🔴 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, 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, 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, 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
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, 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, 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): Shady 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, 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
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
By @jzikah has a new book! Cartoon President http://amzn.to/2QUeZhk @Jzikah
⋙ 💙💙🔄 📔 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
⋙ 💙💙🔄 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
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
⋙ 💙💙🔄 📔 This❗️⋙ Lawfare: House Releases Impeachment Trial Brief http://bit.ly/2ucCo3Y document 111p
// 1/18/2019
By @Jzikah
By @Jzikah
⋙ 💙💙🔄 📔 This❗️⋙ Trial Memorandum of the US House of Representatives in the Impeachment Trial of President Donald J Trump http://bit.ly/2uePNsc
// 1/18/2020
⋙ 💙💙🔄 📔 This❗️⋙ Trial Memorandum of President Donald J Trump http://bit.ly/2NGi2XK 171p
// 1/20/2020
By @Jzikah
⋙ 💙💙🔄 📔 This❗️⋙ Vox, Matthew Yglesias and Andrew Prokop: The ultimate guide to the Donald Trump impeachment saga http://bit.ly/2SoXpkm
// Updated: Feb 5, 2020, 8:06pm EST, Published: Nov 5, 2019, 8:06am EST
⋙ 💙💙🔄 📔 This❗️⋙ 📀 Press Here For Impeachment Trial on Cspan
// 1/20/2020-2/5/2020
⏳WaPo: The full Trump-Ukraine impeachment timeline http://wapo.st/35odsUl
By @Jzikah has a book! Cartoon President http://amzn.to/2QUeZhk
⭕ 31 Dec 2020
🐣 RT @JRubinBlogger Disappointed rules proposed for House do not sanction members seeking to overthrow democracy.
🐣 RT @SpyTalker [Jeff Stein] Very happy to announce our new partnership with @thedailybeast, starting with today’s cross-posted piece: Poisoner, Hacker, Meddler, Spy: How Russian Agents Ran Wild via @thedailybeast
⋙ DailyBeast/SpyTalk, Jeff Stein and Patricia Ravalgi: Poisoner, Hacker, Meddler, Spy: How Russian Agents Ran Wild in 2020 http://bit.ly/38WUlnO
// 12/31/2020; Some wins, some losses, but overall a record to be proud of—if you’re Vladimir Putin.
WaPo: Meet the Trump saboteur in charge of undermining Biden — and America http://wapo.st/3rK5MIb Trump’s budget director, Russell Thurlow Vought, “is very good at is sabotage. He’s sabotaging national security, the pandemic response and the economic recovery”
🐣 RT @stuartpstevens Hey @realDonaldTrump, know you’re up and Tweeting! Enjoy that last NY Eve before we kick you out of Our House. You lost. Here’s a special message just for you and yours. Happy New Year, loser.
⋙ 🐣 RT @ProjectLincoln A #NYE2020 message made with love from @TheRickWilson to @realDonaldTrump. #NewYear 💽 https://twitter.com/ProjectLincoln/status/1344856023471972352?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @jgeltzer The Justice Department just filed its response to the lawsuit filed by Gohmert & more trying to force Pence to declare Trump the winner at the joint session of Congress on 1/6. ¤ DOJ—the same DOJ that reports to Trump—says the lawsuit should be tossed out of court. ¤ DOJ is right.
🐣 RT @mccaffreyr3 TRUMP PENTAGON putting US national security in great peril. Transition meetings turned off since 18 Dec. Political appointees are deliberately hiding issues. Russian hack? Mil Ops against Iran? Contract corruption? Jan 6 DC security?
⋙ NPR: Biden’s National Security Adviser: Pentagon Hasn’t Granted Meetings Since Dec. 18 http://n.pr/2KUkID1
Reuters: Iran’s foreign minister says Trump trying to fabricate pretext to attack Iran http://reut.rs/2L8h8F2 “Separately, a military adviser to Iran’s supreme leader warned Trump ‘not to turn the New Year into mourning for Americans’”
Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif on Thursday accused U.S. President Donald Trump of attempting to fabricate a pretext to attack Iran, and said Tehran would defend itself forcefully.
Separately, a military adviser to Iran’s supreme leader warned Trump “not to turn the New Year into mourning for Americans”.
Zarif said in a tweet: “Instead of fighting Covid in US, @realDonaldTrump & cohorts waste billions to fly B52s & send armadas to OUR region. Intelligence from Iraq indicate plot to FABRICATE pretext for war.”
The U.S. military flew two nuclear-capable B-52 bombers to the Middle East in a message of deterrence to Iran on Wednesday, but the bombers have since left the region.
The Pentagon announced on Thursday that the Nimitz aircraft carrier, which was off the coast of Somalia, would be heading back to it’s homeport. Previously operating in the Middle East, some U.S. officials said the move could be seen an attempt to reduce tensions in the region.
In recent days there has been increased concern and vigilance about what Iranian-backed forces might do in the lead up to the anniversary of a Jan. 3 U.S. drone strike in Iraq that killed top Iranian general Qassem Soleimani, the official said.
Washington blames Iran-backed militia for regular rocket attacks on U.S. facilities in Iraq, including near the embassy. No known Iran-backed groups have claimed responsibility.
Iran is preparing to hold events marking the anniversary of Soleimani’s killing.
“Iran doesn’t seek war but will OPENLY & DIRECTLY defend its people, security & vital interests,” Zarif wrote.
Hossein Dehghan, a military adviser to Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, said on Twitter: “I saw on the news that the Americans are on alert for fear of the revenge (over Soleimani’s killing) and have flown two B-52 bombers over the Persian Gulf”.
“All their military bases in the region are covered by our missiles. I advise the White House evictee (Trump) not to turn the New Year into mourning for Americans,” said Dehghan, a former defence minister.
🧵 RT @BillKristol 1. A brief thread on why we should not panic but should worry, even be a bit…alarmed. ¤ I’ve been speaking with former Trump Administration officials and with other former senior national security types who remain plugged in to the Pentagon. 📌 https://twitter.com/BillKristol/status/1344655961445855232?s=20
// three I’s ~ Iran, Insurrection Act, Insanity
⭕ 30 Dec 2020
WSJ Editorial: Trump’s Embarrassing Electoral College Hustle http://on.wsj.com/3aYX9Ub
// It is doomed to fail but would still set a destructive precedent.
Reuters: Trump pardon of Blackwater Iraq contractors violates international law – UN http://reut.rs/3hxZnv1
Nicholas Slatten was convicted of first-degree murder, while Paul Slough, Evan Liberty and Dustin Heard were convicted of voluntary and attempted manslaughter, over the incident in which U.S. contractors opened fire in busy traffic in a Baghdad square and killed 14 unarmed Iraqi civilians.
The four contractors, who worked for the private security firm Blackwater owned by the brother of Trump’s education secretary, were included in a wave of pre-Christmas pardons announced by the White House.
“Pardoning the Blackwater contractors is an affront to justice and to the victims of the Nisour Square massacre and their families,” said Jelena Aparac, chair of the U.N. working group on the use of mercenaries, said in a statement.
The Geneva Conventions oblige states to hold war criminals accountable for their crimes, even when they act as private security contractors, the U.N. experts said.
“These pardons violate U.S. obligations under international law and more broadly undermine humanitarian law and human rights at a global level.”
By allowing private security contractors to “operate with impunity in armed conflicts”, states will be emboldened to circumvent their obligations under humanitarian law, they said.
The pardons were strongly criticised by many in the United States. General David Petraeus and Ryan Crocker, respectively commander of U.S. forces and U.S. ambassador in Iraq at the time of the incident, called Trump’s pardons “hugely damaging, an action that tells the world that Americans abroad can commit the most heinous crimes with impunity.”
WaPo, EJ Dionne: Republican ‘populism’ is a fraud http://wapo.st/3mXGwuh “McConnell’s maneuvers this week are the last gasp of his party’s hypocrisy, rooted in a burning desire for working-class votes unmatched by a will to do anything to earn them”
Republicans were only willing to embrace Trump’s “populism” as long as it was fake — or of a right-wing sort that elevated the politics of race and immigration. The moment Trump started talking about real money for non-elites, the GOP leadership threw its hands up in horror. McConnell’s maneuvers this week are the last gasp of his party’s hypocrisy, rooted in a burning desire for working-class votes unmatched by a will to do anything to earn them.
WaPo Editorial: Trump is inciting chaos on Jan. 6, both in and outside the Capitol http://wapo.st/381AHbd
Mr. Trump — who told the Proud Boys during the first presidential debate in September to “stand back and stand by” — issued his uncamouflaged summons to “Be there, will be wild!” So much for the law-and-order president. Just as hypocritical are the Republican members of Congress — the latest being Mr. Hawley — who plan to raise objections to the certification of electoral votes for Mr. Biden. They cite completely baseless allegations, uniformly rejected by the courts, of voter fraud. Their aim is not, as they profess, to ensure election integrity, but rather to cater to the whims of a would-be autocratic president and burnish their credentials as Trump loyalists for future elections.
Republican congressional leaders have acknowledged that Mr. Trump’s desperate efforts to stop Mr. Biden from being sworn in to office are bound to fail. Not, though, before more harm is done to the United States’ political system and its standing in the world. We can only hope the damage from the chaos Mr. Trump is inciting doesn’t extend to human lives.
🐣 RT @kyledcheney SASSE issues a lengthy midnight takedown of efforts by some Republicans to overturn Biden’s victory, labeling them “ambitious politicians who think there’s a quick way to tap into the president’s populist base without doing any real, long-term damage.” http://bit.ly/3rIJ0k0 https://twitter.com/kyledcheney/status/1344516142556184576?s=20/photo/1
⋙ 🐣 Democrats have won the popular vote in all but one election since 1992, and have generally acquiesced to the Electoral College outcome. There were legitimate concerns over the outcomes in 2000, 2004 and 2016. But Dems NEVER behaved in the unhinged way Trump & his minions are now.
🐣 RT @kasparov68 Putin has been busy signing laws with both hands. More laws criminalizing dissent, huge fines for “online libel,” and “foreign agents”. With other hand, more goodies for his pals, privatizing national parkland, handing more public assets to his mafia.
⋙ 🐣 RT @kasparov68 It’s typical of authoritarian regimes to be obsessed with churning out new laws as a way of legitimizing their repression. As documented well by Kafka, the irony is that they ignore the law when it suits them and have no independent judiciary.
🐣 RT @RadioFreeTom I hope that’s all it is.
⋙ 🐣 RT @gtconway3d The president is cutting short his vacation in order to resume his critical and important work undermining the Constitution he swore to uphold.
⋙⋙ 🐣 RT @kaitlancollins President Trump is skipping his New Year’s Eve party, an unusual move that surprised guests who were told he’d be there. Instead he’s heading back to Washington early. W/ @Kevinliptakcnn [link]
⋙ 🐣 RT @ps9814 I’m certain this is about Iran war plans. See @RadioFreeTom’s article in The Atlantic.
⋙ 🐣 CNBC (2016): Trump asks why US can’t use nukes: MSNBC http://cnb.cx/3rGrJHY ● Text Block: https://twitter.com/Auriandra/status/1344487869637824513?s=20/photo/1
[8/3/2016:] “Several months ago, a foreign policy expert on the international level went to advise Donald Trump. And three times [Trump] asked about the use of nuclear weapons. Three times he asked at one point if we had them why can’t we use them,” Scarborough said on his “Morning Joe” program.
Scarborough made the Trump comments 52 seconds into an interview with former Director of Central Intelligence and ex-National Security Agency Director Michael Hayden.
Scarborough then asked a hypothetical question to Hayden about how quickly nuclear weapons could be deployed if a president were to give approval.
“It’s scenario dependent, but the system is designed for speed and decisiveness. It’s not designed to debate the decision,” Hayden said.
🐣 RT @TheRickWilson Not one of you dorks in the Senate will escape this politically. It will never, ever go away.
💽 MSNBC, Mitchell Reports: Sen. Murphy: Hawley is “engaged in the attempted overthrow of democracy” http://on.msnbc.com/393fFZ9
// Senator Chris Murphy (D-CT) weighs in on expanding stimulus checks, telling Andrea Mitchell that “the legislative session ends in three days. So there is only one path to get $2,000 into the hands of Americans who are struggling today, and that is to pass the House legislation.” He also sharply criticizes Sen. Josh Hawley’s (R-MO) announcement that he would object to the Electoral College certification on January 6th, saying that “Josh Hawley and anyone who supports his effort are engaged in the attempted overthrow of democracy. There is no evidence that there was any fraud.”
🐣 RT @marceelias Looks like 2021 may be another busy year of suing states over restrictive voting laws.
⋙ USAToday: GOP seeks to roll back mail-in voting in states like Georgia and Pennsylvania that Trump is contesting http://bit.ly/38GwyZ6
TheAtlantic, Ed Yong: Where Year Two of the Pandemic Will Take Us http://bit.ly/392R1I7
// As vaccines roll out, the U.S. will face a choice about what to learn and what to forget.
TheAtlantic, Tom Nichols: Trump Could Still Start a Last-Ditch War With Iran http://bit.ly/3pHFp3X
// A final grand distraction before the president is forced to relinquish his office is a real danger that deserves serious attention.
🐣 RT @BillKristol OMB is in effect the White House and has been involved over the last couple of years in many of Trump’s illegalities and cover-ups, so that’s no surprise. On the other hand, DOD “opacity” is bad and worrisome.
⋙ 🐣 RT @lrozen Biden spox Yohannes Abraham warns of DoD & OMB “intentional opacity,” making transition harder, has security, health, economic repercussions
⭕ 29 Dec 2020
🐣 RT @harrylitman Pence’s constitutional role is to “open” the certificates. That’s it. Not to certify not even technically to count. He has no way even to purport to change the count. It’d be like saying the Oscar presenters get to decide who wins Best Picture.
🐣 RT @MSNBC “When candidates lose presidential elections it is a humiliating personal rejection … and they need family and friends around them to help them cope with that defeat. Donald Trump doesn’t have that,” Democratic strategist Chaitanya Komanduri says.
⋙ 💽 MSNBC, TheBeatWithAri: ‘Loser’: Dem Strategist says Trump ‘has nobody’ to console him, maybe a ‘hug from Lou Dobbs’ http://on.msnbc.com/
// As Trump wreaks havoc in his final days in office, Democratic strategist Chaitanya Komanduri joins MSNBC’s Ari Melber to discuss his inability to concede and why he’s a “loser.”
🐣 RT @michaelluo .@sbg1: “…unless there is a full accounting for what happened with Donald Trump, 2020 is not over and never will be. I still don’t want to remember, but I know that forgetting is not an option, either.”
⋙ NewYorker, Susan Glasser: The Trümperdämmerung Is a Fitting End to 2020 http://bit.ly/3nZFWh4
WaPo: N.Y. prosecutor hires forensic accounting experts as Trump criminal probe escalates http://wapo.st/34U1qnW
// Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance
⭕ 28 Dec 2020
🐣 RT @PhilLewis The Proud Boys have made Hotel Harrington their gathering spot when they’re in D.C. ¤ The hotel just put out a statement that they’ll close January 4th-6th, when thousands of Trump supporters are expected to come to the capitol for a last-ditch rally. Many just lost reservations https://twitter.com/Phil_Lewis_/status/1343760802965286912?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @pbump This is not a joke.
⋙⋙ 🐣 RT @Bencjacobs INBOX: President Donald Trump issues Proclamation on 850th Anniversary of the Martyrdom of Saint Thomas Becket
⋙ 🐣 ‘Who will rid us of this meddlesome president?’
😅 RT @DonWinslow The first few weeks of January are going to feel a lot like the last 30 minutes of Goodfellas. 💽 https://twitter.com/donwinslow/status/1343777976710643712?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @PeterHotez We’ve learned in 2020 that our nation can’t implement complicated public health measures: we saw this with the diagnostic testing, virus detection, virus genome sequencing, we’re just not delivering at a high level, can’t understand why
⋙ 🐣 ♫ Well, this train carries saints and sinners
This train carries losers and winners
This train carries whores and gamblers … ¤
I said, this train carries broken-hearted
This train, thieves and sweet souls departed
This train carries fools and kings … ¤
~ Springsteen
⋙⋙ 🐣 lyrics aside, Fauci has said we need to study the difficulty of achieving public health goals in a complex society of non-conformists
🐣 RT @keplya https://twitter.com/keplyq/status/1343732280318164992?s=20/photo/1
// “Hope was never a thing with feathers” ~ Claudia Rankine
⋙ 🐣 “It’s a cold and it’s a broken Hallelujah” ~ Leonard Cohen
🐣 RT @kylegriffin1 Breaking: The House has voted to override Trump’s veto of the National Defense Authorization Act. It’s the first successful override vote of the Trump admin.
🐣 RT @JustSchmeltzer WOW, House passes $2000 checks in a suspension-of-the-rules vote, getting the 2/3rd vote needed. Impressive! ¤ Mitch won’t let a vote on that, cleanly, but gives Pelosi and Schumer another strong talking point, as well as GA Senate candidates.
WaPo: Biden accuses Trump appointees of obstructing transition on national security issues http://wapo.st/2Ky6oA3
TheGuardian: Russia admits to world’s third-worst Covid-19 death toll http://bit.ly/3aWn7Ye
// More than 186,000 Russians have died due to coronavirus, three times more than previously reported
But many Russians flout social distancing rules, and in recent weeks the country’s outbreak has overwhelmed poorly funded hospitals in the regions.
Russia has instead pinned its hopes on corralling its outbreak by vaccinating people with its Sputnik V jab, named after the Soviet-era satellite.
… Russia has not said how many people it has vaccinated so far, and according to recent surveys by state-run polling company VCIOM and the Levada polling agency only 38% of Russians plan to get the shot.
⋙ 🐣 MT @Laurie_Garrett [12/21] … Alexander “Sasha” Kagansky, age 45, supposedly stabbed himself & then leapt to his death from a 14th story window in St Petersburg Russia. He was a #COVID19 #vaccine researcher, collaborating w/US & UK scientists.
⋙⋙ MoscowTimes (12/21): Russian Scientist Who Worked on Coronavirus Vaccine Stabbed, Falls Out of Window http://bit.ly/3pygEH0
🐣 RT @duty2warn To reconfirm, Trump is pathologically aberrant and fiercely malignant. GOP Senators are enablers who put party and power over country and constitution. Trump’s lawyers are village idiots. His cabinet is criminal. Every Trump loyalist is a sycophant. And DeJoy deserves deJail.
🐣 RT @JRubinBlogger Our divisions are considerable, aggravated by the descent of one party into nuttery and by a Constitution that gives GOP disprop power. Lawmakers should reduce distortion (e.g., the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact) and deploy federalism.
⋙ WaPo, Jennifer Rubin: America isn’t ‘hopelessly divided.’ It only looks that way because of our Constitution. http://wapo.st/3nZnDsc
⭕ 27 Dec 2020
🐣 RT @StevenBeschloss If we just move on after Jan. 20, if we don’t confront both the criminality and the complicity of Trump and his regime, then America can’t really move on. This will be a festering wound of injustice that won’t heal.
⋙ 🐣 As Fintan O’Toole wrote of Trump today in The Irish Times: “[T]hose who want to rebuild American democracy will have to put a stake through his heart.” http://bit.ly/3hyPZYd
↥ ↧
🐣 RT @SykesCharlie “Democracy is not just about voting… Trump set out to lay waste to that whole system, from the bottom up, poisoning the groundwaters of respect for evidence, argument and rationality that keeps it alive.”
⋙ IrishTimes: Fintan O’Toole: Trump has unfinished business. A republic he wants to destroy still stands http://bit.ly/3hyPZYd
// 2020 in review: Donald Trump will continue to unleash racism, nativism and a fear of government
… [H]e got nearly 75 million votes in November, even while his malign incompetence was killing his own people. He got those votes, moreover, having made it abundantly clear that he would never accept the result of the election unless he won. They were votes for open autocracy.
This is his legacy: he has successfully led a vast number of voters along the path from hatred of government to contempt for rational deliberation to the inevitable endpoint: disdain for the electoral process itself.
In this end is his new beginning. Stripped of direct power, he will face enormous legal and financial jeopardy. He will have every reason to keep drawing on his greatest asset: his ability to unleash the demons that have always haunted the American experiment – racism, nativism, fear of “the government”.
Trump has unfinished business. A republic he wants to destroy still stands. It is, for him, not goodbye but hasta la vista. Instead of waving him off, those who want to rebuild American democracy will have to put a stake through his heart.
🐣 RT @AppropsDems NEW: @AppropsDems Chairwoman @NitaLowey on President Trump’s belated signing of HR 133: ¤ “The House Appropriations Committee has jurisdiction over rescissions, and our Democratic Majority will reject any rescissions submitted by President Trump.” http://bit.ly/3mMPkDm
🐣 RT @stealthygeek Reminder that line-item veto is not a thing.
⋙ 🐣 RT @AndrewSolender Trump says he’s signing the stimulus bill “with a strong message that makes clear to Congress that wasteful items need to be removed.” ¤ “I will send back to Congress a redlined version, item by item… insisting that those funds be removed from the bill.” Text Block: https://twitter.com/AndrewSolender/status/1343365526198906882?s=20/photo/1-2
🐣 RT @ChrisMurphyCT The House will vote tomorrow on legislation increasing the checks from $600 to $2000. It will pass with likely universal Democratic support. ¤ Then it’s up to McConnell. The Senate could vote Tuesday and send it to the President’s desk. ¤ What will McConnell do?
⋙ 🐣 If Trump is serious and McConnell doesn’t allow a vote or doesn’t push caucus to support the $2000, Trump could screw up the GA election which McConnell needs Trump’s support for to keep his majority…🤔
🐣 RT @PreetBharara👇
⋙ 🐣 RT @kyledcheney NY Post cover/editorial: “Sidney Powell is a crazy person. Michael Flynn suggesting martial law is tantamount to treason.”
⋙ NYPost: The Post says: Give it up, Mr. President — for your sake and the nation’s http://bit.ly/3ryjo9u
// Mr. President, it’s time to end this dark charade. We’re one week away from an enormously important moment for the next four years of our country.
Mr. President, it’s time to end this dark charade. ¤ We’re one week away from an enormously important moment for the next four years of our country. ¤ On Jan. 5, two runoff races in Georgia will determine which party will control the Senate — whether Joe Biden will have a rubber stamp or a much-needed check on his agenda.
Unfortunately, you’re obsessed with the next day, Jan. 6, when Congress will, in a pro forma action, certify the Electoral College vote. You have tweeted that, as long as Republicans have “courage,” they can overturn the results and give you four more years in office. ¤ In other words, you’re cheering for an undemocratic coup.
You had every right to investigate the election. But let’s be clear: Those efforts have found nothing. To take just two examples: Your campaign paid $3 million for a recount in two Wisconsin counties, and you lost by 87 more votes. Georgia did two recounts of the state, each time affirming Biden’s win. These ballots were counted by hand, which alone debunks the claims of a Venezuelan vote-manipulating Kraken conspiracy. ¤ Sidney Powell is a crazy person. Michael Flynn suggesting martial law is tantamount to treason. It is shameful.
We understand, Mr. President, that you’re angry that you lost. But to continue down this road is ruinous. We offer this as a newspaper that endorsed you, that supported you: If you want to cement your influence, even set the stage for a future return, you must channel your fury into something more productive.
President Trump, your legacy is secure — stop the ‘stolen election’ rhetoric. Stop thinking about Jan. 6. Start thinking about Jan. 5. […]
🐣 I’ve seen different pov’s and I’m confused:
1. Was Trump defeated (on relief package)?
2. Did he get some substantive commitments?
3. Or ~ Was he played?
⋙ 🐣 RT @TSubtext Very much depends on the audience.
WaPo: Trump has indicated he will sign stimulus and government spending bill into law, averting shutdown http://wapo.st/2KYWaZ8
// The president had demanded changes to the stimulus bill but on Sunday signaled he would release the stimulus funds after all
CNN, Dean Obeidallah: Nero fiddled. Trump plays golf http://cnn.it/3mQhYmZ
🐣 RT @duty2warn In his final days, Trump finally now approaches the apex of his malignancy. There is nothing positive driving him at all. There is nothing he cares about that is beneficial to the electorate. He is driven purely by grievance, rage, fear and especially revenge.
😅 WaPo: Dave Barry’s Year in Review 2020 http://wapo.st/2KyfEnM
// And we thought past years were awful.
⭕ 26 Dec 2020
🐣 RT @TheLastWord .@tribelaw argues that Trump’s pardons to absolve the crimes of his friends might be crimes themselves if they’re issued to obstruct justice. He also explains why it’s important for the next admin. to investigate and prosecute those abuses of power. https://on.msnbc.com/37T6ZoK
// 12/28/2020
⋙ 🐣 RT @tribelaw My @FT op-ed explains the counter-intuitive fact that it’s the very breadth of the president’s pardon power — its “plenary” character— that enables an ex-president to be prosecuted for using that power as part of a criminal scheme to obstruct justice:
⋙⋙ FT, Lawrence Tribe: Donald Trump’s pardons must not obstruct justice http://on.ft.com/3mUkXLd
// Abuses of constitutional clemency power should be investigated and prosecuted
🚫 WaPo, David Ignatius: Until Biden’s win is certified, the U.S. remains vulnerable http://wapo.st/2WMorET
// alarmist
Law&Crime: Mike Pence Cannot Block the Certification of Joe Biden’s Victory When the Senate Formally Counts Electoral College Votes on Jan. 6th http://bit.ly/2M21Dik
🐣 RT @MuellerSheWrote Let me explain why he’s really mad. The NDAA forces shell companies to reveal money sources, putting a major crimp in the global money laundering scams donald and his family have been running for decades. It’s not a “gift” to Russia. It would cut off his ruble supply.
⭕ 25 Dec 2020 ✨✨
🐣 RT @GeorgeTakei He warned us four years ago how this would go. How do you think it all ends, friends? 💽 https://twitter.com/GeorgeTakei/status/1342540614030815233?s=20/photo/1
// Tony Schwartz, co-author of TAOTD, saying Trump will never accept his loss
⋙ 🐣 RT @Cleavon_MD You couldn’t pick a worse person to run America during a pandemic than Trump. 3,000 Americans dead per day because we have a mentally unstable President. Even more disturbing & sickening are Republicans that toe the party line and allow their constituents to die from COVID.
⋙⋙ 🐣 RT @sandzNJ That is truly the most disturbing part. Here we sit and watch and wonder who will save us. Another 60K +/- people will die before new leadership comes in! He’s done more damage than doing nothing with his lies, gatherings and subterfuge.
💙 🧵 RT @JYSexton This is one of the most important threads I’ll write. ¤ Trumpism is fascism. ¤ We are in a full-blown crisis. We must recognize we’re dealing with a religious death cult and warring over reality itself. ¤ Here’s what I discovered writing AMERICAN RULE. 1/-31 📌 https://twitter.com/JYSexton/status/1309895500200579073?s=20
// 9/26/2020
📋 RawStory: More than 2,900 health care workers died this year — and the government barely kept track http://bit.ly/38CVdOi
🐣 RT @CIAspygirl It’s not too late. Maybe Melania can be a Cover Girl for:
“Birther Monthly”
“Tone Deaf Daily”
“Enabler Enquirer”
“Crime Family Chronicle”
“Soulless Sentinel”
“Sexual Predator Apologist Gazette”
⋙⋙ 🐣 RT @thedailybeast Melania’s lack of magazine covers as First Lady seems to have Trump a little grouchy on Christmas https://trib.al/JjaT6Mr
⋙ 🐣 ● 2500/day dying from COVID-19
● Unemployment insurance running out
● Eviction moratorium ending
● Government shutting down
● Defense bill vetoed
~ and we’re supposed to feel sorry for who? ● https://twitter.com/Auriandra/status/1342696749111119874?s=20/photo/1
// Melania eating jewelry like spaghetti
CNN, Gary Kasparov: It’s time to treat Putin’s Russia like the rogue regime it is http://cnn.it/37OoSoA
🐣 RT @GarrettHaake Graham golfed with President Trump today, and here suggests the President is dug in on boosting direct payments to $2000. Unless he can convince senate Republicans fast, we’re moving towards a shutdown on Monday.
⋙ 🐣 RT @LindseyGrahamSC After spending some time with President @realDonaldTrump today, I am convinced he is more determined than ever to increase stimulus payments to $2000 per person and challenge Section 230 big tech liability protection.
⋙⋙ 🐣 RT @PeterVroom1 Trump’s goal now is to intentionally create a crisis that will allow him to take extraordinary measures with respect to DOJ/DOD. Graham, as Sen Judiciary Chairman, can facilitate his last ditch efforts through committee hearings to lend some credibility.
🐣♫ RT @LawrenceTribe “Come senators, congressmen
Please heed the call
Don’t stand in the doorway
Don’t block up the hall
For he that gets hurt
Will be he who has stalled
The battle outside ragin’
Will soon shake your windows
And rattle your walls
For the times they are a-changin’” — Bob Dylan
🐣 RT @DanRather I hope. I mourn. I pray. I love. I listen. I share. I resolve. I waver. Life is complicated. We need each other to shoulder the pain. And share the joy. Merry Christmas.
🐣 “The Dead of Winter” will have a different meaning this year
🐣 A survivor of World War II, a doctor, once tried to explain what life was like when Prague was bombed. ¤ He said, “Life had no value.” ¤ When I look at the death toll each day, numb, I think I finally understand what he was saying.
⭕ 24 Dec 2020
🐣 RT @davidaxelrod Of all the many reckless, thoughtless, selfish- even lawless- things @realDonaldTrump has done as president, throwing COVID aid to Americans in doubt on Christmas Eve has to rank near the top. ¤ This isn’t about getting them more money. ¤ It’s about getting himself more attention.
⋙ 🐣 trying to upstage the baby Jesus
🐣 RT @LincolnProject On #ChristmasEve in 1776, George Washington led his men across the Delaware River and changed the tide of history. On this eve in 2020, their #Legacy is under attack. We must unite & rise to meet this moment just as they did more than 200 years ago. #MerryChristmas✨ https://twitter.com/ProjectLincoln/status/1342282252953255937?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @DelthiaRicks … No $2000 checks & no $600 ones, either
⋙ WaPo: Families on brink of eviction, hunger describe nightmare Christmas as $900 billion relief bill hangs in limbo http://wapo.st/34G11Fu
// About 14 million Americans will lose unemployment aid on Saturday after President Trump and Congress were unable to reach a deal.
😅 RT @gzeromedia ¤ #TopStories2020 ¤ Trump’s promising to be back by Christmas 2024 (maybe as Santa). ¤ More #PUPPETREGIME: https://gzeromedia.com/puppet-regime/
💽 https://twitter.com/gzeromedia/status/1342243660532908033?s=20/photo/1
// pseudo-Muppets
🐣 RT @joshtpm Manafort worked for Russia to attack the United States probably just for money in the final analysis. Trump knew. Trump helped. And now Trump has pardoned Manafort with full knowledge that he was part of a Russian conspiracy to sabotage a US election.
🐣 RT @WillieGeist Andrew Weissman, former senior prosecutor on the Mueller investigation, on President Trump’s pardons of Manafort and Stone: “What (Trump) did yesterday is proof of obstruction. It’s the final act.” @Morning_Joe
‼️ 🐣 RT @JakeSherman So let’s recap where we are on Christmas Eve.
— Unemployment expires Saturday.
— Government funding expires Monday.
— House Rs blocked Dem 2k check bill.
— Senate R leadership says 2k check bill cant get 60 in the Senate, unlikely to bring it up.
— No plan to keep govt open.
WaPo, Amber Philips: Could Trump declare martial law to try to steal the election? http://wapo.st/3rlzR0B
// That and other efforts his allies are floating won’t work, say legal and national security experts. Here’s why.
⭕ 23 Dec 2020
🐣 RT @RadioFreeTom If you don’t like the pardons, and the vetoes, and the general callousness of going to Florida while people suffer, you are really not going to like the war with Iran that he is clearly going to try and start in the next few weeks.
🐣 RT @JohnJHarwood Trump’s pardons to shield Manafort and Stone – after dangling the idea to persuade them not to tell Mueller what they know about him – is open corruption ¤ the pardons don’t discredit the national security questions about Trump’s conduct w/Russia ¤ the pardons affirm them
🐣 RT @BillKristol The Manafort pardon was of course contemptible. But it was successful. The promise of pardons enabled just enough of a cover up that Trump was able to get away with the collusion and lying about it. In this sense, Trump won. Putin won. America lost, and justice was denied.
🐣 RT @Peter_Wehner To GOP lawmakers who declare Trump’s actions are “rotten to the core”: It’s better late than never, but his actions have been rotten to the core for four years. It would’ve been more courageous to speak out when it mattered, not 28 days before Trump leaves office.
NYT Editorial: Trump Corrupted the Presidential Pardon. Biden Must Repair It. http://nyti.ms/34IB7Rw
// There are clear ways to reform the pardon process to work as the founders intended.
NYT: Trump Gives Clemency to More Allies, Including Manafort, Stone and Charles Kushner http://nyti.ms/3rpk0hk
// It was the second wave of pardons and commutations by the president in two days, showing his willingness to use his power aggressively on behalf of loyalists.
WaPo: Trump’s last-minute outburst throws pandemic relief effort into chaos http://wapo.st/2KoPS5n
🐣 RT @chrislhayes All of this was clear during impeachment, of course. It’s the entire theme of Schiff’s final speech: The man is iredeemably venal and cannot be trusted to do the right thing ever. Ten months later 1 of every 1000 Americans is dead, & the president is desperate to pull off a coup
🐣 RT @duty2warn Kudos to those who commented, suggesting that the REAL source of Trump’s objection to the NDAA involved the proposed requirement of shell corporations to disclose ownership etc. – which is problematic for money launderers like him. Good accurate call.
WaPo: Trump vetoes defense bill, teeing up holiday override votes in Congress http://wapo.st/3mGeFic
NYT, Maggie Haberman and Michael Schmidt: A President Unhappy, Unleashed and Unpredictable http://nyti.ms/34EO2Em
// President Trump remains the most powerful man in the world, but powerless to achieve what he most wants: to avoid leaving office as a loser.
⭕ 22 Dec 2020
💙 WaPo, Edward Foley (12/22): It’s time for Mike Pence to choose: Trump, or the truth http://wapo.st/3n0cLJf
🐣 RT @BeschlossDC George Mason, delegate to Constitutional Convention, said in 1788 that a President should not be granted power to pardon because he might “pardon crimes which were advised by himself. It may happen, at some future day, that he will establish a monarchy, and destroy the republic.”
💙 NBC, Ben Collins: As Trump meets with QAnon influencers, the conspiracy’s adherents beg for dictatorship http://nbcnews.to/3pkLqmT
// With Trump’s days in office dwindling, QAnon influencers have become increasingly restless and militant, urging the president to “#crosstherubicon.”
WaPo: Trump grants clemency to 20, including ex-advisers and former lawmakers http://wapo.st/3haX54G
// The recipients of pardons and commutations included three Republican former members of Congress, people convicted of crimes as part of the investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election, and contractors convicted of killing unarmed Iraqi civilians in 2007.
🐣 RT @thedailybeast Trump informed MAGA attorney Sidney Powell on Monday that he does not intend to appoint her “special counsel” to investigate “election fraud,” according to two people with knowledge of the matter and another source close to the White House.
⋙ DailyBeast, Asawin Suebsaeng and Erin Banco: Trump Tells Sidney Powell He Won’t Name Her ‘Special Counsel’ http://bit.ly/3hfpEya
// The president has met with the conspiracy theorist lawyer recently. But he is not yet buckling to one of her wishes.
🐣 RT @benjaminwittes What a genuinely disgusting set of clemency actions—from pardons for L’Affaire Russe figures to slates wiped clean for murderers of Iraqi civilians and corrupt congressmen!
NYT, Matthew Continetti: Is Trump Really All That Holds the G.O.P. Together? http://nyti.ms/2Ktw4xA
// The Republican Party has embraced reality-TV authoritarianism not out of strength but weakness.
🐣 RT @LaurieGarrett Mystery worthy of Le Carre: Alexander “Sasha” Kagansky, age 45, supposedly stabbed himself & then leapt to his death from a 14th story window in St Petersburg Russia. He was a #COVID19 #vaccine researcher, collaborating w/US & UK scientists. @MaxBoot
⋙ MoscowTimes (12/21): Russian Scientist Who Worked on Coronavirus Vaccine Stabbed, Falls Out of Window http://bit.ly/3pygEH0
RawStory: Michael Flynn should face court martial for ‘incitement to insurrection’: Ex-Colin Powell chief of staff http://bit.ly/2WD4oIZ
Former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn is among the far-right Republicans saying President Donald Trump should declare martial law and reconduct the 2020 election because of widespread voter fraud. Many elections officials and national security experts, however, have stressed that there is no evidence that such fraud occurred or that President-elect Joe Biden didn’t win the 2020 presidential election fairly. And when Col. Lawrence B. Wilkerson, who served as chief of staff to former Secretary of State Colin Powell, spoke to MSNBC’s Chris Hayes on Monday night, December 21, he expressed his outrage over Flynn’s martial law suggestion and recommended that he face court martial.
Wilkerson told Hayes, “I have to commend all those people out there in every state who worked so hard to deliver a free and fair election. At the same time I saw that, I have to say my fears are somewhat significant with a former lieutenant general in the United States Army saying what Flynn said with regard to martial law and going to the battleground states and essentially reconducting the election. Were I the secretary of defense, I’d call him back to active duty — which is in the prerogative of the secretary of defense — and I’d court martial him.”
The former Colin Powell chief of staff, who considers Flynn a “disgrace to his uniform,” added, “at a minimum, I’d cite him for incitement to insurrection. This is not something that a military officer should do…. He needs to be rebuked. He needs to be reprimanded. And it needs to be done officially.”
⭕ 21 Dec 2020
CNN, Stephen Collinson: Trump threatens 30-day reign of destruction on the way out of office http://cnn.it/34yOh3y “‘We don’t know what he might do,’ one officer in the Pentagon said. Another added: ‘We are in strange times.’”
🐣 RT @GlennKesslerWP Noteworthy: Pat Robertson does a rundown of a bunch of Trump’s lies and notes Trump seems to believe this stuff. He “lives in an alternate reality…very erratic…it’s time to move on.” 💽 https://twitter.com/GlennKesslerWP/status/1341142630479114240?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @jeremyherb New statwment from Wyden following Treasury briefing on SolarWinds says Microsoft said “dozens of email accounts were compromised. Additionally the hackers broke into systems in the Departmental Offices division of Treasury, home to the department’s highest-ranking officials.” Text Block: https://twitter.com/jeremyherb/status/1341184949794320384?s=20/photo/1
WaPo: Undercutting Trump, Barr says there’s no basis for seizing voting machines, using special counsels for election fraud, Hunter Biden http://wapo.st/3nJp2TC
🐣 ◕ RT @D_Kuehn It’s really important for people to understand that what is happening now is much worse than the Great Recession. I understand it’s hard to process that we are living through a series of historic crises, but it’s imperative that we understand that’s what’s happening. https://twitter.com/D_Kuehn/status/1340872948765351937?s=20/photo/1
// overlaid unemployment recession
⋙ 🐣 RT @D_Kuehn The economic crisis is extraordinary. We have a public health crisis on top of that, an ongoing constitutional crisis and barely avoided threat to democracy. And we’re facing a climate crisis.
⋙ 🐣 RT @D_Kuehn The inflection point of capitalist prosperity that’s brought so many real benefits also brings problems and contradictions and we have to accept their reality.
🐣 RT @benpershing “Dominion has stated the company has no ownership relationship with the Pelosi family, the Feinstein family, the Clinton family, Hugo Chavez or the government of Venezuela.”
⋙ 🐣 RT @existentialfish Newsmax just aired this note to “clarify” its coverage of Smartmatic and Dominion. 💽 https://twitter.com/existentialfish/status/1341078245878472706?s=20/photo/1
⋙ 🐣 RT @svdate […; full statement:] https://twitter.com/svdate/status/1341096656431923202?s=20/photo/1
📊 RT @Mediaite Polarized America: Fox News Poll Says 22 Percent Think Trump Was Best POTUS Ever And 42 Percent Say He Was The Worst [link]
CNN: Barr says no need for special counsels to investigate election or Hunter Biden http://cnn.it/3h4u3DW “On the SolarWinds cyber attack that affected several agencies in the US government, Barr said, ‘It certainly appears to be the Russians.’”
⭕ 20 Dec 2020
WaPo, Max Boot: Trump saved the worst for last http://wapo.st/3rgSsea “Never before in U.S. history has there been a record of a president discussing a military coup to stay in office”
🐣 RT @propublica “His GPA did not warrant it, his SAT scores did not warrant it. We thought for sure, there was no way this was going to happen. Then, lo and behold, Jared was accepted.”
⋙ ProPublica (2016): The Story Behind Jared Kushner’s Curious Acceptance Into Harvard http://bit.ly/2LV0IQR
// 11/18/2016; ProPublica editor Daniel Golden wrote a book a decade ago about how the rich buy their children access to elite colleges. One student he covered is now poised to become one of the most powerful figures in the country.
🐣 RT @kasparov68 It’s like the police watching a thief try to break into a bank vault but not stopping him because he has the wrong tools and can’t get it open. Do they wait until he blows it up or shoots the bank manager?
⋙ 🐣 RT @stuartpstevens If the president plotting a coup and seizing voting machines isn’t the greatest criminal conspiracy in US history, what beats it? Success is not necessary for conviction, only intent and planning.
WaPo: A frustrated Trump redoubles efforts to challenge election result http://wapo.st/2J6k6Ju
💙 Public officials and military leaders have refused to be drawn into Trump’s post-election maneuvering. On Friday, Army Secretary Ryan McCarthy and Gen. James C. McConville, the Army’s top officer, released a joint statement that said: “There is no role for the U.S. military in determining the outcome of an American election.”
💙 TheAtlantic, Peter Wehner: Trump Is Losing His Mind http://bit.ly/2WusPby “In the process, Trump has in too many cases turned his party into an instrument of illiberalism and nihilism”
The president is discussing martial law in the Oval Office, as his grip on reality falters. ¤ None of this should come as a surprise. Some of us said, even before he became president, that Donald Trump’s Rosetta Stone, the key to deciphering him, was his psychology—his disordered personality, his emotional and mental instability, and his sociopathic tendencies. It was the main reason, though hardly the only reason, I refused to vote for him in 2016 or in 2020, despite having worked in the three previous Republican administrations. Nothing that Trump has done over the past four years has caused me to rethink my assessment, and a great deal has happened to confirm it.
Even amid the chaos, it’s worth taking a step back to think about where we are: An American president, unwilling to concede his defeat by 7 million popular votes and 74 Electoral College votes, is still trying to steal the election. It has become his obsession.
In the process, Trump has in too many cases turned his party into an instrument of illiberalism and nihilism. Here are just a couple of data points to underscore that claim: 18 attorneys generals and more than half the Republicans in the House supported a seditious abuse of the judicial process.
And it’s not only, or even mainly, elected officials. The Republican Party’s base has often followed Trump into the twilight zone, with a sizable majority of them affirming that Joe Biden won the election based on fraud and many of them turning against medical science in the face of a surging pandemic.
… If any of his predecessors—Barack Obama, George W. Bush, Bill Clinton, George H. W. Bush, and Ronald Reagan, to go back just 40 years—had been president during this pandemic, tens of thousands of American lives would almost surely have been saved.
Our institutions, especially the courts, will have passed a stress test, not the most difficult ever but difficult enough, and unlike any in our history. Some local officials exhibited profiles in courage, doing the right thing in the face of threats and pressure from their party. And a preponderance of the American public, having lived through the past four years, deserve credit for canceling this presidential freak show rather than renewing it. The “exhausted majority” wasn’t too exhausted to get out and vote, even in a pandemic.
But the Trump presidency will leave gaping wounds nearly everywhere, and ruination in some places. Truth as a concept has been battered from the highest office in the land on an almost hourly basis. The Republican Party has been radicalized, with countless Republican lawmakers and other prominent figures within the party having revealed themselves to be moral cowards, even, and in some ways especially, after Trump was defeated. During the Trump presidency, they were so afraid of getting crosswise with him and his supporters that they failed the Solzhenitsyn test: “The simple act of an ordinary brave man is not to participate in lies, not to support false actions! His rule: Let that come into the world, let it even reign supreme—only not through me.”
For the foreseeable future, journalists will rightly focus on the pandemic. But once that is contained and defeated, it will be time to go back to focusing more attention on things like the Paris Accords and the carbon tax; the earned-income tax credit and infrastructure; entitlement reform and monetary policy; charter schools and campus speech codes; legal immigration, asylum, assimilation, and social mobility. There is also an opportunity, with Trump a former president, for the Republican Party to once again become the home of sane conservatism. Whether that happens or not is an open question. But it’s something many of us are willing to work for, and that even progressives should hope for.
There’s a lovely line in William Wordsworth’s poem “The Prelude”: “What we have loved, Others will love, and we will teach them how.”
There are still things worthy of our love. Honor, decency, courage, beauty, and truth. Tenderness, human empathy, and a sense of duty. A good society. And a commitment to human dignity. We need to teach others—in our individual relationships, in our classrooms and communities, in our book clubs and Bible studies, and in innumerable other settings—why those things are worthy of their attention, their loyalty, their love. One person doing it won’t make much of a difference; a lot of people doing it will create a culture.
Maybe we understand better than we did five years ago why these things are essential to our lives, and why when we neglect them or elect leaders who ridicule and subvert them, life becomes nasty, brutish, and generally unpleasant.
Just after noon on January 20, a new and necessary chapter will begin in the American story. Joe Biden will certainly play a role in shaping how that story turns out—but so will you and I. Ours is a good and estimable republic, if we can keep it.
🐣 RT @ OlgaNYC1211 So humiliating! Every Russian media outlet this morning is breaking with the news that Trump refused to publish a WH statement blaming Russia for the attacks. Bad enough trump and Republicans refuse to act but having this used as propaganda is infuriating @senatemajldr @SenateGOP
🐣 RT @gelles “Trump has visited golf courses on about 21% of the days of his presidency, or roughly 1 in 5 days. He has visited Trump properties on about 29% of the days of his presidency — nearly one-third of his days in office.”
⋙ 📋 CNN: Donald Trump’s presidency by the numbers http://cnn.it/3auV962
// 12/18/2020
🐣 RT @MSNBC Fmr. CIA and Pentagon Chief of Staff Jeremy Bash on the alleged Russian cyberattacks on US agencies: “I think Trump requested cyber hacking from Russia. He welcomed it, he benefited from it and I think he’s rewarded it.”
💙 ‼️ ⋙ 💽 MSNBC, AndreaMitchell: Former CIA and Pentagon Chief of Staff Jeremy Bash: This is an epic national security crisis http://on.msnbc.com/2Wwwi9B “I think Trump requested cyber hacking from Russia, he welcomed it, he benefited from it and I think he rewarded it”‼️ ● https://twitter.com/Auriandra/status/1340648927402586122?s=20/photo/1
// Former CIA and Pentagon Chief of Staff Jeremy Bash joins Peter Baker and Andrea Mitchell to comment on the Russian hack of federal agencies. “We have not had a cybersecurity breach like this in a long time, maybe even in our history,” Bash stated. Regarding President Trump’s silence, Peter Baker added that “this administration has taken a number of actions against Russia in the past; it’s expelled diplomats, imposed sanctions. What it’s not done is have the President…actually give voice to these kinds of actions. He does not criticize Russia.”
🐣 RT @MoscowTimes The United States confirmed Saturday that it is planning to close the two remaining U.S. consulates in Russia https://twitter.com/MoscowTimes/status/1340554032063102976?s=20
⭕ 19 Dec 2020
🐣 RT @OrinKerr In the old days they waited for a suspicious fire at the parliament building.
⋙ 🐣 RT @LLinWood Georgia, Michigan, Arizona, Nevada, Wisconsin, Minnesota & Pennsylvania are states in which martial law should be imposed & machines/ballots seized. ¤ 7 states under martial law. ¤ 43 states not under martial law. ¤ I like those numbers. ¤ Do it @realDonaldTrump! ¤ Nation supports you.
🐣 RT @JohnJHarwood recorded speaking privately to fellow Republicans in 2016, Kevin McCarthy “joked” that Donald Trump was on Vladimir Putin’s payroll ¤ after he said it, then-Speaker Paul Ryan (unsuccessfully) swore those who heard it to secrecy: “no leaks. this is how we know we’re a real family”
⋙ 🐣 RT @GOPLeader I had a briefing from the FBI today to learn more about Eric Swalwell’s ties to a reported-spy from China, and one thing is now crystal clear: ¤ Swalwell should no longer be on the Intel Committee.
🐣 RT @RadioFreeTom If there were an ounce of decency left in the GOP, @senatemajldr would assemble a group of senior Republicans, call @MarkMeadows, go to the Oval, and together tell Trump to stop planning a coup or he’ll be removed from office in accordance with the Constitution. But there isn’t.
NYMag, Jonathan Chait: Trump Floats Coup Plan That’s So Wild Even Rudy Giuliani Is Terrified http://nym.ag/34uCzHc
🧵 RT @joshtpm It’s kind of buried in most of the reporting on this meeting Trump had with Sidney Powell, Rudes [Rudy?], etc. But the real detail I think is that Mike Flynn was at this White Hiuse meeting. Flynn is actively pushing a declaration of marital law that wld have the military force new … https://twitter.com/joshtpm/status/1340448349233803266?s=20
⋙ 🐣 RT @joshtpm 2/ elections in the swing states Trump lost. Powell is, I think, best seen as a creature of Mike Flynn, at least inasmuch as their influence on Trump. Flynn has always had a unique hold over Trump. From 2015 through his notional cooperation to pardon. A former 3 star general …
⋙ 🐣 RT @joshtpm 3/ pressing a defeated President to declare martial law to overturn the result of an election that is now formally and definitively over is needless to say a very grave matter. I have complete confidence that Joe Biden will be inaugurated as the 46 president in one …
⋙ 🐣 RT @joshtpm 4/ month. But I think people are underestimating how chaotic and dangerous the next thirty days will be. What we are watching is a criminal conspiracy to overturn a certified, final election result involving the President and a handful of cronies including Flynn,
⋙ 🐣 RT @joshtpm 5/ Giuliani, Powell and others.
💙 🧵 RT @tnicholsmd He came in by ambulance short of breath. Already on CPAP by EMS. Still, he was clearly working hard to breathe. He looked sick. Uncomfortable. Scared. ¤ As we got him over to the gurney and his shirt off to switch a a hospital gown, we all noticed the number of Nazi tattoos. 1/ 📌 https://twitter.com/tnicholsmd/status/1333391178738274305?s=20
⋙ 🐣 RT @tnicholsmd All of us being a team that included a Jewish physician, a Black nurse, and an Asian respiratory therapist. ¤ We all saw. The symbols of hate on his body outwardly and proudly announced his views. We all knew what he thought of us. How he valued our lives. 4/
⋙ 🐣 RT @tnicholsmd Yet here we were, working seamlessly as a team to make sure we gave him the best chance to survive that we could. All while wearing masks, gowns, face shields, gloves. The moment perfectly captured what we are going though as healthcare workers as this pandemic accelerates. 5/
⋙ 🐣 RT @tnicholsmd Unfortunately, society has proven unwilling to listen to the science or to our pleas. Begging for people to take this seriously, to stay home, wear a mask, to be the break in the chain of transmission. 8/
⋙ 🐣 RT @tnicholsmd Instead, they’ve called the pandemic a hoax, called us liars and corrupt, told us we are being too political by worrying about patients dying and trying to save lives. ¤ They’ve stopped caring about our lives, our families, our fears, worried only about their own. 9/
⋙ 🐣 RT @tnicholsmd I’ve faced these situations countless times since medical school. Not the intubation – which is routine at this point for me and my team. The swastikas. The racist patients. Every single time I feel a bit shaken, but I went into this job wanting to save lives… 12/
⋙ 🐣 RT @tnicholsmd I run through the meds and plan with the nurse and RT. I pause. I see the SS tattoo and think about what he might think about having Jewish physician taking care of him now, or how much he would have cared about my life if the roles were reversed. 16/ […]
🧵 RT @ I don’t really want to boost Cohen, but I also don’t want to rip it off, so here it is, but I’ll tell you what he said @emilyjanefox is the interviewer here. [link to Vanity Fair] 📌 https://twitter.com/DirkSchwenk/status/1340507936733470726?s=20
// Interview with Michael Cohen, Trump’s former “fixer”
🐣 RT @ @DirkSchwenk Starts at noting that Cohen said at the beginning that Trump wouldn’t transition peacefully … and granted that’s true. Cohen on Trump – “pure narcissism.”
This interviewer Emily Jane Fox says she is a long time friend of Cohen – which is a bit of a pause. Cohen is a bit inconsistent as to whether Trump knows he lost – seems to be on the bottom line that Trump is working on his next steps – to rip off Fox News and do a TV network
Trump TV, per Cohen, will be “one fucking infomercial after another and there are 20 Million stupid people out there … that are willing to part with their money…. Educated people, too.”
Cohen – he fell for the emotional appeal, his white power base falls for the same appeal.
PARDONS: Cohen says he does not expect a lot of pardons … Trump cares for no one except for Trump … won’t pardon Giuliani, Jared, Ivanka, Jr., etc. That would waive 5th Amendment, and that wouldn’t be good for DJT … so … no.
Cohen expects many cases out of DOJ and the States, and in light of that, DJT won’t pardon, because they would then testify against Trump.
STEP DOWN AND GET PARDONED? “No, that’s not going to happen, DJT will never step down” because that would be little people forcing him to do so.
Are you still assisting in any investigations? COHEN: I can partially answer, part that I can’t…. I have provided them (Tish James) her entire investigation stems from my (Cohens) testimony to them…. They’re VERY WELL PREPARED … to bring justice to the crimes
Civil Litigation … You (cohen) are out all this money … I (cohen) owe millions … wants reimbursed for money he laid out for Stormy Daniels. Trump called me, said stop this … Stormy sued me (cohen) … deposed General Counsel and Eric Trump … they are too dumb to settle
Cohen is ready to take it all to trial, because that is the only way to beat Trump. Trump never settles, and will take advantage of any weakness shown.
Will you ever talk to Trump again? Cohen – No, I can’t the damage he caused is too significant … he destroyed my family’s happiness. I will never forgive him for what he did… He did himself for himself, without me knowing, at my expense.
Cohen: The court held me responsible for Trump’s dirty deeds … and I can never forgive it. EJF: you really believed he would be loyal? C: DJT is “one way”, but he still somehow believed that he had 5% loyalty … but he had zero.
EJF: Will he jump back in and campaign for Trump 2024? C: he’s desperate for the money… when IRS looks at tax returns, they’re going to find he owes 100s of millions even before penalties … which makes the company worthless…
C: He WILL counterprogram the Biden election [inauguration?]… Obama had the dignity and patriotism to sit in the front row in a peaceful transition … Trump has no humbleness, decency … so he’ll counterprogram the inauguration … so he’ll raise money on it
Alan Weisselberg… is as much in it as Trump, but in my case they gave that fucknut…immunity. I just don’t get it. EJC: We’ll see what he gets. @emilyjanefox I really questioned your decision to put Cohen on, but I think this is a valuable interview, and I hope people boost
Cohen – my book “Disloyal” is currently being adapted for a full length feature film (so he’s getting paid big), and he has a second book coming out (which kinda makes me doubt a little of my tweet above).
Next Cohen book – how people get sucked into Trump. DJT doesn’t care about anyone except for himself, and will steal everything out of the Trump PACs that he can possibly take. He’s already thinking about how to “take money for the little guy.” ¤ Cohen: he’s racist, homophobic, a fraud, etc.
Closes out. Still not sure if Cohen should be boosted at all. I know @marykerry thinks not. He’s definitely a NYer, and has some mobbed up family ties. Enemies of my enemies? Not sure at all.
🐣 RT @atrupar John Bolton did a CNN interview earlier today where he called the Oval Office discussion of martial law “appalling” and said Trump is “unfit for the job.” 💽 https://twitter.com/atrupar/status/1340526191107854338?s=20/photo/1
🚫🧵 RT @RonGOPVet4Biden What a surprise, it looks like the “mastermind” behind QAnon, Jim Watkins, had connections to child porn sites going back to the 1990s. So, when the whole purpose of your cult is to fight against child porn and your leader … 📌 https://twitter.com/RonGOPVet4Biden/status/1340453502330556416?s=20
⋙ MotherJones, Al Vincens and: QAnon Is Supposed to Be All About Protecting Kids. Its Primary Enabler Appears to Have Hosted Child Porn Domains. http://bit.ly/37zRtOr
// 10/29/2020; [not posted because old article] Archives document Jim Watkins’ links to domains suggestive of underage sexual material.
🐣 RT @SpyTalker Spies on Flynn-Trump #Coup Talk: ‘Horrifying..embarrassing.’ It’s ‘white knuckle’ time, says one former top #CIA officer by .@talk_spy .@spytalker
⋙ SpyTalk, Jeff Stein: Spies on Flynn-Trump Coup Talk http://bit.ly/38lRAfx
// ‘Horrifying..embarrassing.’ It’s ‘white knuckle’ time, says one former top CIA officer
Reports that disgraced former Army General Michael Flynn urged President Trump to declare martial law and “re-run” the election drew harsh reactions Saturday from intelligence veterans, who worry that foreign adversaries could use the chaos at the top of the government to “take advantage of us,” as one former top CIA spy put it.
“It was heated, people were really fighting it out in the Oval,” a source told CNN.
Veteran intelligence officers told SpyTalk they were appalled at the coup talk.
“Many former intelligence officers, myself included,” retired CIA presidential briefer David Priess told SpyTalk, “are shocked that the using-the-military-to-interfere-in-democratic-processes, things we used to collect on and analyze regarding other countries, are reportedly being discussed by the U.S. president about the US political process!”
Former CIA chief of staff Larry Pfeiffer called the coup talk “very disturbing.” He virtually cringed at the thought of foreign embassies in Washington filing reports on the possibility of martial law in the United States.
“This is the kind of behavior that gets intelligence officers at embassies writing cables home about impending coup plotting,” he told SpyTalk. “Usually those are Americans writing the cables. Not this time.”
Even before the coup talk, said former senior CIA operations officer Marc Polymeropoulos, foreign diplomats at embassy receptions in Washington were openly worrying about the president’s mental state. “The subject was, is the American president acting like Kurtz,” he told SpyTalk. ¤ (Kurtz is the fictional mad colonel in the 1979 Vietnam War drama Apocalypse Now, adapted from Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness.)
And now the CIA’s foreign counterparts are bringing it up in bilateral meetings with others around. “My friends overseas are embarrassed,” he said. “We represent America.” It looks like “we’re crazy town.”
“The bottom line is Trump’s nuttiness is super embarrassing. There is not so much worry that this is real coup plotting, as we know the U.S. military is loyal, but ultimately a president acting like Kurtz is dangerous for America,” Polymeropoulos said. “And our adversaries see this crystal clear.”
A member of Congress who said he had been talking with career intelligence agency employees said they are “horrified. But they believe Trump lacks the competency to carry out a coup.”
“We are so lucky they are idiots,” tweeted former senior CIA executive John Sipher.
But Polymeropoulos, who served as a CIA station chief battling terrorist insurgents and Russians alike during his 28-year career, worries that “our adversaries going to take advantage” of the apparent chaos at the top of the government. He calls it “white knuckle” time.
Amid all this, Trump, backed by many congressional Republicans, is still rallying his followers in a campaign to invalidate the presidential election.
But Flynn’s advocacy of a military coup will go nowhere, even if he and Trump tried to set the ball rolling, intelligence veterans agree. He’s already shooting himself in the foot by refusing to sign the national defense budget, passed overwhelmingly by both houses of Congress, noted a member of Congress. “Not exactly the way to get military support,” he said on terms of anonymity in exchange for freely discussing national security issues.
“Certainly the fact that the President would even briefly consider using the military to overturn an election is appalling,” says former State Department and CIA officer and historian Mark Stout.
“But those of us who have worked for and alongside the military know that he is barking up the wrong tree. The U.S. military is not going to do this sort of thing for any President, ever.”
🐣 RT @talk_spy If Pat Cipollone and Mark Meadows are so worried by the coup plotting that they’re sending up flares via the press, maybe it’s time for them to walk out, hold an impromptu press conference in the White House driveway and beg a delegation of Republican leaders to confront Trump.
🐣 RT @RepKinzinger [R] One of the Q conspiracies includes that GITMO is going to house the deep state when “the storm” happens. So this guy is implying that I’m nervous cuz Its going to get me. Ill expose these theories, and shine the light into the darkness. #RestoreOurGOP […]
🐣 RT @RepKinzinger [R] No. The military will not be “deployed” to re-run an election. It’s time for this to be shut down, and now. Gen. Flynn has lost his moral authority to be taken seriously, and the GOP needs to stand up to it. #RestoreOurGOP
// 12/18/2020
🐣 RT @Scaramucci Can’t hide the money. It will be traced. He knows they are all going to jail
🐣 RT @BrendanNyhan Dangerous how the goalposts are shifting. Imagine telling yourself in 2014 that people will think everything is fine because the next President won’t *successfully* pull off a coup
⋙ 🐣 RT @holden It’s amazing how the “Watch what Trump does, not what he says” folks moved to “Watch what Trump *successfully* does, not what he *attempts* to do” without missing a beat.
⋙⋙ 🧵RT @BrendanNyhan The Wall Street Journal editorial board mocked me for warning of the threat Donald Trump posed to American democracy back in 2017. People were still suggesting that the threat had been overblown just a few weeks ago. And here we are. 📌 https://twitter.com/BrendanNyhan/status/1340489535063547906?s=20
⋙ 🐣 RT @holden It’s like someone shows you a gun, and says “I’m going to shoot those people” and all the Very Serious People say, oh, he just talks that way, he’ll never shoot.”
🐣 RT @john_sipher This is a terrible breach. Any public retaliation will not be in direct response but we be [sic] necessary push back for years of Russian malign activity against the US and its allies. We’ve mishandled Putin for over a decade. He’s now clearly shown his stripes.
🐣 RT @BrianStelter “Privately, the president has called the hack a ‘hoax’ and pressured associates to downplay its significance and push alternate theories for who is responsible, two people familiar with the exchanges said.”
⋙ NYT: Trump Contradicts Pompeo Over Russia’s Role in Hack http://nyti.ms/3h1XeaC
// Hours after the secretary of state said that Moscow was behind the vast cybersecurity breach, the president suggested it might have been China and downplayed the severity of the attack.
🐣 RT @JuliaDavisNews “Deputy Speaker of the Russian State Duma responded with an ominous threat: “We’re going to use their computers to make sure that people like Biden & his entire team will never again imagine that they have the right to world domination. Just wait and see””
⋙⋙ 🐣 1. “Deputy” Speaker
2. The Duma has no power
⋙ 🐣 RT @JuliaDavisNews Asylum for Trumpusha: ¤ Russian lawmakers are concerned about the future of the Kremlin’s favorite U.S. president.
⋙⋙ DailyBeast: Russian Media Wants Moscow to Grant Asylum to Trump http://bit.ly/
// 12/10/2020; Russian media and lawmakers are concerned about the future of the Kremlin’s favorite U.S. president.
🐣 RT @jennycohn1 I hadn’t thought of that.
⋙⋙ 🐣 RT @cre8tiverenewal What about Erik Prince’s mercenaries? With Flynn in DoD I fear anything is possible… 32 days is a long time for them to do significant damage
⋙ 🐣 I think in that event, the US military would get involved
🐣 RT @swin24 Since 2017, Trump has on again off again talked about wanting Mike Flynn back in his admin and/or advising him, despite the cloud of scandal around the ex- national security adviser. Come the very end of the trump era, the president got what he wanted in the dumbest way possible
⋙ 🐣 RT @swin24 Also, for some Trumpworld connective tissue: Mike Flynn is now been in direct contact on “election fraud” issues with MyPillow ceo Mike Lindell, who is a major funder of Lin Wood and Sidney Powell’s legal work, the latter of whom was also at the Trump meeting with Flynn
⋙⋙ 🐣 RT @swin24 Turns out, MyPillow ceo Mike Lindell is a major funder of a number of the pro-Trump efforts to overturn the 2020 election that you’ve been seeing. He’s given handsomely to Trumpist attorneys Lin Wood/ Sidney Powell in weeks since the election, for instance [link]
⋙ 🐣 RT @swin24 If you had told me a year ago that in the wake of the 2020 race, Trump would bring back Gen. Flynn to consult & egg on & work w/ QAnon peddling lawyers to try to steal the election & cancel democracy, & that the MyPillow creator would also be a player in the saga I woulda said… ….Yea ok that sounds right
🐣 RT @stuartpstevens Not since US Army officers became traitors and joined the Confederacy, has a group so betrayed their oath of office as the majority of Republican Senators and Members of Congress. Their children & grandchildren will study their weakness and anti-American cowardice.
🐣 RT @Porter_Anderson Media: @sam_vinograd to @biannagolodryga on the cyberattack: “What @realDonaldTrump did today was cement his own legacy as a national security threat to the homeland. By undercutting his experts, he’s helping #Russia’s mission to sow confusion in the #UnitedStates.”
// on CNN
🐣 RT @ScottMStedman One of the biggest financial scandals in the world is how Deutsche Bank time and time again acted as a conduit for the Russian government, Russian intelligence, and Russian oligarchs to expand their influence around the world, and particularly, in the US.
🐣 RT @RichardHaass smart piece on the hack. essential to distinguish among 1) political influence operations; 2) espionage; 3) disruptive attacks/sabotage; & 4) unconstrained warfare to understand what occurred & to decide whether to go beyond instituting better protection.
⋙ WIRED: Russia’s Hack Wasn’t Cyberwar. That Complicates US Strategy http://bit.ly/37w3fct
// To evaluate whether cybersecurity tactics are working, you need to first establish what the SolarWinds hack really was.
🐣 RT @kasparov68 Are you kidding? His own Secretary of State, a full loyalist, already admitted it was Russia! When I said in 2017 that Trump had more Russian connections than Aeroflot, this is what I was worried about. [re: Trump tweet]
⋙ NYMag, Jonathan Chait: Trump Won’t Denounce Russia’s Hack Because He’s Still Subservient to Putin http://nym.ag/3mEe1S9
⋙⋙ 🐣 “RT @real The Cyber Hack is far greater in the Fake News Media than in actuality. I have been fully briefed and everything is well under control. Russia, Russia, Russia is the priority chant when anything happens because Lamestream is, for mostly financial reasons, petrified of…. … discussing the possibility that it may be China (it may!). There could also have been a hit on our ridiculous voting machines during the election, which is now obvious that I won big, making it an even more corrupted embarrassment for the USA. @DNI_Ratcliffe @SecPompeo”
🐣 RT @benjaminwittes It is, shall we say, unusual for the President of the United States to meet in the Oval Office with a felon to discuss the appointment of the criminal’s lawyer as a special counsel.
⋙ RT @benjaminwittes I chose my word very carefully. He pled guilty to a felony. His motion to withdraw that plea was never granted. The Justice Department’s motion to dismiss was granted because—and only because—of the pardon, which he accepted. Pardon or not, he is a felon.
// Michael Flynn, Sidney Powell
🐣 RT @RenatoMariotti The mere fact that the President of the United States is considering a military coup is alarming. That would mean the end of America as we know it. ¤ Let’s not mince words here. Using “martial law” to overturn the election is a coup. It’s beyond unconstitutional. It’s evil.
🐣 RT @SykesCharlie Folks, at this point we probably should begin to consider the possibility that the president is insane.
⋙⋙ 🐣 RT @maggieNYT During the meeting, the president asked about Flynn’s suggestion of deploying the military, those briefed said. That was also shot down.
⋙ 🐣 RT @gtconway Let’s not be hasty
↥ ↧
🧵 RT @maggieNYT SCOOP – Sidney Powell was in Oval Office last night as POTUS discussed making her special counsel for election fraud. @KannoYoungs and me 📌 https://twitter.com/maggieNYT/status/1340349856574038017?s=20
⋙⋙ NYT: Trump Discussed Naming Campaign Lawyer as Special Counsel on Election Fraud http://nyti.ms/3mzWs5U
// In a meeting at the White House on Friday, the president weighed appointing Sidney Powell, who promoted conspiracy theories about rigged voting machines, to probe voter fraud.
⋙ 🐣 RT @maggieNYT Among those pushing back on the idea was Pat Cipollone, Meadows and even Giuliani. But Giuliani separately pushed DHS this week to seize control of voting machines to examine them for possible fraud. DHS said it has no authority to do that.
⋙ 🐣 RT @maggieNYT The meeting got raucous, with various administration members drifting in and out and different people arguing. Powell told others they were quitters, people people briefed on the meeting
⋙ 🐣 RT @maggieNYT The fact of the meeting – and Giuliani hope of seizing the voting machines – has alarmed some of the president’s advisers, who see his desire to take his refusal to accept the election results as in a dangerous new place
⋙ 🐣 RT @maggieNYT Meadows and Cipollone strenuously and repeatedly objected to these suggestions, saying there was no constitutional basis, according to the people briefed.
⋙ 🐣 RT @maggieNYT One person floated an executive order to seize the voting machines. That was also shot down by Cipollone, per the people briefed.
