisan Legislation to Hold Russia Accountable http://bit.ly/2V0JVuQ
U.S. Senators Bob Menendez (D-N.J.), Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), Cory Gardner (R-Colo.), Ben Cardin (D-Md.), and Jeanne Shaheen (D-N.H.) today introduced the Defending American Security from Kremlin Aggression Act (DASKA) of 2019. The comprehensive legislation seeks to increase economic, political, and diplomatic pressure on the Russian Federation in response to Russia’s interference in democratic processes abroad, malign influence in Syria, and aggression against Ukraine, including in the Kerch Strait.
The legislation establishes a comprehensive policy response to better position the U.S. government to address Kremlin aggression by creating new policy offices on cyber defenses and sanctions coordination. The bill stands up for NATO and prevents the President from pulling the U.S. out of the Alliance without a Senate vote. It also increases sanctions pressure on Moscow for its interference in democratic processes abroad and continued aggression against Ukraine.
DailyBeast, Erin Banco, Betsy Woodruff: Trump’s DHS Guts Task Forces Protecting Elections From Foreign Meddling http://bit.ly/2DHVeRQ
// “It’s very curious why the leadership has not committed resources to prepare for the 2020 election,” one DHS official tells The Daily Beast.
DailyBeast, David Lurie: Trump Is Immune From Impeachment if Mueller Can’t Share His Evidence http://bit.ly/2EbpG8p
🐣 RT @MSNBC Michael Cohen lawyer Lanny Davis to Sen. Burr: “We’re coming. There were no false excuses.”
⋙ MSNBC, Hallie Jackson: Cohen lawyer to Sen. Burr: ‘We’re coming. There were no false excuses.’ http://on.msnbc.com/2SO82Q1
// Lanny Davis, Michael Cohen’s attorney and communications adviser, speaks with Hallie Jackson about his client’s controversial postponement of his Senate testimony due to ‘medical needs’ after a recent shoulder surgery.
🐣 RT @JillWineBanks House Judiciary Committee should request all Mueller evidence relevant to actions of Trump before, during and after the election and during his presidency. Federal rules allow this. Watergate Judge Sirica said public right to know allowed release of grand jury evidence. Here too.
DailyBeast: Senate Intel Chief Richard Burr Covered for Trump While Russia Attacked 2016 Election http://bit.ly/2Gnzm1T
◕📊 FiveThirtyEight: Public Opinion Of The Mueller Investigation Has Become More Partisan http://53eig.ht/2GNqKkz
● https://twitter.com/Auriandra/status/1095963855895871488/photo/1
Vox, Andrew Prokop: Judge rules that Manafort deliberately lied to Mueller’s team during cooperation http://bit.ly/2tnwKs2
// The former Trump campaign chair may now get a tougher sentence.
🐣 RT @selectedwisdom What I find remarkable about the Manafort-Kilimnik meeting is the timeline. August 2, 2016 – just after Trump’s “Russia if you have those emails” & Stone messaging to find dirt. Just before Manafort spouts Russia propaganda on CNN & just weeks before leaves campaign
⋙ 🐣 RT @selectedwisdom When looking for indicators & warnings of Collusion, I always say do surveillance at a “dinner meeting at a private cigar room” – How Manafort’s 2016 meeting with a Russian employee at New York cigar club goes to ‘the heart’ of Mueller’s probe
📌 https://twitter.com/selectedwisdom/status/1095716460616450048
WaPo: Trump claims ‘no collusion’ with Russia as leading Democrat says conclusion is premature http://wapo.st/2DE7qmw Intel Comm Ranking Member Sen Mark Warner (D-VA)
📊 CNN, Brian Stelter: How a single poll question illustrates America’s divide over Trump and Russia http://cnn.it/2RY0LbS //➔ 43% of all but just 19% of GOP say Mueller has proven Russian tried to interfere; (also true under Watergate until the evidence became irrefutable)
🐣 RT @RepAdamSchiff Here’s what stands out to me from today’s ruling:
¤ Manafort lied about his contacts with an individual affiliated with Russian intelligence. And he lied intentionally.
¤ If Manafort had told the truth, it would have been so damaging to Trump as to negate his chances of a pardon.
🐣 RT @ScotMStedman August 2 – Manafort shares private, detailed polling data w Kilimnik
August 3 – Don Jr meets with Zamel who touts his social media manipulation tools
Also August 3 – Kilmnik flies from NY to Moscow on Deripaska’s jet
August 4 – Spike in Alfa Bank-Trump Tower server communications
WaPo: Federal judge finds Paul Manafort lied to Mueller probe about contacts with Russian aide http://wapo.st/2S1MLhg
🔆 This❗️⋙ CNN: Judge voids Paul Manafort plea deal, says he ‘intentionally’ lied to the FBI, special counsel and grand jury http://cnn.it/2BweLnO
💙 🐣 RT @MSNBC for Special Counsel Robert Mueller have proved 3 of the 5 examples they cite as occurrences when Manafort lied to them in the course of his cooperation.
💽 https://twitter.com/MSNBC/status/1095831723483512832/photo/1
🐣 RT @PaulaChertok Senate Intel chair Richard Burr can’t be a trusted voice on the Russia probe. Important piece by @rgoodlaw, weaving together Burr’s actions & statements since teaming up w/ the Trump campaign, to paint a darker & more cynical picture than we imagined.
⋙ 💙 JustSecurity, Ryan Goodman: Who is Richard Burr, Really? Why the public can’t trust his voice in the Russia probe http://bit.ly/2RYLJCQ
MilitaryTimes: After Trump’s treaty withdrawal, NATO is getting ready for a Russia with a lot more missiles http://bit.ly/2GGZYdf
Vox, Aaron Rupar: Trump’s tweet that Senate investigators found “NO EVIDENCE OF COLLUSION,” explained http://bit.ly/2tkND6J
// Trump wants you to believe Richard Burr is the final word on Russia. He isn’t.
💽 🔆 This❗️⋙ CNN, Marshall Cohen et all: How Team Trump keeps changing its story in the Russia investigation http://cnn.it/2TOSVD1 Timeline with videos
// By Marshall Cohen, Sam Fossum, Em Steck, Tal Yellin; Videos produced by McKenna Ewen
Politico: ‘Mr. Manafort did not lie’: Attorneys take final stand against Mueller charges http://politi.co/2E7nz5t
// The special counsel has accused Manafort of breaching a plea deal when he lied about interactions with an associate allegedly linked to Russian intelligence.
🐣 RT @annalecta FEC probing Rebuilding America Now—a pro-Trump super PAC facing allegations of illegal coordination & a wire transfer to Paul Manafort flagged by special counsel Robert Mueller—for failing to disclose $1M received on the eve of the 2016 election for years
⋙ TPM, Josh Kovensky and Allegra Kirkland: Manafort-Linked PAC Failed To Report $1 Million And The FEC Wants To Know Why http://bit.ly/2GJ4B6H
🐣 RT @RepSwalwell THREAD: Let’s talk about direct vs circumstantial evidence. The law treats them the same. @SenatorBurr says there’s no “direct evidence of collusion” b/w Trump & Russians. Put aside the fact that @MarkWarner doesn’t agree w/ this. What matters is if there’s evidence of collusion. 📌 https://twitter.com/RepSwalwell/status/1095754587368292353
CNN: Senators target Russia with massive bipartisan bill http://cnn.it/2TKTw8Q
// Bob Menendez, Lindsey Graham
They’ve proposed a massive bill that aims to, among other things, force the administration to assess whether Russia is a state sponsor of terror.
It would also require a two-thirds Senate vote if Trump decides to leave NATO, a report on Russian President Vladimir Putin’s net worth and assets, and title insurance companies in the US to report information on who owns entities that buy high-priced homes here — as well as would hammer Russia with a host of additional sanctions and new ways of cracking down on Russian disinformation and cyber-crimes.
“The sanctions and other measures contained in this bill are the most hard-hitting ever imposed — and a direct result of Putin’s continued desire to undermine American democracy. The sanctions and measures we propose are designed to respond in the strongest possible fashion,” [Graham] added.
Wednesday’s legislative announcement comes a day after the US released a sweeping list of prominent Russian business and political figures, implementing a congressional law designed to punish Russia for election interference.
The US Treasury report, published shortly before a midnight deadline, listed every senior member of the political administration at the Kremlin, and every Russian oligarch with a net worth of $1 billion or more.
MoscowProject: Burr’s Blind Eye To Collusion http://bit.ly/2SUOxWc
TheAtlantic, Joseph Augustyn: Maria Butina Is Not Unique http://bit.ly/2UYPmul
// For years, countries including Russia and China have used their citizens who study in the U.S. as an intelligence-gathering resource.
🐣 RT @PaulaChertok US and EU close to agreeing on new #sanctions to check #Russia’s aggression toward #Ukraine in the Sea of Azov (where Russians attacked & seized 3 ships & 24 Ukrainian sailors passing thru Kerch Strait in November) | Financial Times
⋙ FinancialTimes: US and EU close to agreeing new sanctions to check Russia [paywall]
⭕ 12 Feb 2019
TheAtlantic, Saahil Desai: Does Anyone Know What the End of the Russia Investigation Really Means? http://bit.ly/2TO9jDO
// Does it mean “clearing” the president? Does it mean one more spree of indictments, a devastating final report?
TheAtlantic, Mikhaila Fogel and Benjamin Wittes: The Much-Heralded End of the Mueller Investigation http://bit.ly/2GGwnkb
// No one knows when it will actually “wrap up”—or what it will mean when it does.
Axios, Mike Allen: House Democrats plan vast Russia probe http://bit.ly/2GKkf1T
🐣 RT @tribelaw Burr is out on a limb that his non-GOP colleagues are sawing off. He’s being a partisan. Plus his definition of “evidence” is wildly unrealistic. Nobody ever imagined Trump saying to Putin, “Hey, I’ll lift the sanctions if you make me president.” That’s not how it works
⋙ CNNPolitics Sen. Mark Warner, the top Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee, rejected Republican Chairman Richard Burr’s recent statements that the committee has not found evidence of collusion https://cnn.it/2E7JQzS
Newsweek, Cristina Maza: Mike Pompeo Warns Vladimir Putin Is Threatening Democracies Everywhere, Says West Took Its Eye Off Russia http://bit.ly/2TTPmeM //➔ wow, has he cleared this with the boss?
🐣 RT @DeadlineDH “[Senate Intel doesn’t] have nearly the tools that Bob Mueller has. The most important tool they don’t have is the threat to indict people for crimes & the ability to reduce their sentences of people that come and cooperate” – @matthewamiller w/ @NicolleDWallace 💽 https://twitter.com/DeadlineWH/status/1095458146443816964/photo/1
🐣 RT @JuliaDavisNews #Russia’s state TV: ¤ Kremlin propagandist Vladimir Soloviev interviews RT’s editor-in-chief Margarita Simonyan re: alleged US info-ops. He asks whether any US politicians disseminate Russian agitprop in conjunction with RT. Simonyan replies: “Only one. Donald Trump. Just kidding.”
🐣 RT @JohnBrennan Senate Intel Committee is doing good work, but it does not conduct criminal investigations. It is up to Special Counsel to charge those who criminally conspired with Russia. Don’t conflate collusion, which occured, with criminal conspiracy. Stay tuned.
⋙ NBC, Ken Dilanian: Senate has uncovered no direct evidence of conspiracy between Trump campaign and Russia http://nbcnews.to/2BwdmxK
// “We were never going to find a contract signed in blood saying, ‘Hey Vlad, we’re going to collude,'” one Democratic aide said.
MotherJones, Dan Friedman: Senate Intelligence Committee Democrats Dispute Claims That Russia Probe Found No Collusion http://bit.ly/2UXKUMt
// “The president is terrified about where our investigation…may lead.”
WaPo, Philip Bump: Why early August 2016 has become central to the Russia investigation: A timeline http://wapo.st/2I579yi
USAToday: Yes, the Mueller investigation is costly. But the millions seized from Manafort have it on track to break even http://bit.ly/2TQhW0Y
DailyBeast, Erin Banco and Adam Rawnsley: Swiss Mystery Company Is at the Heart of a Mueller Puzzle http://bit.ly/2BC2UEN
// You’ve never heard of Zurich-based Salix Services AG. But Robert Mueller’s team has.
WaPo, Aaron Blake: A Russian oligarch offers a significant denial in the Mueller probe http://wapo.st/2Gnd3Jt
WaPo: Senate Intel chair slams Trump fixer Michael Cohen, as House Democrats staff up probes http://wapo.st/2Sxps4b Richard Burr (R-NC)
🐣 RT @emptywheel Congratulations to the WaPo which, unlike the NYT, can report that the polling handoff happened at the same meeting Manafort was talking sanctions relief.
⋙ 🐣 RT @CarolLeonnig What I like most in this story: ¤ It takes you to a cigar bar in Aug 2016, & a Russian operative w/ “important messages” to give Trump campaign chair. ¤ It knits together string that @PostRoz, @thamburger and WaPo team have been gathering for 2 1/2 years.
⋙⋙ 🔆 This❗️⋙ WaPo: How Manafort’s 2016 meeting with a Russian employee at New York cigar club goes to ‘the heart’ of Mueller’s probe http://wapo.st/2SKfTy1
The Aug. 2, 2016, encounter between the senior Trump campaign officials and Kilimnik, who prosecutors allege has ties to Russian intelligence, has emerged in recent days as a potential fulcrum in special counsel Robert S. Mueller III’s investigation.
It was at that meeting that prosecutors believe Manafort and Kilimnik may have exchanged key information relevant to Russia and Trump’s presidential bid. The encounter goes “very much to the heart of what the special counsel’s office is investigating,” prosecutor Andrew Weissmann told a federal judge in a sealed hearing last week.
One subject the men discussed was a proposed resolution to the conflict over Ukraine, an issue of great interest to the Russian government, according to a partially redacted transcript of the Feb. 4 hearing.
During the hearing, the judge also appeared to allude to another possible interaction at the Havana Room gathering: a handoff by Manafort of internal polling data from Trump’s presidential campaign to his Russian associate.
🐣 RT @JuliaDavisNews #Russia’s state TV selected this imagery to go along with the quote by senior Kremlin aide Vladislav Surkov, who wrote that— beyond election interference across the globe— Russia alters Western consciousness and is engaged in “an information counteroffensive against the West.” https://twitter.com/JuliaDavisNews/status/1095326502365904897/photo/1
// photo of Trump, Macron etc
🐣 RT @olgaNYC1211 The Ministry of Information Policy of Ukraine on Tuesday, Feb 12, presented the “White Book of Special Information Operations Against Ukraine, 2014-2018.” ¤ Have always said that Ukraine was a testing ground for the war Russia launched on the West.
⋙ Unian: Ukraine’s ministry of information policy presents “White Book” of info-ops against Ukraine http://bit.ly/2SQYinY
// It contains descriptions of Russia’s information campaigns aimed against Ukraine, carried out in 2014-2018.
Newsweek, Cristina Maza: Vladimir Putin’s Adviser Tells Americans: ‘Russia Interferes in Your Brains, We Change Your Conscience’ http://bit.ly/2GB7VRo
Americans who worry about Russia election interference should stop focusing on such trivialities and instead realize that the idea that they have a choice over how they are governed is a mere illusion, Vladislav Surkov, an adviser to Russian President Vladimir Putin, wrote in an op-ed published this week.
“The illusion of choice is the most important illusion, the main trick of Western democracy especially…. The rejection of this illusion in favor of the reality that everything is predestined will allow society to reflect first on our vision of democratic development,” Surkov wrote. “Foreign politicians talk about Russia’s interference in elections and referendums around the world. In fact, the matter is even more serious: Russia interferes in your brains, we change your conscience, and there is nothing you can do about it.”
In his op-ed for the Russian publication Nezavisimaya Gazeta, or “Independent Newspaper,” Surkov also laid out Putin’s vision of returning Russia to its rightful role as a global superpower and exporting “Putinism” as an ideology to be adopted around the world.
“After having fallen from the USSR to the Russian Federation, Russia stopped collapsing and began to recover and return to its natural and only possible state as a large nation that is on the rise,” he wrote.
“The great role assigned to our country in the history of the world does not allow us to leave the stage or keep silent among the crowd…. It does not promise peace…. Putin’s great political machine is only gaining momentum and gearing up for a long, difficult, and interesting job,” Surkov continued.
He then went on to describe Putin as the founder of modern Russia, similar to the Turkish leader Mustafa Kemal Ataturk or France’s Charles de Gaulle. “Putinism is the ideology of the future,” he wrote. “The political system created in Russia is suitable not only for the future of local areas, it clearly has significant export potential.”
🐣 RT @NatashaBertrand Senate Intelligence Committee aide tells me, re: NBC story, that right now there is “a common set of facts” that the panel is working with, “and a disagreement about what those facts mean.” ¤ They add: “We are closer to the end than the beginning, but we’re not wrapping up.”
⋙ 🐣 RT @NatashaBertrand Re: the headline, “Senate has uncovered no direct evidence of conspiracy between Trump campaign and Russia,” same aide says: “the word ‘direct’ is doing a lot of work here.”
🐣 RT @krassenstein
Cost of Mueller Probe thus far: $25,000,000
Fines and Forfeitures Brought in by Mueller/SDNY Probe:
Manafort – $26,740,000
Cohen – $1,850,100
Flynn – $500
Papadopoulos – $9,500
Gates – $20,000
van der Zwaan – $20,000
TOTAL: $28,640,100
Total Profit: $3,640,100
Go MUELLER!
📊 Politico: Poll: More Americans have confidence in Mueller than Trump http://politi.co/2GJ9mNs 56% to 33%, according to a recent poll by The Washington Post and George Mason University’s Schar School
💽 MSNBC: Figliuzzi: Russia-Trump collusion question is not yet answered [Video] http://on.msnbc.com/2I7ZYpd
WaPo, Scott Clement and Matt Zapotosky: Americans view Mueller as more credible than Trump, but views of his probe are scattered http://wapo.st/2SwN7BT
⭕ 11 Feb 2019
💽 MSNBC, The Beat With Ari: Meet the Mueller prosecutor who scares Trump more than Mueller http://on.msnbc.com/ 2V2yh2t
In a special report, MSNBC Chief Legal Correspondent Ari Melber examines the tactics of a hardball Federal Prosecutor on Special Counsel Mueller’s team, Andrew Weissmann, who many refer to as Mueller’s “legal pit bull”. Melber breaks down how Weissmann honed his hardball strategy in the Enron investigation, one of the most far-reaching, aggressive and controversial prosecutions in modern American law and how he built a reputation of effective and controversial prosecution, by charging targets that many prosecutors avoid: like a defendant’s own family members.
🐣 RT @eorden Attorneys for the Donald J. Trump Foundation accused the New York attorney general’s office of political motivation in its civil lawsuit against the nonprofit, citing recent comments made by Attorney General Letitia James.
📌 https://mobile.twitter.com/Trumpnado2016/status/1095020835163787264
⋙ CNN, Erica Orden: Trump Foundation says NY AG’s comments show lawsuit is political http://cnn.it/2WYcZ8c
🐣 RT @bradheath Mueller’s former deputy: “A public narrative has built an expectation that the special counsel will explain his conclusions, but I think that expectation may be seriously misplaced.”
⋙ USAToday: Robert Mueller has spent two years investigating Trump, and he hasn’t said a word. It’s possible he never will. http://bit.ly/2By4veI
🔆 This❗️⋙ EmptyWheel, Marcy Wheeler: A Primer on How to Read: So the NYT Can Stop Telling Paul Manafort’s Lies http://bit.ly/2tqQECN //➔ Critique of NYT: In Closed Hearing, a Clue About ‘the Heart’ of Mueller’s Russia Inquiry
DailyBeast, Adam Rawnsley: Are Russian DisInfo Warriors Meta-Trolling Us With Mueller’s Trial? http://bit.ly/2TJjvh1
// Frat-house antics in the courtroom, winking at its own celebrity—what’s behind the spate of bizarre behavior from the IRA, Russia’s notorious troll factory?
✅ PBS: AP fact check: Trump claims he’s vindicated in Russia probe http://to.pbs.org/2MZHGVS
He’s tweeting that Republican Sen. Richard Burr, who chairs the Senate intelligence committee, has “announced” the panel found no collusion or conspiracy between Russia and the Trump campaign during the 2016 election. That’s taking it too far. Burr did say in a published interview that he had found no evidence so far of collusion after two years of investigation, but the probe is continuing. Burr also indicated the committee’s final report may not even reach a conclusion on the question, leaving it up to the public to decide.
Newsweek: Trump Officials ‘Doing Russia’s Bidding’ to Get Richer Against U.S. National Interests, Former Deputy Asst AG Harry Litman Says http://bit.ly/2N2gZ2E
NewYorker, Jeffrey Toobin: Roger Stone’s and Jerome Corsi’s Time in the Barrel http://bit.ly/2DAkcCi
// Feb 18&25 Issue; Why the mismatched operatives matter to Trump—and to the Mueller investigation.
WaPo, Philip Bump: If there was collusion with Russia, here’s where it might have occurred http://wapo.st/2WV2EKa
// The known links are not very strong.
EmptyWheel, Marcy Wheeler: Quid Pro Quo Redux, Part One: The Trump Tower Dangle http://bit.ly/2RVpc9V
🐣 RT @RadioFreeTom He’s not wrong. And it’s our fault.
⋙ 🐣 RT @olex_sherba Putin’s adviser Surkov to those “who cry about Russian meddling in elections”: “Things are much more serious: we meddle with your brains, we change your conscience – and you have no clue what to do about it”. http://bit.ly/2SJMSlY
🐣 RT @Liveuamap Putin’s adviser Surkov in the article in “Nezavisimaya gazeta” says that Putin managed to create “state of new type” – “Putinism” is a new form of government(like Republic), Putinism will be in Russia for coming century even after Putin http://bit.ly/2I7i0Ia via @oldLentach
⋙ 🐣 “Putinism” IOW “Mobster Oligarchy” ~ No, thanks.
⭕ 10 Feb 2019
🐣 RT @MikeL_Jollett Wow. Without all the makeup and stuff, Trump looks like Old Man Potter from It’s a Wonderful Life. https://twitter.com/Mikel_Jollett/status/1094683340714594304/photo/1-2
🐣📊 RT @pewresearch Pew Poll: 62% of Americans had a favorable opinion of NATO in our 2017 survey. U.S. goodwill toward the alliance was significantly higher than in 2016, when 53% had a favorable view https://pewrsr.ch/2MXHAwL
WaPo: New Trump-Russia probe will focus on reports of money laundering, ‘financial compromise,’ Schiff says http://wapo.st/2Sq7yAf
TheAtlantic, Quinta Jurecic: A Confederacy of Grift http://bit.ly/2BuAOLv
// The subjects of Robert Mueller’s investigation are cashing in.
🌀 Mueller v Trump SCORECARD https://twitter.com/mcspocky/status/1094388982996238336/photo/1
Politico: Schiff questions Mueller’s approach on Deutsche Bank http://politi.co/2DqBOka
🐣 RT @MuellerSheWrote This sounds to me like AMI wanting people to stop looking beyond Dirty Sanchez. (That’s what we’re calling him. He’s a Stone Ally). What do you guys think?
⋙ The brother is the Occam’s Razor explanation. But, Bezos has the resources and the best investigators working for him. It’s hard to think he would bring up the Saudis with no proof whatsoever. He might find himself on the wrong side of a bone saw.
⋙ DailyBeast, Lachlan Markay: Mistress’ Brother Leaked Bezos’ Racy Texts to Enquirer, Sources Say http://bit.ly/2Gle6JP //➔ Never underestimate Occam’s Razor
// Multiples sources tell The Daily Beast that Michael Sanchez, a Trumpworld associate and brother to Bezos’ lover, gave the couple’s texts to The National Enquirer.
WaPo: House Intelligence Chairman Adam Schiff (D-CA) voices concern that Mueller’s scrutiny of Trump’s finances isn’t adequate http://wapo.st/2Gk2pmW
🐣 RT @NatashaBertrand Senate Intel chairman Burr “told CBS last week that the committee’s investigators ‘don’t have anything that would suggest there was collusion.’ But Weissmann’s remarks seem to suggest that for the special counsel that avenue of inquiry is still alive.”
🔆 This❗️⋙ NYT: In Closed Hearing, a Clue About ‘the Heart’ of Mueller’s Russia Inquiry http://nyti.ms/2SqF3T2 //➔ did the Trump campaign (and later the Trump admin) pursue a grand bargain that would lift Magnitsky sanctions and would also have advanced Trump Tower Moscow?
Comments by one of Mr. Mueller’s lead prosecutors, disclosed in a transcript of a closed-door hearing, suggest that the special counsel continues to pursue at least one theory: that starting while Russia was taking steps to bolster Mr. Trump’s candidacy, people in his orbit were discussing deals to end a dispute over Russia’s incursions into Ukraine and possibly give Moscow relief from economic sanctions imposed by the United States and its allies.
The theory was offered almost as an aside by the prosecutor, Andrew Weissmann, during a discussion of contacts between Mr. Trump’s former campaign chairman, Paul Manafort, and a longtime Russian associate, Konstantin V. Kilimnik, whom investigators have linked to Russian intelligence.
“Trump’s unusual sympathy and receptivity to Putin and the Kremlin was evident throughout the campaign” and the first few months of his presidency, said John E. Herbst, a former United States ambassador to Ukraine. That pattern, he said, fueled the notion that Mr. Trump might seek a “grand bargain” that would end sanctions, possibly on terms deeply unfavorable to Ukraine.
The sanctions also limited business opportunities with Russia. Mr. Trump had long sought a marquee Trump Tower project in Moscow, and at least two aides were pursuing separate nuclear power projects that would have benefited from an end to the sanctions.
As Mr. Trump took office, some State Department officials described worrying inquiries that suggested the White House might be preparing to precipitously drop the sanctions. And various intermediaries floated proposals they said would end the sporadic combat in eastern Ukraine between Russian-funded separatist fighters and Ukrainian forces trying to hold back the loss of more territory.
Michael D. Cohen, Mr. Trump’s longtime fixer, told The New York Times that he left a sealed envelope containing one such plan on Mr. Flynn’s White House desk. …
Mr. Kilimnik, meanwhile, was trying to use his extensive ties to Mr. Manafort to advance another. It envisioned the return of Viktor F. Yanukovych, a pro-Russia politician who had risen to the presidency of Ukraine in 2010 with the help of Mr. Manafort, who was paid tens of millions of dollars for his efforts.
Mr. Yanukovych was forced from office by a popular uprising in 2014 and fled to Russia. Mr. Kilimnik wanted to resurrect him as a semiautonomous leader in eastern Ukraine, a division of the country fiercely opposed by most Ukrainians.
In a February 2017 interview with The Times, Mr. Kilimnik described Mr. Manafort as a possible negotiator for the deal. He said that Mr. Manafort had told him that “there is only one enemy — the chaos.”
What Mr. Manafort and Mr. Kilimnik discussed about the Russia-Ukraine conflict is not all that concerned prosecutors. Another issue is a directive from Mr. Manafort to Mr. Gates to turn over Trump campaign polling data to Mr. Kilimnik in the midst of the presidential race.
The transcript suggests that Mr. Manafort claims that he wanted only public data transferred. But Mr. Weissmann told the judge that the question of whether any American, wittingly or unwittingly, engaged with Russians who were interfering in the election relates to “the core” of the special counsel’s inquiry.
⭕ 9 Feb 2019
TheAtlantic, Natasha Bertrand: Matthew Whitaker Plays to an Audience of One http://bit.ly/2tc3owS
// Throughout a contentious oversight hearing, the acting attorney general seemed to be auditioning for his next job in the Trump administration.
NYT: Trump Defies Congressional Deadline on Khashoggi Report http://nyti.ms/2tgGYud
EmptyWheel, Marcy Wheeler: Paul Manafort Sold Out Donald Trump — and His Anonymous Leakers Are Lying about It Publicly http://bit.ly/2Ih0f9x
🐣 RT @juliettekayyem A few notes on Bezos’ security apparatus. The guys I knew at FBI and Secret Service often ended up in VIP Protection, a lucrative post-government position where salaries can be in the high 6 digits. It’s a serious job, especially to protect the richest of the rich. 1/ 📌 https://twitter.com/juliettekayyem/status/1094272500320612352
Unian [UKR]: Russian intel offering Ukrainians US$2,000 for setting on fire churches of former Moscow Patriarchate http://bit.ly/2MXLI0R
// Russian spies and Moscow-controlled “security services” in the occupied parts of Donbas have been working to recruit Ukrainian nationals who would commit arson attacks on temples operated by Orthodox priests of what was until recently called the Moscow Patriarchate.
WaPo, Max Boot (Dec): An Israeli tech firm is selling spy software to dictators, betraying the country’s ideals http://wapo.st/2SkX3hA newly relevant
// 12/5/2018
Newsweek: Donald Trump Jr. ‘Expects to be Indicted’ and is in ‘More Immediate Jeopardy’ Than Jared Kushner, Journalist Natasha Bertrand Says http://bit.ly/2SprYt2
Inquisitr: Kremlin ‘Proud’ Of ‘Operation’ To Get Trump Elected, Says Former US Ambassador To Russia Michael McFaul http://bit.ly/2SoeQEo
TheGuardian: Mark Galeotti: ‘We should laugh at Russia more’ http://bit.ly/2WUEMGk
// The Russian politics expert on why the West misreads Putin, Trump’s election, the Skripals and why he loathes Game of Thrones
⭕ 8 Feb 2019
JustSecurity, Sam Berger: Trump’s Plan to Have the Military Build a Wall is Illegal http://bit.ly/2DBpduk
🐣 RT @JohnWDean The world knew the National Enquirer was sleazy. It was not known it’s kind of journalism was much like the mob, extortion and blackmail. Thank you Jeff Bezos for rolling over the log so we all can see what crawls out. Pecker can’t do dirty from prison!
⋙ WaPo Editorial: The truth about the National Enquirer comes crawling out http://wapo.st/2TMMdhb
TheObserver, John Schindler: Inside the Spy Scandal at the Heart of Jeff Bezos’ War With the National Enquirer http://bit.ly/2Bs8g5D
RawStory, Travis Gettys: Cohen pal Donny Deutsch predicts anti-mob laws will take down entire Trump Organization http://bit.ly/2TB3WYM
Deutsch said the SDNY investigation was beginning to look like a Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act, or RICO, case.
“I’m going to throw out the term RICO,” Deutsch said. “(It) was introduced, basically, for mob bosses. Police said, ‘Okay, if somebody in your organization killed somebody we can pin it on you.’”
“I think from here on in,” he said, “to the day Donald Trump dies, until those children are wherever they go, they will be picking apart this organization, because what they want to make an example of is this president who showed up and tried to undo 250 years of what our grandfathers fought for, and this organization will eventually be RICO’d and take the entire thing down. This is just the beginning.”
🐣 RT @tribelaw Are Donald Trump and the murderous Saudi Prince bin Salman co-conspirators with David Pecker and AMI in a failed criminal plot to blackmail and extort Jeff Bezos as owner of the Washington Post? Asking for a friend in the Southern District of New York.
TPM, Allegra Kirkland: Ex-Enquirer Editor Jerry George: Bezos Story Was ‘Means Of Kissing And Making Up With’ Trump http://bit.ly/2RQ5oER
DailyBeast, Barbara McQuade: New Trump Probe Looks a Lot Like a RICO Investigation http://bit.ly/2BtpFdV
// The crimes reportedly under investigation—money laundering, fraud, conspiracy—could amount to a criminal enterprise. That’s how my team of prosecutors put away Detroit’s mayor.
WaPo, Aaron Blake: What we learned from the Matthew G. Whitaker hearing http://wapo.st/2RS5vj6
// The showdown between House Democrats and Trump’s acting attorney general could provide a glimpse of what’s to come.
1. Whitaker was in over his head
2. Won’t deny Mueller is on a ‘witch hunt’
3. No subpoena showdown yet — but . . .
4. A sitting president cannot be indicted
5. The most inexplicable moment
⋙ This was the moment Whitaker was elevated to the top law enforcement position in the United States. And he says he cannot remember exactly how he first learned he got that job? That certainly seems like something that would be etched into memory — especially three months in.
NYT Editorial: Saudi Arabia’s Threadbare Cover-Up of Khashoggi’s Killing Unravels Further http://nyti.ms/2UTt7Gh
// The crown prince, Mohammed bin Salman, was overheard threatening to silence the self-exiled Washington Post journalist “with a bullet.”
NYT: Jeff Bezos’ Extortion Claim Said to Be Under Review by Prosecutors http://nyti.ms/2td2jEV
🐣 RT @mkraju Siding with Saudi crown prince, WH will NOT make determination on punishing those responsible for Khashoggi murder under Magnitsky Act. “The President maintains his discretion to decline to act on congressional committee requests when appropriate,” official tells @Kevinliptakcnn 📌 https://twitter.com/mkraju/status/1093925586739888128
DailyBeast, Spencer Ackerman (Mar 2018): Trump’s Publisher Pal Puts Saudi Propaganda Magazine in U.S. Supermarkets http://bit.ly/2RNsBHS
// 3/26/2018; The owners of the National Enquirer have a slick, ad-free magazine on U.S. newsstands praising crown prince Mohammed bin Salman—and insist they had no outside help for it.
Bloomberg, David Glovin and Andrew Martin: Manafort Prosecutors Have Questions About $1 Million Condo Loan http://bloom.bg/2MWl6xs
DailyBeast: Federal Prosecutors Probing National Enquirer’s Jeff Bezos Story: Report http://bit.ly/2BqCc1Z
DailyBeast, Michael Daly: Bezos Could Put National Enquirer Brass in Jail http://bit.ly/2N13DEc
// ‘D*ck pic’ threat looks like a crime in New York. That could void AMI’s deal with feds and let them use everything David Pecker and Dylan Howard said.
DailyBeast, Lachlan Markay, Asawin Suebsaeng and Maxwell Tani: Private Eyes Detail Inner Workings of National Enquirer ‘Blackmail’ Machine http://bit.ly/2UNBqDp
// Threatening to reveal Jeff Bezos’ “dick p*ck” was just the latest strong-arm tactic. “The nice way of calling it was quid pro quo,” one veteran said, “but really it was blackmail.”
Politico, Josh Gerstein: Mueller: Manafort downplayed Russian associate’s conduct even after plea deal http://politi.co/2I04JkI
Vox, Andrew Prokop: Mueller’s team discusses pardons and the Trump administration in a new Manafort transcript http://bit.ly/2GiUqqd
// What the new document tells us about the Mueller investigation.
5:28p 🐣 RT @MuellerSheWrote Anyone have eyes on the ground? This is the second report I’ve heard of this, but no photos or MSM coverage. @CNN @ShimonPro @MSNBC
⋙ 2:54p 🐣 RT @M_Quirk The Kushner residence in Long Branch New Jersey appears as if it is being raided by the FBI #KushnerRaid
⋙⋙ 🐣 RT @M_Quirk This is the primary residence of Charlie Kushner, Jared’s father
TheObserver, John Schindler: Inside the Spy Scandal at the Heart of Jeff Bezos’ War With the National Enquirer http://bit.ly/2Bs8g5D
🐣 RT @NatashaBertrand Saudi state minister for foreign affairs (former foreign minister) responds to questions about Saudi/AMI relationship, calls it “a soap opera” but hedges when asked whether the Saudis played a role in the leaked Bezos stories. “I doubt it,” he says.
⋙ 🐣 RT @yarabayoumy Saudi’s Jubeir on AMI/National Enquirer: “It’s a soap opera.” Asked if KSA played any role urging David Pecker/AMI to leak negative stories about Bezos: “I doubt it”, followed by “As far as I know, flat no.” ¤ Read @TheAtlantic’s story on the saga here:
⋙ ⋙ TheAtlantic, Alana Semuels: Jeff Bezos Brings the Receipts http://bit.ly/2UOx2nr
// The Amazon founder is at war with a tabloid.
TheAtlantic, Alana Semuels: Jeff Bezos Brings the Receipts http://bit.ly/2UOx2nr
// The Amazon founder is at war with a tabloid.
NYT (Mar 2018): Wooing Saudi Business, Tabloid Mogul Had a Powerful Friend: Trump http://nyti.ms/2GgoR0e
// 3/29/2018
WaPo: Ivanka Trump has ‘zero concern’ about Mueller probe, plays down pursuit of Trump Tower in Moscow http://wapo.st/2DZHdQz
NBC: Amazon’s Jeff Bezos accuses National Enquirer owner of ‘extortion and blackmail’ http://nbcnews.to/2DiZEyd
// Emails published by Bezos appear to show that the tabloid publisher threatened to publish embarrassing photos if Washington Post owner didn’t back off an investigation.
⭕ 7 Feb 2019
ForeignAffairs, Konstantin Skorkin: Putin’s Game Plan in Ukraine http://fam.ag/2WVgxIj
// How Moscow Aims to Force Concessions Out of Kiev
MotherJones, Mark Follman and Hannah Levintova: The NRA Welcomed Maria Butina—Even As She Worked to Arm Anti-American Thugs Abroad http://bit.ly/2WORSoN
// While NRA leaders embraced her, Butina denounced US sanctions and advised a militia group helping Putin seize Crimea.
🐣 RT @BillKristol Re-reading Bezos’s post, I’m struck that he goes out of his way to note AMI’s Trump and Saudi connections, which in the past have been “mixe[d]… all together.” Bezos seems to believe Trump and the Saudis are relevant to understanding what happened here.
⋙ 💙💙 Medium, Jeff Bezos: No thank you, Mr. Pecker http://bit.ly/2UJslv6
VanityFair, Emily Jane Fox: “I Am Disgusted”: Behind the Scenes of Trump’s Increasingly Scrutinized $107 Million Inauguration http://bit.ly/2Bpr0m8
// Stephanie Winston Wolkoff was the mastermind event producer behind Trump’s inaugural celebration, which has since come under S.D.N.Y. investigation. Now, taped conversations reveal Wolkoff’s concerns with how money was being spent, the general chaos of the process, the involvement of the Trump family, and the people in charge, namely Rick Gates and Tom Barrack.
NYT: Year Before Killing, Saudi Prince Told Aide He Would Use ‘a Bullet’ on Jamal Khashoggi http://nyti.ms/2Gx6yTB intelligence intercepts
📊 CNN Poll: Almost everyone wants a public report on Mueller’s findings http://cnn.it/2DZLzr6 87% say investigators should release a public report, including 80% of Republicans
WaPo: Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos accuses National Enquirer of extortion over intimate photos http://wapo.st/2TEAhxA
Bezos, who owns The Washington Post, wrote that the Enquirer wanted him to make a false public statement that he and his security consultant, Gavin de Becker, “have no knowledge or basis for suggesting that AMI’s coverage was politically motivated or influenced by political forces.”
Bezos declined to do so. Instead, he published what he said were emails from Enquirer executives to a lawyer representing de Becker. In one, top Enquirer editor Dylan Howard appears to suggest that the tabloid would publish a series of photos of Bezos and of Sanchez, some of them salacious, if AMI’s terms weren’t met.
“I wanted to describe to you the photos obtained during our newsgathering,” Howard wrote, going on to say that the Enquirer had a “below the belt selfie” of Bezos, among other shots. Howard added, “It would give no editor pleasure to send this email. I hope common sense can prevail — and quickly.” …
AMI’s chief executive, David Pecker, has had a long friendship with President Trump, who has repeatedly attacked Bezos, Amazon and The Washington Post. Pecker directed the Enquirer to write favorable stories about Trump during the 2016 presidential campaign, while paying $150,000 to former Playboy model Karen McDougal to suppress her claim of a long-running affair with Trump.
On Jan. 31, de Becker was quoted in the Daily Beast suggesting that the Enquirer’s pursuit of Bezos was politically motivated. …
Bezos’s public letter seems to suggest that federal agents should investigate whether AMI may have violated the terms of its non-prosecution agreement with prosecutors in Manhattan over its role in the 2016 hush money payments. …
In addition, he included emails from AMI’s deputy general counsel, Jon Fine, detailing a list of terms under which AMI said it would withhold publication of the photos. One of those terms was a statement from Bezos and de Becker “affirming that they have no knowledge or basis for suggesting that [AMI’s] coverage was politically motivated or influenced by political forces.”