⋙ 🐣 RT @maggieNYT Adding to the story but two people briefed said Flynn was there as well for this meeting.
⋙ 🐣 RT @maggieNYT During the meeting, the president asked about Flynn’s suggestion of deploying the military, those briefed said. That was also shot down.
⋙ 🐣 RT @maggieNYT MORE – POTUS asked about possibility of Powell being given security clearances to pursue her theories, per people briefed on the meeting.
President Trump on Friday discussed naming Sidney Powell, who as a lawyer for his campaign team unleashed conspiracy theories about a Venezuelan plot to rig voting machines in the United States, to be a special counsel overseeing an investigation of voter fraud, according to two people briefed on the discussion. ¤ It was unclear if Mr. Trump will move ahead with such a plan.
Most of his advisers opposed the idea, two of the people briefed on the discussion said, including Rudolph W. Giuliani, the president’s personal lawyer. In recent days Mr. Giuliani has sought to have the Department of Homeland Security join the campaign’s efforts to overturn Mr. Trump’s loss in the election. ¤ Mr. Giuliani joined the discussion by phone, while Ms. Powell was at the White House for a meeting that became raucous and involved people shouting at each other at times, according to one of the people briefed on what took place.
Ms. Powell’s client, retired Lt. Gen. Michael T. Flynn, the former national security adviser whom the president recently pardoned, was also there, two of the people briefed on the meeting said. Some senior administration officials drifted in and out of the meeting. ¤ During an appearance on the conservative Newsmax channel this week, Mr. Flynn pushed for Mr. Trump to impose martial law and deploy the military to “rerun” the election. At one point in the meeting on Friday, Mr. Trump asked about that idea.
The White House counsel, Pat A. Cipollone, and the White House chief of staff, Mark Meadows, repeatedly and aggressively pushed back on the ideas being proposed, which went beyond the special counsel idea, those briefed on the meeting said. Mr. Cipollone told Mr. Trump there was no constitutional authority for what was being discussed, one of the people briefed on the meeting said.
Mr. Trump was defeated in the election by President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr. by more than 7 million votes. The states have confirmed Mr. Biden’s Electoral College victory by a margin of 306-232. ¤ But Mr. Trump, egged on by supporters like Ms. Powell, has never conceded and, holed up inside the White House, he continues to assert that he actually won — even though the baseless claims Ms. Powell and others have made of widespread fraud have been thoroughly debunked and even many of Mr. Trump’s closest allies have dismissed as preposterous her tale of an international conspiracy to rig the vote.
Mr. Trump tends to think of Justice Department appointees when he describes special counsels, but those briefed on the meeting said the idea was for Ms. Powell to serve as a special counsel within the White House, appointed by the president, according to those briefed on it. ¤ Mr. Trump also asked about Ms. Powell being given security clearances to pursue her work, two of the people briefed on the meeting said.
Ms. Powell accused other Trump advisers of being quitters, according to the people briefed. ¤ But the idea that Mr. Trump would try to install Ms. Powell in a position to investigate the outcome sent shock waves through the president’s circle. She has repeatedly claimed there was widespread fraud, but several lawsuits she filed related to election fraud have been tossed out of court. …
Mr. Trump has been in contact with Ms. Powell at other times in recent days, even though his campaign last month sought to distance itself from her as she aired wild and baseless claims about Dominion Voting Systems machines, which were used in some states, somehow being connected to a Venezuelan plot to control the election. ¤ Dominion officials have demanded that Ms. Powell retract her claims. The Trump campaign on Saturday sent a memo to campaign officials telling them to preserve documents related to Ms. Powell and Dominion in case of legal action by the company against Ms. Powell, according to a report by CNN that a campaign official confirmed.
Since the election, Mr. Trump had pushed the outgoing attorney general, William P. Barr, to appoint a special counsel to look into election fraud, as well as one to investigate Hunter Biden, President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s son. Mr. Barr, people briefed on the matter, has been unwilling to do what Mr. Trump wanted.
Mr. Trump and Mr. Giuliani have been pushing for data that would provide evidence of widespread election fraud. Mr. Barr has said the Justice Department has found no evidence of fraud on a scale that would change the outcome of the election. ¤ Part of the White House meeting on Friday night was a discussion about an executive order to take control of voting machines to examine them, according to one of the people briefed on the discussion. ¤ Mr. Giuliani has separately pressed the Department of Homeland Security to seize possession of voting machines as part of a push to overturn the results of the election, three people familiar with the discussion said. Mr. Giuliani was told the department does not have the authority to do such a thing. ¤ The conversation between Mr. Giuliani and Kenneth T. Cuccinelli II, the acting deputy secretary of the Homeland Security Department, took place in the past week, according to the people familiar with the discussion, who were granted anonymity because they were not authorized to describe the conversation.
The department oversees the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, the agency responsible for safeguarding critical systems, such as elections and hospitals. ¤ Mr. Cuccinelli is said to have told Mr. Giuliani that there is no authority by which the agency, which spent the year working with state election officials to prepare for the election, could assert control over voting machines in those states. ¤ Mr. Giuliani called Mr. Cuccinelli this week to push the department to re-examine the machines to find evidence of what the Trump campaign has called widespread fraud, two of the people briefed on the discussion said.
The effort by Mr. Trump’s campaign to use the cybersecurity agency in the push to overturn the results of the election comes after the president last month fired the head of that agency, Christopher C. Krebs. Before he was ousted, Mr. Krebs joined other top election officials in calling the 2020 election “the most secure in American history.”
State and local governments take the lead in managing elections in the United States while cybersecurity agency primarily provides support, guidance and intelligence with the local leaders on potential threats to the voting system.“We don’t own those networks and we do not have independent legal authority to go in and start combing through those networks,” said Suzanne Spaulding, an under secretary for cybersecurity and critical infrastructure in the Obama administration. “Efforts that appear to be driving a partisan agenda, particularly completely unfounded allegations, significantly undermine the hard work these men and women have been engaged in for years.’
🐣 RT @JonLemire “Officials at the White House had been prepared to put out a statement Friday afternoon that accused Russia of being ‘the main actor’ in the hack, but were told at the last minute to stand down”
⋙ AP: Trump downplays Russia in first comments on cyberattack http://bit.ly/34wBkHE
//➔ coulda been China; he forgot to mention the 400lb man in his basement
🐣 RT @ianbassin The former top intelligence official at DHS has reported to Congress as part of a whistleblower complaint that he was pressured by the Admin to exaggerate the role of far left agitators in violent acts.
⋙ Reuters: DHS whistleblower was pressed to exaggerate leftist role in urban protests, lawyer says http://reut.rs/3ha0vF2
⭕ 18 Dec 2020
💙 📋 NYT, Timothy Eagan: The Next 3 Months Are Going to Be Pure Hell http://nyti.ms/3rfObHF “The Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation projects that more than 500,000 Americans likely will have died from Covid-19 by the end of March” ⋙ We were at 314,000 on 12/18
// Biden margin; Lessons from Lewis and Clark on living through the darkest days and longest nights.
‼️ 📋 It’s equally troubling that Biden won the popular vote by 7 million, but came within 43,000 votes of losing the election because of the anti-democratic relic of the Electoral College.
🐣 RT @k_eichensehr My latest for @just_security: some thoughts on the still unfolding Russia hacks and why the US should depart from its usual “Strategic Silence” in the face of espionage to try to prevent these hacks from escalating into destruction/disruption
⋙ JustSecurity, Kristen Eichensehr: “Strategic Silence” and State-Sponsored Hacking: USG and SolarWinds http://bit.ly/37uMoH8
// Is the failure to date to attribute the SolarWinds intrusion and condemn Russia a purposeful tactic?
🐣 RT @AlexWardVox How the US government hack happened, and what it means, explained by @Jason_Healey
⋙ Vox, Alex Award: How the US government hack happened, and what it means, explained by an expert http://bit.ly/37tDJVk
// “This has only started,” Columbia University’s Jason Healey told Vox.
🧵 RT @anneapplebaum Time for Christmas shopping 2020! So many good books were published this year, despite everything. Everyone should read Putin’s People by @CatherineBelton, on the deep roots of Russia’s current ruling class. I reviewed it for @TheAtlantic here: 📌 https://twitter.com/anneapplebaum/status/1340042528318517248?s=20
⋙⋙ TheAtlantic: A KGB Man to the End http://bit.ly/34pd3D8
// The origins of Putin’s worldview—and the rise of Russia’s new ruling class
🐣 RT @dnvolz A full SolarWinds damage assessment and recovery operation for the U.S. government “is a months, if not yearslong, ordeal,” a senior intelligence official said.
⋙ WSJ, Warren Strobel: Computer Hack Blamed on Russia Tests Limits of U.S. Response http://on.wsj.com/2LRf2d5
// It appears spying, not destruction, was the aim; U.S. officials have yet to define precise impact of the suspected Kremlin intrusion
🐣 RT @mviser The formation of the Biden Cabinet began much earlier and has been far more comprehensively planned than previously known. ¤ By Election Day, they had a database of 9,000 potential hires, with 2,500 already vetted. (It now has more than 45,000 entries).
⋙⋙ WaPo: 45,000 names, 130 packets of information, and gut instincts: How Biden is managing his transition http://wapo.st/3apPKNu
⋙ 🐣 RT @mviser “The Biden transition team is the most organized, best resourced, most effective transition team ever” said David Marchick at @publicservice. “Future transition teams, Republican and Democratic will be studying their model. They’re just wickedly organized”
🐣 RT @edwardlucas This is utterly brilliant by @ClaireBerlinski
⋙ Substack, Claire Berlinski: The Hack http://bit.ly/38eYoM8
// How to write about attacking the United States: The Cosmopolitan Globalists’ Guide to Style
🐣 RT @anneapplebaum “Rather than deter the Kremlin, the president has repeatedly refused to acknowledge previous Russian actions—basically giving Vladimir Putin an invitation to continue and amplify attacks” From @GrahamDavidA, on why the US has been hacked
⋙ TheAtlantic, David Graham: Trump’s Weakness Invited Russian Cyberattacks http://bit.ly/34mnhEr
// The president’s failure to push back aggressively against Putin’s meddling seems only to have encouraged it.
🐣 RT @petestrzok Untrue. The investigation opened July 31. ¤ 199 criminal charges followed. ¤ @realDonaldTrump, be like Sen McCain: spend your last days in office standing up to Putin’s cyberattacks and fighting the virus that’s killed 315k Americans, not diverting from your defeat and corruption.
⋙ 🐣 RT @real New Peter Strzok Texts Undermine Official Narrative on Start of ‘Russia Collusion‘ Investigation [link] via @BreitbartNews. Check out last in his class John McCain, one of the most overrated people in D.C.
TheDispatch, Jack Goldsmith: Self-Delusion on the Russia Hack http://bit.ly/38aQEug
// The U.S. regularly hacks foreign governmental computer systems on a massive scale.
🐣 RT @laraseligman Just in: @SecArmy Ryan McCarthy and @ArmyChiefStaff Gen. McConville respond to former Gen. Flynn’s remarks urging Trump to declare martial law to overturn the election results: “There is no role for the U.S. military in determining the outcome of an American election.”
🐣 RT @mccaffreyr3 On MSNBC. CHRIS HAYES. 8 pm ET. Today. Friday. Pentagon ends coordination with Biden transition. The top four political operatives are Trump squirrels who are hiding incompetence. There is no coup coming. This is just incompetence and political warfare.
🧵 RT @McFaul On Russian power, a few sentences from “Putin, Putinism, and the Domestic Determinants of Russian Foreign Policy.” THREAD/ 1. 📌 https://twitter.com/McFaul/status/1340013745146191872?s=20
⋙⋙ IntlSecurity, Michael McFaul: Putin, Putinism, and the Domestic Determinants of Russian Foreign Policy http://bit.ly/2KHGrNR
// 10/19/2020
🐣 RT @thedailybeast The shell company, which sucked almost half of the Trump campaign’s funds, had a board stacked with family members and confidantes
⋙ DailyBeast/BI: Kushner OK’d Trump Campaign Shell Company That Secretly Paid Inner Circle: Report http://bit.ly/2J1pj5k
// The shell company, which sucked almost half of the Trump campaign’s funds, had a board stacked with family members and confidantes.
Jared Kushner approved the creation of a shell company that operated like a “campaign within a campaign” and secretly funneled millions of dollars in campaign cash to Trump family members, Business Insider reports. The company, American Made Media Consultants Corporation and American Made Media Consultants LLC, took more than half of the Trump campaign’s massive $1.26 billion war chest and was largely shielded from having to publicly report financial details. However, a source told Business Insider that Trump’s daughter-in-law Lara Trump was the company’s president, Vice President Mike Pence’s nephew was its VP, and Trump campaign CFO Sean Dollman was treasurer and secretary.
The mysterious company caused consternation among other campaign staffers, who had no idea how it was spending money, and the Campaign Legal Center filed a civil complaint with the FEC in June accusing the Trump campaign of laundering $170 million largely through it. A campaign spokesperson denied that AMMC paid Lara Trump or Pence’s nephew for being on its board.
⭕ 17 Dec 2020
🐣 RT @AWeissman_ Trump leaves office saying not a word about the devastating Russian cyber attack on our nation. He began 4 years ago by undermining Obama’s Russia sanctions and then rewarded the man who helped him, Michael Flynn, with a full pardon. ¤ Why is he so afraid to condemn Russia?
🐣 RT @NatashaBertrand SCOOP/BREAKING NEWS: The Energy Department and National Nuclear Security Administration, which maintains the U.S. nuclear weapons stockpile, have evidence that hackers accessed their networks, officials directly familiar with the matter said.
⋙⋙ Politico: Nuclear weapons agency breached amid massive cyber onslaught http://politi.co/3npPFgi
// Hackers accessed systems at the National Nuclear Security Administration, which maintains the U.S. nuclear weapons stockpile.
⋙ 🐣 RT @NatashaBertrand Investigators found suspicious activity in networks belonging to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC), Sandia and Los Alamos national laboratories in New Mexico and Washington, the Office of Secure Transportation and the Richland Field Office of the DOE.
⋙ 🐣 RT @NatashaBertrand DOE and NNSA officials have begun coordinating notifications about the breach to their congressional oversight bodies. Officials at DOE still don’t know whether the attackers were able to access anything, the people said—and may not know “for weeks”
NYT, Thomas P. Bossert: I Was the Homeland Security Adviser to Trump. We’re Being Hacked. http://nyti.ms/37pHATf Mr. Bossert was the homeland security adviser to President Trump and deputy homeland security adviser to President George W. Bush.
// The magnitude of this national security breach is hard to overstate.
The logical conclusion is that we must act as if the Russian government has control of all the networks it has penetrated. But it is unclear what the Russians intend to do next. The access the Russians now enjoy could be used for far more than simply spying.
The actual and perceived control of so many important networks could easily be used to undermine public and consumer trust in data, written communications and services. In the networks that the Russians control, they have the power to destroy or alter data, and impersonate legitimate people. Domestic and geopolitical tensions could escalate quite easily if they use their access for malign influence and misinformation — both hallmarks of Russian behavior.
On Dec. 13, the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, a division of the Department of Homeland Security — itself a victim — issued an emergency directive ordering federal civilian agencies to remove SolarWinds software from their networks.
The removal is aimed at stopping the bleeding. Unfortunately, the move is sadly insufficient and woefully too late. The damage is already done and the computer networks are already compromised.
The remediation effort alone will be staggering. It will require the segregated replacement of entire enclaves of computers, network hardware and servers across vast federal and corporate networks. Somehow, the nation’s sensitive networks have to remain operational despite unknown levels of Russian access and control. A “do over” is mandatory and entire new networks need to be built — and isolated from compromised networks.
President Trump is on the verge of leaving behind a federal government, and perhaps a large number of major industries, compromised by the Russian government. He must use whatever leverage he can muster to protect the United States and severely punish the Russians.
President-elect Joe Biden must begin his planning to take charge of this crisis. He has to assume that communications about this matter are being read by Russia, and assume that any government data or email could be falsified.
At this moment, the two teams must find a way to cooperate. ¤ President Trump must get past his grievances about the election and govern for the remainder of his term. This moment requires unity, purpose and discipline. An intrusion so brazen and of this size and scope cannot be tolerated by any sovereign nation. ¤ We are sick, distracted, and now under cyberattack. Leadership is essential.
NYT, Thomas P. Bossert: I Was the Homeland Security Adviser to Trump. We’re Being Hacked. http://nyti.ms/37pHATf Mr. Bossert was the homeland security adviser to President Trump and deputy homeland security adviser to President George W. Bush.
// The magnitude of this national security breach is hard to overstate.
🐣 RT @CharlesPPierce Do you think he knows that his veto can be overridden? Have they explained that to him yet?
⋙ 🐣 RT @real I will Veto the Defense Bill, which will make China very unhappy. They love it. Must have Section 230 termination, protect our National Monuments and allow for removal of military from far away, and very unappreciative, lands. Thank you!
// Translation: Section 230 = Ability for Social Media to label his posts as misinformation; “our” National Monuments = Confederate monuments, rename bases; removal of military from “far away” = Germany
⭕ 16 Dec 2020
WaPo, Dana Milbank: We’ve finally identified the source of fraud in the 2020 election. It’s Ron Johnson. http://wapo.st/34kMZJo //➔ Basically, the hearing was an opportunity to air the accusations Rudy Inc lost in court but without a judge to look at the evidence and rule on the case
🐣 RT @DeadlineWH “Do we need a special counsel for Hunter Biden right now? Obviously not… An investigation has already been opened. There is no need for recusal of this Justice Dept. The only reason… is to try and stick it to the incoming president” – Chuck Rosenberg w/ @NicolleDWallace 💽 https://twitter.com/DeadlineWH/status/1339359574235766785?s=20/photo/1
💙 Politico, Dan Diamond: ‘We want them infected’: Trump appointee demanded ‘herd immunity’ strategy, emails reveal http://politi.co/2Kcr3JB
// Then-HHS science adviser Paul Alexander called for millions of Americans to be infected as means of fighting Covid-19.
🐣 ❣ RT @ProjectLincoln Americans have always said, “It can’t happen here.” But it can, and it will, unless we stand united and fight for our #democracy. 💽 https://twitter.com/ProjectLincoln/status/1339306575278698496?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @annieisi “This is not the America I recognize. It’s got to stop. … I would appreciate more support from my own party, the Republican Party, to call this stuff out and move on … We have to move on.” –Chris Krebs on baseless election fraud claims
⋙ USAToday: Ex-election security chief Christopher Krebs confronts GOP on false fraud claims: ‘It’s got to stop’ http://bit.ly/38aq5pg
WaPo, Amber Philips: How Republicans are spinning their election fraud falsehoods now that many are acknowledging Biden’s win http://wapo.st/3r2hJsr
// The message seems to be: Okay, Biden won, but here are reasons we should still maybe doubt it
🧵 RT @atrupar This is pretty rich coming from a guy whose baseless claims have undermined public confidence in elections 📌 https://twitter.com/atrupar/status/1339225647424688130?s=20
// Senate Homeland Security Committee on election, Chain Ron Johnson; former CISA chief Chris Krebs testifies (after having been fired by Trump for saying election was secure)
🐣 RT @real Poll: 92% of Republican Voters think the election was rigged!
⋙ 🐣 ◕ https://twitter.com/Auriandra/status/1339205790826176515?s=20/photo/1
// Statistica/Gallup: Party Affiliation Sees Major Shift http://bit.ly/3mtz5L3
// 7/17/2020; chart through June; Jan: D ~45%, R ~47% ➔ Jun: Jan: D ~50%, R ~39%
⋙⋙ 🐣 If you include non-voters, Republicans are about 22% of all Americans
NYT: Trump Appointees Describe the Crushing of the C.D.C. http://nyti.ms/34gr0mO “‘Every time that the science clashed with the messaging, messaging won,’ Mr. McGowan said.” The WH squelched anything ‘they thought could be viewed as criticism of Trump’
// Kyle McGowan, a former chief of staff at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and his deputy, Amanda Campbell, go public on the Trump administration’s manipulation of the agency.
⭕ 15 Dec 2020
NewYorker, Masha Gessen: The Overlooked Hallmark of the Trump Administration—and Other Autocracies http://bit.ly/2WromX0 ‘We have to understand Trump’s failures through two traits: cruelty and militant incompetence. But there is a third one: indifference’
We have come to expect this President to fail Americans, catastrophically, and we have become accustomed to understanding these failures through two traits of his Administration: cruelty and militant incompetence. But there is a third one, characteristic of many, if not all, autocracies: indifference.
One of the best-remembered and most useful phrases from twentieth-century political theory is Hannah Arendt’s “the banality of evil,” born of her attempt to understand the motivations of Adolf Eichmann, an architect of the Holocaust. The phrase has been interpreted to mean that Eichmann, despite his high position, was merely a cog in a wheel that would have churned with or without him—that he was normal for his time, a shapeless man who would have conformed to any era. All of this is accurate. But what perhaps struck Arendt most when she was reporting on the Eichmann trial, for The New Yorker, was Eichmann’s indifference. She notes that he didn’t seem to remember some of his most consequential, murderous actions, not because he had a poor memory—and not, she assumed, because he was dissembling—but because he didn’t care, and hadn’t cared at the time. Eichmann had an excellent recollection of two things: perceived injustices perpetrated against him—during his trial in Jerusalem he showed himself to be a first-class whiner—and events that advanced his own career, as when important people noticed him and, say, took him bowling.
The parallels offer themselves. From what we know about Donald Trump, he will remember 2020 as a year when he was unfairly treated by the voters, the courts, and the media, and also a year when he golfed. In this year of the coronavirus, Trump has oscillated between holding briefings and acting like the pandemic was over, while recommending bleach and bragging about his own tremendous recovery. But what he has demonstrated consistently, while three hundred thousand people in this country have died and millions became sick, is that he couldn’t be bothered. Memorable news stories have focussed on the cruel and self-serving ways in which the Administration has addressed the pandemic, as when the President’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, reportedly found it to be politically advantageous that the virus was disproportionately affecting states with Democratic governments, or when Trump withheld resources from states whose governors had criticized him. Trump apparently wanted to lift covid-19 restrictions because he wanted the short-term economic boost that might have helped his reëlection chances. But he also demonstrably, passionately, even desperately wanted a vaccine, and he wanted to take credit for it. His Administration poured money into Operation Warp Speed. And then they dropped the ball, for no reason that we can now see—likely because there is no real reason. Someone might have thought that it wasn’t his job. Someone might have wanted to spite Pfizer for refusing the money that Trump was so generously bestowing. Someone else might have assumed, overconfidently, that Pfizer could always be coerced later into producing the additional doses. Trump himself was most likely golfing.
Nothing has reminded me of Russia quite so much as the Trump Administration’s belated effort to encourage Americans to vaccinate. It will build on an earlier effort to “defeat despair” about the pandemic, which either wasted or simply failed to spend more than a quarter of a billion dollars, because the officials involved tried to ideologically vet two hundred and seventy-four celebrities who may or may not have been asked to take part. Many, according to documents released by the House Oversight and Reform Committee, appeared to have been disqualified because they had been critical of Trump. Several said no, and only a handful, Dennis Quaid among them, accepted; Quaid then apparently backed out, and the campaign went dormant. Had it all been a scam? A particularly dumb version of a Hollywood witch-hunt? Probably not. It was probably another story about a President and an Administration that cares about slights but not about people.
🐣 RT @thereidout “At the end of the day, there’s now one pro-democracy political party in the United States of America and that’s the Democratic Party. ¤ And I am a member of that party because of that. I’m a single issue voter. I believe in democracy.” @SteveSchmidtSES
on #thereidout. 💽 https://twitter.com/thereidout/status/1338999604654862345?s=20/photo/1
WaPo, Aaron Blake: McConnell sets up a clash with Trump over who’s in charge in the GOP http://wapo.st/385aXJS //➔ In the mix is whether Trump will react to McConnell’s rebuke by gumming up the Georgia runoffs
WaPo: Judge orders Trump Organization to give more records to N.Y. attorney general http://wapo.st/3mpJcR4
// re: tax evasion
🐣 RT @SennBlumenthal Stunning. Today’s classified briefing on Russia’s cyberattack left me deeply alarmed, in fact downright scared. Americans deserve to know what’s going on. Declassify what’s known & unknown.
🐣 RT @JuliaDavisNews “This is probably going to be one of the most consequential cyberattacks in U.S. history,” one U.S. official said, after the NSC held its second meeting in three days about the attacks, which security experts have linked to Russian intelligence.
⋙ Politico: ‘Massively disruptive’ cyber crisis engulfs multiple agencies http://politi.co/34gL88h
// The hacks also placed new pressure on the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, which has been without a permanent leader since November.
🐣 RT @JoyceWhiteVance I wrote what’s been on my mind & my heart: Barr will go down in history as the worst attorney general of our lifetimes. He consistently chose to enable a president who did not believe in the rule of law, regardless of the damage it did to the country.
⋙ MSNBC, Joyce Vance: Barr’s escape hatch isn’t enough to shake Trump’s stigma http://on.msnbc.com/3r3Fksu
// Barr’s legacy is one of dishonesty and steadfast refusal to understand his duty to serve justice and the people.
DailyBeast, Rick Wilson: Trump’s Axis of Assholes Just Completed Its Hostile Takeover of the Republican Party http://bit.ly/37jZK8S “The Republican Party’s wholesale moral, ideological, and political collapse is the most shocking ideological betrayal in our nation’s history”
// He lost the election, but his true believers, denying that defeat to the bitter end and already preparing to sabotage everything the Biden administration does, are the party now.
The Republican Party’s wholesale moral, ideological, and political collapse is the most shocking ideological betrayal in our nation’s history. From a devotion (at least a stated devotion) to the Constitution, federalism, and limits on the power of government over its citizens, the Trump GOP has gone full authoritarian, pleading “Meine Ehre heisst Treue” to ensure Donald Trump’s continuing affection. That they believe this won’t come without political and moral consequences is beyond logic and reason, but here we are.
This week’s legal temper tantrums, insane demands, and alt-reich violence on the streets of Washington, D.C., proved that, except for a tiny handful, Republicans are just as awful as Trump. They are peerless when it comes to raging contempt for the will of the voters, the Constitution, and the fundamental underpinnings of the republic. The ludicrous, last-gasp Texas legal argument that the Supreme Court summarily rejected last week was not simply doomed to fail from a legal perspective. It was so politically and morally corrosive and dangerous that only in the era of Trumpian collapse would they have allowed their names to be attached to it.
Once 17 Republican attorney generals—and if you’re new to politics, “AG” also stands for “Aspiring Governor”—put ambition over the Constitution and the rule of law to co-sign the Lone Star State’s hot garbage, to use the legal term, we’re no longer in a functioning republic.
All authoritarian movements seek to purify their ranks, to weed out the unbelievers, the apostates, the poseurs. Trumpism is no different. You’ll see more and more GOP members tested in the dark and difficult days ahead. Don’t be shocked when they fail; as a close observer of the GOP’s transformation into the party of Trump-fluffers, I’ve seen it more closely than most and know how this story ends. They’ll make every excuse, but fear of Trump and the wretched lust for power are all they have left.
🐣 📋 RT @Redistrict Fact: in 2016, Hillary Clinton won the popular vote by 2.9 million and came within 77,744 votes of winning the presidency. ¤ In 2020, Donald Trump lost the popular vote by 7.1 million and came within 65,009 votes of winning reelection.
// margins in Swing States
⋙ 🐣 RT @Lee__Drake This analysis looks at the tipping point to 270. A small number of votes in AZ, GA, WI, NV, and NE-2 could have done it
⋙ 🐣 RT @CjgbVictoria As devil’s advocate, I’ll make a pro-EC argument I haven’t seen elsewhere. Over the last 20 years, ignoring 3rd parties, the presidential vote has averaged D 52% & R 48%. Each party won the EC 50% of the time. Under a pop vote system, the D’s wd win 83% & the R’s 17% of the time.
🐣 RT @kaitlancollins Biden says he had “a good conversation” with McConnell today. “I called him to thank him for the congratulations.” He said they have “always been straight with one another” and agreed to get together “sooner than later.” “I’m looking forward to working with him.”
🐣 RT @mkraju Barry Black, the esteemed Senate chaplain, says in his morning prayer: “We accept the results of the Electoral College and ask that you bless President-elect Joe Biden and Vice President-elect Kamala Harris.” His prayer comes before McConnell’s speech on the floor
🐣 RT @atrupar “Our country has officially a President-elect and a Vice President-elect … the Electoral College has spoken” — here’s Mitch McConnell on the Senate floor congratulating Joe Biden and Kamala Harris on their victory over Donald Trump 💽 https://twitter.com/atrupar/status/1338866857734856705?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @MuellerSheWrote He must have fallen down multiple times like the others.
⋙ 🐣 RT @BillBrowder Shocking news. Paul Behrends, ex-staffer to Dana Rohrabacher and one of the key people behind the anti Magnitsky campaign in DC in 2016 died suddenly from head trauma last weekend in Washington
⋙⋙ DailyBeast: Ex-Hill Staffer Linked to Veselnitskaya Dies Suddenly After Fall Near His Home http://bit.ly/2LE0CwP “The longtime aide to ‘Putin’s Congressman’ Dana Rohrabacher died suddenly from a head injury over the weekend”
// Paul Behrends, who lost his job on the House Foreign Affairs subcommittee after links to Russia were reported, suffered a head injury close to his home on Friday night.
⋙⋙⋙ 🐣 RT @ThomasS4217 timing is interesting..8th anniversary of Magnitsky Act
🐣 RT @Reuters Putin congratulates Joe Biden on U.S. election victory – Kremlin http://reut.rs/3abf5KN
⭕ 14 Dec 2020
💙 ✅ WaPo, Ann Gerhart: Election results under attack: Here are the facts http://wapo.st/2IY9cWg ⋙ with excerpts from various court rulings and links to all of The Post’s reporting on each false claim
// tags: rigged election rigging stolen election stolen; A compilation of the misinformation, disinformation and many rejected legal challenges by Trump and his allies to try to overturn votes
🐣 RT @RepJerryNadler Attorney General Barr will be remembered for misleading the public, politicizing DOJ, and callously disregarding civil rights. I look forward to working with whomever President-elect Biden chooses as the new AG to repair the integrity of the Department of Justice. Text Block: https://twitter.com/RepJerryNadler/status/1338638516415311877?s=20/photo/1
💙 NYT, Michelle Goldberg: Just How Dangerous Was Donald Trump? http://nyti.ms/3gOot8n “Both the Trump and Bush presidencies concluded with America a smoking ruin. Only Trump has ensured that nearly half the country doesn’t see it”
// He failed to bend the state to his will, but he still broke the country.
Fascism is obsessed with fears of victimization, humiliation and a decline, and a concomitant cult of strength. Fascists, wrote Robert O. Paxton in “The Anatomy of Fascism,” see “the need for authority by natural chiefs (always male), culminating in a national chieftain who alone is capable of incarnating the group’s historical destiny.” They believe in “the superiority of the leader’s instincts over abstract and universal reason.” This aptly describes Trump’s movement.
… Trump’s ability to envelop his followers in a cocoon of lies is unparalleled. The Bush administration deceived the country to go to war in Iraq. It did not insist, after the invasion, that weapons of mass destruction had been found when they obviously were not. That’s why the country was able to reach a consensus that the war was a disaster.
No such consensus will be possible about Trump — not about his abuses of power, his calamitous response to the coronavirus, or his electoral defeat. He leaves behind a nation deranged.
🐣 RT @inhoungk Analysts said it was hard to know which was worse: that the federal government was blindsided again by Russian intelligence agencies, or that when it became clear what was happening, White House officials said nothing. @SangerNYT @nicoleperlroth
⋙ NYT: Scope of Russian Hack Becomes Clear: Multiple U.S. Agencies Were Hit http://nyti.ms/3gM8Leb
// The Pentagon, intelligence agencies, nuclear labs and Fortune 500 companies use software that was found to have been compromised by Russian hackers. The sweep of stolen data is still being assessed.
🐣 RT @nytimes Joe Biden’s 306 Electoral College votes make his victory official. https://nyti.ms/3a9Zv1Y [Map:] https://twitter.com/nytimes/status/1338650030576689152?s=20/photo/1
💽 WaPo: Joe Biden’s speech to America: ‘It is time to turn the page’ http://wapo.st/3oPDrhi
President-elect Joe Biden reaffirmed his faith in the integrity of American elections and the legitimacy of his presidency after the electoral college formalized his November win Monday, ridiculing President Trump for claiming victory despite multiple failed efforts to overturn the election results.
In sweeping and sometimes agitated comments 37 days after he was projected the winner, Biden attempted to unify a polarized and skittish country with direct appeals to the more than 74 million Americans who voted for Trump.
“In this battle for the soul of America, democracy prevailed,” Biden said. “We the people voted. Faith in our institutions held. The integrity of our elections remains intact. And now it is time to turn the page, as we’ve done throughout our history. To unite. To heal.”
The speech represented, to date, Biden’s most forceful defense of the election as well as his most complete denunciation of Trump’s fraudulent claims. Biden noted that he received 7 million more popular votes, and the same number of electoral votes, 306, as Trump did in 2016 when he claimed “a landslide.”
“President Trump was denied no course of action he wanted to take,” Biden said. “He took his case to Republican governors and Republican secretaries of state . . . to Republican state legislatures, to Republican-appointed judges at every level. Even President Trump’s own cybersecurity chief overseeing our elections said it was the most secure election in American history.”
Biden praised judges and election workers, both Democrats and Republicans, who withstood Trump’s criticism and defended the integrity of the election. ¤ “They knew this election was overseen, overseen by them — it was honest, it was free, and it was fair,” Biden said. “They saw it with their own eyes, and they wouldn’t be bullied into saying anything different. It was truly remarkable.”
“It is my sincere hope we never again see anyone subjected to the kind of threats and abuse we saw in this election,” he added. “It’s simply unconscionable. We owe these public servants a debt of gratitude … our democracy survived because of them.”
Biden expressed particular contempt for a Texas-based legal challenge — which was joined by 17 Republican attorneys general and 126 congressional Republicans — that sought to overturn results in four states that Biden won: Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.
“Thankfully, a unanimous Supreme Court immediately and completely rejected this effort,” Biden said. “The court sent a clear signal to President Trump that they would be no part of an unprecedented assault on our democracy.”
The meeting of the electoral college has been, in recent history, a formality often unnoticed by the public, rather than an event carried live on cable television and prompting a major address by a president-elect. It was only Trump’s defiance that prompted Biden to decide to give another valedictory speech.
💽 ≣ PBS: Biden speaks after Electoral College certification results [transcript, video] http://to.pbs.org/2LDSpJ5
🧵 RT @atrupar Biden: “In the start of this pandemic, this crisis, many were wondering how many Americans would actually vote at all, but those fears proved proved to be unfounded. We saw something very few predicted, even thought possible — the biggest voter turnout in the history.” 📌 https://twitter.com/atrupar/status/1338643429434208256?s=20
// Biden speech after Electoral Votes counted (pending Hawaii)
🔆 This❗️⋙ NYT: William Barr Is Out as Attorney General http://nyti.ms/34aXvTo “Barr’s resignation allows him to avoid any confrontation with the president over his refusal to advance Mr. Trump’s efforts to rewrite the election results”
// Mr. Barr was one of the most powerful members of President Trump’s cabinet and faced widespread criticism over his willingness to advance Mr. Trump’s political agenda.
🐣 RT @marceelias 🚨🚨🚨BREAKING: Joe Biden and Kamala Harris have officially cross the 270 margin in the Electoral College voting necessary to become President and Vice-President on January 20th. ¤ Donald Trump and his allies lost a record breaking 59 lawsuits between Election Day and today.
🐣 We reached 300K verified deaths from COVID-19 today ~ the same day thd first vaccines were administered. ¤ But we’re not out of the woods yet. IHME projects another 200K deaths by April 1. ¤ So stay safe: mask up, keep your distance, wash your hands and avoid gatherings. ● https://twitter.com/Auriandra/status/1338608858915278850?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @nytimes Breaking News: More than 300,000 people with the coronavirus in the U.S. have died, a wrenching toll that comes on the heels of the nation’s first vaccine shots.
‼️ ⋙ NYT: The number of people with the virus who died in the U.S. passes 300,000. http://nyti.ms/34fd38C
WaPo, Karen Tumulty: President Trump has become a delusional character out of Monty Python http://wapo.st/3gMR8L3
😅 ♫ RT @ReesusP GOODBYE Perhaps it would be easier to hear from some white kids?
💽 https://twitter.com/ReesusP/status/1338507387888537600?s=20/photo/1
// The Sound of Music parody Auf Wiedersehen to Trump
🐣 RT @BeschlossDC President’s legal team has just been rejected by Wisconsin Supreme Court in effort to overturn 2020 election: https://twitter.com/BeschlossDC/status/1338530371990941697?s=20/photo/1
// Three Stooges
🐣 📋 I take some comfort in the fact that, of the entire US pop. of 331M, just 74.2M voted for Trump. That’s only 22.5%. ¤ 81.3M voted for Biden. That leaves 175.5M who did not vote. Some are too young to vote, of course, some too busy, some uninterested. I’m grateful they’re there.
⭕ 13 Dec 2020
💙 WaPo: Tracking the 2020 electoral college vote http://wapo.st/3gIg9ap //➔ Times when each state’s electors will cast their votes are given, along with the link to each state’s livestream
// Follow along as states cast their votes for president and finalize Joe Biden’s win
🐣 ”The yeoman is the backbone of the nation.” “Cowards are born in towns, heroes in the country.” – Heinrich Himmler ¤ ⋙ The ideology that says cities are “corrupt” and the countryside brave and pure has a history
🐣 RT @kylegriffin1 In a remarkable show of near-unanimity across the nation’s judiciary, at least 86 judges — ranging from the lowest levels of state court systems to the U.S. Supreme Court — have rejected at least one post-election lawsuit filed by Trump or his supporters.
⋙ WaPo: ‘The last wall’: How dozens of judges across the political spectrum rejected Trump’s efforts to overturn the election http://wapo.st/3qNZyXr
// 38 appointed by Republicans
🐣 RT @HowardMortman 20 years ago today. ¤ Gore: “Supreme Court has spoken. While I strongly disagree with court’s decision, I accept the finality of this outcome, which will be ratified Monday in Electoral College. For sake of our unity as a people and strength of our democracy, I offer my concession” 💽 https://twitter.com/HowardMortman/status/1338092915135049729?s=20/photo/1
⭕ 12 Dec 2020
🐣 RT @brhodes These goons in the streets of DC would have been SA in early 1930s Berlin. And the vast majority of elected Republicans won’t say a word about it.
🐣 RT @davidplouffe The battle to save our country is not Democrats vs Republicans. It is pro-democracy forces vs. pro-autocracy forces. It won’t go away on Jan. 20. It won’t be won easily and it will take a big tent to include all those who disagree on a bunch of things but agree on the big thing.
🧵 RT @SteveSchmidtSES In all the years I worked in GOP politics, from local races to the White House it never occurred to me that it was even remotely possible that there were people sitting in rooms with me that would one day be in favor of overturning a Presidential election and making the loser […] America’s first dictator. 📌 https://twitter.com/SteveSchmidtSES/status/1337848568661598212?s=20
🐣 RT @jamiegangel What Attorney General Bill Barr really thinks of @realDonaldTrump tweets according to a source familiar with the dynamic: “it’s the deposed king’s ranting…” my reporting with @Kevinliptakcnn @cnn
⋙ 🐣 RT @LisaMirandoCNN Great new reporting from @jamiegangel: A source familiar with the dynamic between AG Barr and Trump right now says Barr cannot be intimidated by Trump, “none of this matters— it’s the deposed King ranting. Irrelevant to the course of justice and to Trump’s election loss..” #CNN
🐣 RT @kasparov68 Don’t dare say “But the system worked” when a majority of Republicans in Congress support the overturning of a free and fair election. You don’t celebrate a cancer not having killed you yet. You celebrate when you’re cancer free.
⋙ 🐣 RT @kasparov68 The system isn’t working when so many of its participants and supposed defenders are trying to destroy it. That’s the crisis, and it’s not going away because this time some judges threw out cases prepared by idiots.
🐣 RT @ RepKinzinger [R] I want to be clear: the Supreme Court is not the deep state. The case had no merit and was dispatched 9-0. There was no win here. Complaining and bellyaching is not a manly trait, it’s actually sad. Real men accept a loss with grace.
🐣 RT @davidplouffe The fight to save our Democracy is just beginning. It’s a scary thought. But if this cast of seditionists gains control of the Senate, House and the White House anytime this decade it’s lights out for America. They are all must-win elections.
🐣 RT @StevenBeschloss Never again wonder how it could have happened in Germany. Never again think it couldn’t happen here. The authoritarian impulse in America is a cancer that must be confronted and overcome.
⋙ 🐣 RT @brianklaas The person representing Trump’s campaign in court just retweeted a call for Joe Biden & Kamala Harris to “confess their crimes on national TV” or be executed. ¤ The authoritarian radicalization of the Republican Party and the Republican base is the defining story of the Trump era.
⋙⋙ 🐣 RT @brianklaas Here’s the tweet, which was retweeted by Sidney Powell, who has been closely affiliated with Trump’s legal team during the post-election process. https://twitter.com/brianklaas/status/1337791310481289218?s=20/photo/1
⋙ 🐣 RT @jennycohn1 They planned their coup starting in February at the latest.
⋙⋙ 🐣 RT @ “Newly Surfaced Recording Reveals ALEC and GOP Election Attorneys [and the CNP] Working with State Legislators to Question Validity of Election” — in February, long before the election took place. By @JamieMCorey 1/
⋙⋙⋙ 💽 Documented.net: Newly Surfaced Recording Reveals ALEC and GOP Election Attorneys Working with State Legislators to Question Validity of Election http://bit.ly/342XCjZ
// 10/26/2020; CNP: Council for National Policy
American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) CEO Lisa Nelson told a room full of conservative activists that ALEC had been working with three GOP attorneys on “action items that legislators can take to question the validity of an election.” The comments were made during a strategy session about elections at the Council for National Policy in February 2020.
Nelson, who runs the legally non-partisan charity (ALEC) and is a member of CNP, told the group, “obviously we all want President Trump to win and win the national vote. But it’s very clear from all the comments and all the suggestions up front that really what it comes down to is the states and the state legislators.” She added that they’ve been working with former Federal Election Commission (FEC) Member and Heritage Foundation attorney Hans Von Spakovsky, former FEC member Brad Smith, and GOP attorney Cleta Mitchell “trying to identify what are those action items that legislators can take in their states.”
🚫 WaPo: Multiple people stabbed after thousands gather for pro-Trump demonstrations in Washington http://wapo.st/2KowlkM
WaPo Editorial: Republicans faced a simple choice: For or against democracy. http://wapo.st/3qQ4Ql2 “Their recklessness raises the once-unthinkable possibility that a Congress controlled by one party might one day flip a presidential election … in defiance of the voters’ will”
🐣 RT @Edsall “America under Trump became less free, less equal, more divided, more alone, deeper in debt, swampier, dirtier, meaner, sicker, and deader,” George Packer writes. “It also became more delusional.”
⋙ TheAtlantic, George Packer: A Political Obituary for Donald Trump http://bit.ly/3gHgMkj
// Jan-Feb 2021; The effects of his reign will linger. But democracy survived.
NYT: ‘An Indelible Stain’: How the GOP Tried to Topple a Pillar of Democracy http://nyti.ms/3qS4cDK “[M]uch of the GOP leadership now shares responsibility for the quixotic attempt to ignore the nation’s founding principles and engineer a different verdict from the one voters cast in November”
// by Jim Rutenberg and Nick Corasaniti; The Supreme Court repudiation of President Trump was also a blunt rebuke to Republican leaders who had put their interests ahead of the country’s.
🐣 RT @SanhoTree Live coverage from the White House Führerbunker. 💽 https://twitter.com/SanhoTree/status/1324370210636390400?s=20/photo/1
↥ ↧
🐣 RT @atrupar Overwhelming “Downfall” vibes from Trump’s tweets this morning. The city is crumbling around him and from the bunker he’s hysterically turning on his former allies.
WaPo, Dan Balz: Republican officials have followed Trump along his dangerous and destructive path http://wapo.st/3gGt64l
⭕ 11 Dec 2020
🐣 RT @SpeakerPelosi The 126 Republican Members that signed onto this unlawful & undemocratic GOP lawsuit have brought dishonor to the House and must once and for all end their election subversion – immediately.
⋙ Speaker.gov: Pelosi Statement on Supreme Court Rejecting GOP Election Sabotage Lawsuit http://bit.ly/37eeAh9
Washington, D.C. – Speaker Nancy Pelosi issued this statement after the U.S. Supreme Court ruled to reject the sham GOP lawsuit demanding that Electoral College votes in four states be overturned and awarded to Donald Trump:
“The Court has rightly dismissed out of hand the extreme, unlawful and undemocratic GOP lawsuit to overturn the will of millions of American voters.
“The 126 Republican Members that signed onto this lawsuit brought dishonor to the House. Instead of upholding their oath to support and defend the Constitution, they chose to subvert the Constitution and undermine public trust in our sacred democratic institutions.
“The pandemic is raging, with nearly 300,000 having died and tens of millions having lost jobs. Strong, unified action is needed to crush the virus, and Republicans must once and for all end their election subversion – immediately.”
NYT, Jamelle Bouie: The ‘Trump Won’ Farce Isn’t Funny Anymore http://nyti.ms/3nboYfa “[T]he events of the past month make me worry that we’re following a script the climax of which requires a disaster”
// Republicans are now seriously arguing that elections are legitimate only when their side wins.
WaPo, Greg Sargent: Chris Murphy’s surprise floor speech raises tough questions for Democrats http://wapo.st/3qPQH7p “This is a party that has a whole bunch of enemies of democracy inside its top ranks. That’s bone-chilling.” ~ Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.)
🐣 RT @AdamSerwer Never forget that the majority of Republicans sought to overthrow the results of a presidential election and install their unelected candidate, the majority of their supporters approved, and their sniveling apparatchiks concocted post hoc rationalizations justifying it.
⋙ 🐣 RT @AdamSerwer None of the people who supported that document—not a one—can ever again honestly claim to believe in freedom, democracy, individual rights, or constitutional government. All they believe in is their own divine right to rule, no matter what the people say.
WaPo, Amanda Bennett: I was Voice of America’s director. Trump’s latest pick to run the organization is dangerous. http://wapo.st/3mbAg1N
HuffPo: Trump Named ‘Loser Of The Year’ By German News Magazine Der Spiegel http://bit.ly/3a4YgRW
// “Trump’s presidency ends as it began: Without decency and without dignity,” Der Spiegel declared.
🐣 RT @ICEINTERN Wake up GOP. ¤ “Patriotism means to stand by the country. It does not mean to stand by the President.” Theodore Roosevelt, 26th President of the United States. ¤ With this rejection, GOP is a DEAD Party. ¤ People will feel shameful to be called “republican”. #GOPIsOver
⋙ 🐣 RT @nytopinion “What is left to say about a political party that would throw out millions of votes? The substance of a lawsuit filed by the State of Texas, and backed by more than 17 other states, would be laughable were it not so dangerous,” writes the editorial board.
⋙⋙ NYT Editorial: The Republicans Who Embraced Nihilism http://nyti.ms/3qS0zNV
// The Supreme Court thwarts the latest Trumpist attack on American democracy.
🐣 RT @TWreninator This is excellent. Madam Speaker please do this!! @TeamPelosi @SpeakerPelosi
⋙ 🐣 RT @BillPascrell Section 3 of the 14th Amendment was written after the Civil War to bar from government any traitors who would seek to destroy the Union. ¤ My letter to House leadership today demands that 126 Republicans (and counting) are violating the Constitution. https://twitter.com/BillPascrell/status/1337482904545464325?s=20/photo/1-2
// letter
🐣 RT @real The Supreme Court really let us down. No Wisdom, No Courage!
🐣 RT @C_C_Krebs Here’s how I see it: plenty of people are telling you who they are right now. Go ahead and take them at their word.
🐣 RT @robertjdenault Just to be clear, this morning Trump found out his loan officers and insurance company have been subpoenaed by criminal investigators not subject to his pardon power and this evening his last gasp at election subversion was killed by a conservative SCOTUS.
🐣 RT @sgurman New w/@aviswanatha @rebeccaballhaus: Trump in a meeting Friday fumed about a @WSJ report that said Barr knew about the Hunter Biden investigation and kept it private during the heated election campaign, and openly considered firing the attorney general.
⋙ ‼️ WSJ: Trump Pursues Appointing Special Counsel to Probe Election, Hunter Biden http://on.wsj.com/3qQATRO
// President has expressed frustration with Attorney General William Barr as efforts to overturn election have failed
🐣 RT @neal_katyal “Any attorney…admitted to conduct cases in any court of the US…who so multiplies the proceedings in any case unreasonably&vexatiously may be required by the court to satisfy personally the excess costs, expenses&attorneys fees reasonably incurred” 28 USC 1927
SCOTUSblog, Amy Howe: Justices throw out Texas lawsuit that sought to block election outcome http://bit.ly/2W6Pevj
🐣 RT @chrislhayes This is bad rhetoric! Bad bad bad!
⋙ 🐣 RT @adamkelsey The @TexasGOP is out with a statement in the wake of the Supreme Court decision, all but calling for secession: ¤ “Perhaps law-abiding states should bond together and form a Union of states that will abide by the constitution.”
🐣 RT @ArietteSaenz .@MichaelJGwin, spox for @JoeBiden, reacts to SCOTUS rejecting Texas’ & President Trump’s bid to overturn the election: “This is no surprise” Text Block: https://twitter.com/ArletteSaenz/status/1337553116334612481?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @DavidAFrench There were zero votes for the TX AG on the merits, including zero votes from Trump appointees. It was a clown suit from the beginning, and 126 representatives, 18 state AG’s, and a host of prominent right-wing activists beclowned themselves by supporting it.
🐣 RT @eliehonig In a way, Alito and Thomas smacked this down hardest of all. ¤ The other 7 Justices said essentially: we wouldn’t even let Texas in the door. ¤ Alito and Thomas said: we *would* let Texas in the door, and then we’d throw them out.
Reason, Jonathan Adler: Supreme Court Unanimously Denies Texas Emergency Relief, Refuses to Grant Motion for Leave to File http://bit.ly/3mathpK “The #Kraken may have been released. Tonight’s Supreme Court order should also have put it out of its misery.”
🐣 RT @gtconway3d “No constitutional provision, no statute and no principle of law gives one state the standing to challenge another state’s handling of an election.”
⋙⋙ 🐣 RT @PostOpinions In our system, Texas isn’t the boss of Pennsylvania, @gtconway3d writes. ¤ “Allowing such suits would invite a multistate free-for-all every time a presidential election is held.”
⋙⋙⋙ WaPo, George Conway III: Trump’s last-ditch effort to steal the election is the biggest farce of all http://wapo.st/3oJyGWr
🔆 This❗️⋙ 🐣 RT @deepakguptalaw BREAKING: The Supreme Court has flatly rejected Texas’s insane bid to overturn the lawful results of the 2020 presidential election. The case is over. Texas has no say how other states conduct their elections. https://twitter.com/deepakguptalaw/status/1337543152996126726?s=20/photo/1
WaPo: Congress bans anonymous shell companies after long campaign by anti-corruption groups http://wapo.st/2W3W8kT “The legislation has limitations. The general public won’t have access to the ownership data, a disappointment to anti-corruption campaigners”
// LLCs; tagged onto Defense bill; Bipartisan measure requires companies established in the U.S. to disclose their real owners
🐣 RT @emptywheel 126 Republicans want to help Donald Trump steal the election even though he lost even worse than Mitt Romney did in 2012.
SCOTUSblog, Tom Goldstein: Editorial: Don’t just deny Texas’ original action. Decimate it. http://bit.ly/379NJmA “A simple five-page per curiam opinion genuinely could end up in the pantheon of all-time most significant rulings in American history”
WaPo, Jennifer Rubin: Republicans record their names on a list of shame http://wapo.st/2LtsKTi (w links to lists of Seditionists)
🐣 RT @McFaul One group of states trying to overturn the election results in a another group of states is an outrageously anti-democratic, anti-federalism act. Since 1861, is there any comparable anti-democratic, anti-American act in our history? I can’t think of any, but maybe I’m wrong.
Law&Crime: Manhattan DA’s Office Reportedly ‘Escalating’ Investigation of Trump ‘Significantly,’ Recently Interviewed Deutsche Bank Employees http://bit.ly/2W4WJTt
⭕ 10 Dec 2020
WaPo: With time running out, Trump and GOP allies turn up pressure on Supreme Court in election assault http://wapo.st/3gDPAD3 We are only “a few democracy-conscious representatives away” from Republicans in Congress overturning an election
Joshua A. Douglas, a law professor at the University of Kentucky, said Trump’s pressure will have no effect with the justices, calling it “a loser of a case” that he expect the court to “reject quite easily — probably with a one-sentence order.”
But he warned that the effort from Trump and his GOP allies has, in his view, made clear that Republicans in Congress, if they held big enough majorities in both chambers, would plausibly attempt to “undo the will of the voter when they count the electoral college votes on Jan. 6.”
With Democrats controlling the House, he added, such a scenario is impossible this year, “but we are only a few democracy-conscious representatives away from that potentially occurring. That itself is extremely concerning for the longer-term health of our democracy.”
TheBulwark, Jonathan Last: The Republican Party As Totalitarian State http://bit.ly/381dTqW “It’s important to understand that this is all new to American politics. We have not been down this road before. And so we should not assume that we know with certainty where it leads”
// One of our two major political parties has become an autocracy.
💙 TheAtlantic, Adam Serwer: If You Didn’t Vote for Trump, Your Vote Is Fraudulent http://bit.ly/2JTyAwE “It’s no accident that the Trump campaign’s claims have focused almost entirely on jurisdictions with high Black populations”
// The president’s supporters believe that the votes of rival constituencies should not count—even though they understand, on some level, that they do.
Trumpism demands the profession of beliefs that are neither strictly literal nor exactly figurative, but instead statements of ideological values that don’t fit neatly in either category. These statements are not amenable to journalistic fact-checking, because they are not factual claims; they are assertions of identity and political legitimacy that are incontestable on their own terms. To announce loudly that you accept the proclamations of the Church of Trump, no matter how false, contradictory, or exaggerated, is to identify yourself as a member of that faith community; to deny them is to risk excommunication. As long as devotion to the Trumpian creed remains a central tenet of membership in the Republican Party, precious few elected officials will risk the brand of the heretic.
To Trump’s strongest supporters, Biden’s win is a fraud because his voters should not count to begin with, and because the Democratic Party is not a legitimate political institution that should be allowed to wield power even if they did. ¤ This is why the authoritarian remedies festering in the Trump fever swamps—martial law, the usurpation of state electors, Supreme Court fiat—are so openly contemplated. Because the true will of the people is that Trump remain president, forcing that outcome, even in the face of defeat, is a fulfillment of democracy rather than its betrayal.
The Republican base’s fundamental belief, the one that Trump used to win them over in the first place, the one that ties the election conspiracy theory to birtherism and to Trump’s sneering attack on the Squad’s citizenship, is that Democratic victories do not count, because Democratic voters are not truly American. It’s no accident that the Trump campaign’s claims have focused almost entirely on jurisdictions with high Black populations.
“Detroit and Philadelphia—known as two of the most corrupt political places anywhere in our country, easily—cannot be responsible for engineering the outcome of a presidential race,” Trump said on November 5. Since then, Trump’s legal challenges have targeted cities with large Black populations—not just Philadelphia and Detroit, but also Pittsburgh, Milwaukee, and Atlanta. Trump improved his vote margin slightly in these places, while getting destroyed in nearby suburbs. But because the outdated popular perception of suburbs is that they are white, they lack the assumption of illegitimacy that Trumpists attach to cities.
The absence of not only evidence of any systemic fraud, but even compelling anecdotes that might be misleadingly trumpeted throughout right-wing media, has not deterred the president or his supporters. Republican legislators are already scheming to put new restrictions on the franchise, justified by claims of fraud so baseless that not even their handpicked judges can find a foothold to sustain them. The necessary ingredient is not actual voter fraud, but Democratic victory at the ballot box, real or potential.
According to a 2020 survey by the political scientist Larry Bartels, three-quarters of Republican voters believe that “it is hard to trust the results of elections when so many people will vote for anyone who offers a handout.” Because Republicans believe, as Mitt Romney put it after his defeat in 2012, that Black people vote for Democrats only because they are offered “free stuff,” Black votes are considered illegitimate even if they are legally cast. Those votes could be legitimate if more of them were cast for Republicans, the party of true Americans, but as long as they are cast for Democrats, they can be dismissed as the result of Democratic brainwashing. Demanding that Black votes be tossed out is not antidemocratic, because they should not have counted in the first place.
In the early days of Reconstruction, Democrats hoped that Black men, if enfranchised, would vote for those who had fought to keep them enslaved, understanding that their subordinate position in southern society was in the best interests of both races. Some northern Republicans similarly feared that Black men would vote as their former masters demanded. But when the emancipated chose their own path based on their own interests, Democrats concluded that they had to be excised from the polity, by force. ¤ In that era, Democrats and their paramilitary allies used their claims of fraud and conviction that Black participation had fatally corrupted democracy to justify a campaign of murder and terrorism.
The conviction that the rival political constituency cannot, under any circumstances, legitimately hold power has not yet resulted in widespread violence. But it remains incompatible with democracy, which requires the assent of its losers and the peaceful transfer of power between factions. ¤ When they say the 2020 election was stolen, Trumpists are expressing their view that the votes of rival constituencies should not count, even though they understand, on some level, that they do. They are declaring that the nation belongs to them and them alone, whether or not they actually comprise a majority, because they are the only real Americans to begin with.
WaPo, Aaron Blake: The Trump team throws in the towel on proving voter fraud http://wapo.st/3gyJELM
🐣 RT @marceelias I am shaken by this Texas case. Not because it will prevail (it won’t) but because something is seriously wrong with our democracy that these elected leaders, who know better, are using the courts to spread lies and undermine our elections. ¤ That makes me very worried.
⋙ 🐣 RT @jaketapper The Kraken Caucus — 106 House Republicans (and 18 state attorneys general) who signed onto a anti-democracy lawsuit to disenfranchise millions of their fellow Americans, based on lies and conspiracy theories.
💙💽 MSNBC, LastWord: Steve Schmidt: ‘106 members of Congress broke faith with American democracy’ http://on.msnbc.com/3gBEUEX
// Fmr. Republican strategist Steve Schmidt joins Lawrence O’Donnell to discuss how some House Republicans refusing to accept that Biden won means “we’re one election away from losing the country to people who do not believe in democracy.”
↥ ↧
💙💽 MSNBC, DeadlineWH: Steve Schmidt: We are ‘one election away… from losing our democracy’ http://on.msnbc.com/3m8TAwG
// 12/9/2020; Lincoln Project co-founder Steve Schmidt says congressional Republicans are to blame for the ‘poisoning of democracy’ by not acknowledging President Trump’s election loss
↥ ↧
💙🐣 RT @AmanpourCoPBS: The Republican Party “has become America’s first autocratic party,” says Lincoln Project co-founder Steve Schmidt. @MichelMcQMartin @SteveSchmidtSES @ProjectLincoln 💽 https://twitter.com/AmanpourCoPBS/status/1336416649017233408?s=20/photo/1
// extended clip of Steve Schmidt w captions
🐣 The neofascist “Republican” party is willing to give up democracy altogether rather than share it with nonwhite people
🐣 RT @ .@JoyAnnReid: “106 House Republicans signed on in support of killing democracy – in Trump’s Hail Mary attempt to overturn the election and save himself from the consequences of returning to civilian life without the legal protections of the presidency”
⋙ 💽 MSNBC, ReidOut: 106 House Republicans, 17 State AGs back anti-democracy lawsuit to try and overturn 2020 election http://on.msnbc.com/2JU2yRh
// 106 House Republicans signed a court filing supporting the Texas lawsuit that seeks to overturn the 2020 election results by overturning millions of votes in four battleground states that President-elect Joe Biden won.
🐣 RT @JoshShapiroPA I know we’ve grown numb over time to Trump’s corrosive conduct but we shouldn’t ignore the fact that the sitting president is petitioning our nation’s highest court to throw out millions of legal votes of our fellow Americans in order to change the results of the election.
🐣 RT @johnkruzel JUST IN: New amicus brief from 106 Republican House members in support of Texas’ bid to overturn President-elect Joe Biden’s win in the Supreme Court. Here they are 👇
⚖️JUST IN: New amicus brief from 106 Republican House members in support of Texas' bid to overturn President-elect Joe Biden's win in the Supreme Court. Here they are👇 pic.twitter.com/QLN4jDfoto
— John Kruzel (@johnkruzel) December 10, 2020
CNN: Joe Biden and Kamala Harris named Time Person of the Year http://cnn.it/39YTaq2 https://twitter.com/cnnbrk/status/1337245574337269761?s=20/photo/1
WaPo: U.S. military dispatches B-52 bombers to Middle East as show of force against Iran http://wapo.st/2W4Og2E
🐣 RT @brhodes During Susan Rice’s tenure as NSA, the blending of domestic and natsec policy accelerated – immigration, health security, technology, R/D, diversity in workforce were prominent issues. Susan knows how to make govt work and is always the best prepared person in the room
🐣 RT @MuellerSheWrote The ONLY reason the Supreme Court should hear the Texas lawsuit is to publicly humiliate the people who filed and and help amplify the clear message that the election stands.
🐣 RT @rickhasen Ben Ginsberg quote in piece: The GOP “used to be a party for states’ rights,” Ginsberg said. “I can’t imagine something that is less faithful to the principle of states’ rights than a Texas attorney general trying to tell other states how to run their elections.”
🐣 RT @marceelias Trump and his allies won 1 case–shortening the time in PA to cure certain mail ballots from 9 days to 6 days after the election. ¤ It is true that neither Rudy nor Ellis were involved in that case. ¤ Trump and his allies have lost 55 cases in the post election.
⋙ 🐣 RT @rickhasen In the end Rudy and Jenna made a lot of money, helped Trump raise a lot of money for a post-presidential leadership PAC slush fund, and helped delegitimize the election in the eyes of millions of Trump supporters, without a single legal victory.
🐣 RT @tribelaw This should be decisive. It’s over. Except that Trump still has allies willing to assist him in his attempted coup. Let’s call it what it is. It is an attempt to overthrow not just the Popular Vote but the Electoral Vote. He says “Stop the Steal.” We should say “Stop the Coup.”
🔆 This❗️⋙ 🐣 RT @wolfblitzer This Just In. All 50 States and DC have now officially certified their presidential election results. The @JoeBiden national popular vote lead over @realDonaldTrump is more than 7 million votes – 51.3% to 46.8%. Biden has 306 Electoral Votes; Trump has 232. (270 needed to win.)
🐣 CISA: “The November 3rd election was the most secure in American history.”
@AGEricSchmitt ¤ @AGSteveMarshall ¤ @AGRutledge ¤ @AGAshleyMoody ¤ @AGDougPeterson ¤ @StenehjemForGov ¤ @AGMikeHunter ¤ @AGCurtisHill ¤ #SeditionSeventeen ¤ https://twitter.com/Auriandra/status/1337078444664922113?s=20/photo/1
// cartoon: “MAGA Show”
🐣 CISA: “The November 3rd election was the most secure in American history.” @KSAGOffice ¤ @JeffLandry ¤ @LynnFitchAG ¤ @foxforgovernor ¤ @AGAlanWilson ¤ @SDAttorneyGen ¤ @TNattygen ¤ @SeanReyesUT ¤ @MorriseyWV ¤ #SeditionSeventeen ¤ #Shame #Treason ● https://twitter.com/Auriandra/status/1337078886467825668?s=20/photo/1
// drawing: Trump w autocrats
🐣 RT @ProjectLincoln The #SeditiousSeventeen state AGs should hear from all of us today. Find their contact information in our thread above and let them know what you think about their failure to uphold democracy and the Constitution on behalf of @realDonaldTrump
🧵 @ProjectLincoln #SeditiousSeventeen 📌 https://twitter.com/ProjectLincoln/status/1337064180629852162?s=20
// Phones and Twitter for State AGs signing on to TX lawsuit to overturn election
Trump Griping (rev chron)
🐣 RT @real Great. Most corrupt Election in history, by far. We won!!!
🐣 RT @real Voter Fraud!
🐣 RT @real “People are upset, and they have a right to be. Georgia not only supported Trump in 2016, but now. This is the only State in the Deep South that went for Biden? Have they lost their minds? This is going to escalate dramatically. This is a very dangerous moment in our history….
🐣 RT @real ….The fact that our Country is being stolen. A coup is taking place in front of our eyes, and the public can’t take this anymore.” A Trump fan at Georgia Rally on @OANN Bad!
🐣 RT @real “Donald Trump won by a landslide, and they stole it from him!” @seanhannity
🐣 RT @real How does Governor @BrianKempGA allow certification of votes without verifying signatures and despite the recently released tape of ballots being stuffed? His poll numbers have dropped like a rock. He is finished as governor! @RepDougCollins
🐣 RT @real How can you give an election to someone who lost the election by hundreds of thousands of legal votes in each of the swing states. How can a country be run by an illegitimate president?
🐣 RT @real The Supreme Court has a chance to save our Country from the greatest Election abuse in the history of the United States. 78% of the people feel (know!) the Election was RIGGED.
⋙ 🐣 68% of Republicans
TIME: Who Will Be TIME’s Person of the Year for 2020? See the Shortlist http://bit.ly/3oBzHzZ
// Essential Workers (incl Dr Fauci), Biden, BLM (w George Floyd), Trump
⭕ 9 Dec 2020
TheAtlantic, James Fallows (12/9): How Biden Should Investigate Trump http://bit.ly/3mra9DW
// The misdeeds and destructive acts are legion. The new president should focus on these three.
🐣 🖼 RT @Gabrielle_Corno And once the storm is over, you won’t remember how you made it through, how you managed to survive. You won’t even be sure, whether the storm is really over. But one thing is certain. When you come out of the storm, you won’t be the same person who walked in #storm 💽 https://twitter.com/Gabriele_Corno/status/1336635374819553283?s=20/photo/1
// amazing tornado video
NYT: 17 Republican Attorneys General Back Trump in Far-Fetched Election Lawsuit http://nyti.ms/3qJeJkw
// The move is an attempt to bolster a baseless legal effort by Texas that seeks to delay certification of the presidential electors in four battleground states that Mr. Trump lost.
🐣 RT @MSNBC “We are now one election away…from losing our democracy because one party doesn’t believe in it,” political strategist Steve Schmidt says as congressional Republicans continue to not acknowledge Pres. Trump’s election loss.
⋙ 💽 MSNBC, DeadlineWH: Steve Schmidt: We are ‘one election away… from losing our democracy’ http://on.msnbc.com/2K7bYc2
// Lincoln Project co-founder Steve Schmidt says congressional Republicans are to blame for the ‘poisoning of democracy’ by not acknowledging President Trump’s election loss
🐣 RT @clearing_fog Think about this. ¤ The 17 state AGs who are trying to overturn the election, are members of RAGA. ¤ RAGA’s biggest donor – at $2.7 million – is the Judicial Crisis Network, who also spent $30 million supporting Trump judges. ¤ JCN’s address is nothing more than a UPS store.
🐣 RT @mrbromwich The Supreme Court should sanction the lawyers who filed this case, as well as the chief legal officers for the states who are listed as plaintiffs. No lawyer could file this in good faith.
⋙ 🧵 RT @bradheath Seventeen states filed a brief in the Supreme Court just now in support of Texas’ request that the justices throw out the results of the presidential election in four other states that didn’t support President Trump. 📌 https://twitter.com/bradheath/status/1336763665580765187?s=20
🐣 RT @kylegriffin1 Trump’s lawyer in the Texas case is the man who questioned whether Kamala Harris was eligible to serve as vice president. That opinion was condemned for being wrong and racist. Now, he’s helping Trump in his doomed effort to overturn the election results.
⋙ CNBC: Trump says he will join Texas in long-shot Supreme Court bid to undo Biden White House win http://cnb.cx/3ozTDmP
// Joe Biden is projected to defeat President Trump in the Electoral College. Trump and his lawyer Rudy Giuliani are frantically trying to avoid that outcome.
💙 NYT, Thomas Edsall: The Resentment That Never Sleeps http://nyti.ms/3m3oyGz
// Rising anxiety over declining social status tells us a lot about how we got here and where we’re going.
🐣 RT @marceelias To answer everyone’s questions — no, this filing does NOT change my answer. ¤ This lawsuit is still going nowhere.
⋙ 🐣 RT @marceelias Seventeen states have filed a brief supporting the Texas’ political stunt in the US Supreme Court. ¤ Sad. https://twitter.com/marceelias/status/1336777108941647872?s=20/photo/1
⋙🔆 This❗️⋙ DemocracyDocket: Texas SCOTUS Decertification Challenge http://bit.ly/3n34a9J
// links to docs:
● Read the motion to file bill of complaint here. http://bit.ly/37PbI9y
● Read the amicus brief filed by 17 states in support of Texas’ request here. http://bit.ly/37MY2Mp
● Read Trump’s motion to intervene here. http://bit.ly/3724q3l
🐣 RT @kylegriffin1 18 red states want the Supreme Court to overturn the will of the people.
🐣 RT @JohnBrennan Those who continue to deny & fight against the election of Joe Biden are advocating for authoritarianism. They want their bully dictator to remain in power. Full stop. ¤ Yes, democracy is messy & at times uncomfortable, but, as oft quoted, it beats all the alternatives.
🔆 This❗️⋙ 🐣 RT @Steve_Vladeck Missouri (and 16 other states Trump won) has filed a friend-of-the-court brief in Texas’s crazy #SCOTUS lawsuit against 4 states Trump lost. The brief doesn’t actually say TX is right, and it doesn’t address the many defects in TX’s claims. It just says “this case is important.”
⋙ 🐣 RT @Steve_Vladeck Read the brief for yourself, but it’s not going to move the needle: ¤ http://bit.ly/3guihCq ¤ I still expect #SCOTUS to issue a single order getting rid of this, either denying TX’s motion for leave to file, or granting it while simultaneously dismissing the suit on the merits.
🐣 RT @McFaul The President of the United States of America is calling for a coup. Outrageous. (& that so many elected “leaders” in our country are remaining silent in response to this attack on our democracy is deeply disappointing.)
🐣 RT @jonfavs When you’re 1-51 in court and can’t find enough Republican legislators to break the law, always go with the hashtag. The hashtag will get you the rest of the way there.
🐣 RT @Noahpinion At least now he admits he’s just trying to overturn an election, rather than “win” one he already lost.
🐣 RT @rorycooper It’s embarrassing how many Republicans are humoring or encouraging this Keystone Coup.
🐣 RT @brianklaass The president of the United States is trying to overturn the certified results of a democratic election in order to seize power like a tinpot despot. And most elected officials in his own party refuse to denounce him for it either because they are political cowards.
🐣 RT @BillKristol “The technical term for attempting to stay in power illegitimately—such as after losing an election—is self-coup or autocoup, sometimes autogolpe…The term autogolpe comes from the Spanish because there have been so many such attempts in Latin America.” https://twitter.com/BillKristol/status/1336715573997219841?s=20
⋙ 🐣 RT @real #OVERTURN
🐣 RT @rebeccaballhaus A sweeping multistate legal effort by Trump and his supporters to override Biden’s victory has reached the end of the line, after at least 35 losses in courts at all levels including the U.S. Supreme Court.
⋙ WSJ: Trump’s Challenges to Election Results Face End of the Legal Road http://on.wsj.com/33Y0pLd
// Courts across the U.S. have rejected the president and his supporters, citing lack of proof and other shortcomings
🐣 RT @JohnJHarwood this is deranged
⋙ 🐣 RT @real We will soon be learning about the word “courage”, and saving our Country. I received hundreds of thousands of legal votes more, in all of the Swing States, than did my opponent. ALL Data taken after the vote says that it was impossible for me to lose, unless FIXED!
🐣 RT @gtconway3d You need a very different kind of intervention
⋙ 🐣 RT @real We will be INTERVENING in the Texas (plus many other states) case. This is the big one. Our Country needs a victory!
EmptyWheel, Marcy Wheeler: In His Mike Flynn Opinion, Emmet Sullivan Made a Finding of Fact Against Billy Barr’s New Reality http://bit.ly/37J93ye
This post shows that Sullivan laid out evidence that DOJ’s motion to dismiss was pretextual. He declined to rule that the motion itself was pretextual, because the question is moot. But he made it clear he thinks DOJ’s excuses for blowing up the Flynn prosecution are bullshit.
And this post notes that, before Sullivan started mooting the shit out of DOJ’s interest in his docket, he struck some documents that Sidney Powell had submitted to his docket because the government had not authenticated them, without at the same time striking another document that the government didn’t rely on but had not authenticated. It’s a tactical step, I think, that leaves everything else in his docket as authenticated, even though DOJ stopped short of standing by all those exhibits. … …
One way to think about this (language) is that Billy Barr attempted to create a new set of facts by submitting documents from the Jeffrey Jensen investigation to Sullivan’s docket and making false claims about them, thereby attempting to annul the set of facts that led DOJ (even DOJ under Bill Barr, repeatedly) to argue that Mike Flynn’s lies were serious. Judge Sullivan is having none of Billy Barr’s new reality, in significant part because DOJ has not explained what changed from its prior assertions of fact and partly because none of the claims it has made about the so-called new evidence refutes DOJ’s prior representations.
These findings of fact may have a more specific effect, though. Billy Barr has served up his different set of facts and based off those, John Durham is attempting to criminalize the decisions of the people that prosecuted Mike Flynn for telling the FBI material lies. DOJ generally has no basis to appeal Sullivan’s findings, because its position in the docket is (as Sullivan notes repeatedly) moot. But Durham has even less ability to contest Sullivan’s findings of fact; he has no standing.
So unless DOJ finds a way around the fact that they themselves have mooted any further involvement before Judge Sullivan, then, any further investigation into the circumstances of Flynn’s prosecution will have to contend with the fact that a judge has already found a number of key premises entertained by those pushing the investigation to be false.
At least as of right now, it is not relevant to Trump’s pardon of Mike Flynn. But one thing Sullivan did in his opinion was to reject Billy Barr’s new reality in a way that may be invoked for any related matters before DC District courts.
⭕ 8 Dec 2020
NYT (12/8): Here’s when Biden’s win becomes official — and how Trump has been trying to prevent that http://nyti.ms/2Hut7vg Calendar of Key Dates ● https://twitter.com/Auriandra/status/1338367174377877504?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @MatthewSteigler Important point Trump’s lawyer is missing: they haven’t filed a cert petition.
⋙⋙ 🐣 RT @JennaEllisEsq IMPORTANT POINT REPORTERS ARE MISSING IN PA SUIT: ¤
The Supreme Court only denied emergency injunctive relief. In the order, it did NOT deny cert. @MikeKellyPA’s suit is still pending before the U.S. Supreme Court.
⋙⋙⋙ SCOTUS: http://bit.ly/3oCIq4R
⋙ 🐣 RT @MatthewSteigler Was feeling fairly clever til I discovered @steve_vladeck said it an hour before I did.
⋙⋙ 🐣 RT @ Important point @JennaEllisEsq is missing in PA suit: ¤ @MikeKellyPA hasn’t even *filed* a petition for certiorari in his case; he had sought an injunction pending a *future* appeal. So there was nothing else for #SCOTUS to deny. ¤ Other than that though…
WaPo: Supreme Court denies Trump allies’ bid to overturn Pennsylvania election results http://wapo.st/36WlVSy Also includes updates on other efforts to overturn election results
🐣 RT @nicnimh JUST IN: #SCOTUS denies Mike Kelly et al legal challenge to Pennsylvania election results. https://twitter.com/nicninh/status/1336426852982939650?s=20/photo/1
// one sentence “injunctive relief … is denied”
⋙ 🐣 RT @sungirl914 Look more closely… the case is still pending.
🐣 RT @scotusreporter BREAKING: Supreme Court denies request to stop certification of Pennsylvania vote, with no noted dissents.
WaPo, Paul Waldman: Who’s going to tell the GOP base that they’re being scammed? http://wapo.st/36Yuufm “The GOP base’s eagerness to fall for every new iteration of this con is limitless, and nobody knows that better than the party’s leaders.”
🔆 This❗️⋙ 🐣 RT @marceelias 🚨NEW: Texas has filed a lawsuit against Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Georgia and Michigan in the US Supreme Court seeking to invalidate their election results.
My answers to your questions:
✓ No, I am not worried.
✓ No, this won’t succeed.
✓ I have no idea.
⋙ DemocracyDocket: TX v PA VA GA WI http://bit.ly/37PbI9y
WaPo: Safe harbor law locks Congress into accepting Biden’s win http://wapo.st/3qA9aVs “Happy Safe Harbor Day, America. … ‘What federal law requires is that if a state has completed its post-election certification by Dec. 8, Congress is required to accept those results’”
// said Rebecca Green, an election law professor at the William & Mary law school
⭕ 7 Dec 2020
🚫😅 HuffPo [UK]: How Fart Jokes Took Over The Final Days Of Trump’s Presidency http://bit.ly/3qCF8QW
// The president’s lawyer Rudy Giuliani just can’t catch a break.
🐣 RT @CNNPolitics Georgia reaffirms Joe Biden’s victory for the third time following recounts, dealing a major blow to Donald Trump’s attempt to overturn the results https://cnn.it/3m4g5mx
WaPo: Trump asks Pennsylvania House speaker for help overturning election results, personally intervening in a third state http://wapo.st/33TFn0g
WaPo: Conservative nonprofit group challenging election results around the country has tie to Trump legal adviser Jenna Ellis http://wapo.st/39Us2Zk
Senior Trump campaign legal adviser Jenna Ellis serves as special counsel to the Thomas More Society, which has filed lawsuits through the newly formed Amistad Project alleging problems with the vote in Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.
Amistad’s lawsuits have asked courts to allow the Republican-controlled legislatures in battleground states to appoint presidential electors — a strategy Trump and his legal team have urged state lawmakers around the country to embrace. Amistad sought to justify the plan in a paper published Friday that railed against the conduct of election officials in “urban Democrat strongholds.”
For Trump, the Amistad Project has served a key role in helping to keep alive his baseless claims that fraud corrupted the 2020 presidential race. The group’s efforts serve as a third front in the assault against the election results, alongside Trump’s own legal challenges and lawsuits filed by attorney Sidney Powell.
🚫 JerusalemPost: Former Israeli space security chief says aliens exist, humanity not ready http://37LFfRw
// article seems credible but I’m still not posting; This “Galactic Federation” has supposedly been in contact with Israel and the US for years, but are keeping themselves a secret to prevent hysteria until humanity is ready.
🐣 RT @MaddowBlog “After a parade of sheep and charlatans posing as White House-endorsed public health officials, Joe Biden’s selection of Rochelle Walensky to head up the CDC suggests that conviction and competence are back in vogue in the Beltway.”
⋙ BostonGlobe: Rochelle Walensky and the return of competence http://bit.ly/37IMhGT
// After a parade of sheep and charlatans posing as White House-endorsed public health officials, Joe Biden’s selection of Rochelle Walensky to head up the CDC
🧵 RT @GeoRebekah 1/ There will be no update today. ¤ At 8:30 am this morning, state police came into my house and took all my hardware and tech. ¤ They were serving a warrant on my computer after DOH filed a complaint. ¤ They pointed a gun in my face. They pointed guns at my kids.. 📌 https://twitter.com/GeoRebekah/status/1336065787900145665?s=20
⋙ 🐣 RT @GeoRebekah 2/ ¤ They took my phone and the computer I use every day to post the case numbers in Florida, and school cases for the entire country. ¤ They took evidence of corruption at the state level. ¤ They claimed it was about a security breach. ¤ This was DeSantis. ¤ He sent the gestapo.
⋙ 🐣 RT @GeoRebekah This is what happens to scientists who do their job honestly. ¤ This is what happens to people who speak truth to power. ¤ I tell them my husband and my two children are upstairs… and THEN one of them draws his gun. ¤ On my children. ¤ This is Desantis’ Florida. […]
💙 TheAtlantic, Zeynep Tufekci: ‘This Must Be Your First’ http://bit.ly/37Lxefg “The U.S. president is trying to steal the election, and, crucially, his party either tacitly approves or is pretending not to see it. This is a particularly dangerous combination”
// Only one widely understood word captures what Donald Trump is trying to do, even though his acts do not meet its technical definition.
⭕ 6 Dec 2020
WaPo: As Trump rants over election, his administration accelerates push to lock in policy and staffing gains http://wapo.st/3oA0JI1
🐣 RT @richarddeitsch “The point of modern propaganda isn’t only to misinform or push an agenda. It is to exhaust your critical thinking, to annihilate truth.” — Garry Kasparov.
🐣 RT @BeschlossDC Vice President Al Gore presided over Congressional certification of electoral votes on January 6, 2001, and declared George W. Bush’s victory, adding, “May God bless our new President.” #Getty https://twitter.com/BeschlossDC/status/1335789721981775874?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @EvanMcMullin Senators Perdue and Loeffler received intel warnings about the coming pandemic and told the public that everything was okay while quietly moving their money so they’d benefit from the crisis. It’s blatant and deadly corruption that simply cannot be tolerated no matter who it is.
⋙ 🐣 RT @EvanMcMullin At a minimum, we have to be able to trust that our representatives in Congress won’t deceive us about a major threat to our lives so that they can profit on it. But that’s exactly what Perdue and Loeffler did. It’s an incredibly inhumane abuse of the public trust.
🐣 RT @BillKristol If we had a president, he’d be assisting in a smooth transition to his successor, speaking about the honor of having served in our highest office, denouncing any threats of violence, and telling people to wear masks and behave responsibly in a pandemic. ¤ But we have no president.
💙🧵 RT @ASlavitt COVID Update December 6: I understand how hard it is to want to believe in an unpleasant reality. ¤ I really do. 1/ 📌 https://twitter.com/ASlavitt/status/1335763841360130048?s=20
🔄 Google: AP: Latest 2020 Presidential Election Results
or https://abcnews.go.com/Elections
💙 🔄 WaPo: Who Joe Biden is picking to fill his White House and Cabinet http://wapo.st/2JPg2gO
// continually updated; tags: Biden Cabinet picks Biden Cabinet nominees under consideration Cabinet options possible Cabinet nominees
⭕ 5 Dec 2020
DailyBeast, David Perry and Matthew Gabriele: History Will Judge Trump but We’ve Got to Do It First http://bit.ly/3lR1NFq A plea by two historians to investigate and expose (if not prosecute) the travesties committed by the Trump administration
// Trump may feel like an aberration now, but give it time and he’ll blend right in with other recent Republicans whose regimes broke the law and got away with it.
🌎 AP: Biden officially secures enough electors to become president http://bit.ly/2VHKmfQ “California certified its presidential election Friday and appointed 55 electors pledged to vote for Democrat Joe Biden, officially handing him the Electoral College majority needed to win”
● https://twitter.com/Auriandra/status/1335575381454303237?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @davidmweissman When I was a conservative watching @JudgeJeanine, I always wanted her to take down President Obama & wondered why she never did. I understand why that never happened. One, she’s kind of crazy, and two, they had nothing on President Obama. When you lose hate, you see clearly.
// NeverTrumper
🐣 RT @RichardHaass This sentence still stuns even tho we know it: “The president barely shows up to work, ignoring the health & economic crises afflicting the nation & largely clearing his schedule of meetings unrelated to his desperate bid to rewrite the election results.”
⋙ NYT, Peter Baker: Trump’s Final Days of Rage and Denial http://nyti.ms/37KVHBM
// Shakespearean; The last act of the Trump presidency has taken on the stormy elements of a drama more common to history or literature than a modern White House.
On Saturday night, Mr. Trump took his unreality show to Georgia for his first major public appearance since the Nov. 3 election. A rally to support two Republican senators in a runoff next month offered a high-profile opportunity to vent his grievances and promote his false claims that he was somehow cheated of a second term by a vast conspiracy.
“You know we won Georgia, just so you understand,” he told supporters in a state that he lost by 12,000 votes, adding that he actually won other states where in fact he lost too. “They cheated and they rigged our presidential election, but we will still win it,” he declared as he pressured Republican state officials to overturn the results. “We just need somebody with courage to do what they have to do.”
[W]hile he will leave office in 46 days, the last few weeks may only foreshadow what he will be like after he departs. Mr. Trump will almost certainly try to shape the national conversation from his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida and his relentless campaign to discredit the election could undercut his successor, President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr. Although many Republicans would like to move on, he appears intent on forcing them to remain in thrall to his need for vindication and vilification even after his term expires.
At times, Mr. Trump’s railing-against-his-fate outbursts seem like a story straight out of William Shakespeare, part tragedy, part farce, full of sound and fury. Is Mr. Trump a modern-day Julius Caesar, forsaken by even some of his closest courtiers? (Et tu, Bill Barr?) Or a King Richard III who wars with the nobility until being toppled by Henry VII? Or King Lear, railing against those who do not love and appreciate him sufficiently? How sharper than a serpent’s tooth it is to have a thankless electorate.
“This is classic Act V behavior,” said Jeffrey R. Wilson, a Shakespearean scholar at Harvard who published the book “Shakespeare and Trump” this year. “The forces are being picked off and the tyrant is holed up in his castle and he’s growing increasingly anxious and he feels insecure and he starts blustering about his legitimate sovereignty and he starts accusing the opposition of treason.” …
As the circle around Mr. Trump shrinks and even allies like Mr. Barr distance themselves, the president resists any suggestion that he stand down. “I’m never, ever going to concede,” he told one ally who urged him to prepare to do so. And if he is not listening to advisers, many are no longer listening to him. ¤ At one point, Mr. Trump appeared to telephone Mr. Ducey even as he was certifying Arizona’s results on live television and the governor refused to take the president’s call, which was announced by a “Hail to the Chief” ring tone. …
Top Republican lawyers have dropped off his election lawsuits, which have been dismissed by the dozens and even in one case declared “bizarre” by a judge appointed by Mr. Trump. Five courts in five battleground states rejected his latest legal challenges to the election in a little more than three hours on Friday, with a Wisconsin judge warning that “this is a dangerous path we are being asked to tread.”
Sliding further from the mainstream, the president has aligned himself more with fringe news outlets like One America News Network and the conspiracy theorists of QAnon, who believe the world is run by a cabal of Satan-worshipping pedophiles plotting against Mr. Trump. In a meeting with Republican senators, according to an official confirming a report in The Post, Mr. Trump said QAnon followers “basically believe in good government,” a comment that left the room silent until his chief of staff, Mark Meadows, volunteered that he had never heard them described that way.
With six weeks until he leaves office, Mr. Trump remains as unpredictable and erratic as ever. He may fire Mr. Barr or others, issue a raft of pardons to protect himself and his allies or incite a confrontation overseas. Like King Lear, he may fly into further rages and find new targets for his wrath. ¤ “If there are these analogies between classic literature and society as it’s operating right now, then that should give us some big cause for concern this December,” said Mr. Wilson, the Shakespearean scholar. “We’re approaching the end of the play here and that’s where catastrophe always comes.”
DailyBeast, Will Sommer: The GOP’s QAnon Faction Is Waging War on Republicans http://bit.ly/2JQsflx
// It’s the conspiracy theories versus those who want to keep a toe, at least, in the world of the real.
DailyBeast, Sam Brodey: Trump Uses Georgia Rally to Urge His Supporters to Avenge Him http://bit.ly/3lOEegq
// The president, and the crowd that gathered to see him in Valdosta on Saturday night, were clearly most invested in the election that just happened rather than the one ahead.
🧵 RT @ASlavitt COVID Update December 5: There’s a common real estate expression Trump is very familiar with called “other people’s money.” ¤ It means if a bank lends you their money, you can take any risk you want. ¤ Trump’s presidency has been guided by the principle “other people’s lives.”1/ 📌 https://twitter.com/ASlavitt/status/1335395470609244160?s=20
🐣 RT @thedailybeast “One of the big challenges that Joe Biden is going to have is to figure out how to puncture that information bubble that, not just Republican officials, but a sizable portion of voters are in right now,” says Obama
DailyBeast, Matt Wilstein: Obama Tells Colbert That Trump ‘Exceeded’ His Worst Nightmares http://bit.ly/2Lbxahw
// The former president revealed to Stephen Colbert what was going through his mind when he first sat down with the newly elected Donald Trump at the White House
“You couldn’t make up some of the stuff that you’re seeing,” Obama said. “And it is to the detriment of the country, but it also runs contrary to what would have been smart politics if the Republicans wanted to maintain the White House.”
“And that in some ways is more troubling because now it’s no longer even strategic,” he continued. “You’re drinking your own Kool-Aid in a way that I think is troublesome. And one of the big challenges that Joe Biden is going to have is to figure out how to puncture that information bubble that, not just Republican officials, but a sizable portion of voters are in right now.”
As Trump continues to deny that he legitimately lost to Biden, Colbert reminded Obama about the gracious way he invited his successor into the White House for a meeting and photo-op shortly after the 2016 election. The host said it was a “chilling moment” to watch because he had an “emotional flash” of all the ways Trump could abuse the “dignity of the office” over his first term. “Were you having a similar feeling in that moment?” he asked.
“Yeah, it was a concern,” Obama answered. When Colbert asked if those concerns were “borne out,” Obama said they were “exceeded.”
🧵 RT @atrupar Trump is about to hold a rally (ostensibly for Loeffler and Perdue) in Valdosta, Georgia. It will be his first since losing the presidential election to Joe Biden. Follow for a video thread. 📌 https://twitter.com/atrupar/status/1335374464377352193?s=20
WaPo: Trump calls Georgia governor to pressure him for help overturning Biden’s win in the state http://wapo.st/36LDXqr
🧵 RT @McFaul Here’s my @JoeBiden foreign policy “to do” list in the first year. ¤ Day One: rejoin the Paris climate agreement. THREAD. 📌 https://twitter.com/McFaul/status/1335280325157535744?s=20
⭕ 4 Dec 2020
TheDispatch, Jonah Goldberg: Screwtape Went Down to Georgia http://bit.ly/3mT2TBV
// ‘The safest road to Hell is the gradual one.’
For the last few years, a certain subset of the right has convinced itself that the Democrats aren’t just wrong or even bad, but that they are singularly evil and lethally dangerous enemies of America, hell-bent on destroying all that is sacred by imposing godless socialism on us all.
I’ll skip the usual structural reasons for this development—the Big Sort, media balkanization, and, yes, the behavior of some Democrats—and focus instead on the part relevant to my point. The president of the United States said this sort of thing a lot.
A second data point: The president is a deeply flawed and crude person with a thumbless grasp of the Constitution, the duties of his office, and the most rudimentary tenets of religion and traditional morality. Because this is so incandescently obvious, casting the Democrats as an existential threat to All We Hold Dear makes it a lot easier to overlook these things. Hence all of that “He’s our King David” gibberish from the early days of the Trump presidency. When you’re in a Manichean existential battle with the unholy Forces of Darkness, it’s much easier to overlook the adultery, greed, deceit, and corruption of your anointed champion.
Now, normally I’m not one to leap to the defense of Democrats, but I think offering the faint praise that they are not all evil incarnate is literally the least I can do. …
For nearly five years now, it has been obvious that Trump was unfit for the job and the arguments marshaled in his defense were cynical rationalizations that, for some, eventually mutated into sincerely held delusions. Sure, some deluded themselves from the beginning, but I’ve talked to too many Republican politicians and conservative media darlings who admitted it in private. And even the griftier gibbons going full Gorka as they fling their own feces for fun and profit in Trump’s defense knew it. …
Now, America isn’t in Hell, but the people who did nothing, or far too little, are daily beset by lesser, fresher, hells of their own making—and I’m making popcorn. The gloriously entertaining spectacle of Trump and his ambitious progeny suddenly having to deal with their own mini-Trumps in the form of Wood, Powell, and their minions is enough to turn their home-brewed dumpster juice into a delicious elixir sweeter even than liberal tears. …
I understand that this all sounds awfully self-righteous. But I’ll tell you, I feel like I deserve my gloating. I’m not alone in my right to it, but I deserve my share. I’ve been saying “don’t do this” for five years and I’ve been mocked and shunned for it. So forgive me if I enjoy my I-told-you-so moment. Or don’t forgive me. I’m used to it.
NewYorker, Steve Coll: Donald Trump, George Wallace, and the Influence of Losers http://bit.ly/2VJvVrX
// The outgoing President may find himself stunned by the speed at which former loyalists distance themselves. But his ideological imprint on the G.O.P. is likely to remain.
DailyBeast, Justin Baragona: CNBC Hosts Get in Off-the-Rails Shouting Match Over Masks and COVID Restrictions http://bit.ly/39VhSYi Rick Santelli, “a godfather of the tea-party movement” has also embraced herd immunity
// Andrew Ross Sorkin told Rick Santelli he was doing a “disservice” to their viewers by denying masks work, prompting Santelii to yell: “You are! You are!”
🐣 RT @RachelBitecofer I KNOW. I’m loving the soothing banality of Biden. ¤ He’s so sane and orderly. And coherent. God I missed coherent. ¤ I wanted it back so badly. I’ll never taken it for granted again. I will work tirelessly every day to defend our hard-fought return to boring!
⋙ 🐣 RT @LarrySabato I’m watching President-elect @JoeBiden’s press conference. It’s so refreshingly NORMAL. After 4 years of the bizarre and the disturbing, we really are going to have a return to normalcy.
WaPo, Beverly Gage: McCarthyism was never defeated. Trumpism won’t be either. http://wapo.st/37DWh3V
// Censure brought down a crusading anti-communist senator but fired up his followers.
tags: William F Buckley, Army McCarthy, Eisenhower, National Review, Roy Cohn, Edward R Murrow, paranoid style, Trumpism
ScienceNews: 50 years ago, scientists caught their first glimpse of amino acids from outer space http://bit.ly/3qqwGEe
// Excerpt from the December 5, 1970 issue of Science News
WaPo: Pentagon blocks visits to military spy agencies by Biden transition team http://wapo.st/3gaYQhM “[T]he delays have impaired the Biden team’s ability to get up to speed on espionage operations against Russia, China, Iran and other U.S. adversaries”
WaPo, Jennifer Rubin: The size of Joe Biden’s victory matters. And it is huge. http://wapo.st/3qucotr Biden “cleared 51 percent — the largest vote percentage obtained against an incumbent president since 1932 … If there is such a thing as a mandate, Biden has one”
Biden not only received a majority of the popular vote, but also cleared 51 percent — the largest vote percentage obtained against an incumbent president since 1932 and a bigger percentage of the popular vote than any Republican president since George H.W. Bush in 1988, when Bush was essentially running for a third Ronald Reagan term. In the process, Biden amassed the largest total number of ballots in U.S. history. He pummeled Trump by more than 7 million votes (and exceeded Barack Obama’s 2008 vote total by more than 11 million). That margin is bigger than Massachusetts’ entire population; in fact, only 14 states have a population of more than 7 million. Biden’s popular vote margin by percentage (4.4 percent) far surpasses Obama’s 2012 victory over Mitt Romney.
Why is it important to emphasize the magnitude of Biden’s victory? Because, far from narrow, it represents the overwhelming verdict of the voters. If there is such a thing as a mandate, Biden has one. He has been explicit about the things he intends to do: preserve and expand Obamacare, pass child-care and sick-leave legislation, pursue police reform, push through a massive infrastructure bill and tackle climate change.
… That it is of such an enormous magnitude should earn at the very least a measure of consideration and deference from senators who were given their seats by a comparatively tiny portion of the electorate. Treating Biden as anything but the president-elect and denying him ample latitude to compile the Cabinet and senior staff of his choosing represents an outlandish attempt to preempt the will of more than 80 million Americans.
NYT, Michelle Goldberg: The MAGA Revolution Devours Its Own http://nyti.ms/33LwyFJ “The Republican establishment, and also the conservative establishment, has always made this bet that it could open Pandora’s box and close it on command” ~ historian Rick Perlstein
// Republicans encouraged Trumpist havoc. Now it’s coming for them.
“The Republican establishment, and also the conservative establishment, has always made this bet that it could open Pandora’s box and close it on command,” Rick Perlstein, a historian of American conservatism, told me. They could activate tribalism to achieve power, while maintaining a modicum of respectability. They could create an alternative reality but keep people enclosed within it. But with Trump “having pried Pandora’s box open, that becomes impossible,” Perlstein said. ¤ Republicans helped Trump unleash countless civic evils. They shouldn’t be surprised when those evils don’t spare them.
IHME: COVID-19 Projection for US http://bit.ly/2QuOKfB Daily Deaths are expected to peak at ~2971 on 1/13/2021.
🐣 ◕ 🔆 This❗️⋙ The new IHME projections are dire. Their early projections were off, but lately they have been right on the mark. THE NEXT 3 MONTHS ARE DIRE. Vaccines will be too late to help most us. Hospitals will need help. ¤ IHME: COVID-19 Projection for US http://bit.ly/2QuOKfB ● https://twitter.com/Auriandra/status/1334940595643625479?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @TheTweetOfGod No.
⋙ 🐣 RT @RightWingWatch Former congresswoman Michele Bachmann has a personal request for God: “Lord, would you allow Donald Trump to have a second term as president of the United States.” 💽 https://twitter.com/TheTweetOfGod/status/1334889119290335235?s=20/photo/1
⭕ 3 Dec 2020
WSJ, Peggy Noonan: Who’ll Be 2020’s Margaret Chase Smith? http://on.wsj.com/3oI71p9 “When history hands you a McCarthy—reckless, heedlessly manipulating his followers—be a Margaret Chase Smith … You’d likely pay some price. But years later you’d still be admired“
// Seventy years ago, Maine’s first female senator distinguished herself for her courage and integrity.
WaPo, Aaron Rappaport: It might not be so simple for Trump to pardon his children and Giuliani http://wapo.st/3mODnxQ “[I]f the issue were to arise, there is a significant possibility that [SCOTUS], dominated by … originalists, would invalidate the use of blanket pardons”
[B]ased on the Framers’ original understanding of the pardon authority, … while the pardon power grants the president expansive authority, that power is not unlimited. Most importantly, the Framers would have understood that pardons must be issued for specific crimes. They were not intended to be broad grants of immunity, get-out-of-jail-free cards bestowed by presidential grace.
The Supreme Court has repeatedly affirmed that the scope of the pardon clause should be interpreted in light of its meaning at the time of the founding. This originalist methodology means looking to 18th-century English law. …
Since English law informs our own understanding of the pardon power, there is a strong argument that the specificity requirement is part of our Constitution and serves as a constraint on the president’s authority. That would not prevent the president from issuing pardons to anyone for any reason, but it does require that each pardoned crime be listed.
In the case of his family and personal lawyer, such a list might prove embarrassing to the president — and edifying to the public. In this way, specificity raises the political costs of issuing such pardons. It also reduces the pardon’s effectiveness. Should a relevant offense be left off the list, the pardon’s recipient would be vulnerable to prosecution.
The Supreme Court has never ruled on the specificity requirement, and the question of the validity of any blanket pardon by Trump would come up only if a federal prosecutor seeks to indict a pardon recipient who raises the pardon as a barrier to prosecution.
But if the issue were to arise, there is a significant possibility that a court, dominated by self-identified originalists, would invalidate the use of blanket pardons. This possibility should make Trump pause before offering such pardons to friends and family. But it also leaves him in a bind. Should he attempt to specify each and every federal crime committed by his children or lawyer? Or is that a gift too costly even for Trump to consider?
NYT, Neal Katyal: I Wrote the Special Counsel Rules. Barr Has Abused Them. http://nyti.ms/36EjsMp
// There is no reason for the outgoing attorney general to appoint his preferred prosecutor for the continuing Trump-Russia inquiry.
🐣📋 RT @davidfrum Share of vote 21st c. presidential candidates
1) Obama 2008 52.9
2) Biden 2020 51.3
3) Obama 2012 51.1
4) Bush 2004 50.7
5) Gore 2000 48.4
6) Kerry 2004 48.3
7) Clinton 2016 48.2
8) Bush 2000 47.9
9) Romney 2012 47.2
10) Trump 2020 46.9
11) Trump 2016 46.1
12) McCain 2008 45.7
NewYorker, Susan Glasser: President Trump Is Acting Crazy, so Why Are We Shrugging It Off? http://bit.ly/39M9Z7P “Either the President actually believes what he is saying or he is engaged in the most cynical attack on American democracy ever to come from the White House”
// The dangerous “yeah, whatever” phase of Trump’s lame-duck Presidency.
// caption: Either the President actually believes what he is saying or he is engaged in the most cynical attack on American democracy ever to come from the White House.
🐣 RT @thedailybeast When even Rudy Giuliani thinks you’re too much
DailyBeast: Rudy Attempts to Shush Unhinged ‘Witness’ During Election Fraud Hearing http://bit.ly/36Cnvsl
// The Trump legal team presented Melissa Carone for testimony despite a judge already declaring her allegations as “simply not credible.”
Politico: Pro-Trump legal crusade peppered with bizarre blunders http://politi.co/33KGEH0
// Spelling errors, misplaced states and client mix-ups are the main results so far of Sidney Powell’s legal efforts to overturn the election.
// Sidney Powell released the Kraken. And it turns out the mythological sea beast can’t spell, is terrible at geography and keeps mislabeling plaintiffs in court.
🐣 RT @Angry_Staffer The official serving as Trump’s eyes and ears at DOJ has been banned from the building after trying to pressure staffers to give up sensitive information about election fraud and other matters she could relay to the White House, per 3 sources
⋙ AP: Trump aide banned from Justice after trying to get case info http://bit.ly/3g5F73b
⭕ 2 Dec 2020
WaPo, Paul Waldman: What’s the future of the GOP? You’re looking at it — and it’s bonkers. http://wapo.st/3qpiDPo
While he might have a change of heart, at this point it looks unlikely that Trump will merely retire to Mar-a-Lago and fill his days playing golf. He’ll keep saying he might run again, so the media and the party keep paying attention to him. As a consequence he’ll retain his position as leader of the GOP, shaping its agenda, keeping it focused on bitter attacks and conspiracy theories, and receiving the fealty of every ambitious Republican.
↥ ↧
🐣 RT @semperdiced Is this SNL? 💽 https://twitter.com/semperdiced/status/1334374454181289990?s=20/photo/1
// Rudy’s witness
🐣 RT @justinbaragona Here’s Lin Wood telling Georgia Republicans NOT to vote for Kelly Loeffler and David Perdue next month. ¤ “They have not earned your vote. Don’t you give it to them. Why would you go back and vote in another rigged election for god’s sake! Fix it! You gotta fix it!” 💽 https://twitter.com/justinbaragona/status/1334227769115484161?s=20/photo/1
WaPo Editorial: The GOP’s push to slime its own honest members is just a grab for cash and political advantage http://wapo.st/2I2RIr8
🐣 RT @Alt_uscis Sydney power [Powell] keeps telling her MAGA crowd not to vote in the runoff. Keep going Sydney 💽 https://twitter.com/ALT_uscis/status/1334220486574739458?s=20/photo/1
// rally with @llinwood
NYT, Thomas Edsall: Honestly, This Was a Weird Election http://nyti.ms/2I39Fpy //➔ While voters soundly rejected Trump, in down-ballot races in the suburbs they also rejected the progressive extreme, with progressive appeal concentrating in already-Democratic city strongholds
// Biden soared among crucial suburban voters. Democrats? Not so much.
🧵 🌎 RT @DrEricDing NEW—Dire warnings in WH Coronavirus Task Force’s confidential state report warns “#COVID19 risk to all Americans is at a historic high” and that “we are in a very dangerous place due to the current, extremely high COVID baseline and limited hospital capacity.” 📌 https://twitter.com/DrEricDing/status/1334306978248724481?s=20/photo/1
🐣 🌎 RT @madremiarosalia democracy! https://twitter.com/madremiarosaIia/status/1334314474015236097?s=20/photo/1
// “The 28 senators from these 14 states represent fewer people than the 2 senators from California”; tags: the 10 percent rules, the ten percent rules, the 10% rules
TheBulwark, Mark Becker: My Call With Ron Johnson: He Knows Biden Won But Won’t Admit It http://bit.ly/2I2VkJK
// The Wisconsin senator says it would be “political suicide.”
WaPo, Philip Rucker: Trump escalates baseless attacks on election with 46-minute video rant http://wapo.st/3mtXD7H
🐣 RT @gtconway3d it’s as though he’s in the bunker, his days numbered, directing ministers to destroy bridges and factories, and ordering generals to attack with armies that no longer exist
Esquire, Charles Pierce: My God, He’s Completely Insane http://bit.ly/3oh9oPh “He does everything except rub dirt in his hair”
// With “the most important speech he’s ever made,” the president announced he will bring the temple down on his own head.
// He does everything except rub dirt in his hair. Me? I have a very brief tolerance for sedition in high places.
WaPo, Philip Bump: The most petulant 46 minutes in American history http://wapo.st/2VAh2rD
🔆 This❗️⋙ YahooNews, David Knowles (Ed.): Trump rehashes bogus vote-fraud claims for 46 minutes in his ‘most important speech’ ever http://yhoo.it/2VuPvrF
↥ ↧
💽 Facebook: Trump’s 46-minute speech http://bit.ly/3qmIxmG
💙 NYT, Thomas Friedman: Biden Made Sure ‘Trump Is Not Going to Be President for Four More Years’ – Interview http://nyti.ms/36vNQIE “We got to figure out how to work together,” he said. Otherwise, “we’re in real trouble.”
// Here’s what Joe Biden had to say about the future in our interview.
🐣 RT @TheAtlantic “Trump’s veneer of invincibility is fading. He lost his bid for reelection, and staged the most incompetent coup attempt since Woody Allen’s ‘Bananas,'” @Yascha_Mounk writes:
⋙ TheAtlantic: Why Trump Might Just Fade Away http://bit.ly/3lvsjnS
// Americans will soon grow tired of the president, despite his efforts to stay in the limelight.
🐣 RT @marceelias Here is the clearest articulation of Powell’s Kraken conspiracy theory, complete with Iran, China, Chavez, and Kemp. Text Block: https://twitter.com/marceelias/status/1334208646771773446?s=20/photo/1
💙 NYT, Frank Bruni: The Deep State Is on a Roll http://nyti.ms/3qnBiLi “These officials and servants are distinguished by a professionalism that survives and edges out their partisan bearings”
// Three cheers for Anthony Fauci and all the other glorious cogs.
🐣 RT @cnni “Attorney General William Barr dealt the most credible blow to Trump’s lies about a stolen election, precisely because he previously often came across more as the President’s personal lawyer than a neutral arbiter of justice.” | Analysis by @StCollinson
⋙ CNN, Stephen Collinson: William Barr breaks with Trump’s election fantasy http://cnn.it/3qjb50v
⭕ 1 Dec 2020
WaPo, Christopher Krebs: Trump fired me for saying this, but I’ll say it again: The election wasn’t rigged http://wapo.st/3mHxCle Details the steps taken by CISA to make the 2020 election “the most secure in US history” esp in the change to auditable paper-based systems
With the advantage of time to prepare for the 2020 election, we got to work. My team at the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, or CISA, had primary responsibility for working with state and local election officials and the private sector to secure their election infrastructure — including the machines, equipment and systems supporting elections — from hacking. (Other agencies handle fraud or other criminal election-related activity.) The Russian assault in 2016 had not included hacking voting machines, but we couldn’t be sure that Moscow or some other bad actor wouldn’t try it in 2020.
A key development was the establishment of the Elections Infrastructure Information Sharing and Analysis Center to share security-related information with people who can act on it for defensive purposes. By the 2018 midterm elections, all 50 states and thousands of jurisdictions had joined the center.
We offered a range of cybersecurity services, such as scanning systems for vulnerable software or equipment, and conducting penetration tests on networks. Election officials across the country responded by markedly improving cybersecurity, including upgrading to more modern systems, hardening user accounts through additional log-on measures and being quicker to share suspicious-event information.
But there was a critical weak spot. Voting machines known as Direct Recording Electronic machines, or DREs, do not generate paper records for individual votes. And paper ballots are essential pieces of evidence for checking a count’s accuracy. With DREs, the vote is recorded on the machine and combined with voting data from other machines during the tabulation process. If those machines were compromised, state officials would not have the benefit of back-up paper ballots to conduct an audit.
In 2016, five states used DREs statewide, including Georgia and Pennsylvania, with a handful of others using DREs in multiple jurisdictions. Fortunately, by 2020, Louisiana was the last one with statewide DRE usage. Congress provided grant funding in 2018, 2019 and 2020 to states to help them retire the paperless machines and roll out auditable systems. As the 2020 election season began, Delaware, Georgia, Pennsylvania and South Carolina all swapped over to paper-based systems. ¤ The combined efforts over the past three years moved the total number of expected votes cast with a paper ballot above 90 percent, including the traditional battleground states.
The secretaries of state in Georgia, Michigan, Arizona, Nevada and Pennsylvania, as well officials in Wisconsin, all worked overtime to ensure there was a paper trail that could be audited or recounted by hand, independent of any allegedly hacked software or hardware.
That’s why Americans’ confidence in the security of the 2020 election is entirely justified. Paper ballots and post-election checks ensured the accuracy of the count.
The 2020 election was the most secure in U.S. history. This success should be celebrated by all Americans, not undermined in the service of a profoundly un-American goal.
NYT, Susan Rice: Our Democracy’s Near-Death Experience http://nyti.ms/3qh0pzn “For now, our democracy has held. Still, the lesson we must learn is not a reassuring one”
// Now is no time for complacency. The next Congress must shore up our institutions.
Mr. Trump and his political allies have been employing nearly every weapon at their disposal to try to retain the White House, notwithstanding the will of the people.
First, the Trump campaign labored (largely in vain) to concoct bogus conspiracy theories to discredit Mr. Biden by falsely smearing his son Hunter. To do so, Mr. Trump and his associates solicited foreign assistance from Ukraine and China and relied on Russian agents to disseminate disinformation.
Second, Trump supporters worked assiduously to suppress the vote by denigrating the legitimacy of mail-in ballots during a pandemic, limiting access to ballot drop-boxes and polling stations, flooding social media with messaging to dampen minority voter turnout, blasting robocalls to deceive voters about where and when to vote and manipulating the postal system to delay ballot delivery.Third, some of Mr. Trump’s most ardent supporters intimidated voters at the polls. Heeding calls to “stand by” and “go into the polls and watch very carefully,” they deployed, sometimes armed, in Black and brown communities under the guise of ensuring no fraudulent votes were cast.
Fourth, in the run-up to Election Day, Mr. Trump dispatched an army of litigants to enlist the courts in curtailing access to the polls. Since the election, his legal team has tried repeatedly to halt ballot counting and toss out legitimately cast votes that most likely favored Mr. Biden. Ultimately, Mr. Trump summoned Michigan’s Republican leaders to the White House, apparently in an attempt to coax the state’s Legislature into unilaterally appointing Trump electors.
Despite these machinations, the worst fears about this election failed to materialize. Defying the combined challenges of the pandemic, a chaotic primary season, foreign interference and presidential sabotage, the 2020 election proved to be one of the cleanest and, according to senior U.S. officials, the “most secure” in our nation’s history. The American people voted in unprecedented numbers, risking their health and foiling efforts in many states to make voting as difficult as possible. African-Americans, especially, braved countless barriers to casting their ballots.
There is no proof, nor even credible evidence, of significant voting irregularities, much less fraud. Republican and Democratic state and local officials largely adhered to their legal responsibilities, conducting the tabulation and certification processes honestly and transparently. Federal officials, sometimes collaborating with the private sector, effectively minimized the impact of Russian electoral interference.
For now, our democracy has held. ¤ Still, the lesson we must learn is not a reassuring one: A determined autocrat in the White House poses a grave threat to our democratic institutions and can severely undermine faith in our elections, particularly when backed by partisans in Congress.
[B]olstering our democracy depends in large part on the people of Georgia voting out their incumbent senators on Jan. 5. If the Senate flips to Democratic control, Congress will be able to apply the lessons of our democracy’s near-death experience.
It would enact the For the People Act to combat corruption, strengthen ethics rules and improve voter access as well as the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act to restore the protections of the 1965 legislation. Congress would pass the Protecting Our Democracy Act to constrain the power of future presidents who deem themselves above the law and finally adopt long-stalled legislation to shore up our election infrastructure against adversaries, foreign or domestic.Now is no time for self-congratulation or complacency. We must act with the unique urgency and courage of those who know they are living on borrowed time.
🐣 RT @DeadlineWH “I think we’ll look back on this as one of the most historic months of the last hundred years… It was the month where American democracy was poisoned intentionally, deliberately with lies” – @SteveSchmidtSES w/ @NicolleDWallace 💽 https://twitter.com/DeadlineWH/status/1333914325682171904?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @Redistrict Breaking: Donald Trump’s share of the U.S. vote just fell to 46.9%. He’s now failed to crack 47% in either of his runs for president (for perspective, Mitt Romney got 47.2% in 2012 and Hillary Clinton got 48.2% in 2016).
🐣 RT @AshaRangappa The pardon power is practically unfettered: The President may generally *grant* a pardon to whomever he wants. But 1) “dangling” a pardon — offering it as an enticement for personal benefit (as detailed in Mueller Report) or 2) offering/accepting money for a pardon is a crime.
🐣 RT @ScottMStedman Oh man. I wonder who this is
⋙ 🐣 RT @ShimonPro NEW: Unsealed court document in DC reveals DOJ investigating an alleged “secret lobbying scheme” and a bribery conspiracy that offered “a substantial political contribution in exchange for a presidential pardon or reprieve of sentence.” @kpolantz
⋙⋙ 🐣 RT @ We don’t know who it involves. We don’t know who the person seeking the pardon is. All of that is redacted. Appears to still be an active investigation.
⋙⋙ 🐣 RT @ Search warrants were executed: ¤ 50 digital devices including iPhones, iPads, laptops, thumb drives and computer drives were seized after investigators raided offices.
🐣 RT @MuellerSheWrote Unbelievable. Barr has made Durham Special Counsel so he can continue to investigate the 2016 Russia probe even after Biden takes office. What a dick.
AP: Interview: Disputing Trump, Barr says no widespread election fraud http://bit.ly/2KPLMmo
Attorney General William Barr said Tuesday the Justice Department has not uncovered evidence of widespread voter fraud that would change the outcome of the 2020 presidential election. ¤ His comments in an interview with The Associated Press come despite President Donald Trump’s repeated baseless claims that the election was stolen, Trump’s effort to subvert the results of the 2020 presidential election and his refusal to concede his loss to President-Elect Joe Biden.
Barr said U.S. attorneys and FBI agents have been working to follow up specific complaints and information they’ve received, but they’ve uncovered no evidence that would change the outcome of the election. Barr was headed to the White House later for a previously scheduled meeting. ¤ “To date, we have not seen fraud on a scale that could have effected a different outcome in the election,” Barr told the AP.
Shortly after Barr’s statement was published, Trump tweeted out more baseless claims of voter fraud. And his attorney Rudy Giuliani and his campaign issued a scathing statement claiming that, “with all due respect to the Attorney General, there hasn’t been any semblance” of an investigation.
The issues Trump’s campaign and its allies have pointed to are typical in every election: Problems with signatures, secrecy envelopes and postal marks on mail-in ballots, as well as the potential for a small number of ballots miscast or lost.
But they’ve also requested federal probes into the claims. Attorney Sidney Powell has spun fictional tales of election systems flipping votes, German servers storing U.S. voting information and election software created in Venezuela “at the direction of Hugo Chavez,” – the late Venezuelan president who died in 2013. Powell has since been removed from the legal team after an interview she gave where she threatened to “blow up” Georgia with a “biblical” court filing.
Barr didn’t name Powell specifically but said: “There’s been one assertion that would be systemic fraud and that would be the claim that machines were programmed essentially to skew the election results. And the DHS and DOJ have looked into that, and so far, we haven’t seen anything to substantiate that,” Barr said.
🐣 RT @mattyglesias Yes.
⋙ NYMag, Jonathan Chait: ‘White Women Voted for Trump’ Is the Worst Election Trope http://nym.ag/3qf0kw5
// If you voted against Trump, Trump’s not your fault.
⋙ 🐣 Three times as many white women as Black women voted for Biden. A lower % of Blacks voted for Biden than for Clinton. This particular election was won by whites in the suburbs, particularly: white men, both with AND without college education (vs 2016) http://brook.gs/37bYO5q
🐣 RT @brianklaas One of the most sinister aspects of Trump’s lies about the election are that they are being pushed by people who know better – people who know they are lying, but also know that the lies will be widely believed by millions. It is beyond disqualifying and must never be forgotten.
⭕ 30 Nov 2020
WaPo, Brian Klaas: How to protect our democracy from a future Donald Trump http://wapo.st/2VxzBg1 “Trump’s efforts to undermine the system have an unintended benefit. He found the hidden cracks that always existed in American democracy and exposed them for all to see”
NewStatesman: Anne Applebaum on Donald Trump: “History has always hung in the balance. We just imagine that it didn’t” http://bit.ly/33xH3MM
// The historian and author of Twilight of Democracy on the meaning of the US election result and whether the age of progress is over.
… A lot depends on how Trump comes to be perceived over the next few weeks and months. It may be that as he leaves office, and power slips away from him, and he continues to say that the election was stolen, which he will – people may begin to find him ridiculous. [Though] I imagine there will be some cult following.
… the existence of a third of the population that is no longer interested in following the rules, and no longer believes in the system – it’s toxic. And it has all these implications. It makes future elections hard to resolve, it might make laws difficult to pass, and it may polarise the other side as well. Because every time they vote for a Democrat, the Democrat is blocked and can’t do anything. And that is going to create a disappointment with democracy on the other side of the spectrum, which would also eventually be very dangerous.
I suppose we have several hopes. One is that the contradiction between what they’re seeing on their news feeds and real life will begin to bother some of them.
It’s the same thing that happened to Soviet propaganda: it eventually became so jarring, and so far away from reality, that people could see through it. [Although] Soviet propaganda worked for a long time, and was very effective. We now remember it retrospectively as having been a joke, but it didn’t feel that way, if you were living in the Soviet Union in the 1960s. But it ceases to portray reality. That’s what we have to hope for in any case.
There is also the reality of other people. Even people who watch Fox all the time, and watch Newsmax, eventually encounter people who don’t. And they have to cope with the idea that there’s an alternative epistemological system. One of the tasks of politics from now on – not just for the left, but for the centrist Democrats and the Republicans and the centre-right – is to try and find ways of reaching those people. … …
Every day there are a huge range of radical options open to us. Every day history could go one direction or another. Our societies could be on a road to steep decline and disaster – or we could recover, and America will lead a new democratic coalition and we’ll create a better world. But neither one of those outcomes is for sure. And both of them depend on the decisions of many different people.
History has always hung in the balance. We just imagined that it didn’t, but it always does. And, by the way, the people who invented American democracy knew that. That’s what they were talking about when they were writing the constitution. What they were all remembering was the fall of Rome. They were reading Cato and Cicero, or popularised, bowdlerised versions of them.
Aristotle said that democracy leads to tyranny, and they had that in their heads. They wrote the constitution in order to seek to avoid that, but they always knew it was possible. There’s the famous quote from Alexander Hamilton, in which he says, one day a demagogue will come along, and people will believe him, and he’ll lead them astray with false promises. They always knew that.
It’s the illusion of the last several decades, because of the incredible success of our democracies since the 1940s, through the 1980s and 1990s. It didn’t always look that way. There were some bad moments in the Sixties and Seventies, but it felt like democracy was constantly triumphing and spreading and there was something inevitable. It was a major and important success, but there is no law of history that meant it had to be a success. ¤ … It’s up to people in their 20s and 30s. What’s the world going to look like in 2050? They’ll decide.
NationalReview Editorial: Trump’s Disgraceful Endgame http://bit.ly/3qeyS1v “Flawed and dishonest assertions … pollute the public discourse and mislead good people who make the mistake of believing things said by the president of the United States”
The idea, as the Trump team stalwartly maintains, that the Supreme Court is going to take up this case and issue a game-changing ruling is fantastical. Conservative judges have consistently rejected Trump’s flailing legal appeals, and the justices are unlikely to have a different reaction.
Trump’s most reprehensible tactic has been to attempt, somewhat shamefacedly, to get local Republican officials to block the certification of votes and state legislatures to appoint Trump electors in clear violation of the public will. This has gone nowhere, thanks to the honesty and sense of duty of most of the Republicans involved, but it’s a profoundly undemocratic move that we hope no losing presidential candidate ever even thinks of again.
Getting defeated in a national election is a blow to the ego of even the most thick-skinned politicians and inevitably engenders personal feelings of bitterness and anger. What America has long expected is that losing candidates swallow those feelings and at least pretend to be gracious. If Trump’s not capable of it, he should at least stop waging war on the outcome.
NatRev, Jim Geraghty: The Stolen-Election Narrative Needs to End http://bit.ly/2HUav7Y
Sunday morning, President Trump called in to Maria Bartiromo’s program on Fox News and laid out his account of what happened in the 2020 presidential election:
A glitch is supposed to be when a machine breaks down. Well, no, we had glitches where they moved thousands of votes from my account to Biden’s account. And these are glitches. So, they’re not glitches. They’re theft. They’re fraud, absolute fraud. And there were many of them, but, obviously, most of them tremendous amounts, got by without us catching. We got lucky to catch them. I think we caught four or five glitches of about 5,000 votes each, and different states. And, again, they’re not glitches . . . This election was over. And then they did dumps. They call them dumps, big, massive dumps, in Michigan, Pennsylvania, and all over. If you take a look at — you just take a look at just about every state that we’re talking about, every swing state that we’re talking about. And they did these massive dumps of votes. And, all of a sudden, I went from winning by a lot to losing by a little.
. . . We’re talking — there are a lot of dead people that so-called voted in this election. But dead people were, in some cases, in many, many cases, thousands of cases, voted, but, also, dead people made application to vote. They were dead 10 years, 15 years, and they actually made application. This is total fraud. And how the FBI and Department of Justice — I don’t know. Maybe they are involved. But how people are allowed to get away from this stuff — with this stuff is unbelievable. This election was rigged. This election was a total fraud. And it continues to be, as they hide. And the problem we have, we go to judges, and people don’t want to get involved . . .
. . . they had judges making deals. And they had electoral officials making deals, like this character in Georgia, who is a disaster. And the governor’s done nothing. He’s done absolutely nothing. I’m ashamed that I endorsed him. But you — I look at what’s going on. It’s so terrible. They stuffed the ballot boxes. You know, I have been hearing that expression, for many years. You have too, stuffed the ballot — they stuffed the ballot boxes. And they used COVID as a means to stuff the ballot boxes. Joe Biden did not get 16 million more votes than Barack Hussein Obama. He didn’t get it.
Since Election Day, President Trump has repeatedly insisted that the election was a fraud, rigged, or stolen, and that massive numbers of votes for him were secretly switched to Biden by the voting machines or by the officials running the elections in the counties. Yet his legal team has not made these assertions in court, nor have they presented any evidence in court that persuaded any judges. The legal team’s much more limited efforts, disputing much smaller numbers of votes, have almost entirely failed.
President Trump also wants his supporters to go out and vote for incumbent Republican Georgia senators David Perdue and Kelly Loeffler in the runoff elections in January. It is hard to see why. If Democrats, along with corrupt Republicans, along with every election official in the state, and every county official and local volunteer, and the management of the Dominion voting machines, and perhaps the Venezuelan government, and perhaps the Department of Justice and FBI and whatever other co-conspirators all worked together to steal the state from Trump . . . why would they not also steal the election for the Democrats running for Senate? ¤ What is the point of voting if the elections are rigged, as the president insists?
If the president is telling the truth, why should Georgia Republicans participate in the charade of an election scheduled for January 5? ¤ And if the president isn’t telling the truth . . . why shouldn’t Georgia Republicans — or anyone else — come out and say that he isn’t telling the truth?
🐣 RT @Marmel Took the liberty of making @draiochta14’s fantastic “who’s leaving” card set into a tik tok. Full credit to her… and, of course, @NSYNC.#ByeByeTrump 💽 https://twitter.com/Marmel/status/1333427743170576384?s=20/photo/1
WaPo Editorial: Trump’s latest Fox News rant was one of his most dangerous. Republicans can’t ignore it. http://wapo.st/37lZIwe //➔ Sure they can. And they will.
PRESIDENT TRUMP’S Sunday Fox News rant ranks as one of the most dangerous of his presidency, and that is saying something. Mr. Trump issued claim after incoherent claim about vote rigging — machines switched thousands of votes, dead people voted, mail-in ballots were “phony,” poll watchers “weren’t allowed.” The United States just conducted probably the most secure, transparent presidential vote in its history; Mr. Trump calls it “the most messed-up election we have ever seen.” Proving there is no core national institution he will not besmirch, Mr. Trump attacked the judicial system for failing to ratify his lies and suggested that the Justice Department and the FBI are in on the conspiracy.
Either the president is delusional, or he is willing to knowingly tear down the democracy to deny that he is a loser. Either way, everyone else in a position of trust has a responsibility to defend the nation’s democratic system against Mr. Trump’s sustained assault. Some Republicans, mostly at the state and local levels, have done so, at times under extreme public scrutiny, counting the votes and refusing to manipulate the electoral process to overturn the popular will. For conscientiously overseeing the vote in his state — and standing up for its integrity against baseless attacks from Mr. Trump and the state’s two U.S. senators — Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger and his family have received threats. He and other election officials have had to accept security details.
“It’s time to stand up and be counted,” Mr. Raffensperger said. “Are you going to stand for integrity? Or are you going to stand for the wild mob? You wanted to condemn the wild mob when it’s on the left side. What are you going to do when it’s on our side?” …
For weeks, Republicans dodged by saying Mr. Trump was entitled to make his case in court. Well, he has had his chance. He has failed. Judges, including those appointed by Mr. Trump, have made clear the election was not stolen. The dodge has run its course.
🐣 RT @DrLeanaWen Scott Atlas is not just “highly controversial” but is a widely discredited purveyor of anti-science disinformation and conspiracy theories that have actively caused harm. To be clear: Masks work. #covid19 is real. Herd immunity kills.
⋙ 🐣 RT @CNN Dr. Scott Atlas, a highly controversial member of the White House’s coronavirus task force, has resigned, a person who works with the task force says
⋙⋙ CNN: Dr. Scott Atlas resigns from Trump administration http://cnn.it/3qg6egB
WaPo: Wisconsin and Arizona make it official as Trump fails to stop vote certification in all six states where he contested his defeat http://wapo.st/39vRHri
WaPo, Eugene Robinson: Trump is an ego monster. Republicans, don’t let him consume you. http://wapo.st/3qdI7Pz “The GOP officials who enabled and abetted Trump will ultimately have to ask what they’re willing to put up with if they can’t bring themselves to marginalize him”
With Trump, it’s generally wise to assume the basest motives. Maybe he is actually trying to bully Republicans into nullifying the election and helping him stage what would amount to an authoritarian coup d’etat. Maybe he is spitefully trying to make life as difficult as possible for the new administration by delegitimizing Biden’s victory in the eyes of many voters. Maybe he is reinforcing his cult-leader control over his followers in what amounts to a massive act of hostage-taking, hoping to use them as human shields against potential criminal investigations or prosecutions — or as sources of ongoing profit.
But perhaps, on some level, Trump simply cannot accept that in an election that saw Republicans do well overall — gaining seats in the House, retaining control of statehouses, winning Senate seats that polls indicated they would almost surely lose — the man at the top of the ticket got creamed by more than 6 million votes.
“So I led this great charge, and I’m the only one that lost?” Trump tweeted Sunday. “No, it doesn’t work that way. This was a massive fraud, a RIGGED ELECTION!”
But yes, it does work that way. And no, of course the election wasn’t rigged. What happened was that voters turned out in record numbers for the specific purpose of kicking Trump out of the White House. It was a massive act of rejection, a clear message sent by more than 80 million of Trump’s fellow citizens: Go away.
🐣 RT @chrislhayes Some of the discourse grooves of the impeachment story are being repeated in Trump’s post election attempt to overturn the election. You can say “well it’s not really come to much of anything” or you can say “this is an extremely dangerous abuse of power, even if it didn’t work”
⋙ 🐣 RT @chrislhayes And obviously there’s a huge connection between impeachment and now. The whole point of the case was that a man who abused his office to attempt to cheat in an election couldn’t be trusted as the head of a democratic government.
🧵 RT @AshaRangappa Wow. Flynn’s pardon extends to any crimes within the “investigatory authority” of the Special Counsel, including crimes *arising* out of facts “known to” the SC within the scope of its investigation. Kinda suggests that his criminal liability wasn’t just lying to the FBI 📌 https://twitter.com/AshaRangappa_/status/1333547087024115712?s=20/photo/1-2
DailyBeast, Rick Wilson: We Won’t Forget and We Won’t Forgive What Trumpists Did to America http://bit.ly/3fOTuc0 “Only exposure, pain, humiliation, and (inshallah) incarceration will lead to a moment of reckoning for the GOP”
// It’s not enough to merely enjoy their agony and humiliation. It’s not enough to hope they’ll be shamed and correct their behavior. Have you not met these people?
🐣 RT @ForeignAffairs Washington and its partners are threatened less by rival great powers than by emergent, interconnected, and cascading transnational dangers, G. John Ikenberry writes. Confronting these dangers will require more cooperation, not less.
⋙ ForeignAffairs, G. John Ikenberry: The Next Liberal Order http://fam.ag/3q6AYAu
// Instead of embracing great-power competition, the United States should double down on the liberal international project.
🐣 RT @IrnaEnglish [Iran] Defense minister says idiot acts, assassinations not to go unanswered https://bit.ly/3qfFLzy #Fakhrizadeh
⭕ 29 Nov 2020
NYT, Ben Smith: The King of Trump TV Thinks You’re Dumb Enough to Buy It http://nyti.ms/33K4d2L “[N]obody I’ve ever covered treats an audience with the blithe disdain of Mr. Ruddy”
// Chris Ruddy, the C.E.O. of Newsmax, has found a business opportunity in feeding Trump supporters the fantasy that the president could still win the election.
🐣 RT @60Minutes “We can go on and on with all the farcical claims alleging interference in the 2020 election, but the proof is in the ballots. The recounts are consistent with the initial count,” says Krebs. “The American people should have 100% confidence in their vote.” https://cbsn.ws/3o2rT9W
⭕ 28 Nov 2020
NYT: In Key States, Republicans Were Critical in Resisting Trump’s Election Narrative http://nyti.ms/3fMqfGE
// They refuted conspiracy theories, certified results, dismissed lawsuits and repudiated a president of their own party.
WaPo: 20 days of fantasy and failure: Inside Trump’s quest to overturn the election http://wapo.st/3mirm3b “Trump was, in the telling of one close adviser, like “Mad King George, muttering, ‘I won. I won. I won.’ ”
NYT: Israel’s Gamble: If Assassination Fails to Set Back Iran’s Nuclear Program, Blowing Up Deal Is Easy http://nyti.ms/3fKNMYq
// The killing of Iran’s top nuclear scientist is likely to impede the country’s military ambitions. Its real purpose may have been to prevent the president-elect from resuming diplomacy with Tehran.
🐣 RT @C_C_Krebs Fact Check: Even if the nonsense claims of hacked voting systems and tallies were true – they’re decidedly NOT & ppl propagating the claims are doing democracy great harm – every canvass, audit, or recount conducted by hand has been consistent. Can’t hack paper. #WeArePerseus
⭕ 27 Nov 2020
WaPo, Elliot Williams: Emmet Sullivan’s handling of the Michael Flynn case is vindicated http://wapo.st/2VduQbE “In the end, the judge’s steadfastness saved the Justice Department from itself — or at least from its attorney general”
🐣 RT @60Minutes See the interview with the man President Trump ousted after he said the election was secure, Sunday night on 60 Minutes. https://cbsn.ws/3fFIJIK 💽 https://twitter.com/WylieNewmark/status/1332542639388942336?s=20/photo/1
// @C_C_Krebs
🐣 RT @paulkrugman So Trump lost, but we’re still talking about why so many people voted for him. And story seems to be that millions thought “We feel disrespected by liberal elites, who think we’re stupid. So we’re going to own them by … 1/ https://twitter.com/paulkrugman/status/1332338636516454404?s=20
⋙ 🐣 RT @paulkrugman voting for a corrupt, dishonest, incompetent guy who barely conceals his contempt for his own supporters.” I honestly have no idea how we’re supposed to deal with this 2/
⋙ 🐣 RT @paulkrugman To say that many Trump supporters basically engaged in a massive self-own sounds condescending; yet what could be more condescending than pretending that this isn’t exactly what happened? 3/ […]
⋙⋙ 🐣 people vote on abortion, guns, judges and some vote because they consider themselves “conservative”; some are simply racist and anti-immigrant ~ the “self-owners” are likely 40-50% of those who voted for Trump. I think of them as the cultists
🐣 RT @kylegriffin1 Milwaukee County’s recount of the presidential election vote tally has come to an end, with President-elect Joe Biden adding 132 votes to his margin of victory over Trump in Milwaukee County.
⋙ MilwaukeeJS: Milwaukee County presidential recount wraps up with Biden adding to his margin over Trump http://bit.ly/39nZqHx
WaPo: In a scathing opinion, appeals court rejects Trump request to block Pa. certification http://wapo.st/3o6OPVR “The Trump campaign said it would take the case to the Supreme Court, where legal experts have said it has little chance of success” ● https://twitter.com/Auriandra/status/1332503376341463041?s=20/photo/1
// The Trump campaign said it would take the case to the Supreme Court, where legal experts have said it has little chance of success.
// FP title ⇈ Inside title: Federal appeals court panel rejects Trump request to block certification of Pennsylvania’s election results
In a scathing 21-page opinion, the 3rd Circuit Court said that the Trump campaign’s challenge of the district court’s decision had “no merit.” The opinion was written by Judge Stephanos Bibas, who was appointed to the court by President Trump. Bibas was joined by two other Republican-appointed judges in a unanimous vote by the three-member panel.
“Charges of unfairness are serious. But calling an election unfair does not make it so. Charges require specific allegations and then proof. We have neither here,” Bibas wrote. “Voters, not lawyers, choose the President. Ballots, not briefs, decide elections.”
🐣 RT @JohnBrennan This was a criminal act & highly reckless. It risks lethal retaliation & a new round of regional conflict. ¤ Iranian leaders would be wise to wait for the return of responsible American leadership on the global stage & to resist the urge to respond against perceived culprits.
⋙ 🐣 RT @JohnBrennan I do not know whether a foreign government authorized or carried out the the murder of Fakhrizadeh. Such an act of state-sponsored terrorism would be a flagrant violation of international law & encourage more governments to carry out lethal attacks against foreign officials.
⋙ 🐣 RT @JohnBrennan These assassinations are far different than strikes against terrorist leaders & operatives of groups like al-Qaida & Islamic State, which are not sovereign states. As illegitimate combatants under international law, they can be targeted in order to stop deadly terrorist attacks.
🧵 RT @ Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, one of Iran’s most important nuclear officials, has been assassinated in Tehran. This is what we know /THREAD/: ¤ 1. Israel has assassinated numerous Iranian nuclear scientists in the past but have never been able to get to the highly protected Fakhrizadeh. 📌 https://twitter.com/tparsi/status/1332343037268291585?s=20
⋙ 🐣 […] RT @tparsi Whatever Iran’s response, the assassination of Fakhrizadeh will change Iranian politics and reduce its openness to compromise with the US, not just on nuclear matters, but on regional issues as well. ¤ That’s why the real target here was Biden’s forthcoming diplomacy w/ Iran.
NYT: Gunmen Assassinate Iran’s Top Nuclear Scientist in Ambush, Provoking New Crisis http://nyti.ms/3qg4zI3
// Iran expressed fury over the killing of Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, blaming it on Israel and the United States. His death may complicate President-elect Biden’s intention to restore the Iranian nuclear deal.
🔆 This❗️⋙ WaPo: Prominent Iranian nuclear scientist killed in attack outside Tehran http://wapo.st/36a4Ioe ● https://twitter.com/Auriandra/status/1332431045724135430?s=20/photo/1
Iran’s foreign minister, Mohammad Javad Zarif, described the attack on the scientist, Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, as the work of “state terror” and implicated Israel as having a possible role. Officials in Israel had no comment.
v
“The operation reflects thinking of those in the Netanyahu government — and/or the Trump administration — who see these next few weeks as their last chance to make relations with Iran as bad as possible, in an effort to spoil the Biden administration’s efforts to return to diplomacy with Tehran,” said Pillar*, referring to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.*Paul Pillar, a 28-year veteran of the CIA and a senior fellow at Georgetown University’s Center for Security Studies
⭕ 26 Nov 2020 🦃
NYT, David Brooks: The Rotting of the Republican Mind http://nyti.ms/36gpvGE
// When one party becomes detached from reality.
My analysis begins with a remarkable essay that Jonathan Rauch wrote for National Affairs in 2018 called “The Constitution of Knowledge.” Rauch pointed out that every society has an epistemic regime, a marketplace of ideas where people collectively hammer out what’s real. In democratic, nontheocratic societies, this regime is a decentralized ecosystem of academics, clergy members, teachers, journalists and others who disagree about a lot but agree on a shared system of rules for weighing evidence and building knowledge.
People need a secure order to feel safe. Deprived of that, people legitimately feel cynicism and distrust, alienation and anomie. This precarity has created, in nation after nation, intense populist backlashes against the highly educated folks who have migrated to the cities and accrued significant economic, cultural and political power. Will Wilkinson of the Niskanen Center calls this the “Density Divide.” It is a bitter cultural and political cold war.
Under Trump, the Republican identity is defined not by a set of policy beliefs but by a paranoid mind-set. He and his media allies simply ignore the rules of the epistemic regime and have set up a rival trolling regime. The internet is an ideal medium for untested information to get around traditional gatekeepers, but it is an accelerant of the paranoia, not its source. Distrust and precarity, caused by economic, cultural and spiritual threat, are the source.