In his post on Medium, Bezos called his ownership of The Post “a complexifier” for him. He wrote that it’s “unavoidable that certain powerful people who experience Washington Post news coverage will wrongly conclude I am their enemy. President Trump is one of those people, obvious by his many tweets. Also, The Post’s essential and unrelenting coverage of the murder of its columnist Jamal Khashoggi is undoubtedly unpopular in certain circles.”
🐣 RT @kylegriffin1 87% of Americans say investigators should release a public Mueller report, just 9% say they should not, according to CNN. ¤ Support for a public release is at 80% among Republicans and those who approve of Trump, 92% among Democrats, 88% among independents.
USAToday, Frank Clemente and William Rice: Donald Trump’s tax returns would answer 4 serious questions about his fitness and our laws http://bit.ly/2TBzWM9
WaPo, Joyce Vance and Matthew Miller: The Mueller investigation has sprouted. Therein lies the jeopardy for Trump. http://wapo.st/2tckBpW
// It’s not the crime; it’s the offspring of the crime
TheGuardian, Ben Jacobs: Bezos blackmail claims add new twist to tale of Trump, Russia and the media http://bit.ly/2WOthjW
// Trump’s vitriol toward Amazon CEO and long ties to National Enquirer collided last month, when tabloid ran story on Bezos’s affair
CNN: As Mueller probe winds down, House Trump investigation powers up http://cnn.it/2tce3I0
🔊 NPR: ‘NYT’ Reporter Covering Trump: We’ve Almost ‘Lost The Ability To Be Shocked’ [Audio] http://n.pr/2DYQmJm Terry Gross interviews NYT’s Michael Schmidt
≣ CNN: Read: Transcript of closed-door Manafort hearing http://cnn.it/2WQ4A6s 143p
// A federal court released a partial transcript from Paul Manafort’s four-and-a-half hour sealed court hearing held on Monday.
Spiegel, Christoph Scheunemann and Jörg Schmitt [GER]: Dossier at Heart of Trump Scandal Still Dogs President http://bit.ly/2WP52lJ
// At the heart of Donald Trump’s Russia scandal is a mysterious dossier prepared by a former British intelligence agent. Many of the suspicions in the papers have been confirmed and have hounded his presidency for two years now.
TheGuardian/AP: Democrats launch new investigation into Trump’s finances and Russia links http://bit.ly/2WODugb
// Announcement comes the day after Trump criticized ‘ridiculous partisan investigations’ in his State of the Union speech
WaPo: Sergei Millian, identified as an unwitting source for the Steele dossier, sought proximity to Trump’s world in 2016 http://wapo.st/2WP30C7
🔆 This❗️⋙ Politico: Senate Intelligence chairman: No evidence of Trump-Russia collusion http://politi.co/2Djq2b8 Senator Richard Burr (R-NC)
“If we write a report based upon the facts that we have, then we don’t have anything that would suggest there was collusion by the Trump campaign and Russia,” Burr told CBS.
Still, the senator said some questions raised over the investigation could occupy the committee “for the next decade,” and that portions of the final report could be so classified that they are never revealed to the public. Burr said his committee is “close to pushing out the door” a report on the Obama administration’s response to Russian election interference, a release that the chairman said could come within a “matter of weeks.”
Burr also described an environment of bipartisanship within the committee, which he oversees with Vice Chair Mark Warner (D-Va.). Burr told CBS he found it difficult to believe the committee would splinter along partisan lines, as was the case in the House Intelligence Committee’s Russia investigation, which was shuttered by its then-GOP majority last year.
DailyBeast, Lachlan Markay: White House Waives Ethics Rules for Its New Lawyers http://bit.ly/2WJaKWd
// Pat Cipollone and Patrick Philbin were excused from provisions of a law that would bar them from making decisions that could affect the financial interests of past employers.
DailyBeast, Betsy Woodruff: ‘They Hate This Guy’: Matt Whitaker Braces for Showdown With Dems http://bit.ly/2TAdPFW
// ‘We don’t know what we’re up against with the House Judiciary Committee,’ one Justice Department source told The Daily Beast. ‘We have no idea.’
⭕ 6 Feb 2019
Bloomberg: Trump Wanted $20 Million for 2006 Moscow Deal: Developer http://bloom.bg/2GoVcBf
● Ukrainian-Russian provides new details of an early negotiation
● Pavel Fuks describes meeting Trump, hosting children in Moscow
🐣 RT @justinhendrix Richard Nixon, 1974: “I believe the time has come to bring that investigation and the other investigations of the matter to an end.” ¤ Donald Trump, 2019: “If there is going to be peace and legislation, there cannot be war and investigation.” ¤ Both beg for investigations to end: 💽 https://twitter.com/justinhendrix/status/1093134844572459008/photo/1
NBC: On Trump’s calendar, just 17 intelligence briefings in 85 days http://nbcnews.to/2GeKXQy
// U.S. officials also say Trump does not regularly read the written intelligence briefing sent over daily.
DailyBeast, Betsy Woodruff and Erin Banco: Paul Erickson, Russian Agent Maria Butina’s Boyfriend, Indicted for Fraud http://bit.ly/2SvgnIe
// The federal indictment in South Dakota alleges that he ran a criminal scheme from 1996 to 2018 using a chain of assisted living homes.
NYPost: Trump associate and Maria Butina’s ex Paul Erickson indicted http://nyp.st/2MXgG9G
WSJ: OPEC Pursues Formal Pact With Russia http://on.wsj.com/2ScOyoK
// An alliance with a 10-nation group led by Moscow would transform the cartel, which is under pressure from Trump and U.S. producers
💙💙 Salon, Heather Digby Parton: Final stages of the Russia probe: Trump is under assault from all directions http://bit.ly/2WGQNzj
// As Mueller untangles the Russia web, prosecutors probe Trump’s company and inauguration. He’s running scared
Bloomberg: Trump Wanted $20 Million for 2006 Moscow Deal, Developer Says http://bloom.bg/2GoVcBf
● Ukrainian-Russian provides new details of an early negotiation
● Pavel Fuks describes meeting Trump, hosting children in Moscow
Politico: House Intel votes to send witness transcripts to Mueller for possible perjury charges http://politi.co/2DZpk4r
Politico: Schumer: Trump is ‘scared’ of congressional oversight http://politi.co/2BkiRzi
TheHill: Schiff hits back at Trump: He’s ‘terrified’ of House Russia probe http://bit.ly/2Sg9hry
Newsweek, Cristina Maza: Donald Trump Was in Negotiations to Build Mall in Russia as Far Back as the 1990s, Former Moscow Mayor Says http://bit.ly/2MTAbj9
WIRED, Garrett Graff: What Robert Mueller Knows—and Isn’t Telling Us http://bit.ly/2WLTkrX
DailyBeast, Spencer Ackerman: House Intel Democrats Just Restarted and Supercharged the Trump-Russia Probe http://bit.ly/2t9bAxK
// Armed with subpoena power, Schiff will look at whether anyone connected to Trump was at risk of being co-opted by a foreign power—and that’s going to have an expansive scope.
WaPo: New Trump-Russia probe will focus on reports of money laundering, ‘financial compromise,’ Schiff says http://wapo.st/2t7jQOZ
NYT: House Expands Russia Inquiry as Pelosi Declares Democrats Will Not Be Cowed http://nyti.ms/2RHushm
🐣 RT @NatashaBertrand Schiff: The House Intel Committee’s Russia investigation “will focus principally on five interconnected lines of inquiry, beginning with these incomplete or unexamined investigative threads:”
Text Block: https://twitter.com/NatashaBertrand/status/1093194527198900227/photo/1
🐣 I know Virginia lies at the heart of a national media market etc, but the non-stop coverage of state scandals has drowned out important news:
1) CNN on US arms going to Al Queda via Saudis,
2) BuzzFeed dump of docs proving collusion over Trump Tower Moscow
@MSNBC @CNN @NBC
🐣 RT @MuellerSheWrote Schiff postpones Cohen’s testimony -> 2/28 “in the interest of the investigation.” Sounds like Mueller wants to get the other transcripts and charge everyone that lied about the Moscow Tower (like Junior?) before they talk to Cohen and risk leaks. #beans
⋙ TheHill: House Intel panel postpones Cohen testimony http://bit.ly/2SuddEK
🐣 The only reason Trump offered up domestic goodies was so he could snatch them back again to hold as ransom for ending investigations which Congress is Constitutionally required to pursue. There’s no there there. There never was.
⭕ 5 Feb 2019
ForeignAffairs, Jill Lepore: A New Americanism ~ Why a Nation Needs a National Story http://fam.ag/2DqhHT2
WNYC: Confidential Memo: Company of Trump Inaugural Chair Tom Barrack Sought to Profit from Connection to Administration, Foreigners http://bit.ly/2SaJ9i1
WaPo: In dissonant State of the Union speech, Trump seeks unity while depicting ruin http://wapo.st/2WDTZLU
🐣 RT @matthewamiller This is really smart. First step in forcing the WH to formally declare executive privilege, which the House can then litigate, is a subpoena. Makes clear Whitaker can’t avoid answering q’s about conversations with Trump by just declining to.
⋙ 🐣 RT @kylegriffin1 Jerry Nadler says he may subpoena Matt Whitaker: “In an abundance of caution—to ensure that Mr. Whitaker both appears in the hearing room on Friday morning and answers our questions cleanly—I have asked the Committee to authorize me to issue a subpoena to compel his testimony.”
Salon, Igor Derysh: Russian-born lobbyist got “suspicious” payments right before and after June 2016 Trump Tower meeting http://bit.ly/2UGKDNJ Rinat Akhmetshin
// A Washington lobbyist and former Soviet officer who attended the famous meeting received unexplained payments
NYT: Firms Recruited by Paul Manafort Are Investigated Over Foreign Payments http://nyti.ms/2De9Is2
TheIndependent [UK]: Newly unearthed video shows Trump ‘meeting with Russians in Moscow in 1995’ over ‘building project’ http://ind.pn/2UHP2Qn
// Video alleges to show US president meeting with former Russian officials in Moscow to discuss building an underground mall
CBC [CA]: Chris Christie warned Trump not to ‘poke the bear’ by attacking Mueller investigation http://bit.ly/2Dep1B9
// Jared Kushner put ‘an axe to my head with Donald Trump,’ former governor says of firing
Politico: Dems revive push to shield Mueller from firing and make his final report public http://politi.co/2t6XnS3
// There’s growing Republican support for making Mueller’s findings public.
Vox, Andrew Prokop: The investigation into Trump’s inauguration money looks quite serious http://bit.ly/2TxacAz
//. The US Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York subpoenaed the inaugural committee on Monday.
LVSun Editorial: Despite his tough talk, Trump has been consistently soft on Russia http://bit.ly/2DbkjEs
DailyBeast/CPI: Poll: Two-Thirds of Americans Oppose Trump’s Withdrawal From Nuclear Pact http://bit.ly/2UHbOYP
// Univ of MD PollTrump wants out, says Russia has violated the treaty’s terms, but even most Republicans oppose withdrawal.
CNN: As Trump seeks an exit from Afghanistan, Moscow steps in http://cnn.it/2t5ZxBl
WaPo, Aaron Blake: The 7 big investigations of Trump, explained http://wapo.st/2HRzqbD
Reuters: As U.S. withdraws, top general warns on Islamic State threat in Syria http://reut.rs/2RHgQ5q “The remarks by U.S. General Joseph Votel, head of the U.S. military’s Central Command, represent the latest warning by current and former U.S. officials about the risk of a resurgence”
🔆 This❗️⋙ 💙💙 BuzzFeedNews: These Secret Files Show How The Trump Moscow Talks Unfolded While Trump Heaped Praise On Putin http://bit.ly/2DWQ2ed
// Ahead of Michael Cohen’s testimony, read the original paper trail behind the campaign to build Europe’s tallest tower in Moscow — and how it played out alongside Donald Trump’s presidential campaign.
Ahead of Michael Cohen’s testimony, read the original paper trail behind the campaign to build Europe’s tallest tower in Moscow — and how it played out alongside Donald Trump’s presidential campaign.
BuzzFeed News is today publishing a cache of internal Trump Organization documents that lay bare the secret negotiations that continued long after Cohen claimed the deal had been abandoned. The documents, many of which have been exclusively obtained by BuzzFeed News, reveal that — despite Trump’s claim that the development was never more than a passing notion — the effort to get the tower built was long-running, detail-oriented, and directly entwined with the ups and downs of his campaign.
As Trump went from rally to rally, vociferously denying any dealings in Russia, his representatives, Michael Cohen and his associate Felix Sater, worked with Trump Organization lawyers and even Ivanka Trump to push forward negotiations to build a 100-story edifice just miles from the Kremlin. The fixers believed they needed Putin’s support to pull off the lucrative deal, and they planned to use Trump’s public praise for him to help secure it. At the same time, they plotted to persuade Putin to openly declare his support for Trump’s candidacy. “If he says it we own this election,” Sater wrote to Cohen.
🐣 RT @krassenstein They Admitted COLLUSION! ¤ Felix Sater to Michael Cohen: ¤ “We can own this election. Michael my next steps are very sensitive with Putins very very close people, we can pull this off. Michael lets go. 2 boys from Brooklyn getting a USA president elected. This is good really good”
↥ ↧
💙💙 🐣 RT @krassenstein I know I am constantly claiming that this is what will bring Trump down, but this 284 page cache of emails, texts and communications between Felix Sater and Michael Cohen shows CLEAR Collusion. ¤ Oh… and I told you so!
⋙ DocCloud: Trump Tower Moscow Planning http://bit.ly/2Stn4dF 284p
⋙ 🐣 Just paged through it. This page really struck me … https://twitter.com/Auriandra/status/1092879550097301504/photo/1
↥ ↧
🐣 RT @krassenstein Don’t you dare tell em there is ‘NO COLLUSION’ ¤ Read this email from Felix Sater to Michael Cohen. ¤ Read it ALL! https://twitter.com/krassenstein/status/1092864407871328261/photo/1
TPM, Tierney Sneed: House Judiciary Chair Jerry Nadler (D-NY) Sets Stage For Matt Whitaker Subpoena Showdown http://bit.ly/2TwkLnr
TPM, Josh Kovensky and Allegra Kirkland: What Jumps Out From The Subpoena Of The Trump Inaugural Committee http://bit.ly/2WGPhwY
TPM, Josh Kovensky and Allegra Kirkland: What Jumps Out From The Subpoena Of The Trump Inaugural Committee http://bit.ly/2WGPhwY
🔊NewYorker: David Remnick on Putin’s Russia. [Podcast] http://bit.ly/2GbTV1a 21mins
ForeignAffairs, Eliot Cohen: America’s Long Goodbye http://fam.ag/2t8ZxAF
// Jan-Feb issue; The Real Crisis of the Trump Era
⭕ 4 Feb 2019
Slate, Mike Pesca: To Russia With Love http://bit.ly/2MSALO2
// It may not be a smoking gun, but the Trump campaign team was so foolish as to stun even the Kremlin officials they spoke with.
NYT, Michelle Goldberg: Latvia Above Us, Croatia Below http://nyti.ms/2DT7wI5
// Under Trump, America is no longer in the top tier of democratic countries.
WaPo, Dan Balz and Griff Witte: Europeans fear Trump may threaten not just the transatlantic bond, but the state of their union http://wapo.st/2UFh7bd
MiddleEastMonitor: Russian FM: Discussing launching Syria Constitutional Committee in Iran http://bit.ly/2D73ASA
NYT, Franz Sedelmeyer: The Putin I Knew; the Putin I Know http://nyti.ms/2WJL3F5
// I met Vladimir Putin and trusted him in the early 1990s, when he was deputy mayor of St. Petersburg. Now that he’s Russia’s president, he’s different. He’s no friend of democracy.
WaPo, Max Boot: The problem with Trump’s “America First”: If the US is pursuing only its self-interest, why should other countries help us? And if other countries don’t help us, how can we achieve our national security objectives? My @PostOpinions column:
⋙ WaPo, Max Boot: Trump doesn’t get it: America pays the cost for betraying allies http://wapo.st/2t60Pwn
🐣 RT @ProudResister This is a big development:
SDNY prosecutors are investigating @realDonaldTrump’s inaugural committee for crimes related to…
— Mail Fraud
— Wire Fraud
— False Statements
— Money Laundering
— Conspiracy to defraud the United States
#TrumpCrimeFamily
VICE, Greg Walters: Don Jr. and Jared Kushner’s congressional testimonies are finally going to Mueller http://bit.ly/2SbanFd
WaPo, Devlin Barrett: End of Mueller investigation could spark battle between Justice Dept. and Congress over release of special counsel’s report http://wapo.st/2DT5tE2
🐣 RT @CREWcrew Maybe it’s a coincidence that so many Russians with connections to crime have bought properties from Trump. ¤ Maybe.
🌀 https://twitter.com/CREWcrew/status/1092618865367048193/photo/1
WSJ: Lawyers for Trump Inaugural Committee Receive Subpoena for Documents http://on.wsj.com/2DVS1iH
// Manhattan U.S. attorney’s office has been investigating president’s inaugural fund
NYT: Trump Inaugural Committee Ordered to Hand Over Documents to Federal Investigators http://nyti.ms/2BhVXJ2
Slate, Mike Pesca: To Russia With Love [Audio] http://bit.ly/2GmteGd
// It may not be a smoking gun, but the Trump campaign team was so foolish as to stun even the Kremlin officials they spoke with.
ABCNews: New York prosecutors seek records from Trump inauguration committee: Sources http://abcn.ws/2DUrthR
🐣 RT @jedshug Akhmetshin is a former Soviet spy who lobbies for Russian oligarchs and money launderers against sanctions… who just happens to meet Kushner, Jr, and Manafort in Trump Tower. ¤ Why on earth is a Trump campaign insider paying him big money in 2016-17?
⋙ BuzzFeedNews: A Lobbyist At The Trump Tower Meeting Received Half A Million Dollars In Suspicious Payments http://bit.ly/2UEjSta
// A bank flagged transactions, including large cash deposits, made before and after Rinat Akhmetshin attended the 2016 Trump Tower meeting.
🐣 RT @TeaPainUSA This is the hold-up that may have kept Don Jr. from bein’ indicted so far. The House Intel Committee will vote on Wednesday to send the transcripts to Mueller’s team.
If Mueller gets these on Weds, pay close attention if there’s a Grand Jury on Thurs.
↥ ↧
🐣 RT @NatashaBertrand .@RepAdamSchiff said last week that the committee will vote to send “all of these transcripts of all the witnesses to Bob Mueller so that he can consider whether additional perjury charges are warranted.”
⋙ 🐣 RT @NatashaBertrand here we go… Members of House Intel will gather on Wednesday at 10 a.m. to vote on the “transmission of Certain Committee Transcripts to the Department of Justice.” http://bit.ly/2Sq1A1v
TheObserver, John Schindler: In Moscow, There’s No Longer Any Line Between Spies, Lies & Terrorists http://bit.ly/2TxnBsm
PBS: AP fact check: Trump’s untruths on Russia probe, wall, jobs http://to.pbs.org/2MPmGkC
PublicIntegrity, Alex Finley: The Trump team’s persistent lying about Russia creates counterintelligence challenge http://bit.ly/2S8XUBR
WaPo, Steven Hall: I was in the CIA. Trump’s petty fights and insults will make us all less safe. http://wapo.st/2MPTLwC
Reuters, Polina Devitt and Arshad Mohammed: Questions linger over Deripaska’s Rusal influence after U.S. deal http://reut.rs/2HRX0Vy
⭕ 3 Feb 2019
MSN: Trump said ‘you have to get rid of’ the Russia probe and parroted a Kremlin talking point in a wide-ranging interview http://bit.ly/2UHNvtR
NBC: Trump says he doesn’t know if he wants Mueller report made public http://nbcnews.to/2BiJuEV
// It depends,” Trump said. “I have no idea what it’s going to say.”
TheHill, Douglas Schoen: Trump tension with intel community worsens threats of Russia and China http://bit.ly/2UEajKG
🐣 RT @FaceTheNation When asked if he would make the Mueller report public, @realDonaldTrump says it’s “totally up to to the Attorney General.”
Text Block: /https://twitter.com/FaceTheNation/status/1092192158499684357photo/1
🐣 RT @MalcolmNance Must read thread: Is the 2020 election already under attack by Weaponized AI pushing proTrump bots? Seems we are on @YouTube
⋙ 🐣 RT @smartereveryday I’m an Engineer who loves America.
I just figured something out I want to talk about it.
Let’s talk about weaponized bots, algorithm exploitation, countermeasures, and counter-countermeasures.
📌 https://twitter.com/smartereveryday/status/1091833011262423040
WaPo/AP: Where the investigations related to President Trump stand http://wapo.st/2SmWzqp
BBC, Gareth Evans: Robert Mueller: America’s most mysterious public figure http://bbc.in/2DSuu2b
🚫 RussiaInsider: Trump Is Right: The Intelligence Community Needs to ‘Go Back to School’ http://bit.ly/2S6DUQ9
// “The current crop of national intelligence chiefs are careerists who have risen to the top through their willingness to conform to a system that is designed not to challenge conventional thinking”
https://twitter.com/RussiaInsider/status/1091956468964679680/photo/1
//➔ disinfo but I like this drawing lol
⭕ 2 Feb 2019
NYT, Katie Benner: Trump Says He Is Not a Target in Investigations, but the Question Is Complicated http://nyti.ms/2BcQAuz
🐣 RT @SethAbramson Putin wanted out of the pact. Trump obliged him by going first and making Putin’s action seem reasonable and warranted. Another win for Putin—another loss for America. And still we can’t get one Republican in D.C. to do more than frown slightly and give the dirt a desultory kick. 📌 https://twitter.com/SethAbramson/status/1091740727720271873
ABCNews: Putin ally suggests Seychelles meeting with Erik Prince more than chance encounter over a beer http://abcn.ws/2t2gjRK no kidding
CNN: Author of controversial Nunes memo joining National Security Council http://cnn.it/2HQPyKq
NYT: Trump Sought a Loan During the 2016 Campaign. Deutsche Bank Said No. http://nyti.ms/2SiuG2M
WSJ: Deutsche Bank in Late 2016 Raced to Shed Loan It Made to Russian Bank VTB http://on.wsj.com/2WLsmAO
// German lender sold a chunk of the loan to Russian financial institution Alfa Bank but Citigroup took a pass, documents and people familiar with the matter indicate
🐣 RT @W7VOA “Two intelligence officers even reported that they have been warned to avoid giving the President intelligence assessments that contradict stances he has taken in public,” reports @TIME.
💙💙 ⋙ TIME, John Walcott: ‘Willful Ignorance.’ Inside President Trump’s Troubled Intelligence Briefings http://bit.ly/2HIzkD0
TheAtlantic, Natasha Bertrand: Russia Is Attacking the U.S. System From Within http://bit.ly/2GgsaUi
// A new filing by Special Counsel Robert Mueller shows how Russia uses the federal courts to go after its adversaries.
Politico, Jack Shafer: Week 89: The Russians Meddle and the Trumps Soft Pedal http://politi.co/2WD5MKo
// CNN broke stories on stolen files from Mueller team and Don Jr.’s mysterious calls. And for once the Trumps didn’t scream “Fake News.”
WaPo, Aaron Blake: Why Putin won’t be mad about Trump pulling out of the INF Treaty http://wapo.st/2Toogwo
⭕ 1 Feb 2019
WaysAndMeans: Trump Proposal Threatens Due Process in Social Security Appeals | Ways and Means Committee http://bit.ly/2t69xus
// Proposed Regulation Would Eliminate Americans’ Right to In-Person Hearing on Disability Appeals, Threatening Earned Benefits
NYT, Linda Qiu: Fact-Checking President Trump’s Interview With The New York Times http://nyti.ms/2MUIn2V
// In the wide-ranging interview, the president made numerous inaccurate or misleading statements about trade, the military and border security, among other topics.
CNN: Author of controversial Nunes memo joining National Security Council http://cnn.it/2HQPyKq
VICE, Greg Walters: Why Mueller’s final move could be a grand conspiracy case http://bit.ly/2RyhemT
// The Watergate and Iran-Contra scandals provide clues to the Russia endgame.
Seth Waxman, a former federal prosecutor based in Washington, D.C., said Mueller has laid the groundwork to incorporate his previous allegations into one overarching, broad conspiracy.
Waxman pointed out that under the law, criminal conspiracies can evolve and take on new members as they develop. So a plot that began exclusively among Russians to hack the Democrats in 2015 could be said to have morphed and grown by mid-2016, when Americans may have joined in to help coordinate the release of the emails.
“I think Mueller has his eyes on one big prize: a vast conspiracy to interfere with the 2016 election,” Waxman said. “I think we’re going to see a new conspiracy in which the things that we’ve already seen charged are included.” …
“As we read Mueller’s theory under [the general conspiracy statute], as long as they acted knowingly to join a scheme to deceive the U.S. government to frustrate its enforcement authority and took some action in pursuit of that scheme, they too would be guilty,” Kohse and Wittes wrote. “Mueller’s theory involves a well-established legal doctrine that has been deployed in roughly analogous situations, and it is potentially extremely powerful.”
Some of the targeted Americans could be members of Trump’s family, according to Peter Zeidenberg, a former prosecutor and deputy special counsel for the prosecution of former White House aide Scooter Libby.
“Mueller is building a conspiracy case that’s likely to ensnare Trump and his family,” Zeidenberg wrote in a December column for USA Today. “In short order, expect to see a case of conspiracy to interfere with the 2016 election to be laid out in court.” …
SFChronicle: Pelosi: Trump’s suspension of arms treaty with Russia is ‘irresponsible’ http://bit.ly/2UztkxZ
CNN, Eliot Engel and Adam Smith: US pulling out of the INF treaty rewards Putin, hurts NATO http://cnn.it/2sZTm1E
NPR: New Information From Senate Investigation Adds Clarity To Trump Tower Meeting http://n.pr/2t3U26e
ForeignPolicy, Michael Hirsh: Trump Once Wanted to Negotiate With Russia Over Nukes. Then Mueller Happened. http://bit.ly/2D45JOJ
// The U.S. president might be too hemmed in by the Russia probe to attempt a successor to the INF or START treaties.
Esquire, Charles Pierce: This Administration* Is Playing Russian Roulette for Idiots http://bit.ly/2Gi8YFA
// The US is suspending participation in a Cold War-era nuclear treaty with Russia. This is an odds-on decision to start another nuclear arms race in Europe.
WaPo, George Will: Only Democrats can save this president http://wapo.st/2WzW4Zc
WaPo: McConnell privately cautions Trump about emergency declaration on border wall http://wapo.st/2RuacQ8
TheHill: Five takeaways on Trump decision to suspend nuclear treaty with Russia http://bit.ly/2DPRFKo
● To Trump, this is Russia’s ‘final chance’
● Door is open for new U.S. missiles
● Allies back U.S. move, but worry about future
● Questions swirl on separate pact
● China casts shadow over decision
CNN: Adelsons give $500,000 to pro-Trump legal fund that helps aides caught up in Russia probe http://cnn.it/2D1X27G
NewYorker, Susan Glasser: Trump Lost the Shutdown, But At Least God Made Him President, and He’s Building That Wall http://bit.ly/2Tsdxku
TheGuardian: Donald Trump confirms US withdrawal from INF nuclear treaty http://bit.ly/2Bfh7Y6
// Announcement gives Russia 180 days to destroy violating missiles and launchers to avoid new arms race
DailyBeast, Olivia Messer: Speed Read: The 7 Craziest Bits in Trump’s New York Times Interview http://bit.ly/2GhgCQv
// He FIRED Mattis. His ‘failing’ nemesis owes him ‘one great story.’ And George Washington ran a business as president, too. That and more from the Times’ Oval Office report.
Vox, Andrew Prokop: The news about Donald Trump Jr.’s mysterious calls before the Trump Tower meeting, explained http://bit.ly/2t1n8TF
// The president is claiming vindication after new reports, but Democrats still have questions.
NYMag, Jonathan Chait: Donald Trump Jr. Called a ‘Family Friend’ Who Was Also a Link to Moscow http://nym.ag/2SmDLYq Howard Lorber
The recipient of one of the phone calls was Howard Lorber who is, yes, a “family friend.” But he is also a longtime point of contact in Trump’s ambitions to build a tower in Moscow, which date back to the 1980s. Lorber accompanied Trump on a 1996 visit to Moscow to explore building there. “Howard has major investments in Russia,” Trump boasted to a Russian politician at the time. As Craig Unger notes, Lorber’s dealings in Russia put him in contact with Russian mobsters.
WaPo: Russian escort says she gave Trump info to Russian tycoon http://wapo.st/2t1XkHe Nastya Rybka
🐣 RT @Newsweek Donald Trump claims Trump Tower Moscow doesn’t count as “business” with Russia https://trib.al/W3OoN3u
MotherJones: The Trump Administration Said It Would Impose Tough New Sanctions on Russia. It Still Hasn’t. http://bit.ly/2TrBzMu
// It has yet to fulfill its pledge to punish the Kremlin for the poisoning of Sergei Skripal.
🐣 RT @nycsouthpaw Good morning moon,
Good morning stars,
Good morning camera crews staking out Jerome Corsi’s house in rental cars
NYT: Excerpts From Trump’s Interview With The Times http://nyti.ms/2G0p2MZ
NBC: Trump’s foreign policy faces growing dissent in Congress http://nbcnews.to/2WzMvK3
// On issues ranging from Syria to North Korea and NATO, Trump’s policies are being rebuked by both parties.
🐣 RT @McFaul Not in America’s national interest. Remember, Reagan signed this one!
⋙ CNN: US expected to announce US suspension of landmark INF arms control treaty http://cnn.it/2MLhFt8
⭕ 31 Jan 2019
LawfareBlog, Benjamin Wittes: What an Old Watergate Document Can Teach the House Judiciary Committee http://bit.ly/2sZtdzU
💽 MSNBC, RachelMaddowShow: Fading NRA panics over exposed ties to Russia http://on.msnbc.com/2D79bIK
// Rachel Maddow looks at the waning fortunes of the NRA and the latest round of infighting as their infiltration by Russian interests, including admitted Russian agent Maria Butina, are exposed.
NewYorker, Isaac Chotiner: Does Democracy Need Truth?: A Conversation with the Historian Sophia Rosenfeld http://bit.ly/2Bd2LaI
NewYorker, David Rohde: Is Trump Trying to Bully America’s Intelligence Agencies Into Silence? http://bit.ly/2UEX6BJ
Bloomberg, Travis Tritten: ‘Erratic’ Trump Undermines Iran, Russia Policies, Report Says http://bit.ly/2t0b70M
● Ex-Trump adviser McMaster decries `partisan discourse’
President’s `unilateral whims’ seen putting progress at risk
NBC: ISIS could reclaim territory in months without military pressure, warns Pentagon in draft report http://nbcnews.to/2UzKdZE
// A draft report says ISIS wants to regain land in Syria, and that with no military pressure, the terror group could retake land in months.
🐣 RT @DeadlineWH “Jared Kushner [turned] out to be the George Costanza of the Trump administration…every piece of advice he gives is exactly and horribly wrong, including his advice to fire Comey… & that firing Flynn would end the ‘Russia thing'” – @RonaldKlain w/ @NicolleDWallace 💽 https://twitter.com/DeadlineWH/status/1091100485099159555/photo/1
🐣 RT @MuellerSheWrote Posting without speculation, because we don’t know if these are related to Mueller. They are in DC. Who is on your Fantasy Indictment Team this week? Junior? Superseding Stone? Superseding Manafort? Erickson? Rando? #FantasyIndictmentLeague #FelonyFriday 📌 https://twitter.com/MuellerSheWrote/status/1091167449486024705
⋙ 🐣 RT @WMerthin These are all CR cases, which generally indicates an indictment. Two of them also have case flag B, which is the case flag for an indictment. The cat B’s were filed on 29th and 30th. The other two were filed yesterday and today. Let me know if that isn’t clear. https://twitter.com/WMerthon/status/1091161265324605440/photo/1-2
🐣 RT @muellertimepod Four more sealed indictments were filed on the DC Court docket today. Cross your fingers #MuellerFriday
🐣 RT @kylegriffin1 Intel Committee member Rep. Jackie Speier: Trump is “becoming a national security threat himself.”
⋙ 💽 MSNBC, AndreaMitchellReports: Rep. Speier: President Trump ‘becoming a national security threat himself’ http://on.msnbc.com/2BeLY7b
// President Trump is lashing out at his own intelligence appointees, pushing back on Tuesday’s testimony from the CIA director and Director of National Intelligence before a Senate committee – both contradicting the president on subjects ranging from North Korea to Syria and ISIS. California Congresswoman Jackie Speier, who serves on the Intelligence Committee, joins Andrea Mitchell to discuss.
🐣 RT @Mimirocah1 Bank & financial records aren’t common evidence of obstruction & witness tampering crimes like those in Stone indictment. Could suggest other possible crimes were listed in the search warrant application. Maybe explains why Trump/Graham are so worked up about the search?
🐣 RT @maziehirono Our country faces real national security challenges from Russia. China, North Korea, Iran. We rely on our intel agencies to tell us the truth. They did that on Tuesday before the Senate Intel Committee. Trump attacks their truths at our country’s peril. Up to us to fight back.
🐣 RT @MarkWarner The media didn’t make the President wake up on Wednesday and trash the intelligence community on Twitter. No tweet or Oval Office photo-op can undo two years of the President’s total disrespect for the intelligence community.
🐣 RT @TheBeatWithAri Stolen DNC, Clinton emails had “very strategic releases” that “would have required somebody inside” the Trump campaign “to have strategized” Watergate prosecutor @nickakerman on Roger Stone indictment:
💽 https://twitter.com/TheBeatWithAri/status/1091111079181201409/photo/1
🐣 RT @kylegriffin1 Nancy Pelosi on whether Russia has compromising information on Trump: “I think it’s a question. By the way. I’ve been asking that question for two years … I’ve always said that. What is this? What is this? Something is wrong with this picture.” Via ABC
💽 https://twitter.com/kylegriffin1/status/1091011989994905600/photo/1
🐣 RT @AngrierWHStaff Trump’s feed is abso-fucking-lutely nuts today, but there’s a strategy to it. Iran! China! Wall is started! Can’t build wall, Dems blocking! We’re gonna build the wall anyway! Abortion! Did I mention the wall that the Dems are blocking is almost done?
“LOOK ANYWHERE BUT HERE!”
🐣 RT @craigunger 1/Fascinating that “blocked #” phone call circa 2016 Trump Tower meeting went to real estate developer Howard Lorber who was much more than just a family friend. In ’96, when Trump went to RU to try to develop Trump Tower in Moscow, Lorber came w his partner Bennett LeBow.
📌 https://twitter.com/craigunger/status/1091176835407335424
🐣 RT @MuellerSheWrote Alright. I wasn’t gonna, but if an indictment drops tomorrow and Miller met with the grand jury today, it’s Stone. Otherwise super space beans on Assange or Erickson. And a side of beans on an emergency declaration to distract. #FelonyFriday [link]
🐣 RT @AngrierWHstaff Trump’s been panicking all day. I wonder who’s going to jail tomorrow? Man I hope it’s Jr.
Inquisitr, Jonathan Vankin: Who Is Howard Lorber? Donald Trump’s Russia-Tied ‘Best Friend’ Got Call From Trump Jr. Ahead Of Tower Meeting http://bit.ly/2G2LTr3 citing WaPo
// Donald Trump Jr. called Howard Lorber after he learned that Russia was offering ‘incriminating’ information about Hillary Clinton at a meeting held in Trump Tower.
Lorber — who was named to Trump’s campaign economic advisory council about two months after the Trump Tower meeting between Trump Jr. and the Russians — also has “deep ties to Russia,” according to a Washington Post profile.
↥ ↧
⋙ WaPo, Josh Rogin (2016): Another Trump adviser with deep ties to Russia http://wapo.st/2DLVfW7 //➔ blocked number called by Don Jr after Trump Tower meeting
// 8/10/2016
Forbes, Steve Denning: The Strange Places Trump Gets His Intelligence From http://bit.ly/2S4TtIt
Politico: Trump claims his intel chiefs were ‘misquoted’ when they publicly broke with him http://politi.co/2UzLJuJ
Politico: Dems ready first subpoena fight with Trump administration http://politi.co/2MJsxYP
// Lawmakers don’t expect Treasury to comply with their demand for documents on the decision to ease sanctions on companies tied to Oleg Deripaska.
Vox, Alex Ward: Trump just lied about what his intelligence officials said http://bit.ly/2WxE1mI
// He says you should read the “COMPLETE testimony.” The problem is it proves he’s wrong.
WaPo, Aaron Blake: Trump claims his intelligence chiefs said they were ‘totally misquoted.’ They spoke in public. http://wapo.st/2S1ZnK3
WaPo, Jacqueline Alemany: Power Up: Trump rift with his own intelligence chiefs widens global opening for Putin http://wapo.st/2CVczWR
💽 HuffPo: Nicolle Wallace Reads Very Long List Of The Times Donald Trump Has Taken Russia’s Side [Video] http://bit.ly/2WActwH
// “Here’s all the stuff Putin is getting,” said the MSNBC host.
CNN: Exclusive: Trump Jr.’s mysterious calls weren’t with his father http://cnn.it/2SlMbz6
💙💙 NewYorker, Masha Gessen: The Trump-Russia Investigation and the Mafia State http://bit.ly/2CWRDih
● Text Block: https://twitter.com/Auriandra/status/1091166406048141313/photo/1
What we are observing is not most accurately described as the subversion of American democracy by a hostile power. Instead, it is an attempt at state capture by an international crime syndicate. What unites Yanukovych, Veselnitskaya, Manafort, Stone, WikiLeaks’s Julian Assange, the Russian troll factory, the Trump campaign staffer George Papadopoulos and his partners in crime, the “Professor” (whose academic credentials are in doubt), and the “Female Russian National” (who appears to have fraudulently presented herself as Putin’s niece) is that they are all crooks and frauds. This is not a moral assessment, or an attempt to downplay their importance. It is an attempt to stop talking in terms of states and geopolitics and begin looking at Mafias and profits.
🐣 RT @maggieNYT NEWS: In an Oval Office intvw, POTUS tells @peterbakernyt and me that he’s essentially done negotiating w Congress,denies directing someone to coordinate w Stone on Wikileaks, says he never directed WH officials to order Kushner to get a security clearance
⋙ NYT: Trump, in Interview, Calls Wall Talks ‘Waste of Time’ and Dismisses Investigations http://nyti.ms/2HJs5Lh with audio
CNN, James Gagliano: Retired FBI agent: The Roger Stone raid was totally by the book http://cnn.it/2S0uwhe
WaPo, Josh Rogin: How Russia is corrupting the liberal world order http://wapo.st/2CVaquh
🐣 RT @JeffRathke Very informative thread on Intel Community threat assessments, from someone who knows. Via @conradtribble
⋙ 🐣 RT @EricBrewerM There’s a lot of bad info floating around out there about how the IC works and how it does the Worldwide Threat Assessment. So as someone who has helped draft these documents (including on issues like Iran!), let me try and set a few things straight in this thread: 1/ 📌 https://twitter.com/BrewerEricM/status/1090989219428872193
WaPo: It’s not just the White House: At Pentagon and State Dept., the press is out in the cold, too http://wapo.st/2sW1zUA
🐣 RT @BradMossEsq Stone is now subject to a protective order. He can’t talk about what the government shows him in terms of evidence prior to the trial.
⋙ 🐣 RT @big_cases New filing in United States v. Stone: Protective Order http://bit.ly/2BdcLRg https://twitter.com/big_cases/status/1091046172838510595/photo/1-4
JustSecurity, John Sipher and Benjamin Haas: Trump’s Moves Against the Intelligence Community Are Hurting U.S. National Security http://bit.ly/2sW1gZW
DailyBeast, Betsy Woodruff and Asawin Suebsaeng: White House Abruptly Canceled Trump’s Meeting With Intel Chiefs http://bit.ly/2UxmFEq
// The cancellation came a day after top officials gave testimony to congress seemingly contradicting key parts of the president’s foreign policy.