What to do? You can’t argue people out of paranoia. If you try to point out factual errors, you only entrench false belief. The only solution is to reduce the distrust and anxiety that is the seedbed of this thinking. That can only be done first by contact, reducing the social chasm between the members of the epistemic regime and those who feel so alienated from it. And second, it can be done by policy, by making life more secure for those without a college degree.
WaPo: Fact-checking Trump’s cellphone rant of election falsehoods http://wapo.st/36avVY3
WaPo: Trump commits to stepping down if electoral college votes for Biden http://wapo.st/3fGohYc
⭕ 25 Nov 2020
🐣 RT @LukeBrussel Pompeo, a proponent of making US policy on the Middle East based around a belief that the State of Israel is a Sign that the Rapture and End Days are near when all sinners will be killed, says Biden cabinet picks live in “fantasy world”.
⋙ Politico: ‘Fantasy world’: Pompeo knocks Biden administration picks as out of touch on foreign policy http://politi.co/33hIXB3
// The secretary of State cited incoming officials’ approach to Iran as an example of having “led from behind.”
Vice, Ben Mathis-Lilley (Dec 2018): William Barr Pushed for Iran-Contra Pardons. Will He Do the Same With Mueller’s Convictions? http://bit.ly/3o1YzRb
// 12/7/2020
↥ ↧
NPR Fresh Air, Dave Davies (Jan 2020): Attorney General William Barr’s Unwavering Support Of Trump, Explained: Interview with David Rohde [Audio ✛ Transcript] http://n.pr/3fyV69w
// 1/23/2020
↥ ↧
CommonDreams, Will Bunch (Dec 2019): Reagan’s Forgotten Iran-Contra Escape May Reveal More About Trump’s Fate Than Watergate http://bit.ly/3m88GDq “The attorney general then is the attorney general now: William Barr”
// 12/4/2019; The principles first laid bare in Iran-Contra—a deference to the raw exercise of power, including a willingness to overlook the rule of law—have become America’s cruel guiding spirit in the 21st century.
🐣 RT @thedailybeast While Trump publicly tries to get momentum for his push to “turn the election over,” he has fretted privately about prosecutors wanting to “f*ck with” him post-presidency.
⋙ DailyBeast: Trump Literally Phones It in for Voter Fraud ‘Hearing’ as He Frets Privately About Prosecutors Ready to Pounce http://bit.ly/2V5iu53
// While Trump publicly tries to get momentum for his push to “turn the election over,” he has fretted privately about prosecutors wanting to “f*ck with” him post-presidency.
🐣 RT @dfriedman33 In 2017, a Trump lawyer left Flynn’s attorney a message that seemed to hint Flynn could get a pardon even if he cooperated with Mueller as long as Flynn didn’t implicate Trump in wrongdoing. Flynn didn’t implicate Trump. And Trump just pardoned him.
⋙ MotherJones, Dan Friedman: Was Trump’s Pardon of Flynn Part of a Deal? http://bit.ly/33i2Bwy
// An old voicemail message may provide a clue.
🐣 RT @TimKaine In February, a majority of both Houses of Congress told Trump—no war with Iran unless you come and justify to us and the American people and get the Congressional approval the Constitution requires.
⋙ 🔥🐣 RT @TimKaine In February, a majority of both Houses of Congress told Trump—no war with Iran unless you come and justify to us and the American people and get the Congressional approval the Constitution requires.
⋙ 🔥Axios (11/25): Scoop: Israeli military prepares for possibility Trump will strike Iran http://bit.ly/3l9bZZw //➔ According to Bret McGurk on @MSNBC on 11/26, the assassination of Fakhrizadeh was likely carried out by Israel with help from US Intelligence ● https://twitter.com/Auriandra/status/1332431385030762496?s=20/photo/1
● Last Sunday, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu met in Saudi Arabia with Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman. One of the main issues discussed was Iran, Israeli officials say.
● Pompeo visited Israel and several Gulf countries last week to discuss Iran. State Department officials traveling with Pompeo told reporters “all options are on the table.”
● While Pompeo was in the Gulf, U.S. Central Command announced that B-52 strategic bombers conducted a “short-notice, long-range mission into the Middle East to deter aggression and reassure U.S. partners and allies.” That was seen as another signal to Iran.
● Hossein Dehghan, an adviser to Iran’s leader and a possible candidate in Iran’s upcoming presidential elections, told AP last week that a U.S. military strike against Iran could set off a “full-fledged war” in the Middle East.
🐣 RT @marceelias There are lots of things in the world to worry about right now but the Pennsylvania election result is not one of them. ¤ The governor has certified the results pursuant to federal law. Joe Biden will be sworn in on January 20th.
🐣 RT @rgoodlaw When the pardon itself is part of an ongoing crime (conspiracy to obstruct justice) it may be ineffective. ¤ @SamBerger_DC’s analysis from 2019Down pointing backhand index #FlynnPardon
⋙ JustSecurity, Sam Berger (2019): When the Pardon Furthers the Conspiracy: Limits to the Pardon Power http://bit.ly/3q3FeRq
// 1/9/2019
🐣 RT @DavidCornDC “This election has to be turned around.” ¤ That’s what @realDonaldTrump just said, when he phoned into a GOP election hearing in Pennsylvania. ¤ This is a dangerous statement.
⋙ 🐣 RT @msfunsun Sedition is a serious felony punishable by fines and up to 20 years in prison and it refers to the act of inciting revolt or violence against a lawful authority with the goal of destroying or overthrowing it.
🐣 RT @BillKristol Giving thanks to the hundreds of thousands of (mostly volunteer) election officials, observers, poll watchers, etc., who pulled off a free and fair election despite the pandemic and the president. How superior our state and local officials have proved than our national ones!
🐣 RT @ProjectLincoln The Lincoln Project Gives Thanks 💽 https://twitter.com/ProjectLincoln/status/1331756305409839105?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @davidaxelrod Let’s be clear: the pardon of Flynn and others to follow are not about righting wrongs. They’re about rewarding silence.
🔆 This❗️⋙ WaPo: Trump pardons former national security adviser Michael Flynn, who pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI http://wapo.st/2V0gPOn
⭕ 24 Nov 2020
🐣 😅 RT @RobMajor4 💽 https://twitter.com/RobMajor4/status/1330714026939183105?s=20/photo/1
// Trump dancing on sinking ship
🐣 RT @JohnFugelsang Hunter Biden’s laptop ¤ discarded & forgotten; ¤ has gone to dwell w/
● Migrant Caravans
● Hillary’s Emails
● The Fake Birth Certificate
● Benghazi
● Ground Zero Mosque
● Obamacare Death Panels
● Swiftboaters for Draft Dodgers &
● “Threats To Traditional Marriage”
on @GOP’s Island of Misfit Smears
‼️🐣 📋 RT @JasonLeopold Reminder that Mark Meadows signed a sworn declaration that said Trump told him he doesn’t mean what he tweets ¤ (Via my/@BuzzFeedNews #FOIA case) https://twitter.com/JasonLeopold/status/1327701545618612225?s=20/photo/1
// Trump’s Tweets not commands re: declassification of Mueller docs
🐣 RT @TheHill Brennan takes final shot at Trump: “I leave his fate to our judicial system, his infamy to history, & his legacy to a trash heap” http://hill.cm/n0Y1kT9
🧵 RT @ErikWempel There’s notice of a settlement in the suit of Joel and Mary Rich against Fox News et al. for infliction of emotional distress over the network’s retracted promotion of the Seth Rich conspiracy theory. 📌 https://twitter.com/ErikWemple/status/1331309423189487623?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @JoeBiden America is back.
🐣 🌎 RT @votesaveamerica Michigan, Nevada and Pennsylvania coming in hot with certification for Joe Biden and Kamala Harris. These states put their victory well over 270.
Reminder, Joe is projected to win: AZ, CA, CO, CT, DE, DC, HI, IL, ME, MD, MA, MN, NH, NJ, NY, OR, RI, VT, VA, WA, WI https://twitter.com/votesaveamerica/status/1331298342253391878?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @tribelaw The rollout of this breathtakingly capable, experienced, diverse national security team was truly splendid. I found myself standing at attention throughout it. America is back. Public service is back. Dedication is back. Truth is back. I felt so proud of my adopted country. 🇺🇸🇺🇸
⭕ 23 Nov 2020
NBCNews, Dean Obeidallah: Trump’s election lies are an attempted coup. Biden and other Democrats should say so. http://nbcnews.to/3pP4RFk
// Regardless of how you define the word, now is not the time for academic debates.
President Donald Trump is not trying to simply undermine President-elect Joe Biden’s presidency, nor is he primarily trying to position himself for a 2024 presidential run, as many have suggested. No, Trump’s No. 1 goal is to overturn the results of the 2020 election. It’s time for Biden and other Democratic leaders to describe his actions in the most forceful and universally understandable language possible. And that means, in this case, calling them part of an attempted coup to illegally overthrow the Biden presidency. …
Regardless of how you define the word, now is not the time for academic debates. Trump’s wildly effective communications strategy proves that sometimes simpler is better. Biden’s response, in contrast, has been far too careful and far too polite. On Thursday, Biden called Trump’s efforts to undermine the election results “totally irresponsible,” adding that his message to immigrants worried about Trump’s electoral attacks was “Hang on. I’m on my way.” Other leading Democrats have, for the most part, followed Biden’s lead.
This message is not surprising given Biden’s campaign strategy, which emphasized unity. Such sentiment was also at the heart of Biden’s victory speech Nov. 7. But it is nevertheless a very bad strategy.
Italy’s Benito Mussolini and Russia’s Vladimir Putin amassed power through bullying. These types of leaders treat silence or muted responses as a sign of weakness, emboldening them to push further with their authoritarian goals.
… A Reuters poll released Wednesday found that only 73 percent of Americans said Biden won the election, while 52 percent of Republicans say Trump “rightfully won.” This is incredibly disturbing, and probably unprecedented.
Team Biden must also repeatedly highlight Trump’s lack of credible evidence of voter fraud. Common sense tells us that if the assertions by Trump surrogate Rudy Giuliani of a “national conspiracy” to rig the election were true, the Trump effort would have more to show for it. It has been nearly three weeks since Election Day. Instead, Trump’s lawyers lashed out at reporters when pressed for details or data. …
Biden, as president-elect, is rightfully focused on trying to facilitate an effective transition of power between Trump’s outgoing administration and his incoming one. But he must simultaneously be spending the weeks until Inauguration Day vocally defending our democratic elections against authoritarian attacks from within. By standing up to Trump’s attempted coup, Biden will be proving to those millions of Americans who voted freely and fairly for him that they made the right choice.
WaPo: Trump relents on transition as Republicans join mounting calls for him to acknowledge Biden’s win http://wapo.st/3l5sV3q
Though procedural in nature, Trump’s acceptance of the General Services Administration starting the transition amounted to a dramatic capitulation and capped an extraordinary 16-day standoff since Biden was declared the winner on Nov. 7. ¤ On Monday, the Michigan Board of State Canvassers certified Biden’s win there, while earlier in the day dozens of business leaders and Republican national security experts had urged Trump to accept the result because refusing to begin the transition was endangering the country’s security, economy and pandemic response.
A senior Trump campaign adviser, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to be candid, said Monday night: “He basically just conceded. That’s as close to a concession as you will probably get.”
🐣 RT @JoyceWhiteVance It’s a .gov website. We’re back, America.
⋙ 🐣 RT @JoeBiden buildbackbettter.gov
🐣 RT @BradMossEsq If the fall of Trump has shown anything it is how many prominent conservative political and legal pundits are complete frauds, scam artists and charlatans selling snake oil to gullible lemmings.
🐣 RT @DeanObeidallah Trump’s attempt to overturn the 2020 election is a COUP-and Joe Biden/Democrats should be vocally denouncing it as such. History proves taking the high road is the very worst response to a fascist like Trump. ¤ My new @NBCNewsTHINK article:
⋙ NBCNews: Trump’s election lies are an attempted coup. Biden and other Democrats should say so. http://nbcnews.to/3pP4RFk
// Regardless of how you define the word, now is not the time for academic debates.
⋙ 🐣 RT @crackthemessage Along these lines I encourage folks to read the attached piece about Thucydides. His writings in 427 BCE about the corruption of political leaders and the role of passion in political discourse are striking for their application to 2016. @MelissaJPeltier
⋙⋙ GetPocket/NYRB: What Thucydides Knew About the US Today http://bit.ly/3pZfWnA
// Everyone who reads Thucydides knows him as the most profound and convincing historian of empire, not only in his own age but also in his explicit and implicit predictions of later ages.
🐣 RT @davidfrum Now onto the corrupt pardons phase of the presidential transition
🐣 RT @kylegriffin1 Sen. Dianne Feinstein: “After serving as the lead Democrat on the Judiciary Committee for four years, I will not seek the chairmanship or ranking member position in the next Congress.”
🐣 RT @real I want to thank Emily Murphy at GSA for her steadfast dedication and loyalty to our Country. She has been harassed, threatened, and abused – and I do not want to see this happen to her, her family, or employees of GSA. Our case STRONGLY continues, we will keep up the good…
⋙ 🐣 RT @real …fight, and I believe we will prevail! Nevertheless, in the best interest of our Country, I am recommending that Emily and her team do what needs to be done with regard to initial protocols, and have told my team to do the same.
🐣 RT @MSNBC BREAKING: GSA Admin. Emily Murphy has informed President-elect Biden that the administration is ready to begin the formal transition process, according to letter obtained by @GeoffRBennett. https://twitter.com/MSNBC/status/1331016584752754692?s=20/photo/1-2
🐣 RT @sbg1 I look forward to no longer having the word ‘ascertainment’ in my current events vocabulary…
⋙ 🐣 RT @BeschlossDC @GSAEmily has let President-elect Biden know that transition process will now begin, says CNN.
WaPo: Republican national security experts call on Trump to concede, begin transition http://wapo.st/339dlNQ
WaPo: Michigan board votes to certify the state’s election results, dealing Trump another blow http://wapo.st/3l5sV3q
WaPo, Jennifer Rubin: The Republican Party has split in two. Let’s keep it that way. http://wapo.st/33a93G5 ‘Romney, Collins, Murkowski, Toomey and Sasse hold the balance of power in a narrowly divided Senate’
🐣 RT @JoeBiden Today, I’m announcing the first members of my national security and foreign policy team. They will rally the world to take on our challenges like no other—challenges that no one nation can face alone. ¤ It’s time to restore American leadership. I trust this group to do just that. 💽 https://twitter.com/JoeBiden/status/1330967606585593857?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @RepAdamSchiff Dear @GSAEmily, ¤ Your refusal to recognize Biden’s win will do serious long-term harm. ¤ To national security, our fight against COVID, and more. ¤ Trump’s frivolous lawsuits and baseless conspiracies to overturn the people’s mandate will not succeed. ¤ Do your duty. Right now. https://twitter.com/RepAdamSchiff/status/1330968740142444546?s=20/photo/1-2
⭕ 22 Nov 2020
🐣 RT @5_2blue Michael Conway says Biden should do the unthinkable and pardon Trump to unite the nation. ¤ How do you feel about this?
⋙ 🐣 No pardon. It would in fact be divisive (Dems would ignite). He should pick a good AG, one known for integrity and fairness, and restore the wall between the DOJ and the White House. If Trump tries to pardon himself, we should get a SCOTUS opinion on that.
🐣 RT @kaitlincollins Chris Christie: “I have been a supporter of the president’s. I voted for him twice. But elections have consequences & we cannot continue to act as if something happened here that didn’t happen.” He says an unwillingness to present evidence “must mean the evidence doesn’t exist.”
🐣 RT @stuartpstevens It was all a lie.
⋙ 🐣 RT @StuartEtc Trumpism’s hold on the GOP has made it clear that there were maybe two dozen actual conservative pols in the GOP before 2016. The rest were pretenders who when you scratched the surface revealed themselves as a motley crew of grifters, fascists, racists, and sociopaths.
⋙ 🐣 RT @TRobinsonAlst2 The GOP sold its birthright as the party of Lincoln, Frederick Douglass, Teddy Roosevelt, Coolidge and Eisenhower to become the party of Limbaugh, David Duke & The Proud Boys. Nixon’s “Southern Strategy” has produced its inevitable result.
🐣 RT @carlbernstein I’m not violating any pledge of journalistic confidentially in reporting this: 21 Republican Sens–in convos w/ colleagues, staff members, lobbyists, W. House aides–have repeatedly expressed extreme contempt for Trump & his fitness to be POTUS. (1/3)
⋙ 🐣 RT @carlbernstein The 21 GOP Senators who have privately expressed their disdain for Trump are: Portman, Alexander, Sasse, Blunt, Collins, Murkowski, Cornyn, Thune, Romney, Braun, Young, Tim Scott, Rick Scott, Rubio, Grassley, Burr, Toomey, McSally, Moran, Roberts, Shelby. (2/3)
⋙ 🐣 RT @carlbernstein With few exceptions, their craven public silence has helped enable Trump’s most grievous conduct—including undermining and discrediting the US the electoral system. ¤ More from my appearance earlier on @cnn 💽 https://twitter.com/carlbernstein/status/1330710307052814336?s=20/photo/1
🧵 RT @MuellerSheWrote THREAD. ‘Twas the night before Christmas
The year: 2020
Giuliani had lost foolish lawsuits a-plenty
Michigan lawmakers tried to be bought
When sedition was offered as trump’s evil plot
And even though Biden and Harris had won
Transition of power still hadn’t begun 1/
📌 https://twitter.com/MuellerSheWrote/status/1330368238702694402?s=20
🐣 RT @ABlinken Sigh. This pains me in light of my admiration for Robert Wright. The Moral Animal is among the most brilliant books I’ve read. Well, maybe I’ll evolve…https://twitter.com/ABlinken/status/1327412079666540555?s=20
⋙ 🐣 I think you can be progressive to your bones and still be a political and policy realist. “Politics ~ The Art of the Possible”
🐣 RT @MaryLTrump Linda Thomas-Greenfield as UN Ambassador, Michele Flournoy as SecDef, and @ABlinken as SecState? This is great news. But I’m afraid we’re going to have to get used to expertise, professionalism, competence, and decency again. I think we can do it.
NYT Editorial: A Great Election, Against All Odds http://nyti.ms/35SyUnK “In the face of a raging pandemic and the highest turnout in more than a century, Americans enjoyed one of the most secure, most accurate and most well-run elections ever”
// Democracy is hard work. That work paid off.
Democracy is a fragile thing, and it requires constant tending and vigilance to survive. Americans were lucky this time. They were also well prepared. When pushed to the brink, they mobilized to protect their democracy. For this moment, at least, tune out the president, his flailing dishonesty and his bottomless disregard for the American experiment. Instead, express gratitude to the millions of Americans who still believe in that experiment, and who did all they could to make this election succeed in the face of daunting odds. Then help make sure they don’t have to do it by themselves again.
NYT: Biden Chooses Antony Blinken, Defender of Global Alliances, as Secretary of State http://nyti.ms/3nK4yKf
// Formerly the State Department’s No. 2, Mr. Blinken is expected to try to re-establish the United States as a trusted ally ready to rejoin global agreements and court multilateral efforts to confront China.
WaPo: Here’s when Biden’s win becomes official — and how Trump is trying to prevent that http://wapo.st/2Hut7vg With key deadlines looming, derailing the certification of results is part of the president’s strategy ● https://twitter.com/Auriandra/status/1330697907545268227?s=20/photo/1
WaPo: Chris Christie calls the conduct of Trump’s legal team a ‘national embarrassment’ http://wapo.st/35Upnwo
⭕ 21 Nov 2020
WaPo: In scathing opinion, federal judge dismisses Trump campaign lawsuit in Pennsylvania http://wapo.st/35Pe090
Brann wrote that Trump’s campaign had used “strained legal arguments without merit and speculative accusations” in its effort to throw out millions of votes. ¤ “In the United States of America, this cannot justify the disenfranchisement of a single voter, let alone all the voters of its sixth most populated state,” Brann wrote.
Sen. Patrick J. Toomey (R-Pa.) said in a statement after Brann’s decision that Trump had “exhausted all plausible legal options” in the state and acknowledged that Biden won the election. “I congratulate President-elect Biden and Vice President-elect Kamala D. Harris on their victory,” said Toomey.
⭕ 20 Nov 2020
NewYorker, John Cassidy: Rudy Giuliani Is a Hot Mess http://bit.ly/334rWKC
Barely stopping to draw a breath, Giuliani claimed that Biden operatives, working in cahoots with big-city Democratic machines, corrupt judges, and a voting-software company tied to Communist governments abroad (I kid you not), contrived to reverse the early leads that Trump held on Election Night in states such as Georgia, Michigan, and Pennsylvania. “What I am describing to you is a massive fraud,” Giuliani insisted at one point. At another, he said that the evidence he and his colleagues had gathered was “enough to overturn any election.”
And what is that evidence? Giuliani claimed that Trump’s legal team had gathered hundreds of affidavits from poll watchers and election officials alleging perfidious acts. But when reporters asked him to release these documents, he replied, “I can’t do it. I can’t put a witness’s life in jeopardy.” Much of the evidence Giuliani did point to has already been discredited, including claims from Republican poll watchers of malfeasance in Wayne County, Michigan, which includes the city of Detroit. Last week, a Wayne County judge dismissed the case to which these witnesses’ affidavits were attached. He said that the witnesses did not attend a session on the ballot-counting process hosted by election officials and their statements were “rife” with speculation.
⭕ 19 Nov 2020
🐣 RT @LeeFuell This is what we are seeing from Trump, Giuliani, and their enablers:
⋙ Rand: The Russian “Firehose of Falsehood” Propaganda Model http://bit.ly/2o8DlqR
// Why It Might Work and Options to Counter It
↥ ↧
🧵 RT @kasparov68 It’s comforting to call Trump, Giuliani, and the rest clowns, but clowns with power are not funny at all. They won’t overturn the election, but they are doing tremendous damage, which was always the goal. 📌 https://twitter.com/Kasparov63/status/1329492749314363398?s=20
⋙⋙ 🐣 RT @NicoleGoodkind This is Trump’s argument: George Soros, Biden, the Clinton Foundation & the antifa worked with the Venezuelan government to rig the election by making big Dem cities vote for the Democratic candidate. But they also let Republicans win Senate, Congressional and local races.
⋙⋙⋙ 🐣 RT @NicoleGoodkind The most insane thing is that this an accurate description of what Trump’s personal lawyers are telling the American people uninterrupted on Fox News and that very few GOP Senators or Congressman will refute these claims in any way.
⋙ 🐣 RT @kasparov68 As I wrote in 2018, Trumpism’s goal is to split the country, to carve out enough supporters who believe whatever he says, no matter the evidence. Attacking the media and discrediting elections were always part of it.
⋙ 🐣 RT @kasparov68 When Trump continued to insist that the 2016 was fraudulent, many wrote it off as childishness and ego. Yes, but discrediting the system also had a point, preparing for an election he didn’t win.
⋙ 🐣 RT @kasparov68 Trump’s outrageous attacks on the US election process, and the refusal of the GOP to challenge them, will result in many similar attacks in future elections, in the US and elsewhere. Democracy discredited, Putin’s dream.
🐣 RT @kylegriffin1 Sen. Sasse; “Trump lost Michigan by more than 100,000 votes, and the campaign and its allies have lost in or withdrawn from all five lawsuits in Michigan for being unable to produce any evidence. Wild press conferences erode public trust … We are a nation of laws, not tweets.”
HuffPo: Republican Senators Push Back Against Trump For Trying To Overturn The Election http://bit.ly/330DZIB
// Plus Sasse and Ernst (sort of); “It is difficult to imagine a worse, more undemocratic action by a sitting American President,” Sen. Mitt Romney (R-Utah) said of Trump.
HuffPo: Republican Senators Push Back Against Trump For Trying To Overturn The Election http://bit.ly/330DZIB
// Plus Sasse and Ernst (sort of); “It is difficult to imagine a worse, more undemocratic action by a sitting American President,” Sen. Mitt Romney (R-Utah) said of Trump.
DailyBeast: Desperate Rudy’s Latest Pennsylvania Gambit Is Wilder Than His Sweaty Press Conference http://bit.ly/35KbSiS
// No, he says, he doesn’t have to provide any evidence of fraud in the state. Instead, it’s Pennsylvania that must prove its mail-in ballots were legal.
🐣 RT @McFaul Letting Rudy become the face of the GOP is really not a good look. Hard to see how this helps in Georgia or the longer game. But Im no expert.
🧵 RT @atrupar Giuliani and company are about to give us a Total overview of the Landscaping 📌 https://twitter.com/atrupar/status/1329472200898994181?s=20
🐣 RT @C_C_Krebs That press conference was the most dangerous 1hr 45 minutes of television in American history. And possibly the craziest. If you don’t know what I’m talking about, you’re lucky.
↥ ↧
🐣 Is there anything in Q iconography having to do with hair dye dripping down both sides of your face? Is it like stigmata? A secret signal to the bearers of arms? Or could it just be a way of subtly signifying that someone is a drooling idiot?
💙 WaPo, Dan Zak and Josh Dawsey: Rudy Giuliani’s post-election meltdown starts to become literal http://wapo.st/3lRiVf9
🔆 This❗️⋙ WaPo: Trump uses power of presidency to try to overturn the election and stay in office http://wapo.st/2IUIEog
WaPo: Wayne County Republican who asked to ‘rescind’ her vote certifying election results says Trump called her http://wapo.st/2UKmsQB “Trump has also invited leaders from Michigan’s Republican-controlled state legislature to meet with him on Friday afternoon in Washington”
🐣 RT @prahme The thing that is most worrisome is there seems to be no time limit attached to his being unable to back up his claims of widespread fraud or lack of frivolous or wreckless suits & suggestions
⋙ 🐣 Trump will never concede. He fully intends to continue to tear apart our democracy, every shred. There’s already a law saying the “apparent winner” must be allowed to transition, but Trump refuses to allow it. The people in DHS who are breaking that law will get a pardon.
⋙ 🐣 Biden will be sworn in and become president, but he’ll have to spend much of his term trying to repair the damage. It remains to be seen how much the GOP will cooperate with him because Trump can get behind [the] primary challenger [of anyone] who steps out of line. Sad!
🐣 RT @prahme I don’t know if you are in Insta, but Neal Katyal’s breakdowns of where the legal stuff stands on a daily are fantastic https://instagram.com/tv/CHtvCYzHRJk/?igshid=f8h10dnnojy3…
⋙ 🐣 It turns out I had set up an account a long time ago. Yes, I love @Neal_Katyal. He’d make a great AG. The problem is there are still going to be 30% who Trump will now be able to convince [the courts] are part of the “deep state.” He’s even messaged his appointees on Scotus to stick w him.
⭕ 18 Nov 2020
😅 RT @Alyssa_Milano Trump’s concession speech. #TransitionNow #EmilyDoYourJob 💽 https://twitter.com/Alyssa_Milano/status/1329261615120670723?s=20/photo/1
WaPo, Philip Bump: What the fired director of federal cybersecurity actually said about the election http://wapo.st/35Odok9 What Chris Krebs “said” was actually a statement put out by two working groups made of numerous officials in fed, state and outside agencies
🐣 RT @McFaul 2 weeks after losing the election, Trump continues to deliver for Putin. No greater gift the outgoing incumbent could deliver to Putin than delegitimizing our democracy by failing to recognize the results.
⋙ 🐣 RT @JuliaDavisNews “That’s how you delegitimize a nation.” ¤ Discrediting the crown jewel of Western democracy remains one of Russia’s top priorities—& while he failed to come through on other fronts, Trump delivered a parting gift above & beyond the Kremlin’s wildest dreams.
⋙⋙ 🐣 RT @JuliaDavisNews While pro-Kremlin mouthpieces are in mourning over Joe Biden’s victory, they managed to make lemonade out of the shriveled lemons of Trump’s waning presidency, by claiming that at least half of America is now disappointed in the country’s electoral system. https://twitter.com/JuliaDavisNews/status/1325157225887801344?s=20
🐣 RT @DeadlineWH “If you take out [Chris Krebs] and the number two guy resigns, now you’ve got no leadership at the helm to stop the propaganda that people are buying into that this whole election was rigged” – @FrankFigliuzzi1 w/ @NicolleDWallace https://twitter.com/DeadlineWH/status/1329195585489018881?s=20/photo/1
DailyBeast, Michael Tomasky: The Only Way for Biden to ‘Move the Country Forward’ Is To Hold Trump To Account for his Crimes http://bit.ly/35Juhw3
// No, the 45th president probably isn’t going to prison. But that doesn’t mean that the 46th president should just move on from the crimes his predecessor committed.
🔄💙 Track the Legal actions Dems are taking here 🔆❗️⋙: DemocracyDocket: 2020 Post-Election War Room http://bit.ly/2INeSSC
🐣 RT @MollyJongFast This is fucked up
⋙ 🐣 RT @aabramson “Rudy told people he was trying to get the legislatures to flip,” one source familiar says. “Rudy’s view of the world is if he does a good enough job inflaming the results, Pennsylvania won’t certify, Wisconsin won’t certify”
⋙⋙ 🐣 RT @aabramson This is viewed as “ludicrous” among dems, gop, and election law experts. But that seems to be besides the point. If Rudy/Trump’s goal is to wreak havoc, its working.
⋙⋙⋙ TIME: ‘People will stop believing in the process.’ Why Donald Trump’s Legal Strategy Is Dangerous Even If It’s Likely to Fail http://bit.ly/35GZ0d6
⋙⋙ 🐣 🔆 This❗️⋙ AP (11/14): GOP leaders in 4 states quash dubious Trump bid on electors http://bit.ly/2UHvFcu “State GOP lawmakers in Arizona, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin have all said they would not intervene in the selection of electors”
🐣 RT @BillKristol The lawsuits are idiotic and the lies embarrassing. But Trump’s getting much of what he wants. He’s still in charge of the GOP and he’s laying the groundwork to stay in charge. In a defeated Administration (e.g. 1992) that behaves normally, power ebbs away quickly. Not so here.
🐣 RT @ There you have it. Trump official told CNN the goal is to “set so many fires that it will be hard for the Biden administration to put them all out.” ¤ This is scorched earth foreign policy.
⋙ CNN: Trump team looks to box in Biden on foreign policy by lighting too many fires to put out http://cnn.it/3fgrk9p
It’s a strategy that radically breaks with past practice, could raise national security risks and will surely compound challenges for the Biden team — but it could also backfire. Analysts and people close to the Biden transition argue the Trump team may act so aggressively that reversing some of its steps will earn Biden easy goodwill points and negotiating power with adversaries.
🐣 RT @C_C_Krebs In defending democracy, do or do not, there is no try. This is the way. #Protect2020 @HamillHimself @PedroPascal1
⋙ 🐣 RT @HamillHimself Translation: The recent statement by Chris Krebs was highly accurate, in that there were no improprieties or fraud, confirmed by all credible 2020 Election officials sworn under oath to be truthful. Therefore, he has been terminated for refusing to lie for me, your #LiarInChief. [Att: Trump’s tweets firing Krebs:] https://twitter.com/C_C_Krebs/status/1328953421882413056?s=20
🐣 RT @girlsreallyrule Statement from @SpeakerPelosi on Trump’s decision to fire top election security official, Chris Krebs: Text Block: https://twitter.com/girlsreallyrule/status/1329018891281035269?s=20/photo/1
⭕ 17 Nov 2020
WaPo: In reversal, GOP officials in key Michigan county certify ballot count after striking a compromise with Democrats http://wapo.st/3kHG4iA State Democrats say Trump has no hope of overturning Biden’s 148,000-vote lead.
“If the state board follows suit, the Republican state legislator will select the electors. Huge win for @realDonaldTrump,” Trump campaign legal adviser Jenna Ellis tweeted Tuesday night after the initial Wayne County deadlock.
But experts said such a move would have been on shaky legal ground, and key GOP lawmakers have acknowledged Biden’s win and said they do not plan to attempt to intervene.
After the initial deadlock in Wayne County was met with an outpouring of condemnation, the board recessed Tuesday night and returned with a new agreement to certify the results, along with a request that the secretary of state’s office conduct a comprehensive audit of the vote tallies.
Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson said in an interview on CNN that “it appears that the truth won in this scenario.”
“The evidence is clear — there were no irregularities, there was no evidence of widespread fraud, and in fact there were simply minor clerical errors,” she said, adding: “So I think they did the right thing, they performed their duty, and they certified the election for the voters in Wayne County.”
On Fox News late Tuesday, Ellis decried the board’s change of heart as “mob rule.”
The reversal in Michigan came as the Trump campaign has faced a string of failures in its beleaguered effort to overturn the result of the election through the courts. In the latest defeat on Tuesday, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court rejected the campaign’s claim that GOP observers did not have sufficient access to the vote count, underscoring how the president’s claims of voting irregularities have repeatedly run aground before judges.
The argument marked Giuliani’s most direct involvement yet in Trump’s post-election litigation. A federal prosecutor during the 1980s, he won plaudits for securing convictions of major mob figures. But according to the federal court system’s public records system, he last entered an appearance in a federal case in 1992. In a text message, Giuliani estimated that it had been “four or five years” since he tried a case in court.
“Rudy is calling the shots, and we are following,” one senior Republican involved in the campaign said. “I wouldn’t have organized it this way, but that’s the way the president wants it.”
Referring to the withdrawal of former Trump attorneys in Pennsylvania, an official said, “Rudy wants to make arguments in court that other lawyers are not willing to make. It’s not that they weren’t willing to represent us. When they intersect with Rudy’s world, they don’t want to make those arguments that Rudy wants to make.”
One Republican lawyer close to the campaign said they too quickly jumped to accusations without proof of fraud and instead should have asked for examinations in states to glean evidence first. ¤ This Republican said the campaign also should have engaged higher-power lawyers earlier on, instead of hiring “TV show lawyers.” ¤ “The lawyers on the outside, none of them are supportive of the Rudy strategy,” this person said. “Rudy is not advancing the cause of the law.”
Reuters: U.S. Senate leader McConnell warns against troops quickly leaving Iraq or Afghanistan http://reut.rs/2UEDnE9
CISA Rumor Control: https://www.cisa.gov/rumorcontrol
// will likely be taken down soon
🐣 RT @suemgordon22 @CISAKrebs delivered for the Nation. With others across government and in the private sector, he built not only new capability, but strong foundation for the future. Proud to call him my colleague and friend. You did good, pal, and served your turn with honor and dignity.
🧵 RT @RepSlotkin Today the acting Sec. Def. announced a quick withdrawal of U.S. troops from Afghanistan & Iraq. Whatever one’s views, making such a quick move without coordination with our NATO, Iraqi and Afghan allies, after so much blood has been shed, hurts us in both the short and long-term. 📌 https://twitter.com/RepSlotkin/status/1328882526425935872?s=20
🧵 RT @jimsciutto Mark Aronchick, who argued against Rudy Giuliani today in PA court, tells me tonight: “Giuliani was outrageous in the things he was saying. He called Philadephia election workers ‘a little mafia group’. Many things he said were not related to what the complaint actually said.” 1/ 📌 https://twitter.com/jimsciutto/status/1328883102467371009?s=20
🔆 This❗️⋙ WaPo: Trump fires top DHS official who refuted his claims that the election was rigged http://wapo.st/3lH2wde
🐣 RT @BillKristol I’m told DOD has been ordered to plan further troop withdrawals, from Somalia, South Korea and Germany. Trump is doing his best to weaken America, our friends, and allies on his way out the door.
⋙ 🐣 RT @TalhaMAwais Intervention is not the answer to everything, Mr. Warmonger.
⋙⋙ 🐣 Troops are in Germany and South Korea for stabilization, not intervention. Pulling troops out of Germany advantages Russia; pulling them out of SoKo opens them up for invasion by NoKo. Trump is breaking things in a tantrum.
🐣 RT @kylegriffin In the incoming Senate, Democratic senators will represent at least 20,314,962 more people than their Republican counterparts. If the two Georgia seats go to the Democrats, the Democratic half will represent 41,549,808 more people than the Republican half.
⋙ Vox, Ian Milhauser: America’s anti-democratic Senate, by the numbers http://bit.ly/36HHFjC
// 11/6/2020; If the United States chose its leaders in free and fair elections, Republicans would be firmly out of power.
🐣 RT @BillKristol It’s not just that the anti-mask, anti-distancing, anti-testing Republicans are wrong as a matter of public policy. It’s not even that they lack empathy for those who suffer. They relish their lack of empathy. They glory in their callousness. They are proud of their inhumanity.
⭕ 16 Nov 2020
💙 NYT Mag, Jonathan Mahler: Can America Restore the Rule of Law Without Prosecuting Trump? http://nyti.ms/3nzbyJK
✅ WaPo, Ann Gerhart and Tyler Remmel: Election results under attack: Here are the facts http://wapo.st/3kFKczI ‘The facts about prominent efforts to question the fairness and integrity of the election, as well as updates on litigation’
// A compilation of the misinformation, disinformation and many rejected legal challenges by the Trump campaign to try to overturn votes.
🐣 RT @EamonJavers Biden on Trump’s refusal to concede: “I find this more embarrassing for the country than debilitating for my ability to get started.”
💙 NYT, Frank Bruni: Was It Worth It, Jared and Ivanka? http://nyti.ms/3f3FVF8 “They are the Faustian poster couple of the Trump presidency, the king and queen of the principle-torching prom at which so many danced alongside them, although in less exquisitely tailored attire” ● Text Block: https://twitter.com/Auriandra/status/1328444315182505985?s=20/photo/1
// The glossiest grifters become Vuitton vagabonds.
They are Mitch McConnell after a makeover, Ted Cruz gone to charm school, Mike Pompeo with a more rigorous fitness regimen, Lindsey Graham with less time on the links. They are Mike Pence and Nikki Haley and scores of others in and out of office, so entranced by power, so enchanted by perks, so primed for future prizes that they junked values that they once supposedly held and downgraded decency to something ornamental, a sprig of parsley on a fish fillet.
🐣 RT @CSIS Falling confidence in vaccines is a U.S. national security risk. A new report recommends five urgent actions to bolster public acceptance for a Covid-19 vaccine. Learn more: http://cs.is/calltoaction.
WaPo: Moderna’s coronavirus vaccine found to be nearly 95 percent effective in a preliminary analysis http://wapo.st/35CxT2W This mRNA vaccine, co-developed with Dr Fauci’s NAIAD, does not require storage at hypercold temps like Pfizer’s
🐣 Updated my header photo and avatar. I had had an image of Stonehenge, feeling we were heading backwards. Now I am focused on science, beauty and optimism, but the scars remain. A brief respite as many more battles will come. ¤ ‘Eternal vigilance is the price of Liberty.’
💙 TheAtlantic, Jeffrey Goldberg: Why Obama Fears for Our Democracy http://bit.ly/3lCsePX
// In an exclusive interview, the former president identifies the greatest threats to the American experiment, explains why he’s still hopeful, and opens up about his new book.
⭕ 15 Nov 2020
🐣 RT @McFaul If I were to become this delusional in the future, I would hope that my children would intervene, and help to reduce the embarrassment. cc @IvankaTrump .
⋙ 🐣 RT @real I WON THE ELECTION!
⋙ [Twitter:] (!) Official sources called this election differently
🐣 RT @KTharase This what one million looks like. ¤ Police estimate you pity party at 5 to 6 thousand. https://twitter.com/KTharase/status/1327689791752716288?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @SteveSchmidtSES They are disloyal Americans. They are sewing conspiracy theories and undermining the legitimacy of an election they know full well was won by Biden. There is no evidence of fraud. It is a con masquerading as an idiots coup. Nevertheless, it is poisonous for our Republic
🐣 RT @stuartpstevens Every Republican who hasn’t acknowledged the winner of 2020 election is hurting America. What’s wrong with these people? Are they not Americans?
⋙ 🐣 RT @ProjectLincoln It’s time for Republicans to put America first. 💽 https://twitter.com/stuartpstevens/status/1327607996776665089?s=20/photo/1
// The Lincoln Project ad❣
💙 🐣 RT @60Minutes “Our adversaries have seen us weakened, not just as a consequence of this election, but over the last several years. We have these cleavages in the body politic that they’re convinced they can exploit,” former President Obama tells Scott Pelley. https://cbsn.ws/3pvlshp
🐣 RT @AnandWrites I feel myself approaching a strange, thrilling milestone: I’m starting not to care about Donald Trump anymore. Not to be interested. Not to wonder about the latest thing. Not to retweet the recent tweet. Just not to care.
⋙ 🐣 RT @JoyceWhiteVance I’ve been thinking that same thing all weekend and it’s absolutely tremendous. Trump is about to be irrelevant.
🐣 RT @Reuters WATCH: From Al Gore in 2000 to Hillary Clinton in 2016, here’s a look back at some historic presidential concession speeches 💽 https://twitter.com/Reuters/status/1328175961670524930?s=20/photo/1
💙 WaPo: The federal government’s chief information security officer is helping an outside effort to hunt for alleged voter fraud http://wapo.st/3eZxwTe
🐣 RT @JohnBrennan Trump will never acknowledge he lost the election. Honesty & accepting reality are not in a despot’s DNA. ¤ Despite his tantrum, Inauguration Day will arrive, and President Biden & VP Harris will immediately restore dignity, competence, & honesty to the White House. ¤ Can’t wait.
🧵 RT @joshtpm On the @SWAtlasHoover front, there’s a fascinating story to be told that @Stanford and particularly the @HooverInst has been a hot spot of covid misinformation from basically the beginning of the pandemic. It’s not just Atlas. 📌 https://twitter.com/joshtpm/status/1328159514319867909?s=20
↥ ↧
🐣 RT @thehowie His last tweet, targeting the sitting Governor of Michigan said:
[‼️] “The only way this stops is if people rise up. ”
If he represents the President and is telling people to rise up against the Governor, that really is not a good look.
⋙ 🐣 RT @SWAtlasHoover Just to clarify the obvious.
US pandemic policy is:
Federally supported (massive resources, OWS, personnel, beds, logistics);
State managed; &
Locally implemented.
Want more mandates & lockdown? Contact your governor. That’s state controlled. Not federal. Period.
#Federalism
⭕ 14 Nov 2020
AP (11/14): GOP leaders in 4 states quash dubious Trump bid on electors http://bit.ly/2UHvFcu “State GOP lawmakers in Arizona, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin have all said they would not intervene in the selection of electors”
💙 WaPo, David Boies and Theodore B Olson: We opposed each other in Bush v. Gore. Now we agree: Biden won. http://wapo.st/3kAD4oe “The nation’s laws and shared values dictate that Americans now unite to support democracy, national security, [and) public trust in institutions…”
WaPo: Trump greets hundreds of supporters in D.C. to falsely claim he won election http://wapo.st/2IuDvnk
⭕ 13 Nov 2020
WaPo (11/13): The votes that won Joe Biden the presidency http://wapo.st/36LFVFX “Flipping just a little more than 81,139 votes in four states would have changed the winner of this election” ~ even though Biden won the popular vote by almost 6 million and counting ● /photo/1
// 6M is from today (7/17); Americans cast a historic number of votes in the presidential election. A handful of them gave Democrats the edge.
🐣 RT @ProjectLincoln It’s time for Republicans to put America first. 💽 https://twitter.com/ProjectLincoln/status/1327370658712608769?s=20/photo/1
// The Lincoln Project ad❣ America First
🐣 RT @ChrisAlbertoLaw I’m sorry, I love this clip of John F Kennedy, so I’m posting it again not only for its content but also to show that our faith in democracy producing the best leaders is well-founded. 💽 https://twitter.com/ChrisAlbertoLaw/status/1327321078369308673?s=20/photo/1
// JFK on the role of the free press
NYT: Federal Prosecutors Push Back on Barr Memo on Voter Fraud Claims http://nyti.ms/35zo6KV
// The prosecutors, assigned to monitor this month’s elections, said they had found no evidence to back any “substantial allegations” of voting irregularities.
CNN: John Kelly blasts Trump for not helping with the transition: ‘The downside to not doing so could be catastrophic’ http://cnn.it/36zm5hl
WaPo: More than 130 Secret Service officers are said to be infected with coronavirus or quarantining in wake of Trump’s campaign travel http://wapo.st/2Iuq9qF //➔ Trump Really Doesn’t Care. Do U?
⭕ 12 Nov 2020
🐣 RT @BradBeauregardJ There’s nothing grand about the GOP, they’re the party of Authoritarianism now. The Republicans represent the top 1% and the only way they can stay in power is through voter suppression and attacking our Democracy. ¤ Watch @mehdirhasan @chrislhayes & @JRubinBlogger break it down 💽 https://twitter.com/BradBeauregardJ/status/1327115680148303874?s=20/photo/1
⋙ 🐣 ◕ RT @BradBeauregardJ This is the graph from the video above that shows how rapidly the Republican Party is sliding towards Authoritarianism. It’s nothing new for Mitch McConnell and his ilk, but it’s happening at an alarming rate with Trump https://twitter.com/BradBeauregardJ/status/1327126110979706883?s=20/photo/1
// Source V-Dem Institute; WaPo
⋙ 🐣 RT @BradBeauregardJ This is the article from @_cingraham that they discussed in the video ¤ The article covers the GOP’s rapid shift towards Authoritarianism, specifically the 2 Republican Senators from Georgia who need to be defeated on 1/5/2021
💙 ⋙⋙ WaPo, Christopher Ingraham: GOP leaders’ embrace of Trump’s refusal to concede fits pattern of rising authoritarianism, data shows http://wapo.st/3ppgpyT
// Research by a team of international scholars shows the Republican Party’s shift away from democratic norms predates Donald Trump but has accelerated since
⋙⋙⋙ (V-DemInstitute: New Global Data on Political Parties: V-Party) ⇊ http://bit.ly/2IzfFWS ● https://twitter.com/Auriandra/status/1327142536473956354?s=20/photo/1
Now, according to data released by an international team of political scientists just before the Nov. 3 election, it’s possible to quantify the extent to which the Republican Party no longer adheres to such principles as the commitment to free and fair elections with multiple parties, the respectful treatment of political opponents and the avoidance of violent rhetoric.
“The Republican Party in the U.S. has retreated from upholding democratic norms in recent years,” said Anna Lührmann, a political scientist at the University of Gothenburg in Sweden and a former member of the German parliament. “Its rhetoric is closer to authoritarian parties, such as AKP in Turkey and Fidesz in Hungary.”
↥ ↧
⋙ 🐣 RT @prahme I’ve had a different opinion about Trump Congressional sycophants (sickelephants)when people say what has he done to them-I think it’s reversed-they are using him, milking him for all he’s worth politically to increase their fascist base of power to use the minute he’s gone…
⋙⋙ 🐣 I think it started under Gingrich which is when they realized they couldn’t win on policies, so they started to lie and use “truthy” language. Of course, before that, Nixon’s Southern Strategy set the dominoes up for people to self-sort.
⋙⋙ 🐣 Then Fox and talk radio created echo chambers that were then weaponized by the Internet. Trump was gasoline thrown onto a smoldering fire, just waiting. I hope Biden will be more than a brief interlude in the craziness and vitriol.
🔆 This❗️⋙ 🐣 RT @MSNBC BREAKING: Joe Biden wins Arizona, NBC News projects. https://on.msnbc.com/3eSYnAe2UpzbrQ
// For years, we’ve been living inside a story defined by Donald Trump’s reality-TV worldview. America finally changed the channel.
🐣 RT @BillKristol “In WI counties where RVAT spent the most Trump underperformed Republican House candidates by 7 points. In PA counties where RVAT spent the most Trump underperformed Republican House candidates by 5 points. Those are decisive margins in such close states.”
⋙ WaPo: Never Trumpers played a critical role in beating him. The numbers prove it. http://wapo.st/3pp0JM3
NYT: Election Officials Directly Contradict Trump on Voting System Fraud http://nyti.ms/2GViilt
// A group of federal, state and local officials working with a Department of Homeland Security agency declared flatly that the election was the most secure in the nation’s history.
WaPo: As Trump stews over election, he mostly ignores the public duties of the presidency http://wapo.st/36zyIcb //➔ what was that thing they said about Nero? 🎻
// He has been mostly absent from view, focused on purging disloyal aides and tweeting grievances and misinformation even as the pandemic rages.
🐣 RT @PeterHotez In my 40 yrs as a physician-scientist committed to halting neglected diseases I’ve visited nations where “life is cheap”, it’s horrifying to witness it firsthand. I never envisioned this could happen in USA where now fake ideologies pseudoscience take precedence over human life
📊 WaPo: Exit poll results and analysis for the 2020 presidential election (preliminary) http://wapo.st/36tgsRL ● https://twitter.com/Auriandra/status/1327070879650615297?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @FranklinFoer I’ve tracked DHS’s election efforts. They were heroic. Without any real money or new authority, they bolstered the safety of election infrastructure markedly and made local officials sharper. Of course, Trump is now rewarding their efforts by pushing their leaders out the door.
⋙ 🐣 RT @JakeTapper Joint Statement from Elections Infrastructure Government Coordinating Council & the Election Infrastructure Sector Coordinating Executive Committees: ¤ “The November 3rd election was the most secure in American history.“
⋙⋙ CISA: Joint Statement from Elections Infrastructure Government Coordinating Council & the Election Infrastructure Sector Coordinating Executive Committees http://bit.ly/3nhzlOg
🐣 RT @jaketapper “Oh this national security official just told the truth and didn’t kowtow to the president pushing a deranged & debunked conspiracy theory, sure hope he doesn’t get fired for it!” is not something people should find themselves saying in the US of A and yet… here we are
💙💙🧵 RT @ifindkarma How will history remember Trump? ¤ “The narrative that will become widely understood is that Donald Trump did not sit atop a global empire. He was not an intuitive genius and tough guy who created billions of dollars of wealth through fearlessness. He had a small, sad operation…” 📌 https://twitter.com/ifindkarma/status/985647147545538560?s=20
// mega MEGA thread of videos etc starting in 2018 by Adam Rifkin ~ fan favorites
⭕ 11 Nov 2020
WaPo, John Bolton: Time is running out for Trump — and Republicans who coddle him http://wapo.st/3pqseES “[A]ny aggrieved candidate must at some point produce valid legal arguments and persuasive evidence. Trump has so far failed to do so, and there is no indication he can”
🐣 There’s a movie about @RonaldKlain: HBO’s “Recount.” He’s played by Kevin Spacey. Klain spear-headed the Gore campaign during the 2000 Recount. The movie won a ton of Emmys. ¤ And if you’re into @NicolleDWallace or @SteveSchmidtSES, they’re major characters in “Game Change”
🐣 RT @marceelias The day ends as it began, with Trump still searching for his first court victory. He and his allies remain 0-12. 🙃 ¤ Goodnight. 😴
🐣 RT @davidplouffe Arizona done. Recounts don’t erase 14K vote leads. So Georgia will be too. 306 EV, most Presidential votes ever and 5-6 pt national vote lead when all is said and done. Well done @JoeBiden, @KamalaHarris and @jomalleydillon.
🐣 RT @sebgorka These men have utterly failed in their duty to America and our chief law enforcement officer, @realDonaldTrump. ¤ Time for @POTUS to declassify ALL Crossfire Hurricane documents. ¤ NOW.
// photos of Durham and Barr
⋙ 🐣 and to think *certain people* still think Hillary should be “locked up” over three (3) c-word “confidential” (the lowest level of classified) emails
WSJ, Karl Kove (‼️): This Election Result Won’t Be Overturned http://on.wsj.com/32B9vgk
// Recounts occasionally change margins in the hundreds, never in the tens of thousands.
🧵 RT @BillKristol Short thread. FWIW, my takeaway from conversations last night with recent DOD senior officials:
1) DOD under Esper has pushed back more than many people realize against many Trump ideas, ranging from use of troops here at home, to Afghan withdrawal, to military options re Iran. 📌 https://twitter.com/BillKristol/status/1326526284625743872?s=20
4) A sign of the loyalty-oath atmosphere now at DOD: When Jim Anderson was fired yesterday as Acting Under Secretary for Policy, he was given a “clap-out” as he left the building. The WH called to request names of any political appointees who joined in so they could be fired. END
↥ ↧
🧵 RT @BillKristol Another thread. More on DOD, based on further conversations with well-informed former Trump officials:
1. NSA Robert O’Brien also key; he urged removal of Esper, putting in Miller and Patel.
2. Having total loyalists not just at Sec Def but at DOD Policy and Intel is a big deal.
📌 https://twitter.com/BillKristol/status/1326536862765252613?s=20
🧵 RT @thedailybeast NEW: President Trump continues to refuse to cede the election. His national security adviser Robert O’Brien is enabling the mayhem, four senior officials told The Daily Beast. 📌 https://twitter.com/thedailybeast/status/1326700251302998016?s=20
⋙⋙ DailyBeast: Trump’s National Security Adviser Tells Staff: Don’t Even Mention Biden’s Name http://bit.ly/36qa79D
// No one around Trump is willing to tell him he lost the election. Into the “fucking clown show” stepped Robert O’Brien.
🧵 RT @SteveSchmidtSES The Trump Coup rolls on. Fueled by Trump’s brittle ego, idiocy, malice and the political cowardice of most all elected Republicans, this sad spectacle seems like the perfect ending to the reality show Presidency. It feels more like “Moon over Parador” than any type of real 1/ 📌 https://twitter.com/SteveSchmidtSES/status/1326652663979765761?s=20
⋙ 🐣 RT @karinanniebell But friends in Europe and other expats are warning that from the outside looking in, we’re missing the really important pieces of the landscape that suggest we are facing a soft, slow roll coup, and we’re not prepared. My inbox is blowing up with warnings about what they see.
DailyBeast: Infamous MAGA Figures Rush Into Purged Pentagon http://bit.ly/38FIf4d
// The senior Defense Department leadership now includes aides to Mike Flynn and Devin Nunes, as well as someone who called Barack Obama a “terrorist leader.”
🐣 RT @RonaldKlain I’ve seen so many kind wishes tonight on this website. Thank you – and I’m sorry I can’t reply to each of you. ¤ I’m honored by the President-elect’s confidence and will give my all to lead a talented and diverse team in a Biden-Harris WH.
// will be Biden’s Chief of Staff
🐣 RT @Kasparov63 Everything must be done to keep as many people in the community of shared truth and shared sacrifice. This is why Biden’s message of unity is crucial, even if rejected by most GOP. Society cannot survive too much fragmentation, which is what Putin is betting on.
⋙ 🐣 RT @Kasparov63 A unity message also rejected by many on the left, btw, and unwisely so. You do not have to have empathy for those who hate you, but you have to recognize their humanity and the need for their participation in society or there will be no society.
⋙ 🐣 RT @Kasparov63 But you can never make peace with extremists who would destroy you and your society, who would bring down the institutions that protect all. Reducing their number is paramount, and it can only be done by breaking through the walls they have built against truth.
🐣 RT @TheRickWilson They did. You lost. You’re leaving. It’s all over but the weeping.
⋙ 🐣 RT @real Nobody wants to report that Pennsylvania and Michigan didn’t allow our Poll Watchers and/or Vote Observers to Watch or Observe. This is responsible for hundreds of thousands of votes that should not be allowed to count. Therefore, I easily win both states. Report the News!
// Trump tweet flagged by Twitter
WaPo, Kathleen Parker: Be very afraid of a post-defeat Trump http://wapo.st/3llo4fm
🐣 RT @McFaul Yes.
⋙ 🐣 RT @mgalyan @McFaul You think we’ll get a peaceful transition?
⭕ 10 Nov 2020
💙 WaPo Mag, David Montgomery (11/10): The Abnormal Presidency http://wapo.st/2KdtQSF
// Trump dramatically changed the presidency. Here’s a list of the 20 most important norms he broke — and how Biden can restore them.
Politico: ‘Devastating’: Top Pentagon leadership gutted as fears rise over national security http://politi.co/3eOzCoN
// Trio of resignations follow defense secretary’s firing.
WaPo: Why GOP superlawyer Ben Ginsberg is bucking his party and blasting Trump’s baseless election claims http://wapo.st/3kmszox
🧵 RT @jennycohn1 Rs blocked efforts 2 assess the legitimacy of their own “wins” (2000, 2002, 2004, 2016), many of which defied polls or involved glitches. They killed the #SAFEAct, which wld have required robust manual audits this year. Rs have unclean hands on the issue of election integrity. 1/ 📌 https://twitter.com/jennycohn1/status/1326356331054342145?s=20
// tags: history of GOP on election recounts election integrity
NYT: The Times Called Officials in Every State: No Evidence of Voter Fraud http://nyti.ms/3kkT9yq
// The president and his allies have baselessly claimed that rampant voter fraud stole victory from him. Officials contacted by The Times said that there were no irregularities that affected the outcome.
🧵 RT @TimothyDSnyder 1/20. Democracy is precious and exceptional. 📌 https://twitter.com/TimothyDSnyder/status/1326319545427107840?s=20
🐣 RT @AndrewSolender New @Reuters/@Ipsos poll of 1,363 U.S. adults (Nov. 7-10):
Who won the 2020 election?
Biden – 79%
Trump – 3%
Not yet decided – 13%
72% say the loser should concede defeat, 60% believe there will be a peaceful transition.
↥ ↧
🐣 RT @WWIPhD ~6 in 10 Republicans said Trump had lost. Only 3% of all respondents said that Trump had won.
⋙ Reuters/Ipsos Poll: Nearly 80% of Americans say Biden won White House, ignoring Trump’s refusal to concede http://reut.rs/38tE6zZ “[A]bout six in 10 Republicans and almost every Democrat said Biden won”
💙 DailyBeast, Rick Wilson: Trump’s Final Hissy Fit Is Petty, Illegal and Stupid http://bit.ly/3llxqaH
//. Joe Biden will be the 46th president of the United States. We’re done. It’s all over but the weeping and rending of MAGA garments.
DailyBeast, Julia Davis: ‘Milk Him Like a Cow’: Russian State Media Mulls How to Take Advantage of Trump Before He’s Gone http://bit.ly/3phqMVu
// Russian lawmakers want Putin to take advantage of Trump in the remaining weeks he’s in office.
🐣 RT @AVindman In the last 24 hours, the Secretary of Defense (SecDef), the Under Secretary of Defense for Policy (USD-P), and the Under Secretary of Defense for Intell (OUSD-I) have been sacked. Trump loyalist now sit in the 1, 3, and 4 slots at DOD. Kash Patel is DOD Chief of Staff. Why?
⋙ 🚫 🐣 RT @DickesonPeter 45 expects massive protests when he makes his grab to stay in power. He needs people in the DoD who will put troops on the streets to crush protests, something Esper didn’t want to do. The US military chiefs need to decide right now, whose side their on, The People or 45?
⋙ 🚫 🐣 RT @thedawnwestlake According to @JuliaDavisNews, Russian State TV is demanding “the cow be milked” before he leaves (the cow being trump), so those folks are being installed to spy/communicate/steal defense secrets? Meanwhile, Gina Haspel was in @senatemajldr’s office this afternoon. WHY?
🧵 RT @atrupar .@ChrisMurphyCT: “There’s an epidemic of delusion that is spreading out from the WH & infecting the entire Republican Party in the wake of this election, & it presents a real threat to this country. Trump didn’t win the election. Every single one of my colleagues knows this.” 📌 https://twitter.com/atrupar/status/1326267249372618757?s=20
// Chris Murphy floor speech
🐣 RT @jaketapper The WH is firing top leaders at the Pentagon while the president denies the election results
⋙ 🐣 RT @JenGriffinFNC US defense official confirms: chief of staff Jen Stewart replaced by Kash Patel, a former Devin Nunes staffer who worked to discredit the Russia investigation. Also out, Vice Admiral Joseph Kernan, ret Navy SEAL who was Undersecretary of Defense for Intelligence.
🐣 RT @ezraklein Biden’s discipline and tonal control through this whole thing has been extraordinary. ¤ Or maybe the better word is: presidential. https://twitter.com/ezraklein/status/1326261433458331649?s=20
🧵 RT @atrupar Biden downplays Trump refusing to concede: “I’m confident that the fact they’re not willing to acknowledge we won at this point is not of much consequence in our planning and what we’re able to do.” 📌 https://twitter.com/atrupar/status/1326250434923802626?s=20
// Biden presser Q&A
🐣 Stay off the streets people. Trump is staffing up to invoke the Insurrection Act. ¤ We’re winning. Victory is inevitable if we keep our cool.
🐣 RT @joshtpm As his presidency dies, Trump is stocking the staffers most involved in the Ukraine extortion effort and the Nunes ‘unmasking’ nonsense into key positions in the intel and defense infrastructure. some he’s reclassifying as career officials to make them harder to fire. https://twitter.com/joshtpm/status/1326255828828041216?s=20
🐣 RT @BillKristol Be alarmed.
⋙ 🧵 RT @John_Hudson Pompeo just now: “There will be a smooth transition to a second Trump administration.” 📌 https://twitter.com/John_Hudson/status/1326225961738772491?s=20
NBCNews: DOJ’s election crimes chief resigns after Barr allows prosecutors to probe voter fraud claims http://nbcnews.to/2JQK2sB
// Barr on Monday issued a memo authorizing prosecutors “to pursue substantial allegations of voting and vote tabulation irregularities prior to the certification of elections.”
Richard Pilger, who was director of the Election Crimes Branch of the DOJ, sent a memo to colleagues that suggested his resignation was linked to Barr’s memo, which was issued as the president’s legal team mount baseless legal challenges to the election results, alleging widespread voter fraud cost him the race.
“Having familiarized myself with the new policy and its ramifications, and in accord with the best tradition of the John C. Keeney Award for Exceptional Integrity and Professionalism (my most cherished Departmental recognition), I must regretfully resign from my role as Director of the Election Crimes Branch,” Pilger’s letter said, according to a copy obtained by NBC News.
⭕ 9 Nov 2020
🐣 RT @ChrisMurphyCT This is simple: my colleagues don’t think they can win if the vote is fair. They need a stooge to run the special election or they are in big trouble.
⋙ 🐣 RT @kyledcheney LOEFFLER and PERDUE jointly attack the Republican secretary of state in Georgia. Text Block: https://twitter.com/kyledcheney/status/1325892732355817473?s=20/photo/1
⋙⋙ 🐣 RT @kyledcheney Georgia’s secretary of state rejects the attacks, says election was a “resounding success” and that even if “illegal votes” are uncovered, they won’t be enough to change the results.
⋙⋙⋙ 🐣 RT @bluestein The response from Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger: “Let me start by saying that is not going to happen. The voters of Georgia hired me, and the voters will be the one to fire me.” #gapol Text Block: https://twitter.com/bluestein/status/1325910990735740928?s=20/photo/1-3
TheBulwark, Bill Kristol: Be Alarmed http://bit.ly/35djhXt
// Things are probably going to work out okay. But complacency in the defense of democracy is not a virtue.
🐣 RT @RVAT2020 Trump is acting contrary to basic Republican constitutional values and threatening the integrity of the election – @AmbJohnBolton 💽 https://twitter.com/RVAT2020/status/1325986200264585216?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @EJDionne Republicans are fostering cynicism about the constitutional order on a massive scale. They are stumbling toward sedition.” ¤ Great column from @MJGerson in which he also accuses the GOP of “bad faith and poltroonery.” ¤ Wonderful word: poltroonery.
⋙ WaPo: The election is over, but there’s no end to Republican bad faith http://wapo.st/3khI1lP
🐣 RT @BradMossEsq Lawyers Sound the Alarm as ‘Off the Rails’ AG Barr Caters to President Trump’s Baseless Fraud Narrative: ‘A Straightforward Abuse of Power’
⋙ Law&Crime, Matt Naham: Lawyers Sound the Alarm as ‘Off the Rails’ AG Barr Caters to President Trump’s Baseless Fraud Narrative: ‘A Straightforward Abuse of Power’ http://bit.ly/2Uf3ZuY
🐣 RT @AshaRangappa_ I also suspect that there is some reflexive control going on: To get people “protesting in the streets” in order to validate their narrative that this is close call and a toss-up. (There’s a time for protest, it’s not now — these challenges won’t make it through the courts)
🐣 RT @LincolnsBible We’re entering the ugly part. ¤ Hang on.
🐣 RT @brhodes It’s pathetic and doomed to fail, but we shouldn’t ignore or forget that much of the Republican Party is publicly advocating overturning the will and votes of the people based on false conspiracy theories and fealty to an autocrat. This is no different from Belarus.
🐣 RT @neal_katyal Even Bill “Teargas” Barr can’t stop the truth. It’s over.
⋙ 🐣 RT @jaketapper Sen. Ben Sasse congratulates President-elect Joe Biden on his win | Politics | http://omaha.com http://bit.ly/2UhDtkF
WaPo: Facebook takes down a large network of pages tied to Stephen Bannon for pushing misinformation http://wapo.st/3kiGXOu
// The pages, which pushed the ‘Stop the Steal’ effort and other misleading messages, were removed over the weekend, while the former top Trump strategist’s account was frozen
🐣 RT @ezraklein If we saw the head of the ruling regime, and his party, react to the election results this way in any other country, we’d know exactly what we are looking at. ¤ And I’d say here, too, it’s time to be honest and say we know exactly what we are looking at.
⋙ Vox, Ezra Klein (11/7): Trump is attempting a coup in plain sight http://bit.ly/36oNbaV
// How do we cover it when it’s happening here?
🐣 RT @karoli Stop being doom and gloomy. We knew the next 2 months were going to suck. It’s all sound and fury, signifying nothing. Mail in ballots are perfectly legal.
🐣 RT @MuellerSheWrote Shocking yet unsurprising. There is no evidence of voting irregularities. Also, Barr, be careful what you ask for. Someone might look into how republicans senators in Kentucky, Maine, and South Carolina won their elections.
⋙ 🐣 RT @JonLemireWASHINGTON (AP) — Barr authorizes DOJ to probe ‘substantial allegations’ of voting irregularities despite little evidence of fraud.
⇈ ⇊
🐣 RT @RadioFreeTom So now we know what that homunculus was up to
‼️ 🐣 RT @MCJalonick WASHINGTON (AP) _ Barr authorizes DOJ to probe ‘substantial allegations’ of voting irregularities despite little evidence of fraud
🐣 RT @SykesCharlie “By refusing to concede, Trump is establishing yet another loyalty test for Republicans, yet another gangland initiation rite. And so far, Republicans are lining up to demonstrate just how loyal they can be.” –@JVLast
⋙ TheBulbark, Jonathan Last: The Warning Lights Are Still Flashing Red http://bit.ly/3n3DW6o
// It’s the day after tomorrow, finally.
MSN/Reuters, Makini Brice and Jan Wolfe: Citizen Trump will face legal woes http://bit.ly/3eHNjpy
NYT: Growing Discomfort at Law Firms Representing Trump in Election Lawsuits http://nyti.ms/3ljhrKn
// Some lawyers at Jones Day and Porter Wright, which have filed suits about the 2020 vote, said they were worried about undermining the electoral system.
🐣 RT @vemontgmg We are watching the Republican Party willingly burn the trust and legitimacy of our democratic system to the ground to avoid hurting the feelings of the president who just lost, badly. This damage will be hard to undo.
Stars&Stripes/Bloomberg: A look at who is being mentioned for top posts in a Biden administration http://bit.ly/3eJFoIm
🐣 RT @anneapplebaum Former Supreme Allied Commander, Nato
⋙ 🐣 RT @stavridisj If Trump moves on to fire the head of the CIA and the head of the FBI, both true professionals and patriots, we are going to be in uncharted waters for the next 90 days. It all has terrible “burn it down” on the way out feeling. It is playing with fire with our nations security
🐣 RT @swingleft Trump got mad at Mark Esper because he opposed using US troops to attack protesters (which Trump did for a photo op). ¤ Christopher Miller refused to answer whether counterterrorism resources would be used on U.S. protesters. https://twitter.com/swingleft/status/1325865454510944256?s=20
🐣 RT @sbg1 The kicker to this Esper interview is chilling. ¤ ‘Who’s going to come in behind me? It’s going to be a real ‘yes’ man. And then God help us.’
⋙ MilitaryTimes: Exclusive: Esper, on his way out, says he was no yes man http://bit.ly/35bAnVI
🔆 This❗️⋙ 🐣 RT @Acosta Trump has fired the Secretary of Defense.
NYT: Pfizer’s Early Data Shows Vaccine Is More Than 90% Effective http://nyti.ms/3eF9Bs5 “By the end of the year it will have manufactured enough doses to immunize 15 to 20 million people, company executives have said”
// Pfizer announced positive early results from its coronavirus vaccine trial, cementing the lead in a frenzied global race that has unfolded at record-breaking speed.
⭕ 8 Nov 2020
‼️ 💙 🧵 RT @DavidManel THREAD: I’m still very interested in Trump’s remarkable success in Miami-Dade and Rio Grande Valley/Texas border. The explanations given in the press… 📌 https://twitter.com/DavidManel/status/1325631543021359105?s=20
⋙ […] 🐣 RT @ Before the election, Kellyanne Conway was quoted as saying: “The person who coined the term, ‘hidden, undercover Trump voter in 2016,’ there are even more of them, and they’re even more committed now, and they’re going to surprise you as to who they are this time.”