🐣 RT @Hardball The Senate delivered a rebuke to the President on Thursday by backing Senator McConnell’s amendment disapproving the withdrawal of troops from Afghanistan and Syria by a vote of 68-23.
⋙ MSNBC, Hardball: Senate votes against withdrawing troops from Syria, Afghanistan http://on.msnbc.com/2DMtxIJ
CNN, Katelyn Polantz: Court begins to fill in details of mystery Mueller case http://cnn.it/2sYSYAs
🐣 RT @tribelaw Trump just said we didn’t see and hear what we saw and heard his own Intelligence Chiefs tell Congress yesterday. This is what tyrants do. They try to get us to believe them over our own eyes and ears. This is the time to tell him to shove it.
NBC: ‘Whistleblower’ in White House security clearance office gets suspended http://nbcnews.to/2G1gQMr
// Tricia Newbold was suspended less than a week after NBC reported Jared Kushner’s top-secret security clearance was approved over staff objections.
HuffPo: Chris Cuomo: Donald Trump’s Distorted Reality Is A National Security Threat http://bit.ly/2UsuHyv
// The CNN host took the president to task over his latest attack on intelligence officials.
🐣 RT @selectedwisdom [Clint Watts] Russian subversion worked 2016 & now because Pres. Trump attacks his own appointed leaders. Trump is Divider-in-Chief, he & Putin both attack U.S. institutions, elected leaders. Trump puts faith in Putin, Kim Jung Un, Erdogan, MBS, but U.S. public servants get wrath. Why? https://twitter.com/selectedwisdom/status/1090621477928558592/photo/1
💙 Salon, Lucian Truscott IV: Mueller closes the circle of Russian collusion on Trump http://bit.ly/2WvHP7T (we shall see … )
// The next indictment will tie together the Russians, WikiLeaks, and the top of the Trump campaign
The indictment last Friday of long-time Republican bad boy and Trump political adviser Roger Stone marks the key turning point in Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation of Russian connections to Donald Trump and his campaign. Mueller has finally revealed the strategy he has been working on all along. He has finished indicting the people he has talked to, and now he’s turning to those he hasn’t.
… Mueller’s indictments of the Russians were not for “process crimes” at all, but rather for various specific crimes surrounding the underlying crime of conspiring to defraud the United States of America.The indictments of 13 Russians from the Internet Research Agency in St. Petersburg, and 12 Russian intelligence agents working for the Russian intelligence agency the GRU in Moscow are at the heart of Mueller’s overall strategy. He is has been investigating a conspiracy by the Russians and other “persons known and unknown to the grand jury,” to “interfere with the 2016 U.S. presidential election,” according to the specific wording of the indictments of the Russians.
Mueller is after this conspiracy: At one end were the Russians in Moscow and St. Petersburg, and at the other end were the “persons known and unknown” in the United States, all of whom are associated with the Trump campaign. Facilitating the two ends of the conspiracy was WikiLeaks, located in the Ecuadorian Embassy in London.
The next arrest and indictment you’re going to see from Mueller will be his biggest yet. One morning in the not too distant future, he’s going to sweep up everyone remaining who was associated with using the Democratic Party emails stolen by the Russians. Julian Assange will be indicted. So will Donald Trump Jr., Jared Kushner. Roger Stone will probably face a superseding indictment along with the others for defrauding the United States by conspiring with WikiLeaks and the Russian intelligence service, the GRU, to steal Democratic Party campaign documents and use them to interfere with the American presidential election of 2016, the same charge he made against the Russians. Mueller will probably follow Justice Department guidelines and the example set by Special Prosecutor Leon Jaworski in Watergate. He will probably not indict the president, but he will name him as an unindicted co-conspirator, just as Richard Nixon was in Watergate.
It’s going to be a jaw-dropping arrest and indictment because it has to be. Mueller can no longer issue indictments piecemeal and get guilty pleas or convictions one by one. This time, he must lay out a case that Trump and his campaign officials committed crimes that are so egregious, it will be impossible for the congress to fail to protect him from being fired. If Mueller were to indict Kushner alone, or Trump Jr. alone, it would be too easy for Trump to feign outrage and fire him. That’s why Mueller’s next move will be his last, and it will be the big one, sweeping up everyone who is left at once. …
Mueller has been building slowly to an indictment of people at the very top of the Trump campaign who knew that the Russians had hacked the Democrats’ documents. These are the “persons known and unknown” who conspired with WikiLeaks about how to use the Democrats’ emails in the closing months of the campaign. One of those people was hinted at in the Stone indictment when Mueller said a “top campaign official” had been “directed” to contact Stone about “additional releases” of Democratic emails by WikiLeaks.
Who “directed” that Stone be contacted will be revealed in the next Mueller indictment, along with whoever Stone contacted overseas or within the Trump campaign by using encrypted programs that will now be available to Mueller’s investigators on Stone’s phones and computers.
There are only three top people associated with the Trump campaign who Mueller’s investigators haven’t talked to: Jared Kushner, Donald Trump Jr., and Trump himself. We know that both Kushner and Trump Jr. had meetings with Russians during the campaign. We don’t know if Trump himself took part in meetings with people like Sergey Kislyak, and we don’t know if Trump was informed about other meetings with Russians like the one that took place at Trump Tower.
From the Stone indictment, we know that the Trump campaign was well-informed about the Democratic Party documents that WikiLeaks had received from the Russian GRU. We don’t know if Trump himself was informed in advance what WikiLeaks would be revealing, such as the release of John Podesta’s emails that came late in the campaign as an “October surprise.”
But we do know that Donald Trump encouraged the Russians to hack Hillary Clinton’s emails and that the Russian GRU did just that on the very night Trump made his request. And we know that Trump mentioned WikiLeaks more than 160 times during the campaign.
Mueller has been working on establishing the “collusion,” if you want to call it that, between the Russian GRU, WikiLeaks, and the Trump campaign. His investigators are sitting on a gigantic mountain of evidence they have gotten from the NSA and the CIA about connections between the foreign elements of the conspiracy — between Assange and the GRU, for example, and between the GRU and people like Mifsud and Kilimnik.
WikiLeaks is the hub through which the GRU distributed the Democrats’ stolen documents to the media in an attempt to influence the presidential campaign of 2016 in favor of Donald Trump. The next indictment you will see from Mueller will be his last, and it will close the circle of collusion by connecting Trump and his campaign on one end, and the Russian GRU on the other end, through WikiLeaks.
⭕ 30 Jan 2019
Bloomberg, David Kocieniewski: The Civil Rights Warrior Who May Have Linked Roger Stone to WikiLeaks http://bloom.bg/2RB3uYG
● Margaret Ratner Kunstler’s legal work spans Attica to Assange
● U.S. alleges lawyer was forwarded email seeking Clinton dirt
LATimes, Virginia Heffernan: Jared Kushner shouldn’t be allowed to play government http://lat.ms/2D2tbMs
🐣 RT @ForeignAffairs “Governments need to share intelligence, coordinate policies, conduct joint exercises, allow one another access to military bases, and collaborate to develop new defense technologies. Failing to strike security deals will leave Americans out in the cold.”
ForeignAffairs, Brandon Kinne: Trump Is Abandoning Security Cooperation http://fam.ag/2FYdxpa
// What America Loses By Going It Alone
WaPo: Trump facing more pushback in Congress — from both parties http://wapo.st/2MJfiHl
// Lawmakers are increasingly eager to challenge the White House on matters of foreign policy and oversight. In the Senate, a vote is expected today on an amendment introduced by Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) that rebukes the president’s decision to pull back troops from Syria and Afghanistan.
PoliticusUSA: Schiff: Intel Chiefs’ Testimony Means Trump Can’t Declare National Emergency http://bit.ly/2Wxe4U4
🐣 RT @KFILE Jerome Corsi told @jaketapper on Sunday: “It’s my recollection that Roger mentioned that this Billy Bush was coming, and he wanted to know if Assange could begin dropping e-mails.” 💽 https://twitter.com/KFILE/status/1090658040326561792/photo/1
USAToday, Tom Nichols: Donald Trump and his Republican minions are playing with nuclear fire on NATO and Russia http://bit.ly/2HHIek6
// NATO opponents are like the anti-vaccine movement. They see no need for something that has kept them safe in ways they do not understand. It’s madness.
🐣 RT @Mimirocah1 Stop minimizing SCO prosecutions as so-called process crimes. Perjury & obstruction are like a “baseball game where the defendant throws sand in the umpire’s eyes.” Let them go & the whole system falls apart. Great article by @RDEliason
⋙ WaPo, Randall Eliason: How Trump defenders try to play down charges against his associates http://wapo.st/2FYUlrB
USAToday, Cindy Otis: Flashback: Trump’s world view makes him uniquely impervious to intelligence analysis http://bit.ly/2BfqerL
🐣 RT @mkraju Schumer to Dan Coats: “I believe it is incumbent on you, Director Wray and Director Haspel to insist on an immediate meeting with the President to educate him about the facts…He is .. hurting the national interest in the process. You must find a way to make that clear to him.” https://twitter.com/mkraju/status/1090784753593339905/photo/1
Politico: Mueller: Shared evidence was used to discredit special counsel probe http://politi.co/2MI9X31
CNN: Trump singled out Dan Coats in morning rant about intelligence community http://cnn.it/2RpsNwB
CNN, Josh Campbell: Trump can’t bully his intelligence agencies into submission http://cnn.it/2sXeQfx
🐣 RT @ScottMStedman Mystery company fighting Mueller subpoena:
-Wholly owned by a foriegn government (court docs)
-Has business in the US (court docs)
-Financial institution (per WaPo)
-Represented by Alston & Bird (per BuzzFeed and CNN)
📌 https://twitter.com/ScottMStedman/status/1090724683899531269
⋙ [Last:] 🐣 RT @ScottMStedman This leaves two clear frontrunners:
-Vnesheconombank (VEB) – CEO met with Kushner during transition
-Qatar Investment Authority (QIA) – Official met with Cohen during transition
NBC: GOP delay in naming House Intelligence Committee members may have cost Mueller http://nbcnews.to/2HGhNeS
// Democrats have been unable to authorize release of witness transcripts to the special counsel without GOP members who were just named Wednesday.
🐣 RT @AshaRangappa_ For the dodos who still don’t get why bringing criminal charges in a counterintel investigation is difficult, here’s the latest filing from Mueller in the Concord Management case which runs Russia’s troll farm and is owned by an oligarch close to Pooty 1/
📌 https://twitter.com/AshaRangappa_/status/1090783029335871488
Newsweek: Russia vs. Ukraine War: Vladimir Putin Ally Wants to Create Autonomous Zone in Occupied Donbas Region http://bit.ly/2SeNdgp
EmptyWheel, Marcy Wheeler: The Disinformation Campaign Targeting Mueller and the Delayed Briefing to SSCI on Russian Election Interference http://bit.ly/2DKYXiw
DailyBeast, Betsy Woodruff: NRA Heavyweight Wanted Access to Putin: Leaked Email http://bit.ly/2RrKPOT
// “[I]mpressing the NRA’s Russian hosts is the quickest way to secure a private interview with President Putin,” an organizer of the NRA’s infamous 2015 trip to Moscow wrote.
PoliticusUSA/Msnbc: Former CIA Director John Brennan Calls Trump’s Blind Arrogance A National Security Threat http://bit.ly/2WvQbMQ
DailyBeast, Kevin Poulsen: Mueller: Russian Trolls Hijacked and ‘Altered’ Evidence for New Disinformation Operation http://bit.ly/2TlZ6hS
// Evidence that was reportedly shared only with lawyers representing Russia’s Internet Research Agency was altered in a bid to “discredit the investigation,” Mueller warns.
RollingStone, Ryan Bort: Trump Had Yet Another Secret Meeting With Putin http://bit.ly/2sZz1JG
// No U.S. officials were reportedly present during the president’s meeting with the Russian leader at the 2018 G-20 summit
VanityFair, Bess Levin: Trump Can’t Stop, Won’t Stop Meeting in Private with Putin http://bit.ly/2TmTQut
// The Donald has a fever, and the only cure is more covert meetings with the president of Russia.
USAToday, Tom Nichols: Donald Trump and his Republican minions are playing with nuclear fire on NATO and Russia http://bit.ly/2HHIek6
TheGuardian: Russians leaked Mueller investigation evidence online, prosecutors say http://bit.ly/2S0jtnY
// More than 1,000 files shared confidentially appeared to have been uploaded to a filesharing site, according to court documents
NYMag, Jonathan Chait: The Peculiar Logic of the Trump-Russia Scandal Deniers http://nym.ag/2RZlReZ
🔆 This❗️⋙ NBC, Tom Winter: Mueller says Russians using his discovery materials in disinformation effort http://nbcnews.to/2HHJnbD
🐣 RT @kasie there were plenty of theories as to why naming this list took so long but here it is, released this week as @GOPLeader told @chucktodd on Sunday it would be
⋙ 🐣 RT @AlexNBCNews NEW: Republicans were just named to the House Intelligence Committee on House floor: Nunes, Devin CA ¤ Conaway, Mike TX ¤ Turner, Michael OH ¤ Wenstrup, Brad OH ¤ Stewart, Chris UT ¤ Crawford, Rick AR ¤ Stefanik, Elise NY ¤ Hurd, Will TX ¤ Ratcliffe, John, TX
🐣 RT @MuellerSheWrote Wow. So the Russians are taking non-sensitive discovery from the Concord Management case from Mueller, changing it, forging it, and disseminating it as part of a disinformation campaign to discredit Mueller. Yeah. Mueller’s going to win this case.
⋙ 🐣 RT @nycsouthpaw In a new filing in the Internet Research Agency case, Mueller’s team says they’ve found evidence discovery documents were forged as part of a “disinformation campaign aimed (apparently) at discrediting ongoing investigations into Russian interference in the US political system.” https://twitter.com/nycsouthpaw/status/1090701941880115202/photo/1-2
🐣 RT @matthewamiller From the “Nazi Germany” tweet during the transition to Helsinki to this, attacks on the IC have been one of Trump’s most enduring themes. Any independent arbiter of the truth is a threat to his entire political strategy.
⋙ 🐣 RT @ddale8 The president mocks his own intelligence chiefs, demands different conclusions from the intelligence community. https://twitter.com/ddale8/status/1090611006009692160/photo/1
NYT, Thomas Edsall: The ‘Rotten Equilibrium’ of Republican Politics http://nyti.ms/2RogaSF
// Charlatans rise. Government falls.
NYT Editorial: House of Pain for President Trump http://nyti.ms/2HHgVX9
// The new Democratic majority in Congress maps out its investigations of the Trump administration.
NYT: Trump Calls Intelligence Officials ‘Naive’ After They Contradict Him http://nyti.ms/2UtLHEy “‘Perhaps Intelligence should go back to school,’ Mr. Trump said on Twitter.”
DailyBeast, Betsy Woodruff and Erin Banco: Mueller Witness’ Team Gamed Out Russian Meddling … in 2015 http://bit.ly/2FYlHxM
// One former analyst at the Wikistrat consulting firm called it ‘disturbing.’
🐣 In the past 24 hours, McConnell has:
1) Denounced shutdowns, is open to legislation to prevent,
2) Supported slowing of removal of troops from Syria and Afghanistan,
3) Called for Mueller report to be released in as full a form as possible.
⋙ What’s up?
🐣 In the past 24 hours, McConnell has: 1) Denounced shutdowns, is open to legislation to prevent, 2) supports slowing of removal of troops from Syria and Afgh, 3) called for Mueller report to be released in as full a form as possible. What’s up?
⭕ 29 Jan 2019
ABCNews: Barr confirmation vote delayed after Democrats raise Mueller report concerns http://abcn.ws/2GjBKpk
NBC, Glenn Kirschner: Trump adviser Roger Stone’s indictment in the Mueller probe suggests conspiracy charges may still be forthcoming http://nbcnews.to/2WB43FB
// The special counsel’s many investigatory dots are starting to connect.
Medium, Umair Haque: All Nationalisms End in Fascism http://bit.ly/2G0NQVa
// The Unlearned Lesson of American and British Collapse
📔DNI Daniel Coats: Statement for the Record: 2019 Worldwide Threat Assessment of the U.S. Intelligence Community [pdf] http://bit.ly/2HGsuhw 42p
● Cover: https://twitter.com/Auriandra/status/1090830267676348419/photo/1
NYT Editorial: What Keeps the Spies Up at Night http://nyti.ms/2t0b4lv
// Trump isn’t entirely wrong about the dangers America faces.
TheGuardian, Jonathan Myerson: How I got inside Mueller’s head: the writer of a new Trump-Russia play tells all http://bit.ly/2WtX29y
// How do you make an up-to-the-moment drama about the Mueller investigation when every day brings a fresh sensation? With proper detective work, says the man behind the BBC’s new thriller
🐣 RT @gtconway3d Without a doubt, and I’ve thought this since Feb. 13, 2018, when the potential for an SDNY investigation became apparent.
⋙ 🐣 RT @AriMelber “I think the Mueller investigation is not the President’s biggest problem… the Southern District of New York investigation has always been *much more dangerous* — and has much more hazard to it — than… Mueller.” ¤ Chris Christie, a former fed prosecutor, to @NicolleDWallace
TheHill: McConnell calls for releasing as much of Mueller’s report as possible http://bit.ly/2Rltual
USAToday, Richard Painter and Virginia Canter: William Barr’s view of Russia recusal could undermine all government ethics programs http://bit.ly/2sWstvG
🐣 RT @kylegriffin1 DNI Dan Coats: “The Kremlin is stepping up its campaign to divide western, political and security institutions … We expect Russia will continue to wage its information war against democracies and to use social media to attempt to divide our societies.”
DailyBeast, Kelly Weill: How the Proud Boys Became Roger Stone’s Personal Army http://bit.ly/2CU0Tnn
// The dirty trickster started his initiation last year. Now the ‘Western chauvinist’ group has his back against Mueller and the media.
🐣 RT @MuellerSheWrote Trust me. It will soon be Donald Trump Junior’s time in the barrel. #beans
🔆 This❗️⋙ Bloomberg: McConnell Bucks Trump on Withdrawal From Syria, Afghanistan http://bloom.bg/2TklEzn Measure would recognize ‘danger’ of fast withdrawal, he says
// Spy chief Coats warns Islamic State still commands thousands
🐣 RT @ABCpolitics The Senate Judiciary Committee postpones a vote on attorney general nominee William Barr by one week after Democrats raise concerns about how Barr will handle special counsel Robert Mueller’s report https://abcn.ws/2DFYw96
NYT, Peter Baker: A Growing Chorus of Republican Critics for Trump’s Foreign Policy http://nyti.ms/2GapAPJ
🐣 RT @Bill_Maxwell_ Mnuchin’s $25 million transaction with Len Blavatnik, a conflict of interest as Mnuchin & #Pence pushed for Oleg Deripaska’s company to get sanction relief which benefits Blavatnik Bigly! ¤ Len Blavatnik also donated $3.5 million to #McConnell.
⋙ NYT: Steven Mnuchin Draws Claims of Conflict of Interest in Decision on Russian Oligarch Oleg Deripaska http://nyti.ms/2RrYV2A
DailyBeast, Julia Arciga and Will Sommer: Roger Stone Pleads Not Guilty, While Proud Boys and InfoWars Fight the #Resistance Outside http://bit.ly/2DJwY2Z
// Stone was indicted last week on charges of obstruction of justice, witness tampering and making false statements.
DailyBeast, Barbara McQuade: Why Is Mueller Hiding Who Ultimately ‘Directed’ Roger Stone to Contact WikiLeaks? http://bit.ly/2DHJ1NZ
// The omission isn’t by accident. It could mean a conspiracy charge is coming, or even that Trump played a role.
🐣 RT @TheHill NEW: Pelosi puts tight grip on talk of Trump impeachment http://hill.cm/dtT3ynh
NYT/Reuters: Factbox: Guilty Pleas, Indictments Abound in Trump-Russia Probe http://nyti.ms/2Rmcu3P
USAToday, Joyce White Vance: Here’s why you should have faith in Robert Mueller and the Russia investigation http://bit.ly/2Bb4VI1
TheGuardian, Peter Stone: Is Oleg Deripaska the missing link in the Trump-Russia investigation? http://bit.ly/2RUFjt8
// The Russian oligarch could face greater scrutiny after disclosure that Paul Manafort discussed Ukraine peace plan with associate
Vox: Trump met Putin without staff or note takers present — again http://bit.ly/2RZL4WD “According to the Financial Times, Trump spoke to Russian President Vladimir Putin during last November’s G20 summit in Argentina without a US official present to take notes”
// Trump reportedly keeps finding a way to meet the Russian leader privately.
DailyBeast, Mimi Rocah: Roger Stone’s Indictment Says Mueller Ain’t Done Yet http://bit.ly/2sR3LwA
// Matthew Whitaker says the investigation is ‘close to being completed.’ If true, why did the Special Counsel say so much about the Trump campaign and execute search warrants?
DailyBeast: Howard Schultz Blames Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez for His Decision to Run as Independent http://bit.ly/2WsT8O9 //➔ he’s intentionally ‼️ running to kill Dems chances
DefenseOne, Patrick Tucker: Intelligence Chiefs Diverge From Trump On Main Threats to US http://bit.ly/2FVF2Qh
Newsweek: Trump’s America Is Becoming More Corrupt, Report Says: ‘Erosion of Ethical Norms at the Highest Levels of Power’ http://bit.ly/2G8rGiV
Under President Donald Trump, the United States has received its worst score on a global corruption index in seven years, according to a new report.
The United States scored 71 on Transparency International’s Corruption Perceptions Index for 2018, a fall of four points since 2017 and the nation’s lowest score since 2011. Transparency International is an anti-corruption watchdog that tracks interactions between money and politics worldwide and ranks countries based on perceived corruption in the public sector.
CNN: Belarusian ‘sex coach’ says she was warned to keep quiet about oligarch Oleg Deripaska http://cnn.it/2DHhE6R
In an exclusive interview with CNN on Tuesday, Vashukevich said she was instructed by Russian security services not to talk about Deripaska, an ex-business associate of former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort.
“I had some talk when I was in Russian jail,” she said. “And they explained to me very clear(ly) what should I do, what should I say and what I shouldn’t say.”
Asked who explained that to her, Vashukevich said “Russian agents,” adding, “They said to me, ‘Don’t touch Oleg Deripaska anymore.'”
The model, who goes by the name Nastya Rybka on social media, was detained at Moscow’s Sheremetyevo Airport earlier this month on prostitution allegations after being deported from Thailand, where she had spent nearly a year behind bars for soliciting. She was freed from police custody last week. …
WaPo: Roger Stone wanted WikiLeaks dump to distract from ‘Access Hollywood’ tape, Mueller witness says http://wapo.st/2CWVa0a
💙 Medium, Scott Stedman: Russian developer had active Delaware shell company at time of Trump Tower Moscow negotiations http://bit.ly/2GfmSZl (for #TrumpRussia deep dives, follow @ScottMStedman)
MotherJones: Democrats to Investigate Treasury’s Decision to Lift Sanctions on Oleg Deripaska’s Companies http://bit.ly/2sSZubR
// They claim the oligarch will “retain significant influence, if not de facto control” of the firms.
WaPo, Max Boot: The intelligence chiefs’ report strikes a blow for truth in the Age of Trump http://wapo.st/2RYAZcu
WaPo: Russia secretly offered North Korea a nuclear power plant, officials say http://wapo.st/2RW50cY
WaPo, Harry Litman: Is Mueller’s report really ‘close to being completed’? I doubt it. http://wapo.st/2TnaWZc
WaPo: Testimony by intelligence chiefs on global threats highlights differences with president http://wapo.st/2CUYU2d
MMFA: Roger Stone repeatedly bragged about talking with Trump and senior campaign staffers during presidential campaign http://bit.ly/2DHxRbW
// Stone: “I have access to all the right people”
⭕ 28 Jan 2019
Quartz, Justin Rohrlich: A Trump insider got a board position right after the US lifted sanctions on a Russian company http://bit.ly/2RVay7o
🐣 RT @neal_katyal It’s stories like this which make me skeptical of Acting fake AG statement today that Mueller is almost finished. As @JeffreyToobin said well,Whitaker is so out of his depth, and so compromised,it is impossible to know. Everything he says should be doubted
⋙ CNN: Mueller team signals to Stone associate Andrew Miller another indictment may be in the works http://cnn.it/2B8mdFn
WaPo, Michael Gerson: Trump is a fraud http://wapo.st/2sS96nv
Meanwhile, in a variety of global negotiations, American opponents need only master one method: flattery. In Trump’s words, “I know people, because deals are people. . . . If [Russian President Vladimir] Putin respects me, and if Putin wants to call me brilliant, and other things that he said which were, frankly, very nice, I’ll accept that.” Taken at face value, Trump is arguing: Deals are people. People who praise me have good judgment. Thus, people who praise me make good deals. Hearing these sentiments from an American president is enough to gag a historian. It is pathetic gullibility elevated into the realm of theory. It should concern us that the American president is a source of global derision and national shame.
🐣 RT @TrueFactsStated Think about this. Canada is being taxed for Aluminum and Russia was granted an exemption. Ask yourself why.
⋙ 🐣 RT @BruceAHeyman The more I think about Russia getting an exemption for Aluminum tariffs & Canada being taxed on the grounds of national security the more insensed I become. Not right! Not even close. Where are the Republicans? Who among them will stand up for Canada? Let us hear your voice. Now!
🐣 This the b.s. @RT spreads …
⋙ 🐣 RT @RT ‘CIA-backed’ mercenaries spread HIV in S. Africa, ex-member claims ¤ https://on.rt.com/9n7o
🐣 RT @SethAbramson (THREAD) Here are 20 indications that Mueller has *months* of work left to do. I write this thread in the shadow of a vague, hesitant, afterthought-like remark that AG Whitaker made today. I hope you’ll read on and retweet; this may be the most important issue before the country. 📌 https://mobile.twitter.com/SethAbramson/status/1090077060788310016
🐣 RT @JuliaDavisNews Former Treasury official told @MaxBoot it was “shocking” the U.S. government would approve such an agreement, because it “does not follow the spirit of the legislation or stated policy objectives and sets an incredibly bad precedent for weak enforcement.”
⋙ 🐣 RT @JuliaDavisNews The Treasury’s sweetheart deal w/ #Deripaska “may have been less punitive than advertised,” contains provisions that free him “from hundreds of millions of dollars in debt while leaving him & his allies w/ majority ownership of his most important company.”
⋙⋙ WaPo, Max Boot: Memo to Republicans: ‘Trump first’ is not the same thing as ‘America first’ http://wapo.st/2sToFLr
VOA: Attorney General Pick Says Trump Has Not Discussed Mueller Probe http://bit.ly/2MJUQGB //➔ “discusses,” no; YELLS ABOUT IT on Twitter, on the phone and at anyone within earshot, YES‼️
🐣 .@KenDilanianNBC reports Matt Whitaker says Mueller probe almost done citing publicly available reports, iow @KenDilanianNBC
🐣 RT @neal_katyal It is absolutely unforgiveable that Whitaker is in any position to know anything about the Mueller investigation,let alone claim to be “reviewing” it. He has just about as much business doing that as a fox does in a henhouse. Unconstitutional, unwise, and will ultimately undo him
⋙ 🐣 RT @neal_katyal It’s stories like this which make me skeptical of Acting fake AG statement today that Mueller is almost finished. As @JeffreyToobin said well,Whitaker is so out of his depth, and so compromised,it is impossible to know. Everything he says should be doubted
⋙⋙ CNN: Mueller team signals to Stone associate another indictment may be in the works http://cnn.it/2B8mdFn
🔆 This❗️⋙ HuffPo, Ryan Reilly: William Barr: Concerns Over Trump’s Privacy Could Shield Robert Mueller Conclusions http://bit.ly/2FUsglc //➔ so, if a sitting president can’t be charged, that’s the whole ballgame
// The likely attorney general said prosecutors need “to be sensitive to the privacy and reputational interests of uncharged third parties.”
DailyBeast, Justin Lynch: While Putin Hardens His Line in Ukraine, Trump Goes Squishy http://bit.ly/2MBk2yE
// A report from the front lines in eastern Ukraine and in Washington D.C.
CNS/PBS: Rep. Swalwell: ‘It’s Pretty Clear’ Trump Is a Russian Agent ‘Hiding in Plain Sight’ http://bit.ly/2CLWkLy
WaPo, Aaron Blake: 20 lies and alleged lies the Trump team has told in the Mueller probe, dissected http://wapo.st/2B7MFzg
🐣 RT @ScottMStedman “I believe they are going to try to charge the President and the Vice President… with some case of Russian collusion” -Roger Stone on Hannity
🐣 RT @kelly2277 😳 Folks, Corsi just admitted to COLLUSION w Wikileaks to time release of stolen GRU Podesta emails to drop in order to distract from the “grab em by the Pussy” tape that was going to be released ‼️
⋙ 🐣 RT @TheBeatWithAri “I had one call with Roger” on “the day that Wikileaks did begin in October dropping the final emails on John Podesta” ¤ He said “we’ve got this timing issue, because the Billy Bush tape is going to be released” – Jerome Corsi
💽 https://twitter.com/TheBeatWithAri/status/1090036333769302016/photo/1
🐣 RT @BillKristol What Whitaker said is alarming. He saw a chance to add pressure on Mueller to get it over with, after the Stone indictment suggested how dangerous the probe is to Trump if allowed to run unimpeded. And he tried to normalize the idea of higher-ups messing with Mueller’s findings.
↥ ↧
🐣 RT @RepAdamSchiff An Acting Attorney General who refuses to follow the advice of ethics lawyers and recuse himself from an investigation in which he has shown a clear bias is the last person who should speak for the Special Counsel. ¤ While the probe is ongoing, Mueller can speak for himself.
↥ ↧
🐣 RT @renatto_mariotti I couldn’t agree more. I hope that when this is over, Mueller will publicly make clear the extent of any interference with his investigation from anyone.
⋙ 🐣 RT @Mimirocah1 This is exactly why Whitaker should have recused himself from overseeing the SCO probe. We should be able to have faith & trust that the AG is acting in the interests finding the truth & not (as many will be) skeptical that he is in some way pressuring Mueller to wrap it up.
TPM: Barr Hints Full Mueller Report Might Not Be Sent To Congress After All http://bit.ly/2DEXFFW
TPM, Tierney Sneed: Trump Camp Pushed Stone For More Wikileaks Info At Key Moment In 2016 http://bit.ly/2HCTTRm
DailyBeast, Adam Rawnsley: Trump’s Treasury Just Rolled Back Sanctions on Companies Linked to Putin Pal Oleg Deripaska. That’s Just Business as Usual. http://bit.ly/2FUOu6E
// The Treasury Department says he’s a shady Putin crony. Here’s why it’s still rolling back sanctions on companies linked to him.
🐣 RT @renato_mariotti After viewing the clip, it seems like Whitaker didn’t intend to say anything new here. He was nervous and trying to say that he now has confidence in the investigation. ¤ It will be interesting to see if anyone at DOJ walks this back.
↥ ↧
🐣 RT @PaulaReidCBS “I think close to being completed and I hope we can get the report from director Mueller as soon as possible,” Acting AG Whitaker suggests Mueller may wrap-up soon. President Trump will be pleased to hear that, which is also why we must be skeptical. @CBSNews 💽 https://twitter.com/PaulaReidCBS/status/1090022321849540610/photo/1
🐣 RT @kylegriffin1 New: Adam Schiff says that Michael Cohen has agreed to appear voluntarily before the House Intelligence Committee “for closed testimony on February 8, 2019.” ¤ “We will continue to work with Mr. Cohen and law enforcement in order to protect Mr. Cohen and his family.”
NewYorker, Masha Gessen: The Unnerving Kitsch of New York City’s New K.G.B. Spy Museum http://bit.ly/2SeSnZQ
Politico: Nadler pledges not to blindside GOP with subpoenas http://politi.co/2G4nJvM
// House Judiciary Chairman Jerry Nadler (D-N.Y.) agreed to consult with his GOP counterpart for two days before issuing a subpoena to force witnesses to testify. Should ranking Republican Doug Collins of Georgia object, Nadler said he would put the subpoena to a vote of the committee.
WaPo, Randall Eliason: There’s evidence of collusion everywhere. But is it a criminal conspiracy? http://wapo.st/2MDegNh
Statesman, Jonathan Tilove: First Reading. Memo to Mueller: A pretty complete history of my meals, drinks and texts with Roger Stone http://atxne.ws/2SgZII6
AP: Trump AG pick says he’s discussed Mueller probe with Pence http://bit.ly/2Wr1XrC
TheHill: Senators introduce bill to require special counsel report be made public http://bit.ly/2RWqBlw
◕📊 AP/NORC Poll: Most Americans oppose Trump’s foreign policy http://bit.ly/2HB0xHN Overall 35% Approve, 63% Disapprove, but 76% of Republicans Approve
◕ Since Trump announced his tariffs last year, the trade deficit has only widened http://bit.ly/2sZqiHP ● https://twitter.com/Auriandra/status/1089900073159442432/photo/1
// Fall 2017-Oct 2018
🐣 RT @moscow_project The Treasury Department just lifted sanctions on three companies owned by Oleg Deripaska, the Russian oligarch with an extensive history of financing Kremlin-backed political parties throughout Europe and Asia. CNN: http://cnn.it/2UolQ0N
… One of Deripaska’s main allies in those efforts: Paul Manafort, whom Deripaska paid millions to run his political campaigns—and who joined the campaign desperately looking to “get whole” with Deripaska over past failed investments. MoscowProject: http://bit.ly/2G9jmzD
… The move came despite congressional efforts to keep the sanctions in place, plus reports that Deripaska’s sweetheart deal effectively allows him to profit from evading sanctions. NYT: http://nyti.ms/2FFXpIH
FiveThirtyEight, Amelia Thomson-Deveaux: 5 Scenarios For How Mueller’s Investigation Could End http://53eig.ht/2CQ36Qt
// And what they mean for Trump.
● Scenario 1: Trump is implicated in some form of coordination with Russia to interfere with the 2016 election
● Scenario 2: Trump is implicated in obstruction of justice
● Scenario 3: Trump isn’t accused of wrongdoing, but someone close to him is
● Scenario 4: Mueller’s findings aren’t made public, so we don’t know whether Trump is implicated in wrongdoing
● Scenario 5: The findings are made public, and neither the president nor any of his close associates are implicated in further wrongdoing
NYT, Ivan Krastev: Putin’s Next Playground or the E.U.’s Last Moral Stand? http://nyti.ms/2sROOKB
// The Balkans has once again become a playground for great power politics.
WaPo: ‘Maybe I didn’t return her phone call’: Trump ridicules Ann Coulter, slams Fox News in fallout over wall http://wapo.st/2Timhtr wow
⭕ 27 Jan 2019
BoingBoing, Cory Doctorow: The rent is too damned high because money-laundering oligarchs bought all the real-estate to clean their oil money http://bit.ly/2Gk0s9d
TheGuardian: Review: Where’s my Roy Cohn? review – damning documentary on villainous lawyer http://bit.ly/2RTjZEd
// In a formulaic yet fascinating film, the corrupt hate figure and his association with Donald Trump is brought to light
Politico: Jerome Corsi says he’s ‘happy’ to testify against Stone http://politi.co/2G6ChLq
Politico: Stone: I’ll talk to Mueller about conversations with Trump http://politi.co/2G4pjO1
TheHill: Chris Christie: Trump, Kushner thought Flynn firing would end Russia controversy http://bit.ly/2G3auve
CNN, Samantha Vinograd: The disturbing signal Trump’s silence sends to Russia http://cnn.it/2FScIOF
The President’s “witch hunt” response to the special counsel’s indictment — especially when considered along with his response to previous ones — will likely be interpreted by many around the world as a sign that when it comes to Russia, he’s conflicted. By crying witch hunt louder than he decries Russia’s attack, he’s setting us up for another very dangerous election season. His failure to condemn illegal Russian behavior, especially when it involves his own associates and family, will probably be interpreted as condoning it. That opens the US to a lot of risk going forward.
🐣💙 RT @kenvogel UPDATE: After @USTreasury lifted sanctions against OLEG DERIPASKA’s companies, the main one (EN+) named 7 new directors, including Chris Burnham, who served on TRUMP’s transition team & worked for @AmbJohnBolton at United Nations.
🐣 RT @kylegriffin1 Rep. Lloyd Doggett, a leading critic of lifting sanctions on Deripaska’s companies, called it “just one more step in undermining the sanctions law, which President Trump has obstructed at every opportunity, while Russian aggression remains unabated.”
⋙ NYT: Treasury Dept. Lifts Sanctions on Russian Oligarch’s Companies http://nyti.ms/2CTq6OS Oleg Deripaska 🐣 RT @kylegriffin1 Rep. Lloyd Doggett, a leading critic of lifting sanctions on Deripaska’s companies, called it “just one more step in undermining the sanctions law, which President Trump has obstructed at every opportunity, while Russian aggression remains unabated.”
⋙ NYT: Treasury Dept. Lifts Sanctions on Russian Oligarch’s Companies http://nyti.ms/2CTq6OS Oleg Deripaska
EmptyWheel, Marcy Wheeler: Two Details That Many Are Missing in/about the Stone Indictment http://bit.ly/2Tmh5Vy
… [O]ne of the only new details in the indictment show[s]that an unidentified Steve Bannon associate congratulated Stone on October 7.
On or about October 7, 2016, Organization 1 released the first set of emails stolen from the Clinton Campaign chairman. Shortly after Organization 1’s release, an associate of the high-ranking Trump Campaign official sent a text message to STONE that read “well done.” In subsequent conversations with senior Trump Campaign officials, STONE claimed credit for having correctly predicted the October 7, 2016 release.
This detail shows that the Trump campaign at least believed that Stone succeeded in getting WikiLeaks to drop the John Podesta emails to distract attention from the Access Hollywood video, which in turn is consistent with a claim Jerome Corsi made about Stone having advance knowledge of the Access Hollywood video and that he and Stone succeeded in timing the email release. …
While Stone disputes Corsi’s claim and Corsi feigns forgetfulness about precisely what happened, by including a communication showing Stone getting credit for the timing, Mueller is suggesting that Corsi is right — and that he has credible, corroborating evidence to prove it.
That’s more coordination — between Corsi and Stone, but more importantly between some go-between and WikiLeaks — than would be the case if Stone’s indictment were all Mueller had. It would put Stone and Corsi in a conspiracy with WikiLeaks and their go-between(s).
Then there’s this detail from the motion to seal Stone’s indictment that no one has yet offered a full explanation for (indeed, most of the reports that noted that Amy Berman Jackson had been assigned the case didn’t explain this detail at all).
Someone — and it would almost certainly have to be the prosecutors (including one who, DC US Attorney’s office prosecutor Jonathan Kravis, is on the internet Research Agency case), — told the court that Stone’s namby pamby “process crime” is related to the big conspiracy case involving WIkiLeaks with a bunch of Russian hackers. And while it’s true that Stone is described in the GRU indictment, he is not named in a way that the court would identify that by themselves. WikiLeaks shows up in both, but there’s no need to tie WikiLeaks cases together unless some defendant is going to show up to face prosecution (and WikiLeaks is does not take any of the overt acts described in the Stone indictment).
USAToday, Barbara McQuade: Stone indictment: Serious Russia investigation charges hint Mueller has more coming http://bit.ly/2WjVWND
NYT: Trump Thought Firing Flynn Would End ‘Russia Thing,’ Chris Christie Writes in Book http://nyti.ms/2HD8zQq
TheGuardian: Trump lifts sanctions on firms linked to Russian oligarch Oleg Deripaska http://bit.ly/2MzfGrT
🐣 RT @RepAdamSchmidt Donald Trump wanted Russian help to build a lucrative Trump Tower in Moscow. ¤ His campaign wanted Russian help in the form of stolen emails and dirt on Hilary Clinton. ¤ And the Russians wanted Trump’s help in removing sanctions. ¤ The convergence of interests is hard to ignore.
ThisWeek: https://twitter.com/RepAdamSchiff/status/1089568822506463233/photo/1
🐣 RT @MollyJongFast “Russia, if you’re listening.”
⋙ 🐣 RT @selectedwisdom Question 3: Did Wikileaks &/or Assange know the stolen emails they were posting came from Russia? This is a close the loop question for conspiracy, showing them as a conduit between Russia-Trump campaign
⇈ ⇊
🐣 RT @selectedwisdom Regarding Trump campaign & Russia: “Toward a conclusion on Collusion or instead a Collusion illusion” – there’s only a few questions Mueller team needs to answer…… 📌 https://mobile.twitter.com/selectedwisdom/status/1089546216323592192
WaPo: Trump advisers lied over and over again, Mueller says. The question is, why? http://wapo.st/2CRRWem
TheIntercept, Trevor Aaronson: There’s a Better Battlefield for the War Against Trump’s Lies: the Courts http://bit.ly/2RUIWze
⭕ 26 Jan 2019
🔊 NPR: Journalist: Russia’s Interference Is An ‘Assault On The Western Liberal Order’ [Audio] http://n.pr/2N1MFFH
Journalist Luke Harding has an insider’s understanding of Russian President Vladimir Putin. Harding served as Moscow bureau chief for the British newspaper The Guardian from 2007 until 2011. During his tenure, Russian agents followed him, tapped his phone and repeatedly broke into his home.
“I almost feel like I could write the KGB handbook, I lived it for quite a long time,” he tells Fresh Air’s Terry Gross.
Salon, Lucian Truscott IV (1/26): What the Stone indictment doesn’t say is what you need to know about Mueller’s Trump Russia probe http://bit.ly/2MHDRod
// What Mueller doesn’t say is more important than what he does say
🐣 RT @JenniferTaub 🧵Thread We Have Seen the Mueller Report –– And It’s Spectacular
📌 https://mobile.twitter.com/jentaub/status/1089193853230505984
⋙ See under Entire Articles: 📌 Taub Spectacular 1-26-2019
NYT Editorial: Saving NATO http://nyti.ms/2Ui8Klz
// The House voted overwhelmingly to block President Trump’s threat to quit the Atlantic alliance. The Senate should promptly follow suit.
DailyBeast, Peter Zeidenberg: No Escape for Roger Stone: Mueller’s Case Is a Slam Dunk and He’s Too Slimy to Get Flipped http://bit.ly/2FQzXZo
// Prosecutor who helped convict Dick Cheney aide Scooter Libby for lying and obstruction says the case against Trump’s old pal is virtually perfect.
… [D]o not expect to see special counsel Robert Mueller make any attempt to flip Stone and have him cooperate. A defendant like Stone is far more trouble than he is worth to a prosecutor. Stone is too untrustworthy for a prosecutor to ever rely upon. He has told so many documented lies, and bragged so often about his dirty tricks, that he simply has too much baggage to deal with even if here to want to cooperate—which seems unlikely in any event. Mueller, I suspect, would not even be willing to engage in a preliminary debrief with Stone to just test the possibility of cooperation out of concern that Stone would immediately go on television with his pals at Fox News to decry Mueller’s Gestapo tactics.
In short, Mueller does not need Stone to get to someone else and, even if he did, he could not rely on whatever Stone told him. Stone has nothing to sell that Mueller would be interested in buying.
Stone is clearly enjoying being in the spotlight now. He should enjoy it while he can. His remaining years won’t be nearly as pleasant.
Crooks&Liars: Malcolm Nance: Trump Administration May Have Set Up Secret Network To Share Intel With Russia http://bit.ly/2DBjE0d
// Former intelligence officer Malcolm Nance didn’t pull any punches on what the House needs to be investigating following the recent bombshell that Jared Kushner’s security clearance was granted after a Trump crony overruled the FBI.
🐣 RT @MuellerSheWrote THREAD 1/ So who is the U.K. go-between mentioned in the Stone indictment? The answer is Ted Malloch. Back in April, we reported that Malloch was detained at the Boston Logan Airport by the FBI & questioned about his ties to Farage, Assange, Wikileaks, Stone, Brexit, & Cam Ana
📌 https://mobile.twitter.com/MuellerSheWrote/status/1089264856211943424/photo/1
ForeignAffairs, Richard Haass: How a World Order Ends http://fam.ag/2DCczMY
// And What Comes in Its Wake
● Text Block: https://twitter.com/Auriandra/status/1089378282112512000/photo/1
The deterioration of a world order can set in motion trends that spell catastrophe. World War I broke out some 60 years after the Concert of Europe had for all intents and purposes broken down in Crimea. What we are seeing today resembles the mid-nineteenth century in important ways: the post–World War II, post–Cold War order cannot be restored, but the world is not yet on the edge of a systemic crisis. Now is the time to make sure one never materializes, be it from a breakdown in U.S.-Chinese relations, a clash with Russia, a conflagration in the Middle East, or the cumulative effects of climate change. The good news is that it is far from inevitable that the world will eventually arrive at a catastrophe; the bad news is that it is far from certain that it will not.
Lawfare, Chuck Rosenberg: Roger Stone’s Arrest Was Appropriate, Not Heavy-Handed http://bit.ly/2RTbLMm
🚫🐣 RT @Redrum_of_Crows ‘Shortly after Trump had won the election, 19.5 percent of Rosneft was sold to unknown buyers, in a complicated three-nation deal. Trump may have pocketed $200-$250 million out of the deal…’
⋙ news.com.au, Charles Firth (2017): What really happened at the Mayflower Hotel? http://bit.ly/2WmpDxq
// 4/5/2017
[ Note: This is a THEORY: ] Well, remember the dossier of dirt on Trump that Buzzfeed released at the end of last year? It was written in the months after that April 27th meeting, and it alleged there was a deal that Trump would drop the sanctions against Russia and let them sell 19 percent of oil company Rosneft, and that Trump would benefit from this transaction.
The thing is that in early December, shortly after Trump had won the election, 19.5 percent of Rosneft was sold to unknown buyers, in a complicated three-nation deal. Who were the countries party to the deal? Russia, Italy and Singapore.
While the details of the deal are secret, the dossier implied that if Trump was elected, and let the deal slide through, he would receive a “brokerage fee” for helping make it happen. If that fee was the extra 0.5 percent on the transaction, that means that Trump may have pocketed $200-$250 million out of the transaction.
🐣 RT @mccaffreyr3 At age 17 I was sworn into the US Armed Forces. We pledged to protect the Constitution NOT allegiance to an individual or a Party. I believe Trump is a serious threat to our Constitution. No character. No judgement. Putin has something on him.
🐣 RT @JoyceWhiteVance Why didn’t Mueller charge Stone with conspiracy? The rules in federal cases require that prosecutors provide defendants with broad discovery. By indicting Stone on a fairly narrow set of charges, Mueller limits what has to be disclosed & can protect ongoing investigation.
NYPost: Pelosi: What does Putin have on the President? http://nyp.st/2G3UKrG
NYT: Jared Kushner, a Confident Negotiator, Finds Immigration Deal to Be Elusive http://nyti.ms/2MyYv9U
// Jared Kushner agreed to take the lead when President Trump, his father-in-law, asked him to find a way to end the monthlong stalemate over funding for a southern border wall.
🐣 RT @frontlinepbs Roger Stone was indicted for giving “false and misleading” testimony to the House Intelligence Committee. Stone and President Trump’s paths have been intertwined for decades. Here’s a look back at their relationship: https://to.pbs.org/2sPz3ns
DailyBeast, Adam Rawnsley: Who ‘Directed’ Roger Stone to Hook Up With WikiLeaks? http://bit.ly/2DCuq6x
// Mueller says Trump campaign officials were eager to cash in on Stone’s WikiLeaks hookup, but there are plenty of suspects
DailyBeast, Michael Daly: The Despicable History of Roger Stone http://bit.ly/2UjSPDg
// After a half-century of dirty tricks, there’s finally the case of United States versus Roger Jason Stone, Jr.
Newsweek/CNN: Roger Stone Says He Does Not Believe He Will Be Convicted Of Mueller Charges http://bit.ly/2B6vKgt
Salon, Lucian Truscott: What the Stone indictment doesn’t say is what you need to know about Mueller’s Trump Russia probe http://bit.ly/2HICEOm
// What Mueller doesn’t say is more important than what he does say
TheAtlantic, Ken White: Roger Stone’s Greatest Liability http://bit.ly/2DCeEsn
// The longtime Trump adviser’s attention-seeking ways made him an easy target for Robert Mueller.
USAToday: After indictment, Roger Stone mocks Mueller with doctored photo on Instagram http://bit.ly/2DC1Nq2
CNN, Paul Callan: Roger Stone must have made Mueller really angry http://cnn.it/2B8My6l
NYT: A Conspiracy or Not? Here’s What We Know About the Mueller Case http://nyti.ms/2Dz3XXm
Bloomberg, Chris Strohm: Roger Stone’s Arrest May Hurt Trump’s ‘Love’ of Wikileaks http://bloom.bg/2FOWxBP
● ‘I love WikiLeaks,’ candidate Trump proclaimed in October 2016
● U.S. intelligence already had warned it was a Russian tool
NYMag, Margaret Hartmann and Nick Tabor: Everything We’ve Learned From Robert Mueller’s Investigation http://nym.ag/2RQCWHH
AP, Eric Tucker and Todd Day: In Trump ally Stone’s case, Mueller finds crime in cover-up http://bit.ly/2WgGX73
TheGuardian, Jill Abramson: Roger Stone’s indictment shows us Robert Mueller is steaming ahead http://bit.ly/2CMe2i5
// The Stone indictment is crucially important in linking the Trump campaign to WikiLeaks – the puzzle pieces are beginning to fit together
TheIntercept, James Risen: Roger Stone Made His Name as a Dirty Trickster, But the Trump-Russia Coverup May Finally Bring Him Down http://bit.ly/2B8LMWZ
NPR: Roger Stone Indictment Raises More Big Questions About Russia, Trump 2016 Campaign http://n.pr/2sM994d
DailyBeast, BetsyWoodruff: ‘I Will Piss on Your Grave’: Emails Reveal Roger Stone’s Abuse of Frenemy Randy Credico http://bit.ly/2RiNquv
DailyBeast, Spencer Ackerman: Dithering GOP Stalls House’s New Trump-Russia Probe http://bit.ly/2UjBwCe
// Democrats now in control of the crucial intelligence committee want to get back to their Russia probe. It can’t happen until the Republicans formally join.
Politico, Jack Shafer: Week 88: Did Stone’s Indictment Finally Tie Trump’s Campaign to Russia? http://politi.co/2S6Gfdg
// A tantalizing reference to a high-level campaign official hints at why the Trump confidant allegedly lied to Congress about his contacts with Wikileaks.
WaPo, Max Boot: Nancy Pelosi ran rings around Trump. Imagine what Kim Jong Un and the Taliban will do. http://wapo.st/2Uq5JQv
NYT: Mueller’s Real Target in the Roger Stone Indictment http://nyti.ms/2HvRRCs
// It was probably not Stone himself, but rather his electronic devices.
🐣 RT @JohnBrenner Your cabal of unprincipled, unethical, dishonest, and sycophantic cronies is being methodically brought to justice. We all know where this trail leads. If your utter incompetence is not enough to run you out of office, your increasingly obvious political corruption surely will.
🐣 RT @Neal_Katyal This is simply astounding. Astounding. Particularly in juxtaposition to all those Trump lies about having nothing to do with Russia.
⋙ 📋 💙💙 NYT: Trump and His Associates Had More Than 100 Contacts With Russians Before the Inauguration [Interactive] http://nyti.ms/2MAZCps
⭕ 25 Jan 2019
💙 Medium, Scott Stedman: The Moscow Project and the missing 6 billion rubles http://bit.ly/2Tj6daG
Newsweek: Will Donald Trump Jr., Jared Kushner Be Indicted? Odds Rise Following Roger Stone Arrest http://bit.ly/2DzAxs8
WaPo, Carlos Lozada: WHAT IT WOULD TAKE: Can impeachment appear legitimate in a hyper-partisan universe? http://wapo.st/2Myz34o
… [I]f lawmakers do begin an impeachment process, truth, not partisan fury, must remain the foremost value — and that means offering a full accounting of Trump’s offenses. There is a compulsion on the part of some of the president’s critics to hinge everything on the work of special counsel Robert Mueller, the Godot of the Trump era, as if specific legal misdeeds are the only issue. “Proof that a crime occurred can feel comfortingly objective,” Tribe and Matz write. “It relieves us of the need to exercise judgment and casts a technical gloss over bitterly divisive political questions.”
Obstruction of justice, violation of the emoluments clause, the betrayal of trust to a foreign adversary — any one of these is a significant misdeed that should be core to any impeachment process. Yet they all reflect Trump’s greatest offense against the American public and the American experiment, which is his lack of interest in faithfully executing the office of the president. His biggest lie, out of so many, occurred when he swore the oath and then, in his inaugural address, pledged to be a leader for all Americans. Trump governs for his own interests and those of his family, and for the cheers of his base. His opponents righteously declare that he is “not my president,” forgetting that Trump made that choice for them long ago.
JustSecurity, Bob Bauer: The Withering of the Giuliani Defense of “No Crime of Collusion” in Wake of Roger Stone’s Indictment http://bit.ly/2ThKjEK
NewYorker, Adam Davidson: Robert Mueller Got Roger Stone http://bit.ly/2HAfZ77
🐣 RT @MaddowBlog: The House Intelligence Committee can’t send testimony transcripts to Robert Mueller until they have a full set of members. So far, Republicans are not naming any members to the Intelligence Committee. They managed it for 23 other committees, but…
💽 https://twitter.com/MaddowBlog/status/1088992076027572224/photo/1
Vice, Greg Walters: Roger Stone’s Arrest Brings Mueller’s Case For Collusion Closer to Trump Than Ever Before http://bit.ly/2B4F70a
// “This brings the investigation into the Trump campaign.”
NYT Editorial: Roger Stone Lied. What Was He Hiding? http://nyti.ms/2Wf16Ky
// Could the Trump campaign really not have known that in dealing with WikiLeaks it was dealing with Russia?
Newsweek: Robert Mueller Will Indict a Lot of People in the Next 60 Days: ‘They Will Be Quite Familiar to the Average American,’ Says Former CIA Director John Brennan http://bit.ly/2CPj1yH
TPM, Allegra Kirkland: This Week: The Long-Awaited Roger Stone Indictment Arrives http://bit.ly/2RU939F
TPM, Josh Marshall: Simple: There Was a Trump Campaign/Wikileaks BackChannel http://bit.ly/2Rieuty
TPM, John Light: Putting The Stone Indictment In Context http://bit.ly/2WlH5Cd
NBC, Daren Gregorian: Nixon Foundation objects to calling Roger Stone an ‘aide’ to disgraced ex-president http://nbcnews.to/2G12ieS
Nixon tattoo https://twitter.com/Auriandra/status/1089025591616114689/photo/1
// The former Trump adviser and self-described GOP “dirty trickster’ was indicted by special counsel Robert Mueller.
Vox, Andrew Prokop: All of Robert Mueller’s indictments and plea deals in the Russia investigation so far http://bit.ly/2Dzgydg
Vox, Andrew Prokop: All of Robert Mueller’s indictments and plea deals in the Russia investigation so far http://bit.ly/2Dzgydg
DailyBeast, Marlowe Stern: Ann Coulter Finally Comes Clean to Bill Maher on Trump: ‘I’m a Very Stupid Girl’ http://bit.ly/2Hv0a1d
// The far-right pundit appeared on Maher’s HBO program ‘Real Time’ Friday night and admitted that she was very wrong about President Trump.
PoliticoMag, Ben Zimmer: Roger Stone and ‘Ratf—ing’: A Short History http://politi.co/2TbzBQ1
// The flamboyant political aide is often tagged with the term. But its origins—and Stone’s relationship with the word—are complicated.
🐣 .@SpeakerPelosi: “Our values unify us … our diversity is our strength … but our unity is our power” ● Text Block: https://twitter.com/Auriandra/status/1089012265624440832/photo/1
No I don’t unify our caucus, our values unify us. And I’m sure it’s the same in the Senate. And the fact is, is that our diversity is our strength. The differences of so many different ways including differences of opinion. That’s our strength, but our unity is our power. And that is what maybe the president underestimated.” (Via AP)
PoliticoMag, Michael Kruse: Roger Stone’s Last Dirty Trick http://politi.co/2CJATef
// He promoted Donald Trump’s political rise decades before anyone. Now he’s been indicted for the bruising style of politics he wielded gleefully on Trump’s behalf.
🐣 RT @SpeakerPelosi What does Putin have on @realDonaldTrump, politically, personally or financially?
NYT: Indicting Roger Stone, Mueller Shows Link Between Trump Campaign and WikiLeaks http://nyti.ms/2CO4Ytj
Politico, Darren Samuelsohn: The juiciest morsel in Mueller’s charges against Roger Stone http://politi.co/2B6umdt
// The special counsel offered the clearest evidence to date of the Trump campaign’s alleged attempts to cooperate with WikiLeaks.
🐣 RT @RonKlain Here’s an idea: Trump could use the 21 days to read Article I, Sec. 9 of the US Constitution, which says “No Money shall be drawn from the Treasury, but in Consequence of Appropriations made by Law.” And then he could consider that he swore to uphold it.
⋙ 🐣 RT @PressSec In 21 days President @realDonaldTrump is moving forward building the wall with or without the Democrats. The only outstanding question is whether the Democrats want something or nothing
Politico, Darren Samuelsohn: The juiciest morsel in Mueller’s charges against Roger Stone http://politi.co/2B6umdt
// The special counsel offered the clearest evidence to date of the Trump campaign’s alleged attempts to cooperate with WikiLeaks.
TheAtlantic, David Frum: Roger Stone’s Arrest Is the Signal for Congress to Act http://bit.ly/2S3iUJx
// Robert Mueller is looking for crimes. It’s up to legislators to safeguard the country.
TheNationalInterest, W James Antle III: Does the Roger Stone Indictment Mean Trump Is in Jeopardy? http://bit.ly/2S7ZR0y
// It’s the unknown unknowns that may determine the course of a presidency.
VanityFair, Abigail Tracy: “We Can See Collusion”: With the Stone Indictment, Mueller Begins Making His Case http://bit.ly/2TeMngX
// The special counsel’s office didn’t charge Roger Stone with conspiracy. Between the lines of the indictment, however, legal experts see a giant red arrow pointing to the president. “Either Trump was in on it,” says one former Justice official, “or he goes down as the most clueless boss and president in the 242-year history of the Republic.”
Vox, Andrew Prokop: Roger Stone’s arrest and indictment, explained http://bit.ly/2ThL6pi
// The longtime Trump adviser has been in Mueller’s crosshairs for some time.
USAToday: Roger Stone indictment: Mueller pushes deeper into Trump campaign; highlights effort to use Russia hacks to derail Clinton bid http://bit.ly/2TbvkMt
// by Kevin Johnson, Bart Jansen and Brad Heath
🐣 Trump wanted steel slats and he got a Steel Lady. @SpeakerPelosi
🐣 I can’t wait until @SpeakerPelosi addresses the American people to say, “Our long national nightmare is over.”
🐣 RT @SpeakerPelosi Roger Stone’s indictment makes clear there was a deliberate, coordinated effort by top Trump campaign officials to subvert the will of the American people during the 2016 Election. #FollowTheFacts
Axios: Pelosi questions Trump’s ties to Putin in wake of Stone arrest http://bit.ly/2TfJvjZ
// Full Statement from Speaker Pelosi:
“The indictment of Roger Stone makes clear that there was a deliberate, coordinated attempt by top Trump campaign officials to influence the 2016 election and subvert the will of the American people. It is staggering that the President has chosen to surround himself with people who violated the integrity of our democracy and lied to the FBI and Congress about it.
In the face of 37 indictments, the President’s continued actions to undermine the Special Counsel investigation raises the questions: what does Putin have on the President, politically, personally or financially? Why has the Trump Administration continued to discuss pulling the U.S. out of NATO, which would be a massive victory for Putin?
Lying to Congress and witness tampering constitute grave crimes. All who commit these illegal acts should be held accountable to the fullest extent of the law. We cannot allow any effort to intimidate witnesses or prevent them from appearing before Congress.
The Special Counsel investigation is working, and the House will continue to exercise our constitutional oversight responsibility and ensure that the Special Counsel investigation can continue free from interference from the White House.”
🐣 RT @ProudResister I hope people continue waking up to just how much damage the GOP has done to America and it didn’t all start with Trump. It’s been going on since Nixon. They’ve been committing crimes, destroying the middle class, starting fake wars and stealing elections for 50 fucking years.
🐣 RT @EricHolder A person who is pardoned can be put in a grand jury and asked about everything, including the acts for which he was pardoned. Obliged to tell the truth-or perjury charges. A president – through use of the pardon power – cannot therefore insulate himself.
🐣 RT @kylegriffin1 Nancy Pelosi on the Roger Stone indictment: “It is staggering that the President has chosen to surround himself with people who violated the integrity of our democracy and lied to the FBI and Congress about it.”
WSJ: Beyond the Shutdown: The Trump-Pelosi Dynamic Defines Washington http://on.wsj.com/2G2OQYa //➔ even the WSJ plays nice
// Spending and immigration fight driven by clashing personalities signals how divided government might play out
🐣 RT @tribelaw Russia —> WikiLeaks —> Stone —> “a senior Trump campaign official” (indictment para 12) —> Trump! That “senior” official must be Trump or someone just one step away. So Coordination, collusion, conspiracy: for indictment purposes, it may matter. For impeachment, not so much.
🔆 This❗️⋙ NYT: Huge Trove of Leaked Russian Documents Is Published by Transparency Advocates http://nyti.ms/2sMZ9rt “Distributed Denial of Secrets” or DDoSecrets
[T]he sheer volume of the material — 175 gigabytes — and the technical challenges of searching it meant that its full impact may not be felt for some time. The volume is many times greater than the total known material stolen by Russian military intelligence from the Democratic National Committee and Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign nearly three years ago.
↥ ↧
📋💙💙 DDoSecrets: Leaked Russian Documents http://bit.ly/2sLAsvl
TheHill: Transparency advocate group releases trove of hacked Russian documents http://bit.ly/2G2R7lV
FiveThirtyEight, Amelia Thomson-DeVeaux: What The Roger Stone Indictment Does (And Doesn’t) Tell Us http://53eig.ht/2WgFe1D
DailyBeast, Rick Wilson: Cosplaying Supervillain Roger Stone Meets Robert Mueller’s Real-Life Feds http://bit.ly/2RgCuNQ
// Stone lied to the Special Counsel because he trusted WhatsApp, which is a grandpa mistake of the first order.
🐣 RT @chunkled Hi. ¤ I love you. ¤ (sound up)
💽 https://twitter.com/chunkled/status/1068137230370308096/photo/1
// Mueller dancing #2 not a 🌀
🐣 RT @20committee WikiLeaks is a front for Russian intelligence. Fact. As even Pompeo, as Trump’s D/CIA, admitted publicly. ANY direct link between WL (ie GRU) and Team Trump isn’t “collusion” — it’s conspiracy and possibly espionage under USC.
📌 https://twitter.com/20committee/status/1088796725408612353
🐣 RT @John_Hudson Mike Pompeo just named Eliot Abrams his new special envoy for Venezuela. Abrams plead guilty to withholding information from Congress about the Iran-Contra affair. Pompeo says Abrams will be in charge of “all things related to our efforts to restore Democracy in Venezuela.”
🐣 RT @TheBeatWithAri “I’m going to assert as a matter of probability that Donald Trump was in the loop on the effort to get the Russians to help his election prospects by releasing the emails” – @BillKristol 💽 https://twitter.com/TheBeatWithAri/status/1088938670944591879/photo/1
MMFA: Alex Jones melts down after Roger Stone indicted: Indict “whore” Hillary Clinton instead http://bit.ly/2FYUCda
🚫 DisobedientMedia (Sep): Emails ~ Forensicator’s Analysis Supports Assange’s Statements On The DNC, Podesta Emails http://bit.ly/2Tgm49Y //➔ fails MediaBias FactCheck: High on “Conspiracy Theories”: http://bit.ly/2G00HpD
// 9/24/2018
🐣 RT @State_Duma Leonid Slutskiy: #US is behind the attempt to overthrow the legitimate President @NicolasMaduro. The #US continues the policy of external pressure, interference in affairs of sovereign states, only the Venezuelan must decide who will be the head of state […]
⋙ TheStateDuma [RU]: Head of the International Committee Leonid Slutskiy commented on events in Venezuela http://bit.ly/2DA9OMg Warning from the Russian Duma:
Text Block: https://twitter.com/Auriandra/status/1088941345308401664/photo/1
Leonid Slutskiy, Chairman of the Committee on International Affairs, believes that the United States is behind the attempt to overthrow the legitimate President of Venezuela, Nicolás Maduro. The United States continues the policy of external pressure and interference in the affairs of sovereign states, but only the people of Venezuela must decide who will be the head of state, the parliamentarian stressed.
“As for Venezuela: very rude and destructive. The United States continues the policy of external pressure and interference in the affairs of sovereign states. Now it is Caracas’s turn. Washington has already announced the recognition of opposition leader Juan Guaidó as an interim president of the country and threatened to toughen the sanction if the power is not transferred to him, allowing otherwise ”all options for action“ on its part.
There is no protection of democracy. This is another forceful imposition of American hegemony and the demolishing of unwanted regimes. ¤ Only the people of Venezuela must decide who will be the president of the country. And only by means of elections.
🐣 RT @NatashaBertrand Just in: Statement from House Intel chair @RepAdamSchiff—“This is now the second witness who has been indicted for or plead guilty to making false statements in testimony before our Committee.”
https://twitter.com/NatashaBertrand/status/1088841962571075584/photo/1
NBC, Ken Dilanian: Roger Stone indictment: Is this all Mueller has, or is he closing in on Trump? http://nbcnews.to/2UhOJLU
// Analysis: The charges do not allege Russian coordination, but Mueller might be building a conspiracy case.
MotherJones, David Corn: What the Roger Stone Indictment Left Out: How He Helped Russia Attack the 2016 Election http://bit.ly/2CLOMbX
// His greatest act of villainy isn’t included in Robert Mueller’s charging document.
🐣 RT @NatashaBertrand He relished his late-night calls with Trump in 2016. He was in regular touch with the Trump campaign about WikiLeaks’ plans to destroy Trump’s foe, Hillary Clinton. And now Roger Stone has met his reckoning via Trump’s other biggest foe: Robert Mueller.
⋙ 💙 TheAtlantic, Natasha Bertrand: Decades of Dirty Tricks Finally Catch Up to Roger Stone http://bit.ly/2FXXRkW
// Trump’s longtime adviser said after appearing in federal court, “The only thing worse than being talked about is not being talked about.”
🐣 RT @Leah_McElrath Abrams is a un-indicted felony equivalent #IranContra coconspirator. ¤ Just so y’all know where this is likely headed.
⋙ 🐣 RT @Phil_Mattingly .@SecPompeo just announced that Elliot Abrams to lead U.S. efforts on Venezuela.
🐣 RT @TheRickWilson 6′ 3″…239-ish. Big on Twitter.
⋙ 🐣 RT @Evan_McMullin Now the question is who ordered Steve Bannon to reach out to Roger Stone about Wikileaks?
🐣 RT @tedlieu Roger Stone is the 6th associate of @realDonaldTrump to get indicted. ¤ Republicans and Trump like to talk about running government like a business. ¤ I simply note that any CEO of a company who has had 6 of his associates indicted would have resigned or been fired by now.
🐣 💙 RT @AnaCabrera 37 people and entities have now been charged by special counsel Robert Mueller, including 6 associates of President Donald Trump: Michael Flynn, Rick Gates, Paul Manafort, George Papadopoulos, Michael Cohen, and Roger Stone. Mueller has brought 199 total criminal charges in all.
🐣 RT @rickwtyler Nancy to Chuck: You just grab him by the b@££s. When you’re the Speaker, he’ll just let you do it. You can do anything.
🐣 RT @RogueFirstLady Everyone hiding now as The Donald watch news coverage of him humiliation.
🐣 RT @GlennKesslerWP A reminder; No one has any idea where Trump gets this tale of the duct-taped women.
🐣 RT @TheRickWilson 6′ 3″…239-ish. Big on Twitter.
⋙ 🐣 RT @Evan_McMullin Now the question is who ordered Steve Bannon to reach out to Roger Stone about Wikileaks?
HomelandSecurityNewsWire: Kremlin dispatches Russian security personnel to protect Venezuela’s Maduro http://bit.ly/2WlMLMj //➔ US opposition be damned
Private Russian military contractors have been dispatched by the Kremlin to Venezuela in the past few days to shore up security for President Nicolas Maduro. The Russian move appears to be in response to the recognition by the United States and most of Latin America’s countries of Juan Guaido, who declares himself as Venezuela’s interm president earlier this week. Russian sources told Reuters that the Russian contingent sent to protect Maduro is about 400 strong.
WaPo: ‘It’s better to be infamous’: Even under indictment, Roger Stone relishes his time in the spotlight http://wapo.st/2DA1lIS
🐣 RT @MikeI_Jollett Trump promised a WALL but delivered a CAVE.
🐣 RT @davidaxelrod These Mueller indictments are like watching Wheel of Fortune. The puzzle fills in with each letter. Now add in the Stone indictment, and the word coming into focus looks very much like COLLUSION.
🐣 RT @KurtEichenwald 1. Every step in investigating the flow of information from the conspiracy involving Corsi/Stone/Russian hackers/Assange to conservative media is getting worse and worse. THIS is a major outrage, and a sign of the utter collapse of American journalism. Now, @CNN is involved… 📌 https://twitter.com/kurteichenwald/status/1088928675431661568
WaPo/Bloomberg, Laurence Arnold: Your Guide to Understanding the Trump-Russia Saga http://wapo.st/2FYD5BS
🐣 RT @j363j In 1972, a 22 year old #RogerStone became a political dirty tricks understudy of Bart Porter, via an internship position in the Nixon White House, arranged by Donald Trump’s lawyer (one year later) #RoyCohn.
WaPo, Jennifer Rubin: President Trump lost. Period. http://wapo.st/2WgTk2Q
🐣 RT @j363j In 1972, a 22 year old #RogerStone became a political dirty tricks understudy of Bart Porter, via an internship position in the Nixon White House, arranged by Donald Trump’s lawyer (one year later) #RoyCohn.
🐣 RT @chrislhayes Pelosi taking the SOTU away worked.
NYT: Trump Announces Deal to Reopen Government, in Surprise Retreat From Wall http://nyti.ms/2UcB20I
🐣 RT @danpfeiffer This is an important point. Democratic control of the House means that bad news cycles are no longer the only mechanism for political accountability and Trump’s power to change the conversation to the next outrage has been essentially neutered
⋙ 🐣 RT @matthewamiller I bet Jared Kushner is pretty happy today the latest story on his security clearance has been blasted out of the news. But unlike the past two years, the news cycle changing doesn’t mean the issue is dead – subpoenas are still coming.
🐣 RT @AltUSPressSecy They’ll never say one word, but every national security analyst is reaching their breaking point along with the air traffic controllers. ¤ We cannot continue to operate the United States Government in this fashion.
⋙ 🐣 RT @kylegriffin1 Nat’l Air Traffic Controllers Assoc.: “We have warned about what could happen as a result of the prolonged shutdown. Many controllers have reached the breaking point of exhaustion, stress, and worry caused by this shutdown. Each hour that goes by … makes the situation worse.”
🐣 RT @AshaRangappa To those claiming that there is no suggestion of collusion in the Stone indictment: One of the most important things in it is that Russian disinformation talking points were being passed to the campaign to create a narrative surrounding the released documents
💽 [CNN] https://twitter.com/AshaRangappa_/status/1088865632584720384/photo/1
🐣 RT @tonyschwartz You know Trump’s character by character of the people he chooses:: Paul Manafort, Roger Stone, Michael Flynn, Jared Kushner, Michael Cohen, Steve Bannon, Sebastian Gorka, Ryan Zinke, Jeff Sessions, Scott Pruitt, Rob Porter, Tom Price, Stephen Miller, Mike Pence, Kellyanne Conway
🐣 RT @MuellerSheWrote No emergency declaration. Trump is folding like a cheap suit. No money for the wall. Much better than what I thought he was going to do.
🐣 RT @TheRickWilson Hey Roger Stone fans: ¤ Bannon ratted him out. ¤ You’re welcome. ¤ Fight amongst yourselves.
🐣 RT @rgoodlaw In Paul Manafort’s own words: ¤ ”Roger’s relationship with Trump has been so interconnected that it’s hard to define what’s Roger and what’s Donald.”
💽 https://twitter.com/rgoodlaw/status/1088828739054649345/photo/1
🐣 RT @JRubinBlogger what did Trump know and when did he know it?
🐣 RT @juliaioffe He’s been waiting to do that for decades, hasn’t he? https://twitter.com/juliaioffe/status/1088860231466172417/photo/1
// Nixon double-V salute
🐣 RT @ZevShalev If you follow the Stone trail, you’re sure to pass Steven Bannon before reaching Rebekah and Robert Mercer and look out for the hidden path to Bibi Netanyahu. @traciemac_Bmore #MuellerFriday
🐣 RT @craigunger As per @anastasiaki, @MoscowTimes is purging content that links alleged Russian Mafioso to @RudyGiuliani.
⋙ 🐣 RT @anastasiaki This is a scandal. The article – @RudyGiuliani Donor Linked to Russian Mobs (#Mogilevich and Chernoy) just disapeared from the website of @MoscowTimes Guess what, I did snapshots from google cash and I will remain
This is a scandal. The article – @RudyGiuliani Donor Linked to Russian Mobs (#Mogilevich and Chernoy) just disapeared from the website of @MoscowTimes Guess what, I did snapshots from google cash and I will remain pic.twitter.com/MGYXV22kcK
— Anastasia Kirilenko (@anastasiaki) January 25, 2019
MotherJones: Nancy Pelosi just slammed Donald Trump over his ties to Russia: “It’s bothersome to see his connections to Russia and the president’s suggestions that we should question whether we should be in NATO—which is a dream come true for Vladimir Putin.”
💽 https://twitter.com/MotherJones/status/1088855666435870720/photo/1
🐣 RT @tweetjaleesa Congrats, Roger Stone! You’re that much closer to Nixon’s criminal legacy. Maybe someday someone will get your big dumb face tattooed on their back.
🐣 RT @woodruffbets Roger Stone outside the courthouse, over boos: “The only thing worse than being talked about is not being talked about”
🐣 RT @DanRather I’ve followed the career of Roger Stone for decades, and he always struck me as a man who thought he was too smart to get caught.
🐣 RT @WilDonnelly Most Successful Witch Hunt ever!
Witch 1 Flynn
Witch 2 Papadopoulos
Witch 3 Gates
Witch 4 Manafort
Witch 5 Cohen
Witch 6 Pineda
Witch 7 Patten
Witch 8 van der Zwaan
Witch 9 Kilimnik
Witch 10 Butina
Witch 11-23 – 13 Russians
Witch 24-36 – 12 Russian intel officers
🐣 RT @ABCNews Chris Christie on Roger Stone indictment: “When I read this indictment this morning, it once again proved out just how smart and careful Robert Mueller is being… This has got to be a very disturbing day for some senior members of the Trump campaign.” https://abcn.ws/2DyQtuL
🐣 RT @NatashaBertrand Stone says there is “no circumstance” under which he will plead guilty to the charges and says he intends to go to trial in DC.
🐣 RT @MuellerSheWrote Beans come true. Roger Atone has been indicted.
⋙ 🐣 RT @MuellerSheWrote Mueller’s grand jury took testimony from Jerome Corsi’s stepson today. The last time the grand jury convened on a Thursday, Russian indictments dropped the next day. Should we be expecting a felony Friday for Roger Stonehenge? (That means his whole gang). #felonyfriday #beans
🐣 RT @HoarseWhisperer I could watch the FBI swarming on Roger Stone’s house all day.
💽 https://twitter.com/HoarseWisperer/status/1088780413512925189/photo/1
🐣 RT @real Greatest Witch Hunt in the History of our Country! NO COLLUSION! Border Coyotes, Drug Dealers and Human Traffickers are treated better. Who alerted CNN to be there?
🐣 No GOPer has won fair and square since Eisenhower: Nixon: Secret reach-out to N Viet Nam to delay peace talks; Reagan: Secret reach-out to Iran on hostages; GWBH: Willie Horton; GWB: SCOTUS ruling, (Term 2:) Ohio shenanigans; and now #TrumpRussia They’re ALL Dirty #TreasonParty
🐣 RT @matthewamiller Stone’s behavior as described in the indictment is so incredibly reckless. Find it hard to believe he takes such a huge risk just to protect outreach to Wikileaks that *he had already bragged about publicly.* Has to be a bigger secret.
Politico: Roger Stone’s Last Dirty Trick http://politi.co/2CJATef
// He promoted Donald Trump’s political rise decades before anyone. Now he’s been indicted for the bruising style of politics he wielded gleefully on Trump’s behalf.
CNBC: Trump associate Roger Stone arrested on 7 counts, including lying to Congress, in special counsel Robert Mueller’s probe http://cnb.cx/
● Roger Stone, a longtime political advisor to President Trump, has been arrested in Florida.
● Stone faces seven counts, including witness tampering, obstruction of justice and making false statements to Congress.
● The indictment alleges that Stone had been in contact with top-ranking Trump campaign officials about efforts to leak damaging information about Hillary Clinton just before the 2016 election.
● According to a person with direct knowledge of the manner, one of the senior officials who reached out to Stone was Steve Bannon, who served as CEO of the Trump campaign during the election’s final stages.
🐣 RT @DavidCornDC Roger Stone kept saying he expected to be indicted for a side issue. But he’s been indicted for a core matter: lying to cover up his attempts to communicate with WikiLeaks about the Russian hacks while he was communicating with the Trump campaign about WikiLeaks.
🐣 RT @KatyTur 5 days after sr campaign official told to contact Stone, Trump makes plea to Russia ¤ “Russia, if you’re listening, I hope you’re able to find the 30,000 emails that are missing.” ¤ That night, per prev Mueller indictment, Russian hackers tried to get into Clinton’s personal email https://twitter.com/KatyTurNBC/status/1088789556739170304/photo/1
🐣 RT @tribelaw “After the July 2016 release of stolen DNC emails by [Wikileaks], a senior Trump Campaign official was directed to contact STONE about any additional releases [of] other damaging information . . . regarding the Clinton Campaign.” WHO “DIRECTS” A SENIOR TRUMP CAMPAIGN OFFICIAL?
🐣 RT @RepSwalwell #RogerStone worked overtime to get his hands on Russian-hacked emails to help @realDonaldTrump. Then Stone took out the shovels to bury and hide his dirty deeds from investigators. Put this in context with all the others eager to work with Russians. This was a campaign of cheats.
🐣 RT @krassenstein In case anyone needs to know. From the Roger Stone Indictment:
Person 1 = Jerome Corsi
Person 2 = Roger Credico
Organization 1 = Wikileaks
Head of Organization 1 = Julian Assange
🐣 RT @neeratanden Yes. This has always been the issue. The Trump campaign wanted Wikileaks out precisely because Access Hollywood had just gone up
⋙ 🐣 RT @vermontgmg Remember the day a Trump official texted Stone “well done” for Wikileaks’ dump of Clinton emails, that was hours after the Access Hollywood tape released. Was Wikileaks dump coordinated to cover-up embarrassing tape?