WaPo: A little-known Trump appointee is in charge of handing transition resources to Biden — and she isn’t budging http://wapo.st/2IiKGhX “‘No agency head is going to get out in front of the president on transition issues right now,’ said one senior administration official”
🐣 RT @60Minutes “Donald Trump can say whatever he wants. But we just had an election, an election that was secure, an election where the votes were tallied,” says PA’s Democratic AG Josh Shapiro, who’s defending the state against Republican lawsuits he calls frivolous. https://cbsn.ws/3n6mFcO
WaPo: Trump continues to defy election results as world and some in GOP begin to move on http://wapo.st/358iPKf “Trump has told others that he is never going to admit that he lost the race”
🐣 RT @blakehounshell The AP has been calling races since 1848
⋙ 🐣 RT @real Since when does the Lamestream Media call who our next president will be? We have all learned a lot in the last two weeks!
🐣 RT @WSJ “The American people can have confidence that this election was fundamentally fair, its integrity will be upheld, and its outcome is clear,” former President George W. Bush said in a statement from Dallas
⋙ WSJ: George W. Bush Congratulates Joe Biden http://on.wsj.com/3n52EU1
// Former President George W. Bush said Sunday he had spoken to President-elect Joe Biden. “I extended my warm congratulations and thanked him for the patriotic message he delivered last night”
Former President George W. Bush said Sunday he had spoken to President-elect Joe Biden. ¤ “I extended my warm congratulations and thanked him for the patriotic message he delivered last night,” Mr. Bush said in a statement from Dallas. “I also called Kamala Harris to congratulate her on her historic election to the vice presidency.”
“Though we have political differences, I know Joe Biden to be a good man, who has won his opportunity to lead and unity our country,” Mr. Bush said. “The president-elect reiterated that while he ran as a Democrat, he will govern for all Americans. I offered him the same thing I offered Presidents Trump and Obama: my prayers for his success, and my pledge to help in any way I can.”
“I want to congratulate President Trump and his supporters on a hard-fought campaign.” the former president added. “He earned the votes of more than 70 million Americans–an extraordinary political achievement. They have spoken and their voices will continue to be heard through elected Republicans at every level of government.”
Mr. Bush expressed confidence in the ballot-counting process that the Trump campaign is challenging in several closely fought states. “President Trump has the right to request recounts and pursue legal challenges, and any unresolved issues will be properly adjudicated,” he said. “The American people can have confidence that this election was fundamentally fair, its integrity will be upheld, and its outcome is clear.”
“We must come together for the sake of our families and neighbors, and for our nation and its future,” Mr. Bush said. “There is no problem that will not yield to the gathered will of a free people.”
🐣 RT @BarackObama Congratulations to my friends, @JoeBiden and @KamalaHarris — our next President and Vice President of the United States. Text Block: https://twitter.com/BarackObama/status/1325136780396437507?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @MalcolmNance We did.
⋙ 🐣 RT @TravisAllen02 The crowds would make you think the US just overthrew a dictator.
🐣 RT @ktumulty Editorial In the Murdoch-owned @nypost implores Trump: “It undermines faith in democracy, and faith in the nation, to push baseless conspiracies. Get Rudy Giuliani off TV. Ask for the recounts you are entitled to, wish Biden well, and look to the future.”
⋙ NYPost Editorial: President Trump, your legacy is secure — stop the ‘stolen election’ rhetoric http://bit.ly/2JIWkmJ
🐣 RT @Transition46 The President-elect spoke with former President Bush this morning.
⋙ 🐣 RT @TheBushCenter Statement by President George W. Bush: Text Block: https://twitter.com/TheBushCenter/status/1325492912122114050?s=20/photo/1
⋙⋙ BushCenter: Statement by President George W. Bush http://bit.ly/2U64t6H
// President Bush congratulates President-elect Biden and Vice President-Elect Harris
⭕ 7 Nov 2020
Politico: Inside Donald Trump’s 2020 undoing http://politi.co/2IbpryZ
// How Biden prevailed and Trump fell short in an unforgettable election, according to conversations with 75 insiders.
🐣 RT @TheRickyDavila If you missed the awesome drone fireworks display, here it is, enjoy. 💽 https://twitter.com/TheRickyDavila/status/1325298618492874754?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @PreetBharara I had to explain to my kids just now that this is not the normal level of celebration after an election in America
⋙ 🐣 RT @marija24 My mom called me from Serbia and said: “You’re celebrating like we did in 2000 when we overthrew Milosevic’s regime”. ¤ Those who survived autocracy and dictatorship know what it feels like when somebody else does.
😅 RT @H_MitchellPhoto Rudy Giuliani accidentally booking Four Seasons Total Landscaping for a press conference instead of the Four Seasons Hotel may be the funniest thing I’ve ever seen. https://twitter.com/H_MitchellPhoto/status/1325281257346002945?s=20/photo/1
↥ ↧
🐣 RT @JohnFellinBmore Great location. It’s the best location. Best location for any press conference. No other President has had this location. I’m the first. Me. I have that location. Big news coming. Big news. The country is doing better than ever. I did that. Great, great location. https://twitter.com/JohnFellInBMore/status/1325161460444524544?s=20/photo/1-3
// 1. landscaping, 2. adult book store, 3. cremation services
🐣 RT @HarryAlford3 This is how Ireland ended its newscast tonight 💽 https://twitter.com/HarryAlford3/status/1325220150497464320?s=20/photo/1
// video montage with voiceover of Biden reading Seamus Heaney
🐣 RT @telesurenglish President-Elect of the United States Joe Biden addressed the nation with a message of unity. ¤ Watch the full speech here: 💽 https://youtu.be/QDrsGSiK1YY
🐣 RT @tedlieu On Eagle’s Wings has lifted me and many others during our low moments. You can tell when a @POTUS actually believes in God. As a Catholic, I’m so proud @JoeBiden will be the second Catholic in our history to sit behind the Resolute Desk.
⋙ 🐣 RT @HeidiNBC On Eagle’s Wings is a Catholic hymn
“And he will raise you up on eagle’s wings,
bear you on the breath of dawn,
make you to shine like the sun,
and hold you in the palm of his hand.”
🐣 RT @ScottMStedman Not lost on me is the moment of embrace between Hunter Biden and his father. The dude has some horrible demons but the attacks they levied against father and son should go down as some of the most disgraceful acts of political malfeasance in US history. https://twitter.com/ScottMStedman/status/1325257492851380224?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @FaceTheNation In the midst of the ongoing and devastating #coronavirus pandemic, @joebiden tells supporters: “This is a time to heal in America.” @NorahODonnell reflects on Biden’s appeal for unity in the wake of #Election2020 💽 https://twitter.com/FaceTheNation/status/1325267708615798787?s=20/photo/1
// Biden Victory Celebration; fireworks and mini-drones
🐣 RT @joshtpm Coming back from golf to see the city awash in celebrations https://twitter.com/joshtpm/status/1325198750931775488?s=20/photo/1
// Trump, scowling
🐣 RT @RegSprecher Kanzlerin #Merkel gratuliert @JoeBiden und @KamalaHarris. https://twitter.com/RegSprecher/status/1325135945977405445?s=20/photo/1
🧵 RT @EvanMcMullin A note to my fellow conservatives and Republicans: I hope you won’t view this electoral loss as setback, but rather as an opportunity to move forward and beyond the darkness of the last four years. https://twitter.com/EvanMcMullin/status/1325162695042068480?s=20
🐣 RT @HeaneyDaily
History says, don’t hope
On this side of the grave.
But then, once in a lifetime
The longed-for tidal wave
Of justice can rise up,
And hope and history rhyme.
🐣 RT @ZelenskyyUa Congratulations to @JoeBiden @KamalaHarris! #Ukraine is optimistic about the future of the strategic partnership with the #UnitedStates. and have always collaborated on security, trade, investment, democracy, fight against corruption. Our friendship becomes only stronger!
↥ ↧
🧵 RT @NBCNews US allies send messages of congratulations to US President-elect Joe Biden and VP-elect Kamala Harris. 📌 https://twitter.com/NBCNews/status/1325144046839296001?s=20
// Macron, Johnson [UK], Trudeau, Kurz [Austria], Martin [Ireland], Stoltenberg [NATO], Kahn [London]
😅 RT @TheRealHoarse Just got in some fresh data since this morning:
– Cursing at the TV – down 78%
– Google searches for “moving to Canada” – down 65%
– Google searches for “Mooving to Kanadia” – up 82%
🐣 RT @aliaena BELLS ringing across PARIS!! ¤ 17h45 November 7, 2020 ¤ Biden/Harris ¤ The world has been watching. 💽 https://twitter.com/aliaena/status/1325121977917403139?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @mathieuvonrohr A tale of two @derspiegel covers https://twitter.com/mathieuvonrohr/status/1325133192341254144?s=20/photo/1-2
// Trump decapitates Statue of Liberty; Biden restores it (same artist)
🐣 RT @MittRomney Ann and I extend our congratulations to President-elect Joe Biden and Vice President-elect Kamala Harris. We know both of them as people of good will and admirable character. We pray that God may bless them in the days and years ahead.
🐣 RT @JohnBrennan President-elect Biden: ¤ Congratulations on your hard-fought victory. Your poise, professionalism, & patriotism have been in abundant evidence over the past several days, as they have been throughout your career. ¤ You are a good & wise man. ¤ Our country needs you. ¤ Thank you.
NBCNews: After Joe Biden win over Donald Trump, relief sweeps U.S.’s traditional allies http://nbcnews.to/357ResL
// We want to invest in our cooperation for a new transatlantic beginning, a new deal,” German Foreign Minister Heiko Maas said.
🐣 RT @SpeakerPelosi We kept the republic! Congratulations to Joe Biden on his victory for the soul of our country. Congratulations to Kamala Harris for making history. It’s a time to heal and a time to grow together. E Pluribus Unum.
🐣 RT @BernieSanders I want to congratulate all those who worked so hard to make this historic day possible. Now, through our continued grassroots organizing, let us create a government that works for ALL and not the few. Let us create a nation built on justice, not greed and bigotry.
🐣 RT @AdamRifkin “There’s a humility to the randomness of tragedy that brings about caring that cannot be faked. Grief humbles you. In this moment our country needs a leader of humility. We are in pain. It gives us hope that Joe Biden is #ManOfTheMoment.” @ReallyAmerican1 💽 https://twitter.com/ifindkarma/status/1315069614691282944?s=20/photo/1
‼️ 🐣 RT @JoeBiden America, I’m honored that you have chosen me to lead our great country. ¤ The work ahead of us will be hard, but I promise you this: I will be a President for all Americans — whether you voted for me or not. ¤ I will keep the faith that you have placed in me. 💽 https://twitter.com/JoeBiden/status/1325118992785223682?s=20/photo/1
// 10:52am 11/7/2020
~~~~~~~~
🐣 My patience is running thin. CALL IT ‼️@AP @cnn @FoxNews @ABC @CBSNews @PBS @NPR @NBCNews @MSNBC @DecisionDeskHQ
🐣 RT @jmeacham Take a breath: President Biden would come to office with a pop vote % LARGER than Truman, JFK, Nixon, Clinton, Bush 43, and Trump. And roughly the same as Reagan, Bush 41, and Obama.
🐣 Chief of Staff Mark Meadows and Rep Matt Gaetz both diagnosed w COVID-19 ~ @MSNBC
⋙ Couldn’t happen to a couple of more deserving guys
🐣 RT @realDonaldTrump [Meltdown]
[Twitter warning:] Some or all of the content shared in this Tweet is disputed and might be misleading about an election or other civic process. Learn more
// X4 ✛ ✛ ✛ ‼️
🐣 RT @MollyJongFast That New York Post cover is proof positive Rupert is done with Trump.
⋙ 🐣 RT @Azi Today’s tabs. https://twitter.com/Azi/status/1325076323107266560?s=20/photo/1-2
// NYDailyNews: “Come On, already”; NYPost: “Ready, Set … Joe?”
🐣 RT @BillKristol “After four years of turning a blind eye to the president’s rhetoric and behavior…the test for the GOP was whether it would accommodate the president’s rebellion against this country’s democratic norms or denounce it. The GOP has failed that test.”
⋙ Politico Mag: The Election That Broke the Republican Party http://politi.co/32lBctn
// By lashing themselves to the president’s desperate conspiracies of fraud, GOP officials have undermined their own legitimacy.
⭕ 6 Nov 2020
TheAtlantic, Anne Applebaum (11/6): Trump Won’t Accept Defeat. Ever. http://bit.ly/3pbWC69
// His forever campaign is just getting started.
🐣 🌎 RT @theglobalist How did Pennsylvania vote in 2020 compared to 2016? #UnitedStates #USElection2020 #Pennsylvania2020 https://twitter.com/theglobalist/status/1325512381951320064?s=20/photo/1
NPR: Trump Dumps 3 Agency Leaders In Wake Of Election http://n.pr/2IfAM0E including Lisa Gordon-Hagerty, administrator of the National Nuclear Security Administration, a move criticized by GOP Senator Jim Inhofe who called her “an exemplary public servant”
Sen. Jim Inhofe, the Republican chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, issued a statement criticizing Energy Secretary Dan Brouillette, who he said “effectively demanded” the resignation of Gordon-Hagerty. (The National Nuclear Security Administration is a semi-autonomous agency that is part of the Energy Department.)
Inhofe called Gordon-Hagerty “an exemplary public servant and remarkable leader” and said Brouillette’s decision “during this time of uncertainty demonstrates he doesn’t know what he’s doing in national security matters and shows a complete lack of respect for the semi-autonomous nature of NNSA.”
🐣 RT @real Incredibly stated Jim! 💽 https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1324927258679767042?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @SteveSchmidtSES Donald Trump has lost. He is defeated. He is attempting to poison American democracy and the nest of Republican cowards in the Senate and House are happy to let him do it.
⋙ 🐣 RT @SteveSchmidtSES .@realDonaldTrump YOU HAVE LOST. IT IS OVER. YOUR ACTIONS IN THIS HOUR ARE A DISGRACE FOR THE AGES. IT WILL NEVER BE FORGIVEN.
⋙ 🐣 RT @SteveSchmidtSES It is essential to understand what we are watching. (1) Joseph Robinette Biden of Delaware has been elected the President of the United States of America. (2) American democracy is under attack by the defeated President. (3) He is not acting alone. He is supported in his attack
⋙ 🐣 RT @SteveSchmidtSES by his White House and campaign staff. He is also supported by several Law firms. All of these people are complicit in the assault against American democracy. None of them should ever be forgiven. All of them should pay a brutal price for betraying the American ideal. (4) The
⋙ 🐣 RT @SteveSchmidtSES Elected leaders of the country have an absolute moral and constitutional obligation to defend the country from Trump’s authoritarian delusions and illiberal ravings. (5) There is no middle ground in this moment. (6) The American people have spoken.
⋙ 🐣 RT @SteveSchmidtSES It is time for the Decision desks to call this race. Networks and other news organizations should not be intimidated from declaring reality. The Trump team has lost. It’s over. @ProjectLincoln . The threshold for calling these races has been met and then some.
⋙ 🐣 RT @SteveSchmidtSES Goodbye @IvankaTrump. You will be loved by the people you disdain and disdained by the people you want to be loved by. There will never be a Met Ball for you again. You are fated to live out your years as an aging, corrupt, villainous Barbie; paying the price for what you did.
⋙ 🐣 RT @SteveSchmidtSES Good Bye @DonaldJTrumpJr. Decency has been restored. Your father once worried about giving you his name because you might turn out to be a loser. Turns out it was the perfect name for you both. Trust me on this , your name will be synonymous with disgrace forever and ever.
⋙ 🐣 RT @SteveSchmidtSES It is quite a thing to watch @mschlapp, a leading voice of American fascism and authoritarianism dress up his sedition in the cloak of American democracy. Yes, they have lost, but their extremism and insanity will deepen. @matthewjdowd
⋙ 🐣 RT @SteveSchmidtSES .@BillStepien History is watching. It’s time to talk to King Lear. Don’t be on the side of Trump’s coup. Leave Trump and his scumbag pack behind. You are a party guy who did a job. Trump lost. Sedition doesn’t suit you. Don’t do it @ProjectLincoln
⋙ 🐣 RT @SteveSchmidtSES Here is a piece of advice for the deflated White House Staffers. If you ever want to work for any institution other than the RNC, Breitbart, NY Post. Wash Examiner, Sinclair, OAN, RT ect.. write a letter of resignation, right now, on the basis of Trump’s remarks last night.
⋙ 🐣 RT @SteveSchmidtSES Every person who goes on Television saying Trump won an election he has lost is desecrating the sacrifice of every American Patriot from the birth of the Republic through today. The statements are an attempt to murder American democracy and end the American experiment.
💙 😅 🐣 RT @_gh0stn LMAOOO IM NEVER DELETING THIS APP 💽 https://twitter.com/_gh0stn/status/1324801623781122048?s=20/photo/1
// Biden w Obama other Dems as Superheroes battling Trump ~ Black Panther? All Votes Matter Mail-in ballots
🐣 RT @atrupar Is there a reason TV stations aren’t calling this race beyond that they don’t want to hurt Trump’s feelings?
⋙ 🐣 Acc to the guys at @msnbc, there are some new questions about the number and party of provisional ballots, ie they may be more Republican than mail-in ballots. ¤ Oh yeah ~ and that Supreme Court challenge
NBCNews: 2 men detained after police learn of possible threat to Philadelphia vote counting center http://nbcnews.to/355dSC0
// The FBI is investigating the possible threat.
WaPo, Max Boot: Thank goodness Trump is too incompetent to properly organize a coup http://wapo.st/3l4FX1S
🐣 RT @LaurieGarrett The placeholder is live. ¤ Many pages are ready to launch, as soon as @JoeBiden is declared the next President of the United States of America. ¤ Stay tuned here for transition team lists and plans:
⋙ 💙 🔄 Biden-Harris Transition Team Official Website https://buildbackbetter.com
NYT, Timothy Egan: American Democracy Survives Its Brush With Death http://nyti.ms/3euLYlW “The violent fringe on the left helped Mr. Trump. The violent fringe on the right, sadly, did not appear to hurt him”
// I’m badly shaken by what happened in this election.
… Democrats were done in by extreme voices that Mr. Trump was able to link to their party. Defunding the police will never be popular outside a few lefty precincts. The whiff of socialism helped kill Democrats in Florida. ¤ The violent fringe on the left helped Mr. Trump. The violent fringe on the right, sadly, did not appear to hurt him.
… A presidential candidate could win the popular vote by nearly five million votes, but depending on where those votes are cast, he or she could still lose in the archaic Electoral College, the fortress for the tyranny of the minority. Only once in the last 30 years have Republicans won the popular vote.
California, where nearly one in eight Americans live, with 53 members in the House, would have the same power as Wyoming, a state with a lone representative in the House and a declining population. ¤ The obvious flaw here — that the person who gets the most votes does not necessarily win — could be neutralized by the National Popular Vote Compact, in which all of a participating state’s electoral votes are pledged to the winner of the national popular vote. … [F]or now, it’s the best vehicle for bringing the American system closer to one that reflects the will of the people.
Ah, the will of people. Who knows what the hell that is. Yes, it’s karmic justice that three of the states pivotal in electing Mr. Trump — Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Michigan — now look like three that will fire him. And for that slim majority, and the rest of us, may mourning in America soon turn to morning in America.
🐣 RT @clairecmc The Lt Gov of PA said this am that the segregated ballots (those arriving after Tuesday-today) have not been counted. If margin is big enough they won’t matter, and that closes off the only legal case with a whisper of merit.
🐣 RT @kylegriffin1 Pennsylvania GOP Sen. Pat Toomey to NBC: “I saw the president’s speech last night. It was very hard to watch. The president’s allegations of large-scale fraud and theft of the election are just not substantiated. I’m not aware of any significant wrongdoing here.”
🐣 RT @BillKristol Every decent Republican elected official should speak up today against the lies, the conspiracy theories, and violence, and for counting every vote. But one person in particular who could make a difference and partly redeem himself after four years of bending the knee: VP Pence.
🚫🐣 RT @ KellyO Statement from the Trump campaign this morning. Text Block: https://twitter.com/KellyO/status/1324722227342880771?s=20/photo/1
// denial
🔆 This❗️⋙ 🐣 RT @Vox BREAKING: Joe Biden is projected to win the #2020Election, per Decision Desk. ¤ The former two-term vice president and 36-year Senate veteran will be the 46th president of the United States. https://twitter.com/voxdotcom/status/1324711652957315080?s=20/photo/1
⋙ Vox: Joe Biden has won. Here’s what comes next. http://bit.ly/2IepWYK
// Biden will have to overcome a surging pandemic, an economic crisis, and a hostile Republican Party.
🐣 RT @atrupar BOOM!
⋙ 🐣 RT @DecisionDeskHQ Decision Desk HQ projects that @JoeBiden has won Pennsylvania and its 20 electoral college votes for a total of 273. ¤ Joe Biden has been elected the 46th President of the United States of America. ¤ Race called at 11-06 08:50 AM EST
⋙ All Results: http://bit.ly/2JLXNZP
🐣 I’m hoping AP announces Biden win once PA results are clear. ¤ Then people of good will ~ not just Democrats but Republicans, too ~ call to congratulate him. ¤ That will get the message through to Trump.🤞
🐣 I expect Biden to be more Eisenhower than FDR.
🐣 Who comes up with phrases like “Defund the police,” anyway? It’s a shibboleth, intended to distinguish the “woke” from the rubes. People insist it doesn’t REALLY mean what it says, ie “defund” means send shrinks with police sometimes, training, etc. Use plain English, people.
⋙ 🐣 RT @RGanley That is one of the failures of Dems, we are terrible at naming things. Rep have perfected naming things for decades, mostly naming thing the opposite of what it actually is, like right to work law.
⭕ 5 Nov 2020
ForeignAffairs, Larry Diamond: A New Administration Won’t Heal American Democracy http://fam.ag/3kkTgK8
// The rot in U.S. political institutions runs deeper than Donald Trump.
NYT: James Baker, a veteran of the 2000 Florida recount, says Trump should not try to stop vote counting. http://nyti.ms/2TYfFm3 ● Text Block: https://twitter.com/Auriandra/status/1324677437976961024?s=20/photo/1
“We never said don’t count the votes,” Mr. Baker said. “That’s a very hard decision to defend in a democracy.” …
“There are huge differences,” Mr. Baker said of the Florida battle and the brewing fights over this week’s election. “For one thing, our whole argument was that the votes have been counted and they’ve been counted and they’ve been counted and it’s time to end the process. That’s not exactly the message that I heard on election night. And so I think it’s pretty hard to be against counting the votes.”
🧵 RT @TimAlberta The dishonesty here is breathtaking. ¤ Cruz claims repeatedly that poll watchers have been denied access in Philly. OK. What’s his source? ¤ People on the scene there say poll watchers have had access all along. Here’s a statement from Philly’s bipartisan commission on elections: 📌 https://twitter.com/TimAlberta/status/1324561121567789056?s=20/photo/1-2
⋙⋙ 🐣 RT @TedCruz I am angry. ¤ The American people are right to be angry. ¤ We need observers. ¤ Now.
⋙ 🐣 RT @TimAlberta The last 3 hours on Fox News has been a parade of fire-breathing Republicans ranting and raving about dark rooms and troves of ballots and a lack of transparency… and it’s obvious that none of them have any actual knowledge about the specifics of what’s happening on the ground.
⋙ 🐣 RT @ The funny thing? For months I’ve heard Trump/GOP officials in MI/WI/PA boast about their poll-watcher system, how sophisticated it is, how they’ve taken steps to ensure eyes & ears in the big precincts. And now the national know-nothings swoop in and scream about lack of access.
NYT, Paul Krugman: Is America Becoming a Failed State? http://nyti.ms/3mXBrCF
// Mitch McConnell may make the nation ungovernable.
🐣 RT @McFaul Is this what you want President Trump? Senator Graham? Senator Cruz? Because if not, you better make it clear right now. Your followers are confused.
⋙ 🐣 RT @perez4az Alex Jones casually attempting to instigate a Civil War at the Maricopa County Recorder’s Office. ¤ America, 2020. 💽 https://twitter.com/perez4az/status/1324559557918556161?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @McFaul Is this what you want President Trump? Senator Graham? Senator Cruz? Because if not, you better make it clear right now. Your followers are confused.
⋙ 🐣 RT @perez4az Alex Jones casually attempting to instigate a Civil War at the Maricopa County Recorder’s Office. ¤ America, 2020.
🐣 RT @brhodes Newt Gingrich has done as much as any person to damage American democracy over the last three decades. This fascist loser rant is a logical endpoint of a cynical and destructive career.
⋙ 🐣 RT @joshtpm Here Gingrich describes the (non-existent) crimes for which Bill Barr should send in federal agents to arrest election workers in Pennsylvania. 💽 https://twitter.com/joshtpm/status/1324574366185738240?s=20/photo/1
WaPo, Edward Foley: Trump wants the courts to stop the counting. He’s going to be disappointed. http://wapo.st/3l2KFwR
🐣 RT @JaneMayerNYer This is a great and important report just in case…
⋙ 🐣 RT @rgoodlaw National Task Force on Election Crises report blows [Mark] Levin idea out of the water. ¤ Even well-grounded claims of vote counting problems would not allow Legislature to select Trump electors. ¤ @ElectionTask is highly respected cross-partisan expert group. Text Block: https://twitter.com/rgoodlaw/status/1324430155343929346?s=20/photo/1-2
⋙ NTFEC: A State Legislature Cannot Appoint Its Preferred Slate of Electors to Override the Will of the People After the Election http://bit.ly/3mXuO3n
WaPo: Trump turns angry and despondent as possible defeat looms http://wapo.st/2I6OJ0A
WaPo: Biden renews call for patience as Trump assails vote-counting process http://wapo.st/3l4loCH
🐣 RT @MuellerSheWrote Trump is freaking the fuck out because not only is he watching his presidency disintegrate, but he’s watching the only protection he has from being criminally prosecuted dissolve as each vote is counted. #CountEveryVote
🐣 RT @McFaul Republicans need to signal clearly right now that they value the democratic process over Trump. Silence is not an option.
🐣 RT @JoeBiden No one is going to take our democracy away from us. Not now, not ever. ¤ America has come too far, fought too many battles, and endured too much to let that happen.
🐣 RT @NYMag “That is the most powerful person in the world, and we see him, like an obese turtle on his back, flailing in the hot sun, realizing his time is over. But he just hasn’t accepted it, and he wants to take everybody down with him, including this country.”
⋙ Vulture, Halle Kiefer: Anderson Cooper Has Snapped and He’s Taking the Good Name of Turtles With Him http://bit.ly/32jrQhM
// Whoa, whoa, whoa, let’s not bring our good friends, the chelonians, into this.
🐣 RT @danpfeiffer It’s true that many Republicans have not parroted Trump, some have even said vaguely good things, but let’s not pretend the party of voter suppression, gerrymandering, misinformation and court rigging care deeply about American democracy.
🐣 RT @ZerlinaShow .@Scaramucci on Trump’s presser: “That was a disaster…if you needed more evidence about how deranged he is and what a complete liar and fraud he is, you got it on full display tonight.” 💽 https://twitter.com/ZerlinaShow/status/1324518829012168704?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @scottbudman #Breaking: Steve Bannon’s Twitter and YouTube accounts have been suspended.
🐣 RT @JoeBiden [7:25pm] Keep the faith, folks.
🐣 RT @RepAdamSchiff What we just saw was the most dishonest and anti-democratic moment in the history of the presidency. ¤ Donald Trump lied incessantly about our election and undermined the very foundation of our democracy. ¤ We will count every vote. No matter what he says.
🐣 RT @JRehling BREAKING: A federal judge has just denied the Trump campaign’s injunction to stop vote counting in Philadelphia. The count goes on.
🐣 RT @BeschlossDC Alexander Hamilton warned us against choosing any leader who was a “daring usurper” of “avarice,” who would try to grab power by aggravating and exploiting the “jealousies and apprehensions” of the American people.
🐣 RT @Acosta CNN: So far today, Johns Hopkins has reported 114,876 new cases and 1,159 reported deaths.
🐣 RT @ProjectLincoln Republicans, now is the time to defend American democracy.
History will remember what you do in this moment of crisis.
Speak up or stay silent. Both are a choice and a statement.
🐣 RT @JeffFlake Fellow Republicans, don’t wait until the election is called to defend our elections and our democratic institutions. The time is now.
🐣 RT @marceelias I hope every Republican voting/election lawyer watched that spectacle on TV so they understand who and what they are fighting for.
🐣 RT @Acosta Don’t get exhausted.
🐣 RT @stuartpstevens Is anyone still seriously asking why it is important to defeat the Trump enablers? ¤ @ProjectLincoln
🐣 RT @MJGerson My one consolation tonight? This is exactly how history will always remember Trump — as a pathetic, lying whiner who cared nothing for this country.
‼️ TPM: Trump Declares War On American Democracy http://bit.ly/3k4x72J
🐣 RT @sullydish Trump just proved that all our fears about his utter indifference to liberal democracy were and are valid. Pathological narcissism and delusion. Unfit. Always was.
WaPo, Aaron Blake: Trump blames Democrats for late-counted mail ballots. He should blame the GOP. http://wapo.st/367f8nj
🐣 RT @oliverdarcy MSNBC immediately cuts off Trump when he moves to undermine the integrity of US election system. ¤ “Here we are again in the unusual position of not only interrupting the President of the United States but correcting the President of the United States…”
⋙ 🐣 RT @oliverdarcy NBC News has cut away. ABC News has cut away as well. CBS News is fact-checking right now.
⋙ 🐣 RT @oliverdarcy “What a sad night for the United States of America to hear their President say that,” @jaketapper says on CNN. “To falsely accuse people of trying to steal the election, to try to attack democracy that way with his feast of falsehoods. Lie after lie after lie.”
WaPo Editorial: Losing an election, Trump chooses to slander American democracy http://wapo.st/350FMPk
WaPo, Philip Bump: In a speech of historic dishonesty, Trump tried to reinforce his long-planned effort to retain power http://wapo.st/32fsixh
✅ WaPo Factchecker, Glenn Kessler: Trump’s White House statement: Falsehood upon falsehood http://wapo.st/3k7ORKy
NYT: In Torrent of Falsehoods, Trump Claims Election Is Being Stolen http://nyti.ms/2I9tgo8
// Most television networks cut away from the statement President Trump gave Thursday night from the White House briefing room on the grounds that what he was saying was not true.
💙 🧵 RT @atrupar Trump opens his news conference by saying “if you count the legal vote, I easily win. If you count the illegal votes, they can try to steal the election from us.” This is a lie. There is no evidence of election fraud. 📌 https://twitter.com/atrupar/status/1324498834941239297?s=20
💙 💽 CSPAN: Campaign2020: President Trump News Conference http://cs.pn/3oWkURr
// tags: trump presser trump says he won election trump meltdown trump treason
President Trump held a briefing at the White House two days after Election Day and without a declared winner in the presidential race. “This is a case where they’re trying to steal an election. They’re trying to rig an election and we can’t let that happen,” said the president without providing evidence to back his assertions. President Trump claimed that mail-in ballots inherently led to “corruption” and election workers “finding” these ballots during the counting process amounted to election fraud. The president said his campaign would pursue legal action, including going to the Supreme Court.
‼️ ⋘ 5:45pm Trump declares he has won ‘when legal votes are counted’ ⋙
🐣 RT @BradMossEsq “Alexa, show me what NRA’s finance officials say to its senior leadership whenever they want a blank check for use on vacation.”
⋙ 🐣 RT @NRA COME AND TAKE IT
🐣 RT @alt_uscis I am just going to leave this here 💽 https://twitter.com/ALT_uscis/status/1324482903468871682?s=20/photo/1
// snippet from Trump/Hillary Clinton debate: “most dangerous”
🐣 RT @peltzmadeline Steve Bannon calls for Dr. Fauci and FBI Director Wray to be beheaded “as a warning to federal bureaucrats”@youtube prohibits “inciting others to commit violent acts against individuals” 💽 https://twitter.com/peltzmadeline/status/1324471538310127618?s=20/photo/1
⋙ MMFA: Steve Bannon and his co-host discuss beheading Dr. Anthony Fauci and FBI Director Christopher Wray http://bit.ly/351N9pV
// Bannon: “I’d put their heads on pikes, right, I’d put them at the two corners of the White House as a warning to federal bureaucrats”
🐣 RT @AshaRangappa_ Today my positive thought that gives me faith in democracy is that the media has handled the delay in election results very well. In particular, they did a good job of setting expectations in advance that this wouldn’t be a “night of” affair, and it is paying off now
🧵 RT @JakeTapper Conservative GOP veteran of several presidential campaigns: “Very concerned about what I’m seeing from GOP activists. They are attacking the integrity of the electoral system but don’t seem to have any particular expertise about what they are criticizing. We all lose… 📌 https://twitter.com/jaketapper/status/1324468023126798336?s=20
⋙⋙ 🐣 hmmmmm … James Baker?
⋙ 🐣 RT @JakeTapper 2/ “… if we turn voting integrity into another political football. And what I’m seeing isn’t the usual gamesmanship around contested elections like we saw in 2000. They are attacking the the system itself. It’s increasingly clear to me that Trump lost this thing….
⋙ 🐣 RT @JakeTapper 3/“…. We cannot be the party attacking a system as being unfair when we just took a 3 million vote loss.”
🐣 RT @brianklaas I’m really up for four years of normal tweets like this. Conspicuous absence of typos, conspiracy theories, racist dog whistles, or lies – and no covfefe to be found.
💙 ⋙ 🐣 RT @JoeBiden [3:45pm] I ask people to stay calm.
The process is working.
The count is being completed.
🐣 RT @JoeBiden Democracy is sometimes messy, so sometimes it requires a little patience. ¤ But that patience has been rewarded now for more than 240 years with a system of governance that has been the envy of the world.
🐣 RT @JoeBiden Be patient, folks. Votes are being counted, and we feel good about where we are.
🐣 RT @MaryLTrump Every vote must be counted. Donald is lying.
WaPo, Cat Zakrzewski: Technology 202: Trump’s Twitter feed is covered in warning labels http://wapo.st/3mXqm4B fun times
🐣 RT @atrupar Following the news for the past two days has been like watching a chess match where one side has lost all of its good pieces and is just scrambling to avoid checkmate
🐣 RT @brhodes The images of Trump trying to shut down a democratic election and his supporters chanting “stop the count” are being broadcast around the globe. A gift to autocrats everywhere.
🐣 RT @joshtpm My understanding of where we are.
Nevada: basically done. Biden’s gonna win.
PA: It’s just math. Biden’s gonna win.
AZ: Biden solid favorite. But a Trump comeback possible.
Georgia: razor thin margin but decent odds for Biden.
NC: Very likely Trump; not impossible for Biden.
🐣 RT @jrubinblogger Please identify any other Democrat who could have won Wis, Mich, PA, Ariz, GA and Nevada. I’ll wait.
⋙ 🐣 Rep Clyburn saved us
WaPo: Trump and his allies boost bogus conspiracy theories in a bid to undermine vote count http://wapo.st/34Xjo9E
// The campaign also sent an estimated 9 million text messages between midnight and midday Wednesday, according to an anti-robocall firm, with some messages seeking money to launch voting challenges.
NYT: With His Path to Re-election Narrowing, Trump Turns to the Courts http://nyti.ms/3514Wxt
// The president pursued lawsuits in Pennsylvania and Michigan, and his campaign said it would demand a recount in Wisconsin.
🐣 RT @DavidCornMD The Trump family is now calling on GOP-controlled state legislatures to nullify the actual vote and push for Trump electors. This is a dangerous moment. https://twitter.com/DavidCornDC/status/1324415365439463424?s=20/photo/1
// screenshot: MarkLevin; RT’d by DonJr
⋙ ⇈ 🐣 RT @marklevinshow REMINDER TO THE REPUBLICAN STATE LEGISLATURES, YOU HAVE THE FINAL SAY OVER THE CHOOSING OF ELECTORS, NOT ANY BOARD OF ELECTIONS, SECRETARY OF STATE, GOVERNOR, OR EVEN COURT. YOU HAVE THE FINAL SAY — ARTICLE II OF THE FED CONSTITUTION. SO, GET READY TO DO YOUR CONSTITUTIONAL DUTY
⋙⋙ 🐣 RT @MaxKennerly No, they don’t. The legislatures already decided to choose electors by popular vote, and Congress decided—as Article II says they can—the manner of appointing electors had to be in place by November 3. It’s done. ¤ BTW, retroactively removing the franchise violates Bush v. Gore.
🚫🐣 RT @ddale8 That is not true. Even in pre-pandemic elections, it was routine for states to accept ballots – including ballots from overseas military members – postmarked by (or before) Election Day but received after. The states that do so include states governed by conservative Republicans.
🚫 ⋙ 🐣 RT @real ANY BALLOT THAT CAME IN AFTER ELECTION DAY WILL NOT BE COUNTED
// screenshot; blocked by Twitter; not RT’d to not spread the craziness
⋙ 🐣 RT @ddale8 That was fast
🐣 RT @pithywidow His legal strategies are only ever PR strategies
⋙ 🧵 RT @ariberman Important point by Biden lawyer Bob Bauer: Trump’s lawsuits challenging vote counting not designed to win in court, but spread misinformation & encourage thuggish behavior by his supporters to undermine legitimacy of election
🐣 RT @business [Bloomberg] WATCH: The Trump campaign speaks outside of the Philadelphia Convention Center as protests happen around the ballot-counting site #Election2020 https://trib.al/n1oFnYv
😅 RT @RightWingWatch Presidential spiritual adviser Paula White is currently leading an impassioned prayer service in an effort to secure Trump’s reelection. 💽 https://twitter.com/RightWingWatch/status/1324175651515949056?s=20/photo/1
// ‘old-time religion’
🐣 RT @russperez56 If @PeteButtigieg isn’t MVP of the @JoeBiden campaign, I don’t know who is. He is on Fox News non-stop, making their jaw drop every time. Like a teacher talking to students. #BidenHarris2020ToSaveAmerica
⋙ HuffPo: Pete Buttigieg Schools Fox News Viewers In Testy Interview On Trump’s Economy http://bit.ly/2TVPcWf
// The former Democratic presidential contender basically told viewers to Google it.
🐣 RT @kasparov68 Counting every vote is the foundation upon which every democratic process and principle is built. If the voting process is shaken, the rest will fall. Count every vote!
🚫🐣 RT @jacobsoboroff Answering my questions would have been a good start at transparency. Where’s *any* evidence of thousands of fraudulent ballots, as you alleged? You ignored everything I asked you.
⋙ 🐣 RT @RichardGrenell We just finished a press conference announcing a federal lawsuit to stop counting illegal ballots in Nevada. ¤ Clark County officials must start answering questions as to why. ¤ We demand transparency.
// what a charade!
🐣 RT @ShalomLipner “Joe,” @algore] said, “I’ve decided to end it… An appeal and recount in FL.. could spark a constitutional crisis and raise serious questions about the continuity of our govt.. I believe it is right and best for our country.”@JoeLieberman via @WSJ.
⋙ WSJ, Joe Lieberman: A Disputed Election: My Lesson From 2000 http://on.wsj.com/3er3iZ2
// Al Gore showed me the importance of accepting an adverse outcome.
🐣 RT @EricGarland So Louis DeJoy’s people meet tomorrow at 11am with Judge Sullivan to discuss just how many votes might have been lost…in TEXAS. Text Block: https://twitter.com/ericgarland/status/1324185392527024128?s=20/photo/1
⋙ 🐣 🌎 RT @SeniorsAction Missing ballots: ¤ We will keep tweeting this image until #DeJoy is in jail. #USPS #MailInBallots https://twitter.com/SeniorsAction/status/1324197008651898880?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @JoeLockhart Game on. The runoffs will be nationalized and a first big test of President elect Biden’s ability to turn out Democrats in Georgia, again.
⋙ 🐣 RT @travisakers David Perdue has now fallen below the 50% mark. With outstanding ballots to be counted coming from primarily Democratic-leaning precincts, it is likely that Georgia will have two runoff races for U.S. Senate.
🐣 RT @AnaCabrera Trump feels like the election is “being stolen from him”, a Trump campaign adviser tells @Acosta. The adviser says Trump is the driving force behind the rhetoric coming from the campaign questioning the legitimacy of the election and ballot counting process.
🐣 RT @RusEmbUSA #Lavrov: <...> dialogue between our countries so far remains hostage to the US domestic political struggle <...> we realistically assess the prospects of bilateral cooperation and do not expect too much. ¤ https://bit.ly/32dPJHi https://pic.twitter.com/P34y5jCA9g
🐣 Carville thinks Alaska Senate in play and that Perdue won’t breach 50%, so the Senate may still be in play ¤ Fired up?
🐣 RT @BillKristol I think it’s very possible, maybe likely, that Biden is the only Democrat who could have beaten Trump.
⋙ 🐣 good move on his part to appeal to working/middle class whites and labor; hope he tamps down the p.c. crowd a tad
🐣 RT @emptywheel What a pity, then, that McConnell has spent the last 4 years making it clear he doesn’t mind if there are long-term Acting Secretaries, even ones who are ridiculously unqualified. ¤ Be less credulous, please, pool boy @JimVandeHei.
🐣 RT @JRubinBlogger “Only 3 pres campaigns have defeated an incumbent president.” What he did not say is that he had to do this in face of multiple abuses, including serial Hatch Act violations, attack on post office and extorting a foreign power to manufacture dirt on him
⋙ WaPo, Jennifer Rubin: Joe Biden ran a historic race http://wapo.st/32fBPEB
// Polls may not be real, but Biden’s big win sure is.
🐣 RT @chrisinsilico Only if it involves confessions.
⋙ 🐣 RT @kayleighmcenany Who would want to join a LIVE prayer group tomorrow?
🇺🇸 🙏 🇺🇸 🙏
💙 🐣 RT @LincolnsBible Land does not vote. ¤ People do. 💽 https://twitter.com/LincolnsBible/status/1324312949100478465?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @Redistrict Of course, there are plenty of other PA counties besides Philly where Biden is still poised to gain a *lot* of ground w/ mail ballots. Delaware, Lehigh, Cumberland, Bucks, Monroe, Centre, Allegheny to name a few. This isn’t a nail-biter, imo.
YahooNews: Eric Trump Busted For Fake Video Of Someone ‘Burning 80 Trump Ballots’ http://yhoo.it/32exyS7
// he RT’d a video from an account that has now been suspended; the video was of sample ballots (no barcodes)
🐣 RT @feliciasonmez Chinese state media doing its thing. Although I love how it kind of ends up being a civics lesson on how American democracy works — a whole section on the Electoral College! — even as they run headlines like “One-person-one-vote is an illusion.”
⋙ 🐣 RT @austinramzy Chinese state-controlled Ta Kung Pao in Hong Kong today: “So-called US-style democracy has descended into a joke.” https://twitter.com/austinramzy/status/1324213965056925697?s=20/photo/1
⭕ 4 Nov 2020
💙❤️ TheAtlantic, George Packer: Face the Bitter Truth http://bit.ly/2TX5OwC
// We are two countries, and neither of them is going to be conquered or disappear anytime soon.
🐣 RT @NBCNews BREAKING: More than 100,000 Covid-19 cases recorded in the U.S. today, marking the latest single-day record high. https://twitter.com/NBCNews/status/1324161586114809860?s=20/photo/1
// 1000+ deaths
🐣 RT @USPoliticsPoll PENNSYLVANIA: Biden needs just 61-63% of the outstanding mail in ballots to win state, which isn’t hard because he’s been winning them by a 78-22% margin so far. ¤ The Blue wall is coming back together.
🐣 RT @pbump If this holds for the rest of what’s out in Maricopa, Trump gains about 80k in Maricopa vs. the original 93k deficit. Not nothing!
⋙ 🐣 RT @greggiroux
Maricopa County update: Trump netted 13,644 votes
Biden 887,457 (+30,322)
Trump 802,160 (+43,966)
https://recorder.maricopa.gov/electionresults/general2020.aspx…
Biden’s lead in Arizona now 79,173 votes, down from 92,817 votes before.
↥ ↧
🐣 RT @pbump I think it’s 430k. 13,600 times 5.8.
⋙ 🐣 RT @AkaMotherto3 Replying to @pbump So PA is back in play. ¤ Why would 2020 be easy.
⋙⋙ 🐣 RT @pbump This is Arizona.
🐣 RT @TracyViselli @pbump Still have 40,000 plus in Pima which will favor Biden as well, probably a bit more than Maricopa.
🧵 RT @kyledcheney JUST IN: Postal Service files a new explanation in court explaining its failure to comply with Judge SULLIVAN’s order but says it complied in spirit anyway. 📌 Text Block: https://twitter.com/kyledcheney/status/1324028292815618051?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @brhodes Maybe, just maybe, voter suppression and sabotaging the USPS had something to do with the discrepancy between the polls and the result (in which Biden will still win).
⭕ 3 Nov 2020 Election Day ‼️
🐣 RT @real VOTE! VOTE! VOTE! 💽 https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1323534663453913093?s=20/photo/1
// Trump dancing to “YMCA”
🐣 RT @MuellerSheWrotePodcast If trump loses, he can be indicted for federal crimes going back five years. And don’t even get me started on state charges post-election. THIS IS IT! WE are the Muellers we’ve been waiting for. #Vote2020
🐣 RT @AnaChech WOW! U.S. District Judge Sullivan ordered USPS personnel to sweep 27 facilities identified by its IG by 3:30 p.m. on Election Day to check for any ballots that hadn’t been delivered, and ensure they arrived at their destination before polls closed
⋙ RawStory: Judge orders postal service to sweep facilities for unsent ballots — and deliver them http://bit.ly/2GsHXBW
// A federal judge has ordered the U.S. Postal Service to check its facilities for any unsent ballots and deliver them immediately. U.S. District Judge Emmet Sullivan
🐣 RT @JuliaDavisNews Sex, Lies and Videotape: ¤ Concerned with Trump lagging in the polls, Moscow is pulling out all the stops in a continued effort to help “Russia’s candidate” with Hunter kompromat. ¤ Putin himself stepped out of the shadows in a coy effort to shade Biden.
⋙ 🚫 🐣 DailyBeast: Russian Media’s Final Election Push For Trump: Primetime Hunter Biden ‘Sex Videos’ http://bit.ly/2JzEX83
// Russian state media is making a final push for Trump by airing excerpts of the so-called “Hunter Biden sex tapes” during primetime, almost daily.
President Donald J. Trump remains Russia’s preferred candidate for a number of reasons, many of which are frequently articulated by pro-Kremlin analysts, pundits, and foreign policy specialists. Appearing on Russia’s state TV show The Evening with Vladimir Soloviev, the deputy dean of world politics at Moscow’s State University, Andrey Sidorov, explained that Trump’s re-election would undoubtedly benefit Russia. Sidorov concluded that the election of former Vice President Joe Biden would lead to the consolidation of the West—restoring NATO alliances badly undermined by Trump—and thus resulting in a united front, with additional sanctions against Russia for its ongoing malign activities.
Sidorov surmised that Moscow can’t help but be concerned with the outcome of the U.S. election, since it will directly affect the Kremlin. The host of the popular state TV show 60 Minutes, Evgeny Popov, worried out loud that the Biden presidency would mean “the administration and the White House filled with Russophobes.” Vice presidential candidate Kamala Harris is viewed through the same lens and a potential Harris presidency, following the Biden years, is another unwelcome prospect for the Kremlin.
🐣 RT @djrothkopf It’s not even noon on Election Day. We don’t know the results. Disappointment may loom. Or success. But the commitment of so many for so long to combatting a malevolent president and GOP who are actively attacking our government has been deeply inspiring.
⋙ 🐣 RT @djrothkopf You all are fighting for your country. You all are doing what is essential to preserve a democracy. You all are what makes America a country that is so much greater than its many flaws and likely in the end to triumph over our enemies and continue growing and evolving.
⋙ 🐣 RT @djrothkopf Some of you have been engaged in this battle for years & years. All of you know it does not end today. But the sacrifices and brilliance and resolve of so many millions should be a source of hope for us all. And I, like so many others I know, am deeply grateful for your efforts.
⋙ 🐣 RT @djrothkopf Thank you. ¤ And vote. And help and encourage others to vote.
🐣 RT @duty2warn There is not much data on how malignant narcissists confront losing. This is a unique case in many ways, and circumstances will dictate much of it. It can be very messy, or not so much. Emotionally, he has three basic thoughts that rotate – malice, grievance, and begging. (more)
⋙ 🐣 RT @duty2warn It can easily turn messy because he still has power and a bully pulpit for a time. Unknown what his enablers will do, likely they cover themselves. Malice is fixation on revenge. We’ll see some. Grievance is spinning lies. We’ll see a lot. Begging is private, we won’t see much.
⋙ 🐣 RT @duty2warn Staying out of jail is a process that stretches over time. It’s really not his greatest fear. His greatest fear is humiliation. If he loses, and it’s by a lot, and he can’t spin anything anyone believes, it’s humiliation. Then his secrets get uncovered. That’s the big humiliation
⋙ 🐣 RT @duty2warn Hitler in the bunker. Jim Jones and Kool-Aid. But it’s not a lot of data considering how different the circumstances were for each. Trump speaks for fifty million people who choose not to see truth. How that plays, is crucial.
🐣 RT @tribelaw This election is unique. At stake is not just the outcome of the vote, but whether we will retain the constitutional right to vote. At stake is truth itself and the future of all that matters. If Trump holds into power, it’s possible we’ll recover someday. But not likely.
⭕ 2 Nov 2020
⭕ 1 Nov 2020
NewYorker, Susan Glasser: Why Trump Can’t Afford to Lose http://bit.ly/32lMvBK
// The President has survived one impeachment, twenty-six accusations of sexual misconduct, and an estimated four thousand lawsuits. That run of good luck may well end, perhaps brutally, if Joe Biden wins.
OpenDemocracy: The dangerous psychology of Donald Trump http://bit.ly/353dhAs
// The last four years provide a roadmap that shows how the personal and the political can combine to disastrous effect.
🐣 RT @.JoeBiden Vote for America. ¤ 💽 http://iwillvote.com https://twitter.com/JoeBiden/status/1316513615373987840?s=20/photo/1
// Joe Biden ad❣ Vote for America
💙 TheGuardian, Lois Beckett: Scholars warn of collapse of democracy as Trump v Biden election looms http://bit.ly/3kP0kzH
// Dozens of experts on fascism warn of global danger, calling for action from ordinary people: ‘It is not too late’
⋙ 💙 NewFascism: How to Keep the Lights On in Democracies: An Open Letter of Concern by Scholars of Authoritarianism http://bit.ly/3kOWk2n
We must boldly and unapologetically safeguard critical thinking based on evidence. This includes demonstrating the virtues of entertaining a wide array of positions and perspectives, and support, both in word and deed, for investigative journalism, science and the humanities, and freedom of the press. We need swift and tangible commitments from corporate media organizations and governments to tackle the dangers of misinformation and media concentration. We must encourage coalitions organized across differences of race, class, gender, religion and caste, while respecting the perspectives and experiences of others. We need to reveal and denounce any and all connections between those in power and those vigilante and militia forces using political violence to destabilize our democracies. Much like the active democratic movements across the globe from Nigeria to India, Belarus to Hong Kong, we must be prepared to defend pluralism and democracy against the growing dangers of communal violence and authoritarianism at the ballot box but, if necessary, also through non-violent protest in the streets. We must defend the integrity of the electoral process and ensure the widest possible voter turnouts, not just in this election but in every election large and small in all of our hometowns. And we must re-commit to a global conversation on support for democratic institutions, laws, and practices both within and between our respective countries. This includes directly confronting the unfettered greed that drives global inequality, which has unleashed geopolitical rivalries over access to resources, international migrations, and collapsed state sovereignties all over the world.
We need to turn away from the rule by entrenched elites and return to the rule of law. We must replace the politics of “internal enemies” with a politics of adversaries in a healthy, democratic marketplace of ideas. And above else, we need to work together to find ways to keep the light of democracy shining in our countries and all over the world. Because if we don’t, we will indeed face dark days ahead.
🚫 TheMarcusReader: The Acceleration of the Authoritarianism of Trump and Trumpism in 2020 http://bit.ly/3kOVeUj with timeline
// ⏳ uncertain of author; It may be too late for the election but I want to get it into the record.
We should worry when:
1. A politician rejects, in words or action, the democratic rules of the game,
2. denies the legitimacy of opponents,
3. tolerates or encourages violence, or
4. indicates a willingness to curtail the civil liberties of opponents, including the media.
🐣 RT @NYCAntifa The truck that side-swiped the Biden/Harris campaign bus was driven by a Trump supporter who drove into a crowd of BLM protesters in September. ¤ Like we’ve been saying–far right violence doesn’t just stick with one group. Esp when given a green light to go ahead w/ impunity https://twitter.com/NYCAntifa/status/1323146292365873153?s=20
🧵 RT @Kasparov63 Trump always outdoes himself in sinking to new lows, but after praising dictators, attacking veterans, demeaning women, and surrendering to a pandemic, we can hope that he has also undone himself. My new op-ed at CNN. 📌 https://twitter.com/Kasparov63/status/1322640109569773568?s=20
⋙⋙ CNN: Win or lose, with Trump, prepare for the unimaginable after the election http://cnn.it/3oMH1cW
⋙ 🐣 RT @Kasparov63 Trying to play “what if?” with autocratic types like Trump rarely works because such people are capable of violating every norm to serve their own interests. But we can be prepared to fight like hell, and we must be.
⋙ 🐣 RT @Kasparov63 If Trump calls on his zealots to “LIBERATE AMERICA!” and there is violence, what then? Stop thinking, “Trump would never..” Normal people don’t like to imagine terrible events, which is why autocrats consistently surprise them.
🐣 RT @WilDonnelly Trump tried to do business with Castro during embargo, wanted to give Putin a $50M condo, had secret bank acct for deals with Chinese communist party, shared love letters with Kim & turned US farmers into govt-subsidized socialists. He sure likes to project his love for commies!
⋙ 🐣 RT @real Biden is a proven Castro puppet! Vote TRUMP
🐣 RT @lawfareblog The right-wing threat is fracturing—with a wide range of overlapping groups and radical individuals posing a risk of political violence that may overwhelm counterterrorism officials. ¤ Here’s Bruce Hoffman and Jacob Ware:
🔆 This❗️⋙ Lawfare, Bruce Hoffman and Jacob Ware: The Terrorist Threat from the Fractured Far Right http://bit.ly/2TLu2tQ
● White Supremacists and Neo-Nazis
● “Boogaloo” and Anti-government Extremism
● QAnon
● Neo-Luddites
● “Salad Bar” IdeologiesConfronting the Fracturing Far-Right Terrorism Threat
The fracturing far-right is not necessarily new. The United States has always faced a diffuse militia and anti-government threat, and throughout the latter parts of the 20th century, the extreme right’s efforts to unify unraveled under intense law enforcement pressure. The result was a disparate, splintered movement, with skinheads, national socialist movements, and militias all competing for recruits and attention. But today’s atomized movement is different—not least because of the connectivity afforded by the internet and social media. It is also fueled to a greater extent than before by increasingly widespread populist discontent in the United States and in other Western countries that has been increasingly legitimized by political leaders and thus entered into the mainstream of national politics and discourse. We are not just seeing several factions energized; we are also seeing them unusually vocal, unnervingly popular and, in some cases, unconventionally public in their promises of violence.
Until a few months ago, far-right violence was mostly predictable. Instances tended to be tragic but otherwise largely contained shootings randomly perpetrated by lone-actor white supremacists against soft targets—typically places of worship or shopping centers—along with sporadic militia or sovereign citizen attacks on law enforcement. We now face a cacophony of violence, growing louder and perpetrated by multiple collectives or groups of actors that are similar in their ideologies and strategies, but just distinct enough in their differing approaches and targeting to complicate counterterrorism efforts.
Although these groups have so far inflicted a limited number of fatalities, their violence has the potential to escalate suddenly. And there seems to be no clearly articulated strategy from either the federal government or law enforcement to wrench back control. The 2020 election provides the most dangerous potential trigger, particularly in the event of a contested outcome. Several of these groups, including QAnon adherents, are highly motivated by President Trump; any appearance of voting irregularities that favor the Biden campaign against Trump, whether legitimate or not, may spark widespread violence—especially if the president chooses to amplify such concerns. But predicting which of these groups is most likely to attack and what targets would be most in danger is not possible. In the absence of a clear, comprehensive national strategy, fear and anxiety is increasingly fueled by uncertainty and discord.
💙🐣 ♫ RT @ProjectLincoln The Lincoln Project is proud to present our music video for “Commander in Chief” by @ddlovato. ¤ Watch and pitch in here: 💽 https://twitter.com/ProjectLincoln/status/1316891143989321731?s=20/photo/1
// The Lincoln Project ad❣ Commander in Chief
🐣 RT @crooks&liars Here’s Trump’s Faux doctor saying lockdowns don’t help, and bashing Fauci. On Russian TV, no less. #Trump #ScottAtlas #DrFauci #COVID19 #Lockdowns #Pandemic Watch now on #CLTV 💽 https://twitter.com/crooksandliars/status/1322949911554318337?s=20/photo/1
🧵 RT @atrupar Trump, currently complaining about the weather in Dubuque, Iowa, complains about the weather wherever he goes 📌 https://twitter.com/atrupar/status/1322989910563893249?s=20
🧵 RT @atrupar This is the stuff of Nazi rallies 📌 https://twitter.com/atrupar/status/1322946242763202560?s=20
USAToday: Lincoln Project: We’re fighting for a better America. A Biden era would be a good start. http://bit.ly/34KUHwT By Reed Galen, Steve Schmidt, Rick Wilson and Stuart Stevens
🐣 RT @joshchaffetz now we’re only allowed to do RT with comment
⋙ 🐣 RT @SWAtlasHoover I recently did an interview with RT and was unaware they are a registered foreign agent. I regret doing the interview and apologize for allowing myself to be taken advantage of. I especially apologize to the national security community who is working hard to defend us.
// oops!
↥ ↧
DailyBeast: Trump’s Favorite COVID Adviser Goes on Kremlin-Backed RT to Blast Lockdowns as ‘Epic Failure’ http://bit.ly/3eevT3H “Scott Atlas, a neuroradiologist, was introduced … as ‘one of the only two men the U.S. president apparently listens to on the pandemic’”
// Scott Atlas also made a point to complain about criticism he’s faced for his coronavirus guidance, calling it a “sad statement” that the media “destroyed” him.
NYT Editorial: Why Are Republicans So Afraid of Voters? http://nyti.ms/34QAUMV
🐣 RT @AliVelshi “If all the votes are added up in Pennsylvania, Trump is going to lose,” says AG @JoshShapiroPA. He’s already defeated 6 different lawsuits restricting voting access in his state. He joins me 8aET to share how he’ll prevent interference on Election Day. #VelshiAcrossAmerica
🐣 RT @JohnWDean There is a reason Trump is campaigning like his freedom depends on winning. It does. If he loses he faces state and federal criminal charges. Likely prison. It seems Donald’s big motivator! So the great con continues…
NYT: Their First Try Backfired, but Giuliani and Allies Keep Aiming at Biden http://nyti.ms/3edcZKx
// The former New York mayor’s dirt-digging effort on Hunter Biden in 2019 ended with President Trump’s impeachment. Now he is back with new associates. So far it is not going exactly as planned.
🎃 31 Oct 2020
🐣 ♫ RT @springsteen This is @joebiden’s hometown. This is more than where he’s from. This is who he’s for. 💽 https://twitter.com/springsteen/status/1322582291453861890?s=20/photo/1
🧵 RT @atrupar Trump is about to deliver his fourth rally speech of the day in Pennsylvania, this one in Montoursville. Follow for a video thread. 📌 https://twitter.com/atrupar/status/1322705991696322561?s=20
🐣 RT @TeamPelosi Democrats believe voters should pick the President of the United States. Trump and his Republican enablers disagree. #Vote accordingly.
⋙ 🐣 RT @BeschlossDC Trump just said it at Reading PA rally: “If we win on Tuesday or — thank you very much, Supreme Court — shortly thereafter…”
⋙⋙ 🐣 RT @therecount Here’s the clip from Trump’s Reading, PA rally: “If we win on Tuesday or — thank you very much, Supreme Court — shortly thereafter…” 💽 https://twitter.com/therecount/status/1322636317252030471?s=20/photo/1
😅 RT @ProjectLincoln Dear Donald… https://twitter.com/ProjectLincoln/status/1322599215357337601?s=20/photo/1
// Lincoln Project ad❣ Closer: missteps, stumbles and stupidity
🐣 RT @petestrzok RT is registered with the Department of Justice as an agent of the Government of Russia. ¤ A WH advisor providing Covid advice to @realdonaldtrump is giving interviews to a propaganda arm of Russia. ¤ Our election is three days away. Imagine what four more years would look like.
⋙ 🐣 RT @SWAtlasHoover New interview. Lockdowns, facts, frauds … if you can’t handle truth, use a mask to cover your eyes and ears https://youtu.be/4qKti8V4-uc #FactsMatter #LockdownsKill
// Scott Atlas gives interview on RT
🐣 RT @tribelaw For the worst traitor ever to hold the presidency to say he’d jail his opponent and his predecessor for treason if he wins is disqualifying in itself
⋙ PoliticusUSA: Trump Threatens To Jail Obama And Biden For Treason If He Wins http://bit.ly/35P3Nby
🐣 RT @stonecold2050 Trumpanzees driving a funeral hearse brandish weapons & attempted to drive Biden’s campaign bus off the I-35 highway in Texas. Their hearse is emblazoned with the message, “Collecting votes one DEAD Democrat at a time”. How in the world is this not terrorism? #LockThemUp
🧵 RT @atrupar Trump is about to deliver his fourth rally speech of the day in Pennsylvania, this one in Montoursville. Follow for a video thread. 📌 https://twitter.com/atrupar/status/1322705991696322561?s=20
🐣 RT @BradMossEsq This incitement to vigilantism isn’t new. History is replete with examples of authoritarians doing this to intimidate dissent. https://twitter.com/BradMossEsq/status/1322714425644691458?s=20
🐣 RT @therecount Here’s the clip from Trump’s Reading, PA rally: “If we win on Tuesday or — thank you very much, Supreme Court — shortly thereafter…” 💽 https://twitter.com/therecount/status/1322636317252030471?s=20/photo/1
DailyBeast: Biden Team Cancels Texas Event After Highway ‘Ambush’ by MAGA Cavalry http://bit.ly/2TILA9G
// Dozens of pickup trucks, many with Trump flags, surrounded a Biden campaign bus as it traveled from San Antonio to Austin.
🐣📋 RT @carlquinanilla New @Stanford study estimates that 18 Trump rallies have led to 30,000 COVID cases and 700 deaths (via @AaronBelkin) https://twitter.com/carlquintanilla/status/1322527556126605313?s=20/photo/1
⋙ ★ Stanford, B Bergheim et al: The Effects of Large Group Meetings on the Spread of COVID-19: The Case of Trump Rallies http://bit.ly/3oJhMrY “[W]e conclude that these 18 rallies ultimately resulted in more than 30,000 incremental confirmed cases of COVID-19 [and] 700 deaths” ● https://twitter.com/Auriandra/status/1322570903461498881?s=20/photo/1
⭕ 30 Oct 2020
💙 🐣 RT @TheDailyShow Here it is. The definitive list of Trump’s 100 Most Tremendous Scandals. 💽 https://twitter.com/TheDailyShow/status/1322327675948576768?s=20/photo/1
SeattleTimes: Judge in Portland cites Trump tweets in restricting feds at protests http://bit.ly/2HIIXTd
// A federal judge found Friday that tweets by President Donald Trump helped incite improper conduct by federal officers responding to racial justice demonstrations in Portland, Oregon.
AMA: American Medical Association statement on ongoing attacks on physicians treating COVID patients http://bit.ly/3oJYTVW ● Text Block: https://twitter.com/Auriandra/status/1322511068518907904?s=20/photo/1
The following statement is attributable to:
Susan R. Bailey, M.D.
President, American Medical Association“Throughout this pandemic, physicians, nurses, and frontline health care workers have risked their health, their safety and their lives to treat their patients and defeat a deadly virus. They did it because duty called and because of the sacred oath they took. The suggestion that doctors—in the midst of a public health crisis—are overcounting COVID-19 patients or lying to line their pockets is a malicious, outrageous, and completely misguided charge. COVID-19 cases are at record highs today. Rather than attacking us and lobbing baseless charges at physicians, our leaders should be following the science and urging adherence to the public health steps we know work—wearing a mask, washing hands and practicing physical distancing.”
MSNBC, Steve Benen: Trump delivers a curious pre-election pitch to the Supreme Court http://on.msnbc.com/3kK3k0h
// Supreme Court justices should help Trump win, the argument goes, because they’ll be happier with him than with his opponent.
At 2:57 a.m. (E.T), while much of the country was asleep, Donald Trump was tweeting. In fact, the president was specifically publishing this:
[Tweet:] “If Sleepy Joe Biden is actually elected President, the 4 Justices (plus1) that helped make such a ridiculous win possible would be relegated to sitting on not only a heavily PACKED COURT, but probably a REVOLVING COURT as well. At least the many new Justices will be Radical Left!”
I think in Republican circles, it’s seen as wild-eyed nonsense when Democrats express concern that Donald Trump intends to turn to the Supreme Court to help him stay in power. But the president himself keeps giving the public — friend and foe alike — reason to believe this is precisely his plan.
His early-morning tweet is strangely written, but the point seems clear enough: Trump is effectively trying to lobby the high court. As the president sees it, a Biden victory would be “ridiculous,” and he hopes a majority of the Supreme Court — or in this case, “4 Justices (plus1)” — can be counted on to prevent this from happening.
For Trump, it doesn’t seem to occur to him to make appeals based on right and wrong, constitutional or unconstitutional, principled or unprincipled. He thinks in self-interested terms, and the president seems to assume everyone else does, too.
🐣 RT @BillMoyers Trump has begun to muse about losing the election, saying he would like simply to drive away, or fly away, from the burden of the presidency. Yesterday, retired Brigadier General Peter B. Zwack wrote that “Trump appears to be a classic flight risk.”
⋙ MoyersOnDemocracy, Heather Richardson: It’s Happening Whether They Like It Or Not http://bit.ly/3kKfBSz
// A record number of 80 million early ballots have already been cast, and we are all parsing the polls for clues about who will emerge as the winner of the 2020
🐣📊RT @SykesCharlie Fat lady hasn’t sung yet. But the lights are on in the dressing room … and she’s clearing her throat .. https://twitter.com/SykesCharlie/status/1322377425859301377?s=20/photo/1
// FoxNews Poll: Biden 52% Trump 44% (10/27-29, LV)
⋙ 🐣 I’m waiting for Biden to say, “Folks, our long national nightmare is over” ¤ He won’t. It’s too divisive. But it’s what I’ll hear
🐣 RT @Yamiche American Medical Association is now pushing back on Trump’s false claim that doctors & hospitals are jacking up death tolls to make more money saying, “The suggestion is … a malicious, outrageous, and completely misguided charge.” Text Block: https://twitter.com/Yamiche/status/1322284418686439424?s=20/photo/1
💙 🐣 RT @MaddowBlog Here is that powerful testimony from Montana ICU nurse Joey Traywick (with a little bit of perspective from Dr. Kris Spanjian at the beginning). ¤ Reporting by NBC News’ @gabegutierrez from @StVincentMT 💽 https://twitter.com/MaddowBlog/status/1322365300021600256?s=20/photo/1
🐣 Biden Team’s on it. Our job:
1. #VOTE
2. Check and make sure your vote counted
3. GOTV: door knock, phone bank, texts, drive others to polls
4. It’s still not too late to donate: http://ActBlue.com
💙 NYT, Ron Suskind: The Day After Election Day http://nyti.ms/34Gk8Qh
// Current and former Trump administration officials are worried about what might happen on Nov. 4.
WaPo: Republicans shift from challenging rules to preparing to challenge individual ballots http://wapo.st/2THNWWx
WaPo: DHS plans largest operation to secure U.S. election against hacking http://wapo.st/3jKs87b
// A 24/7 war room will operate from Election Day until local officials are confident in the results. It shows just how far DHS’s cybersecurity agency has come since 2016.
WaPo: The unseen machine pushing Trump’s social media megaphone into overdrive http://wapo.st/31XFh6I
// Researchers say the online feedback loop between Trump, high-profile influencers and rank-and-file followers is a danger to the election.
WaPo: Five Reagan White House lawyers endorse Biden, saying Trump has ‘fomented hatred’ http://wapo.st/3ebX4vT
⭕ 29 Oct 2020
NewYorker, Susan Glasser: Denialism, Dishonesty, Deflection: The Final Days of the Trump Campaign Have It All http://bit.ly/2TF8EXa “[T]his fall’s campaign may well go down as one of the most scandalous periods of his norm-shattering Presidency”
WaPo, Alan Alda: I cannot remain silent as Trump rejects science and endangers lives http://wapo.st/2HRedid “Trump’s deceitful assurances that covid-19 is nothing to worry about have laid untold dead at the feet of this president.”
🐣 RT @MSNBC .@FrankFigliuzzi1: When the president fires and threatens to terminate consecutive FBI directors for not doing his political bidding, he doesn’t erode one agency’s credibility and trust, he jeopardizes public perception of law enforcement writ large
⋙ MSNBC, Frank Figiuzzi: When Trump attacks the FBI, he’s inadvertently attacking the police he says he supports. http://on.msnbc.com/3jExtwU
// Trump’s pre-election threats to the FBI director is part of a larger pattern.