🐣 RT @Neal_Katyal A simple 3 step guide to understanding the morning’s news:
1. Read tweet below
2. Read Mueller indictment of Roger Stone
3. Ask yourself why a sitting President of the US would have felt compelled to tweet the below. At some point, # of criminals surrounding Trump not coincidence
⋙ 🐣 RT @real [12/3/2018] “I will never testify against Trump.” This statement was recently made by Roger Stone, essentially stating that he will not be forced by a rogue and out of control prosecutor to make up lies and stories about “President Trump.” Nice to know that some people still have “guts!”
🐣 RT @JohnJHarwood key passage in Roger Stone indictment: he “was contacted by senior Trump campaign officials to inquire about future releases” of stolen information by Wikileaks
🔆 This❗️⋙ ≣ LawFareBlog: Document: Indictment of Roger Stone [pdf] http://bit.ly/2UdQgmj 24p
An indictment of Trump associate Roger Stone has been unsealed in connection with the Mueller investigation. Stone is indicted on one count of obstruction of an official proceeding, five counts of false statements, and one count of witness tampering. The document is
available here and below. …
🐣 RT @olgaNYC1211 Roger Stone has been indicted for working w WikiLeaks to release stolen info for Trump and Russia during election. Trump has known Stone and Manafort since around 1980 through his mentor Roy Cohn. Don Jr also communicated w WikiLeaks!
⋙ 🐣 RT @olgaNYC1211 There goes Roger Stone’s defense that he never communicated with Wikileaks .. ¤ Dm messages released via @NatashaBertrand show otherwise ¤ How many members of the @realDonaldTrump camp had DIRECT communications w Wikileaks?? ¤ Stone, Don Jr.. and I’m sure many more will be revealed
https://twitter.com/olgaNYC1211/status/968631729195044865/photo/1-2
🔆 This❗️⋙ WaPo: Longtime Trump adviser Roger Stone indicted by special counsel in Russia investigation http://wapo.st/2UjXqph
🐣 RT @JohnPodesta Rogers’s time in the barrel—and it’s headed over Niagara Falls. Roger Stone, Adviser to Trump, Is Indicted in Mueller Investigation via @NYTimes
⋙ 🔆 This❗️⋙ NYT: Roger Stone Arrested in Mueller Investigation Into Trump Campaign http://nyti.ms/2WqEB5E
OCCRP: Yevgeny Prigozhin ran the infamous “troll farm” and other pro-Putin media operations. One of his operatives came clean to reporters, sharing some of the dirty work he and his team did for the oligarch, including murder. ¤ Then he vanished.
⋙ OCCRP (Dec 2018): Operative for “Putin’s Chef” Shares Secrets, Vanishes — Then Reappears and Retracts http://bit.ly/2S7SS7V
// 12/17/2018
YahooNews/Newsweek (2017): Jared Kushner Doesn’t Read And Gets Tired Of Talking About The Middle East, Joe Scarborough Says http://yhoo.it/2CNEVT4
// 11/17/2017
ScienceMag: Fake news on Twitter during the 2016 U.S. presidential election http://bit.ly/2Dw9xd4
Our findings suggest immediate points of leverage to reduce the spread of misinformation. Social media platforms could discourage users from following or sharing content from the handful of established fake news sources that are most pervasive. They could also adopt policies that disincentivize frequent posting, which would be effective against flooding techniques (25) while affecting only a small number of accounts. For example, platforms could algorithmically demote content from frequent posters or prioritize users who have not posted that day. For illustrative purposes, a simulation of capping political URLs at 20 per day resulted in a reduction of 32% of content from fake news sources while affecting only 1% of content posted by nonsupersharers. (SM S.15). Finally, because fake news sources have shared audiences, platforms could establish closer partnerships with fact-checking organizations to proactively watch top producers of misinformation and examine content from new sites that emerge in the vicinity of fake news sources in a coexposure network. Such interventions do raise the question of what roles platforms should play in constraining the information people consume. Nonetheless, the proposed interventions could contribute to delivering corrective information to affected populations, increase the effectiveness of corrections, foster equal balance of voice and attention on social media, and more broadly enhance the resiliency of information systems to misinformation campaigns during key moments of the democratic process.
⭕ 24 Jan 2019
Salon, Lucian Truscott IV (1/24): Trump’s Moscow tower deal is the key http://bit.ly/2CXEXaG
// It’s at the heart of Trump’s Russia connections, and that’s why he and Giuliani have lied about it repeatedly
Msnbc: Kushner security clearance rejection overruled by Trump appointee http://on.msnbc.com/2MucQV2
// Rachel Maddow shares breaking news from NBC News that being rejected for security clearance by two separate career security officials, Jared Kushner and at least 30 others had their rejections overruled by a Trump-appointed supervisor [Carl Kline]. Bradley Moss, a national security attorney specializing in security clearance law, lends his expertise to the story.
Newsweek: Trump Administration Neglects to Implement Required Russia Sanctions, Saying There’s ‘No Deadline’ http://bit.ly/2WhbnpB
NBC: Twitter is testing a new way to determine where a tweet started http://nbcnews.to/2RLfueU
// Twitter’s changes come as many journalists and power users have said they are re-evaluating their Twitter habits.
🐣 RT @NicolleDWallace Omg
⋙ 🐣 RT @davidgura Asked by if U.S. soldiers would defend a NATO ally “if needed,” Secretary of State Mike Pompeo says, “I’m not going to get into hypotheticals…”
Text Block: https://twitter.com/davidgura/status/1088448404030660608/photo/1
WaPo: Witness in special counsel probe, former Stone associate, collected payments from Infowars through job Stone arranged http://wapo.st/2sMcMa5
🐣 RT @RadioFreeTom It’s also my view, and I’m not a Democrat. Trump is a simple man who responds to simple lessons: if he wins on this, he’ll be treated like a conquering hero by the right, and he’ll want that same jolt of adrenaline over and over. There’s a lot more at stake here than policy.
⋙ 🐣 RT @baseballcrank This as much as anything is the Democrats’ point of view on the shutdown – it’s not about policy at all, it’s about setting the terms of partisan power for the next two years
⋙⋙ 🐣 RT @markknoller Addressing @usmayors, @SpeakerPelosi says Democrats “must hold the line” against the President on border wall, otherwise he’ll use a Government shutdown “anytime he doesn’t get his way.” She says he’s holding the American people hostage “to a campaign applause line.
PoliticusUSA: ‘The Days Of Mob Rule Are Over’: Rep. Eric Swalwell Tells Trump He’s Going Down http://bit.ly/2HwKeeX
RawStory: ‘When the country goes to hell’: 2014 video shows Trump bragging he would ‘crash the economy’ to get his way http://bit.ly/2Te0KC6
🐣 RT @brianklaas The president’s unqualified son-in-law raised major red flags during his security clearance review, was initially rejected by security specialists, but then their supervisor overruled them. Nepotism and security risks wrapped up in one. What a dangerous joke.
🐣 RT @matthewamiller Massive. Not just Kushner, but for more than 30 other WH staffers as well? Their handling of clearances has never added up, and this looks like an enormous scandal.
🔆 This❗️⋙ NBC: Officials rejected Jared Kushner for top secret security clearance, but were overruled http://nbcnews.to/2FWmChy Jared Kushner was rejected for a top secret clearance by 2 career security specialists, but their supervisor overruled them & approved him, say sources.
// by Laura Strickler, Ken Dilanian and Peter Alexander
The official, Carl Kline, is a former Pentagon employee who was installed as director of the personnel security office in the Executive Office of the President in May 2017. Kushner’s was one of at least 30 cases in which Kline overruled career security experts and approved a top secret clearance for incoming Trump officials despite unfavorable information, the two sources said. They said the number of rejections that were overruled was unprecedented — it had happened only once in the three years preceding Kline’s arrival.
After reviewing the file, CIA officers who make clearance decisions balked, two of the people familiar with the matter said. One called over to the White House security division, wondering how Kushner got even a top secret clearance, the sources said. Top secret information is defined as material that would cause “exceptionally grave damage” to national security if disclosed to adversaries.
Meduza: Russia’s risks in Venezuela, the latest Internet crackdown legislation moves forward, Deripaska’s escort may have been with the FSB http://bit.ly/2RLsnWu //➔ I don’t know this source well but fyi @MuellerSheWrote
💄 Kashin says Rybka is a former FSB sex worker and bonafide political prisoner In an op-ed for Republic, columnist Oleg Kashin argues that “sex trainer” Anastasia Vashukevich (“Nastya Rybka”) should be considered a political prisoner, not a tabloid sideshow. Kashin says Vashukevich’s “strange,” reckless behavior before and after Navalny’s exposé indicates that she believed she was safe from reprisals by someone as rich and powerful as Oleg Deripaska. According to journalist Sergey Kanev’s source in Russia’s prostitution world, Vashukevich apparently worked with the Federal Security Service. Kashin says this means the FSB likely used her to attack Deripaska and Deputy Prime Minister Sergey Prikhodko. When the agency got what it wanted from these individuals, the FSB did what it does with any expendable resource and cut Vashukevich loose.
The prostitution case against Vashukevich in Moscow suggests that Russia’s authorities have actively turned on their former call girl, Kashin argues. Whether the motivation is “corruption” or staging a cautionary tale for potentially loose-lipped sex workers, the state is now persecuting Vashukevich, Kashin says, which makes her a political prisoner. (A day after Kashin’s article was published, Vashukevich and Alexander Kirillov were released on their own recognizance from pretrial detention in Moscow.)
WaPo, Jennifer Rubin: When it comes to Russia, maybe voters do care about facts http://wapo.st/2MvGiKj
ChicagoSunTimes: If Trump looks and talks like a Russian stooge … http://bit.ly/2WgSmnm
🐣 RT @clarecmc POTUS just said that the Rs that voted with the Democrats today to re-open the government did so because of hurricane relief money in the bill. The R Senators that voted that way were from Alaska, Colorado, Tennessee, Utah, Maine, and Georgia.
Newsweek: Deutsche Bank Willing To Report Jared Kushner’s ‘Suspicious Transactions’ To Robert Mueller: Report http://bit.ly/2Hw2Snv
🐣 RT @FoundDemocracy To be effective, you have to fight in a way that a bully understands. #TeamPelosi
⋙ CNN, Chris Cillizza: How Nancy Pelosi beat Donald Trump at his own game (and why it matters) http://cnn.it/2CHNcYs
NBC: Skripal poisoning: Trump admin yet to impose new Russia sanctions required by law http://nbcnews.to/2HwqBDY
// The European Union punished four Russians this week in connection with the Skripal poisoning, but the U.S. hasn’t moved forward with its own penalties.
DailyBeast, Matt Lewis: SOTU There!: Pelosi Proves That Congress Actually Is a Co-Equal Branch of Government http://bit.ly/2FQqIbZ
// The State of the Union battle is largely symbolic. But symbols matter, and Donald Trump learned that his new adversary won’t be pushed around.
NYMag, Nick Tabor: Everything We Know About BuzzFeed’s Michael Cohen Scoop, and Why Mueller Shot It Down http://nym.ag/2RO2O7j
Bloomberg: Manafort Fires Back at Mueller’s Claims That He Broke Deal by Lying http://bloom.bg/2RMIG5f
● Mueller says Manafort lied about five matters when cooperating
● Judge orders ex-Trump campaign aide to appear Friday in court
VanityFair, Abigail Tracy: “It Is a High-Wire Act”: D.O.J. Vets Have Theories About Mueller’s Message to BuzzFeed http://bit.ly/2ROZngk
CNN: As Stone waits for Mueller, he’s back to going out for pizza on Fridays http://cnn.it/2RgomEw
Meduza: What does Russia stand to lose in Venezuela? http://bit.ly/2CJYGLa
📊 CNN: Poll: More Americans believe Mueller investigation is justified than politically motivated http://cnn.it/2CKUryX CBSNews Poll: 50/45%
WaPo, Greg Sargent: There is only one way to break Trump’s pathology. Pelosi has found it. http://wapo.st/2FXoiY2
💙 TheAtlantic, Bernard-Henri Lévy: The New American Empire http://bit.ly/2DxBscU Bernard-Henri Lévy is a philosopher, activist, filmmaker, and author of over thirty books
// What is the internet if not a modern panopticon? But it is a two-sided one, a panopticon that can be turned around.
TheAtlantic, Josh Rubin: NATO Fears That This Town Will Be the Epicenter of Conflict With Russia http://bit.ly/2FXjhPc
// Narva, a small Estonian town that borders Russia, used to be part of the USSR. Most people there speak only Russian. Will Putin try to invade like he did in Crimea?
RollingStone, Tim Dickinson: Eight Questions About Robert Mueller, Russia and the NRA http://bit.ly/2B4LFvx
// Trump’s ties to the gun group are reportedly in the special counsel’s sights as the special counsel investigation enters 2019
Did anyone inside the NRA knowingly participate in the conspiracy for which Butina is now jailed and her handler, Alexander Torshin, was hit with U.S. sanctions?
Was the NRA’s invitation and trip to Moscow in 2015 — which the Daily Beast reports was authorized by the Kremlin, citing “a U.S. intelligence report” — evidence of collusion by the gun group with Russian officials, or did the NRA have the wool pulled over its eyes by its Russian hosts, Torshin and Butina?
Did Russian money pass through the NRA to help fund Trump’s bid for the White House, which McClatchy reported in January 2018 was the subject of an FBI investigation?
If Russian money did wind up in NRA coffers, did the NRA know the source of the cash? And how much (if any) of the record $30 million that the NRA spent on behalf of Trump in 2016 did this Russian cash represent?
If the NRA did receive Russian money, which other Republicans benefited from the tainted largesse of 2016? As a reminder, the gun group spent more than $6 million on behalf of Sen. Richard Burr (R-NC) and at least $3 million each on behalf of Marco Rubio (R-FL) and Roy Blunt (R-MO).
Could any of this alleged Russian money have been used in the political campaigns to help seat supreme court justices Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh? (The NRA reportedly spent about $1 million on each nomination fight.)
Why did NRA president Pete Brownell, who attended the 2015 Moscow gathering, abruptly step down last May, a year before the end of his term, being quickly replaced by Col. Oliver North?
If Russian money was flowing to the NRA, has it since dried up? Do the NRA’s entanglements with the Russians have anything to do with its current financial mess, which the gun group has argued in court documents could leave it unable to exist?
CNN: Q & A with the Russian pop star tied to Trump and why he canceled his North American tour http://cnn.it/2G1F7Rw Emin Agalarov
CREW: Russia Renewed Ivanka Trump’s Trademarks Shortly Before the 2016 Election http://bit.ly/2B3ZFFO
CNBC: Michael Cohen adviser Lanny Davis wants Trump censured by Congress for ‘witness tampering,’ as president blasts ‘bad lawyer’ http://cnb.cx/2FXLSnt
● Michael Cohen’s legal adviser Lanny Davis called for President Trump to be censured by the House for “witness tampering,” and for Trump’s lawyer Rudy Giuliani to be criminally investigated for the alleged misconduct.
● Davis’ call comes a day after Cohen postponed his congressional testimony due to alleged “threats” against his family by the president and Giuliani.
● Cohen, who is cooperating with Robert Mueller’s probe of Trump, pleaded guilty in 2018 to lying to Congress about a Trump real estate effort in Russia, and about hush-money payments to two purported Trump paramours, porn star Stormy Daniels and Playboy model Karen McDougal.
💙 Salon/DeepState, Jefferson Morley: In a challenge to Trump, U.S. intelligence targets Russia http://bit.ly/2RcDJxw
// The rise of Trump has coincided with the decline of counterterrorism as a declared U.S. policy priority
It is safe to say President Trump did not read the new National Intelligence Strategy of the United States (NIS) released on Tuesday.
Which is a good thing.
The document shows the intelligence community (meaning the 17 U.S. government intelligence agencies) has mobilized against the threat posed by President Trump, his incoherent impulses on war and peace, and his furtive machinations with Russia.If Trump had read them, he would have noticed his government’s 17 clandestine services had targeted his friends in Moscow, his business partners in the skyscraper hotel business.
The IC is on the record (again) as saying the threat of Russian penetration is not “fake news,” not a hoax, but a menace.
Is it time to confront Russia? Is the National Intelligence Strategy a declaration of Cold War II?
Russia has been elevated as a threat, but it is not defined as an existential threat, as jihadist terrorism was from 2001 to 2018.
I think the IC — or, if you prefer, “the deep state” — is looking for legitimacy, which Trump threatens. Russia now seems more threatening to the U.S. intelligence community than Iran or jihadist terror. This is accurate but no reason for a new Cold War. It is a reason to reduce and eliminate Russia’s nuclear arsenal—and to do the same with our own nukes.
Bottom line: Russia is the growing threat to the United States, according to the intelligence community. If the president says Russia is no threat, well, he doesn’t read U.S. intelligence reports, least of all this one.
This report is a sign that Trump is losing control of his government. Don’t take it from me. Listen to the insiders.
RFE/RL: Russia Slams U.S. Backing For Venezuela Opposition Leader http://bit.ly/2FPeCzE
Vox, Andrew Prokop: Michael Cohen’s claim that President Trump is threatening his family, explained http://bit.ly/2sMDGyN
// Trump made ominous innuendos about Cohen’s father-in-law. Now Cohen’s congressional testimony may be off.
WaPo/AP: Where the investigations related to President Trump stand http://wapo.st/2CIWLXf
USAToday: Putin warns against ‘destructive interference’ in Venezuela after Trump recognizes Juan Guaido http://bit.ly/2TcVezN
WaPo: Venezuela and U.S. locked in tense standoff as Russia warns against American ‘intervention’ http://wapo.st/2TdPJR8
🐣 Pompeo denounces Maduro. Russia supports him. Call to Trump from Putin coming?
🐣 Judiciary to re-open Hillary email case? Dems should use the opportunity to look into the FBI leaks to Guiliani that forced Comey’s hand re: the Wiener laptop @AmyKlobuchar @KamalaHarris @SenWhitehouse
🐣 RT @tribelaw Why did Buzzfeed story about Trump’s subornation of perjury cause a Tsunami while his witness tampering in plain view causes only a ripple? This is an even more serious crime (20 yrs v 5 yrs). Looks like only hidden POTUS crimes shock people. Crimes in plain view, not so much.
🐣 RT @MSNBC JUST IN: Michael Cohen has been subpoenaed to testify before the Senate Intel Cmte., a source close to Cohen tells @NBCNews. ¤ https://on.msnbc.com/2HvvQUv
TheGuardian: Russia and key allies vow to stand by Maduro in Venezuela crisis http://bit.ly/2T6w59S uh oh
// Attempts to force Venezuela’s president from power are illegal, says Russian senator
🔆 This❗️⋙ DailyBeast, Kevin Poulson: This Time It’s Russia’s Emails Getting Leaked http://bit.ly/2Dw97DK
// The Russian oligarchs and Kremlin apparatchiks spared by WikiLeaks in the past will not be so lucky this week, when transparency activists drop a massive archive of leaked docs.
⭕ 23 Jan 2019
💙 WashingtonMonthly, Martin Longman: A Connection Between the Moscow Tower and the Trump Tower Meeting http://bit.ly/2Rh2JUl
// Sberbank; read entire article; see 25 Jan: Medium, Scott Stedman: The Moscow Project and the missing 6 billion rubles http://bit.ly/2Tj6daG
Sater is in the news again because of his central role in brokering a deal between IC Expert CEO Andrey Rozov and the Trump Organization to build a skyscraper in Moscow that would have been the tallest building in Europe. On Tuesday, Buzzfeed News published the detailed plans for that tower. I now have reason to believe that there’s a connection between the Moscow Tower deal, which was formalized in a letter of intent signed on October 28, 2015, and the infamous Trump Tower meeting that occurred on June 9, 2016.
It’s not that surprising that Sater and Rozov were working on two distinct real estate deals at the same time, but the New York-based accountant, Ilya Bykov, who was involved in the West 38th Street transaction is the same accountant who helped Azerbaijani oligarch Aras Agalarov create a shell company in Delaware just prior to the June 9, 2016 Trump Tower meeting. Agalarov, you will remember, was responsible for bringing Donald Trump’s beauty contest to Moscow in 2013, and it was his son Emil who reached out to Donald Trump Jr. to offer dirt on Hillary Clinton.
The shell company, called Silver Valley Consulting, has attracted the attention of investigators because eleven days before the June 9 meeting, Mr. Agalarov moved “$19.5 million from an offshore investment vehicle to a US bank account” for the newly established corporation.
As independent investigator Scott Stedman put it, “The intersection of Rozov, Sater, Bykov, Agalarov and the shell company that purchased 22 West 38th Street, resulting in an $8M profit for Rozov in the midst of negotiating Trump Tower Moscow will surely pique the interest of congressional and federal authorities.”
Up until now, there has been no suggestion that there was a similar connection between the Moscow Tower proposal and the Magnitsky Act, but some of same players are emerging as having been involved in both of these negotiations. For example, the accountant Ilya Bykov connects both with Sater and Rozov’s real estate deal and with Agalarov’s shell company. In the latter case, the suspicion is that Agalarov was moving $20 million into an American account for some purpose related to the Trump Tower meeting. …
As for the implications for the Russia investigation, there is clear evidence here that the Trump Organization was looking for ways to ingratiate itself with Vladimir Putin in furtherance of getting a deal to build a tower in Moscow. The Russians dangled a deal, got Trump to sign on the dotted line, and then held that over him as they attempted to get him to make commitments should he actually become president. The Magnitsky Act was one of their main targets, but so was undermining the European Union, breaking up NATO, getting America to leave Syria, getting a recognition of their right to Crimea, and sanctions relief. Trump has pursued all of these things and more since becoming president.
BuzzFeedNews, Kevin Collier: It Looks Like Russian Hackers Are Still At It In 2019 http://bit.ly/2MwPHkO
// A British think tank that counters Russian information operations has been hacked — and Russian media outlets are all over the leaked material.
RFE/RL: ‘Your Turn To Lie’: Former Russian State TV Cameraman Describes ‘The Business Of Misinforming Viewers’ http://bit.ly/2FZ4tzJ
Politico: Schiff, Waters plan joint Deutsche Bank investigation http://politi.co/2FPwx9o House Intelligence Chairman Adam Schiff and Financial Services Chairwoman Maxine Waters
Politico: Manafort to confront lying charges in court Friday http://politi.co/2Ul3I8b
// Robert Mueller has accused the former Trump campaign chairman of lying during grand jury testimony and in cooperation sessions with the special counsel.
HomelandSecurityNewsWire: GRU’s suspected plan to link Skripal poisoning to Steele Dossier http://bit.ly/ 2sFonb8
// Excerpts from paywalled: TheTelegraph, Robert Mendick [UK] (1/20/2019): Kremlin accused of laying false trail linking Sergei Skripal to ex-MI6 officer behind Trump dossier [$] http://bit.ly/2S9c05i
TheHill: Trump disapproval rating at all-time high amid shutdown, Russia concerns: poll http://bit.ly/2CFqBM6
Newsweek: ‘Putin Knows a Lot More Than the American Public Knows’ About Trump’s Dealings With Russia, Says Ex-CIA Chief Brennan http://bit.ly/2Dvt7Gq
🐣 RT @RepAdamShiff The shutdown’s impact on federal workers is bad enough, but the FBI is also losing counter-terrorism sources and is unable to fund key efforts to target terror suspects, drug traffickers and sexual predators. ¤ Time to reopen the government and stop putting our security at risk.
[ Tlink https://twitter.com/RepAdamSchiff/status/1088179749401305088 ]
⋙ 🐣 RT @NatashaBertrand New: The wheels of justice are grinding to a halt. FBI agents say the shutdown is costing them irreplaceable sources, postponing indictments, & slow-rolling investigations. The fed judiciary and US Attorneys’ offices are running out of money. It’s day 33. [ Link ]
RFE/RL: Russian Court Orders House Arrest For Activist Charged Under ‘Undesirable’ Law http://bit.ly/2Duyoy7
A Russian court has ordered nearly two months of house arrest for an activist affiliated with а civil society group founded by former Russian oil tycoon Mikhail Khodorkovsky.
The case against Anastasia Shevchenko appears to be the first time that Russian authorities have criminally prosecuted someone under the “undesirable organization” law — a controversial measure signed into law nearly four years ago by President Vladimir Putin.
Politico: Ocasio-Cortez and Freedom Caucus ready for battle http://politi.co/2DtV5Cm
// Liberal freshmen Democrats and conservative GOP hard-liners are set to face off in the House Oversight Committee.
🐣 RT @Green_Footballs When the era of the Trump Horror is finally over, that’s not the end of it. This country needs to have a serious talk with itself about how this blatant crime family could ever be allowed into the White House. Our institutions were clearly not prepared for a monster like this.
🐣 RT @JuliaDavisNews #Russia’s state TV: ¤ Politician Sergey Stankevich says that Trump has the power to unilaterally withdraw the United States from NATO without going through Congress. ¤ Host Olga Skabeeva: “And who told him he could do that? Putin!”
https://twitter.com/JuliaDavisNews/status/1088111071943184385/photo/1
🐣 RT @kylegriffin1 Cummings and Schiff: “We will not let the President’s tactics prevent Congress from fulfilling our constitutionally mandated oversight responsibilities. This will not stop us from getting to the truth. We expect Mr. Cohen to appear before both Committees.”
🐣 RT @tedlieu Cohen is delaying his testimony due to threats from Trump and Giuliani. ¤ Here is 18 U.S.C. § 1512: ¤ “Whoever knowingly uses intimidation, threatens … or attempts to do so … with intent to … influence, delay, or prevent the testimony of any person” is guilty of a felony.
⋙ 🐣 RT @kylegriffin1 Lanny Davis: “Due to ongoing threats against his family from President Trump and Mr. Giuliani, as recently as this weekend, as well as Mr. Cohen’s continued cooperation with ongoing investigations, by advice of counsel, Mr. Cohen’s appearance will be postponed to a later date.”
WaPo, Greg Sargent: Trump’s position is weakening fast. Here’s how Democrats can exploit that. http://wapo.st/2Ua0Bzz
WaPo, Brian Klaas: For two years, Trump has been undermining American democracy. Here’s a damage report. http://wapo.st/2R9vT7O
NBC, Ken Dilanian: House Democrats probe how Jared Kushner got security clearance http://nbcnews.to/2U9Pxm0
// The probe was launched “in response to grave breaches of national security at the highest levels of the Trump Administration,” said Rep. Elijah Cummings.
≣ Director of National Intelligence (DNI): National Intelligence Strategy NATIONAL INTELLIGENCE STRATEGY of the United States of America 2019 [pdf] http://bit.ly/2RNzddZ 36p https://twitter.com/Auriandra/status/1088098420466896897/photo/1
WaPo, James Hohman: The Daily 202: 10 sobering quotes from the new National Intelligence Strategy http://wapo.st/2Hs5vXh “This is part of an effort by Coats to be more transparent in the face of sustained attacks from the president and his allies on the right”
In the past, there’s been a public report and a separate classified version. But this year there is only one version – and it’s entirely unclassified. This is part of an effort by Coats to be more transparent in the face of sustained attacks from the president and his allies on the right against what they’ve taken to calling the Deep State.
📊 DailyBeast: Politico/Morning Consult Poll: 57 percent believe it’s likely that Russia “has compromising information“ on Trump http://bit.ly/2Wd3wJL
Text Block: https://twitter.com/Auriandra/status/1088087424369086464/photo/1
Only 7 percent of American voters surveyed support giving Donald Trump funding for his Mexico border wall to end the U.S. government shutdown, according to a new poll. The results of poll, carried out for Politico and Morning Consult, reveal a series of damning numbers for the president, including those that show his disapproval rating at an all-time-high. Fifty-seven percent said they disapprove of Trump’s job performance, while 54 percent of voters blame Trump and Republicans on Capitol Hill for the government shutdown. While 43 percent of voters support the border wall, just 7 percent of voters said that they support dedicating funding to a border wall if it was the only way to end the government shutdown. And further bad news for the White House: The poll also shows that a majority of the respondents, 57 percent, believe it’s likely that Russia “has compromising information“ on Trump.
🐣 RT @BradMossEsq Translation: we prefer the Russian model of limiting information the public receives so as to make it more likely that our preferred viewpoint is the only one they’re likely to hear.
⋙ 🐣 RT @esaagar Sarah Sanders this AM on the lack of press briefings: “We’re in the business of getting information to the American people, not making stars out of people that want to become contributors on CNN”
TheAtlantic, Natasha Bertrand: The Wheels of Justice Are Grinding to a Halt http://bit.ly/2WdphZV
// FBI agents say the government shutdown is costing them confidential sources, postponing indictments, and shutting down investigations.
🐣 RT @CraigCaplan 357-22: House passes bill to prohibit the use of federal funds for US withdrawal from @NATO 29-member international alliance.
https://twitter.com/CraigCaplan/status/1087878173231120384/photo/1
🐣📊 RT @davidfrum Only 31% of Americans feel confident that Russia is *not* blackmailing the president according to Morning Consult poll
⋙ Politico: Poll: Shutdown, Russia drive Trump to all-time high disapproval http://politi.co/2My590l
Nearly 6-in-10 voters — 57 percent — disapprove of Trump’s job performance, compared to the 40 percent that approve. In addition, 54 percent of voters blame Trump and Republicans on Capitol Hill for the government shutdown. Only 35 percent blame congressional Democrats.
⭕ 22 Jan 2019
NewYorker, John Cassidy: Halfway Through the Trump Presidency, the Resistance Is Winning http://bit.ly/2FJ1RXh
AlterNet/DeadlineWH (MSNBC): ‘I see criminal conspiracy’ in the Trump-Russia investigation: former federal prosecutor Mimi Rocah http://bit.ly/2Hrl55t
WaPo Editorial: Trump’s lies on his business dealings in Russia were a profound betrayal of voters http://wapo.st/2DtQnog
CNN: Mueller wants to know about 2016 Trump campaign’s ties to NRA http://cnn.it/2FI3AMq
RollingStone, Tim Dickinson: What’s Really Going on with Trump and the Russian Oligarch Oleg Deripaska? http://bit.ly/2Uagcix
// A sanctions deal cut by the Treasury Dept. provides “Putin’s favorite industrialist” with “hundreds of millions” in debt relief
USAToday Editorial: Trump pursued a deal in Russia and hid it from voters http://bit.ly/2FSFldR
🐣 RT @emptywheel ICYMI, today Jerome Corsi and Larry Klayman today asked for what I think is a gazillion dollars in their lawsuit against Mueller before they realized this was supposed to be a serious lawsuit and pretended to replace gazillion with a real number. https://twitter.com/emptywheel/status/1087808123354664960/photo/1
📌 https://twitter.com/emptywheel/status/1087808123354664960
⋙ Court Filing: http://bit.ly/2FFxd1b
🐣 RT @emptywheel Nadler just sent a letter to the Big Dick Toilet Salesman asking (among other things) if he talked to the White House before Mueller’s office issued Friday’s statement. https://twitter.com/emptywheel/status/1087827728345296896/photo/1
⋙ HouseJudiciaryComm: http://bit.ly/2S8jZzS
🐣 RT @MollyMcKew Was thinking about @kenvogel piece on Treasury allowing Deripaska to restructure companies to evade sanctions in icky ways, & decided to go look at the foreign agent (FARA) filings for Deripaska’s reps ¤ This revealed some remarkable FARA BS shared below /1 📌 https://twitter.com/MollyMcKew/status/1087939154909057025
🐣 RT @Axios NEW: Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Ro Khanna, Ayanna Pressley and Rashida Tlaib — all members of the Congressional Progressive Caucus — have been named to the House Oversight Committee
⋙ Axios: 4 progressive Democrats named to House Oversight Committee http://bit.ly/2U9MoTu
🐣 .@ARTEM_KLYUSHIN The Nastya Rybka story is all over the U.S. news ~ featured on the most popular cable news show, @maddow. She is a 🌟 DailyBeast, Amy Knight: The Sex Worker Who Could Hold Keys to Mueller Probe Freed From Moscow Jail http://bit.ly/2FQAAS1 👁🗨👁🗨 👁🗨👁🗨
🔆 This❗️⋙ Crooks&Liars/DeadlineWH (MSNBC): Frank Figliuzzi: Trump Lies Because Russians Won Presidency For Him http://bit.ly/2CHuGzE //➔ took my breath away, not the least because Figliuzzi is always so guarded and precise. Figliuzzi is the former Asst Dir for Counterintel at the FBI.
Text Block: https://twitter.com/Auriandra/status/1087937638986903552/photo/1
… I am left now with only one conclusion, that the news on Russia, the truth about Russia, is so bad that no one can afford to let it leak out. We have too many people covering up the same thing over and over again and the only conclusion I have is that it’s about as bad as it can be.
… I’m developing a real sense here that there is now knowledge within the Trump circle that the Russians did assist with, in a successful way, the winning of the presidency. I am increasingly convinced that this is what people are trying to cover.
… All of this points to knowledge, in my mind, that the Russians were — it was understood that the Russians were assisting the campaign, and that they did so in such a way — remember, we have over two dozen Russians indicted already between hacking and social media propaganda in support of the campaign. We have Vladimir Putin saying in Helsinki to a reporter’s question, did you tell your government to put their full force and support behind candidate trump? Answer, ‘Yes.’ I believe there’s knowledge of that, I believe there’s great fear about the extent to which they assisted. And I think that’s at the root of what people are lying about.
🐣 RT @TheLeadCNN NEW: Special counsel Robert Mueller’s team is interested in the Trump campaign’s relationship with the NRA during the 2016 campaign, CNN’s @SaraMurray reports. https://cnn.it/2FEnBU8 https://twitter.com/TheLeadCNN/status/1087819257411452930/photo/1
🐣 RT @kasparov63 Trump doesn’t want an immigration solution. He needs a crisis and if there isn’t one, he’ll invent it. As I’ve said about Putin for 10 years now, confrontation itself is the goal. There’s no negotiating with that, only winning or losing.
… This is why “just give him what he wants” or “meet him halfway” is so stupid. What he wants is conflict. There’s no appeasing that, only losing over and over.
RawStory, Bob Brigham: Ex-FBI counter-intel chief warns Trump is ‘the greatest threat of all’ facing America http://bit.ly/2Dtd2kA
NBC News national security contributor Frank Figliuzzi joined MSNBC’s “Deadline: White House” with Nicolle Wallace on Tuesday to analyze the in-depth report on the shutdown released by the FBI Agents Association (FBIAA).
“There are Champagne corks being popped back in the Kremlin right now, because they couldn’t have engineered a better scenario than a demoralized FBI that can’t pay its bills, can’t pay informants and, yes, the leadership is responsible for this,” Figliuzzi replied.
“The leader responsible for this is the guy who said he owns this and he’ll take — he’ll take it on the chin for the shutdown and that’s Donald Trump,” he concluded. “So that’s a reflection of the degree to which our president is putting self-interest over national interest.”
WaPo, Damian Paletta and Josh Dawsey: ‘Knock them in the teeth.’ How Trump turns crises into leverage. http://wapo.st/2R5Iau8
🐣 RT @NormOrnstein Mitch McConnell says blocking Merrick Garland was the most consequential thing he has ever done. I would say a close second is blackmailing Obama and the intelligence community to keep a lid on Russian involvement in the 2016 election. Both are utterly nefarious acts.
HuffPo: John Kerry Says Donald Trump Should Resign http://bit.ly/2S2DfOZ
// “He doesn’t take any of this seriously,” the former secretary of state said during a panel at the World Economic Forum in Davos.
NBC: Supreme Court releases censored appeal by foreign government in mystery Mueller case http://nbcnews.to/2T9ch5w
// An unidentified foreign government is asking the Supreme Court to get involved in a case that may be part of special counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia investigation.
BuzzFeedNews: Trump Tower Moscow: Rudy Giuliani Said There Were “No Plans.” Here They Are. http://bit.ly/2sBUqbY
YahooNews, Jenna McLaughlin and Sean D. Naylor: Shutdown hits national security employees across government http://yhoo.it/2Mouhq0
💙 ≣ OfficeDirectorNationalIntelligence (ODNI): Press Release: Strategy Promotes Integration, Innovation, Partnerships, and Transparency for the 17 Intelligence Elements http://bit.ly/2Hu4j5F
🐣 RT @inteldotgov The National Intelligence Strategy provides guidance and direction for the U.S. Intelligence Community. Here’s your “at a glance” guide to this key document:
💙 ⋙ ≣ NIS: Public’s Daily Brief ~ 2019 NIS At A Glance [Interactive] http://bit.ly/2sJPxNP
// Dan Coates
🐣 .@torshin_ru The Nastya Rybka story is all over the U.S. news ~ featured on the most popular cable news show, @maddow. DailyBeast, Amy Knight: The Sex Worker Who Could Hold Keys to Mueller Probe Freed From Moscow Jail http://bit.ly/2FQAAS1 👁🗨👁🗨👁🗨
Bloomberg, Cass Sunstein: William Barr’s Baffling and Alarming View of Executive Power http://bloom.bg/2R3GWQ0
// Suppose the president can make sure the Justice Department never files criminal charges against him?
🐣 RT @Acosta CNN: FBI has lost several informants who had penetrated target groups at the center of terrorism investigations, a joint terrorism task force coordinator said anonymously in a report released Tuesday by the FBI Agents Association. via @davidgshortell and @SchneiderCNN
🐣 RT @KyivPost United Nations: 13,000 killed, 30,000 injured in Donbas since 2014 https://buff.ly/2RGoySl #UN #Donbas #Ukraine #war
🐣 RT @BillBrowder BREAKING: Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe approves Magnitsky Report 95-3 calling on all Council of Europe member states to pass Global Magnitsky Acts in their countries to sanction human rights abusers
⋙ ParliamentaryAssembly: Sergei Magnitsky and beyond – fighting impunity by targeted sanctions http://bit.ly/2RFPB0a
MotherJones, David Corn: Yes, There Was Collusion. Look at the Manafort Case http://bit.ly/2FHNSRt
// A load of evidence is hiding in plain sight.
CNN: Republicans: Cohen lawyer says key topics off-limits for congressional hearing http://cnn.it/2RMPQ9W
Michael Cohen’s congressional testimony next month will exclude any topic that’s “under investigation,” Republicans say they were told by Cohen’s lawyer, which could mean Cohen won’t discuss lying to Congress about the Trump Tower Moscow project or the payments made to women during the 2016 campaign for their silence.
WaPo, Aaron Blake: The growing ‘leverage’ questions about Trump and Russia http://wapo.st/2Hs5rqy
// What once seemed like a far-fetched conspiracy theory has come up again and again in recent weeks.
DailyBeast, Amy Knight: The Sex Worker Who Could Hold Keys to Mueller Probe Freed From Moscow Jail http://bit.ly/2FQAAS1
// Nastya Rybka may not know as much as she claims about a sanctioned Russian oligarch and Paul Manafort. But if not, why did the oligarch try so hard to keep her in prison?
Russian oligarch Oleg Deripaska’s nemesis, the 28-year-old Belarusian self-declared “seductress” and “huntress of billionaires” known as Nastya Rybka [aka Anastasia Vashukevich], just got out of jail in Moscow.
And Deripaska must have thought things were going so well.
As we now know, he worked hard to keep her locked up in Thailand, or Russia—wherever, as long as she would quit telling her stories and showing her videotapes about him talking American politics, Trump politics, with a deputy prime minister of Russia at the height of the U.S. elections.
Whether Rybka’s information sheds light on the Russia collusion investigation or not, the fact that Deripaska used to be a client of jailed Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort makes those conversations highly suspicious. …
Then Rybka and her associate Alexander Kirillov were released. And that surprise came just after—perhaps because of—a highly damning exposé about Deripaska and the petite, blonde Rybka (real name Anastasia Vashukevich) was posted by Russian opposition democrat Aleksei Navalny. …
It told the story of a 2016 yachting excursion off the coast of Norway that Rybka had taken with Deripaska. That report, based on Rybka’s photos and videos, revealed that Russian Deputy Prime Minister Sergei Prikhodko was also on board and that he and Deripaska had discussed the U.S. election campaign. …
Navalny directed a message to Deripaska and Prikhodko: “You yourselves, not Rybka, are to blame. You called for prostitutes on the yacht. Well, you should have understood that they will not provide you with confidentiality. Order next time through the FSO [the Federal Protection Service]. Let Rybka collect her things and get home to Belarus. Cancel your order. Maybe you will decide to teach her a severe lesson in the SIZO [detention cell] or even have her die. But for you this will not end well. That’s for sure.”
WaPo: Model who claimed U.S.-Russia collusion evidence freed from jail in Moscow http://wapo.st/2RKmgSn
Anastasia Vashukevich, also known as Nastya Rybka, and her partner, Alexander Kirillov, still face possible prostitution charges stemming from a “sex-training seminar” they held in Thailand last year, Kirillov’s lawyer Svetlana Sidorkina said in a phone interview.
Vashukevich, who also worked as an escort, made headlines last year after video footage she posted to social media surfaced showing her on a yacht with Russian metals magnate Oleg Deripaska and a then-deputy prime minister. After her arrest in Thailand, she pleaded for U.S. help and said she had recordings documenting links between Deripaska and Donald Trump’s campaign.
The claim was notable because Deripaska used to work with former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort. But no recordings related to the campaign — or proof that they exist — have surfaced.
The pair’s release came after Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko appeared to get involved. His spokeswoman told the Belarusian edition of the Komsomolskaya Pravda newspaper that he had ordered his diplomats to “immediately start working for the release of the Belarusian citizen.” A Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.
On Monday, Deripaska posted on Instagram that he had gone “to fish” in Lake Baikal rather than attend the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. This appeared to be a pun. “Rybka” means “little fish” in Russian.
TheHill: U.S. banker tied to Russia sought access to Trump transition team: report http://bit.ly/2FSsmZJ
ABC News reports that Robert Foresman, a banker who lived in Moscow for years and has been advertised by his company as someone with connections to Putin’s closest advisers, sought a meeting with Tom Barrack, the chairman of Trump’s inauguration fund.
Foresman never met with Barrack, according to the report, and later sought access to Trump’s transition team a second time through a meeting with Michael Flynn, who would end up becoming Trump’s first national security adviser.
🐣 RT @NatashaBertrand New: FBI Agents Association just released a 72-page report about the shutdown. “The shutdown has eliminated any ability to operate,” says 1 agent. “The US Attorney’s Office is unable to issue grand jury subpoenas for financial institutions,” says another.
⋙ FBIAA Report: VOICES FROM THE FIELD ~ FBI Agent Accounts of the Real Conseequences of the Government Shutdown [pdf] http://bit.ly/2W9fvrM 72p
🐣 RT @McFaul These are not the actions of a great country or a secure leader.
⋙ 🐣 RT @vkaramurza Membership in an opposition group is now a “crime” in Russia. My Open Russia colleague Anastasia Shevchenko became the first person arrested for belonging to an “undesirable organization.” Orwellian thoughtcrimes becoming a reality under Putin’s regime.
🐣 Anastasia Vashukevich (Nastya Rybka) needs a @Wikipedia entry.
TheBulwark, Jennifer Horn: RNC Signals Trump’s Weakness with Push to Endorse Him Now http://bit.ly/2T369Ma
// (Note: The Bulwark is Bill Kristol’s new ‘zine, replacing The Weekly Standard as a #NeverTrumper saferoom); “If the president were in a stronger position, resolutions to declare him the ‘presumptive nominee’ would be unnecessary”
🐣 RT @McFaul What? Why? Assistant Secretary Mitchell just got there ! He has a reputation for being tough on Russia, supportive of NATO, etc. Is his departure related to these views? Please send links as journalists uncover the story.
⋙ 🐣 RT @StateDeputySpox Assistant Secretary Mitchell is stepping down as leader of the @StateDept Bureau of European and Eurasian Affairs. His departure is effective February 15, 2019. Elisabeth Millard, Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary, will serve as acting Assistant Secretary of State.
🐣 Check out my blog (actually a sub-blog) on 🇺🇸Trump/Russia🇷🇺 https://wp.me/PDKwi-6Kc It has resources, timelines, maps by @Jzikah, and a comprehensive list of articles and Tweets by key people @MuellerSheWrote
CrimeRussia: Nastya Rybka and Alex Leslie resealed [sic] from police, no charges brought http://bit.ly/2sBcnr8
Nastya Rybka (Anastasia Vashukevich) and her sex mentor Alex Leslie (Alexander Kirillov) were released from the police, the Head of the Association Agora Pavel Chikov reports in his Telegram channel.
“Nastya Rybka and Alex Leslie have just been released from the police, reports the lawyer of the latter Svetlana Sidorkina. Charge is not brought, the appearance obligation is withdrawn,” writes Chikov. …
Today the Nagatinsky District Court of Moscow was to elect a preventive measure for Vashukevich and Leslie in the case of Inducing to Prostitution (part 2 of Art. 240 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation).
Vashukevich and Kirillov became known after Alexey Navalny’s Anti-Corruption Foundation (FBK) showed pictures from Instagram of the girl, in which a man similar to Deputy Prime Minister Sergey Prikhodko, stayed on a yacht of oligarch Oleg Deripaska, accompanied by escort girls. Later the FBK published an interview with the author of the book titled A Diary About Seducing a Billionaire Nastya Rybka and her sex trainer Alex Leslie.
Deripaska filed a lawsuit with the Ust-Labinsku Court of Krasnodar region, and it recognized the investigation as violating the businessman’s privacy rights and charged 500 thousand rubles from the defendants. The investigation and reports in the media about the businessman were included by Roskomnadzor in the register of prohibited information. …
AJC: Model who said she had dirt on Russian oligarch walks free http://on-ajc.com/2WcY2ii //➔ Nastya Rybka (aka Anastasia Vashukevich), Oleg Deripaska
🐣 .@nytimes and @washingtonpost need to pick up the story of #NastyaRybka’s release ASAP. #SaveNastyaRybka
RFE/RL: ‘Sex Trainer,’ Escort ‘Nastya Rybka’ Released But Remains Suspect, Lawyer Says http://bit.ly/2FFOtTT
🐣 RT @BillBrowder Wow. Russian authorities just released Nastya Rybka. That was unexpected.
⋙ Meduza: ‘Sex trainers’ who leaked Deripaska yacht footage are unexpectedly released from Moscow jail http://bit.ly/2FLdJZ5
⋙ 🐣 Let’s hope her international profile offers her some protection.
⋙ 🐣 #SaveNastyaRybka ¤ #SaveNastyaRybka ¤ #SaveNastyaRybka ¤ #SaveNastyaRybka ¤ #SaveNastyaRybka ¤ #SaveNastyaRybka ¤ #SaveNastyaRybka ¤ #SaveNastyaRybka ¤ #SaveNastyaRybka ¤ #SaveNastyaRybka ¤ #SaveNastyaRybka ¤ #SaveNastyaRybka ¤ #SaveNastyaRybka ¤ #SaveNastyaRybka
💙 JustSecurity, John Sipher: Western Covert Action and Russian Active Measures http://bit.ly/2DrhjF7 //➔ the case against “whataboutism”
🔆 This❗️⋙ The moral high ground in international affairs is not defined by whether or not states defend themselves, or have militaries and intelligence services, but by what they stand for. … For this reason, many former national security practitioners have been critical of President Trump’s comments and actions. They realize it is precisely this moral cause and higher purpose that President Trump threatens with his dismissal of the liberal world order, attack on legal and ethical norms, and his embrace of tyrants. His behavior potentially damages our domestic political discourse and alienates our allies and friends. Perhaps more importantly, however, our military, diplomatic and intelligence professionals may find it much harder to justify their sacrifices if they sense America is changing it stripes, and no longer reflects noble intentions and a desire to do good in the world. As Trump continues to shred American institutions and values, he is also weakening our ability to act on its behalf. Those who vigorously defend America on the front lines do so because it is special, not only because we happen to live here.
🐣 RT @PaulaChertok Here’s the audio of the alleged conspiracy to keep #Deripaska’s escort Nastya #Rybka locked up in Thailand. Call begins in Russian, switches to English when Russian man & woman give instructions to “William” Via @navalny @KirkseniyaSF https://youtu.be/zqU2L_05yUI #Maddow #TrumpRussia
[ TLink: https://twitter.com/PaulaChertok/status/1087722252404051968 ]
Salon, Matthew Rozsa: What happens if Putin wins? Michael McFaul on “the end of the liberal international order” http://bit.ly/2FOC8Mq
// Salon speaks with Michael McFaul, former US ambassador to Russia and a man that Vladimir Putin wants to interrogate
🐣 RT @SenBlumenthal Trump’s gift to Putin oligarch, Deripaska, even more egregious than previously known—Senate should move again to block lifting sanctions on Russian henchmen.
[ Tlink NYT https://twitter.com/SenBlumenthal/status/1087712057875664896 ]
🐣 RT @olgaNYC1211 Ukraine amps up their air defense amid a buildup of Russian troops and military equipment along Ukraine’s borders that significantly increased since November. Lots of activity going on the past week
⋙ Unian: Ukraine beefs up air defense amid massing of Russian troops near Ukrainian borders http://bit.ly/2R6Pwxt
// The Chief of the General Staff is in charge of air defense.
FiveThirtyEight, Amelia Thomson-DeVeaux: Could A Slew Of New Congressional Investigations Erode Trump’s Approval Rating? http://53eig.ht/2AWNnip
🐣 RT @benjaminwittes Process point: When a person consistently gives you information with zero relation to the truth, that person is not a useful source. ¤ Implication for L’Affare Russe journalism: Stop interviewing Rudy Giuliani and stop treating what he says as probative of anything.
⭕ 21 Jan 2019
🔄💙 RanttMedia, Ahmed Baba: Your Guide To Every Day Of Trump’s First 2 Years As President http://bit.ly/2UbTLtg
// Here’s a summary of America’s experience in President Trump’s first two years and an index linking to contemporaneous analysis covering every single day.
WashingtonMonthly, Martin Longman: It’s a Bit Late to Conclude that Trump Is Compromised by the Russians http://bit.ly/2CBVroR
NewYorker, Isaac Chotiner: “Even If He Did Do It, It Wouldn’t Be a Crime”: Rudy Giuliani on President Trump http://bit.ly/2Czt0be
🐣 RT @MaddowBlog Leaked audio records allegedly show how Oleg Deripaska’s associates plotted the arrest of the ‘sex trainers’ who claimed to have ‘RussiaGate’ dirt on him
https://twitter.com/MaddowBlog/status/1087536773092294656/photo/1
⋙ Meduza: Leaked audio records allegedly show how Oleg Deripaska’s associates plotted the arrest of the ‘sex trainers’ who claimed to have ‘RussiaGate’ dirt on him http://bit.ly/2T9xigG
// Anastasia Vashukevich (aka Nastya Rybka)
TheGuardian, Mark Galeoti (2018): Gangster’s paradise: how organised crime took over Russia http://bit.ly/2FEQQ9r
// 3/23/2018; Under Vladmir Putin, gangsterism on the streets has given way to kleptocracy in the state.
🐣 RT @Hardball “If anyone other than Rudy Giuliani said this, it would have been an extremely big deal.” @benjaminwittes on Giuliani saying Trump could have pursued the Moscow tower deal up to the 2016 election. #Hardball
TheHill: Russian pop star linked to Trump Tower meeting cancels US tour http://bit.ly/2AQsmpN
NYT: 5 Times the Trump Administration Has Been Tougher Than Trump on Russia http://nyti.ms/2sGC7m0
CNN: Giuliani tries to clean up comments about Trump Tower Moscow http://cnn.it/2REtN4Z
ChicagoTrib: Talk of the County: Trump hat should say ‘Make Russia Great Again’ http://trib.in/2DqlP6G
// This message is for the 99 percent of Republicans and Trump supporters who are the Putin wing of the Republican Party: When are you guys going to start jumping off the Putin-Trump ship?
NYT: Russian Oligarch and Allies Could Benefit From Sanctions Deal, Document Shows http://nyti.ms/2FFXpIH
💙 WaPo, Michael Glennon: If Trump is impeachable, so is Pence http://wapo.st/2RKJ18Q Michael J. Glennon is a law professor at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University.
// He is the author of “When No Majority Rules: The Electoral College and Presidential Succession.”
🐣 RT @Axios Rudy Giuliani said yesterday that Trump’s talks with Michael Cohen about the Moscow project could have gone up to the 2016 election. Today he’s saying those comments were “hypothetical” and not based on conversations with Trump.
WaPo, Max Boot: Trump should not take solace from Mueller’s cryptic correction http://wapo.st/2AX3kW9
🐣 RT @RepAdamSchiff While Trump was pursuing deal worth hundreds of millions in Russia…
He was advocating eliminating sanctions worth billions to Putin.
He was asking Russia to hack Clinton’s emails.
His son was meeting Russian officials to get dirt on Clinton.
And Rudy says it’s no big deal?
🐣 RT @JuliaDavisNews Citing leaked phone recordings, @navalny claims that #Deripaska organized the jailing of Nastya Rybka, the Belarusian escort who published photos and audio of Deripaska discussing the U.S. election on a yacht with a top Kremlin official, Sergei Prikhodko. [ Tlink to Russian https://twitter.com/JuliaDavisNews/status/1087387273862230016 ]
WaPo, Paul Waldman: Trump’s corruption keeps getting more obvious http://wapo.st/2HoCMTd
Bloomberg, Zaid Sabah and Ivan Levingston: Israel Strikes Iranian Targets in Syria, 11 Reported Dead http://bloom.bg/2RZiaF8
● Targets include arms depots, intelligence site, Israel says
● Syria says its air defense has shot down dozens of missiles
🐣 RT @ McFaul Remember, if true, this means that Trump has lied to the American people multiple times about his dealings with Putin’s regime. That outrages me. Why all Americans are not outraged as well baffles me.
⋙ 🐣 RT @MeetThePress WATCH: @rudygiuliani, President Trump’s personal lawyer, says that negotiations over Trump Tower Moscow likely went up to the 2016 election. #MTP
💽 https://twitter.com/MeetThePress/status/1086987147209519104/photo/1
⭕ 20 Jan 2019
TheTelegraph, Robert Mendick [UK]: Kremlin accused of laying false trail linking Sergei Skripal to ex-MI6 officer behind Trump dossier [$] http://bit.ly/2S9c05i
// paywall [$], but excerpts under HomelandSecurityNewsWire (1/23/2019): GRU’s suspected plan to link Skripal poisoning to Steele Dossier http://bit.ly/ 2sFonb8
Russian intelligence created a false trail linking the double agent Sergei Skripal to the former MI6 officer behind the Trump dossier before carrying out the Salisbury nerve agent attack, the Telegraph has been told.
Well-placed sources now believe that the plot to kill Col Skripal may have included a ‘black ops’ attempt to sow doubt on the veracity of the explosive dossier that claims Donald Trump received Kremlin backing.
💙💙 BuzzFeedNews, Hannes Grassegger: The Unbelievable Story Of The Plot Against George Soros http://bit.ly/2Wfp1cX
// How two Jewish American political consultants helped create the world’s largest anti-Semitic conspiracy theory.
NYT, Peter Baker: U.S. Policy on Russia? Trump and His Team Might Give Different Answers http://nyti.ms/2HBL9Lt
🐣 RT @JuliaDavisNews Putin’s Russia supports the idea of the wall, the chaos caused by the shutdown, anti-immigrant animus, racial tensions in the US, because those cracks in our foundation make us weaker. That’s also why the Kremlin enjoys Trump’s divisive actions & rhetoric. [ Tlink Russia State TV https://twitter.com/JuliaDavisNews/status/1087207415593033729 ]
🐣 RT @kylegriffin1 A Harvard and a Yale psychiatrist on Trump: “He is unimpeded by empathy, duty, or shame and is wedded, in dangerous ways, only to what nurtures his exaggerated self-image … As things stand, his disregard for truth imperils our country and the world.” [ Tlink BostonGlobe https://twitter.com/kylegriffin1/status/1087198098450010113 ]
🐣 RT @gtconway3d “‘Rudy is the gift that keeps on creating issues that do not otherwise exist. He should have taken the Mueller statement [denying the BuzzFeed story], embraced it and not said another word,’ said a prominent criminal defense lawyer … active in Robert Mueller’s investigation.”
⋙ 🐣 RT @jonathanvswan Top Washington criminal defense lawyers, both Democrats and Republicans, told me they couldn’t understand what Giuliani was trying to achieve with his TV appearance.
⋙⋙ Axios, Jonathan Swan: Rudy’s remarkable interview http://bit.ly/2R0ASYl
In a remarkable interview with CNN’s Jake Tapper today, the president’s lawyer Rudy Giuliani suggested it was possible — and would be “perfectly normal” — that Trump talked to Michael Cohen before he testified about him to Congress. Giuliani added he didn’t know if Trump and Cohen had such a conversation.
Salon/RawStory, Tana Ganeva: Security analyst: Russia “collected receipts” to blackmail Trump before he even won a primary http://bit.ly/2FLsQkc
// Marcy Wheeler concludes Trump may have been compromised by Putin far earlier than the Trump tower meeting
VanityFair: Giuliani: “So What?” If Trump and Cohen Discussed Testimony Before Congress http://bit.ly/2Dn1pf9
// The president’s lawyer acknowledged Trump may have spoken with Michael Cohen before his congressional perjury.
TheGuardian: Trump may have spoken to Cohen before false testimony to Congress – Giuliani http://bit.ly/2DolDFa
// President’s attorney, Rudy Giuliani, said it would have been ‘perfectly normal’ for Trump to discuss testimony with Cohen
💽 CNN, Reliable Sources: Bernstein: Trump has lied at every turn about Russia http://cnn.it/2RWRchv
// Veteran journalist Carl Bernstein discusses the truthfulness of President Donald Trump with CNN’s Brian Stelter.
NYMag, Chas Danner: Giuliani: Moscow Tower Talks Continued Until Election, Trump and Cohen May Have Discussed Testimony http://bit.ly/2FEpwbA
TheIntercept, Glenn Greenwald: Beyond BuzzFeed: The 10 Worst, Most Embarrassing U.S. Media Failures on the Trump/Russia Story http://bit.ly/2R3Vwqy
// 🚫 GG is a troll …
MotherJones: BuzzFeed Defends Trump-Russia Blockbuster and Promises to Run Down New Details http://bit.ly/2DnNDZD “Our reporting is going to be borne out.”
DefenseOne, Richard Fontaine: The Shutdown Is Great News for Russia http://bit.ly/2R4KFgl
// The competition of democracy versus dictatorship is to a degree a contest of narratives.
The longest government shutdown in American history is making headlines around the world. It will also have global effects, none of them good. U.S. political leaders, so unable to compromise, should understand how their decisions chip away at national security.
NYT: Moscow Skyscraper Talks Continued Through ‘the Day I Won,’ Trump Is Said to Acknowledge http://nyti.ms/2RBzK2w
🐣 This agonizing over the @BuzzFeedNews story confounds me. Trump is the Boy Who Cried Wolf on this. He calls ALL stories he doesn’t like #FakeNews. So what moral ground does he have to call this one out? My guess is most of the BF story is right. They do good work.
🐣 RT @gtconway3d Leave it to Rudy to destroy the momentary respite that BuzzFeed had given his client.
🐣 Why does Mueller need corroborating documents when he’s got Giuliani?
🐣 RT @ryanstruyk TAPPER: “You just acknowledged that President Trump might have talked to [Cohen] about his testimony.” ¤ GIULIANI: “And so what if he talked to him about it?”
🐣 RT @juliaioffe This means Trump was working on a deal in Russia while praising Putin, calling for an end to Russia sanctions, calling NATO “obsolete,” and AFTER the US government warned that Russia was trying to influence the election in his favor.
🐣 RT @jonathanweisman Trump was seeking a Moscow tower deal as he called for an end to sanctions against Russia. He was seeking a deal when he questioned the legitimacy of NATO. He was seeking a deal when he called on Russia to release hacked Democratic emails.
🐣 RT @kylegriffin1 New: Rudy Giuliani told NYT that Trump “recalls a series of conversations” with Michael Cohen about the Trump Tower Moscow project during the campaign. ¤ Giuliani added that Trump recalled, “‘It was all going from the day I announced to the day I won.'” 🐣 RT @selectedwisdom So the President lied throughout his campaign. The pivot continues, as debate ensues over a news story, slip out an important admission “Giuliani Says Talks for Trump Tower in Moscow Lasted Through 2016 Election” – The New York Times
⋙ NYT: Giuliani Says Talks for Trump Tower in Moscow Lasted Through 2016 Election http://nyti.ms/2sDEKF4
🐣 RT @joshtpm Whether Trump told Cohen to lie, allowed him to or winked and nudged is infinitely less important than what is now freely admitted: that throughout the 2016 campaign Putin was dangling a 9-figure payday in front of Trump. … via @TPM
🔆 This❗️⋙ TPM, Josh Marshall: The Hotel Deal Is Really All That Matters http://bit.ly/2W6gVDq
… [W]hether and how he lied about it is legally interesting. But that’s the cover-up rather than the thing itself. That deal was with sanctioned individuals and sanctioned banks. Whether it was even legal to be entering into the negotiations is not clear to me. But certainly the post-2014 sanctions against Russia had to be lifted before the deal could be finalized. That is the central issue. It’s not simply that Trump had “business” with Russia and deceived the public about it during the campaign and after. It’s more specific and direct. Why was Trump so solicitous of Russia and Vladimir Putin during the campaign? Well, a lot of possible reasons. But a major and likely the major reason was because Putin was dangling a multi-hundreds of millions of dollars payday in front of him. That’s a big incentive, especially for Donald Trump. ¤ To get that money, Trump had to court Putin and he’d eventually need to lift sanctions against him.
🐣 RT @NatashaBertrand 🚨Giuliani is doubling down on his claim that the Trump Tower Moscow negotiations lasted until Nov 2016. ¤ If true, Trump was secretly trying to strike a multimillion $ deal with Moscow even after FBI warned him of the counterintel threat posed by Russia.
⋙ 💽 NBC: Giuliani: Trump Tower Moscow negotiations ‘as far as October, November’ 2016 http://nbcnews.to/2RWNrIL
// Rudy Giuliani, President Trump’s personal lawyer, says that negotiations over Trump Tower Moscow likely went up to the 2016 election, during an interview with Meet the Press.
FaceTheNation: .@brett_mcgurk on @realDonaldTrump’s decision to withdraw from Syria: “Announcing you are going to withdraw without a plan, and there wasn’t a plan, increases vulnerabilities for our troops”
💽 https://twitter.com/FaceTheNation/status/1087025499140964352/photo/1
⭕ 19 Jan 2019
AmericanOversight: Republicans’ Threats to Boycott Congressional Investigation Jeopardize Their Own Credibility — Not the Investigation’s http://bit.ly/2AYk13a
🐣 RT @kasparov63 Typical with Putin’s Russia, a good domestic US example of why “both sides” demands often fail. When one side wants the crisis itself, good-faith negotiation are a waste of time. [ TLink Fox https://twitter.com/Kasparov63/status/1086727558849331200 ]
… Trump doesn’t want an immigration solution. He needs a crisis and if there isn’t one, he’ll invent it. As I’ve said about Putin for 10 years now, confrontation itself is the goal. There’s no negotiating with that, only winning or losing.
… This is why “just give him what he wants” or “meet him halfway” is so stupid. What he wants is conflict. There’s no appeasing that, only losing over and over.
DailyBeast, Clive Irving: Trump Follows Nixon’s Last Lines of Defense as Walls Close In http://bit.ly/2W6gBo3
// Suborning perjury, hush money, obstruction of justice, impeachment: they all echo Nixon as he made his historic confessions to my old colleague David Frost.
Whether or not the BuzzFeed story about Michael Cohen and his testimony to Congress can actually support the fevered response it provoked, the fact is that the fired-up investigations by congressional committees under the control of Democrats will rip away two years of Republican obstruction and drive relentlessly toward the truth—independently of the Mueller investigation.
💽 MSNBC, MTPdaily: Kasparov: All Trump’s ‘big decisions’ are ‘connected to Putin’s interests’ http://on.msnbc.com/2HotGpD
// Gary Kasparov joins MTP Daily and tells Chuck, “All Trump’s big decisions, they are somehow connected to Putin’s interests and always help Putin to reach his geopolitical goals.”
CrimeRussia: Ambulance called for detained Nastya Rybka http://bit.ly/2U2eO1y
🐣 RT @StZaryn In 1947#Kremlin falsified elections in PL to legitimise occupation in #Poland and own brutal politics. Kremil did the same in the #Crimea, #Donbass and Luhansk after agression on #Ukraine. Falsyfying the reality is typical for #Russian agressive efforts. #history @Disinfo_Digest [Tlink https://twitter.com/StZaryn/status/1086721205682487298 ]
Axios, Zachary Basu: What we now know about Don Jr. and Russia http://bit.ly/2W7Jd0r
LATimes: Trump acts like an asset of Russia. Whether he intends to be one is less important http://lat.ms/2R1JnSY
✅ AP FACT CHECK: Trump on the wall, drugs, Russia, vets http://bit.ly/2FDDxpQ
RUSSIA INVESTIGATION
RUDY GIULIANI: Trump’s lawyer: “I never said there was no collusion between the campaign (and Russia).” — interview Wednesday with CNN.
THE FACTS: Actually, he did deny in the past that there was any collusion between the Trump campaign and Russians.
Asked by Fox News in July if that was his position, he said, “Correct.” Giuliani has previously called the idea of the Trump campaign’s collusion with Russia “total fake news.” ″No collusion,” he also said.
Giuliani continued to deny that Trump himself was involved any collusion, whatever others in his campaign may or may not have done.
He sought to clarify his remarks after, saying he had no knowledge of collusion “by any of the thousands of people who worked on the campaign.”
Evidence so far points to a broad range of Trump associates who had Russia-related contacts during the 2016 presidential campaign and transition period, and some have been caught lying about it.
BBC: Four questions about Trump’s tower in Moscow that never was http://bbc.in/2TZvqXG
1. Did Donald Trump build anything in Moscow?
2. How is Michael Cohen involved?
3. Just how deeply was Trump involved?
4. Why is all this controversial?
NYT, Anastasia Edel: No, I Won’t Take Trump Home to Russia With Me http://nyti.ms/2AVQZRN Ms. Edel is a writer who grew up in southern Russia.
// The American president has changed my relationship with both my old country and my new one.
⋙ See under Entire Articles: WaPo Basics Trump/Russia 1/19/2019
WaPo/Bloomberg: Your Guide to Understanding the Trump-Russia Saga http://wapo.st/2W5iXDJ
🐣 RT @TheRickWilson Everyone’s been all in a kerfuffle about the BuzzFeed/Mueller issue, but I think it’s important to remember that the arc of Trump’s recent history is long and always bends towards Russia.
🐣 .@SpeakerPelosi is fighting to establish the terms by which policy can be addressed with fact-based solutions, as the condition upon which any actual progress must be predicated. Is Trump educable? TBD.
⋙ 🐣 .@SpeakerPelosi is the teacher Trump smacked in elementary school. To his Hellen Keller, she is Anne Sullivan.
🐣 RT @KFILE New @BuzzFeedNews statement on their story
“As we’ve re-confirmed our reporting, we’ve seen no indication that any specific aspect of our story is inaccurate. We remain confident in what we’ve reported, and will share more as we are able.”
@mattmittenthal , spokesperson for BF
🐣 RT @BillBrowder The Nastya Rybka case is standard Putin playbook. The regime can’t have mistresses & escorts talking about what they hear while sleeping with officials & oligarchs. They will make an extreme example out of her to make sure that no other person in her position will ever talk again
⋙ 🐣 RT @JuliaDavisNews “Rybka” clearly knows this case is not really about prostitution.
⋙⋙ 🐣 RT @JuliaDavisNews Anastasia Vashukevich, aka “Nastya Rybka,” appears in Moscow court, says she regrets that her actions have compromised #Deripaska, promises that she won’t disseminate any info about Deripaska and accepts blame for his enemies using her story against him. [Link to Russian]
WaPo, Paul Farhi: BuzzFeed’s stumble is highest-profile misstep at a time when press is under greatest scrutiny http://wapo.st/2ANRKMT
TheGuardian, David Smith: Mueller’s disavowal of bombshell Cohen report fuels Trump’s war with media http://bit.ly/2Mmw0Mo
// The special counsel’s office broke its silence to dispute a claim by Buzzfeed that Trump had ordered his fixer to lie to Congress
⭕ 18 Jan 2019
Vox, Alex Ward (1/18): Felix Sater, the spy, criminal, and mafia-linked executive tied to Trump Tower Moscow, explained http://bit.ly/2tGOpev
// He helped track Osama bin Laden — and secure a Trump Tower in Moscow.
NewYorker, Susan Glasser (1/18): “Are We Really Where We Are?”: Trump, Putin, and Washington’s Unbelievable New Normal http://bit.ly/2UjcKCu
This is not the end, of course. There will be more goalpost moving, and many more Giuliani cable-TV appearances to parse. But the idea that the President of the United States colluded with Russia in the midst of an American election seems a lot less unthinkable now than it was before the White House changed its story, again and again and again. This was one of those weeks in the Trump era when it seemed fair to think that, if the world feels like it is falling apart, maybe that’s because it actually is. And, however incredibly, it almost surely won’t be the last.
💙 ForeignAffairs, Thomas Wright: Trump’s Foreign Policy Is No Longer Unpredictable http://fam.ag/2Du8BGk
Text Block: https://twitter.com/Auriandra/status/1088113563728838658/photo/1
// Gone Are the Days of a Divided Administration
The unpredictability of this administration originated not in Trump’s views but in the struggle between the president and his political advisers on the one hand and the national security establishment on the other. Until recently, these two camps vied for supremacy, and it was difficult to know which would win on any given issue.
At the two-year mark, it is now clear that the president is dominating this struggle, even if he has not yet won outright. For the first time, it is possible to identify a singular Trump administration foreign policy, as the president’s team coalesces around his ideas. This policy consists of a narrow, transactional relationship with other nations, a preference for authoritarian governments over other democracies, a mercantilist approach to international economic policy, a general disregard for human rights and the rule of law, and the promotion of nationalism and unilateralism at the expense of multilateralism.
NBC, Mimi Rocah and Joyce Vance (1/18): No (Trump) collusion? Rudy Giuliani’s defense strategy doubles down as evidence mounts in Mueller probe http://nbcnews.to/2AWUFTE
// Giuliani’s position — that Trump was unaware of what others might have done — won’t get him very far with anyone who is paying attention
ForeignPolicy, Stephen Hadley: It’s Time to Stand Up to Russia’s Aggression in Ukraine http://bit.ly/2FzVfuc
// Putin’s latest ploy in the Kerch Strait must be countered fast.
SanFranChronical Editorial: How Trump works for the Russians http://bit.ly/2FBh6BJ
🐣 RT @MuellerSheWrote Mueller says NOPE!
⋙ 🐣 RT @MuellerSheWrote So @BuzzFeed is saying Mueller has evidence of @realDonaldTrump telling @MichaelCohen212 to lie to Congress about how long talks over Trump Tower Moscow lasted. We know 45 doesn’t text or email. Lordy, I hope there are tapes. @Comey #JusticePorn
🐣 RT @matthewamiller You can spend hours parsing the Carr statement, but given how unusual it is for any DOJ office to issue this sort of on the record denial, let alone this office, suspect it means the story’s core contention that they have evidence Trump told Cohen to lie is fundamentally wrong.
🐣 RT @tribelaw This seems to be why Mueller decided to get people to chill about the Buzzfeed bombshell. Note that Mueller’s rare statement did NOT deny that Cohen lied to Congress about the Moscow project at the direction of Individual 1. Congress must begin investigating this NOW.
⋙ 🐣 RT @ChrisMurphyCT Listen, if Mueller does have multiple sources confirming Trump directed Cohen to lie to Congress, then we need to know this ASAP. Mueller shouldn’t end his inquiry, but it’s about time for him to show Congress his cards before it’s too late for us to act.
[link to BuzzFeed]
🐣 RT @gtconway3 “Directives” is clearly a reference to the campaign finance violations, where Cohen states that he was following instructions. There’s nothing in the section on the congressional testimony that amounts to a direction to Cohen.
🐣 RT @tribelaw To be clear, Bob Bauer didn’t overlook an explicit, judicially enforceable command in Art. I. The Senate’s clear duty to conduct a trial after the House impeaches flows from the structure, history, function, and logic of the Impeachment Power, not from any mandating language.
⋙ 🐣 RT @tribelaw Obama WH counsel Bob Bauer told @chucktodd that McConnell could simply refuse to try Trump on impeachment charges voted by the House. Not so. Under Article I Sec 2 the Senate must “try” all impeachments, with the Chief Justice presiding. Its options don’t include doing nothing.
🔆 This❗️⋙ 🐣 RT @BuzzFeedBen In response to the statement tonight from the Special Counsel’s spokesman: We stand by our reporting and the sources who informed it, and we urge the Special Counsel to make clear what he’s disputing.
// BuzzFeed Editor
🐣 RT @emptywheel Now consider that SCO doesn’t need Cohen to prove a campaign finance case against Trump, bc they’ve got people like Weisselberg who didn’t themselves commit perjury. That meant they could aggressively characterize Trump’s instructions to Cohen.
WaPo, Michael Hayden and Neal Katyal: The House should investigate impeaching Trump http://wapo.st/2CxKPYf
🔆 This❗️⋙ WaPo: In a rare move, Mueller’s office denies BuzzFeed report that Trump told Cohen to lie about Moscow project http://wapo.st/2FIu67H
WaPo, George Will: The shabbiest U.S. president ever is an inexpressibly sad specimen http://wapo.st/2MgPiTq
DailyBeast, Barbara McQuade: Trump and Cohen’s Alleged Moscow Lie Would Be a Crime. The Truth Could Be Even Worse. http://bit.ly/2FFXPz9
// What could be so bad about a business deal in Russia that the president and his attorney might have to break the law to conceal it?
DailyBeast, Betsy Woodruff and Asawin Suebsaeng: John Dowd, President Trump’s Old Lawyer, Is Still Whispering in His Ear http://bit.ly/2T28iHX
// That’s according to Dowd himself, and confirmed to The Daily Beast by the president’s current lawyer, Rudy Giuliani.
🐣 RT @DeadlineWH “It is one of the most dramatic and potentially devastating developments in the Donald Trump vs Michael Cohen saga, to date: a new report so damning that if true could very well put in motion Donald Trump’s impeachment…”- @NicolleDWallace
🐣 RT @MuellerSheWrote So @BuzzFeed is saying Mueller has evidence of @realDonaldTrump telling @MichaelCohen212 to lie to Congress about how long talks over Trump Tower Moscow lasted. We know 45 doesn’t text or email. Lordy, I hope there are tapes. @Comey #JusticePorn
NYT, Frank Bruni: BuzzFeed’s Cohen Story Suggests Trump Never Wanted to Be President http://nyti.ms/2W4nfLr
// His campaign was a marketing venture. Why else refuse to put business on hold
WaPo, Greg Sargent: Five big takeaways from the stunning report that Trump told Cohen to lie http://wapo.st/2MhMyp4
LawfareBlog: The Latest Revelation From BuzzFeed News: Trump Reportedly Directed Cohen to Lie to Congress http://bit.ly/2MkFgRa By Mikhaila Fogel, Susan Hennessey, Quinta Jurecic, Matthew Kahn, Benjamin Wittes
🐣 RT @SenJeffMerkley If this report of Trump suborning false testimony is confirmed, then Trump committed a felony and must resign or be impeached.
TheAtlantic, Natasha Bertrand: Why Democrats Have Suddenly Started Talking About Impeachment http://bit.ly/2sBiifE
// A BuzzFeed report says President Trump directed Michael Cohen to lie to Congress, prompting the talk of impeachment even before the special counsel finishes his probe.
WaPo, Jennifer Rubin: Mueller might finally have a smoking gun http://wapo.st/2SXgfOF
TheIntercept, Mehdi Hasan: Trump’s Articles of Impeachment are Writing Themselves, with Echoes of Richard Nixon Growing Stronger http://bit.ly/2Fysq1f
🐣 RT @BillBrowder This is outrageous. Natalia Rybka is attested and brutally manhandled the moment she touched down in Moscow after being deported from Thailand. Just to remind you, she secretly taped Deripaska on his yacht with a senior Russian official talking about manipulating US politics
⋙ 🐣 RT @Navalny [translated] At the airport twisted dangerous criminal-Nastya rybku. Her guilt is great: she was a prostitute on the yacht of billionaire Deripaska and filmed a video, which was hit by the Vice Prime Minister Prikhodko. So now Rybka hands, and Prikhodko and Deripaska the police claims no
💽 https://twitter.com/navalny/status/1086174510292844545/photo/1
🐣 RT @SenWhitehouse If this is true, this is plain, slam-dunk, criminal obstruction of justice (18 U.S.C. 1505, 1512), subornation of perjury (18 U.S.C. 1622), conspiracy (18 U.S.C. 371) and likely aiding and abetting perjury (18 U.S.C. 2). [link to Buzzfeed]
WaPo: 14 sitting Republican senators are on-record holding a president accountable for obstruction: Bill Clinton http://wapo.st/2FJTzh1
🐣 RT @joshcampbell These explosive @Buzzfeed revelations should cause soul-searching by those who have assisted @realDonaldTrump in attacking Mueller & the FBI. They should prepare themselves for the possibility they may have been wrong, they may have been used, and the President might be a crook.
💽 CNN https://twitter.com/joshscampbell/status/1086243156775952386/photo/1
🐣 RT @tribelaw If this report is accurate, Trump committed subornation of perjury, punishable by five years imprisonment under 18 U.S. Code § 1622.
⋙ Axios: BuzzFeed: Trump told Cohen to lie to Congress about Moscow tower http://bit.ly/2Hs1aDE
⭕ 17 Jan 2019
🔄 💙💙 📔 Court Filing (1/17/2019): Civil Action No. 1:18-cv-03501 [pdf] http://cnn.it/2CBddZy (111p) Democratic National Committee v.: Russian Federation, DJ Trump For President, Inc (and others)
DEMOCRATIC NATIONAL COMMITTEE, Plaintiff, v.:
THE RUSSIAN FEDERATION;
ARAS ISKENEROVICH AGALAROV;
EMIN ARAZ AGALAROV;
JOSEPH MIFSUD;
WIKILEAKS;
JULIAN ASSANGE;
DONALD J. TRUMP FOR PRESIDENT, INC.;
DONALD J. TRUMP, JR.;
PAUL J. MANAFORT, JR.;
ROGER J. STONE, JR.;
JARED C. KUSHNER;
GEORGE PAPADOPOULOS;
RICHARD W. GATES, III;
Defendants.
Project-Syndicate, Carl Bildt: The Trump Administration’s Farewell to Aims http://bit.ly/2DlNPID
// Whereas previous US political leaders used speeches in Cairo to explain America’s broad objectives in the Middle East, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo recently opted for a different approach. Rather than articulate a strategy to bring peace and reform to the region, he promised only further confrontation.
🐣 RT @joshtmp Look. He lied. He told someone to lie. But it’s not like he was lying about a serious issue. Only about $300 million he hoped to make by allying himself with a foreign autocrat and betraying his own country.
// dripping sarcasm
CNN: Trump startled by cozy Barr-Mueller relationship http://cnn.it/2U2zxm1
“I told him how well I knew Bob Mueller and that the Barrs and Muellers were good friends and would be good friends when this was all over,” Barr said. “Bob is a straight-shooter and should be dealt with as such.”
While Barr said during his hearing that Trump “was interested” in hearing about the friendship, the details that emerged this week caught the President off guard, the three sources said. He bristled at Barr’s description of the close relationship, complaining to aides he didn’t realize how much their work overlapped or that they were so close.
🐣 RT @BeschlossDC Article One of Nixon bill of impeachment, approved by House Judiciary Committee, accused Nixon of “approving, condoning, acquiescing in, and counselling witnesses with respect to…false or misleading testimony in duly instituted judicial and congressional proceedings.”
🐣 RT @BradMossEsq In 1974, after the smoking gun tape came out, Senator Goldwater led a group of GOP Senators to the WH for a heart to heart moment. ¤ If the Buzzfeed story is true, who will play the role of Goldwater this time?