🐣 RT @MaddowBlog “We are experiencing the most significant cyber security threat we’ve ever seen in the United States”
⋙ AP: FBI warns ransomware assault threatens US healthcare system http://bit.ly/3mGQ1yx
Federal agencies warned that cybercriminals are unleashing a wave of data-scrambling extortion attempts against the U.S. healthcare system designed to lock up hospital information systems, which could hurt patient care just as nationwide cases of COVID-19 are spiking.
In a joint alert Wednesday, the FBI and two federal agencies warned that they had “credible information of an increased and imminent cybercrime threat to U.S. hospitals and healthcare providers.” The alert said malicious groups are targeting the sector with attacks that produce “data theft and disruption of healthcare services.”
The cyberattacks involve ransomware, which scrambles data into gibberish that can only be unlocked with software keys provided once targets pay up. Independent security experts say it has already hobbled at least five U.S. hospitals this week, and could potentially impact hundreds more.
The offensive by a Russian-speaking criminal gang coincides with the U.S. presidential election, although there is no immediate indication they were motivated by anything but profit. “We are experiencing the most significant cyber security threat we’ve ever seen in the United States,” Charles Carmakal, chief technical officer of the cybersecurity firm Mandiant, said in a statement.
Alex Holden, CEO of Hold Security, which has been closely tracking the ransomware in question for more than a year, agreed that the unfolding offensive is unprecedented in magnitude for the U.S. given its timing in the heat of a contentions presidential election and the worst global pandemic in a century.
The federal alert was co-authored by the Department of Homeland Security and the Department of Health and Human Services.
The cybercriminals launching the attacks use a strain of ransomware known as Ryuk, which is seeded through a network of zombie computers called Trickbot that Microsoft began trying to counter earlier in October. U.S. Cyber Command has also reportedly taken action against Trickbot. While Microsoft has had considerable success knocking its command-and-control servers offline through legal action, analysts say criminals have still been finding ways to spread Ryuk.
The U.S. has seen a plague of ransomware over the past 18 months or so, with major cities from Baltimore to Atlanta hit and local governments and schools hit especially hard.
In September, a ransomware attack hobbled all 250 U.S. facilities of the hospital chain Universal Health Services, forcing doctors and nurses to rely on paper and pencil for record-keeping and slowing lab work. Employees described chaotic conditions impeding patient care, including mounting emergency room waits and the failure of wireless vital-signs monitoring equipment.
“One of the comments from the bad guys is that they are expecting to cause panic and, no, they are not hitting election systems,” Holden said. “They are hitting where it hurts even more and they know it.” U.S. officials have repeatedly expressed concern about major ransomware attacks affecting the presidential election, even if the criminals are motivated chiefly by profit.
Mandiant’s Carmakal identified the criminal gang as UNC1878, saying “it is deliberately targeting and disrupting U.S. hospitals, forcing them to divert patients to other healthcare providers” and producing prolonged delays in critical care.
He called the eastern European group “one of most brazen, heartless, and disruptive threat actors I’ve observed over my career.”
While no one has proven suspected ties between the Russian government and gangs that use the Trickbot platform, Holden said he has “no doubt that the Russian government is aware of this operation — of terrorism, really.” He said dozens of different criminal groups use Ryuk, paying its architects a cut.
WaPo: Appeals court panel rules Minnesota must set aside ballots received after Election Day in case they are invalidated http://wapo.st/2HIlqRQ
💙 🐣 RT @duty2warn He is losing in the suburbs. He’s losing with women. He’s losing with seniors. He is losing with the young vote. He loses big with African Americans. Also loses a bit with Hispanics. He’s also losing among military families. How many non-college educated white males can there be?
💙 JustSecurity, Dakota Rudesill: Preventing a Military Decision About Who Won a Disputed Election http://bit.ly/2HLHoDT “A self-interested Trump administration instruction declaring the current president the winner would put the military in an impossible situation”
Unfortunately, the norm-shattering step of a self-serving “I won” executive order from President Trump is conceivable, as is a legal opinion to that same effect from a Justice Department run by an Attorney General who has prioritized protection of the president over the non-partisan, fair, and impartial administration of justice. Trump and his team have demonstrated their willingness to abuse the presidency for personal and political benefit. Trump has repeatedly indicated intent to contest the election if he is not declared the winner. And, serious gaps and ambiguities in election law could leave a disputed election unresolved through inauguration day. In this context, it is prudent to anticipate that Trump and his political appointees might take norm-shredding, legally dubious administrative steps to hold onto power.
WaPo: Gen Z, Millennial voters embrace activism and voting, as youth turnout surges ahead of Election Day http://wapo.st/3ekBJRf
Major social movements driven by young activists around climate change, gun safety and Black Lives Matter protests have led to an explosion of civic awareness among younger Americans, who are on track to turn out to vote in record numbers this election and could play a pivotal role in some key battleground states.
Data on early voters and recent polling suggest eligible voters under 30 could break their historic 2008 turnout, when it peaked at 48 percent when Barack Obama was elected. New data suggest they may be on track to sustain their dramatic turnout in the 2018 midterms, when they more than doubled their rate of voting compared to the prior midterm election.
NYT, Michelle Goldman: Four Wasted Years Thinking About Donald Trump http://nyti.ms/3mxCyJ9
ChristianPost, Joe Biden: The greatest commandment has guided my politics http://bit.ly/34FsMOV
🐣 Any family that has suffered the horror of family separation should be reunited and allowed to stay in the US. Their healthcare should be paid for, including for the psychological trauma they have suffered. This can be appended to a law to make DACA permanent.
NYT: ‘Perception Hacks’ and Other Potential Threats to the Election http://nyti.ms/3jGJQsi
// In the final days of voting, election officials and cybersecurity experts are keeping a close eye on a range of possible ways foreign governments and other hackers could interfere.
[F]rom the sprawling war room at United States Cyber Command to those monitoring the election at Facebook, Twitter, Google and Microsoft, experts are watching closely for more “perception hacks.” Those are smaller attacks that can be easily exaggerated into something bigger and potentially seized upon as evidence that the whole voting process is “rigged,” as President Trump has claimed it will be.
The phrase comes up every time Christopher Krebs, the Department of Homeland Security official responsible for making sure voting systems are secure, talks about the biggest vulnerabilities in this election. His worry is not a vast attack but a series of smaller ones, perhaps concentrated in swing states, whose effect is more psychological than real.
Perception hacks are just one of a range of issues occupying election officials and cybersecurity experts in the final days of voting — and their concerns will not end on Election Day.
One theory gaining ground inside American intelligence agencies is that the Russians, having made the point that they remain inside key American systems despite bolstered defenses and new offensive operations by Cyber Command, may sit out the next week — until it is clear whether the vote is close.
The Russian play, under this theory, would be to fan the flames of state-by-state election battles, generating or amplifying claims of fraud that would further undermine American confidence in the integrity of the election process. …
NYT: ‘Perception Hacks’ and Other Potential Threats to the Election http://nyti.ms/3jGJQsi
// In the final days of voting, election officials and cybersecurity experts are keeping a close eye on a range of possible ways foreign governments and other hackers could interfere.
🧵 RT @atrupar Melania Trump in Tampa: “In a time when hate, negativity, & fear are the messages the media streams into our homes & the large tech companies are protecting political censorship, we need to remember what is really important: my husband’s administration is focused on the future.” 📌 https://twitter.com/atrupar/status/1321876095826907136?s=20
// Trump rally in Tampa
🐣 RT @theminorchords Trump has a closer relationship with Kim Jong-un than Angela Merkel.
⋙ 🐣 RT @ddale8 Trump rails against US allies as in many ways “worse than the enemy,” telling a story about how Germany came out this week and said they like “Barack Hussein Obama” more than him. (?) He says their Obama love shows he’s doing his job by calling them out over their NATO failings
🐣 RT @MeidasTouch NEW VIDEO ¤ Those who know Trump best, know he is the worst. #AlumniAgainstTrump 💽 https://twitter.com/MeidasTouch/status/1321864529383313411?s=20/photo/1
// Meidas Touch ad❣ Alumni Against Trump
FSIStanford/Medium, Michael McFaul: To Foster a Free and Fair Election, American Voters Must Stay Calm and Patient http://bit.ly/2TAyaN1
// Even after casting their ballots, American voters still have a role to play in helping to foster a free and fair election.
🐣 RT @ForeignAffairs Donald Trump has shown more sympathy for far-right groups, many of them armed, than any president in recent memory, @matanock and @pstanpolitics write. How will this affect U.S. electoral politics in the weeks, months, and years to come?
⋙ ForeignAffairs: The Militarization of U.S. Politics http://fam.ag/2JjJ1co
// Regardless of who wins on November 3, Trump’s presidency has opened the door to electoral violence in the future.
TPM: 5 Points On The Huge Story About Trump And A Turkish Bank That’s Flying Under The Radar http://bit.ly/3e5IpT4
↥ ↧
NYT: Turkish Bank Case Showed Erdogan’s Influence With Trump http://nyti.ms/3jJqC5c
// New details of the Justice Department’s handling of the accusations against Halkbank reveal how Turkey’s leader pressured the president, prompting concern from top White House aides.
Reuters: White House advisers warn of ‘unrelenting’ COVID-19 spread http://reut.rs/2HItodQ “If things do not change, if they continue on the course we’re on, there’s gonna be a whole lot of pain in this country” Dr Anthony Fauci said in an interview
WaPo, Greg Sargent: Trump’s effort to steal the election, explained by a Democrat fighting against it http://wapo.st/3myF8hX “Pennsylvania is Ground Zero for this experiment. … Pennsylvania Attorney General Josh Shapiro (D) shed some light on what this could look like“
The claim is belied by the extraordinary extent to which Trump has gone to corrupt this election — that is, to avoid escaping the judgment of majorities of Americans. He and his allies have engaged in an unprecedentedly concerted effort to suppress the vote, while also placing large swaths of the government at the disposal of his reelection in a manner that defies recent memory.
Pennsylvania is Ground Zero for this experiment. It is the tipping-point state and the place where Trump’s corrupt machinations could have their most palpable impact. ¤ In an interview, Pennsylvania Attorney General Josh Shapiro (D) shed some light on what this could look like in coming days.
“We have a sitting president who’s actively trying to undermine this election,” Shapiro told me. “He’s doing that because he knows that if all legal eligible votes are counted, he’s more likely than not going to come out on the losing side here in Pennsylvania.”
Pennsylvania state officials are in the extraordinary position of actively taking defensive steps to preempt a situation in which the Supreme Court helps Trump suppress untold numbers of lawfully cast ballots — as Trump has openly declared he expects it to do.
Shapiro is at the center of this effort. One main worry concerns the untold numbers of ballots that are mailed before Election Day but arrive after. The Supreme Court on Wednesday issued a ruling allowing for Pennsylvania ballots arriving up to three days afterward to be accepted.
But Shapiro bluntly warned that Trump and Republicans will still likely try to use those late-arriving ballots “as a hook to challenge all mail-in ballots.”
What might this look like? The fear among many Democrats is that, despite the Supreme Court ruling, the Trump campaign and Republicans could still challenge those late ballots — and use that to ask the court to halt the count of all mail ballots until that’s sorted out.
The counting of mail ballots will go on for days after the election. If Trump is ahead in the initial count of in-person Election Day votes — and far more Republicans intend to vote on the day itself — he could declare victory while seeking to invalidate uncounted mail ballots.
It doesn’t matter that much what Trump declares. What matters is whether the court is willing to halt the count. ¤ Pennsylvania officials tried to preempt this by announcing that they will segregate all late-arriving ballots. The idea is to prevent Republicans from challenging those ballots and then using that to challenge all mail ballots, by claiming they’ve all been commingled and can’t be separated from one another, requiring a halt to the count until the legal dispute over the late ballots is resolved.
But the U.S. Supreme Court only declined to nix those late-arriving ballots for now, just before the election. And three conservatives — Clarence Thomas, Samuel A. Alito Jr. and Neil M. Gorsuch — indicated that after the election, they may revisit the question.
Worse, the justices said there’s a “strong likelihood” that the state Supreme Court’s ruling is unconstitutional, because if state courts can “override” the legislature on setting election rules, that renders its authority over those rules “meaningless.”
In short, three justices believe state legislatures wield near-absolute authority over election rules — and state courts cannot intervene to ensure that those rules don’t infringe on voting rights as outlined in state constitutions.
If Amy Coney Barrett and Brett M. Kavanaugh subscribe to this — and Kavanaugh already has, in a related decision in Wisconsin — five justices could invalidate untold numbers of late-arriving ballots after the election.
So we know the Supreme Court is open to hearing a dispute over those late ballots after the election and could invalidate them. But does that mean the court would also halt the count of the larger pool of mail ballots?
We don’t know. Probably not: In the Pennsylvania ruling, even the three conservative justices indicated reluctance, clarifying that if the late ballots are segregated, that would allow a “targeted remedy” against them. ¤ But we know Trump and Republicans will try to make this happen.
A Politico piece aptly summed up the moment with this line: “Never before in modern presidential politics has a candidate been so reliant on wide-scale efforts to depress the vote as Trump.”
On top of that, Trump’s open effort to conscript the Supreme Court is only the latest in a long line of efforts to bend the government and the machinery of justice toward his reelection. The scale of the corruption is unprecedented. But, with a massive enough effort, it can be defeated.
WaPo: How Trump waged war on his own government http://wapo.st/37Qnjqv “Beyond [the] recognizable faces, employees across the government were banished to basement offices, denied promotions and excluded from decision-making”
// ‘The 45th President’: One in a series looking back at the Trump presidency
// Twitter subtitle: Career employees have come under siege as a president and his political appointees have attacked bureaucrats they view as resistant.
The president went even further last week, signing an executive order that removes job protections for an estimated tens of thousands of civil servants, allowing them to be dismissed with little cause or recourse. The sweeping effort to crack the foundation of government employment probably would be rescinded if Joe Biden is elected president. But it shows the mistrust at the core of Trump’s worldview.
“It’s not how the enormous enterprise we call the federal government works,” said Donald Kettl, a public-affairs professor at the University of Texas at Austin. “Bending the apparatus of the state to his own will — there’s an authoritarian tint to that that is impossible to escape.”
⭕ 28 Oct 2020
CNN, Dan Berman: Vermont secretary of state formally asks Kavanaugh to correct opinion http://cnn.it/35FjXUQ
NYT, Thomas Edsall: How Far Might Trump Go? http://nyti.ms/3e9ES63
// No one is quite sure.
↥ ↧
🔆 This❗️⋙ TheAtlantic, Barton Gellman: The Election That Could Break America http://bit.ly/2FTvxTj
// Nov issue; If the vote is close, Donald Trump could easily throw the election into chaos and subvert the result. Who will stop him?
🐣 RT @michikokakutani As Election Nears, Trump Makes a Final Push Against Climate Science: The Trump admin recently removed the chief scientist at the National Oceanic & Atmospheric agency, and installed new political staff who question accepted facts about climate change.
NYT: As Election Nears, Trump Makes a Final Push Against Climate Science http://nyti.ms/3jD11Ll
// The administration is imposing new limits on the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration that would undercut action against global warming.
⭕ 27 Oct 2020
FutureOfLife: 55 Years After Preventing Nuclear Attack, Vasili Arkhipov Honored With Inaugural Future of Life Award http://bit.ly/3oz1qSz
// Cuban Missile Crisis Cold War
On October 27, 1962, a soft-spoken naval officer named Vasili Arkhipov single-handedly prevented nuclear war during the height of the Cuban Missile Crisis. Arkhipov’s submarine captain, thinking their sub was under attack by American forces, wanted to launch a nuclear weapon at the ships above. Arkhipov, with the power of veto, said no, thus averting nuclear war.
It is sobering that very few have heard of Arkhipov, although his decision was perhaps the most valuable individual contribution to human survival in modern history. PBS made a documentary, The Man Who Saved the World, documenting Arkhipov’s moving heroism, and National Geographic profiled him as well in an article titled – You (and almost everyone you know) Owe Your Life to This Man.
The Cold War never became a hot war, in large part thanks to Arkhipov, but the threat of nuclear war remains high. Beatrice Fihn, Executive Director of the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN) and this year’s recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize, hopes that the Future of Life Award will help draw attention to the current threat of nuclear weapons and encourage more people to stand up to that threat. Fihn explains: “Arkhipov’s story shows how close to nuclear catastrophe we have been in the past. And as the risk of nuclear war is on the rise right now, all states must urgently join the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons to prevent such catastrophe.”
Of her father’s role in preventing nuclear catastrophe, Elena explained: “We must strive so that the powerful people around the world learn from Vasili’s example. Everybody with power and influence should act within their competence for world peace.”
🐣 THIS is why you shouldn’t trust the mail to return your ballot. It’s too late. Fill out your mail-in ballot and drop it off, or else vote early in person (taking safety precautions).
⋙ 🐣 🌎 RT @ How’s the mail doing? Not great. https://twitter.com/UpshotNYT/status/1321081482505523200?s=20/photo/1
// mail delays
⋙⋙ NYT: One Week Before Election, the Mail Is Still Slow http://nyti.ms/2J5h8EG
🐣 RT @BrunoAmato_1 Wall Street wants Trump gone. They are banking on a Blue Wave. 🌊 🇺🇸
⋙ Politico, Ben White: As Trump warns of economic disaster, Wall Street grows giddy about Biden http://politi.co/3e54WPQ
// Many investors are betting on a Democratic sweep. But some other scenarios could create an unsettling environment for markets
🐣 RT @FlossObama I will never forget that moment. A man unafraid to be vulnerable. A man filled with kindness. A man who could connect, and deeply so.
⋙ NYT, Thomas Friedman: When My President Sang ‘Amazing Grace’ http://nyti.ms/3e0anzy
// caption: President Barack Obama helped ease the nation’s pain after a mass shooting at a South Carolina church in 2015.
// subtitle: We’ve forgotten what it’s like to have a truth-teller and a healer in the White House.
NYT, Kevin Roose: The Year in Misinformation, So Far http://nyti.ms/3oywuSx
↥ ↧
🔄 NYT: Tracking Viral Misinformation Ahead of the 2020 Election http://nyti.ms/3jBGJ4T
// Every day, Times reporters will chronicle and debunk false and misleading information that is going viral online.
💙 🐣 RT @RVAT2020 NEW AD: Trump Administration Officials for Biden. ¤ Never before have high-ranking staffers of an incumbent president opposed his reelection and endorsed his opponent. ¤ 💽 Heed their warning. https://twitter.com/RVAT2020/status/1320828657414348800?s=20
// Republican Voters Against Trump ad ❣ Trump ex-officials
🧵 RT @FinancialTimes Donald Trump’s debt totals at least $1.1bn. Should he win re-election, about $900m of it will come due during his second term https://on.ft.com/3oqPFNT 📌 https://twitter.com/FinancialTimes/status/1320646374556344322?s=20/photo/1
⋙⋙ FinancialTimes: All the president’s debts: who Donald Trump owes money to http://on.ft.com/34yJQpZ
// Debts of more than $1bn are tied to the Covid-struck commercial real estate market
⋙ 🐣 RT @FinancialTimes Donald Trump’s biggest bank lender, Deutsche Bank, has financed his hotels in Chicago and Washington, and his Miami golf resort. ¤ The US president owes the bank $340m
⭕ 26 Oct 2020
✅ NYT Factcheck: Rallies Are the Core of Trump’s Campaign, and a Font of Lies and Misinformation http://nyti.ms/35xiwaQ https://twitter.com/Auriandra/status/1320962196948557824?s=20/photo/1
// A recent rally in Wisconsin was typical. In 90 minutes, President Trump made 131 false or inaccurate statements.
WaPo: Trump appointee resigns over the president’s order removing job protections for many civil servants http://wapo.st/ Trump’s order “seeks to make loyalty to him the litmus test for many thousands of career civil servants, and that is something I cannot be part of”
The Trump administration-appointed head of a key advisory council on the civil service has resigned over an executive order to strip away protections against political interference in hiring and firing for a large portion of the career federal workforce.
The order, which could affect tens of thousands or more career positions involved in making or carrying out policy, “is nothing more than a smoke screen for what is clearly an attempt to require the political loyalty of those who advise the President, or failing that, to enable their removal with little if any due process,” Ronald Sanders wrote in his letter of resignation Sunday from the Federal Salary Council.
“I simply cannot be part of an Administration that seeks . . . to replace apolitical expertise with political obeisance. Career Federal employees are legally and duty-bound to be nonpartisan; they take an oath to preserve and protect our Constitution and the rule of law . . . not to be loyal to a particular President or Administration,” he wrote.
🐣📋 RT @AriBerman Crazy fact: 52 GOP senators who voted to confirm Amy Coney Barrett represent 17 million fewer people than 47 Dems & Collins who voted no
WaPo, Dana Milbank: It’s up to John Roberts to save his court http://wapo.st/2HDQ7b1 “If Roberts and his conservative allies on the court don’t do at least some of this in the next few months, they can count on being joined next year by a whole batch of new colleagues“
WaPo: Supreme Court rejects request to extend Wisconsin’s deadline for counting mail-in ballots http://wapo.st/34yz3Mx “The most powerful rebuke to Republican judicial activism is to defeat Trump & elect Joe Biden and Kamala Harris in a landslide,” WI Dem Party Chair Wikler said
🐣 RT @JRubinBlogger To be clear, if the conservative justices rip up precedent, advance partisan agenda and engage in election mischief the court’s jurisdiction, size and life tenure will be altered. It needs to be innocuous for a long while or face a popular movement to severely limit its reach
🔆 This❗️⋙ Vox, Ian Milhiser: The radical implications of the Supreme Court’s new ruling on Wisconsin mail-in ballot http://bit.ly/35GqfUd
// The Supreme Court’s new decision on Wisconsin mail-in ballots threatens a century of voting rights law.
🧵 RT @kasparov68 Democrats participated in McConnell’s charade of a confirmation instead of boycotting because they didn’t want to “politicize” it. Now Trump has a party with Barrett, proudly desecrating the separation of powers. 📌 https://twitter.com/Kasparov63/status/1320919451441762309?s=20
⋙ 🐣 RT @kasparov68 The GOP wants tribalism, with no separation between Republican presidents and GOP in Congress and in the courts. This is not politics as usual at all. It’s an attempt at one-party rule, a minority party at that, and it’s dangerous.
⋙ 🐣 RT @kasparov68 Turning parliament and the courts into loyal servants of the president is the goal of every would-be autocrat. From Russia to Turkey to Hungary, this has been the roadmap. The US is far stronger, but not immune.
⋙ 🐣 RT @kasparov68 There will be many crises in the coming weeks. Trump and his dictator backers abroad have much at stake and they aren’t going to play by rules Americans recognize. We will see who is only role-playing at democracy and who is willing to fight for it.
WaPo, George Conway: I believe in the president, now more than ever http://wapo.st/2HFZEhn omg! 😅
💙 🐣 RT @RonaldKlain Take it from me: the only way to avoid Bush v Gore II is to win by enough votes that 2020 never gets to the Supreme Court. Don’t let the Court have this power: all of us, at the ballot box, need to decide this election.
⋙ 🧵 RT @mjs_dc Holy shit—Brett Kavanaugh just endorsed Rehnquist’s concurrence in Bush v. Gore, which was too extreme for Kennedy or O’Connor. ¤ This is a red alert. I can’t believe he put it in a footnote. This is terrifying. Text Block: 📌 https://twitter.com/mjs_DC/status/1320873994032205824?s=20/photo/1
⋙ ⋙ 🐣 RT @mjs_dc This is VERY BAD NEWS for voting rights. Appallingly bad. Brett Kavanaugh used a footnote to throw his support behind an extreme theory that would severely limit state courts’ ability to protect voting rights. It’s the revenge of Bush. v. Gore. Actually, it’s much worse. […]
🐣 RT @ kylegriffin1 Ex-Mueller deputy Andrew Weissmann: “I suspect strongly that if the president does not win reelection, that he is going to pardon a lot more people related to the Trump Organization, his family, people who work there, and even himself.”
⋙ NPR: Andrew Weissmann, Ex-Mueller Deputy, On Pardons, Barr And Investigating Trump http://n.pr/3e1O8cv
🐣 So, now we have a Justice whose son was Trump’s banker in a seat stolen from Obama because March was too close to an election, a Justice who ia rapist who likes beer, and another confirmed 8 days before an election who thinks women should have rapists’ babies. So much winning.
🐣 📋 ◕ RT @imrankhan Whoever wins the US election, it looks impossible for Trump to win the popular vote. ¤ Which will mean that the last time the Republicans won the popular vote will have been in 2004. And the last time before that, in 1988. ¤ Twice! In nine elections! https://twitter.com/imrankhan/status/1320678085407186944?s=20/photo/1
// w link to Wikipedia; GOP won popular vote ONCE since 1988 ‼️
⭕ 25 Oct 2020
🐣 RT @McFaul In democracies, journalists are supposed to ask tough questions. In autocracies, journalists working for the regime toss softballs. Trump obviously prefers the latter over on another network (& no one forced him to do this interview!)
💙 🐣 RT @PoliticusSarah This was Trump’s epic meltdown on 60 Minutes and it was even worse than reported. Trump literally ran away because he didn’t like the questions. 💽 https://twitter.com/PoliticusSarah/status/1320519094295240712?s=20
WaPo: Tumult at home, ailing alliances abroad: Why Trump’s America has been a ‘gift’ to Putin http://wapo.st/2HBpOSs “National security experts say Putin’s greatest triumph in the Trump years has been on the foreign policy front, and [Trump’s] methodical denigration of NATO”
// by Philip Rucker and Shane Harris; ‘The 45th President’: One in a series looking back at the Trump presidency
🐣 RT @PorterAnderson Media: @JohnJHarwood to @AnaCabrera on the new positive diagnoses of @VP’s top staffers: Not only chief of staff @marcshort45 but also Zach Bauer, “Mike Pence’s body man, tested positive — an indication that the vice-president may have had serious, serious exposure to #COVID19.”
🐣 RT @InTheNoosphere Trump plans to fire heads of FBI, CIA and Pentagon if he wins re-election
⋙ Axios: Scoop: Trump’s post-election execution list http://bit.ly/2TnWaTF
🚫 🐣 RT @McFaul Putin rejects Donald Trump’s criticism of Biden family business
⋙ Reuters: Putin rejects Donald Trump’s criticism of Biden family business http://reut.rs/3dWvmTH
// hmmm
🔆 This❗️⋙ NYT: Trump Had One Last Story to Sell. The Wall Street Journal Wouldn’t Buy It. http://nyti.ms/37FMYC9
// by Ben Smith; Inside the White House’s secret, last-ditch effort to change the narrative, and the election — and the return of the media gatekeepers.
By early October, even people inside the White House believed President Trump’s re-election campaign needed a desperate rescue mission. So three men allied with the president gathered at a house in McLean, Va., to launch one.
The host was Arthur Schwartz, a New York public relations man close to President Trump’s eldest son, Donald Jr. The guests were a White House lawyer, Eric Herschmann, and a former deputy White House counsel, Stefan Passantino, according to two people familiar with the meeting.
The three had pinned their hopes for re-electing the president on a fourth guest, a straight-shooting Wall Street Journal White House reporter named Michael Bender. They delivered the goods to him there: a cache of emails detailing Hunter Biden’s business activities, and, on speaker phone, a former business partner of Hunter Biden’s named Tony Bobulinski. Mr. Bobulinski was willing to go on the record in The Journal with an explosive claim: that Joe Biden, the former vice president, had been aware of, and profited from, his son’s activities. The Trump team left believing that The Journal would blow the thing open and their excitement was conveyed to the president.
As the Trump team waited with excited anticipation for a Journal exposé, the newspaper did its due diligence: Mr. Bender and Mr. Beckett handed the story off to a well-regarded China correspondent, James Areddy, and a Capitol Hill reporter who had followed the Hunter Biden story, Andrew Duehren. Mr. Areddy interviewed Mr. Bobulinski. They began drafting an article.
Then things got messy. Without warning his notional allies, Rudy Giuliani, the former New York mayor and now a lawyer for President Trump, burst onto the scene with the tabloid version of the McLean crew’s carefully laid plot. Mr. Giuliani delivered a cache of documents of questionable provenance — but containing some of the same emails — to The New York Post, a sister publication to The Journal in Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp. Mr. Giuliani had been working with the former Trump aide Steve Bannon, who also began leaking some of the emails to favored right-wing outlets. Mr. Giuliani’s complicated claim that the emails came from a laptop Hunter Biden had abandoned, and his refusal to let some reporters examine the laptop, cast a pall over the story — as did The Post’s reporting, which alleged but could not prove that Joe Biden had been involved in his son’s activities.
… Or was this yet another story of the younger Mr. Biden trading on his family’s name — a perfectly good theme, but not a new one or one that needed urgently to be revealed before the election.
Mr. Trump and his allies expected the Journal story to appear Monday, Oct. 19, according to Mr. Bannon. That would be late in the campaign, but not too late — and could shape that week’s news cycle heading into the crucial final debate last Thursday. An “important piece” in The Journal would be coming soon, Mr. Trump told aides on a conference call that day.
His comment was not appreciated inside The Journal. ¤ “The editors didn’t like Trump’s insinuation that we were being teed up to do this hit job,” a Journal reporter who wasn’t directly involved in the story told me. But the reporters continued to work on the draft as the Thursday debate approached, indifferent to the White House’s frantic timeline.
Finally, Mr. Bobulinski got tired of waiting. ¤ “He got spooked about whether they were going to do it or not,” Mr. Bannon said. ¤ At 7:35 Wednesday evening, Mr. Bobulinski emailed an on-the-record, 684-word statement making his case to a range of news outlets. Breitbart News published it in full. He appeared the next day in Nashville to attend the debate as Mr. Trump’s surprise guest, and less than two hours before the debate was to begin, he read a six-minute statement to the press, detailing his allegations that the former vice president had involvement in his son’s business dealings.
When Mr. Trump stepped on stage, the president acted as though the details of the emails and the allegations were common knowledge. “You’re the big man, I think. I don’t know, maybe you’re not,” he told Mr. Biden at some point, a reference to an ambiguous sentence from the documents.
As the debate ended, The Wall Street Journal published a brief item, just the stub of Mr. Areddy and Mr. Duehren’s reporting. The core of it was that Mr. Bobulinski had failed to prove the central claim. “Corporate records reviewed by The Wall Street Journal show no role for Joe Biden,” The Journal reported.
And if you’d been watching the debate, but hadn’t been obsessively watching Fox News or reading Breitbart, you would have had no idea what Mr. Trump was talking about. The story the Trump team hoped would upend the campaign was fading fast.
[I]t’s also about a larger shift in the American media, one in which the gatekeepers appear to have returned after a long absence.
It has been a disorienting couple of decades, after all. It all began when The Drudge Report, Gawker and the blogs started telling you what stodgy old newspapers and television networks wouldn’t. Then social media brought floods of content pouring over the old barricades.
By 2015, the old gatekeepers had entered a kind of crisis of confidence, believing they couldn’t control the online news cycle any better than King Canute could control the tides. Television networks all but let Donald Trump take over as executive producer that summer and fall. In October 2016, Julian Assange and James Comey seemed to drive the news cycle more than the major news organizations. Many figures in old media and new bought into the idea that in the new world, readers would find the information they wanted to read — and therefore, decisions by editors and producers, about whether to cover something and how much attention to give it, didn’t mean much.
But the last two weeks have proved the opposite: that the old gatekeepers, like The Journal, can still control the agenda. It turns out there is a big difference between WikiLeaks and establishment media coverage of WikiLeaks, a difference between a Trump tweet and an article about it, even between an opinion piece in The Wall Street Journal suggesting Joe Biden had done bad things, and a news article that didn’t reach that conclusion.
Perhaps the most influential media document of the last four years is a chart by a co-director of the Berkman Klein Center for Internet and Society at Harvard, Yochai Benkler. The study showed that a dense new right-wing media sphere had emerged — and that the mainstream news “revolved around the agenda that the right-wing media sphere set.”
And the fact that Mr. Bobulinski emerged not in the pages of the widely respected Journal but in a statement to Breitbart was essentially Mr. Bannon’s nightmare, and Mr. Benkler’s fondest wish. And a broad array of mainstream outlets, unpersuaded that Hunter Biden’s doings tie directly to the former vice president, have largely kept the story off their front pages, and confined to skeptical explanations of what Mr. Trump and his allies are claiming about his opponent.
President Trump himself hit a wall when he tried to push the Hunter Biden narrative onto CBS News. ¤ “This is ‘60 Minutes,’ and we can’t put on things we can’t verify,” Lesley Stahl told him. Mr. Trump then did more or less the same thing as Mr. Reynolds, posting a video of his side of the interview to his own blog, Facebook.
The media’s control over information, of course, is not as total as it used to be. The people who own printing presses and broadcast towers can’t actually stop you from reading leaked emails or unproven theories about Joe Biden’s knowledge of his son’s business. But what Mr. Benkler’s research showed was that the elite outlets’ ability to set the agenda endured in spite of social media.
But I admit that I feel deep ambivalence about this revenge of the gatekeepers. I spent my career, before arriving at The Times in March, on the other side of the gate, lobbing information past it to a very online audience who I presumed had already seen the leak or the rumor, and seeing my job as helping to guide that audience through the thicket, not to close their eyes to it. “The media’s new and unfamiliar job is to provide a framework for understanding the wild, unvetted, and incredibly intoxicating information that its audience will inevitably see — not to ignore it,” my colleague John Herrman (also now at The Times) and I wrote in 2013. In 2017, I made the decision to publish the unverified “Steele dossier,” in part on the grounds that gatekeepers were looking at it and influenced by it, but keeping it from their audience.
The schemes of Mr. Herschmann, Mr. Passantino and Mr. Schwartz weren’t exactly WikiLeaks. But the special nervousness that many outlets, including this one, feel about the provenance of the Hunter Biden emails is, in many ways, the legacy of the WikiLeaks experience.
I’d prefer to put my faith in Mr. Murray and careful, professional journalists like him than in the social platforms’ product managers and executives. And I hope Americans relieved that the gatekeepers are reasserting themselves will also pay attention to who gets that power, and how centralized it is, and root for new voices to correct and challenge them.
⋙ 🐣 @benyt New media have always been disruptive: printing press::Reformation; pamphlets::French/Amer Revs; radio::Hitler but also Roosevelt; TV::McCarthy, but also Civil Rights/Nam War. The social media rev is full of promise as well as pitfalls. It took CV19 to get us back to facts
⭕ 24 Oct 2020
NYT Editorial: R.I.P., G.O.P. http://nyti.ms/35qOAgk
// The Party of Lincoln had a good run. Then came Mr. Trump.
🐣 RT @davidfrum If Trump had believed that until the pandemic he was on the way to beating Joe Biden, he would not have spent the summer of 2019 committing the crimes that got Trump impeached.
🚫 🐣 RT @AJentleson Reid says Biden should end the filibuster after 3 weeks. He’s right! If Dems take back the WH and the Senate we have a narrow window to pass the bills necessary to save our democracy. McConnell strung us along for a year on ACA. Fool me twice, shame on me.
⋙ AP: Reid says Biden should end Senate filibuster after 3 weeks http://bit.ly/3dSUefh
// mixed feelings about this
Former Senate leader Harry Reid says if Democrats win the presidency and the Senate, Joe Biden should take “no more than three weeks” to test bipartisanship before ending the filibuster so Democrats can overcome what they call Republican obstruction and pass bills.
The retired Nevada Democrat told The Associated Press in an interview that he understands Biden wants to work with Republicans, as the former vice president and Delaware senator has in the past. But Reid said there is just too much that needs to be done in the country to wait around trying to reach agreements under the decades-old Senate practice of requiring 60 votes to advance legislation.
Obama has since joined the effort for change. During the funeral this year for Rep. John Lewis, a civil rights leader, Obama announced his support for ending the filibuster, calling it a Jim Crow-era relic that was used to stall voting advances for Black people.
🐣 RT @maggieNYT UPDATE: The total of aides around Pence in the coronavirus outbreak is up to FIVE people. Short, Obst and 3 additional VP office staff, per ppl briefed
⋙ NYT: Members of Pence’s Inner Circle Test Positive for Coronavirus http://nyti.ms/3mjBxnR
// Along with Marc Short, the vice president’s chief of staff, three additional staff members and a Pence adviser have also tested positive, according to people briefed on the developments.
The decision by Mr. Pence, who leads the White House Coronavirus Task Force, to continue campaigning is certain to raise new questions about how seriously the White House is taking the risks to their own staff members and the public from the pandemic that has killed more than 224,000 people in the United States. Mr. Short has been among those within the White House who have questioned the extensive lockdowns across the country.
🐣 RT @davidplouffe Powerful World Series ad narrated by Brad Pitt, @BarackObama dropping truth bombs in S. Florida and Joe and Kamala making their case vs. Trump super spreader events with no closing argument in the penultimate Saturday of Campaign 2020.
🐣 RT @matthewamiller I think we’re done here.
🐣 RT @danielsgoldman This additional information, combined with the illogical and suspicious story of the computer store owner, casts even more doubt on the laptop story. ¤ Most importantly, according to Parnas, the Russian security services had the materials in 2019.
⋙ 🐣 RT @NatashaBertrand Exclusive: Ex Giuliani associate Lev Parnas tells me Giuliani was offered salacious Biden photos/emails in May 2019 by associate of Burisma founder Zlochevsky, who wanted to curry favor w/Trump admin. Material was also for sale in Kyiv in Sept ‘19. Latest:
⋙⋙ Politico: Former Giuliani associate raises questions about Hunter Biden’s ‘hard drive from hell’ http://politi.co/34ptsI1
// Salacious documents supposedly belonging to Hunter Biden were circulating in Ukraine in May 2019, Lev Parnas says.
WaPo, Max Boot: Trump may be running the sleaziest presidential campaign ever http://wapo.st/3dXRWeW Starting with Gingrich, the Republican Party “has become the party of pseudo-scandals”
🐣 RT @ForeignAffairs Ahead of the U.S. presidential election, read @apolyakova on the threat from disinformation campaigns, emanating from Russia and beyond:
⋙ ForeignAffairs, Alina Polyakova: The Kremlin’s Plot Against Democracy http://fam.ag/3dWzzGU
// Sep-Oct issue; How Russia Updated Its 2016 Playbook for 2020
🐣 ◕ RT @Greg_Palast The GOP’s running against the demographic tide; the only way they can win is by suppressing the vote. https://instagram.com/p/CGtJ885AiN6/ https://twitter.com/Greg_Palast/status/1320027778494959618?s=20/photo/1
// shrinking GOP base shrinking Trump base
1976 2018
11% 27% Minority Voters
17% 34% Whites with College Degrees
71% 39% Whites without College Degrees
⭕ 23 Oct 2020
🐣 RT @nytpolitics A Russian state hacker group started prowling around American state and local government computer systems just two months before the Nov. 3 election, setting off concern inside private security firms, law enforcement and intelligence agencies
⋙ NYT (10/23): Russians Who Pose Election Threat Have Hacked Nuclear Plants and Power Grid http://nyti.ms/37AVX7Q The group “It appears to be casting a wide net to find useful targets ahead of the election, experts said”
// The hacking group, Energetic Bear, is among Russia’s stealthiest. It appears to be casting a wide net to find useful targets ahead of the election, experts said.
Forbes: Forbes Estimates China Paid Trump At Least $5.4 Million Since He Took Office, Via Mysterious Trump Tower Lease http://bit.ly/37Gq8uq
// Donald Trump maintained a stake in Trump Tower when he became president, and with it, a financial connection to the Chinese government.
🐣 RT @gtconway3dg ohh he just gave it all away — Trump’s pushing to reopen so he can raise the GDP as much as possible before the report comes out on November 1st.
⋙ 🐣 RT @atrupar Trump still thinks that public health measures to slow the spread of coronavirus are the fruit of a Democratic hoax meant to hurt him politically 💽 https://twitter.com/atrupar/status/1319796535136296962?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @TVietor08 Trump “has participated in nearly three dozen rallies since mid-August…analysis shows COVID-19 cases grew at a faster rate than before after at least five of those rallies in…Blue Earth, MN; Lackawanna, PA; Marathon, WI; Dauphin, PA; Beltrami, MN”
⋙ USAToday: Trump’s campaign made stops nationwide. Coronavirus cases surged in his wake in at least five places. http://bit.ly/34nO5V1
🐣 RT @NeverTrumpTexan In case you didn’t catch the historic reference, when the Germans demanded Allied forces surrender during the Battle of the Bulge, the American General responded:
⋙ 🐣 RT @ProjectLincoln Nuts! https://twitter.com/ProjectLincoln/status/1319801126363951104?s=20/photo/1-2
// Letter threatening to sue Project Lincoln from lawyer Marc Kasowitz; Double billboard in Times Square: 1) Ivanka applauding w NY and US death tolls; 2) Jared w quotation (VF?): “[New Yorkers] are going to suffer and that’s their problem” [VanityFair: http://bit.ly/3hHJPmV%5D
🐣 RT @bradheath This, from U.S. District Judge Emmet Sullivan, is a pretty remarkable show of distrust for the Justice Department. https://twitter.com/bradheath/status/1319631557238378496?s=20/photo/1
// Minute order on Michael Flynn
🐣 RT @tribelaw AXIOS: U.S. hits highest daily COVID-19 case count since pandemic began. At least 81,010 cases were confirmed today, surpassing the previous record set July 17 when 76,842 cases were recorded. Record levels of death lie ahead. And yesterday Trump said we’re doing just fine.
🐣 RT @donwinslow MY NEW VIDEO: #OpenLetterToRepublicans SOUND UP!! […]
💽 https://twitter.com/donwinslow/status/1300191230328856576?s=20/photo/1
// Don Winslow ad❣ Open Letter To Republicans
🐣 RT @nytopinion “This debate gave Trump and his team reason to hope that, despite everything, lightning might strike twice.” ¤ Our opinion writers watched the last Trump-Biden debate. Here’s what they thought.
⋙ NYT: Biden and Trump’s Final Debate: Who Won? http://nyti.ms/35GdCZl
// How their last clash looked to Times Opinion writers.
🐣 I caught Biden misspeaking a couple of times (“poor boys”) (I think he meant 2035 not 2025 on carbon neutral goal) plus some things I wished he’d said. ¤ Trump, OTOH, was lying, exaggerations, and conspiracy theories (some old, some new). So: vintage Trump.
🧵 Here are the major Fact Checks of the Final Presidential Election Debate, held in Nashville Tennessee, moderated by Kristin Welker of NBC News ~ (alphabetical) ⋙ 📌 https://twitter.com/Auriandra/status/1319566809629138944?s=20
✅ ABCNews: Fact-checking Trump and Biden during 2nd 2020 presidential debate http://abcn.ws/3mfHylG
// The two candidates faced off in Nashville, Tennessee.
✅ AP FACT CHECK: Falsehoods and fumbles in Trump-Biden debate http://bit.ly/3dTZ102
✅ BBC: US election 2020: Trump and Biden final debate fact-checked http://bbc.in/35nP6fa
✅ Bloomberg: Fact Check: Trump and Biden’s Final Presidential Debate http://bloom.bg/2TpyUUZ
✅ BusinessInsider: Fact-checking the final Trump-Biden debate http://bit.ly/2HtzgHK
✅ CBSNews: Final presidential debate: Fact checking Trump and Biden http://cbsn.ws/3dQcUMq
✅ CNN: Fact check: Toned-down Trump continues his onslaught of falsehoods http://cnn.it/3koFdEf w 💽 Daniel Dale video
✅ Factcheck.org: Bogus Claims of Debate Moderator Bias http://bit.ly/31y8FR1
✅ TheGuardian: Biden slams Trump on coronavirus response, family separations and racism in final debate – as it happened http://bit.ly/34oUOOO
✅ LATimes: Fact-checking the final Trump-Biden presidential debate http://lat.ms/35lH3Q2
✅ NBCNews: Debate fact check: Trump and Biden face off in final debate http://nbcnews.to/3dY6Th2
✅ NYT: Fact-Checking the Final Presidential Debate http://nyti.ms/3jjRLvv
✅ Politifact: Fact-checking Donald Trump, Joe Biden in the final presidential debate http://bit.ly/34l3mpB
✅ WaPo: Fact-checking the second Trump-Biden debate http://wapo.st/3mes80N
~
✅ ✛ Heard on MSNBC (Fact-check): COVID-19 and young people (through 34yo): 21% hospitalized, 10% need ventilators, 2.7% die (on Ari Melber post-debate)
⭕ 22 Oct 2020
🧵 RT @NickMiroff Trump is right that Obama “built the cages.” But the “kids in cages” trope has become so completely divorced from context and history that it has left the public even more confused about how the American immigration enforcement system works. A quick thread: 📌 https://twitter.com/NickMiroff/status/1319485799918936064?s=20
[ … ]
⋙ 🐣 RT @NickMiroff All of this underscores the fact that administrations from both parties have struggled to cope with migration pressures using detention and deterrence. But the separation system Trump carried out under “Zero Tolerance” had no precedent, and did not occur under Obama.
🐣 RT @AWeissman Trump added a new spin to his false claim that he would release his taxes but they are “under audit.” There is no such prohibition, as we know. Trump added that there is nothing to see there since the Special Counsel had the financials and saw no wrongdoing. That’s false.
🐣 📋 RT @stuartstevens Before anybody gets excited about Trump going after Biden on energy, might look at some polling on subsidies for oil industry. Last numbers I saw had it at 87% against issue.
🐣 RT @NoahShachtman WHOA. Wall Street Journal’s news side just released a debunking of WSJ opinion side.
🐣 RT @Anthony Corporate records reviewed by The Wall Street Journal show no role for Joe Biden
🐣 RT @WSJ Hunter Biden’s ex-business partner alleged Joe Biden was part of talks around his son’s efforts to form a venture with a Chinese oil company. Biden’s campaign denied the former vice president’s involvement, and records reviewed by WSJ show no role for him.
⋙ WSJ: Hunter Biden’s Ex-Business Partner Alleges Father Knew About Venture http://on.wsj.com/34iMsrQ
// An ex-business partner of Hunter Biden said he consulted his father about a planned venture with a Chinese oil company. Joe Biden denied any involvement
🐣 RT @Acyn Does it look like he thinks he won? 💽 https://twitter.com/Acyn/status/1319471599901310978?s=20/photo/1
// post-debate Trump
⋙ FINAL Debate ⇈ ⇊
🧵 RT @atrupar Trump enters without a mask. Biden enters with one. And the final 2020 presidential debate is under way. 📌 https://twitter.com/atrupar/status/1319444920697049088?s=20
// two segments, linked
🧵 RT @jentaub Here we go. Anything could happen tonight. Final debate, moderated by Kristin Welker. #Debates2020 📌 https://twitter.com/jentaub/status/1319444655398932480?s=20
~~~~~~~~~~
To family: Why I keep saying: top off your gas tanks, charge up your power blocks, make sure you have bottled water and toilet paper, batteries, candles etc. Be careful online.
(Molly McKew is an expert on information warfare. She has been interviewed on PBS’s Frontline and for the documentary “Active Measures”:)
🧵 RT @MollyMcKew Today, more detail was revealed by CISA about extensive Russian cyber intrusions in US election/critical systems ¤ The indictment of GRU hackers released Monday is a roadmap to understanding what Russian can do on Election Day ¤ New on @RenewGreatPower /1 Text Block: 📌 https://twitter.com/MollyMcKew/status/1319427015242584065?s=20/photo/1
⋙⋙ GreatPower, Molly McKew: The newest GRU indictment is a roadmap for Election Day disruption http://bit.ly/3joafL6
// The US fired a warning shot at the Kremlin before the election — or maybe it’s a signal flare to alert Americans what may be coming
⋙ 🐣 RT @MollyMcKew On Monday, DoJ unsealed the indictment of 6 hackers from Russia’s GRU for “worldwide deployment of destructive malware and other disruptive actions in cyberspace.” /2
⋙⋙ Justice.gov: Six Russian GRU Officers Charged in Connection with Worldwide Deployment of Destructive Malware and Other Disruptive Actions in Cyberspace http://bit.ly/2FRYX4h
// Defendants’ Malware Attacks Caused Nearly One Billion USD in Losses to Three Victims Alone; Also Sought to Disrupt the 2017 French Elections and the 2018 Winter Olympic Games⋙ 🐣 RT @MollyMcKew It connected the dots between a wide array of cyberattacks over the past 5 years, which happened in France, Ukraine, Georgia, South Korea, the US, and the UK. ¤ The indictment made clear that a multi-nation intelligence effort helped attribute these attacks to the GRU /3
⋙ 🐣 RT @MollyMcKew The broad range of activities attributed to Sandworm shows how much leeway these units are given by the Kremlin to probe and beta-test and operationalize different kinds of cyber weapons to expansively contribute to Russia’s strategic (and petty) objectives within parameters. /4
⋙ 🐣 RT @MollyMcKew Key takeaways of the new GRU indictment:
1) tracking Russian activity is a top priority
2) Russia is willing to use disproportionate responses to retaliate against perceived slights
3) Russian behavior has not been deterred or altered by any response they have met thus far /54) The list of operational targets is a road map for what could happen on Election Day (or beyond)
5) private-sector & individual targets are seen as interchangeable with national targets
6) They tried to look like other hackers to hide the attribution of their attacks /67) far-right US media/personalities keep finding themselves as the amplification network for GRU-obtained materials — but how?
8) so much for the “patriotic hackers” bullsh*t⋙ 🐣 RT @MollyMcKew What are the potential targets for Russian hackers, based in the details in the indictment?
– Low-level elex interference (last minute hack-and-leak operations etc)
– Disrupting govt information systems, which could relate directly to elections or not … /8– Disrupting power grids
– Disrupting banking systems/payment systems
– Disrupting govt services and systems, or creating the perception of system vulnerabilities
– Creating the perception of widespread internet disruption
– Targeted technical attacks on media organizations … /9– Disrupting hospital databases, which can disrupt or delay the delivery of care
– Disrupting shipping, transportation, aviation, and other essential infrastructure
– the CISA announcement today mentioned education systems, which would be a remote learning nightmare, no doubt /10⋙ 🐣 RT @MollyMcKew We know Russian interference efforts are ongoing, we know how much importance they put in the cyber toolkit, and we should have every expectation that at least some of these options are well-prepared for use on US targets. /11
⋙ 🐣 RT @MollyMcKew Americans are wound pretty tight. We’re prepped to believe that someone will do something to disrupt the conduct of the elex, tallying of results, transition of power. It wouldn’t take very much to create the perception, or reality, of chaos /12 (end)
↥ ↧
🐣 RT @NatashaBertrand “Officials did not make clear what Russia planned to do, but they said its operations would be intended to help President Trump, potentially by exacerbating disputes around the results.” Really seems like THIS should have been the focus of last night’s emergency briefing.
⋙ 🐣 RT @nicoleperlroth BREAKING: U.S. administration officials have been watching Russia’s FSB penetrate state and local systems in recent weeks and believe they have pieced together Russia’s plans for election interference. It is far worse than Iran. w/ @julianbarnes @SangerNYT
⋙⋙ NYT: Russia poses a bigger election threat than Iran, many U.S. officials say. http://nyti.ms/31uDUw8
NYT: Iran and Russia Seek to Influence Election in Final Days, U.S. Officials Warn http://nyti.ms/2FRQXQN
// Iran is behind threatening, spoofed emails sent to voters, the officials said, but there was no indication that any votes themselves had been altered.
⭕ 21 Oct 2020
🧵 RT @atrupar Obama: “[Trump] has not shown any interest in doing the work or helping anybody but himself & his friends or treating the presidency like a reality show he can use to get attention..the only people truly better off than they were 4 years ago are billionaires who got his tax cuts” 📌 https://twitter.com/atrupar/status/1319040222517207040?s=20
↥ ↧
💽 RollingStone: Watch Obama Absolutely Torch Trump During His Debut Campaign Event for Biden http://bit.ly/31sBNco
// Obama debut; “He did inherit the longest streak of job growth in American history, but just like everything else he inherited, he messed it up,” the former president said
🧵 RT @.danielsgoldman Thread on “Russian disinformation.” ¤ Recently@DNI_Ratcliffe asserted that Hunter Biden’s laptop is not part of a Russian disinformation campaign. But Radcliffe misses the point. It is part of Russia’s efforts to interfere in the election. ¤ Let me explain. ¤ 1/ 📌 https://twitter.com/danielsgoldman/status/1318944825505447938?s=20
🐣 RT @Yamiche President Obama: “Our Democracy is not going to work if the people who are supposed to be our leaders lie everyday and just make things up. And we’ve become just numb to it. We’ve become immune to it. Every single day. Fact checkers can’t keep up.”
TheGuardian: Rudy Giuliani faces questions after compromising scene in new Borat film http://bit.ly/3odU7iW
// Trump’s personal attorney has indiscreet encounter with actor playing Borat’s daughter in hotel room during pandemic
🐣 RT @davidaxelrod This @BarackObama speech in Philly is a brutal takedown of @realDonaldTrump. The raging pandemic. The laggard economy. The assault on the ACA. The slights of the war heroes. The embrace of conspiracy theories and racist memes. “Why would we accept this from the @POTUS?”
WaPo: U.S. agencies mount major effort to prevent Russian interference in the election even though Trump downplays threat http://wapo.st/3omhQxN
Top security agencies are coordinating actions to thwart foreign hackers, prevent Russia-linked individuals from entering the United States and freeze any of their assets subject to U.S. jurisdiction. They are also passing intelligence to social media firms, and helping state and local election officials shore up their defenses.
For months American military cyber-operators, aided by intelligence from the National Security Agency, have been targeting Russian spies in order to disrupt their plans by repeatedly knocking them off the Internet, confusing their planners and depriving them of their hacking tools. The goal is to prevent them from attacking American voting systems, according to security officials, speaking on the condition of anonymity because of the matter’s sensitivity.
The State Department this year has revoked the visas of two Ukrainians deemed to be engaged in activities designed to influence the election and advance Russia’s interests. The Treasury Department imposed sanctions last month on four Russia-linked individuals — including one of the Ukrainians who was labeled an “active Russian agent” — to prevent them from interfering in the electoral process — the first time that the U.S. government has taken such an action before an election.
A vital missing ingredient, however, has been messaging from the top, such as a declaration from the president that the United States will not tolerate efforts — in particular from the Kremlin — to interfere in the election. …
But officials say even if Trump is not publicly voicing support for agencies’ efforts, he is not impeding them, and the NSA, FBI and Department of Homeland Security have made securing the election a top priority.
But this election year the FBI, also armed with NSA intelligence, has tipped Facebook, Twitter and other tech companies to networks of fake accounts created by Russian operatives, which have cut short the attempts of these actors to polarize voters and undermine support for Democratic nominee Joe Biden.
With this improved relationship and other initiatives, the government is “light-years” ahead of where it was in 2016 — and even the midterms, said David Imbordino, the NSA’s Election Security lead …
In 2016, some state election officials were wary of allowing the federal government to help them safeguard their systems. Today, DHS’s Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency has relationships with officials in all 50 states and the District of Columbia and has installed malware-tracking sensors on every state election network to spot potential intrusions. In some states, like Florida, it has those sensors in every county.
The election is still threatened by domestic efforts to cast doubt on its integrity and by Russian efforts to amplify those messages, experts say. The U.S. intelligence community’s head of counterintelligence, William Evanina, this month said that Russia, China and Iran have sought to “amplify divisive messages put forth by Americans, to include the president.”
In March 2018, DHS helped launch the Elections Infrastructure Information Sharing and Analysis Center, which serves more than 8,800 election jurisdictions by providing cyberthreat alerts and running CISA’s remote security monitoring. Also that year Trump signed an executive order permitting the imposition of sanctions in the event of foreign interference, and he also signed a national security memo that streamlined approval for offensive cyber operations.
U.S. Cyber Command ran a campaign to keep Russian trolls off the Internet for several days around the midterm elections in 2018. And today, CyberCom and the NSA are undertaking broader and more sophisticated actions, including against the Russian military spy agency, the GRU, and a botnet run by Russian-speaking criminals, U.S. officials said. …
Treasury’s sanctions have enabled social media firms to take more aggressive action against foreign influence. Shortly after Ukrainian lawmaker Andrii Derkach was added to a sanctions list last month, Google removed 14 accounts linked to him, including a Gmail account and a YouTube channel, which he used to spread disinformation involving the Ukraine and the 2016 U.S. presidential election. Google was able to remove the accounts as violations of their terms of service that require customers to obey U.S. law, a Google spokeswoman said.
Noting the strides taken by the federal, state and local governments and social media companies, CyberCom’s Hartman urged Americans to refrain from “giving a foreign adversary more credit than they’re actually due.”
In the end, McMaster said, the biggest threat to the election is not Russia. “It’s what we’re doing it to ourselves,” he said. “The Russians cannot create these fissures in our society, but they can widen them.”
WaPo: Study finds no crime increase in cities that adopted ‘sanctuary’ policies, despite Trump claims http://wapo.st/3kjUxSz
WaPo, Greg Sargent: Why Trump’s endgame is to rage at Lesley Stahl http://wapo.st/
Politico: White House looks at cutting Covid funds, newborn screenings in ‘anarchist’ cities http://politi.co/2FNKR3T “New York, Portland, Ore., Washington, D.C., and Seattle could lose funding for a wide swath of programs that serve their poorest, sickest residents”
// Documents show funding for a host of health programs is at risk under the president’s order targeting liberal strongholds.
New York, Portland, Ore., Washington, D.C., and Seattle could lose funding for a wide swath of programs that serve their poorest, sickest residents after the president moved last month to restrict funding, escalating his political battle against liberal cities he’s sought to use as a campaign foil.
The Department of Health and Human Services has identified federal grants covering those services, which are among the nearly 200 health programs that could be in line for cuts as part of a sweeping government-wide directive the administration is advancing during the final weeks of the presidential campaign and amid an intensifying pandemic Trump has downplayed.
Trump in a Sept. 2 order called on federal agencies to curtail funding to jurisdictions that “disempower” police departments and promote “lawlessness.” The memo argued that the cities haven’t done enough to quash riots stemming from this summer’s protests over systemic racism and police violence.
The HHS list offers the most detailed picture yet of the administration’s efforts to quickly comply with the Trump directive and the potentially large cuts facing these cities even as the pandemic strains local budgets. It isn’t immediately clear what criteria the budget office will use to evaluate the grants — or how or when cuts may be made.
But while the White House pores over existing funds, at least one department has already moved to implement Trump’s directive for new funding. The Department of Transportation earlier this month said Trump’s “anarchy” memo would factor into the department’s review of applications for a new $10 million grant program supporting Covid-19 safety measures.
The HHS list, which was sent Friday to the White House budget office, represents the 1,500-plus funding awards that have gone to the four cities since 2018. Each federal department also faced a Friday deadline to submit their own lists to the Office of Management and Budget, which will make the final decisions about funding.
Officials from New York City and Seattle — as well as the United States Conference of Mayors — have already threatened legal action if the administration moves to block funds.
“This is nothing more than political retribution,” said Laura Feyer, a spokesperson for New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio.
🐣 RT @JoyceWhiteVance Apparently Senator McConnell believes Kentuckians sent him to the Senate, not to look out for them in tough times, but to consolidate his personal legacy of stealing judgeships.
⋙ WaPo: McConnell warns White House against making stimulus deal as Pelosi and Mnuchin inch closer http://wapo.st/3oecPXF
// GOP leader suggests Democrats are not negotiating in good faith and could disrupt Supreme Court nomination
TheGuardian: Trump’s false ‘Russian spy’ claims put me in danger, says Steele dossier source http://bit.ly/34g7186
// Exclusive: New York-based analyst Igor Danchenko did gather intelligence about Trump but he is certainly not a spy, he says
⭕ 20 Oct 2020
NYMag, Jonathan Chait: Alleged China-Fighter Donald Trump Has Secret Chinese Bank Account http://nym.ag/2Hp3POw
NYT: Trump Calls on Barr to ‘Act’ Against Biden Before Election http://nyti.ms/3kjYSFn //➔ doesn’t seem to get that having all the career lawyers in the DOJ resign would be a “bad look”
// The president is increasingly fixated on seeing criminal action against his political opponents.
🐣 RT @kylegriffin1 The Associated Press, while investigating how Trump plowed through a billion dollars during the campaign, found this interesting detail: A web of limited liability companies hid more than $310 million in spending from disclosure, records show.
⋙ AP: How Trump plowed through $1 billion, losing cash advantage http://bit.ly/2TeIDNU “‘You could literally have 10 monkeys with flamethrowers go after the money, and they wouldn’t have burned through it as stupidly’”
President Donald Trump’s sprawling political operation has raised well over $1 billion since he took the White House in 2017 — and set a lot of it on fire.
Trump bought a $10 million Super Bowl ad when he didn’t yet have a challenger. He tapped his political organization to cover exorbitant legal fees related to his impeachment. Aides made flashy displays of their newfound wealth — including a fleet of luxury vehicles purchased by Brad Parscale, his former campaign manager.
Meanwhile, a web of limited liability companies hid more than $356 million in spending from disclosure, records show.
“They spent their money on unnecessary overhead, lifestyles-of-the-rich-and-famous activity by the campaign staff and vanity ads,” said Mike Murphy, a veteran Republican consultant who advised John McCain and Jeb Bush and is an outspoken Trump critic. “You could literally have 10 monkeys with flamethrowers go after the money, and they wouldn’t have burned through it as stupidly.”
🐣 Better yet, contact the @FBI
⋙ 🐣 RT @KimberlyLofgren This afternoon, I received the following email purportedly from the Proud Boys. They said if I don’t vote for Trump, they will “come after me.” They had my address. They know where I live. ¤ This is voter intimidation and illegal. If this happens to you, contact @866OURVOTE. https://twitter.com/KimberLofgren/status/1318709674603053057?s=20/photo/1
🧵 RT @McFaul ICYMI, Director William Evanina of the National Counterintelligence and Security Center remarked that Russia is “using a range of measures to primarily denigrate former Vice President Biden and what it sees as an anti-Russia ‘establishment.’ THREAD 1/
📌 https://twitter.com/McFaul/status/1318692370855071744?s=20
⋙ 🐣 RT @McFaul “… For example, pro-Russia Ukrainian parliamentarian Andriy Derkach is spreading claims about corruption — including through publicizing leaked phone calls — to undermine former Vice President Biden’s candidacy and the Democratic Party. ” 2/
⋙ 🐣 RT @McFaul “Some Kremlin-linked actors are also seeking to boost President Trump’s candidacy on social media and Russian television.” That’s all on the record, folks, from a very senior U.S. intelligence official. 3/ END THREAD
⋙⋙ Stanford/Medium, Michael McFaul and Bronte Kass: Four Years Later, How is Russian Interference Different in the 2020 Election? http://bit.ly/3jg4a3m “[T]he Kremlin’s most ambitious project … has been the apparent effort to launder false information about Hunter Biden”
🐣 RT @RepAdamSchiff Anticipating the harsh judgment of history, Trump’s enablers are lashing out. At everyone. ¤ It will be said that when they found they lacked the courage to confront the most dangerous, unethical president in American history, ¤ They consoled themselves by attacking those who did.
🐣 RT @JuliaDavisNews Let me guess: she asked some good questions?
⋙ 🐣 RT @real I am pleased to inform you that, for the sake of accuracy in reporting, I am considering posting my interview with Lesley Stahl of 60 Minutes, PRIOR TO AIRTIME! This will be done so that everybody can get a glimpse of what a FAKE and BIASED interview is all about… …Everyone should compare this terrible Electoral Intrusion with the recent interviews of Sleepy Joe Biden!
↥ ↧
🐣 RT @TheRecount Following his “60 Minutes” interview, Trump did not smile to greet cheering supporters as he departed the White House. https://twitter.com/therecount/status/1318691887939788803?s=20/photo/1
🐣 Democrats would not be “packing the courts.” It’s the GOP that has packed the courts, not just SCOTUS (by refusing hearings for Garland and ramming through Barrett) ~ but lower courts too, by slow-walking Obama’s nominees. ¤ Another word/expression is needed: re-balancing?
🐣 RT @rprose A former demographic forecaster at Russia’s statistics service, who left in July amid a dispute over virus data, says publicly available statistics on daily mortality rates “need to be multiplied by three”
⋙ Bloomberg: Rogue Demographer Says Russia Covid Deaths May Be Europe’s Worst http://bloom.bg/3m4mYo0
// A former employee of the Kremlin’s statistics agency says Russia’s daily coronavirus mortality figures understate the real toll from the disease …
⭕ 19 Oct 2020
NYT, Michelle Goldberg: Is the Trump Campaign Colluding With Russia Again? http://nyti.ms/35hpkJp “Reporting on disinformation is complicated, because it’s hard to write about it without amplifying it. Still, this episode distills just how far Trump has dragged the country down”
// Giuliani’s dirty tricks are the scandal, not Hunter Biden’s hard drive.
If there’s an important story here, it’s almost certainly about Giuliani’s dirty tricks, not any wrongdoing by Joe Biden. Reporting on disinformation is complicated, because it’s hard to write about it without amplifying it. Still, this episode distills just how far Trump has dragged the country down in four years.
In 2016, the public didn’t know that Paul Manafort, Trump’s former campaign chairman, was passing polling data to someone tied to the Russian intelligence directorate — such a revelation would have been devastating. Giuliani’s relationship with Derkach, by contrast, is out in the open.
Last week Giuliani told The Daily Beast he thinks there’s only a 50 percent chance that his Ukrainian collaborator is really a Russian spy, and that it wouldn’t matter to him if his Hunter Biden material was linked to Russian hacking. This barely made a ripple. “It’s collusion in broad daylight,” said Murphy.
Giuliani probably can’t sabotage Biden the way WikiLeaks sabotaged Clinton. The Clinton leak was damaging because many voters already believed there was something sinister about her hidden emails. Burisma never stuck to Biden in the same way, so there’s less payoff in forcing it back into the news.
But Giuliani’s tactics aren’t any less foul for being ineffective. It’s hardly surprising that the president’s bottom-feeding lawyer has shown himself open to working with Russian intelligence. It’s striking, though, that no one expects better.
🐣 RT @j_smithcameron Congrats to my friend @AndreaChalupa for #MrJones film being Critics Pick ¤ Check it out; it is riveting (and timely!)
⋙ NYT: ‘Mr. Jones’ Review: Bearing Witness to Stalin’s Evil http://nyti.ms/3jfiR6T
// 6/18/2020; In Agnieszka Holland’s historically informed drama, a Welsh journalist travels to 1933 Ukraine, then in the grip of famine.
StandUpRepublic, Molly McKew: Joe Biden Isn’t Doom-Scrolling America, And Probably You Shouldn’t Either http://bit.ly/2Hg1G8h
// It’s time to unhack our perceptions of our nation and limit the power of disinfo to shape reality
⋙ See under Entire Articles: McKew Doomscroll 10-19-2020
… Everything everyone warned about is here (except of course for deep fakes, which were really kind of over-inflated in importance as a predicted threat). Only it’s worse because one party is totally open to it. And part of the other side doesn’t hear it when they echo it back just as loud.
You should read most of these stories if you want to have a good sense of how awful it must be in any real newsroom right now. But this is what we see every day: an endless series of stories about the stories that seek to influence us and where they come from and what that means. Is it true, is it manipulation, is it conspiracy, is it madness? It’s an exhausting and multi-layered process that leaves us frayed, frail, frustrated, deep in our own doom-scrolling of American decline.
But maybe this is because we really have forgotten it doesn’t have to be like this. You’ve constantly heard me and others speak about how vital and essential leadership is to fixing the problem of the effectiveness of disinformation, in terms of establishing values, calling balls and strikes, setting us to the task of building instead of tearing down. Now, I have an example of this to show you.
Biden, in his half of the “dueling town halls” on Thursday night, repeatedly avoiding taking swipes at Trump supporters or Republicans, or saying that all is lost or that we are close to the abyss. We have to stop suspecting each other’s motives, he said, even when we don’t agree on policy. Over and over, he didn’t go for a zinger or a throat punch. He spoke of a better America.
This thing about not questioning the motivation of opponents gives everyone a way out of the Trump era death spiral — a simple way to end the endless “no, that’s a conspiracy” cycle that has polarized congressional discourse, poisoned media discourse, and amped us all up in hyper-partisan stances where we think everything needs to be the bloody Alamo even when that actually makes no sense.
Asked what it means if he loses, Biden offered that it may mean he isn’t a very good candidate, but he hopes it doesn’t mean we’ve given up on the idea of unity. Asked if he believed he could avoid seeking revenge against Trump, who the questioner believed was largely responsible for the very toxic political atmosphere in the country, Biden emphasized the need to find a way back to bipartisanship, and said “vindictiveness in a president” isn’t a good thing.
He repeatedly avoided blaming the challenges we are going to face on any one faction or side — he just accepted that they will be his burdens to carry, his problems to solve.
Joe Biden is serious about unity. I think maybe we are all underestimating how serious he is about unity. He’s already walking the unity walk, because he knows this is what he is selling to America, banking on the fact that our desire not to have to think about the government all the time and live in a permanent state of existential dread is very real. He’s not talking about the worst attacks on him because it would mean having to attack his attackers. He seems to know this is a dead end.
Biden has Trump’s number, and he has an encyclopedic memory of every disgraceful act Trump has committed and every humiliation of the office that must be overcome. But he also seems to understand the deep impact the corrosive effect that Trump’s presidency has had on all of us.
On our faith in the nation, and our ability to see truth, and our ability to find common ground, and our ability to be willing to disarm. I think perhaps we have forgotten what it’s like not to be targeted by a weapon of cognitive erosion 24/7, 365 days a year. But it felt like he was trying to show us.My dad called after the town halls to ask me something about socks. “I turned on the Biden thing for a minute,” he said. “It was like opening a portal into a saner time.” And it was. Biden was willing to admit past faults, and he explained how and why he had evolved on issues. He was respectful of questioners, whose views he didn’t agree with and explained why. He showed his views are informed by deep knowledge, and aware of disagreements with those positions. And no — he didn’t say we should check out a conspiracy about how his opponents are demons, in case we might agree.
Probably no one will be very happy about a president actually focused on unity — at least, not initially. But maybe, just maybe, Biden can turn down the temperature enough that we can all return to a lower activation energy and focus on the hard work that needs to be done instead of just living in the burn-and-churn adrenaline haze of the last 4 wacky years.
Can Joe Biden spontaneously will a calmer, unified America able to dedicate itself to solving the problems of actual people into existence? No, of course not. He can’t do it on his own. But in the same way that the Russians have hacked our perceptions of who we are and what we can accomplish — and Donald Trump has hacked our perceptions of who we are and deeply convinced Americans of a sense of doom and powerlessness that simply isn’t real — maybe Joe Biden can convince us to stop doom-scrolling the American demise that hasn’t happened and is not imminent and turn instead back to the hard, non-reality show work of building a functional country that will lead the way through these coming decades of transformative human transition before it’s too late and we find authoritarian nations have set the terms of a dystopian future. Maybe this would be the greatest perception hack of all.
MotherJones: Trump’s Wild Lies Down the Election Homestretch Are Not Crazy http://bit.ly/2T7imBa “Trump is using the autocrat’s playbook. Vladimir Putin’s, to be specific”
// The president isn’t nuts—he’s trying to make you nuts.
With Election Day nearing, the comparison has never been more apt. In 2016, the nonpartisan think tank RAND published a study (http://bit.ly/3jlyqtW) of the tactics and techniques used in Kremlin-controlled media. The end goal of what the researchers called “a shameless willingness to disseminate partial truths or outright fictions” was to entertain, confuse, and overwhelm the public. (The entertainment component can serve as inspiration for loyal followers—for example, a string of broadcast traveling stage performances showcasing a greatest-hits of grievance and outrageousness.)
In a related book-length report (http://bit.ly/3o25MkS) published in 2018, RAND dug into a phenomenon of partisan politics that went back decades but was accelerating dangerously under Trump. As Clifton wrote, “This unprecedented behavior from a US president is akin to dumping gasoline on a long-smoldering trend RAND researchers call ‘Truth Decay’: a deepening disagreement over basic facts that is increasingly undercutting the fundamentals of our democracy, from elections to policymaking.” Whether it was Kellyanne Conway’s infamous coinage of the term “alternative facts” or the Trump team’s brewing storm of mendacity around the Mueller investigation, “misinformation coming from the highest levels of the US government fuels blind partisanship,” Clifton noted. “And it could potentially leave the public confused and mistrustful during crucial times, from national votes to a national security crisis.”
🔆 This❗️⋙ Politico: Hunter Biden story is Russian disinfo, dozens of former intel officials say http://politi.co/2HmmGK4 “If we are right, this is Russia trying to influence how Americans vote in this election, and we believe strongly that Americans need to be aware of this”
// More than 50 former intelligence officials signed a letter casting doubt on the provenance of a New York Post story on the former vice president’s son.
WaPo: Debate commission to mute Trump, Biden microphones during parts of Thursday debate http://wapo.st/31moUjQ
WaPo: Supreme Court denies GOP request to stop extended deadline for mail-in ballots in Pennsylvania, a key state for Trump http://wapo.st/3dJagbC
🐣 RT @duty2warn If you haven’t seen #UNFIT yet, NOW is the time. Trump’s psychopathology IS the main story now. We should all understand it, and share – to the left and right. ¤ It’s also less than $1, thanks to iTunes, Prime Video, Microsoft, and Fandango (thru 10/22). ¤ http://unfitfilm.com
🐣 RT @snlyngaas Scoop –> Russian hackers suspected in campaign targeting U.S. state and local government networks
⋙ Cyberscoop, Sean Lyngaas: Industry alert pins state, local government hacking on suspected Russian group http://bit.ly/2IJfUPj “[T]he advisory from U.S. officials noted that there was no evidence that the ‘integrity of elections data has been compromised’”
WSJ, William McRaven: Biden Will Make America Lead Again http://on.wsj.com/3jg8Whn “We need a president with decency and a sense of respect.” ¤ Mr. McRaven, a retired Navy admiral, was commander of U.S. Special Operations Command, 2011-14. ● Text Block: https://twitter.com/Auriandra/status/1318383228890288131?s=20/photo/1
This week I went to the polls in Texas. Truth be told, I am a pro-life, pro-Second Amendment, small-government, strong-defense and a national-anthem-standing conservative. But, I also believe that black lives matter, that the Dreamers deserve a path to citizenship, that diversity and inclusion are essential to our national success, that education is the great equalizer, that climate change is real and that the First Amendment is the cornerstone of our democracy. Most important, I believe that America must lead in the world with courage, conviction and a sense of honor and humility.
If we remain indifferent to our role in the world, if we retreat from our obligation to our citizens and our allies and if we fail to choose the right leader, then we will pay the highest price for our neglect and shortsightedness. ¤ I voted for Joe Biden.
🐣 RT @dcexaminer As “a consequence of Russia’s actions,” Sweden will increase defense spending by 40% over the next four years, the largest increase for the country in 70 years. @TomRTweets says the shocking move shows Russia’s attempt to intimidate them backfired.
⋙ WashingtonExaminer: Russia reaps whirlwind with massive Swedish defense spending boost http://bit.ly/2Tb60YE
// As “a consequence of Russia’s actions,” Sweden will increase defense spending by 40% over the next four years.
NYT, John M Barry: What Fans of ‘Herd Immunity’ Don’t Tell You http://nyti.ms/3kdFHgl Mr. Barry is the author of “The Great Influenza: The Story of the Deadliest Pandemic in History.”
// Great Barrington Declaration; A proposal to let people with low risk of infection live without constraint could lead to a million or more preventable deaths.
// Twitter alt-title: Opinion | Herd Immunity? Or ‘Mass Murder’?
So the idea of returning to something akin to normal — releasing everyone from a kind of jail — is attractive, even seductive. It becomes less seductive when one examines three enormously important omissions in the declaration.
First, it makes no mention of harm to infected people in low-risk groups, yet many people recover very slowly. More serious, a significant number, including those with no symptoms, suffer damage to their heart and lungs. One recent study of 100 recovered adults found that 78 of them showed signs of heart damage. We have no idea whether this damage will cut years from their lives or affect their quality of life.
Second, it says little about how to protect the vulnerable. One can keep a child from visiting a grandparent in another city easily enough, but what happens when the child and grandparent live in the same household? And how do you protect a 25-year-old diabetic, or cancer survivor, or obese person, or anyone else with a comorbidity who needs to go to work every day? Upon closer examination, the “focused protection” that the declaration urges devolves into a kind of three-card monte; one can’t pin it down.
Third, the declaration omits mention of how many people the policy would kill. It’s a lot.
The Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation at the University of Washington, whose modeling of the pandemic the White House has used, predicts up to about 415,000 deaths by Feb. 1, even with current restrictions continuing. If these restrictions are simply eased — as opposed to eliminating them entirely, which would occur if herd immunity were pursued — deaths could rise to as many as 571,527. That’s just by Feb. 1. The model predicts daily deaths will still be increasing then.
WaPo: Trump attacks ‘Fauci and these idiots’ in call with campaign staff intended to boost morale http://wapo.st/3kebpu5 “Every day he goes on television, there’s always a bomb, but there’s a bigger bomb if you fire him. But Fauci is a disaster. … He’s been there for 500 years”
WaPo: U.S. charges Russian intelligence officers in several high-profile cyberattacks http://wapo.st/31ly5Bb
The United States on Monday unsealed criminal charges against six Russian intelligence officers in connection with some of the world’s most damaging cyber attacks, including disruption of Ukraine’s power grid and releasing a mock ransomware virus — NotPetya — that infected computers globally causing billions of dollars in damage.
The alleged hackers are members of the same military intelligence agency — the GRU — previously charged in connection with efforts to interfere in the 2016 U.S. presidential campaign. But the new indictment does not charge these members with U.S. election interference, and officials said the announcement was not timed to the current political schedule.
Rather, they stand accused of what Justice Department officials say is the single most disruptive and destructive series of cyberattacks ever attributed to one group. ¤ “No country has weaponized its cyber capabilities as maliciously and irresponsibly as Russia, wantonly causing unprecedented collateral damage to pursue small tactical advantages and to satisfy fits of spite,” Assistant Attorney General John Demers said in announcing the indictment.
One of those charged, 29-year-old Anatoliy Kovalev, was also indicted in 2018 by then-special counsel Robert S. Mueller III as part of an alleged conspiracy to hack American election systems during the 2016 presidential contest.
Demers brushed back the suggestion that Monday’s indictment might be any kind of message to Russia to not interfere in the current election, saying the announcement was “not particularly” timed to the political schedule. “When the investigation has matured and we’re ready according to the principles of federal prosecution then we bring the cases,” Demers said, declining to discuss in any detail the extent to which Russia is currently targeting the U.S. election. ¤ “Americans should be confident that a vote cast for their candidate will be counted for that candidate,” Demers said.
The charges lay out a breathtaking series of attacks and attempts attributed to the group, also known as Unit 74455 and which cybersecurity researchers have dubbed the Sandworm Team. That group, authorities say, also hacked computers supporting the 2018 Winter Olympics in South Korea, hacked and leaked emails of individuals involved in French presidential candidate Emmanuel Macron’s campaign in 2017, and targeted the international and British organizations investigating the poisoning of former GRU officer Sergei Skripal in 2018 in Britain.
FBI Deputy Director David Bowdich said charges show that “time and again, Russia has made it clear they will not abide by accepted norms and instead they intend to continue their destructive and destabilizing cyber behavior.”
According to the indictment, the hackers unleashed wave after wave of computer attacks on Ukraine — a perennial focus of the Russian government. ¤ In late 2015 and 2016, the hackers allegedly launched computer attacks against Ukraine’s electric power grid. ¤ “These attacks turned out the lights and turned off the heat in the middle of the Eastern European winter, as the lives of hundreds of thousands of Ukrainian men, women and children went dark and cold,” Demers said. …
The other defendants charged Monday are Yuriy Andrienko, 32; Sergey Detistov, 35; and Pavel Frolov, 28.
⭕ 18 Oct 2020
Salon, Chauncey DeVega: Historian Timothy Snyder warns that America is already in its own “slow-motion Reichstag Fire” http://bit.ly/31nOOE0 “Donald Trump’s authoritarian presence … is amongst the gravest threats America has ever faced from within” ~ Timothy Snyder
// Salon talks to Snyder about how Donald Trump uses pain and suffering as a weapon to remain in power
🐣 RT @NormOrnstein For those who do not have the opportunity to see the physical @washingtonpost page where systematically details all the scandals and norms Trump has broken, here it is. Breathtaking: https://twitter.com/NormOrnstein/status/1317992278300962816?s=20/photo/1
⋙ 🐣 RT @AmySiskind Thanks Norm. Of note, this page represents roughly 1% of the broken norms – The Weekly List in full now has more than 34,500 items. https://theweeklylist.org
💙 ⋙⋙ WaPo, Amy Siskind: This is not normal http://wapo.st/31mKBjU
// 10/16/2020; from “The List”; A guide to what the next president will have to unwind
🐣 RT @GYamey BOOM ‼️💥 The Great Barrington Declaration is not science-based. The ONLY question left is who is funding/pushing for letting the virus rip? @aier of course! They play down climate change & schmooze with “tobacco firms, ExxonMobil & the Koch brothers”
🔆 This❗️⋙ TheGuardian, Trish Greenhalgh, Martin McKee and Michelle Kelly-Irving: The pursuit of herd immunity is a folly – so who’s funding this bad science? http://bit.ly/37ip9jK The American Institute for Economic Research (AIER), a Koch-funded libertarian thinktank
// Links between an anti-lockdown declaration and a libertarian thinktank suggest a hidden agenda
You may not have heard of the “Great Barrington declaration” but you’ll likely have seen the headlines that followed it. Journalists have written excitedly about an emerging rift in the scientific community as the consensus around the most effective response to Covid supposedly disintegrates. The declaration, which called for an immediate resumption of “life as normal” for everyone but the “vulnerable”, fuelled these notions by casting doubt on the utility of lockdown restrictions. “We know that all populations will eventually reach herd immunity”, it stated.
Scientists were swift in their response. The declaration’s core assumption, that population immunity will be achieved by allowing life to go on as normal and shielding only the most vulnerable from the virus, is entirely speculative. The thrust of its argument is based on a false opposition between those who argue for lockdown and those who are against it, when in fact lockdowns are one of numerous measures that scientists have called for, and are seen as a short-term last resort to regain control. …
The truth is that a strategy of pursuing “herd immunity” is nothing more than a fringe view. There is no real scientific divide over this approach, because there is no science to justify its usage in the case of Covid-19. We know that when it comes to other coronaviruses, immunity is only temporary. The president of the UK’s Academy of Medical Sciences, in a detailed rebuttal, describes the declaration’s proposals as “unethical and simply not possible”.
Its three signatories were later received by Alex Azar, the US secretary of health and human services, and by Scott Atlas, recently appointed as Donald Trump’s health adviser, who tweeted on 8 October that “top scientists all over the world are lining up with the @realDonaldTrump #Covid_19 policy”. And on a call convened by the White House, two senior officials in Trump’s administration cited the declaration.
Was this ever really about science? When scientists disagree, we expect them to provide evidence for their position. Yet the declaration’s many contentious statements are unreferenced – and the manner of its launch seems designed to amplify publicity over substance. If anything, the tactics employed in this performance have serious implications for the public’s trust in scientists.
… [A]s the professor of political economy Richard Murphy put it, the declaration was “the economics of neoliberalism running riot … revealing in the process its utter indifference to the interests of anyone but those who can ‘add value’ within that system”.
As we approach one of the most important elections in the history of western democracy (itself described as a referendum on lockdown), we should be asking who funded this piece of political theatre, and for what purpose. The American Institute for Economic Research (AIER), where the declaration was signed, is a libertarian thinktank that is, in its own words, committed to “pure freedom” and wishes to see the “role of government … sharply confined”.
The institute has a history of funding controversial research – such as a study extolling the benefits of sweatshops supplying multinationals for those employed in them – while its statements on climate change largely downplay the threats of the environmental crisis. It is a partner in the Atlas network of thinktanks, which acts as an umbrella for free-market and libertarian institutions, whose funders have included tobacco firms, ExxonMobil and the Koch brothers. Our questions to the AIER about its relationship to the three signatories went unanswered, but it has posted a number of articles about the declaration and herd immunity on its website.
These are not the names one would associate with sound public health policies. But the trio of scientists who fronted the declaration were able to put the weight of the world’s most prestigious academic institutions behind their statements – Stanford, Harvard and Oxford – giving the declaration a sheen of respectability. The views of these scientists about lockdown and the pursuit of herd immunity are no doubt sincerely held (though, notably, not published in any peer-reviewed scientific articles), but they are falling into a trap set by the right.
Rightwing free-market foundations and institutions have long attempted to savage the public reputation of well-intentioned policies such as those aimed at curbing ecological threats and limiting smoking. Some of the tactics these organisations have used in the past are those we see at play in the Great Barrington declaration: discredit the scientific consensus, spread confusion about what the right response is and sow the seeds of doubt. It seems that lockdown restrictions aimed at bringing the virus under control are merely the latest target in this rightwing stealth campaign.
⋙ Barrington Declaration https://gbdeclaration.org
● Dr. Martin Kulldorff, professor of medicine at Harvard University, a biostatistician, and epidemiologist with expertise in detecting and monitoring infectious disease outbreaks and vaccine safety evaluations.
● Dr. Sunetra Gupta, professor at Oxford University, an epidemiologist with expertise in immunology, vaccine development, and mathematical modeling of infectious diseases.
● Dr. Jay Bhattacharya, professor at Stanford University Medical School, a physician, epidemiologist, health economist, and public health policy expert focusing on infectious diseases and vulnerable populations.
🐣 RT @60Minutes “I can disagree with Bernie Sanders on 57 issues… But you know what he’s not? He’s not un-American. Donald Trump is fundamentally un-American,” says the Lincoln Project’s Rick Wilson, media consultant and ad maker for Republicans like Giuliani and Rubio. https://cbsn.ws/34SY5oq
🐣 RT @DrJRubenstein We’ve done tyranny before. ¤ Let’s not do it again. ¤ #Vote #VoteHealth #VoteBidenHarris https://twitter.com/DrJRubenstein/status/1318011380134457344?s=20/photo/1-2
// George III and Trump regal poses
🐣 RT @SamStein Bolton tells @jaketapper that if Trump loses he doesn’t expect him to go out gracefully and that it’s an open question how bad it gets. Says it will be incumbent on Republicans to step in. Makes clear it’s the problem his party will have to solve.
😅 RT @JReinerMD Newsmax preempted their schedule to broadcast the president’s rally but apparently didn’t think it important to change the title of the programming. https://twitter.com/JReinerMD/status/1317982424421310466?s=20/photo/1
// lol “The Rise of Hitler” …
🐣 📊 RT @EuropeElects If Europeans could vote in the US Presidential election
EU: Biden 83%—Trump 17% […] https://twitter.com/EuropeElects/status/1317965230459228162?s=20
🧵 RT @donmoyn This is pretty damning. Bannon & Giuliani met with NY Post editors to drop their Hunter Biden story. Veteran reporters refused to allow their name to be attached to it because they did not think the story held up. 📌 https://twitter.com/donmoyn/status/1317947100701855746?s=20
⋙ NYT: New York Post Published Hunter Biden Report Amid Newsroom Doubts http://nyti.ms/3dCHbyk “Giuliani said he chose The Post because ‘either nobody else would take it, or if they took it, they would spend all the time they could to try to contradict it before they put it out.’”
// Some reporters withheld their bylines and questioned the credibility of an article that made the tabloid’s front page on Wednesday.
⭕ 17 Oct 2020
🐣 RT @ Tribelaw “Rather than bring us together, the president did the exact opposite. In April, he tweeted, “LIBERATE MINNESOTA!” and “LIBERATE MICHIGAN!” and “LIBERATE VIRGINIA, and save your great 2nd Amendment. It is under siege!””
⋙ WaPo, Elizabeth Neumann: The threats against Democratic governors prove Trump’s rhetoric encourages violence http://wapo.st/2Izhnrk Elizabeth Neumann served as assistant secretary of homeland security for counterterrorism and threat prevention from March 2018 to April 2020.
// 10/16/2020
🐣 RT @danielsgoldman This is so well reasoned and analyzed by @jonathanchait. The flurry of lies and ethical, moral and policy failures by Trump would never be acceptable for any other candidate or president, including Biden.
⋙ NYMag, Jonathan Chait: The News Media Isn’t Biased Against Trump. It’s Biased For Him. http://nym.ag/3lVKune
🧵 RT @ChrisMurphyCT Joe Biden – and all of us – SHOULD be furious that media outlets are spreading what is very likely Russian propaganda. ¤ 1/ I’ve seen the intel. The mainstreaming of misinformation is Russia’s 2020 goal. Here’s what we know, and why we can’t take it lying down. 📌 https://twitter.com/ChrisMurphyCT/status/1317449896333611009?s=20
⋙ 🐣 RT @ChrisMurphyCT 2/ Russia knew it had to play a different game than 2016. So it built an operation to cull virulently pro-Trump Americans as pseudo-assets, so blind in their allegiance to Trump that they’ll willingly launder Kremlin constructed anti-Biden propaganda. ¤ Guiliani was a key target.
⋙ 🐣 RT @ChrisMurphyCT 3/ Andriy Derkach was a top Russian agent. He was unmasked by the Treasury Dept this summer. Derkach and his team recruited Guiliani and have been feeding him info all year. The White House knew this.
⋙⋙ WaPo: White House was warned Giuliani was target of Russian intelligence operation to feed misinformation to Trump http://wapo.st/3j3me0v
⋙ 🐣 RT @ChrisMurphyCT 4/ Whether he knows it or not, Giuliani is effectively a Russian asset now. It’s almost certain that any anti-Biden info he has is fed to him by Derkach and Russian intel. ¤ This should be patently obvious to any reporter worth his or her salt.
⋙⋙ CNN: Vowing crackdown on Russian meddling, US sanctions Ukrainian lawmaker who worked with Giuliani to smear Biden http://cnn.it/37gT6Rh
⋙ 🐣 RT @ChrisMurphyCT 5/ And you don’t have to believe me. Believe the Department or Justice – Trump’s own FBI is investigating the “leaked” Hunter Biden emails as Russian spycraft.
⋙⋙ CNN: US authorities investigating if recently published emails are tied to Russian disinformation effort targeting Biden http://cnn.it/3kci6ww
⋙ 🐣 RT @ChrisMurphyCT 6/ Further, media don’t need a Pulitzer to see the whole story as super fishy. ¤ A pro-Trump computer repairman mysteriously comes across Hunter Biden’s laptop, copies the files, and guess who gets them? Russia’s top American asset – Rudy! Coincidence!!
⋙⋙ DelawareOnline: Meet the computer repairman at the center of New York Post’s Hunter Biden laptop story http://bit.ly/37oq16i
⋙ 🐣 RT @ChrisMurphyCT 7/ Why is it important for media to not simply pick this story up and amplify it? Why should we be offended that the VP is being asked about it? ¤ Because this is Russia’s bet – that America, and its media, is so hungry for salacious stories that no one will vet their lies.
⋙ 🐣 RT @ChrisMurphyCT 8/ And American media do have major credibility, for good reason. They do amazing work, and get most stories 100% right. ¤ Russia wants to use this credibility to their advantage. And that’s why we all have to be vigilant. Democracy depends on it.
🐣 RT @MonteBoa99 When the president advocates tossing aside the due process protections of the Constitution, you are looking at a man who thinks he’s King John before he was forced to sign the Magna Carta. ¤ It doesn’t get more Fascist than that, until you go full Mussolini.
⋙ 🐣 RT @renatto_marriotti We should never get used to the President of the United States calling for his political opponents to be imprisoned. ¤ Trump’s words matter. A group of terrorists took Trump’s words seriously enough to plot to kidnap the Governor. ¤ This is un-American. It’s authoritarian.
⋙⋙ 🧵RT @Acyn The President mentions the Governor of Michigan, the crowd chants lock her up, and the President says lock them all up 💽 https://twitter.com/Acyn/status/1317577844835319809?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @JoeBiden Donald Trump keeps telling us if he was president, you’d feel safe. ¤ Well, he is president — whether he knows it or not.
// 7/31/2020
TheGuardian: Facebook says it rejected 2.2m ads seeking to obstruct voting in US election http://bit.ly/3dDr1F6
// Nick Clegg, Facebook vice president, says social media giant also attached false information warnings to 150m posts
🐣 RT @duty2warn Those of you who watched him today in Michigan and Wisconsin, who heard him incite violence, saw him dance like a fool, and witnessed lie after lie interspersed with gaffes in a thunderstorm of unpunctuated half-sentences, probably think this is as bad as he can get. Think again.
🐣 RT @IlvesToomas I once had to listen for two hours to a not very smart president tell me why he had to lock up his opponent. Six months later Viktor Yanukovitch fled to Moscow and all of Ukraine got to see the garish trash he bought with his corruption.
⋙ 🐣 RT @Acyn Trump: Lock up the Bidens, lock up Hillary. Lock them up 💽 https://twitter.com/Acyn/status/1317248938001403904?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @AliVelshi Trump faces a long rap sheet after leaving office: potential charges include bribery, obstruction of justice, campaign finance violations, money laundering & conspiring to defraud the U.S. @JoyceWhiteVance joins me 9aET to discuss her new op-ed. #velshi
⋙ WaPo: Barbara McQuade and Joyce Vance: A rap sheet for a former president If Trump is prosecuted, obstruction of justice, bribery and conspiracy to defraud the U.S. could be among the charges. http://wapo.st/3lP4YxY
// 10/16/2020
🧵 RT @atrupar Trump begins his speech in Janesville, Wisconsin, by urging the governor to “open your state up,” even though coronavirus cases in the state have been spiking 📌 https://twitter.com/atrupar/status/1317616804693463043?s=20
🧵 RT @JackieCalmes “So I guess they said she was threatened,” Trump says to his MI rally about Gov. Gretchen Whitmer–as if he doesn’t believe the FBI case against 13 men for plotting to abduct her. ¤ Crowd chants “Lock her up!” ¤ Yup–their gov was targeted & they want HER locked up. ¤ Law & order. 📌 https://twitter.com/jackiekcalmes/status/1317588265915064323?s=20
🧵 RT @atrupar The crowd for Trump’s rally in Muskegon, Michigan. 📌 https://twitter.com/atrupar/status/1317576907412721667?s=20
🐣 RT @MiaFarrow Ken Burns: “Since the Second World War, our nation’s democracy has never faced a greater threat than the current political leaders in Washington.”
🐣 RT @ScottMStedman Source: Investigators are worried that Russian businessman Andrey Muraviev’s potential election-related interference may go beyond the funding of Lev Parnas and Igor Fruman.
⭕ 16 Oct 2020
CNN (Oct): Cuomo signs law that allows NY to prosecute those pardoned by a President http://cnn.it/3maItmJ
// 10/16/2020
The bill, which was passed by the state legislature in May, closes New York’s “double jeopardy” legal loophole that protected individuals who are pardoned by a president for federal crimes from being prosecuted at the state level for the same offense. The change goes into effect immediately and applies to future and past offenses, provided a plea has not been entered and a person has not already been tried.
“This critical new law closes a gaping loophole that could have allowed any president to abuse the presidential pardon power by unfairly granting a pardon to a family member or close associate and possibly allow that individual to evade justice altogether,” New York Attorney General Letitia James said in a statement. “No one is above the law, and this commonsense measure will provide a reasonable and necessary check on presidential power today and for all presidents to come.”
The pardon bill allows for the prosecution at the state level of any individual who was employed by or served in the executive branch, served in a position subject to Senate confirmation, or worked for a presidential campaign or transition team, regardless of whether they had been pardoned or granted clemency by the president under which they served. It would similarly allow prosecution of presidential relatives regardless of pardon.
🐣 RT @NormOrnstein For those who do not have the opportunity to see the physical @washingtonpost page where systematically details all the scandals and norms Trump has broken, here it is. Breathtaking: https://twitter.com/NormOrnstein/status/1317992278300962816?s=20/photo/1
💙 ⋙ WaPo, Amy Siskind: This is not normal http://wapo.st/31mKBjU
// from “The List”; A guide to what the next president will have to unwind
🐣 RT @CNNOpinion “There is no chance that Trump doesn’t know what he is doing. While he likes to play the implausible ignorance card on issues like QAnon, it’s impossible that Trump doesn’t know that he’s helped Russia,” writes CNN national security analyst @sam_vinograd.
⋙ CNN, Samantha Vinograd: Trump and Giuliani may be useful to Putin, but they’re no idiots http://cnn.it/3dDcb1c
AP: Watchdog org: Trump ’16 campaign, PAC illegally coordinated http://bit.ly/3j9cDW5
New documents from a former Cambridge Analytica insider reveal what an election watchdog group claims was illegal coordination between Donald Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign and a billionaire-funded pro-Trump super PAC.
The legal complaint touches on some of the same people involved in today’s hotly contested presidential race and provides a detailed account alleging that Trump’s last campaign worked around election rules to coordinate behind the scenes with the political action committee.
The now-defunct British data analytics firm violated election law by ignoring its own written firewall policy, blurring the lines between work created for Trump’s 2016 campaign and the Make America Number 1 super PAC, according to an updated complaint the nonpartisan Campaign Legal Center filed Friday with the Federal Election Commission.
The complaint also alleges that Cambridge Analytica — which improperly acquired and used 87 million Facebook users’ profiles to predict their behavior — had a shared project calendar for both entities, among other evidence.
“The idea that this spending was at all independent is farcical and these emails underscore that,” said Brendan Fischer, an attorney for the government oversight group, whose new filing supplements a complaint filed four years ago. “Cambridge Analytica not only misused people’s personal data, but it was a conduit for the wealthy family that owned it to unlawfully support the Trump campaign in 2016.”
The super PAC created a plethora of “crooked Hillary” memes that circulated widely on social media, and was financed largely by conservative billionaire Robert Mercer, who also founded, owned and managed Cambridge Analytica.
Under federal law, a super PAC may raise and spend unlimited amounts of money, including from corporations and unions, to support candidates for federal office — but it’s illegal for them to coordinate with political campaigns.
The complaint alleges that Cambridge Analytica used information it gained from working with Trump’s campaign to develop and target ads for the super PAC supporting his candidacy, “constituting unreported in-kind contributions to Donald J. Trump for President, Inc. in the form of coordinated communications.”
🐣 RT @LincolnProject What happened to Rachel Vindman’s family could happen to anyone. ¤ In collaboration with @VoteVets 💽 https://twitter.com/ProjectLincoln/status/1317103003157983233?s=20/photo/1
// Project Lincoln ad❣ Here Right Matters
↥ ↧
NYT (2019): Meet Alexander Vindman, the Colonel Who Testified on Trump’s Phone Call http://nyti.ms/37d5NMP
// 10/29/2019; He fled Ukraine at age 3 and became a soldier, scholar and official at the White House. That’s where, he told impeachment investigators, he witnessed alarming behavior by President Trump.
WaPo: U.S. judge: Do Trump’s tweets or White House lawyers speak for president on declassifying entire Russia probe? http://wapo.st/2GZG0NL
A federal judge rebuked the Justice Department and the White House Counsel’s Office on Friday for dismissing without explanation President Trump’s “emphatic and unambiguous” tweets ordering the declassification of all documents in the government’s probe of Russia’s interference in the 2016 U.S. election.
“I have fully authorized the total Declassification of any & all documents pertaining to the single greatest political CRIME in American History, the Russia Hoax,” the president tweeted Oct. 6. “Likewise, the Hillary Clinton Email Scandal. No redactions!”
Trump’s blanket statement came the day after he returned to the White House from three days of treatment for the novel coronavirus at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center in Bethesda, Md. The tweet has since created a headache for government lawyers in pending open-records lawsuits filed by news organizations seeking fuller disclosure of special counsel Robert S. Mueller III’s report and investigative materials.
Associate Deputy Attorney General Bradley Weinsheimer maintained in a court filing Tuesday that the White House Counsel’s Office informed the Justice Department that notwithstanding the president’s statement, “there is no order requiring wholesale declassification or disclosure of documents at issue.”
At Friday’s hearing, however, Judge Reggie B. Walton of the U.S. District Court in D.C. expressed bafflement at the claim that President Trump’s words were not to be believed.
“I think the American public has a right to rely on what the president says his intention is,” Walton said. ¤ “It seems to me when a president makes a clear, unambiguous statement of what his intention is, that I can’t rely on the White House Counsel’s Office saying, ‘Well, that was not his intent,’ ” the judge said in a hearing conducted by videoconference because of the coronavirus pandemic.
Walton directed the department by noon Tuesday to clarify with Trump or “an individual who has conferred directly with the president” whether Trump had intended to order the declassification and release of Mueller report materials without redaction. The judge cited the urgency of releasing as much information as possible in the remaining days before the election.
🐣 RT @DeadlineWH “Thanks to some stunning new reporting in the Washington Post, we now know that Rudy Giuliani was identified by United States intelligence agencies as a target of an active Russian intelligence operation to harm the candidacy of Joe Biden” – @NicolleDWallace 💽 https://twitter.com/DeadlineWH/status/1317208494978760706?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @MuellerSheWrote The PDFs of the Biden emails were created in Central Europe on 10/10/19, 6 mos after the laptop was dropped off in Delaware. Do you know who was in Central Europe on 10/10/19? Firtash. In Vienna. The place Parnas & Fruman were off to when they were nabbed & indicted. On 10/10/19.
DailyBeast: Bolton Warned His Staff To Stay Away From Russia-Aligned Rudy Giuliani http://bit.ly/2H73i3L by Erin Banco, Spencer Ackerman and Asawin Suebsaeng
// As early as the spring of 2019, the former New York mayor was seen as a conduit for Russia’s evolving efforts to manipulate the forthcoming election.
🚫 WaPo, David Ignatius: The truth behind the Hunter Biden non-scandal http://wapo.st/357myX3
🧵 RT @ReardonReports BREAKING: Today @Fox17 obtained new FBI docs in an alleged plot to kidnap Michigan @GovWhitmer – the docs lay out tactical training, surveillance, and violent threats against lawmakers and police officers….. 💽 📌 https://twitter.com/ReardonReports/status/1317241836038217728?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @brhodes It’s very 2020 that Rudy Giuliani is acting as an asset for both Russian intelligence and the Trump campaign and nothing about that is surprising.
🐣 RT @JakeTapper Former WH COS John Kelly has told friends, about Trump: “The depths of his dishonesty is just astounding to me. The dishonesty, the transactional nature of every relationship, though it’s more pathetic than anything else. He is the most flawed person I have ever met in my life.”
⋙ CNN: Former White House chief of staff tells friends that Trump ‘is the most flawed person’ he’s ever met http://cnn.it/3lVtT2R
WSJ: More Than 1,000 Current and Former CDC Officers Condemn U.S. Covid-19 Response http://on.wsj.com/3dB250B Includes Jeffrey Koplan, who led the CDC under Presidents Clinton and Bush, and Tom Frieden, who served under President Obama
// An open letter calls for the federal agency to play a more central role in addressing the pandemic
🐣 RT @FrankFigliuzzi Rudy knows. Trump knows. Barr knows. Now we know.
⋙ 🐣 RT @DeadlineWH “I think in their wildest dreams inside the Kremlin, they could not have imagined a scenario where the lawyer to the president of the United States is actually becoming a mouthpiece for the intelligence services” – @FrankFigliuzzi1 w/ @NicolleDWallace 💽 https://twitter.com/DeadlineWH/status/1317208955278495746?s=20/photo/1
NYT Editorial: End Our National Crisis http://nyti.ms/3dxzUzP
// President Trump’s re-election campaign poses the greatest threat to American democracy since World War II
⭕ 15 Oct 2020
NYT: Slamming Trump, G.O.P. Senator Warns of a ‘Republican Blood Bath’ http://nyti.ms/3dy5cGM “We are staring down the barrel of a blue tsunami,”
// Senator Ben Sasse of Nebraska issued a scathing takedown of President Trump during a telephone town hall with constituents, saying he cozied up to dictators and white supremacists.
In a dire, nine-minute indictment of Mr. Trump’s foreign policy and what Mr. Sasse called his “deficient” values, the senator said the president had mistreated women and alienated important allies around the globe, been a profligate spender, ignored human rights and treated the pandemic like a “P.R. crisis.” He predicted that a loss by Mr. Trump on Election Day, less than three weeks away, “looks likely,” and said that Republicans would face steep repercussions for having backed him so staunchly over four tumultuous years
“The debate is not going to be, ‘Ben Sasse, why were you so mean to Donald Trump?’” Mr. Sasse said, according to audio obtained by The Washington Examiner and authenticated by The New York Times. “It’s going to be, ‘What the heck were any of us thinking, that selling a TV-obsessed, narcissistic individual to the American people was a good idea?’”
“We are staring down the barrel of a blue tsunami,” he added.
Mr. Sasse also hinted at more drastic consequences: a “Venezuela style” Supreme Court with dozens of justices installed by ascendant Democrats; an empowered China ruling the Pacific because of Mr. Trump’s “weak” policies; and American allies doubting whether they can “trust in U.S. strength and U.S. will.”
Mr. Sasse, a former university president with a doctorate in American history from Yale who styles himself as a principled conservative, has never made a secret of his distaste for Mr. Trump. During the 2016 campaign, he compared Mr. Trump to David Duke and refused to vote for him. In office, he called Mr. Trump’s signature trade war with China “nuts.”
He argued that Mr. Trump had “careened from curb to curb” as he sought to respond to a pandemic that has claimed more than 217,000 American lives this year.
“He refused to treat it seriously,” Mr. Sasse said. “For months, he treated it like a news-cycle-by-news-cycle P.R. crisis.” ¤ He added that he did not think Mr. Trump’s leadership through the crisis had been “reasonable or responsible, or right.”
The “deficiencies” added up from there. ¤ “The way he kisses dictators’ butts,” Mr. Sasse said, listing his reservations about Mr. Trump. “I mean, the way he ignores that the Uighurs are in literal concentration camps in Xinjiang right now. He hasn’t lifted a finger on behalf of the Hong Kongers.”
He continued: “The United States now regularly sells out our allies under his leadership, the way he treats women, spends like a drunken sailor.” ¤ Mr. Trump “mocks evangelicals behind closed doors,” he added. “His family has treated the presidency like a business opportunity. He’s flirted with white supremacists.”
Each of these things, Mr. Sasse predicted, would have consequences, for Republicans and the nation. He sounded particularly alarmed about the potential damage Mr. Trump, who supported Democrats for decades as a businessman, could do to the conservative cause in the long term by driving the country “to the left.”
Young people, he said, could “become permanent Democrats because they’ve just been repulsed by the obsessive nature of our politics.” Women, who have abandoned the party in droves, could decide “they need to turn away from this party permanently in the future.”
“I’m now looking at the possibility of a Republican blood bath in the Senate, and that’s why I’ve never been on the Trump train,” he said. “It’s why I didn’t agree to be on his re-election committee, and it’s why I’m not campaigning for him.”
🐣 RT @theRickWilson Is Thomas Schoenberger the Mastermind Behind QAnon? [EXCLUSIVE] https://heavy.com/news/thomas-schoenberger-qanon/… via @heavysan
⋙ Heavy, Emily Bicks: Is Thomas Schoenberger the Mastermind Behind QAnon? [EXCLUSIVE] http://bit.ly/37dB6r8
// Schoenberger has provided source material to Will Sommer at DailyBeast to gain access to the MSM
ARG [Alternate Reality Game] developer and pioneer Jim Stewartson mentions Schoenberger as one of the original developers of the QAnon movement in an in-depth video interview with the Financial Times, which was published on October 15.
“By March of 2017, Schoenberger’s crew linked up with Robert David Steele (former CIA) and William Binney (former NSA), members of VIPS (Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity), a group of disaffected former intelligence officers and government officials who worked together writing editorials and sharing information. These groups came together and recruited the network that became Qanon,” the investigator told Heavy.
Other former national security officials that have publicly promoted the QAnon operation and are linked to the VIPs network include Steve Pieczenik, Michael Scheuer, and Trump’s former National Security Advisor General Michael Flynn, the latter of whom posted a video himself on Twitter taking the Oath of Q on July 4, 2020.
YouTubers recruited into the QAnon network included Jordan Sather, and Patriot Soapbox’s Tracy Beanz and Paul Furber, the latter of whom is a South African web developer and tech journalist who was identified in an NBC News report as one of three people who helped boost the Qanon conspiracy theory to a wider audience, spreading the cryptic posts and messages from 4chan by taking the conspiracy from the dark corners of the Internet to the living rooms of everyday Americans.
A quick Google search of Schoenberger’s name reveals that he’s a musical artist, pianist and composer who shares his music under the YouTube handle Sophia Musik. However, he’s also an Internet mastermind of disinformation who purposely posts bizarre claims about himself and his co-conspirators online, the investigator told Heavy.
Schoenberger “has an extensive criminal record” and “has a history of being accused of co-opting businesses and movements, including “game jacking” the Cicada puzzles and has been accused by several people of being involved in murders and robberies, has been convicted of felony stalking, the investigator told Heavy.
“He also appears to be a member of the IAM (I am) cult and convinces members he is a time traveler, an alchemist, and a reincarnation of St. Germain (a prominent figure in the cult).”
Schoenberger is believed to have manipulated his way into the news covering QAnon, according to Heavy’s source. In particular, The Daily Beast’s Will Sommer, who’s broken several QAnon-related news stories over the past few years. … ¤ “By acting as a source to a journalist like Will Sommer, who has done a great deal of coverage on QAnon, Schoenberger is potentially putting himself in a position to influence media coverage of Q,” the source said.
Shoenberger has a son named Wolfgang from his marriage to Iranian American musician Faranak “Fara” Shahroozi, the cousin of NJK Holding Corporation founder and chairman Nasser Kazeminy, according to Heavy’s source. Kazeminy is also the godfather to Schoenberger and Shahroozi’s son.
In 2005, Schoenberger and Kazeminy formed Amadeus Investors LLC, which over time would pay Schoenberger in excess of $100,000,” Heavy’s source said.
In 2017, The Washington Post reported “that Flynn received about $28,000 from the Trump Presidential Transition. The largest source of income disclosed is $140,000 for Flynn’s work as an adviser and consultant to Minneapolis-based NJK Holding Corp. That firm is led by Nasser Kazeminy, an Iranian-born businessman now living in the United States.”
“In a 2015 deposition, Schoenberger claims that he worked on a covert operation planned for Afganistan with Bijan Kian in 2011. Kian was a partner with Flynn in the Flynn Intel Group and he was indicted in the Mueller investigation,” Heavy’s source clarified.
“Flynn is so influential in the Q community, that in order to show their dedication to QAnon, many followers online frequently display three stars in their Twitter bio, which references Flynn being a three-star general” …
QAnon’s origins can be traced to Cicada 3301, a complicated puzzle game that first appeared online in 2012 to test the world’s most “highly intelligent individuals.” In 2016, Schoenberger “stole” Cicada, Heavy’s source said, and he started manipulating the puzzle while working with Chavez, dropping “breadcrumbs” – vague top secret information hidden in clues.
In October 2017 QAnon posts premiered on 4chan, a site Schoenberger was prominent on before moving to 8chan in December, a site run out of the Philipines by pornography mogul and pig farmer, Jim Watkins, Heavy’s source said.
“We believe this group, using Steven Biss, Republican Congressman Devin Nunes’ lawyer … as a go-between so their communications would be confidential, set up QAnon as a means of creating their own channel to bypass the media and to turn American citizens into controlled extremists.” …
↥ ↧
🔲 YouTube: Is QAnon a game gone wrong? https://youtu.be/-4vb6UWhf3o via FT.com
🧵 RT @dantoujours So just so I follow this story: ¤ Hunter Biden, who lives in Los Angeles, decides to fly 3000 miles across country, to drop off 3 MacBook Pros at a repair shop run by a blind guy who charges the insanely low price of $85. ¤ He gets off the plane and drunk drives to the repair shop (because there aren’t repair shops in LA). 📌 https://twitter.com/dantoujours/status/1316844679783223297?s=20
He drops them off, signs a contract for repair and then disappears. The repair shop owner recovers and reads Hunter’s *private* emails, a few of which mention a possible meeting with his dad and is so alarmed, he contacts the FBI. ¤ The FBI arranges to pick up the hard drives, but the computer repair shop owner takes a totally normal step of copying them. Once he realizes the FBI isn’t doing anything with them, he calls up the most credible ex-Mayor on Earth and hands them the contents of these drives.
That totally credible ex-Mayor sits on them for months, then chooses to release them 3 weeks before the election. The mainstream media asks to independently verify their validity but said ex-Mayor does what all people trying to prove facts do and ignores these requests. ¤ Is this how stupid we are now?
No one who does data recovery would read through thousands of personal emails, even if the computer is abandoned. You’d just wipe the drives clean and sell the computers used. ¤ If these emails were as alarming as it’s being pushed, Giuliani wouldn’t have sat on them for months. ¤ And if Giuliani wanted to prove their validity, he’d turn them over to forensic experts.
HuffPo: GOP Sen. Ben Sasse Trashes Trump In Call With Voters: He ‘Kisses Dictators’ Butts’ http://bit.ly/37enyeK
// The Nebraskan said Trump secretly mocks evangelicals, mistreats women, “sells out our allies” and has “flirted with white supremacists.”
🐣 RT @brhodes 20 days before an election and the GOP message is that social media is unfairly censoring Russian disinformation and Savanah Guthrie asked tough questions. Amidst a pandemic and recession.
VanityFair, Caroline Giuliani: Rudy Giuliani Is My Father. Please, Everyone, Vote for Joe Biden and Kamala Harris. http://bit.ly/31bUOzI
// I may not be able to change my father’s mind, but together, we can vote this toxic administration out of office.
━━━━━━━▼ Biden Trump Dueling Townhalls
✅ WaPo: Fact-checking the dueling town halls of Trump and Biden http://wapo.st/3k3GJf2 “Trump spun a web of falsehoods like a whirling dervish, while Biden talked in depth and at length on a range of policy issues, leaving us with a handful of claims to check”
🧵 RT @MollyMcKew Watching both townhalls 📌 https://twitter.com/MollyMcKew/status/1316898079006724097?s=20
POTUS:
-refused to denounce QAnon
-says his RT of bin Laden conspiracy is Thumbs up
-refuses to say he won’t claim elex rigged, spreads disinfo
-references Russian campaign agst Biden as important
-claims Obama spied on him despite failure to find any evidence
🐣 RT @adamslily TRUMP just wrapped his town hall and the new news we got was:
1) He most definitely did NOT follow the testing requirements for the 1st debate
2) He definitely DOES owe $421 million & paid $750 in fed income tax
3) He will NOT disparage the domestic terror threat, QAnon
🐣 RT @jmeacham You couldn’t script a starker or more illuminating contrast between Biden and the incumbent than this evening. Gravitas is on the ballot.
🐣 RT @glennkesslerWP has there ever been two more different presidential candidates than Trump and Biden?
🐣 RT @justinwolfers The election is now officially Mr Rogers v. Your Crazy Uncle.
🐣 RT @RadioFreeTom Switching back to ABC now that the Trump thing is over, and I see Joe Biden being grilled about fracking, because the choice is between a Democratic candidate who might not ban fracking and a completely unhinged sociopathic loon
🔶
🧵 RT @atrupar [Trump Townhall]
GUTHRIE: When was your last negative coronavirus test?
TRUMP: “Well, I test quite a bit.”
GUTHRIE: Did you test the day of the debate?
TRUMP: “I don’t know. I don’t even remember.”
G: Did you take a test the day of the debate?
T: “I probably did.” 📌 https://twitter.com/atrupar/status/1316893262737756163?s=20
🐣 RT @jengranholm I just love that @JoeBiden is talking about EV batteries, carbon negative strategies, transmission challenges, BTUs, weatherizing buildings, capturing methane and all manner of clean energy job opportunities … does @realDonaldTrump even know what any of that is?
🐣 RT @kylegriffin1 Trump town hall highlights (a brief list):
Does not denounce QAnon
Admits he “probably” owes money to foreign banks
Spreads lies about masks
Refuses to say when he last tested negative before getting COVID
🐣 RT @CNNPolitics In a heated exchange, President Trump once again refused to denounce the QAnon conspiracy theory https://cnn.it/3nVymnZ
🐣 RT @cheeseninja The only reason herd immunity is still in the news is because it’s a euphemism for failure and surrender, which is Trump’s actual Covid policy.
🐣 RT @BeschlossDC History does not suggest that showing anger helps a Presidential candidate in a debate.
“Dueling Townhalls” ⇈ ⇊ (I’m watching Biden)
🧵 RT @sahilkapur Trump and Biden town halls begin 📌 https://twitter.com/sahilkapur/status/1316892639598399490?s=20
🐣 RT @kittyboone ABC analysts discussing @JoeBiden debate, and @RahmEmanuel says it best: his character is what wins the day. Truthful, willing to admit any errors. (Oh and btw: he is still spending time with voters in Constitution Hall.) CLASS ACT.
🐣 RT @mitchellreports Asked by @GStephanopoulos on ABC what it will mean about where America is if he if he loses, @JoeBiden says “it could say that I’m a lousy candidate …I hope it doesn’t say we are as racially ethnically & religiously at odds with one another as the President wants us to be”
🐣 RT @ Biden:”I guarantee you if I’m elected president, you will not hear me race-baiting, you will not hear me dividing, you’ll hear me try to unify…bring people together.”
🐣 RT @jeneps Biden’s been saying for weeks. that he didn’t want to make news on expanding SCOTUS but he just did. If Barrett is confirmed pre-election, “I’m open considering what happens from that point on,” he says of adding to the court.
🐣 RT @AshaRangappa If Biden wins both media and citizens are going to have to readjust attention spans to be able to listen to thoughtful, detailed ideas supported by facts — it requires engaging the rational and logical part of your brain rather than the one you use when you’re attacked by a bear
━━━━━━━▲
NBCNews: Feds examining whether alleged Hunter Biden emails are linked to a foreign intel operation http://nbcnews.to/37cfnzO
// One email, which has not been confirmed to be authentic, suggested a meeting between Joe Biden and a rep from a Ukraine firm that once paid his son Hunter.
WaPo: White House was warned Giuliani was target of Russian intelligence operation to feed misinformation to Trump http://wapo.st/3j3me0v
The warnings to the White House, which have not previously been reported, led national security adviser Robert O’Brien to caution Trump in a private conversation that any information Giuliani brought back from Ukraine should be considered contaminated by Russia, one of the former officials said.
The message was, “Do what you want to do, but your friend Rudy has been worked by Russian assets in Ukraine,” this person said. Officials wanted “to protect the president from coming out and saying something stupid,” particularly since he was facing impeachment over his own efforts to strong-arm Ukraine’s president into investigating the Bidens.
But O’Brien emerged from the meeting uncertain whether he had gotten through to the president. Trump had “shrugged his shoulders” at O’Brien’s warning, the former official said, and dismissed concern about his lawyer’s activities by saying, “That’s Rudy.” …
Officials’ warnings about Giuliani underscore the concern in the U.S. intelligence community that Russia not only is seeking to reprise the disinformation campaign it waged in 2016, but also may now be aided, unwittingly or otherwise, by individuals close to the president. Those warnings have gained fresh urgency in recent days. The information that Giuliani sought in Ukraine is similar to what is contained in emails and other correspondence published this week by the New York Post, which the paper said came from the laptop of Hunter Biden and were provided by Giuliani and Stephen K. Bannon, Trump’s former top political adviser at the White House.
The former officials said Giuliani was not a target of U.S. surveillance while in Ukraine but was dealing with suspected Russian assets who were, leading to the capture of some of his communications.
Giuliani was interested in acquiring information from his foreign contacts about Burisma, the Ukrainian energy company where Hunter Biden held a board seat, as well as Biden’s activities in Ukraine, China and Romania, two former officials said. Giuliani’s eagerness was so pronounced “that everybody [in the intelligence community who knew about it] was talking about how hard it was going to be to try to get him to stop, to take seriously the idea that he was being used as a conduit for misinformation,” one former official said.
Earlier in 2019, U.S. intelligence also had warned in written materials sent to the White House that Giuliani, in his drive for information about the Bidens, was communicating with Russian assets.
Several senior administration officials “all had a common understanding” that Giuliani was being targeted by the Russians, said the former official who recounted O’Brien’s intervention. That group included Attorney General William P. Barr, FBI Director Christopher A. Wray and White Counsel Pat Cipollone.
In a text message on Thursday, Giuliani said that he was never informed that Andriy Derkach, a pro-Russian lawmaker in Ukraine whom he met on Dec. 5 in Kyiv, was a Russian intelligence asset. Giuliani said he “only had secondary information and I was not considering him a witness.” But Giuliani met again with Derkach in New York two months later, hosting him on his podcast, and he has promoted Derkach’s unsubstantiated claims about the Bidens, describing Derkach as “very helpful.”
In September, the U.S. Treasury Department sanctioned Derkach for allegedly running an “influence campaign” against Joe Biden, calling the Ukrainian “an active Russian agent for over a decade” who has maintained “close connections with Russian intelligence services.”
In August, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence publicly described Derkach as part of a Russian effort to interfere with the 2020 election by smearing Biden. The office of the DNI accused Derkach of “spreading claims about corruption — including through publicizing leaked phone calls — to undermine” Biden and the Democrats.
For some officials, Trump’s willingness to meet with Giuliani despite warnings about Russian influence smacked of the collusion allegations that dogged the president after the 2016 election. Special counsel Robert S. Mueller III said he did not find evidence to substantiate a criminal charge of conspiracy against anyone in the Trump campaign. But his investigation documented numerous instances in which Trump associates knowingly sought damaging information from Russian individuals and their proxies about Hillary Clinton, the 2016 Democratic presidential candidate.
Giuliani was not shy about his pursuit of information that might damage Biden, taking a documentary film crew from the right-wing One America News to Ukraine in December when he met with Derkach. At the time, Giuliani claimed that Trump had directed him to share his findings with the Justice Department and Senate Republicans.
Officials’ fears about what Giuliani might tell the president were compounded by Trump’s generally furious reaction to negative intelligence about Russia and its efforts to influence U.S. politics.
“Whenever you talk to the president, no matter what your facts are, if you mention Russia, that’s it — you’ve hit the third rail,” one of the former officials said. Trump has called Russia’s documented campaign of election interference a “hoax” that was drummed up to challenge the legitimacy of his election and undermine his administration.
Trump has relied for years on Giuliani’s counsel. But in recent months, as the president has found himself behind in the polls, the former New York mayor has become an even closer confidant, aides and officials said. Giuliani has visited the White House for debate preparations, given the president tips on his response to the coronavirus pandemic, promoted the controversial drug hydroxychloroquine as a treatment for covid-19 and discussed what political events and rallies he thinks the president should hold.
Giuliani also was a major source of information during the impeachment, when Trump tried to rebut allegations of abuse of power by airing false allegations that Biden, while serving as vice president, had pressed for the removal of a Ukrainian prosecutor to spare his son from being investigated.
During his impeachment trial in the Senate, Trump denied sending Giuliani to Ukraine to dig up dirt on Biden, who was then a contender for the Democratic presidential nomination. But after his acquittal, Trump reversed himself, acknowledging in a podcast interview with Geraldo Rivera that he had directed Giuliani to go to Ukraine.
“So when you tell me, why did I use Rudy, and one of the things about Rudy, number one, he was the best prosecutor, you know, one of the best prosecutors, and the best mayor,” Trump said. “But also, other presidents had them. FDR had a lawyer who was practically, you know, was totally involved with government. Eisenhower had a lawyer. They all had lawyers.”
Months earlier, Trump also had told Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky that he should meet with Giuliani.
“Mr. Giuliani is a highly respected man. He was the mayor of New York City, a great mayor, and I would like him to call you,” Trump told Zelensky in a phone call on July 25, 2019, according to a partial transcript released by the White House. “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. If you could speak to him that would be great.”¤ That phone call was the centerpiece of the impeachment case against the president.
⭕ 14 Oct 2020
SanDiegoUnionTrib, Phillip Halpern: Commentary: I won’t work in Attorney General William Barr’s Justice Department any longer http://bit.ly/3k5ilcN Halpern was an assistant US attorney for 36 years in the US Attorney’s Office in San Diego.
Maybe I should’ve seen this coming, but like many of my colleagues, I fervently hoped that Attorney General William Barr’s preemptive misrepresentation of special counsel Robert Mueller’s report was an honest mistake or a solitary misstep — rather than a deliberate attempt to conceal potential presidential misconduct. After all, Barr has never actually investigated, charged or tried a case. He’s a well-trained bureaucrat but has no actual experience as a prosecutor.
Unfortunately, over the last year, Barr’s resentment toward rule-of-law prosecutors became increasingly difficult to ignore, as did his slavish obedience to Donald Trump’s will in his selective meddling with the criminal justice system in the Paul Manafort, Michael Flynn and Roger Stone cases. In each of these cases, Barr overruled career prosecutors in order to assist the president’s associates and/or friends, who potentially harbor incriminating information. This career bureaucrat seems determined to turn our democracy into an autocracy.
There is no other honest explanation for Barr’s parroting of the president’s wild and unsupported conspiracy theories regarding mail-in ballots (which have been contradicted by the president’s handpicked FBI director) and his support for the president’s sacking of the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York, whose office used the thinnest of veils to postpone charging the president in a criminal investigation along with Michael Cohen (who pled guilty and directly implicated the president). It took federal Judge Alvin Hellerstein to stop Barr’s unprecedented “retaliatory” demands to silence the president’s former lawyer as a condition for staying out of jail.
Similarly, it took federal Judge Reggie Walton (who sharply criticized Barr for a “lack of candor”) to at least temporarily stop Barr from dismissing all charges against Flynn, the president’s former national security adviser, who admitted lying to the FBI about conversations he had with the Russian ambassador. Rather than representing the interests of the American public, Barr chooses to act as Trump’s lap dog.
More recently, Barr directed federal officers to use tear gas in Lafayette Park to quell what were, at that time, peaceful protesters. Barr’s assertion the square was not cleared due to the president’s desire for a Bible-carrying photo op is laughable. It is certainly a case that Barr would lose before a jury (again, though, this may not be clear to him due to his unfamiliarity with jury trials).
Barr also turned his back on the rule of law by supporting the president’s selective use of federal troops to assault citizens protesting the killing of George Floyd in Portland, Oregon. Yet he stood silently by when armed right-wing protesters stormed the Michigan state Capitol building to protest the Democratic governor’s public health orders.
Barr’s longest-running politicization of the Justice Department is the Durham investigation — a quixotic pursuit designed to attack the president’s political rivals. Confirming his scorn for honest apolitical prosecutors, Barr refers to some as “headhunters” who pursue “ill-conceived charges against prominent political figures.” It does not appear to be a coincidence that all of these prominent political figures happen to be friends of the president. However, if I’m a headhunter because I charged and convicted disgraced local House members Duncan D. Hunter and Randy “Duke” Cunningham, so be it. It’s a badge that I will wear with honor.
I remained in government service this past year at least partly because I was concerned that the department would interfere with the Hunter prosecution in my absence. Unfortunately, many of my colleagues without such a rationale appear to have started abandoning Barr’s ship. Equally troubling, highly qualified lawyers appear to be unwilling to apply to be federal prosecutors while Barr remains at the helm. Yet, as I leave government service, I take great comfort in the fact that the career people who remain in the Department of Justice are firmly committed to the rule of law, and are some of the most dedicated, ethical and industrious individuals we have in government. At times like these, I take heart in knowing that they are all committed to preserving and rebuilding the Department of Justice that I was privileged to serve.
🐣 RT @MaryLTrump The republicans stole a Supreme Court seat from President Obama in order to install Gorsuch. They are again corrupting the process in order to install Barrett. Expanding the court to right those wrongs wouldn’t be court-packing, it would be justice.
🧵 RT @McFaul In the age of twitter and Tiktok, I understand why no one reads 1000 page reports anymore. Even I didn’t read the entire things, but in light of news today, remember: “Why the Senate’s Russia report should be one of America’s biggest stories THREAD 1/ 📌 https://twitter.com/McFaul/status/1316458520670167040?s=20
⋙ NBCNews, Michael McFaul (8/22): Senate Russia report proves Trump collusion was very real. But do voters care? http://nbcnews.to/3186JhA
// Trump and Biden’s contrasting positions on Russian interference in American elections are clear. Whether voters care about these differences, however, is not as obvious.
🐣 RT @ForeignAffairs Many Chinese elites think that Trump’s presidency has pushed the United States’ gradual decay into a new phase of sharp deterioration, writes @JulianGewirtz. Changing that perception is key to deterring China’s most problematic behavior.
⋙ ForeignAffairs: China Thinks America Is Losing http://fam.ag/3lLgTwI
// Washington must show Beijing that the United States is not inexorably declining.
🐣 RT @spdustin This Hunter Biden laptop story is fucked. ¤ Docs show the laptop was dropped on Apr 12, 2019. They also show an external drive and its serial number. ¤ Western Digital’s web site says that drive’s **3-year** warranty expires Apr 18, 2022…meaning it was manufactured Apr *18*, 2019. https://twitter.com/spdustin/status/1316621229751762945?s=20/photo/1-3
🚫🐣 RT @BillKristol “Metadata on the PDF files suggest they were created on a Mac laptop on Sep. 29 and Oct. 10…The timing of the creation of those PDF files—several months after Biden allegedly dropped off his laptop at the PC repair store in April 2019—raises questions.”
⋙ DailyBeast: Trump Knew for Days That Rudy’s Hit on Hunter Biden Was Coming http://bit.ly/3176FyR by Asawin Suebsaeng, Erin Banco and Adam Rawnsley
// not tweeting; The president cheered as his personal lawyer prepared a “sex and drugs” sliming of the Democratic nominee’s son.
For example, metadata on the PDF files purporting to show Hunter Biden’s emails published by the Post suggest they were created on a Mac laptop on September 29 and October 10, 2019—around the same time Giuliani’s Ukrainian associates who helped him dig up dirt on the Bidens, Igor Fruman and Lev Parnas, were arrested and charged with breaking campaign finance laws. The timing of the creation of those PDF files—several months after Biden allegedly dropped off his laptop at the PC repair store in April 2019—raises questions about how and when Giuliani came into possession of the purported emails.
The Daily Beast tracked down John Paul Mac Isaac, a worker at a computer repair shop in Wilmington. … Mac Isaac was nervous and quiet throughout a one-hour interview, and his account kept shifting. He wavered back and forth between saying he had gone to the Federal Bureau of Investigation with the materials and the FBI had approached him. … The former Vice President’s office not only cast doubt on the main thrust of the article—that Biden, contrary to earlier claims, met with an official at a Ukraine energy company at his son’s behest—but also framed the entire charge as a product of “Russian disinformation.”
Sen. Ron Johnson (R-WI) and his staff told other lawmakers on Wednesday that they had received materials related to the contents of the Post story on September 25, the day after the publishing of his team’s Hunter Biden report.
Johnson and others hyped the investigation as crucial, claiming it would provide vital information to the American electorate before November 3. In the end the report did not move the needle.
🐣 RT @jallepap The subtext here is that Rudy & his circle should be extremely aware that their contacts in the GRU are compromised. The IC knows about their collusion in real time. Receipts are in hand. Countermeasures are ongoing. Americans are not going to be played again like in 2016.
⋙ 🧵 RT @nicoleperlroth NEW: Three weeks ago, intelligence analysts started contacting several people with knowledge of the GRU hack of Burisma, after picking up intelligence “chatter” that stolen Burisma emails would be leaked in a forthcoming “October surprise.”
📌 https://twitter.com/nicoleperlroth/status/1316585131818115073?s=20/photo/1-2
⋙⋙ NYT: Allegation on Biden Prompts Pushback From Social Media Companies http://nyti.ms/317M1yE
// Joe Biden’s campaign rejected assertions made in a published report that were based on unverified material from Trump allies. Facebook and Twitter found the story dubious enough to limit access to it on their platform.
The Biden campaign on Wednesday rejected a New York Post report about Joseph R. Biden Jr. and his son Hunter that the nation’s leading social media companies deemed so dubious that they limited access to the article on their platforms.
The report, appearing just three weeks before the election, was based on material provided by Republican allies of President Trump who have tried for months to tarnish Mr. Biden over his son. It claimed that the elder Mr. Biden had met with an adviser to a Ukrainian energy company on whose board Hunter Biden served.
A spokesman for the Biden campaign, Andrew Bates, said that Mr. Biden’s official schedules showed no meeting between Mr. Biden and the adviser, Vadym Pozharskyi.
“We have reviewed Joe Biden’s official schedules from the time and no meeting, as alleged by the New York Post, ever took place,” Mr. Bates said.
Twitter said it was blocking the article because it included people’s personal phone numbers and email addresses, which violated their privacy rules, and because the article violated their policy on hacked materials.
… [T]he Trump campaign said the personal account of the White House press secretary, Kayleigh McEnany, had been locked because she had posted the New York Post story
An investigation by Senate Republicans — and significant scrutiny of the issue over the last year — found no evidence that Mr. Biden, the former vice president, engaged in wrongdoing over his son’s business dealings. … And Mr. Trump was impeached in connection with encouraging Ukraine’s leader to investigate Mr. Biden.
The Post report described a circuitous and unusual path by which the newspaper had obtained the email correspondence that involved two of Mr. Trump’s staunchest allies: Rudolph W. Giuliani, the president’s personal lawyer and a former New York City mayor, and Stephen K. Bannon, a former White House adviser.
The article said the emails were part of a trove of material on a laptop computer that was dropped off for repairs at a shop in Delaware, Mr. Biden’s home state, and never retrieved. It said the store owner had made a copy of the correspondence and provided it to the lawyer for Mr. Giuliani.
🐣 RT @LizSzabo So interesting: One-third of the genome of the novel coronavirus is dedicated to evading our “innate” immune system, which kicks in before we have time to make antibodies. ¤ Lecture 6: “Target cells and the innate response” https://youtu.be/2mL_cOckhzg via @YouTube
Last month, United States intelligence analysts contacted several people with knowledge of the Burisma hack for further information after they had picked up chatter that stolen Burisma emails would be leaked in the form of an “October surprise.”
Among their chief concerns, according to people familiar with the discussions, was that the Burisma material would be leaked alongside forged materials in an attempt to hurt Mr. Biden’s candidacy — as Russian hackers did when they dumped real emails alongside forgeries ahead of the 2017 French elections …
TheGuardian: Unmasking’ inquiry ordered by Barr finds no wrongdoing by Obama officials – report http://bit.ly/3lNcCJb
// Findings seen as defeat for Trump and Barr, who appeared to be fishing for damaging information that could be used against Biden
🐣 RT @FrancisBrennan Hunter Biden introduced his father, then-Vice President Joe Biden, to a top executive at a Ukrainian energy firm less than a year before the elder Biden pressured government officials in Ukraine into firing a prosecutor who was investigating the company…
⋙ 🐣 Account reported: this is an end run around @Twitter and @TwitterSupport‘s decision to BLOCK this story which the @FBI and @cyber have identified as RUSSIAN disinformation attempting to interfere with our election
🚫 DailyBeast: Donald, Rudy and Rupert’s Dubious ‘October Surprise’ Reeks of Desperation http://bit.ly/3dqmXYu
// again, not to amplify, I did not tweet; The same sort of conspiracy peddling that paid off politically in 2016 isn’t doing a thing against Joe now.
… Every major paper, every fact-checker, every everything outside of Trumpland agrees on two points: one, that Biden put pressure on the Ukrainian government to fire Shokin because Shokin was seen as corrupt by every international organization (the IMF, for example), which wanted him out, and Obama deployed Biden to convey that message; two, that as far as is known, Shokin wasn’t even investigating Burisma at the time in question (2015). You can read this, or dozens of other sources.
So the whole idea that Biden did something corrupt with respect to Shokin is a desperate ploy from Trumpworld to be able to argue that Biden is the real bad actor. Why are they doing this? Let’s just take a second to remember what Trump said to Volodymyr Zelensky in that perfect phone call: “The other thing. There’s a lot of talk about Biden’s son, that Biden stopped the prosecution and a lot of people want to find out about that so whatever you can do with the Attorney General would be great.”
That, of course, is illegal. He got impeached over it, and if we had an honest Senate, he’d have been removed from office.
But here we have Giuliani and Bannon trying, after every other effort has failed, to get the Burisma story back into the news cycle. And it’s possible they’re sitting on more info proving or appearing to prove that Biden did in fact discuss Hunter’s business dealings with him.
Hunter Biden seems like a mess of a human being with really terrible judgment, and Joe should have said to him: dude, no, stay out of Ukraine. But the idea that this amounts to corruption is a stretch. Biden’s been in public life for 50 years. No one has ever accused him of cupidity or venality. If he did discuss his son’s business dealings, it was probably to tell him to be careful.
Meanwhile, there’s Donald Trump, whom no one has ever accused of decency or generosity. He used his own charitable foundation to pay fines in Palm Beach and buy portraits of himself. And that ranks about 50th of the list of things Trump has done that are greedy, unethical, or possibly illegal. Every day, he’s making money from the Saudis or someone staying in his Washington hotel. Every day, he’s out there trying to steal the election. Every day, he corrupts the institutions he’s been put in charge of a little bit more. And, every day, dozens or hundreds of Americans are dying needless deaths because he panicked and didn’t know what to do. He lied, and his lies are killing people.
And we’re going to get excited over one meeting Biden may have had that even if it happened proves nothing? No. The story here, if there is one, is how Giuliani and Bannon got this.
Being “equally tough on Hillary” got us the most corrupt and anti-democratic president in our country’s history. We can’t be stupid enough to play that equivalency game a second time.
🚫⬇️ 🐣 RT @BradMossEsq JFC the NY Post’s story is coming apart at the seams. This repair shop guy sounds like a lunatic. The whole saga is nuts.
⋙ 🐣 RT @NoahSchachtman Here’s the audio of the extremely odd interview with the guy who claims he gave Hunter Biden’s laptop to Rudy Giuliani.
⋙⋙ DailyBeast: Man Who Reportedly Gave Hunter’s Laptop to Rudy Speaks Out in Bizarre Interview http://bit.ly/2H2vbKr
// 🚫=not to amplify; John Paul Isaac gave conflicting stories to reporters on Wednesday. He also said he feared for his life, citing the Seth Rich conspiracy.