BuzzFeedNews, Jason Leopold and Anthony Cormier: President Trump Directed His Attorney Michael Cohen To Lie To Congress About The Moscow Tower Project http://bit.ly/2Dj8Gwl
// Trump received 10 personal updates from Michael Cohen and encouraged a planned meeting with Vladimir Putin.
WaPo: Mitch McConnell: Behold the Democrat Politician Protection Act http://wapo.st/2SZ55cf
🐣 RT @SethAbramson Has anyone considered letting Putin give the State of the Union from Moscow?
🐣 RT @annalecta NEW: Foreign agents—including revolving door Senator David Vitter, who left the Senate in 2017—were paid $650,000 since May 2018 for lobbying to ease U.S. sanctions on firms tied to Russian oligarch Oleg Deripaska, FARA disclosures on @OpenSecretsDC show
⋙ OpenSecrets: Former Senator Vitter among foreign agents paid to ease sanctions on Russian oligarch’s firm http://bit.ly/2HiU4Ba
🐣 RT @kylegriffin1 Anastasia Vashukevich, the model from Belarus who claimed to have recordings involving Oleg Deripaska that she said would shed light on the Trump campaign’s ties to Russia, has been detained at a Moscow airport on prostitution allegations, WaPo reports.
⋙ WaPo: Model who claimed U.S.-Russian collusion tape held in Moscow on prostitution charges http://wapo.st/2CqDlGo
// Anastasia Vashukevich
↥ ↧
WaPo (Feb 2018): A self-described sex expert says she will spill information on Trump and Russia to get out of a Thai jail http://wapo.st/2RSCbwX
// 2/27/2018, Anastasia Vashukevich
WaPo, Paul Waldman: Michael Cohen is about to sing, and Trump is in big trouble http://wapo.st/2W0FxgT
🐣 RT @NatashaBertrand A similar bill, called the NATO Support Act, was introduced in the House today by Dem Rep. Jimmy Panetta. Co-sponsored by 5 Dems and 5 Republicans, including Reps. Hurd, Upton, Kinzinger, Don Bacon & Mike Gallagher
⋙ 🐣 RT @RobbieGramer NEW: 8 senators are going to introduce a bill to “prevent any president from leaving NATO” this afternoon. This bill, from 4 Dems and 4 Republicans, come amid fears Trump could legally unilaterally withdraw from NATO without any Congressional input
Vox, Aaron Ruper: Rudy Giuliani’s disastrous CNN interview created more problems for Trump http://bit.ly/2QRf69z
// In a stunning revelation, Giuliani conceded that Trump’s campaign manager may have colluded with Russia
🐣 RT @tribelaw This comparison of Trump to Jefferson Davis strikes a deeply persuasive — and disturbing— chord:
⋙ TheIntercept, James Risen: Why Doesn’t Donald Trump’s Cozy Relationship With Vladimir Putin Worry His Supporters? Jefferson Davis’s Treason Case Holds a Clue. http://bit.ly/2syE97r
🐣 RT @NormOrnstein Congratulations to Mitt Romney, Lindsey Graham, John Cornyn, John Thune and so many others for being recognized by official Russian television for their service to Russia.
⋙ 🐣 RT @TrueFactsStated Russian State Television celebrating lifting of sanctions and their ownership of the GOP. https://twitter.com/TrueFactsStated/status/1086016726846844928/photo/1
🐣 RT @ The CODEL to Afghanistan included a required stop in Brussels for pilot rest. In Brussels, the delegation was scheduled to meet with top NATO commanders, U.S. military leaders and key allies–to affirm the United States’ ironclad commitment to the NATO alliance. (1/4) 📌 https://twitter.com/Drew_Hammill/status/1085997662846009344
// from Pelosi’s office: Trump canceled trip
ThinkProgress: The latest front in Russian infiltration: America’s right-wing homeschooling movement http://bit.ly/2FzDjA2
// This is the latest connection between Russia and the American religious right.
WaPo: In rebuke to Trump administration, more than 130 Republicans break ranks to oppose Treasury plan to lift sanctions against Putin ally http://wapo.st/2FGNdPw
🐣 RT @rolltidebmz With everyone focused on Russia sanctions, good time to remind folks that the administration still needs to come forward with a second round of mandatory sanctions under the CBW Act. Something both R’s and D’s should demand from admin.
⋙ 🐣 RT @ForeignAffairsGOP It is unacceptable that the administration lacks a plan – or even a timeline – for action on the second round of mandatory sanctions against Russia required by U.S. law
// 11/6/2018
EmptyWheel, Marcy Wheeler (12/9/2018): Information in Amended DNC Lawsuit Reveals that Roger Stone Is at Significantly Greater Risk for CFAA Indictment http://bit.ly/2ASNWtF
// 12/9/2018
Criterion, Roger Kimball (1992): The treason of the intellectuals & “The Undoing of Thought” http://bit.ly/2HiOr5Q
// On the abandonment of Enlightenment intellectualism, and the emergence of a new form of Volksgeist.
● When hatred of culture becomes itself a part of culture, the life of the mind loses all meaning.
—Alain Finkielkraut,The Undoing of Thought
● Today we are trying to spread knowledge everywhere. Who knows if in centuries to come there will not be universities for re-establishing our former ignorance?
—Georg Christoph Lichtenberg (1742-1799)
WaPo: The quintessential Trump campaign story: A bag of cash, Michael Cohen and a rigged online poll http://wapo.st/2AQQPv7
🐣 RT @kasparov63 Bret nails it as usual. It’s become unpopular to talk about Western values, the free world, and even leadership, but the catastrophe in their absence is now apparent. Demagoguery and dictatorship have filled the vacuum.
⋙ 🐣 RT @BretStephensNYT: The West is now rudderless. To be rudderless puts you at the mercy of elements. The elemental forces of politics today are tribalism, populism, authoritarianism and the sewage pipes of social media.
⋙⋙ NYT, Bret Stephens: The Rudderless West http://nyti.ms/2FGgnyo
// We are drifting, in the absence of mind and will, toward a moment of civilizational self-negation.
WaPo, Adam Taylor: How defeated is the Islamic State? http://wapo.st/2Hg7AWf
CNN, Barbara Starr: Trump is fraying nerves inside the Pentagon http://cnn.it/2QSw8nG
Bloomberg, Shannon Pettypiece: Mueller’s Quiet Cooperator Rick Gates Has Key Role in Trump Probe http://bloom.bg/2QTdyvF
● Former campaign aide maintained ties to Trump aides into 2017
● Gates sentencing delayed by Mueller amid continued cooperation
TheAtlantic, Yoni Appelbaum: Impeach Donald Trump http://bit.ly/2FykFIP March 2019 cover story
// March 2019; Starting the process will rein in a president who is undermining American ideals—and bring the debate about his fitness for office into Congress, where it belongs.
⭕ 16 Jan 2019
📊 TheHill: Trump loses support from key constituency of white people without a college degree: poll http://bit.ly/2Fz1X3P
CNN Poll: 45% approv now; 54% in Dec
Quinn Poll: 53% now; 56% in (Dec?)
Forty-five percent of whites without college degrees approved of the job done by Trump in a new CNN poll released Monday, compared to 54 percent who had backed him in a poll conducted in December.
A Quinnipiac University National Poll also released Monday shows a similar trend. In that survey, approval for Trump among non-college educated whites dropped from 56 to 53 percent, with Trump still getting a majority of support from the group. Disapproval rose from 37 to 43 percent.
🐣 RT @djrothkopf There is absolutely no national security justification to lifting sanctions on Deripaska, no benefit whatsoever to the US and considerable risk associated with condoning his behavior, support for Kremlin crimes against the US.
⋙ 🐣 RT @jimsciutto Breaking: GOP defeats Democratic effort to maintain sanctions on key Kremlin ally Oleg Deripaska. Dems needed 60 votes, got only 57, incl 11 Republicans. Treasury accused him of election interference, bribery, ordering murder of a businessman & links to Russian organized crime
🐣 RT @tribelaw The 57-43 Senate vote today fell short of the 60 needed to block Trump’s outrageous lifting of the election-related sanctions against Derepaska and his companies. Eleven Republicans voted against Trump but the pro-Putin cowards included Senators McConnell, Graham, and Romney.
WaPo, Carolyn Maloney: How the Trump administration tries to skew democracy by attacking the census http://wapo.st/2ASCpur
TheHill: Fox’s Griffin: Was told by diplomat that Syria attack was ‘direct result’ of US pullout decision http://bit.ly/2RxzVMn
WaPo, EJ Dionne: The many red flags raised by William Barr’s hearing http://wapo.st/ 2T45udC
Politico: ‘She’s satin and steel’: Pelosi wages war on Trump http://politi.co/2FFuILt
// Her move to derail Trump’s State of the Union address underscores her aggressive challenge to the president.
TheWeek: Trump reportedly called up a journalist to defend Russia right after a private meeting with Putin in 2017 http://bit.ly/2FCx2CR
NYMag, Jonathan Chait: Trump Lawyer No Longer Denying Campaign Colluded With Russia http://nym.ag/2QWK3t7
🐣 RT @AdamSerwer William Barr’s testimony during his confirmation hearing was reassuring … until you look at the fine print. https://twitter.com/AdamSerwer/status/1085589453777879040/photo/1
⋙ TheAtlantic, AdamSerwer: Barr May Do Exactly What Trump Wants http://bit.ly/2RQOM3X
// The nominee for attorney general vowed independence, but his answers raised disturbing questions.
🐣 RT @DeadlineWH “Clearly what’s happening here is we see Trump with Vladimir Putin in his head, manipulating his thoughts, influencing what comes out of the President of the United States’ mouth …” – Jeremy Bash w/ @NicolleDWallace
💽 https://twitter.com/DeadlineWH/status/1085682319187419137/photo/1
🐣 RT @GregMiller I’d never seen this footage before – Trump sending clenched-fist solidarity signals to Putin at a G20 dinner.
⋙ Here’s Donald Trump desperately trying to get Vlad’s attention at the G20 dinner.
🌀 https://twitter.com/Scout_Finch/status/887791141839568896/photo/1
// fist bump thumbs up
RawStory, Dominique Jackson: Robert Mueller’s team packed with ‘bribery experts’ to expose favors between Trump-Putin: report http://bit.ly/2TT3AfB
🐣 RT @mikercarpenter Nikolai Patrushev, Putin’s national security advisor, has just threatened Ukraine with “loss of statehood.” Is anyone in this administration still awake?
⋙ TASS: Russian security chief warns Ukraine could lose statehood http://bit.ly/2Hjy4pM
// 1/15/2019, “The Kiev authorities are doing everything to split Ukraine, implementing the West’s scenario to break Ukraine away from Russia, while ignoring the interests of its own people,” said Nikolai Patrushev
“As a result, the country was de facto split. The population of the western regions does not trust natives of southeast considering them to be supporters of the ‘Russian world.” In southern and eastern regions, Kiev’s power is ensured, to a large extent, at the expense of moral and physical pressure exerted on the local population by radical nationalists,” Patrushev stressed.
“Because of that, anti-government sentiment in the aforementioned regions is mounting, with the public rift exacerbated by the inter-church standoff,” he added.
🐣 RT @kasparov63 For loyalty to Trump or the love of a Russian oligarch’s money? Every one of these Republicans should keep the name of Ronald Reagan out of their mouths forever. It’s the party of Trump now.
⋙ 🐣 RT @LauraLitvan NEW: Senate just BLOCKED a Chuck Schumer measure that would prevent the Trump admin from lifting sanctions on three firms linked to Russian oligarch and Putin ally Oleg Deripaska. ¤ The vote in the GOP-led Senate was 57-42, short of the 60 needed to move it to a final vote.
Politico, Darren Samuelson: GOP wants Mueller transparency — with caveats http://politi.co/2RQt6VD
// The approach appears aimed at undercutting critics worried the White House and DOJ chief nominee William Barr could withhold crucial parts of Mueller’s work.
🐣 RT @AdamSchiff Barr does not believe a president can be indicted, and that impeachment is the constitutional remedy. ¤ Yet Barr will not commit to sharing the contents of Mueller’s report with Congress, so we may determine what remedy is appropriate. ¤ That is immunity, not the rule of law.
🐣 RT @LauraLitvan NEW: Dem Senators Bob Menendez & Jack Reed tell Trump they want immediate access to interpreters present at all his interactions w Vladimir Putin, incl at the Helsinki summit https://twitter.com/LauraLitvan/status/1085654113860300801/photo/1
Msnbc, TheBeatWithAri: Judiciary chairman: Trump ‘must have known’ about Russian contact http://on.msnbc.com/2FCodc8
// Special Counsel Mueller releases a new document laying out exactly what Paul Manafort lied about after he started cooperating with the Russia probe, as Senators grill Mueller’s prospective new boss in confirmation hearings. House Judiciary Chair, Rep. Jerry Nadler, tells Ari Melber that Republicans have “not been playing it straight” by leaking information about a potential investigation and that the leaks “must stop”. Rep. Nadler also tells Ari Melber that if Trump’s nominee for Attorney General wants to “go down in history as someone who helped protect the rule of law” he will ensure that the Mueller probe report is made “public”.
WaPo, Samantha Vinograd: Trump’s alarming failure to engage in basic counterintelligence hygiene with Putin http://wapo.st/2MdGjT2
🐣 RT @Acosta Kremlin foreign policy adviser Yuri Ushakov: “What kind of nonsense are you asking. This is stupid, why even comment on that? This is already in the realm when it’s even embarrassing to talk about it… how can the President of the United States be an agent of another country?”
🐣 RT @TonySchwartz How do you fight evil — Trump, Steve King, Alex Jones, the Sackler Oxycontin family, just from today’s headlines — without being infected by hatred yourself? This the dilemma I find myself struggling with again this morning.
⋙ ♫ “Onward, Christian soldiers … ”
🐣 RT @MuellerSheWrote I have a secret dream that Barr is such good friends with Mueller, he wrote that bullshit memo to trick Trump into hiring him so he could protect the investigation. Like the Comey/Mueller/Ashcroft hospital room trick. I know it’s not true. Just let me have my justice porn.
RollingStone, Tim Dickinson: Trump-Loyal Senators Make Russian Oligarch’s Day http://bit.ly/2FyXGNy
// Led by Mitch McConnell, Senate Republicans ensure sanctions will be lifted on companies of “Putin’s favorite industrialist”
WaPo, Jennifer Rubin: Facing Trump’s tantrum, Pelosi takes away the TV http://wapo.st/2SZ2Up1
WaPo, Greg Sargent: Trump advisers are cynically feeding his raging ego, and we’re all the victims http://wapo.st/2RQ8IUw
WaPo, Michael McFaul: Sorry, but Trump is not ‘tough on Russia’ http://wapo.st/2SXuC5F
Vox, Andrew Prokop: Mueller’s heavily redacted new filing about Paul Manafort, decoded http://bit.ly/2MgF4T9
// There are references to shady payments, meetings with a Russian associate, mysterious work, and more.
WaPo, Anton Troianovski: The Russians know exactly what Putin and Trump talked about, but we probably won’t find out for decades http://wapo.st/2RxICq3
The interpreters working for Soviet leaders were trained to take nearly verbatim stenographic notes. Declassified Soviet records of Cold War talks are often more detailed than official American notes on the same conversations, said Svetlana Savranskaya, the director of Russia programs at the National Security Archive at George Washington University.
💙💙 WIRED, Garrett Graff: Trump Must Be a Russian Agent; the Alternative Is Too Awful http://bit.ly/2McHzWu
// It would be rather embarrassing for Donald Trump at this point if Robert Mueller were to declare that the president isn’t an agent of Russian intelligence.
The pattern of his pro-Putin, pro-Russia, anti-FBI, anti-intelligence community actions are so one-sided, and the lies and obfuscation surrounding every single Russian meeting and conversation so consistent that if this president isn’t actually hiding a massive conspiracy, it means the alternative is worse: America elected a chief executive so oblivious to geopolitics, so self-centered and personally insecure, so naturally predisposed to undermine democratic institutions and coddle authoritarians, and so terrible a manager and leader that he cluelessly surrounded himself with crooks, grifters, and agents of foreign powers that he’s compromised the national security of the US government and undermined 75 years of critical foreign alliances, just to satiate his own ego.
In short, we’ve reached a point in the Mueller probe where there are only two scenarios left: Either the president is compromised by the Russian government and has been working covertly to cooperate with Vladimir Putin after Russia helped win him the 2016 election—or Trump will go down in history as the world’s most famous “useful idiot,” as communists used to call those who could be co-opted to the cause without realizing it.
At least the former scenario—that the president of the United States is actively working to advance the interests of our country’s foremost, long-standing, traditional foreign adversary—would make him seem smarter and wilier. The latter scenario is simply a tragedy, or maybe a farce for everyone involved.
We’re left here—in a place unprecedented in American political history, wondering how much worse the truth is than we already know—after four days of fresh revelations in the public drip-drip-drip of the Russia investigation. The past two months have seen the public understanding of the case advance into almost unthinkable territory. Now we’re simply trying to figure out how bad things really are.
Consider: On Friday, The New York Times reported that the FBI opened a counterintelligence investigation of the president himself in 2017; on Saturday, The Washington Post published a story saying that Trump has gone to great lengths to cover up and hide—even from his own aides—his interactions with Putin; on Sunday, columnist Max Boot outlined the case for Trump as a Russian asset; and on Tuesday the Times came back with an authoritative recounting of Trump and Putin’s interactions, a recounting that included a bizarre telephone call from Air Force One where the president tried to argue off the record that contrary to the unanimous conclusion of his own intelligence community, “that the Russians were falsely accused of election interference.”
CNN: Senate Democrats’ effort to block Trump move on Russia sanctions fails http://cnn.it/2RuATsO
DailyBeast: Rick Gates Tells Mueller About Trump Team’s Dealings With Israeli Intelligence Firm http://bit.ly/2TRxDEz
// Psy Group delivered plans for ‘social media manipulation’ in 2016 and the special counsel is digging in as part of his probe into Mideast influence.
↥ ↧
DailyBeast (Oct 2018): Saudi Spy Met With Team Trump About Taking Down Iran http://bit.ly/2FwAHTt
// 10/25/2018, Mueller’s investigators examined a series of meetings between an Israeli social media strategist, the general blamed for Jamal Khashoggi’s murder, and Trump adviser Michael Flynn.
CNN: Pence declares ‘ISIS has been defeated’ on the same day as deadly Syria attack http://cnn.it/2RunQrk
Newsweek: Former CIA Director John Brennan Agrees Donald Trump Is a ‘Clear and Present Danger’ to U.S. National Security http://bit.ly/2RwaScz
🐣 RT @laraseligman As the attack today triples the American death toll in Syria, Trump’s national security team is tearing at the seams. My latest:
⋙ ForeignPolicy, Lara Seligman: American Troops Die in Syria as Trump Team Squabbles http://bit.ly/2MdqETU
// U.S. Syria policy is dogged by infighting and confusion.
🐣 RT @KrauseForIowa One of those rare times that I agree with Sen. #LindseyGraham, who said today that he is concerned that #Trump’s statements about withdrawing from Syria have “emboldened the enemy” to target US forces. #TrumpRussia #Syria #ISIS
⋙ CNN: US service members killed in ISIS-claimed attack in Syria http://cnn.it/2FDPon1
Haaretz: WATCH Bill Maher Explains Why He Is Now for Impeaching Trump http://bit.ly/2QPTQRy
// Maher tells MSNBC’s Chris Matthews, ‘It’s about time. I’ve been using the word ‘treason’ the whole time he’s been in’
💙 TheAtlantic, Jurecic Quinta and Benjamin Wittes: The Real Significance of the FBI’s Probe Into Trump http://bit.ly/2ssXXcq
// It’s a big deal.
Axios, Jonathan Swan: How the White House is prepping for Democrats’ onslaught http://bit.ly/2RwhurA
TheWeek, W James Antle III: Is the FBI overreaching in its investigation of Trump’s Russia relations? http://bit.ly/2McoJie
💽 Newsweek/Msnbc: Donald Trump is Not ‘Unwitting Agent’ to Russia, ‘Knows Exactly What He is Doing’ Says House Intelligence Democrat Eric Swalwell http://bit.ly/2HiWG1R
WaPo, Dana Milbank: Why would William Barr take this job? The answer should alarm Trump. http://wapo.st/2MfskfI
It was William P. Barr’s confirmation hearing. But it was Robert S. Mueller III’s affirmation hearing.
President Trump had nominated Barr to be his new attorney general to shield him from Mueller’s hoax of a rigged witch hunt. But Barr spent much of his seven-hour confirmation hearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee on Tuesday lavishing praise on his future boss’s tormentor. And Republicans, for the most part, didn’t defend Trump — and occasionally joined in the Mueller veneration.
Just about everybody but Trump regards Mueller as an upstanding man doing honest work. Even Trump’s potential new attorney general.
Barr described declining an earlier request to join Trump’s legal defense team, saying, “I didn’t want to stick my head into that meat grinder.” He recalled telling Trump at the time that “Bob is a straight shooter and should be dealt with as such.”
Regarding his “good friend” of three decades, Barr vowed unequivocally: “On my watch, Bob will be allowed to finish his work.” If ordered to fire Mueller without cause, he said, “I would not carry out that instruction.”
And what if Trump’s lawyers attempt to edit the Mueller report, as has been threatened? “That will not happen.” Barr warned that the president’s interference in cases involving himself and his associates could be unconstitutional or criminal.
The rule of law, Barr said, “is the heartbeat of this country,” and he vowed to “protect the independence and the reputation of the department.” Trump’s treatment of subordinates “might give me pause if I was 45 or 50 years old, but it doesn’t give me pause right now,” Barr continued. He added, “I will not be bullied into doing anything I think is wrong.”
Barr spent decades building his reputation. Why would he throw it away now by becoming the guy who buried the Mueller report?
Axios: Exclusive excerpt: Chris Christie torches Jared http://bit.ly/2Mc2nh3
DailyBeast: Deripaska’s Rusal Installs Kremlin Fanboy as White House Aims to Lift Sanctions http://bit.ly/2CnVFA4 by Betsy Woodruff, Allison Quinn and Erin Banco
// The move further concerned lawmakers already worried that the changes made to comply with Treasury’s demands would prove cosmetic.
CNN, Stephen Collinson: Another good day for Putin as turmoil grips US and UK http://cnn.it/2Dcmxoj
CNN: Senate Republicans break with Trump on Russia sanctions http://cnn.it/2HepOHr
In a rebuke to the Trump administration on Russia, 11 Senate Republicans joined with Democrats to advance a measure Tuesday that would stop the Treasury Department from relaxing sanctions on three Russian companies with ties to oligarch Oleg Deripaska, a Kremlin ally.
The Senate voted 57-42 to proceed to a resolution from Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer that would reverse the Trump administration’s decision to lift sanctions on the firms, a vote Schumer forced under a provision in a 2017 Russia sanctions law.
Sixty senators will be required to pass the resolution in a vote expected to be held on Wednesday. At least two Republicans would have to change their votes for the measure to pass.
⭕ 15 Jan 2019
BrennanCenter, Andrew Cohen (1/15): William Barr’s Slick Performance Shouldn’t Fool Anyone http://bit.ly/2T7jDXi
// He needs to recuse from the Mueller probe, argues Brennan Center fellow Andrew Cohen.
NYT, KK Rebecca Lai Jim: Every Time Trump Has Talked to Putin [Interactive] http://nyti.ms/2T0HSGA
● https://twitter.com/Auriandra/status/1085650489444712448?s=20/photo/1
President Trump and President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia have had at least five face-to-face meetings and nine publicly reported conversations over the phone since Mr. Trump won the election in 2016. Reports of Mr. Trump’s efforts to hide the details of some of these conversations have drawn fresh scrutiny to his relationship with the Russian president. http://nyti.ms/
💙 NYT (Peter Baker): Trump and Putin Have Met Five Times. What Was Said Is a Mystery. http://nyti.ms/2AOPRiK
DailyBeast, Dick Kirk and Christopher Dickey: Trump Doesn’t Want Alliances Like NATO, He Wants U.S. Soldiers to Be Guns for Hire http://bit.ly/2RA06Cl
// From Europe to the Korean Peninsula, Trump insists countries pay more for the U.S. troops. Meanwhile Putin, Xi Jinping, and Kim Jong Un enjoy the spectacle of shattering alliances.
Newsweek: Putin Spokesman Backs Up Trump, Calling Russia Collusion a ‘Conspiracy Theory’ http://bit.ly/2ANT6XI
💙 RollingStone, Ryan Bort: A Damning New Timeline Argues Trump’s Collusion Is Hiding in Plain Sight http://bit.ly/2W4GzbI
// A Twitter thread by a Russian policy expert and a former federal prosecutor @andrewsweiss illustrates Trump’s relationship with Vladimir Putin and the Kremlin
📌 https://mobile.twitter.com/andrewsweiss/status/1084802080051736577
TheGuardian, Jon Swain: Mueller: Manafort worked with alleged Russian agent even after criminal charges http://bit.ly/2QSOCVg
// Former Trump campaign chief started communicating with Konstantin Kilimnik on plan for future of Ukraine in 2016
WaPo: Belarusan model who touted evidence of Trump-Russia ties pleads guilty in Thailand http://wapo.st/2Rviooc Anastasia Vashukevich
VanityFair, Abigail Tracy: “The President Has Been Acting on Russia’s Behalf”: U.S. Officials Are Shocked by Trump’s Asset-Like Behavior http://bit.ly/2TZt9fl
TheAtlantic, David Graham: Donald Trump’s Pattern of Deference to the Kremlin Is Clear http://bit.ly/2HfGazO
// Now it’s on the president to explain his posture.
Politico, Darren Samuelson: New Trump-Russia subplot: Mueller and Barr are ‘good friends’ http://politi.co/2FBjqHT
// Trump’s attorney general nominee told senators the president knows about his 30-year relationship with the special counsel, whom Trump says is out to get him.
WaPo: New court filing indicates prosecutors have extensive details on Manafort actions not yet made public http://wapo.st/2MdX7tb
WSJ: Mueller Probe Likely to Restrict Michael Cohen’s Testimony http://on.wsj.com/2swnW2w
● https://twitter.com/Auriandra/status/1085296266702143489?s=20/photo/1
// Trump’s former lawyer may be barred from discussing matters related to talks with the special counsel and Manhattan federal prosecutors
While Mr. Cohen’s testimony may be restricted, he is expected to give an explosive recounting of his experience working for Mr. Trump. His testimony is expected to focus on his life story, examining how he went from serving as one of Mr. Trump’s most loyal aides for more than a decade to publicly breaking with him last year and implicating him in two federal crimes.
“He’s going to tell the story of what it’s like to work for a madman, and why he did it for so long,” said the person close to Mr. Cohen. “He’s going to say things that will give you chills.”
Alternet/RawStory: Sally Yates’ warnings about Russia’s stronghold on Mike Flynn just took on a whole new significance http://bit.ly/2srsMyj
// The day before President Donald Trump fired FBI director James Comey, acting Attorney General Sally Yates testified to Congress about the activities of Trump’s national security adviser, Michael Flynn.
Alternet/RawStory: Sally Yates’ warnings about Russia’s stronghold on Mike Flynn just took on a whole new significance http://bit.ly/2srsMyj
// The day before President Donald Trump fired FBI director James Comey, acting Attorney General Sally Yates testified to Congress about the activities of Trump’s national security adviser, Michael Flynn.
🐣 RT @PaulaChertok Lindsey Graham is Nunes #2. Spouts Trump propaganda at #Barr hearing. Reads Strzok texts, slams Steele dossier, slams FBI opening counterintel investigation of Trump: “We’re relying on you to clean this place up…make sure they don’t have an agenda. Will u look into it?”—“I will” https://twitter.com/PaulaChertok/status/1085195854753890305?s=20/photo/1
DailyBeast: William Barr: I ‘Can Conceive of Situations’ Where Journalists Might Be Jailed ‘as Last Resort’ http://bit.ly/2SVmliD
🐣 RT @matthewamiller Barr’s commitment to seek but not necessarily follow the advice of ethics officials is the Whitaker standard and falls short of what Holder, Sessions, Rosenstein, and Yates all committed to – to follow that advice. It’s obviously deliberate that he’s breaking precedent.
RollCall: Adam Schiff hiring full-time team to investigate Trump’s Russia connections http://bit.ly/2CrC5CH
// House Intelligence Committee chairman hiring more investigators to revive House Russia probe
CNN, Chris Cillizza: The 1 giant question Donald Trump still hasn’t answered on Russia http://cnn.it/2Fu5hgv
Vice: Rick Gates is still cooperating in “several ongoing investigations” Mueller says http://bit.ly/2stRH47
⭕ 14 Jan 2019
TheAtlantic, David Frum: Subpoena the Interpreter http://bit.ly/2ROa3er
// There are real costs to such a move—but the public needs to know what was said between Trump and Putin.
Vox: The US apparently kept no detailed notes of Trump-Putin meetings for the past 2 years http://bit.ly/2Ddblrz
// That’s a huge problem.
WaPo, Amy Wang: ‘Like I said: A puppet’: Hillary Clinton doubles down on Trump and Russia http://wapo.st/2FsevtG
NYT, Paul Krugman: Donald Trump and His Team of Morons http://nyti.ms/2RTckF8
// Nobody left besides those with no reputation to lose.
NYRB, Christopher Browning (Oct 2018): The Suffocation of Democracy http://bit.ly/2O8INWU
// 10/25/2018
🐣 RT @JuliaDavisNews There are few things that Putin desires more than the weakening of NATO, the military alliance of the US, Europe & Canada that has deterred Soviet & Russian aggression for 70 yrs. Several times in 2018, Trump privately said he wanted to withdraw from NATO.
NYT: Trump Discussed Pulling U.S. From NATO, Aides Say Amid New Concerns Over Russia http://nyti.ms/2Mb9aaF
🐣 RT @PassTheSalty “The president of the United States is a clear and present danger to the national security of the United States.” – David Laufman, former chief of DOJ’s counterintelligence ¤ 😳 ¤ NOW IS THE TIME FOR ALL GOOD MEN AND WOMEN TO COME TO THE AID OF THEIR COUNTRY!
💽 https://twitter.com/PassTheSalty/status/1085039197424181248?s=20/photo/1
NYT Editorial: Donald Trump: The Russia File http://nyti.ms/2FCRfsl
// Americans deserve to know what the president and Vladimir Putin are talking about.
NYT: At Trump’s Inauguration, $10,000 for Makeup and Lots of Room Service http://nyti.ms/2D9A9Rd
🐣 RT @JanzAndrew It looks like prosecutors are investigating Devin Nunes regarding a secret meeting with convicted criminal Michael Flynn and others. We may soon discover why Nunes risked it all to cover up for Trump last year.
⋙ DailyBeast: Mueller Probes an Event With Nunes, Flynn, and Foreign Officials at Trump’s D.C. Hotel http://bit.ly/2Da1sut by Erin Banco, Asawin Suebsaeng, Betsy Woodruff, Spencer Ackerman
// Devin Nunes has been a pitbull for the president, growling at the prosecutorsinvestigating Trumpworld. Now an event that Nunes himself attended is under Mueller’s microscope.
MotherJones, David Corn: Donald Trump Was Always a Counterintelligence Nightmare http://bit.ly/2SUCzZp
// Why did it take so long for the FBI to investigate and what did it find?
WaPo, Chris Coons: Here are the commitments William Barr needs to make to be attorney general http://wapo.st/2DaAW4a
WaPo: Ask the Trump White House for comment and you might get a non-denial denial http://wapo.st/2MgKk9z
WaPo: Barr vows to let special counsel investigation finish and says it is ‘very important’ Congress and the public be told of the findings http://wapo.st/2FqMjr3
CNN: Attorney General nominee says Mueller should be allowed to finish report http://cnn.it/2CjBu6d
🐣 RT @JohnBrennen Questions Congress should ask the American translator in Helsinki: Were written notes passed between Mr. Trump & Mr. Putin? Did Mr. Trump ask Mr. Putin to conceal anything about the past? Were any promises made? Were you asked to step aside at any time?
NYT: Top Democrats Warn Trump Over Comments on Michael Cohen http://nyti.ms/2HeKQWv
ThisWeek, Joel Mathis: 4 takeaways from the weekend’s bombshell reports about Trump and Russia http://bit.ly/2stMEAB
CNN: Transcripts detail how FBI debated whether Trump was ‘following directions’ of Russia http://cnn.it/2DabID3 “The congressional transcripts obtained by CNN reveal new details into how the FBI launched the investigation into Trump and the discussions that were going on”
// by Jeremy Herb, Pamela Brown and Laura Jarrett
TheAtlantic, Jeffrey Goldberg (Editor): UNTHINKABLE: 50 Moments That Define an Improbable Presidency http://bit.ly/2RvDFOn 50 Articles
// Jan 2019; Donald Trump’s 50 Most Unthinkable Moments ~ 50 Articles
CNN, Stephen Collinson: Trump’s Putin problem seizes the spotlight in a time of turmoil http://cnn.it/2H8GwrT
⭕ 13 Jan 2019
🐣 RT @selectedwisdom [Clint Watts] Regarding this NYT story from this weekend, imagine you are a FBI Agent working Russian counterintelligence in 2016 and you witness the following:
📌 https://mobile.twitter.com/selectedwisdom/status/1085932216440496128
TheAtlantic, Tom Nichols: In Trump’s World, Reality Is Negotiable http://bit.ly/2RPVc3m
// The president’s resistance to learning will long outlive his administration.
Lawfare, Jack Goldsmith: On What Grounds Can the FBI Investigate the President as a Counterintelligence Threat? http://bit.ly/2ANwQxc
💙💙 WaPo, Jennifer Rubin: No president has ever been asked: Are you a Russian agent? http://wapo.st/2FvQH7n
Mueller inherited the FBI investigation, meaning whatever the FBI learned or concluded went into his bank of evidence in an investigation that was both a criminal and a counterintelligence inquiry. Constitutional scholar Larry Tribe tells me, “Under settled FBI protocol, no such investigation, whose purposes include protecting America from future attack, can be opened without a strong evidentiary basis and careful internal clearance or closed without either effectively ‘neutralizing’ its target — an impossibility with a sitting president as long as he remains in office — or clearing that target.”
In essence, as Lawfare’s Ben Wittes put it, “It was about Russia. It was always about Russia. Full stop.” The obstruction of the investigation was not simply to protect Trump, in this telling, but also was part of the pattern of collusion, cooperation and conspiracy between Trump and his associates, on one hand, and, on the other, the Kremlin. Trump didn’t fire James B. Comey just because Comey was going to find incriminating information on him; he did it also to protect the Russians and his relationship with the Russians — or so the story goes.
The FBI decision to undertake such an unprecedented inquiry, writes former Justice Department lawyer David Kris, wasn’t out of bounds, given the evidence: Russian meddling, the Steele dossier, the Carter Page warrant, the firing of Comey, the confession to Lester Holt that Trump fired Comey because of Russia and, finally, Trump telling Russians in the Oval Office that Comey was a “nut job” and his firing took off “great pressure because of Russia.” Kris argues that “the FBI was not merely justified, but actually compelled, to investigate the president.”
USAToday, Tom Nichols: All signs point the same way: Vladimir Putin has compromising information on Donald Trump http://bit.ly/2FpB9mn
// Trump’s behavior toward Russia has always been a security concern, and the FBI had no choice but to open a counterintelligence operation. It did its job.
WaPo, Asha Rangappa: The FBI can’t neutralize a security threat if the president is the threat http://wapo.st/2Rssqq9
// Mueller — and Congress — could pick up where counterintelligence hits its limits
WaPo, Anne Applebaum: The Trump-Putin revelations tell us what we knew all along http://wapo.st/2sn0DIA
Reuters: Key Republican to ask FBI about report of Trump counterintelligence probe http://bit.ly/2TMqRjh Sen Lindsey Graham
USAToday, Tom Nichols: All signs point the same way: Vladimir Putin has compromising information on Donald Trump http://bit.ly/2FpB9mn
💙💙 WaPo, Max Boot: Here are 18 reasons Trump could be a Russian asset http://wapo.st/2D7IJQ9
Newsweek: Mueller Draft Report Says Trump ‘Helped Putin Destabilize the United States’, Watergate Journalist Carl Bernstein Says http://bit.ly/2SYl7mR
DailyBeast, Betsy Woodruff: Kremlin Blessed Russia’s NRA Operation, U.S. Intel Report Says http://bit.ly/2D8MDbM
// When Maria Butina and Alexander Torshin’s brought NRA bigwigs to Moscow, it wasn’t a rogue mission. It was okayed from the very top, according to a report reviewed by The Beast.
WaPo: Revelations about Manafort’s 2016 interactions with Russian associate show special counsel’s intense focus on Russia contacts http://wapo.st/2M8OEYe
NYT, Michael Tomasky: What’s the Best Way to Dump Trump? http://nyti.ms/2M75JSh
// Impeachment is tempting. But there’s a stronger case for waiting for the 2020 election.
NYT: Trump’s Efforts to Hide Details of Putin Talks May Set Up Fight With Congress http://nyti.ms/2FoMLGd
⭕ 12 Jan 2019
Lawfare, David Kris: Why the FBI’s Investigation Into the President Was Unavoidable http://bit.ly/2FyPA78
NYT Editorial: With Barr, Will Justice Be Done? http://nyti.ms/2AGUtI0
The nominee to be attorney general has backed some of the president’s worst impulses on the Russia inquiry.
Newsweek: Mueller Investigation Could Have Classified Communications Intercepts Proving Trump Worked With Russia: Former FBI Chief Frank Figliuzzi http://bit.ly/2Hb2b2J
💙 NYT, Maureen Dowd: Nancy Pelosi Spanks the First Brat http://nyti.ms/2sngDKD
Two men, sons of immigrants, rising to be the head of their own empires, powerful forces in their ethnic communities. Both dapper and mustachioed with commanding personalities. And both wielding a potent influence on the children who learned at their knees and followed them into the family businesses.
But here’s the difference: Big Tommy D’Alesandro Jr. taught little Nancy how to count. Fred Trump taught Donald, from the time he was a baby, that he didn’t have to count — or be accountable; Daddy’s money made him and buoyed him.
Fred, a dictatorial builder in Brooklyn and Queens from German stock, and Big Tommy, a charming Maryland congressman and mayor of Baltimore from Italian stock, are long gone. But their roles in shaping Donald and Nancy remain vivid, bleeding into our punishing, pressing national debate over immigration, a government shutdown and that inescapable and vexing Wall.
CNN, AxeFiles: Former US ambassador to NATO: The United States is ‘no longer the most important actor’ http://cnn.it/2QG8xXi
NBC, Chuck Rosenberg and Joyce Vance: Trump’s firing of Comey triggered an FBI counterintelligence investigation. Here’s what ‘counterintelligence’ entails. http://nbcnews.to/2AHB5L0
// It is crucial that we have a robust counterintelligence capability housed within the FBI, even if you may not see most of its work.
🐣 RT @kenvogel NEW: Senate Dems will push for a vote as soon as Tuesday to stop @USTreasury from lifting sanctions against OLEG DERIPASKA’s companies. @SenSchumer cites the oligarch’s work with PAUL MANAFORT as a reason to keep the sanctions until MUELLER finishes.
⋙ NYT: Democrats Push to Block Sanctions Relief for Russian Oligarch’s Companies http://nyti.ms/2AGGZMg
🐣 RT @mkraju Another sign of Trump’s new reality: Foreign Affairs Chairman Eliot Engel to probe Trump-Putin contacts.”We will be holding hearings on the mysteries swirling around Trump’s bizarre relationship with Putin and his cronies, and how those dark dealings affect our national security”
Politico: Trump pledges transparency on Putin conversations after bombshell report http://politi.co/2M6eXyi
President Donald Trump on Saturday said he would be willing to release the details of his private conversation with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Helsinki last summer.
“I would. I don’t care,” Trump told Fox News host Jeanine Pirro in a phone interview, adding: “I’m not keeping anything under wraps. I couldn’t care less.”
💙💙 🔊 LawfarePodcast: The Lawfare Podcast: Special Edition: The FBI’s Counterintelligence Investigation of Donald Trump http://bit.ly/ 2D62hEy
Politico, Jack Shafer: Week 86: FBI’s Blockbuster Probe of Trump’s Loyalty Revealed http://politi.co/2RJuZDv
// Meanwhile, thanks to a paperwork goof there’s little doubt Manafort sent campaign polling data to a Ukrainian pal who might be a Russian spy
NewYorker, John Cassidy: As the Shutdown Drags On, the Trump-Russia Story Is Back at Center Stage http://bit.ly/2TJz1Jf
NYMag, Jonathan Chait: Mueller Is Investigating Trump as a Russian Asset http://nym.ag/2TJyAyB
Vox, Andrew Prokop: How the big new New York Times scoop changes our understanding of the Trump-Russia probe http://bit.ly/2Cti7I7
// In May 2017, the FBI opened an investigation into whether President Trump was working on Russia’s behalf.
NYT: Trump Tweets Lengthy Attack on F.B.I. Over Inquiry Into Possible Aid to Russia http://nyti.ms/2RQw6S0
TheGuardian: Trump vents fury over Russia stories and again threatens national emergency http://bit.ly/2M7Cfnh
🐣 RT @Comey The perfect day to see “To Kill a Mockingbird” on Broadway. Amazing cast and vital message: “All rise.”
🐣 RT @emptywheel Let’s just imagine, for the moment, that Trump got himself badly compromised and can’t find a way out. He fears what Putin has more than what Mueller has (which is NOT a pee tape).
⋙ EmptyWheel: Lawfare’s Theory of L’Affaire Russe Misses the Kompromat for the Pee Glee http://bit.ly/2QK3GnR
// 8/2/2018
🐣 RT @brianklaas After Trump snatched notes of his private meeting with Putin from the interpreter & concealed them from US officials, the only detail the interpreter confirmed was: Trump said “I believe you” when Putin denied the Kremlin’s information warfare operation.
🐣 RT @McFaul This Trump behavior is abnormal, strange, and not in US national interest: “Trump has concealed details of his face-to-face encounters with Putin from senior officials in administration”
🐣 RT @MaxBoot “We were frustrated because we didn’t get a readout,” a former senior admin official said. “The State Department & NSC were never comfortable” with Trump’s interactions with Putin. “God only knows what they were going to talk about or agree to.”
🐣 RT @NatashaBertrand Former chief of the National Security Division’s Counterintelligence and Export Control Section at DOJ 👇
⋙ Now is the time for all good men (and women) to come to the aid of their country
🐣 RT @ NEW: After closed door mtg with Putin, Trump took his interpreter’s notes, told linguist not to reveal what had transpired to other administration officials. Pattern of concealing communications with Putin.
⋙ WaPo: Trump has concealed details of his face-to-face encounters with Putin from senior officials in administration http://wapo.st/2CiEeka
⋙ 🐣 RT @hanny_hawkins And let’s not forget America learned of this meeting when Tass, the Russian news agency, posted these pix. ¤ This is when Trump told the Russians about Irael’s top secret source inside ISIS, spilling not only one of America’s top state secrets, but Israel’s. https://twitter.com/hanny_hawkins/status/1084233324569157632?s=20/photo/1-4
NewYorker, Isaac Chotiner: How the Times Reported the F.B.I. Counterintelligence Investigation Into President Trump: An Interview with the Journalist Adam Goldman http://bit.ly/2AEcp5J
WashingtonMonthly, Martin Longman: The Intelligence Community Has Long Suspected Trump of Being Under Russian Influence http://bit.ly/2RmNqOS
🐣 RT @Evan_McMullin I’ve always been fascinated by traitors. They consider themselves highly intelligent, yet fail to understand how likely they are to be caught. When they are, they become men without a home, having betrayed their countrymen and been used by an enemy. So it will be with this one.
🐣 RT @sarvay Destroying NATO. Destabilizing the UK and the European Union. Pushing China closer to Russia. A warm water military port in the Mediterranean. I’m pretty sure the list of gifts received by Putin far exceeds his original expectations.
⭕ 11 Jan 2019
NYT: As U.S. Exits Syria, Mideast Faces a Post-American Era http://nyti.ms/2Cj0M4w
🐣 RT @NatashaBertrand Stepping back for a minute: If no other reporting existed on Trump/Russia, the fact that the FBI started a CI investigation to determine whether or not the sitting president of the US was either comprised by or an agent of Russia, it would be the biggest political story…ever.
🐣 RT @NatashaBertrand The NYT report highlights the fact that many assume Trump has only ever been officially under investigation for obstruction of justice. The new takeaway (though probably already assumed by most) is that Trump himself was also an individual subject of a counterintel investigation.
🔄 💙💙 Politico Mag, Darren Samuelsohn: The Only Impeachment Guide You’ll Ever Need http://politi.co/2QHcJGi
// 1/11/2019, As talk of the I-word heats up, here’s POLITICO Magazine’s soup-to-nuts answers to all your questions about the politics—and the practical realities—of removing a president.
DailyBeast: Ex-FBI Officials Say Spy Inquiry into President Trump Is ‘Uncharted Territory’ http://bit.ly/2QIsRaC by Spencer Ackerman, Erin Banco and Betsy Woodruff
// If the Times’ story is right, retired agents and officials say that means the highest levels of Justice and the FBI knew the president was—and may still be—under investigation.
DailyBeast, Betsy Woodruff: Senate Democrats Call For DOJ Ethics Probe After Whitaker Non-Recusal http://bit.ly/2RINjwj
// Senate Democrats sent the letter just days before Attorney General nominee William Barr’s confirmation hearing.
🐣 RT @benjaminwittes It was about Russia. Full stop. It was always about Russia.
🐣 RT @leahmcelrath Russian oligarch, Putin ally, and Trump friend makes a thinly-veiled threat against SCOTUS Justice Ruth Bader-Ginsburg:
🐣 RT @ARTEM_KLYUSHIN Пришла пора выводить Рут Гинзбург из состава судей Верховного суда. Гинзбург, звезда либеральной юриспруденции, находится в Верховном суде уже 25 лет. Пора ей отдохнуть
⋙ [Trans:] The time has come to bring Ruth Ginsburg out of the Supreme Court judges. Ginzburg, the star of liberal jurisprudence, has been in the Supreme Court for 25 years. It’s time for her to rest @realDonaldTrump
💙💙 Lawfare, Benjamin Wittes: What if the Obstruction Was the Collusion? On the New York’s Times’s Latest Bombshell http://bit.ly/2SQAg9A
↥ ↧
🐣 RT @brianklaas It’s not a good sign when the FBI thinks there is a credible possibility that the President of the United States is either actively or unwittingly an agent of the Kremlin, but here we are.
🐣 RT @JohnWDean A headline that will be in the history books…
💙💙 🔆 This❗️⋙ NYT: F.B.I. Opened Inquiry Into Whether Trump Was Secretly Working on Behalf of Russia http://nyti.ms/2SL2UJ8
CNN, Jeremy Herb et al: Michael Cohen’s big day may not be about Russia http://cnn.it/2TGRUwv
MotherJones: The Russian Pop Star Behind the Trump Tower Meeting Is About to Tour the US. Will Robert Mueller Be There? http://bit.ly/2spEwkU Emin Agalarov
// “The only singing he may have to do is before a grand jury.”
NBC: Senate intel committee grilling ex-Trump campaign members in Russia probe http://nbcnews.to/2D5ig5W
//Investigators asked former Trump aide Sam Nunberg about the president’s business dealings and how he formulated his policies toward Moscow.
CNN, Stephen Collinson: Trump seeks to expand powers as Mueller, Democrats threaten to constrain http://cnn.it/2RmTJC3
LATimes, Chris Megerian et al: Russia investigation could spark battle to learn Robert Mueller’s findings http://lat.ms/2QGDpab
WaPo, Christian Caryl: There’s a way to know if Russia threw the election to Trump http://wapo.st/2QG7Ayi
Sinan Aral, a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, … says he and his colleagues want to study the Russian influence campaign in precisely this geographical context. The MIT scholars have developed a robust methodology for assessing how social media campaigns influence the behavior of their targets — and now they want to bring it to bear on the Russian meddling in 2016. “We need a rigorous, scientific postmortem on Russian misinformation to harden our democracy against future attacks,” he told me. “While current analyses focus on Russia’s reach, what we’re missing is an analysis of their impact – who their misinformation targeted and what effect it had.”
Aral and his MIT research partner Dean Eckles sent me what they call a “blueprint” for such a study. They propose zeroing in on the issue of “causality” by analyzing how different levels of disinformation changed behavior and opinions. They would use randomized experiments to estimate shifts in voter turnout and voting.
⭕ 10 Jan 2019
VanityFair, Bess Levin: Mnuchin Tells Democrat’s to Just “Trust” Trump on Russia http://bit.ly/2CiCZkS
// The House Speaker called the classified briefing “one of the worst” Congress has ever received from the administration.
NYT: Trump and Pompeo Embrace Autocrats and Disparage Opponents at Home http://nyti.ms/2M7thqb
AmericanProspect, Adele Stan: Shutdown Antics Obscure Big Moment in Russia Investigation http://bit.ly/2soCjGa
// Foreign intervention in U.S. election not nearly as interesting as table-slamming petulance.
Given the headlines, you might think that the partial shutdown of the federal government was about President Donald J. Trump’s need to satisfy his base and the message-crafters at Fox News, but that’s only a partial truth. Were it not for the manufactured drama you might call Wall Quest, think of what the headlines would be: Trump’s emissary snubbed by Turkey’s president; Trump retreats on his get-out-of-Syria-now policy; Yemen catastrophe continues with U.S. aid to Saudi Arabia; Mueller investigation grows ever closer to the president. Shutting down the government as a means of extorting Congress offers a noisy, newsy diversion from all of that—with the added bonus of stage-setting for a potential declaration of a national state of emergency for the exercise of authoritarian power.
With Wall Quest coverage sucking up the majority of minutes on newscasts and cable talk shows, you’d be forgiven for missing the extraordinary developments this week in Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation of the role of Russia in the 2016 presidential campaign. Taking the cake is the spectacular blunder made Tuesday in a court filing by attorneys for former Trump campaign chief Paul Manafort, when they inadvertently revealed that Manafort, between March and August 2016, passed Trump campaign polling data to Konstantin Kilimnik, a Manafort business associate with ties to Russian intelligence services. The New York Times reports that Manafort asked Kilimnik to pass on the data to two Ukrainian oligarchs who are aligned with the Kremlin.
Whoa, that’s getting kind of close to the big guy. Though what the president knew about these doings remains unknown, a pretty damning circumstantial timeline is being developed. (For the record, Trump said he knew nothing of Manfort’s poll-passing gambit.) Consider the June 2016 meeting in Trump Tower, at which Natalia Veselnitskaya, a Russian lawyer with Kremlin ties, sat with Manafort, Donald Trump Jr., and Jared Kushner to offer dirt on Trump’s opponent, Hillary Clinton. The Russian lawyer appeared to suggest a quid pro quo for the “dirt” promised by the intermediary who set up the meeting: Should Trump win the election, he should back a repeal of the Magnitsky Act, under which Russia suffers U.S. sanctions for its seizure of the Crimean Peninsula from Ukraine.
On Tuesday, Velselnitskaya was charged by federal prosecutors in New York with obstruction of justice in a different case, but one with repercussions for the Russia investigation, since this New York case portrays her as an agent of the Russian government.
Add to the pile those curious, predictive comments made in August 2016 by Trump campaign adviser and former Manafort business partner Roger Stone, who seemed to enjoy advance knowledge of the release of Clinton campaign emails by WikiLeaks. And a report in The Guardian on claims that Manafort visited WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange in March 2016 at the Ecuadorian embassy in London, where Assange has taken up quarters in a kind of self-imposed exile in order to avoid facing a number of charges against him, most seriously in the United States. The Trump campaign honcho’s reported visit to Assange coincides with the timeframe during which Manafort was passing campaign data to Kiliminik, going by the Times report. …
Yes, the shutdown sucks. Yes, it’s hurting the economy. No, you can’t allow the president to extort the Congress.
But something bigger looms on the horizon—bigger than the impact on the economy, bigger than the stories of the individual people going without pay because of the president’s malicious caprice. The bigger thing, over which the darkest of clouds looms, is the fate of democracy itself.
TIME, Simon Shuster: Russians Indicted by Mueller Linked to Journalists’ Murder http://bit.ly/2M4hadz
A pair of Russians indicted by Special Counsel Robert Mueller for meddling in the U.S. elections of 2016 were involved in a plot that led to the murder of three Russian journalists in Africa, according to a private investigation funded by the journalists’ former employer, the exiled Russian oligarch Mikhail Khodorkovsky.
Data revealed by Khodorkovsky at a briefing in London on Thursday suggests that several Russians linked to Evgeny Prigozhin, a powerful ally of President Vladimir Putin, conspired to lure the murdered journalists into an ambush on a country road in the Central African Republic, where they were shot dead on the night of July 30. Among those implicated in the investigation was Mikhail Burchik, who was indicted alongside Prigozhin last year for allegedly interfering in the U.S. presidential elections.
The three murdered journalists—conflict reporter Orkhan Dzhemal, documentary filmmaker Alexander Rastorguev and cameraman Kirill Radchenko—arrived in the Central African Republic in late July to work on a film about Russian private military contractors, whose operations across Africa have intensified in recent years.
TIME, Simon Shuster: Russians Indicted by Mueller Linked to Journalists’ Murder http://bit.ly/2M4hadz
WaPo Editorial: Congress gave the president too many powers. Now it must scale them back. http://wapo.st/2RoK65Z
WaPo, Erica Newland: I worked in the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel. I hope its lawyers won’t give Trump an alibi. http://wapo.st/2M5aKuO
💙 NewYorker, Sue Halpern: Why Would Paul Manafort Share Polling Data with Russia? http://bit.ly/2RllKdd
🐣 RT @Mimirocah1 As you know, it’s not an “oppressive legal theory” it’s a well-established legal principle in the Federal Rules of Evidence that someone’s admissions and statements made publicly or privately can be used against them. Surely you advised your client of that.
⋙ 🐣 RT @RudyGiuliani Read CNN article that Mueller’s gang of angry Democrats wants to use the President’s public comments as part of an obstruction claim. According to this latest oppressive legal theory you can’t even defend yourself. But who says Mueller’s team doesn’t leak. Extremely unethical.
NYT: Prosecutors Examining Ukrainians Who Flocked to Trump Inaugural http://nyti.ms/2M4CKi2
JustSecurity, Paul Seamus Ryan: Trump Campaign in Legal Jeopardy Over Manafort’s Sharing Data with Russian Agent http://bit.ly/2soajlX
NYT: Mnuchin Defends Easing Sanctions on Russian Oligarch’s Companies http://nyti.ms/2FhIfJP
CNN: Exclusive: Robert Mueller met with Trump’s pollster http://cnn.it/2FkK9Jl
Mueller’s team met with pollster Tony Fabrizio in February 2018, an interview that has not been previously reported and takes on new significance after Manafort’s attorneys revealed Tuesday that Mueller’s team is still interested in how Manafort shared polling data with his Russian intelligence-linked colleague.
CNN, Chris Cillizza: This is the week the game changed in the Russia investigation http://cnn.it/2H7eEUS
CNN: As Robert Mueller writes his report, a potential battle brews over obstruction of justice http://cnn.it/2D35Hbo
🐣 RT @renato_mariotti THREAD: What does the recent revelation that Paul Manafort provided internal polling data from the Trump campaign with an alleged Russian intelligence operative tell us? (A lot.) 📌 https://twitter.com/renato_mariotti/status/1083523261395337216?s=20
WaPo, Randall Eliason: This is exactly what collusion looks like http://wapo.st/2ADeGyo
NYT: Former Trump Lawyer Michael Cohen Agrees to Testify to Congress http://nyti.ms/2Cdj2Mv
BusinessInsider, Sonam Sheth: Grading the Steele dossier 2 years later: what’s been corroborated and what’s still unclear http://read.bi/2VJaPZp
Vox, Aaron Rupar: Trump accidentally admits there’s no actual emergency at the border. Oops. http://bit.ly/2H7JKM8
⋙ 🐣 RT @RiegerReport TRUMP: I have the absolute right to do national emergency if I want.
Reporter: What’s your threshold for when you might make that decision?
Trump: My threshold will be if I can’t make a deal with people that are unreasonable.
CNBC, Dan Mangan: Trump says he knew ‘nothing’ about his campaign chief Paul Manafort sharing polling data with alleged Russian spy http://cnb.cx/2M5jyAH
● President Donald Trump says he knew “nothing” about his then-campaign chief Paul Manafort sharing polling data with an alleged Russian spy.
● Manafort’s criminal defense lawyers inadvertently disclosed that special counsel Robert Mueller has accused Manafort of lying to the special counsel’s team about sharing such data with the alleged spy, Konstantin Kilimnik.
● The disclosure is the strongest piece of evidence known publicly that a high-ranking official in Trump’s campaign may have been coordinating with Russians during the campaign in an effort to get Trump elected.
WSJ: America’s Electric Grid Has a Vulnerable Back Door—and Russia Walked Through It http://on.wsj.com/2QCSrO0
// A Wall Street Journal reconstruction of the worst known hack into the nation’s power system reveals attacks on hundreds of small contractors
⭕ 9 Jan 2019
TheNationalInterest, Colin P. Clarke and William Courtney (1/9): America’s Absence Could Be Syria’s New Nightmare http://bit.ly/2DfPm2X
// U.S. withdrawal from Syria will give Bashar al-Assad, Iran and Russia freer rein to subdue opposition forces. But also, Assad will feel emboldened to act with greater impunity and brutality.
by Colin P. Clarke William Courtney
Observer, John Schindler: Exclusive: Mueller Is Holding Top Secret Intelligence That Will Sink the Trump Presidency http://bit.ly/2TU2FLT
FoxNews, Alex Pappas: ‘Somebody’s already been killed’ because of Trump dossier, Fusion GPS rep revealed http://fxn.ws/2QENO6a
CNN: Manafort intended for polling data to go to 2 Ukrainian oligarchs who owed him millions http://cnn.it/2RjWJze
🐣 RT @BillKristol Why the sudden decision in December by Trump to shut down the government over the wall? Trump had no idea of how to deal with markets swooning, Mattis quitting, Dems taking over the House. So have a fake fight to secure his base in light of a possible Mueller report or showdown.
AP: Graham says Barr expressed confidence in special counsel http://bit.ly/2RlUN98
WashingtonExaminer: Andrew Napolitano: Mueller can show Trump campaign ‘had a connection to Russian intelligence’ http://washex.am/2AEtwo5
Bloomberg, Noah Feldman: Rosenstein Bent the Rules to Protect Mueller — and It Worked http://bloom.bg/2RkOd2T
// The deputy attorney general should have recused himself at least twice, but didn’t, and stood up to Trump in the process
Politico, Marianne Levine: Dems to use Mueller probe as cudgel against Barr http://politi.co/2FlGz1C
// Democrats want Trump’s nominee for attorney general to assure them he won’t interfere in the special counsel’s investigation.
CNBC: Lawyers for Russian oligarch, Republicans now involved in possible Mueller mystery case: Report http://cnb.cx/
● The law firm Alston & Bird is involved in an effort by a mysterious foreign-owned company to avoid complying with a subpoena believed to be related to special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation, a new report says.
● The firm in the past has represented Russian interests and the Republican Party in a fight over Hillary Clinton’s emails.
● The Supreme Court is weighing whether to allow the unidentified company to continue to challenge a grand jury subpoena that is believed to be connected to Mueller’s investigation of Russian interference in the 2016 election that sent Donald Trump to the White House.
💽 CNN, Erin Burnett Out Front: Law firm linked to mystery subpoena has Russia ties [Video] http://cnn.it/2SKZu9b
// One law firm involved in a foreign government-owned company’s challenge of a mysterious grand jury subpoena related to the Robert Mueller investigation is Alston & Bird, CNN has learned, a firm that has previously represented Russian interests, including working for a Russian oligarch and a contractor of the Russian government.
Mediaite, John Ziegler: It Is Pretty Clear the Trump Team & Russia ‘Flirted’. But Did They Actually ‘Hook Up’? http://bit.ly/2Cd48pn
NewYorker, Joshua Yaffa: How the Charge Against Natalia Veselnitskaya Could Lead Back to the Trump Campaign http://bit.ly/2CbhRNE
WaPo, James Hohman: The new Russia revelations are more consequential than Trump’s newsless immigration speech http://wapo.st/2M66H1m
WaPo: GOP senators promise AG nominee Barr won’t touch Mueller’s probe http://wapo.st/2TEFJA6
WaPo: A beefed-up White House legal team prepares aggressive defense of Trump’s executive privilege as investigations loom large http://wapo.st/2AOmltR
TheAtlantic, Natasha Bertrand: Manafort’s Own Lawyers May Have Hastened His Downfall http://bit.ly/2RhHKWz
// The initial failure to redact a sensitive document was the latest in a series of missteps by Paul Manafort’s lawyers.
DailyBeast, David Litt: Trump’s Big Problem: His Reality-TV Shtick Is Getting Boring http://bit.ly/2CekdeN
// Tuesday night’s Oval Office address illustrated how unimaginative the president’s approach truly is.
Newsweek, Cristina Maza: Russian Diplomats Say Trump Administration Won’t Pull out of Syria After Confusing Messages Emerge From Washington http://bit.ly/2ABSJzC
ForeignAffairs, Ilan Goldenberg and Nicholas Heras: If Trump Wants to Get Out of Syria, He Should Strike a Deal With Russia http://fam.ag/2AGGpy1
// Making the Best of a Bad Idea
CNBC, Kevin Breuninger: Trump attorney general nominee William Barr would let Mueller finish Russia probe, GOP Sen. Lindsey Graham says http://cnb.cx/2RArwXR
● Attorney general nominee William Barr would let special counsel Robert Mueller complete his ongoing Russia investigation, Sen. Lindsey Graham says.
● Graham’s reassurance comes amid reports that Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, who appointed Mueller, is planning to voluntarily step down from his No. 2 role at the Justice Department within the next month.
● Graham’s role in tamping down concerns about Trump’s pick to lead the Justice Department offers another display of the influence the Republican senator still maintains in the upper echelons of the Trump administration.
WaPo, Jennifer Rubin: One more Russian contact: Here’s why it matters http://wapo.st/2H7Hogj
“The most innocent possible explanation here is that Trump hired an international criminal who was trying to give campaign information to a Russian oligarch in exchange for debt relief, and using a Russian intelligence asset as his go between,” says former Department of Justice spokesman Matthew Miller. “But it’s hard to see what good polling data would be to a Russian oligarch, so it raises the question of whether Manafort’s actual goal was to get the information to the Russian government itself.” Whether this was all about Manafort and his finances or whether this was part of a larger quid quo pro between Trump and the Russians isn’t yet clear.
WaPo, Max Boot: The collusion case against Trump just got a lot stronger http://wapo.st/2M2z1RX
USAToday: Donald Trump’s team had 100 contacts with Russian-linked officials: report http://bit.ly/2CcwzDT
WaPo, Henry Olsen: The Manafort revelations raise a haunting question for Trump http://wapo.st/2FoNB4T
Salon, Dean Obeidallah: Why Donald Trump and his children will be charged with crimes http://bit.ly/2FlOQ5Q
// Watch “Proof of Collusion” author Seth Abramson analyze Trump’s Russia connections from every angle on SalonTV
‼️ABCNews: Rosenstein expected to depart DOJ in coming weeks once new attorney general confirmed http://abcn.ws/2FhiVUg
⭕ 8 Jan 2019
ForeignAffairs, Margaret MacMillan (1/8): Warnings From Versailles ~ The Lessons of 1919, a Hundred Years On http://fam.ag/2sxGuQk
Law&Crime, Matt Naham: Rudy Giuliani Rumored to Be Bracing for ‘Horrific’ Report from Robert Mueller http://bit.ly/2QEhFvH
🐣 RT @Jzikah Thank you. This is how you take down a strong man. Make him look weak. #LaughterKills #RidiculeRifle https://twitter.com/jzikah/status/1082781439794532352?s=20/photo/1
CNN, Katelyn Polantz: Mueller believes Manafort fed information to Russian with intel ties http://cnn.it/2VGtJjq
ForeignAffairs, Colin Clarke and Ariane Tabatabai: Withdrawing From Syria Leaves a Vacuum That Iran Will Fill http://fam.ag/2LZXTdb
// Shiite Militias Are in the Region to Stay
🐣 RT @JuliaDavisNews Having grown up in the Soviet Union, I second that.
⋙ 🐣 RT @Martina [Navratilova] I can tell you all this for sure- whatever ridiculous propaganda we were fed in then Czechoslovakia, which was mandated by Soviet Union- pales next to the lies being told and repeated by trump and his ilk. I am not kidding… ¤ trump truly trumps the communists. And that’s not easy
🐣 RT @SenBlumenthal Internal polling data is precious. It reveals your strengths— & your weaknesses. Why share such valuable information with a foreign adversary—unless that adversary was really a friend?
⋙ LATimes, Chris Megerian: Manafort, Trump’s campaign chair, shared polling data with Russian during 2016 campaign, court filing says http://lat.ms/2VFzIFa
🐣 RT @joshtpm I think the full meaning and impact of the Times revelation about that polling data hasn’t sunk in yet. Trump’s campaign manager was secretly sharing confidential campaign polling data with oligarch closely tied to Vladimir Putin. Probably bigger than Trump Tower meeting.
DailyBeast, Adam Rawnsley: Line Between Trump Tower Meet Lawyer Natalya Veselnitskaya and Moscow Gets Even Blurrier http://bit.ly/2VEavLB
// We all knew she was tight with Russian prosecutors, but today’s indictment showed the receipts.
NYMag, Jonathan Chait: Trump’s Campaign Manager Gave Polling Data to Russian Agent http://nym.ag/2RymbQP
// Konstantin Kilimnik
The idea that Donald Trump’s campaign did not collude with Russia always rested on an implausible scenario, in which every single one of the many trails connecting Trump Tower to Moscow ended short of contact. A court document shared today by Paul Manafort’s lawyers inadvertently spills a detail that makes the no-collusion scenario even more remote.
The document by Manafort’s lawyers attempts to redact several key details, but mistakenly left them legible. The most important detail is that Manafort, who served as Donald Trump’s 2016 campaign manager, shared polling data with Konstantin Kilimnik, a Russian intelligence agent. The detail comes up because the special counsel is charging Manafort with omitting this fact when he cooperated with them, while Manafort’s lawyers maintain he merely forgot about it. But the real significance of this event is not why he failed to share it but that it happened at all.
USAToday: Paul Manafort, President Trump’s former campaign chief, accused of lying about sharing polling data with Russian http://bit.ly/2H5rpPR
Vox, Andrew Prokop: Natalia Veselnitskaya’s indictment, explained http://bit.ly/2SF2Uud
// The Russian lawyer who met Don Jr. at Trump Tower was indicted on a separate matter.
MotherJones, Dan Friedman: Paul Manafort’s Botched Redactions Reveal New Details on Trump-Russia Interactions http://bit.ly/2TCP3Vb
// Here’s more info on his curious relationship with an alleged Russian intelligence associate.
WaPo, Philip Bump: A new link between the Trump campaign and Russian intelligence that’s more evocative than definitive http://wapo.st/2FgCE6y
TheGuardian: Manafort shared polling data on 2016 election with elusive Russian – Mueller http://bit.ly/2sqc1DL
● Manafort attorneys disclosed allegation in court filing
● Konstantin Kilimnik said to have ties to Russian intelligence
WaPo, Paul Waldman: Those pesky Russians keep coming back to haunt Trump http://wapo.st/2CWSDEi
💙💙 NYT: Manafort Accused of Sharing Trump Campaign Data With Russian Associate http://nyti.ms/2M11lEd … and was involved in proposed back-channel “peace plan” for Ukraine
// “Russian associate” = Konstantin Kilimnik
As a top official in President Trump’s campaign, Paul Manafort shared political polling data with a business associate tied to Russian intelligence, according to a court filing unsealed on Tuesday. The document provided the clearest evidence to date that the Trump campaign may have tried to coordinate with Russians during the 2016 presidential race.
Mr. Manafort’s lawyers made the disclosure by accident, through a formatting error in a document …
The document also revealed that during the campaign, Mr. Manafort and his Russian associate, Konstantin V. Kilimnik, discussed a plan for peace in Ukraine. Throughout the campaign and the early days of the Trump administration, Russia and its allies were pushing various plans for Ukraine in the hope of gaining relief from American-led sanctions imposed after it annexed Crimea from Ukraine.
“This is the closest thing we have seen to collusion,” Clint Watts, a senior fellow with the Foreign Policy Research Institute, said of the data-sharing. “The question now is, did the president know about it?”
Both Mr. Manafort and Rick Gates, the deputy campaign manager, transferred the data to Mr. Kilimnik in the spring of 2016 as Mr. Trump clinched the Republican presidential nomination, according to a person knowledgeable about the situation. Most of the data was public, but some of it was developed by a private polling firm working for the campaign, according to the person.
Mr. Manafort asked Mr. Gates to tell Mr. Kilimnik to pass the data to Oleg V. Deripaska, a Russian oligarch who is close to the Kremlin and who has claimed that Mr. Manafort owed him money from a failed business venture, the person said. It is unclear whether Mr. Manafort was acting at the campaign’s behest or independently, trying to gain favor with someone to whom he was deeply in debt.
WaPo: Supreme Court rules against mystery corporation from ‘Country A’ fighting subpoena in Mueller investigation http://wapo.st/2Fk17He
NYT: Manafort Shared Trump Campaign Data With Russian Associate, Prosecutors Say http://nyti.ms/2TCXSOL
🐣 RT @Evan_McMullin There is no “crisis” on the border. Trump is using a familiar authoritarian tactic of inspiring national security fear to justify abuses intended to protect himself from political and legal threats. If he declares a national emergency, it will set a truly dangerous precedent.
🐣 RT @BillKristol The hype, the lies, the use of a pseudo-dramatic speech in an attempt to rally the base—that is demagogic business as usual. The assumption of emergency powers would be an act of a whole different order. It would create a genuine constitutional crisis.
NYT: Veselnitskaya, Russian in Trump Tower Meeting, Is Charged in Case That Shows Kremlin Ties http://nyti.ms/2QxSdHQ
⭕ 7 Jan 2019
WaPo: ‘No different from my original statements’: Trump denies changes to Syria exit plan http://wapo.st/2C9O33R
NYT: Bolton Walked Back Syria Statement. His Disdain for Debate Helped Produce It. http://nyti.ms/2Vz3w6F
Politico: House Democrats prepare fusillade of Trump investigations http://politi.co/2TCIq5w
// Trump Hotel, taxes, Cabinet members are all targets.
✅ KITF: AP FACT CHECK: Trump claims innocence in probe; wall myths http://bit.ly/2CUZcr1
💽 RCP: Rachel Maddow: Trump Curiously Well Versed In Specific Russian Talking Points [Video] http://bit.ly/2TBColz
WashingtonMonthly, Nancy LeTourneau: If Trump Is Not a Russian Asset, What Explains His Behavior? http://bit.ly/2AvXpa8
CNBC: Blackwater founder Erik Prince says Mueller asked about meeting Russian Putin pal in Seychelles: ‘You probably would rather go to a proctology exam’ http://cnb.cx/2CW5Xsu
● Blackwater founder Erik Prince said he would have preferred getting a “proctology exam” to being interviewed by special counsel Robert Mueller’s team of investigators.
● Prince was questioned by Mueller’s team about his meeting in the Seychelles islands shortly before President Donald Trump’s inauguration with Kirill Dmitriev, who was appointed by Russian leader Vladmir Putin to run a sovereign wealth fund.
● A member of the delegation of the crown prince of Abu Dhabi, Mohammed bin Zayed, who was meeting with Prince, suggested the former Navy SEAL speak with Dmitriev, according to Prince.
Haaretz: ‘Someone’s Puppet:’ Trump Under Fire for Echoing Russian Talking Points http://bit.ly/2SGNfKZ
// Here is a look at where the investigations related to President Donald Trump and Russia stand and what may lie ahead for him
NBC: Trump-appointed judge defends Mueller, scolds lawyer for Russian firm http://nbcnews.to/2QvEXUq
// “You have undermined your credibility in this courthouse,” Judge Dabney Friedrich said. “Knock it off.”
TheGuardian,Tom McCarthy: Will Adam Schiff pose a bigger threat to Trump than Robert Mueller? http://bit.ly/2seycMX
//. New chairman of the House intelligence committee leads pack of antagonists as he plans to investigate the details of Trump’s businesses, his lenders, and his partners in the US and abroad
CNN, Marshall Cohen and Jeremy Herb: Revisiting the Trump-Russia dossier: What’s right, wrong and still unclear? http://cnn.it/2CV2tq2
LawfareBlog: Case Closed: The Justice Department Won’t Stand Behind its Report on Immigrants and Terrorism http://bit.ly/2QqPjF3
⭕ 6 Jan 2019
WaPo: While Trump wallows in the White House, America’s allies are left on their own http://wapo.st/2Aw5g7G
// “While President Trump was ‘over Christmas, watching the ‘guys out on the lawn with machine guns,’ Russia’s Vladimir Putin seemed to be contemplating another war with Ukraine. While his top aides issued threatening statements, the Ukrainian government and some Western observers warned of suspicious movements of Russian aircraft and equipment.”
TheHill: Five things to know about the Trump Tower Moscow proposal http://bit.ly/2LYaiOY
PhillyInquirer, Will Bunch: The crazy new evidence that Trump’s Russia problem is far worse than we all thought http://bit.ly/2AzBi2N
⭕ 5 Jan 2019
DailyBeast, Clive Irving (1/5/2019): We Need to Know What Happened When Trump Was Left Alone With Putin http://bit.ly/2H9fyjS
// From the Holocaust to Watergate, there are plenty of examples of how easily bad stuff happens when, like in Helsinki, there is no record of what is said.
NYT, David Leonhardt: The People vs. Donald J. Trump http://nyti.ms/2QubMRB
// He is demonstrably unfit for office. What are we waiting for?
VOA/AP: AP Fact Check: Trump’s Afghanistan Comments Inaccurate http://bit.ly/2sfbuo2
Reuters: Grand jury extended in U.S. special counsel’s Trump-Russia probe http://reut.rs/2Rc0GG0
⭕ 4 Jan 2019
DailyBeast, Betsy Woodruff and Andrew Desiderio: Dems Move to Block Trump From Lifting Sanctions on Russian Oligarch Oleg Deripaska http://bit.ly/2Fd6ZT8
// Newly empowered Democrats are trying to force the administration’s hand on Manafort-linked Oleg Deripaska.
TheAtlantic, Gregory Pfeiffer: The Truth About the Soviet War in Afghanistan http://bit.ly/2FdC7kJ
// Trump mischaracterized it in an attempt to justify his own disastrous policy in the region.
NYT: Congress Is Examining Decision to Lift Sanctions on Russian’s Firms http://nyti.ms/2Vsjork
Reuters: Grand jury extended in U.S. special counsel’s Trump-Russia probe http://reut.rs/2Rc0GG0
⭕ 3 Jan 2019
⭕ 2 Jan 2019
WaPo, Aaron Blake: Trump’s bizarre history lesson on the Soviet Union, Russia and Afghanistan http://wapo.st/2s7ERso
Trump: “Russia used to be the Soviet Union. Afghanistan made it Russia, because they went bankrupt fighting in Afghanistan. Russia. … The reason Russia was in Afghanistan was because terrorists were going into Russia. They were right to be there. The problem is, it was a tough fight. And literally they went bankrupt; they went into being called Russia again, as opposed to the Soviet Union. You know, a lot of these places you’re reading about now are no longer part of Russia, because of Afghanistan.”
⭕ 1 Jan 2019
🐣 The way I read it, Mitt Romney is the new leader of the GOP. As opposed to the extremist Trump faction. Let’s hope.
WaPo, Mitt Romney: The president shapes the public character of the nation. Trump’s character falls short. http://wapo.st/2LJlPRS
The Trump presidency made a deep descent in December. The departures of Defense Secretary Jim Mattis and White House Chief of Staff John F. Kelly, the appointment of senior persons of lesser experience, the abandonment of allies who fight beside us, and the president’s thoughtless claim that America has long been a “sucker” in world affairs all defined his presidency down.
To a great degree, a presidency shapes the public character of the nation. A president should unite us and inspire us to follow “our better angels.” A president should demonstrate the essential qualities of honesty and integrity, and elevate the national discourse with comity and mutual respect. As a nation, we have been blessed with presidents who have called on the greatness of the American spirit. With the nation so divided, resentful and angry, presidential leadership in qualities of character is indispensable. And it is in this province where the incumbent’s shortfall has been most glaring.
The world is also watching. America has long been looked to for leadership. Our economic and military strength was part of that, of course, but our enduring commitment to principled conduct in foreign relations, and to the rights of all people to freedom and equal justice, was even more esteemed. Trump’s words and actions have caused dismay around the world. In a 2016 Pew Research Center poll, 84 percent of people in Germany, Britain, France, Canada and Sweden believed the American president would “do the right thing in world affairs.” One year later, that number had fallen to 16 percent.
… The alternative to U.S. world leadership offered by China and Russia is autocratic, corrupt and brutal.
The world needs American leadership, and it is in America’s interest to provide it. A world led by authoritarian regimes is a world — and an America — with less prosperity, less freedom, less peace.
To reassume our leadership in world politics, we must repair failings in our politics at home. That project begins, of course, with the highest office once again acting to inspire and unite us. It includes political parties promoting policies that strengthen us rather than promote tribalism by exploiting fear and resentment. Our leaders must defend our vital institutions despite their inevitable failings: a free press, the rule of law, strong churches, and responsible corporations and unions.
America is strongest when our arms are linked with other nations. We want a unified and strong Europe, not a disintegrating union. We want stable relationships with the nations of Asia that strengthen our mutual security and prosperity.
… I will speak out against significant statements or actions that are divisive, racist, sexist, anti-immigrant, dishonest or destructive to democratic institutions.
… [N]oble instincts live in the hearts of Americans. The people of this great land will eschew the politics of anger and fear if they are summoned to the responsibility by leaders in homes, in churches, in schools, in businesses, in government — who raise our sights and respect the dignity of every child of God — the ideal that is the essence of America.
🐣 RT @JakeTapper 1/4 Retired four-star Admiral William McRaven, the commander of U.S. Special Operations Command from 2011 to 2014 (which included the OBL mission), just issued the following statement to CNN in response to POTUS attacking GEN McChrystal on twitter:
2/4 “Stan McChrystal is one of the great generals of this generation and the finest officer I ever served with. He is a deep strategic thinker, tactically brilliant, with unparalleled personal courage. His leadership of special operations forces in Iraq and Afghanistan…
3/4 “… unquestionably saved the lives of thousands of American and allied troops, as well as countless civilians. No general I know has given more in the service of this country.”
4/4 Trump’s tweet this morning attacking McChrystal was in response to the general saying the president is dishonest and immoral:
⋙ CNN: Trump attacks McChrystal after retired general called Trump immoral http://cnn.it/2ApIY7F
↥ ↧
🐣 RT @TheLoyalO Retired generals, regardless political persuasion, continue to sound alarm bells about the danger Trump poses, yet Republicans refuse to take responsibility for the traitor in their ranks.
⋙ CNN: Retired Gen Stanley McChrystal hits President Trump as immoral, dishonest https://cnn.it/2CJ5pGf
NPR, Philip Ewing: Here’s What Could Be Ahead In The Russia Investigations In 2019 http://BCNews: http://n.pr/2s5Wd90
TheHill: A timeline of the Mueller probe’s biggest developments http://bit.ly/2s2u7eC
VoiceOfAmerica, Jamie Dettmer: Ukraine Fears Breakout Offensive as Russia Breaks ‘New Year’s Truce’ http://bit.ly/2AsLvhh
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