🐣 RT @ThePlumLineGS This is a huge tell. A GOP strategist tells Bloomberg that Senate Republicans don’t want a big stimulus bill now because they want to pivot hard to austerity under a Biden presidency, which could cripple it. No wonder McConnell is laughing. New piece:
⋙ WaPo: How Republicans will try to destroy a Biden presidency http://wapo.st/318u0jI
🐣 RT @MikeSachsEsq Even if the Dem Senators are right in their prediction that Barrett would furnish the 5th vote to strike down the ACA in its entirety…if Dems win WH and Senate, they could just moot the case pre-decision with a law instituting a de minimis tax penalty for the individual mandate
🐣 RT @danielsgoldman Before more journos go peddling this @nypost story, they should do some diligence on the cover story for how Giuliani got the “hard drive.” Giuliani has been conspiring with Russian agents for months, including someone the US says is actively trying to interfere in this election
MotherJones: Giuliani and the New York Post Are Pushing Russian Disinformation. It’s a Big Test for the Media. http://bit.ly/3dzsNHe (actually, this is old news, but “all things old are new again,” right?)
// With its new Biden story, Murdoch’s tabloid is a useful idiot for Vladimir Putin
WaPo: Videos show closed-door sessions of leading conservative activists: ‘Be not afraid of the accusations that you’re a voter suppressor’ http://wapo.st/34WEwf0
⭕ 13 Oct 2020
💙 CMD*: Senator Whitehouse Calls Out Dark-Money Networks Behind Amy Coney Barrett’s SCOTUS Nomination http://bit.ly/313R0jS *The Center for Media and Democracy: How GOP dark money funders are the one who have “stacked the Court”; (all docs here)
// They used gutting the Voting Rights Act (VRA) to legally suppress the vote and allow gerry-mandering and now are poised to overturn: 1) The ACA, 2) DACA, 3) Gay Rights, 4) Roe v Wade, 5) Labor Rights
// Leonard Leo (Federalist Society), Carrie Severino (Legal Crisis Network and, now, FedSoc),
Donors Trust (identity laundering)
↥ ↧
💙 💽 WaPo Documentary: Pathways to power http://wapo.st/3nMoo8v
// 5/21/2020; The conservative movement transforming America’s courts
↥ ↧
💙 WaPo: Federalist Society’s Leonard Leo is helping Trump make courts more conservative http://wapo.st/3nN2dyN
// 5/21/2020; Leonard Leo helped conservative nonprofits raise $250 million from mostly undisclosed donors in recent years to promote conservative judges and causes
🐣 RT @SenWhitehouse It’s the same funders selecting judges, funding campaigns for the judges and then showing up in courts in these orchestrated amicus flotillas and telling those judges what to do. It’s all one big #DarkMoney scheme.
🐣 RT @annagalland Here’s what Trump did to my suburban neighborhood:
– shattered our schools
– torched beloved local businesses
– inflamed racist hate
– scammed working families to reward his own fam & cronies
– terrorized our immigrant families
Nope, don’t like you even a smidgen.
⋙ 🐣 RT @kaitlancollins “Suburban women, will you please like me?” President Trump says at his Pennsylvania rally. “I saved your damn neighborhood.
🐣 RT @howardfineman Hearing: #AmyConeyBarrett won’t say if Trump can delay the election. He can’t. – Vox This was a revealingly corrupt, cravenly political non-answer. No doubt she knew it when she said it, which shows that, even after being nominated, she plays to #Trump.
⋙ Vox, Aaron Rupar: Amy Coney Barrett refused to say if Trump can delay the election. The correct answer is he can’t. http://bit.ly/3nHf2L4
// The question has an easy, straightforward answer. Barrett didn’t provide it.
🐣 RT @amyklobuchar Today Judge Coney Barrett would not say whether voter intimidation is illegal. ¤ Just to be clear: voter intimidation IS illegal. It’s explicitly outlawed (in 18 USC 594 to be exact).
🐣 RT @NatashaBertrand “…the White House Counsel’s Office effectively told DOJ to disregard Trump’s tweets on the matter. They weren’t accompanied by an actual declassification order, and DOJ will proceed as though the tweets hadn’t occurred.” @kyledcheney
⋙ Politico: DOJ: Trump’s ‘total declassification’ of Russiagate docs has no effect http://politi.co/2H6pyLi
// DOJ attorneys told a judge that the White House Counsel’s Office effectively told DOJ to disregard Trump’s tweets on the matter.
🐣 RT @DonWinslow NEW VIDEO: #MemoToTrump ¤ I wrote a memo to Donald John Trump. 💽 https://twitter.com/donwinslow/status/1315739358230503424?s=20/photo/1
// Don Winslow ad❣ #MemoToTrump
🐣 RT @McFaul This video reminds me of a very ill Boris Yeltsin running for reelection in 1996. Anyone else remember his dancing?
⋙ 🐣 RT @RexChapman 215,000 dead Americans and he’s out there doing this… 💽 https://twitter.com/RexChapman/status/1315879949967011840?s=20/photo/1
// Trump dancing like a crazy person
⋙ 🐣 RT @RexChapman 💽 https://twitter.com/RexChapman/status/1315893789714776068?s=20/photo/1
// Yeltsin dancing like a crazy person
⋙⋙ 🐣 RT @McFaul You found it! Eerily similar right? (Yeltsin was hiding that he’d just had a series heart attack)
⋙⋙⋙ 🐣 Maybe that’s how you signal it’s time for Putin to swoop in, bail you out and take over
⭕ 12 Oct 2020
★ JAMA, Howard Bauchner and Phil Fontanarosa: Excess Deaths and the Great Pandemic of 2020 http://bit.ly/33RRI5m Highlights a series of articles in JAMA on the toll of the COVID-19 pandemic in the US: deaths (including “excess” deaths), social, financial and on disparities
Two new reports in JAMA provide updated estimates regarding the mortality associated with the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic in the US. In a research letter by Woolf and colleagues, the authors update their analysis of the number of “excess” deaths in the US related to COVID-19 and other causes from March 1 through August 1, 2020. 1,2 The authors report that during this 5-month period, a total of 1 336 561 deaths occurred in the US, an estimated 20% increase compared with the number of expected deaths, and representing 225 530 excess deaths. 2 Approximately 67% of these excess deaths were attributable directly to COVID-19, whereas excess deaths attributed to other causes also could have been related to the pandemic in general.
A second research letter, by Bilinski and Emanuel, 3 compared the US to Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development countries with populations exceeding 5 million. The authors found that since the beginning of the pandemic, among the countries with moderate mortality (n = 8; COVID-19 deaths, 5-25/100 000) or high mortality (n = 7; COVID-19 deaths, >25/100 00), the US ranked third, with 71.6 deaths/100 000.
The importance of the estimate by Woolf et al—which suggests that for the entirety of 2020, more than 400 000 excess deaths will occur—cannot be overstated, because it accounts for what could be declines in some causes of death, like motor vehicle crashes, but increases in others, like myocardial infarction. These deaths reflect a true measure of the human cost of the Great Pandemic of 2020. As depicted in the illustration, these deaths far exceed the number of US deaths from some armed conflicts, such as the Korean War and the Vietnam War, and deaths from the 2009 H1N1 (Swine flu) pandemic, and approach the number of deaths from World War II.
In the report by Bilinski and Emanuel, 3 the authors note that the US experienced high COVID-19–associated mortality and excess all-cause mortality into September 2020. After the initial peak in early spring, US death rates from COVID-19 and from all causes remained higher than rates in countries with high COVID-19 mortality.
In addition, 3 Viewpoints and an Editorial in JAMA reflect on the mental health, financial, and disparities issues related to the pandemic.
Simon and colleagues 4 suggest that it is critical to consider that for every death, an estimated 9 family members are affected, such as with prolonged grief or symptoms of posttraumatic stress disorder. In other words, approximately 3.5 million people could develop major mental health needs. This does not account for the thousands of health care workers in hospitals and nursing homes who have been witness to the unimaginable morbidity and mortality associated with COVID-19.
Cooper and Williams 5 comment on the unrelenting and seemingly intractable and embedded disparities that exist in the US and within the US health care system. They call for restorative justice. This issue is not new, but rather the COVID-19 pandemic has once again highlighted and further compounded the health, social, and economic disparities inherent in communities of color.5,6
Cutler and Summers 7 suggest that the COVID-19 pandemic represents the greatest threat to prosperity and well-being that the US has encountered since the Great Depression that began in 1929. The authors estimated the total financial cost of the pandemic—related to lost economic output and losses related to health—at $16 trillion, or approximately 90% of the annual US gross domestic product (GDP). The estimated economic loss from COVID-19 is a staggering number, but was largely preventable, and will reverberate through society for years to come.
In an accompanying Editorial, Fineberg underscores the key ideas of the Viewpoints by Simon et al, Cooper and Williams, and Cutler and Summers, and summarizes the findings of the report by Woolf et al highlighting that the data on excess deaths related to COVID-19 are “sufficiently mortifying and motivating.” 8 He also emphasizes that “an intense, persistent, multipronged, and coherent response must be the order of the day and an urgent priority for the nation.” 8
Few people will forget the Great Pandemic of 2020, where and how they lived, how it substantially changed their lives, and for many, the profound human toll it has taken.
WaPo, Christopher Ingraham: New research explores authoritarian mind-set of Trump’s core supporters http://wapo.st/3lDoiy2
// Data reveal high levels of anti-democratic beliefs among many of the president’s backers, who stand to be a potent voting bloc for years to come
The Trump administration’s response to the coronavirus pandemic has been a catastrophic failure, with researchers at Oxford University estimating that its mismanagement of the crisis resulted in nearly 60,000 preventable deaths.
A new book by a psychology professor and a former lawyer in the Nixon White House argues that Trump has tapped into a current of authoritarianism in the American electorate, one that’s bubbled just below the surface for years. In “Authoritarian Nightmare,” Bob Altemeyer and John W. Dean marshal data from a previously unpublished nationwide survey showing a striking desire for strong authoritarian leadership among Republican voters.
They measure it using a tool Altemeyer developed in the early 1980s, called the right-wing authoritarian (RWA) scale. …
… Researchers have also consistently found that separate measures of authoritarian belief, such as a short survey of attitudes toward child-rearing, are reliable predictors of Trump support.
… He found the different versions of the scale produced findings that were nearly identical to the original 20-question battery, suggesting the scale is measuring a distinct psychological attribute that can’t be explained away by religiosity or political ideology.
“Even if Donald Trump disappeared tomorrow,” they write, “the millions of people who made him president would be ready to make someone else similar president instead.”
🐣 RT @brianklaass Voter suppression isn’t normal. This isn’t part of democracy in Europe, or Japan, or Canada. 5 hour wait times to cast a ballot is a uniquely American blight. It’s a choice, made by Republicans, to make it hard for people to vote so that they can win elections with lower turnout. [link] https://twitter.com/brianklaas/status/1315710585443676160?s=20
🐣 RT @AnaCabrera Fauci on CNBC: “I’ve devoted my entire professional life to fighting infectious diseases. This is an outbreak of historic proportions, the likes of which we have not seen in 102 yrs. There’s no chance that I’m going to give up on this & walk away from it, no matter what happens”
💙 🧵 RT @AshaRangappa_ THREAD. Great, question, @JoyAnnReid! I had the same question. And for an answer, I *highly* recommend “Let Them Eat Tweets,” by @Jacob_S_Hacker and Paul Pierson, which gives a clear, if depressing answer to this question. For big picture summary, read on: 📌 https://twitter.com/AshaRangappa_/status/1315825379450421249?s=20
⋙ 🐣 RT @ 3. This leads to what the authors call “The Conservative Dilemma.” At some point, the party reaches a choice point: How do you get people to vote for you, when you are serving the economic interests of an elite few, (these are the plutocrats — the rich), and it doesn’t help them […]
// outrage machine explained
🐣 RT @fenrir_71 Gorsuch – Catholic.
Kavanaugh – Catholic.
Roberts – Catholic.
Alito – Catholic.
Thomas- Catholic.
Sensing a pattern yet?
⋙ 🐣 Also, Sotomayor, to be complete
⋙ 🐣 a possible explanation is that Catholicism as taught in the Catechism and universities is (still) essentially Thomist. Plus the Jesuits developed skills in argumentation (and torture). Not to forget the nuns (rulers in hand) who added a certain authoritarian flair
NYT: Hours before Trump campaigns in Florida, Fauci cautions against holding rallies, saying it is ‘asking for trouble.’ http://nyti.ms/3jUfoMe
//; Hours before President Trump campaigns in Florida, Dr. Anthony Fauci cautioned against holding rallies, saying it was ‘asking for trouble.’
🐣 RT @JoshNBCNews Dr Fauci tells @thenewsoncnbc with Shep Smith he’s committed to staying on the job regardless of who’s elected the next president. Says he’s not walking away from a problem this important
🐣 RT @AOC When politicians use faith as an excuse to pass and uphold laws that seize control of people’s bodies but not guarantee them healthcare, feed the poor, shelter the homeless, or welcome the stranger, you have to wonder if it’s really about faith at all.
📊 FiveThirtyEight: Biden is up 10.6% (52.4% Biden vs 41.8% Trump) in 538’s Poll-of-Polls http://53eig.ht/3dbyskN This is up from post-convention low of ✛6.6% on 9/19. Never has Biden been below 50% post convention ● https://twitter.com/Auriandra/status/1315685150068551685?s=20/photo/1
WaPo, Jennifer Rubin: Republicans played victims in the first Barrett hearing. Democrats made the case against Republicans. http://wapo.st/3dlzUTj “If they save the seat, it would be a windfall; if they send more and more Republicans packing on Nov. 3, that’s a win, too”
Among the best of the Democrats was Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.), whose presentation, cadence and passion have been well-crafted, both as a presidential candidate and now a surrogate for former vice president Joe Biden.
⋙ 💽 Amy Klobuchar segment Her remarks are worth watching in full http://cs.pn/2InXtj8
She was right to declare the hearing a “sham,” given that Republicans, in rushing through Barrett’s nomination, are refusing to pass a coronavirus relief package for the American people. “I think it shows real messed-up priorities from this Republican Party,” Klobuchar said. “But I am here anyway to do a job. To tell the truth.” She slammed Republicans for pushing Barrett’s nomination, even as Americans were already voting and even though they refused to consider Judge Merrick Garland in March 2016. She traced out the likely consequences of Barrett’s judicial philosophy — ending the ACA, eroding the legal right to abortion, striking down health care legislation. She made certain to point out that President Trump was seeking to put her on the court so that she could hand him the election, should it be disputed.
⋙ Amy Coney Barrett SCOTUS Nomination Threads:
🐣 Live-tweeting Hearings:
🧵 @SCOTUSblog ¤ https://twitter.com/SCOTUSblog/status/1315640381627871238?s=20
🧵 @peoplefor [PFAW] ¤ https://twitter.com/peoplefor/status/1315638230235189249?s=20
🧵 @sahilkapur ¤ https://twitter.com/sahilkapur/status/1315639093523632128?s=20 ¤
🧵 RT @peoplefor [PFAW] As Amy Coney Barrett’s Supreme Court nominations hearings start, remember: we know that confirming Barrett would jeopardize our health care, our reproductive rights, our civil rights, and more. ¤ To protect our health care and our rights, senators must #BlockBarrett #WeDissent 📌 https://twitter.com/peoplefor/status/1315638230235189249?s=20
🧵 RT @SCOTUSblog Chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee Lindsey Graham (SC) gavels the room into session with some housekeeping remarks and then speaks about Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg getting confirmed with a bipartisan vote of 96-3. 📌 https://twitter.com/SCOTUSblog/status/1315640381627871238?s=20
🧵 RT @sahilkapur Lindsey Graham and Dianne Feinstein chat before the Amy Coney Barrett Supreme Court hearings begin. 📌 https://twitter.com/sahilkapur/status/1315639093523632128?s=20
⭕ 11 Oct 2020
🐣 RT @MarshallCohen NEW: Deep dive on “information laundering” under Trump. ODNI puts out unverified Russian info about Trump’s opponents ¤ Fox News gives it 24/7 attention without context ¤ Trump gets worked up and tells DOJ to jail Biden, etc. w/ @oliverdarcy @ZcohenCNN
⋙ CNN: How Team Trump used Fox News as a laundromat for unverified Russian information about top Democrats http://cnn.it/3jReHDn
Trump, with the help of outlets like Fox News, has been pushing a dishonest narrative in touting intelligence documents that his administration declassified last month on the eve of the first presidential debate. They claimed the information was a supposed smoking gun proving that Hillary Clinton and the Obama administration sought to frame Trump with a Russian collusion scandal.
But when examined closely the documents indicate no such thing. In fact, by the Trump administration’s own admission, they are based on unverified Russian intelligence that could be totally bogus. Which is to say that the President and Fox News personalities such as Sean Hannity and Tucker Carlson are hyping and disseminating information that originates from a foreign adversary to bludgeon top Democratic officials.
Trump and his allies have even gone so far as to demand or suggest that President Barack Obama and former Vice President Joe Biden should be charged with actual crimes — again, resting much of their case on unverified Russian chatter and other cherry-picked material that the Central Intelligence Agency and National Security Agency warned against releasing, as CNN previously reported. …
In other words, the US government picked up on Russians discussing Clinton’s political strategy to highlight Trump’s connections to Russia. This is no bombshell: Clinton’s political strategy played out in public view during the 2016 campaign — in tweets and TV interviews — and it was true that Trump’s team had extensive contacts with Russians, which they worked hard to keep secret during and after the 2016 campaign. …
According to sources and Barr’s own recent public comments, Durham’s work is not expected to conclude before the election. Instead, Trump and right-wing news outlets have relied on these document dumps from Ratcliffe and Barr to fill the void and speculate about future indictments.
But Ratcliffe’s document dumps are a tell-tale sign that there likely won’t be any eye-popping indictments stemming from the Durham investigation. Ratcliffe wouldn’t be turning over these sensitive documents to Congress — and to the public — if they were needed for upcoming criminal prosecutions, according to current and former Justice Department officials.
Instead Ratcliffe and congressional Republicans are releasing the documents now, helping to stoke outrage in conservative media and feeding Trump’s diatribes in his several-times-a-day interviews with Fox News and other conservative talk show hosts.
“What they are doing is the most severe politicization of intelligence in history,” said Nick Shapiro, former CIA deputy chief of staff under Brennan.
🐣 RT @MSNBC “Abraham Lincoln was up for re-election and it was 27 days before the election and a seat became open on the United States Supreme Court,” Sen. Harris says at #vpdebate. “But, Honest Abe said, it’s not the right thing to do. The American people deserve to make the decision.” 💽 https://twitter.com/MSNBC/status/1315442123492163584?s=20/photo/1
💙 🐣 RT @60Minutes They’ve worked on election campaigns for big-name Republicans like Giuliani, Rubio, McCain, Kasich, and George W. Bush. Now these Republican strategists have banded together to defeat the candidate of their own party. ¤ Inside the Lincoln Project, tonight. https://cbsn.ws/30R28Av 💽 https://twitter.com/60Minutes/status/1315376215205851137?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @60Minutes “None of us will ever work in Republican politics again,” says longtime GOP strategist Steve Schmidt about the likely consequences of being part of a super PAC whose mission is to defeat President Trump’s re-election. https://cbsn.ws/30XFhTU 💽 https://twitter.com/60Minutes/status/1315445804526694401?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @kylegriffin1 Chuck Schumer is calling on Amy Coney Barrett to commit to recusing herself from cases involving the Affordable Care Act and the 2020 election if confirmed. ¤ Schumer says Barrett has “serious conflicts of interest.” [Axios link] https://twitter.com/kylegriffin1/status/1315434504782336004?s=20
🐣 RT @DemWrite This. Is. Blistering. Trump’s epic failure on COVID, in 10 succinct minutes. ¤ Everyone in America should see this. From @ByDonkeys: #DemCast 💽 https://twitter.com/DemWrite/status/1315393284043235329?s=20/photo/1
// Timeline
⭕ 10 Oct 2020
DailyBeast, Asawin Suebsaeng and Spencer Ackerman: Team Trump Admits Its ‘Russiagate’ Head Fake Has Been a Flop http://bit.ly/2GI43R0
// Loyalists like Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe are trying to craft a counter-narrative. But the country isn’t in the mood for the tale.
.
“That’s just everything now—the Post Office as a domestic political weapon, the census is being used as one,” said a former senior intelligence official. “The right wing has come around to the view that it is legitimate to use every aspect of government as leverage to preserve their own political power and destroy their enemies. That’s the reality of where we are. There’s no rational view of the proper job of intelligence agencies that says it’s to protect the president.”Intelligence veterans are quick to point to the very long history of politicized intelligence, from the Bay of Pigs to Iran-Contra to Iraq. They also observe that previous politicization was typically tied to a foreign target, rather than a domestic political fight, something that highlights the blatancy of Ratcliffe and Trump’s efforts. “There was a set of rules both sides played by, even if they politicized their analysis like [Bush-era Undersecretary of Defense] Doug Feith did to support a desired policy,” Mowatt-Larsen said. “The aberration here is that it’s being used purely to support the president in an election context. That’s an unacceptable politicization.”
CIA allies are quick to point out that none of the multiple inquiries into Russian election interference have substantiated Trump’s narrative of Clinton’s campaign inventing a hoax of Russia collusion. Instead, they’ve validated the 2017 intelligence assessment that Russia intervened on Trump’s behalf.
[A] former official thought the domestic weaponization of intelligence wasn’t necessarily a permanent feature of elite American politics. But the official said it depended on Republican moneymen repudiating Trump and compelling the party to abandon his mode of politics. That’s something that they haven’t done in four years–and something capital, historically, never does against nationalisms. “Is the result of this election definitive enough that the Republican Party decides we’re going to change our approach, or are they locked in?” the ex-official said. “It’s all going to come down to the plutocrats that fund the Republican Party.”
Mowatt-Larssen, author of the memoir A State of Mind: Faith and The CIA, agreed there was nothing inevitable about permanent domestic politicization of intelligence. But he said the intelligence agencies needed to “purge” themselves of habits of acquiescence to political figures.
“The first thing you need to do is restore your reputation and purge—I use that word deliberately—all the ways you’ve been intimidated, cajoled and persuaded to join a political enterprise. The intelligence agencies have to recognize there is now a problem with their truth-seeking character, objectivity, independence and nonpolitical role now being in question,” he said. “What’s clear is there’s been a trend toward politicization that has gotten really bad, and the intelligence community is aware they’re under assault.”
Trump is confident that a nation mired in a pandemic and corresponding economic disaster cares about relitigating the Russia investigations. “The American people are totally aware of this,” he assured Limbaugh.
⭕ 9 Oct 2020
WaPo: Trump, lagging in polls, pressures Justice Dept. to target Democrats and criticizes Barr http://wapo.st/2SJV1oR “Barr has sought to lower expectations in recent weeks, making sure that senior officials in the West Wing are not expecting anything before the election”
The delayed report is “a disgrace,” and Trump’s 2016 Democratic opponent, Hillary Clinton, should be jailed, Trump said in a rambling radio interview, one day after he argued on Twitter that his current Democratic opponent, Joe Biden, is a criminal who should be barred from running.
“The behavior would be shocking in a normal presidency, but Trump has literally been doing this for years,” Harvard Law School professor Jack Goldsmith, a Justice Department official in the George W. Bush administration, said of Trump’s calls to go after Democrats. “So it is reprehensible, but not shocking.”
🐣 RT @forwardarc Gretchen Whitmer: When Trump told the Proud Boys to “stand back and stand by” during the first presidential debate, he is complicit. Hate groups heard the president’s words not as a rebuke, but as a rallying cry. As a call to action.
⋙ WaPo, Gretchen Whitmer: I will hold the president accountable for endangering and dividing America http://wapo.st/3nxnmNr
WaPo, Greg Sargent: On Hannity’s show, Trump reveals his corrupt, panicky endgame http://wapo.st/30PHbpq “Law enforcement is telling me that they are ready for a volatile and potentially violent period as we ramp up to the election and beyond” ~ Frank Figliuzzi
⭕ 8 Oct 2020
JustSecurity, Justin Hendrix (10/8): Six Disinformation Threats in the Post-Election Period http://bit.ly/31WW9L8 ● /photo/1
// Those seeking to sow discord may be keeping their powder dry until after November 3rd
CNN: US counterintelligence chief says foreign adversaries are exploiting Trump’s lies to influence election http://cnn.it/2SPnWIg
The top US intelligence official on election security says that foreign adversaries are exploiting lies by President Donald Trump in their campaigns to influence the 2020 election.
Bill Evanina, the Director of the National Counterintelligence and Security Center, agreed when asked by Hearst Television that foreign powers are using the numerous exaggerated and false claims Trump has made about mail-in voting, voting multiple times and 2020 being the most fraudulent election in history.
Evanina was asked about a list of false claims about mail-in voting and voter fraud that the President has made, which the interviewer, Mark Albert, called “false statements.” Evanina did not directly address the truthfulness of Trump’s claims but did say they’re being amplified by foreign adversaries.
“If they see a reference made by the President of the United States, a prominent US Senator, a business person, someone who America looks at as a voice of reason, and they believe it suits their interests, they will amplify that by a thousand to make sure that the most amount of people see it,” Evanina said.
Mail-in voting is a favorite target of Trump’s, who has routinely spread false information on the way many Americans plan to vote during the pandemic.
🐣 RT @RadioFreeTom Seriously, people should be listening to this interview with Hannity, because the president is basically just calling for violence at this point.
⋙ 🐣 RT @htheike77 We knew this is where this was going to go, & now we are approaching Nov 3- the time when it was going to happen. He has been prepping them for this for a very, very long time. This was his plan all along. The FBI has tried to sound the alarm- Barr has covered it up.
CNN: Prestigious medical journal calls for US leadership to be voted out over Covid-19 failure http://cnn.it/2SH0fSi “‘They have taken a crisis and turned it into a tragedy,’ the editorial says”
In an unprecedented move, the New England Journal of Medicine on Wednesday published an editorial written by its editors condemning the Trump administration for its response to the Covid-19 pandemic — and calling for the current leadership in the United States to be voted out of office.
“We rarely publish editorials signed by all the editors,” said Dr. Eric Rubin, editor-in-chief of the medical journal and an author of the new editorial.
The editorial, which Rubin said was drafted in August, details how the United States leads the world in Covid-19 cases and deaths. So far, more than 7.5 million people in the United States have been diagnosed with Covid-19 and more than 200,000 people have died of the disease.
“This crisis has produced a test of leadership. With no good options to combat a novel pathogen, countries were forced to make hard choices about how to respond. Here in the United States, our leaders have failed that test. They have taken a crisis and turned it into a tragedy,” the editorial says.
NYT, Mary McCord: The Plot Against Gretchen Whitmer Shows the Danger of Private Militias http://nyti.ms/3ltTakE Ms McCord was an acting assistant attorney general for national security.
// These groups have no constitutional right to exist.
🐣 RT @MargLTaylor I’m concerned that the bizarre conservative push recently to say “the US is a republic not a democracy” is to lay the groundwork for Republican state legislatures to disregard the popular vote in key states.
⋙ 🐣 RT @KenGardner11 It isn’t recent. We don’t decide issues merely by majority vote. The states (represented in the Senate) must also approve legislation. And we don’t decide presidential elections by majority vote either. Candidates do sometimes win the presidency despite losing the popular vote.
⋙⋙ 🐣 RT @MargLTaylor I think I was too subtle in my tweet. The point is, we are both. So what are people who draw this distinction trying to achieve?
⋙⋙ ⋙ WaPo, Eugene Volokh (2015): Is the United States of America a republic or a democracy? http://wapo.st/30IRgEL
// 5/23/2015
⋙⋙ 🐣 RT @KenGardner11 The people who want democracy really want all issues and all elections (even President) to be decided by majority rule. The people who emphasize that we are a Republic emphasize that our constitution imposes some limits on majority rule to protect minorities or individuals.
⋙⋙⋙ 🐣 But now we are moving to dictatorship by a corrupt minority drawing fuel from resentful populations. This has happened before, if elsewhere
WaPo: Citing 25th Amendment, Pelosi, Raskin move to create panel that could rule on president’s fitness for office http://wapo.st/3iJy2oC “[Pelosi] previewed the move on Thursday, telling reporters that she would discuss the 25th Amendment on Friday”
🐣 RT @kyledcheney TRUMP campaign fundraising email just now says Biden shouldn’t be allowed to run and needs to “pay the price.” https://twitter.com/kyledcheney/status/1314332502379704320?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @DavidCornDC This article suggests that the president of the United Stares—the man who controls the nuclear arsenal—may be suffering steroids-induced mania. And not one Republican has expressed concern about this.
🔆 This❗️⋙ NYT: Trump Lashes Out at His Cabinet With Calls to Indict Political Rivals http://nyti.ms/3nyvWeH
// By Peter Baker and Maggie Haberman; The pressure on his top administration officials to take action came as President Trump bristled at the restraints of his illness.
The president castigated his own team, declaring that Attorney General William P. Barr would go down in history “as a very sad, sad situation” if he did not indict Democrats like Mr. Biden and former President Barack Obama. He complained that Secretary of State Mike Pompeo had not released Hillary Clinton’s emails, saying, “I’m not happy about him for that reason.” And he targeted Christopher A. Wray, the F.B.I. director. “He’s been disappointing,” Mr. Trump said.
“Unless Bill Barr indicts these people for crimes, the greatest political crime in the history of our country, then we’re going to get little satisfaction unless I win and we’ll just have to go, because I won’t forget it,” Mr. Trump said, referring to the investigation into his 2016 campaign ties with Russia. “But these people should be indicted. This was the greatest political crime in the history of our country, and that includes Obama and it includes Biden.”
Mr. Trump has often argued that his political antagonists should be prosecuted, but in this case, he went further by indicating that he had directly pressured Mr. Barr to indict without waiting for more evidence. “He’s got all the information he needs,” the president said. “They want to get more, more, more, they keep getting more. I said, ‘You don’t need any more.’”
The president was all over the map in his two Fox phone calls, throwing out unsubstantiated or discredited accusations, explaining that he wanted to bring home troops from Afghanistan to be ready to fight China or Russia if necessary and calling Gov. Gretchen Whitmer of Michigan “the lockup queen” even as his own Justice Department was announcing the existence of an anti-government group’s plot to kidnap her.
As for his opponents, he said on Fox Business that Mr. Biden “wouldn’t be president for two months” because “he’s not mentally capable,” leaving Ms. Harris to then take over the presidency. “She’s a communist,” he said. “We’re going to have a communist.” A few hours later, Mr. Trump reposted Twitter messages claiming that Speaker Nancy Pelosi might be orchestrating “a coup” against him.
Mr. Trump told his Fox interviewers that he felt well despite his hospitalization, although during his evening phone call with Sean Hannity, his voice at times sounded raspy and twice he had to clear his throat. …
Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the majority leader, even indicated that he was boycotting the White House because of its lax handling of the virus.
“I haven’t actually been to the White House since August the 6th because my impression was that their approach to how to handle this is different from mine and what I suggested that we do in the Senate, which is to wear a mask and practice social distancing,” Mr. McConnell told reporters.
After being rebuffed by the White House, the Washington city government’s health department released an open letter to the staff members and guests who attended a Sept. 26 ceremony in the Rose Garden that has been blamed for the outbreak, imploring them to get tested for the virus. Crede Bailey, the head of the White House security office, has been hospitalized and a fourth White House journalist tested positive on Thursday.
Ms. Pelosi said she planned to introduce legislation on Friday creating a commission on presidential capacity to review the health of a commander in chief under provisions of the 25th Amendment providing for the temporary transfer of power to the vice president in case of inability to discharge the duties of the office. “Crazy Nancy is the one who should be under observation,” Mr. Trump replied on Twitter.
… He said he was no longer taking the experimental drugs used to treat the virus, but he added that he was still taking a steroid that doctors say can produce bursts of energy, euphoria and even a sense of invulnerability.
“I felt pretty lousy,” Mr. Trump said. But, he added, “I’m back because I’m a perfect physical specimen and I’m extremely young.” He once again played down the severity of the disease. “Now what happens is you get better,” he said. “That’s what happens, you get better.”
Mr. Trump later released a video addressed specifically to senior citizens, who were once his political base but have increasingly soured on him as they have been disproportionately affected by the pandemic, according to polls.
“To my favorite people in the world, the seniors,” he said in the video. “I’m a senior. I know you don’t know that. Nobody knows that. Maybe you don’t have to tell them. But I’m a senior.”
Acknowledging that he had been “very sick,” he praised the experimental treatments he was given for the virus and vowed to provide them to seniors. “I want you to get the same care that I got,” he said. “You’re going to get the same medicine. You’re going to get it free, no charge, and we’re going to get it to you soon.”
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention say that a person infected with the coronavirus can be with other people 10 days after symptoms first appear if the patient has gone 24 hours free of fever without the use of medication that reduces temperatures and if other symptoms are improving.
The onset of the president’s symptoms remains murky; if he started feeling sick on Oct. 1, the day he reported testing positive, then a Saturday return would be premature by C.D.C. guidelines. If he had his first symptoms the day before, then Saturday would meet the 10-day mark. Mr. Trump’s doctors have said he has not experienced fever in days, but the dexamethasone steroid he is taking is known to hide a fever.
Experts said resuming a public schedule might worsen Mr. Trump’s condition, which could still rapidly deteriorate in the next several days. Covid-19, an unpredictable disease, can suddenly and unexpectedly worsen during a patient’s second week of illness. Based on the information provided, “No, I would not clear him to start public engagements on Saturday,” said Dr. Phyllis Tien, an infectious disease physician at the University of California, San Francisco, where she conducts and advises on Covid-19 clinical trials.
White House aides privately expressed concern about whether the president’s animated mood in recent days stemmed from the dexamethasone. Doctors not involved with the president’s care said it could have a significant effect on a patient’s behavior.
Dr. Negin Hajizadeh, a pulmonary/critical care physician at Northwell Health, noted that the majority of Covid patients receiving dexamethasone are on mechanical ventilation and in a state of induced coma, so they do not exhibit any behavioral side effects. But, she said, large studies show that generally 28 to 30 percent of patients will exhibit mild to moderate psychiatric side effects like anxiety, insomnia, mania or delirium after receiving steroid treatments, and about 6 percent may develop psychosis.
“When we prescribe steroids we warn our patients: ‘This may cause you to feel jittery, might cause you to feel irritable,’” Dr. Hajizadeh said. “We will tell family members, especially for our older patients, ‘This may cause insomnia, this may cause changes in eating habits and, in extreme cases, mania and impaired decision making.’”
Watching the news coverage and angry at the state of the race, Mr. Trump has been imploring aides to let him resume campaign rallies as soon as this weekend. He showed up again in the Oval Office on Thursday despite efforts to get him to remain in the residence until he was more fully recovered. In addition to the attempt to hold a rally in Florida on Saturday, he said he would try to stage one the following day in Pennsylvania. …
Alex Conant, a Republican strategist and former aide to Senator Marco Rubio of Florida, said that the Trump campaign was entering a dangerous period, one when a campaign heading for a possible defeat can become treacherous.
“The knives come out, the donors flee and the candidate throws embarrassing Hail Marys,” he said. “Most politicians can handle losing a race, but they really don’t want to be embarrassed. When a loss seems inevitable, people who want a future in politics start looking out for their own interests. People start looking over their shoulders.”
🐣 RT @Amy_Siskind Lol Richard Grenell, who embarrassingly for our country served as DNI, got locked out of Twitter for tweeting false claims about voter fraud. ¤ Now do Trump.
🧵 RT @atrupar Trump won’t tell Hannity if he’s had a negative coronavirus test. He just ignores the question and starts ranting. 📌 https://twitter.com/atrupar/status/1314379349781553152?s=20
// Trump phone call with Hannity; hoarse, coughing, voice gives out
⋙ 🐣 RT @atrupar “California is gonna have to ration water. You wanna know why? Because they send millions of gallons of water out to sea, out to the Pacific. Because they want to take care of certain little tiny fish, that aren’t doing very well without water.” — Trump
⋙ 🐣 RT @atrupar Trump concludes his interview with Hannity by claiming that Mike Pence refusing to commit to a peaceful transition of power during the VP debate was his “best answer” of the night
💙 🐣 RT @EvanMcMullin Refusing to even consider another party’s Supreme Court nomination ‘because it occurred in the final year of a presidency’ and then rushing through your own party’s nomination in the final months of the next presidency is itself a form of court packing.
⋙ 🐣 RT @EvanMcMullin If Republicans in Congress are truly concerned about court packing – as they should be – they should’ve considered Garland’s confirmation in 2016 or remain consistent now and defer this confirmation until the next presidency. Trying to have it both ways is politicizing the court.
🐣 RT @MikeBalsamo1 NEW: Friction is growing in the Trump-Barr relationship over the Durham probe. Trump feels he’s given Barr wide latitude on Russia & wants more charges. While Barr understands Trump’s frustration, he won’t tolerate interference in specific investigations.
⋙ AP: Trump, Barr at odds over slow pace of Durham investigation http://bit.ly/2FcSUa0
… [T]he tensions between Trump and the attorney general over the fate of the probe underscore the extent to which the president is aggressively trying to use all of the levers of his power to gain ground in an election that has been moving away from him. ¤ In the absence of blockbuster findings, Trump is now moving to make documents public himself with his new acting head of intelligence.
… A report from the Justice Department’s inspector general in December knocked down multiple lines of attack against the Russia investigation, finding that it was properly opened and that law enforcement leaders were not motivated by political bias. But Barr has said he and Durham disagreed with the inspector general over whether the FBI had enough information to open a full investigation and, in particular, to use surveillance on a former Trump campaign aide.
WaPo: Longtime GOP fundraiser Elliott Broidy charged with acting as a foreign agent, is likely to plead guilty http://wapo.st/3daq1I6
↥ ↧
On Maddow:
Trump Campaign Finance Committee
Steve Wynn, stepped away from casino business over sexual harassment scandal
Michael Cohen, Trump lawyer, convicted for perjury
⋙ Elliott Broidy, just indicted ~ guilty plea expected
Louis DeJoy, “guy Trump put in charge of messing up the post office”
(George Nader) ~ business ties to Broidy; imprisoned for child pornography
💽 TheIndependent [UK]: Trump gives Bill Barr ultimatum as he demands roundup of political enemies http://bit.ly/2SDNqIv //➔ This is stunning, really
// Rambling phone interview on Fox Business sees president vent rage about rivals’ supposed crimes against him
During a live phone-in on Fox Business, Donald Trump complained again that not enough of his political enemies have been arrested – and said attorney general Bill Barr could find himself in “a sad situation” if he doesn’t start rounding them up.
The blunt warning comes after Mr Trump left Walter Reed Medical Centre and returned to Twitter with a blizzard of angry tweets and retweets, many of them calling for the indictment of Obama administration figures.
The president’s rambling and ill-tempered interview with Maria Bartiromo on Thursday saw him run through a long list of his usual grievances, but he was particularly rancorous on the subject of supposed Obama-era “crimes” against him for which he wants to see his predecessor indicted, along with Joe Biden, Hillary Clinton and many others.
“Unless Bill Barr indicts these people for crimes,” declared the president, “the greatest political crime in the history of our country, then we’re gonna get little satisfaction unless I win. Because I won’t forget it. But these people should be indicted, this was the greatest political crime in the history of our country. And that includes Obama, and that includes Biden; these are people that spied on my campaign, and we have everything.
“Now they say they have much more, and I say Bill, you got plenty. You don’t need any more.”
Read more: How many presidents have lost a second term?
Comparing Mr Barr unflatteringly to former acting director of national intelligence Richard Grennell and successor John Ratcliffe, both of whom have released documents related to the Russia investigation, Mr Trump gave his attorney general a warning.
“To be honest, Bill Barr’s gonna go down either as the greatest attorney general in the history of the country or he’s gonna go down as a very sad, sad situation. I mean, I’ll be honest with you. He’s got all the information he needs. They wanna get more, more, more, they keep getting more, I say: ‘You don’t need any more. You got more stuff than anybody’s ever had.’”
Mr Trump has complained for years that various Democrats should be “locked up”, even telling Hillary Clinton to her face at a 2016 debate that she would be “in jail” if he won. (His administration has not investigated her in any meaningful way.)
However, in the last year or so, he has begun insisting ever more furiously that the Obama team committed crimes against him, in particular saying Mr Obama spied on his campaign.
[ Tweets: ]
All Russia Hoax Scandal information was Declassified by me long ago. Unfortunately for our Country, people have acted very slowly, especially since it is perhaps the biggest political crime in the history of our Country. Act!!!
So I had to constantly fight off all of this Scum, achieve more than any other President in First Term, and then they talk Chaos. They created crimes against me and this administration!
Where are all of the arrests? Can you imagine if the roles were reversed? Long term sentences would have started two years ago. Shameful!
NOW THAT THE RADICAL LEFT DEMOCRATS GOT CAUGHT COLD IN THE (NON) FRIENDLY TRANSFER OF GOVERNMENT, IN FACT, THEY SPIED ON MY CAMPAIGN AND WENT FOR A COUP, WE ARE ENTITLED TO ASK THE VOTERS FOR FOUR MORE YEARS. PLEASE REMEMBER THIS WHEN YOU VOTE!
Wow!!! NOW DO SOMETHING ABOUT THIS, THE BIGGEST OF ALL POLITICAL SCANDALS (IN HISTORY)!!! BIDEN, OBAMA AND CROOKED HILLARY LED THIS TREASONOUS PLOT!!! BIDEN SHOULDN’T BE ALLOWED TO RUN – GOT CAUGHT!!!
Girl♥️Bot
@AMErikaNGIRLLL
The highest ranking members of the FBI , NSA and CIA were not only spying on Trump- They were trying to subvert his election win with #FakeIntelligence and a #FakeInvestigation 🔥Later in the Fox Business interview, while expounding the theme of Hillary Clinton’s State Department emails, Mr Trump appeared to suggest that he might take a more active role in his proposed criminal roundups.
“She should be indicted for that!” he shouted down the phone. “If people delete emails in a regular court case – she deleted 33,000 emails and nothing happens to her! Our justice system, nothing happens to her. With all of the pages of stuff, thousands of pages that we have on them, nothing happens to them, nothing happens.
“And you know, I said I’m gonna not get involved, I’m gonna have to get involved, because these people are crooked people.”
WaPo, Aaron Blake: Down in the polls and yearning for an October surprise, Trump lashes at his most loyal allies http://wapo.st/33J7wYa Trump goes after Barr for not indicting his political enemies and after Pompeo for supposedly sitting on information to support such indictments
There was much about President Trump’s Thursday morning interview with Fox Business host Maria Bartiromo that reeked of desperation and an incumbent president fighting for his political life. He decided to go down the “unlikable” path with Sen. Kamala D. Harris (D-Calif.) and called her a “monster.” He said he wouldn’t participate in a virtual debate with former vice president Joe Biden next week. He suggested he might win heavily blue New York state. He even cast doubt on polls showing him down by double digits — by pointing to boaters and truck owners who support him.
But perhaps nothing in the interview reflected his precarious position quite like what he said about some of his most loyal allies. And the theme of each was the same: These people aren’t doing enough to further his political goals by linking his prominent foes to crimes.
Less than 12 hours earlier, Trump’s loyal vice president, Mike Pence, won plaudits from conservatives for his debate performance against Harris. But Trump hijacked the debate news with an interview that included targeting arguably his two most loyal Cabinet members — Attorney General William P. Barr and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo — along with FBI Director Christopher A. Wray.
Trump built upon tweets this week suggesting Barr needs to start indicting people tied to the Russia investigation, while explicitly citing President Barack Obama and Biden.
“Unless Bill Barr indicts these people for crimes — the greatest political crime in the history of our country — then we’re going to get little satisfaction, unless I win,” Trump said, adding that he “won’t forget it” and that the crime “includes Obama, and that includes Biden.”
Trump also said at another point that “Bill has got to move” and that he would go down in history as a “very sad situation” if he doesn’t indict people. He said the Justice Department keeps asking for more information but that it already has all the information it needs.
But Obama and Biden weren’t the only ones Trump implicated in crimes and suggested he wanted his Cabinet officials to target. He also expressed rare dissatisfaction with Pompeo, who he said should release some sort of new information on Hillary Clinton’s emails.
“They’re in the State Department, but Mike Pompeo has been unable to get them out, which is very sad actually. I’m not happy about him for that reason,” Trump said. “He was unable to get that. I don’t know why. You’re running the State Department; you’re able to get them out.”
It wasn’t clear exactly what Trump was referring to, since the State Department has already released emails that it had.
While Trump has leaned on Barr before, and Barr has at least attempted to offer a veneer of criticizing Trump, the rebuke of Pompeo was highly unusual. Pompeo has bent over backward for Trump, dating back to his time as CIA director, and there’s rarely been daylight between the two men.
Trump also critiqued both men at multiple points in the interview, suggesting this was a concerted push rather than just a couple of one-off comments.
“Forget about the fact that they were classified,” Trump said of Clinton’s emails. “Let’s go. Maybe Mike Pompeo finally finds them, okay?”
Trump also reserved some of his harshest words to date for Wray, who has recently contradicted Trump’s baseless claims about massive mail-in voter fraud. Trump declined to say whether he would fire Wray.
“He’s been disappointing,” Trump said. “He talks about even the voting thing, that he doesn’t see the voting ballots as a problem,” he added before stating a baseless claim about voter fraud.
The 2016 election, it bears emphasizing, arguably turned on a late announcement from then-FBI Director James B. Comey about newly discovered Clinton emails. Trump is basically asking for the exact same thing from Pompeo — and publicly so. But it seems he would settle for something supposedly incriminating involving Obama and Biden, too.
Trump has been ramping up the pressure on Barr in recent days, and Thursday’s interview was a fusillade of pleas for his allies to use their legal powers to further his political goals. If Trump’s political standing doesn’t improve — and perhaps even if it does — you can bet there will be more where this came from over the next four weeks.
🐣 RT @clearing_fog Trump tweets ¤ April 17, 2020 https://twitter.com/clearing_fog/status/1314302938227990528?s=20/photo/1
// ‘Liberate VA MI MN’
‼️ 🐣 RT @danielsgoldman Let me get this straight: the “coup” started when Comey “overstepped his authority” and exonerated Clinton, leading to his announcement just days before the election that he reopened the investigation, all while those “working against” Trump didnt leak that investigation? Gotcha.
⋙ 🐣 RT @SenRonJohnson What is the greater threat to our democracy—transparency, or the continued coverup of an attempted coup against the duly elected president? Read my @WSJopinion
⋙⋙🚫 WSJ, Ron Johnson: An American Coup Attempt http://on.wsj.com/30M8W22
// omg; Time may be running out to expose the effort to overthrow Trump, which began before his election.
🐣 RT @JRehling If the suspects are Black, the media calls them rioters.
If the suspects are Muslim, the media calls them terrorists.
If the suspects look like ZZ Top, the media calls them a militia.
https://twitter.com/JRehling/status/1314298883665608704?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @FloridaBiden 👇 https://twitter.com/FloridaBiden/status/1314238882586787840?s=20/photo/1
// Reasons to Vote Him Out
🚫🐣 RT @Acosta Trump on Harris: “She wants to open up the borders to allow killers, murderers and rapists into our country.”
// disinfo
⁉️🐣 RT @BeschlossDC Now @JonLemire of AP reports that Mike Pence has canceled engagements scheduled for Indiana tomorrow and is instead returning to DC.
🐣 RT @kasparov63 Whenever a politician talks about achieving liberty and prosperity without democracy, get ready to take to the streets.
🐣 RT @PeteButtigieg Democracies are much better at delivering liberty, peace, and prosperity. That’s why we’re fighting so hard for democracy right now.
⋙ 🐣 RT @SenMikeLee Democracy isn’t the objective; liberty, peace, and prospefity are. We want the human condition to flourish. Rank democracy can thwart that.
🐣 RT @robertjdenault AG Barr contemplated charging BLM protestors with insurrection while he was aware of an *actual plot* to overthrow the government of Michigan by right-wing fanatics. ¤ People must recognize the seriousness of this moment. If the plot had succeeded it could have triggered.. a lot.
⋙ 🐣 RT @TaraLOGrady And FBI Director Chris Wray is the only person left standing between these plots and the American people yet trump and Bill Barr want him removed & will fire him immediately after the election
⋙⋙ 🐣 RT @AjleDr Exactly and if the FBI had not started to reassert its independence it probably would have been successful. Trump already has his troublemakers lined up. This was a test run. If anyone doesn’t believe me look at the past five years of trump atrocities while in office.
↥ ↧
🐣 RT @FBI Six Arrested on Federal Charge of Conspiracy to Kidnap the Governor of Michigan http://ow.ly/sVGI50BNBsm https://twitter.com/FBI/status/1314294597535887365?s=20/photo/1
// The Michigan Attorney General Charged Seven Additional Individuals Following a Coordinated Disruption of the Plan
🧵 RT @MichaelEHayden ICYMI: A Pro-Trump, anti-BLM blog popped up in the critical swing state of Pennsylvania this April. ¤ It was secretly authored by a U.S. white nationalist. We connected it to a network of Russian websites: 📌 https://twitter.com/MichaelEHayden/status/1314225868915564554?s=20
⋙ 🐣 RT @MichaelEHayden .@splcenter found that “Lancaster Patriot,” a Pennsylvania politics blog amplified by FOX News, is connected to a Russian malware site. ¤ It’s also linked to the Pro-Putin website Russia Insider:
⋙⋙ SPLC, Michael E Hayden : Far-Right Pennsylvania Politics Blog Was Mirrored by Obscure Russian Website http://bit.ly/2SFvtJM
🐣 RT @SachaBaronCohen It still feels bizarre to speak out in my own voice, but I wrote this for @TIME because Trump’s lies and conspiracies, spread by Facebook, threaten to kill more people—and democracy as we know it!
💙 TIME, Sacha Baron Cohen: We Must Save Democracy From Conspiracies http://bit.ly/2SE5YIQ “Trump clearly believes that his only hope for political survival is to spin an alternate universe”
⭕ 7 Oct 2020
💙 🧵 RT @atrupar The Pence-Harris vice presidential debate is about to begin. Follow for a video thread. 📌 https://twitter.com/atrupar/status/1314007886369095681?s=20
💙 🧵 RT @atrupar The Trump-Biden debate, moderated by Chris Wallace, is about to begin. Follow for a video thread. 📌 https://twitter.com/atrupar/status/1311108221990559748?s=20
// 9/29/2020
💙 WaPo (10/7): New Justice Dept. election fraud guidance could allow boosting of Trump’s exaggerated claims, legal observers say http://wapo.st/33GcNQ7 This is what the PA GOP legislature was trying to do, but now it’s nationwide DOJ policy
The Justice Department recently issued guidance giving federal prosecutors more leeway to take public action on suspected election fraud before ballots are in — a move that some legal analysts worry could foreshadow an effort to bolster President Trump’s exaggerated claims of fraud via mail-in voting.
The guidance, which came in an email from a career official in the department’s public integrity section, detailed what it called an “exception to the general non-interference with elections policy,” which discourages prosecutors from taking overt steps in fraud investigations until all ballots are counted and certified.
The exception would apply, the email indicated, “where the integrity of any component of the federal government is implicated by election offenses within the scope of the policy, including, but not limited to, misconduct by federal officials or employees administering an aspect of the voting process through the United States Postal Service, the Department of Defense, or any other federal department or agency.”
🐣 RT @JohnBrennan In debate, @Mike_Pence lied about handwritten notes of mine from 2016 that referenced unsubstantiated Russian allegation about Secretary Clinton. Follows DNI Ratcliffe’s politicized release of misleading snippets of documents. ¤ Russia helped Trump, and continues to. ¤ Full stop.
🐣 RT @joshrogin .@petestrzok on Radcliffe’s Russian intel: “There’s not anything nefarious there. [Trump’s allies] are trying to claim that Clinton spun all this up. This is clearly false. Her campaign did not.”
⋙ WaPo: Trump’s team trusts Russian intelligence over U.S. intelligence http://wapo.st/30CWGRF
🐣 RT @tribelaw “After all that America has accomplished, after all the years we have stood as a beacon of light to the world, it cannot be that here and now, in 2020, we will allow government of the people, by the people, and for the people to perish from this earth.” — @JoeBiden at Gettysburg
⭕ 6 Oct 2020
CNN: Former CIA director accuses intel chief of selectively declassifying documents to help Trump http://cnn.it/3d55rsF
Former CIA director John Brennan on Tuesday accused current intelligence chief John Ratcliffe of selectively declassifying documents ahead of the November election that benefit President Donald Trump, telling CNN that the decision to release materials gathered by the agency on Russian allegations that Hillary Clinton was planning on “stirring up a scandal” against her Republican rival in 2016 was motivated by politics.
“These were my notes from the 2016 period when I briefed President Obama and the rest of the national security council team about what the Russians were up to and I was giving examples of the type of access that the US intelligence community had to Russian information and what the Russians were talking about and alleging,” he added.
The former CIA director also pushed back on Ratcliffe’s declassification of a heavily redacted CIA memo related to the investigative referral forwarded to the FBI at the time. The memo notes that the Russians allege Clinton’s effort to stir up a scandal was “a means of distracting the public from her use of a private email server.”
“If, in fact, what the Russians were alleging that Hillary was trying to highlight the reported connections between Trump and the Russians, if that was accurate and a big if, there is nothing at all illegal about that,” Brennan said.
“John Ratcliffe and others are trying to portray this as unlawful activity that deserves follow-up investigation by the FBI. No. It was a campaign activity,” he added.
That message came during a Twitter spree attacking former FBI Director James Comey, former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe, former special counsel Robert Mueller and the FBI, where Trump said he will declassify the documents with “no redactions.” Trump was quote-tweeting Paul Sperry, a conservative journalist and fellow at the Hoover institution, who wrote that if the documents were declassified, it would show that “the FBI and CIA not only knew the Russia ‘collusion’ allegations against Trump were a political dirty trick, but that they were in on the trick.”
But Brennan told CNN Tuesday that the memo declassified by Ratcliffe, which he characterized as a Counterintelligence Operational Lead (CIOL), is just one of several documents that were sent to the FBI related to Russian activity during the 2016 race.
“There are a lot of other CIOLs that talk about the contacts that were taking place between individuals associated with the Trump campaign and the Russians. So he might want to think about trying to balance some of these releases by providing information to the American public about what theintelligence community had unearthed during this period of time about Russia’s interactions with those involved in the Trump campaign,” he said. …
NYT: Whistle-Blowing Scientist Quits Government With Final Broadside http://nyti.ms/3nlxMQl
// Dr. Rick Bright, who said he was demoted at the health department for blowing the whistle on a politicized coronavirus response, remains concerned about White House interference.
🐣 RT @DavidCornDC This is disinformation. ¤ HRC campaign was openly raising questions re Trump ties to Russia. ¤ It was right to do so. Manafort was colluding with a Russian intelligence officer. And @DonaldJTrumpJr had tried to collude with a Kremlin emissary. Read GOP-backed Sen intel report.
⋙ 🐣 RT @BrookeSingman EXCLUSIVE @DNI_Ratcliffe declassified docs revealing CIA Director Brennan briefed @BarackObama on @HillaryClinton “plan”to tie @realDonaldTrump to #Russia as “a means of distracting the public” from her use of “private email server”ahead of 2016 election
🔄 🐣 RT @KimZetter Georgetown law school has created a fact sheet for all 50 states explaining the laws barring unauthorized private militia groups and what to do if groups of armed individuals show up near a polling place or voter registration drive. http://bit.ly/30IlLup
NYT: From Gettysburg, Biden Calls for Healing of a ‘House Divided’ http://nyti.ms/33Ce8rd He “fram[ed] the election as a national emergency whose outcome will determine the trajectory and the character of the country for years to come”
// “We have too bright a future to have it shipwrecked on the shoals of anger and hate and division,” Joe Biden said in a speech near the Civil War battlefield in Pennsylvania.
↥ ↧
🔆 This❗️⋙ Rev: Joe Biden Gettysburg Campaign Speech (Transcript) October 6, 2020 http://bit.ly/3lkIC77 C-Span: Joe Biden Remarks in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania http://cs.pn/3d3KKgA
🐣 RT @NormOrnstein Starting January 21, we need an impeccable career prosecutor to head the Public Integrity Section at DOJ, and Preet Barara at SDNY. And we need the career people there to go after all the miscreants in Cabinet, WH, agencies. Without fear or favor. Crimes cannot go unpunished.
🐣 RT @BillKristol I have the highest regard for @GenMhayden as a public servant, and for Mike and @JchaydenJeanine as human beings. We’re honored to present this moving testimonial. It shows how important defeating @realDonaldTrump and electing @JoeBiden is to real patriots who love this country.
⋙ 🐣 RT @RVAT2020 NEW AD: Former Director of the CIA under Bush @GenMhayden: “If there is another term for Trump, I don’t know what happens to America.” 💽 https://twitter.com/RVAT2020/status/1313649181475704832?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @mitchellreports On Trump/Truman balcony photo op, @BeschlossDC: “A lot of that scene was chilling because it reminded us of scenes that people could have seen of the 1930s, from central Europe or Latin America. Someone strutting around trying to show his power.” #AMRstaff
🐣 RT @JoyceWhiteVance Absolutely no words. I resigned the night before Trump was inaugurated, in large part over concerns about how immigration laws would be enforced under Sessions (his rumored choice to be AG at that point) & not wanting to stick around for that, but this is truly unfathomable.
⋙ 🐣 RT @KatyTur Rod J. Rosenstein went even further…telling the five prosecutors that it did not matter how young the children were. He said that government lawyers should not have refused to prosecute two cases simply because the children were barely more than infants.
💙 🔆 This❗️⋙ NYT: ‘We Need to Take Away Children,’ No Matter How Young, Justice Dept. Officials Said http://nyti.ms/2I5dzxV ‘From the policy’s earliest days DOJ officials understood — and encouraged — the separation of children as an part of the plan to prosecute border crossers’
// Top department officials were “a driving force” behind President Trump’s child separation policy, a draft investigation report said.
🐣 RT @TheRickWilson 1/ Trump cut off stimulus talks. It’s almost as if he has a political death wish and will take down Republicans with him. ¤ His campaign people are staring mutely at the screens of their phones, stunned and depressed. ¤ Stepien was just on with the pollsters. Ooops. Blindsided.
🐣 RT @TheRickWilson 1/ Trump cut off stimulus talks. It’s almost as if he has a political death wish and will take down Republicans with him. ¤ His campaign people are staring mutely at the screens of their phones, stunned and depressed. ¤ Stepien was just on with the pollsters. Ooops. Blindsided.
2/ The desperation is growing in the campaign. They’ve watched the tracker. They see how badly they’ve bled out since the debate and his manic behavior since diagnosed. ¤ The stunts aren’t moving the numbers. Even the base is fading. Seniors fading. Noncollege whites fading.
3/ What happens next? Well, a lot of places are about to end rent and mortgage forebearance. The COVID bounce is coming. ¤ There is no vaccine. There is no scalable therapy. (What Trump got at Walter Reed was bespoke and expensive.) ¤ More pain is coming because he has failed.
4/ He has failed in every meaningful way and COVID will be his grim legacy. The Trump reality distortion field is cracked and broken; if he’s *lucky* history will brutalize him as a clown, a joke, a man without the intelligence to govern either the nation or himself.
5/ The more likely course of history will paint him forever as corrupt, mentally ill, and a wannabe authoritarian without a single redeeming quality. ¤ He will be seen as the first anti-American President, a man who reduced our nation at home and abroad.
6/ His elected enablers will lose, if not this cycle then next. Some will try to wash off Trumpism, but it’s a combination of septic muck, stripper glitter, and authoritarian nationalism. “Donald Who?” will rise from their lips daily. ¤ *They* were just being loyal to the party.
🐣 RT @FrankFigliusi Chris Wray may get fired for this. Must watch this video on election security from our intel leaders: @FBI #ChrisWrayHasBalls #Election2020
💙 ⋙ 💽 ≣ FBI: Safeguarding Your Vote: A Joint Message on Election Security http://bit.ly/36BNrF6
// video w transcript; The directors of the FBI, National Security Agency, Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, and National Counterintelligence and Security Center discuss their agencies’ commitment to protect the integrity of the 2020 election. More at fbi.gov/elections.
💽 ≣ FBI: Safeguarding Your Vote: A Joint Message on Election Security http://bit.ly/36BNrF6
// video w transcript; The directors of the FBI, National Security Agency, Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, and National Counterintelligence and Security Center discuss their agencies’ commitment to protect the integrity of the 2020 election. More at fbi.gov/elections.
🐣 RT @kyledcheney Even before he was out of Walter Reed, Trump confirmed through his chief of staff a directive to declassify new documents that his spy chief suggested raised questions about the attribution of 2016 election interference to Russia.
⋙ Politico: Trump rewrites the Russia probe from the hospital http://politi.co/3iGob2O
// by Natasha Bertrand, Andrew Desiderio, Kyle Cheney; The president declassified intelligence documents meant to implicate Clinton in 2016 meddling, but officials say they’re misleading
Trump authorized the declassification and release of documents this week based on intelligence that even his own advisers warn could be Russian disinformation, in what his allies have signaled is aimed at sowing doubt at the intelligence community’s conclusion that the meddling in the 2016 campaign came at the Kremlin’s direction — and was intended to boost his candidacy.
Some of those documents were released on Tuesday afternoon, including heavily redacted notes from former CIA Director John Brennan following a briefing with then-President Barack Obama. The notes describe intelligence reports that were drawn from Russian operatives, summaries of which Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe declassified last week. …
It also comes in the middle of an ongoing investigation by U.S. Attorney John Durham, who was tasked by the Justice Department with probing the intelligence community’s findings. Durham is expected to refrain from releasing any conclusions before Election Day to avoid impacting the race, but the recent declassifications by both Ratcliffe and Attorney General William Barr appear to be an effort to fill that void. Trump has taken full advantage of it, weaponizing the releases to boost his re-election campaign.
Former acting CIA Director Michael Morell, who endorsed Clinton in 2016, called Ratcliffe’s reclassifications “the most politicized act I’ve ever seen by a senior intel official” and “a blatant attempt to get votes for Donald Trump before the election.
“This is Russian disinformation designed to create the very political chaos that it’s creating. This is Putin playing with us,” he added. …
Brennan, for his part, has denied accusations by Trump’s allies that he politicized the intelligence community’s findings in January 2017, when it concluded that Moscow interfered with the goal of helping Trump.
“I left it up to the CIA components responsible for Russia, cyber, and counterintelligence to select the relevant experts, some of whom had served in the fusion cell, to write the report,” he wrote in his recently released book.
When two senior managers approached him in late 2016 and said they only had medium confidence in the assessment of Putin’s motives, Brennan suggested they raise their concerns with the analysts who wrote the report and had seen all of the raw intelligence, he recalled. The managers agreed, and never went back to Brennan with further issues, said a person familiar with the matter.
🐣 RT @JoeBiden As president, I will embrace:
Hope, not fear.
Peace, not violence.
Generosity, not greed.
Light, not darkness.
I will be a president who appeals to the best in us. Not the worst.
🐣 RT @oneunderscore_ Facebook’s QAnon ban is the most sweeping content moderation step I’ve seen from any social media company so far. ¤ This won’t just ban certain posts. Facebook will ban Groups, Pages and Instagram accounts that post about QAnon, a militarized movement.
⋙ NBCNews: Facebook bans QAnon across its platform http://nbcnews.to/3jPVFNP
// The change is a significant escalation over its previous actions targeting QAnon and one of the broadest rules the social media giant has put in place in its history.
🐣 RT @jimsciutto New: All but one member of the Joint Chiefs of Staff is now self-quarantining due to exposure at multiple meetings in recent days, including a meeting in Pentagon’s secure meeting space for classified information known as ‘the tank’, a defense official tells @barbarastarrcnn
🐣 RT @TomBossert For the good of collective public health, not just your own, please remember to avoid large gatherings (they are super spreader magnets), socially distance, wear a mask, isolate when sick, and quarantine after being in contact with someone sick. This pandemic is far from over.
⋙ 🐣 RT @TomBossert These are the core elements of the targeted layered mitigation strategy. Unfortunately, the President and senior people around him have violated all five of these fundamentals. The news cycle tends to obscure the basics, but we can all learn from these unfortunate developments.
🐣 RT @carriecordero “We are not going to tolerate foreign interference in our elections” – FBI Director Chris Wray
⋙ 🐣 RT @FBI The right to vote in a free and fair election is one of the foundations of American democracy. The leaders of the #FBI, @CISAgov, @NCSCgov, and @NSAgov want you to know how their organizations work together to protect your voice—no matter how you cast your vote. #Protect2020 💽 https://twitter.com/FBI/status/1313494766387105794?s=20/photo/1
// Christopher Wray
⭕ 5 Oct 2020
WaPo, Ishaan Tharoor: What the U.S. election means for Russia http://wapo.st/3nmrEXZ “From a Russian perspective, the best outcome is a chaotic, contested election,” Alina Polyakova said. She is the president and CEO of the European Center for Policy Analysis
In congressional testimony delivered last month, FBI Director Christopher A. Wray said he believed Russia was once again “very active” in its efforts to influence the U.S. election, specifically to “denigrate” Biden, Trump’s rival for the White House. That irked the president, but Wray is hardly the first administration official to link Putin’s agenda with Trump’s political success.
Former national security adviser John Bolton claimed he was afraid to leave Trump alone with Putin at a 2018 summit and alleged that Trump was loath to bring up election interference in his private conversations with the Russian leader. Bolton’s predecessor, H.R. McMaster, said last week that Trump was “aiding and abetting Putin’s efforts” by stoking uncertainty about mail-in voting and the credibility of the U.S. election.
“You know, Putin gets away with, I mean, literally murder or attempted murder . . . because people don’t call him out on it,” McMaster said on MSNBC. “And so they are able to continue with this kind of fire hose of falsehood, to sow these conspiracy theories. And we just can’t be our own worst enemies.”
No matter the Trump administration’s anti-Moscow moves, “you have a White House that has not been communicating a strong stance against Russia,” Alina Polyakova, the president and CEO of the European Center for Policy Analysis, told Today’s WorldView. The Russians “have been able to carry out all kinds of mischief,” she said, from Afghanistan, Syria and Libya to the Baltic Sea, exploiting the Trump administration’s dissonant, “incomprehensible foreign policy agenda” and Trump’s own seeming unwillingness to confront Putin.
Polyakova said[:] “Like it or not, Biden was part of that administration and did very little to impose real consequences.”
As president, most experts expect that he would ratchet up pressure on Moscow and work in greater concert with European partners who are also taking a tougher line. “If Biden is elected, we will confront a consolidation of the West on an anti-Russian platform,” said Andrey Kortunov, head of the Kremlin-founded Russian International Affairs Council, to Bloomberg News.
Biden branded Trump “Putin’s puppy” in their first debate, while shrugging off a largely unproven Republican allegation that his son received an illicit $3.5 million payment from the wife of Moscow’s ex-mayor. In a CNN town hall last month, Biden labeled Russia an “opponent.” His 2011 visit to the Russian capital as vice president is still remembered for his perceived affront of telling opposition leaders that Putin should not run for president again (he’s now extended his rule until 2036). A future President Biden would have to reckon with the likely expiry of the New START accord, which limited the number of strategic nuclear warheads deployed by the United States and Russia. The Trump administration’s attempts to negotiate a new treaty have so far not yielded much fruit.
“A Biden administration will confront Russian aggression from a position of strength, even as we work to maintain strategic stability,” campaign spokesman T.J. Ducklo told Axios last month. “Unlike this administration which has never taken the Russian threat seriously, Joe Biden will rally our allies to deter Russian aggression as a united front, and protect the interests of Western democracies.”
[Dmitri Trenin of the Carnegie Moscow Center:] “If Biden wins, he will show to the world that he’s no Putin puppet and that he will take Putin very seriously.”
That’s why an altogether different result may be most appealing for the Russians. “From a Russian perspective, the best outcome is a chaotic, contested election,” Polyakova said. That’s quite possible, given the real possibility that Trump may not accept defeat and may choose, instead, to litigate the election through the courts.
A crisis for American democracy — and the global despair over America that in some corners has already set in — may be a victory in and of itself for the Russian leadership. “There’s been a misconception of Russian strategy in general,” Polyakova said. “It’s about ensuring that the U.S. looks chaotic, badly managed and full of strife and unable to deal with problems abroad and at home.” ¤ To that end, the Kremlin has hardly needed to lift a finger.
🐣 RT @nytimes After months of delays, President Trump’s son Eric was questioned under oath on Monday as part of a civil investigation by New York’s attorney general into whether the Trump family’s real estate company committed fraud.
⋙ NYT: Eric Trump Finally Interviewed in N.Y. Fraud Inquiry http://nyti.ms/2Su41hT
// President Trump’s son had sought to postpone a deposition with the New York attorney general’s office until after Election Day.
🐣 RT @JoshTPM Watching the little clues and the continued refusal to disclose the date of the last negative COVID test the piece of kryptonite at the center of this clown show seems likely to be that Trump went into the debate without getting tested, and perhaps hadn’t been tested in days.
💙 WaPo: Trump administration revokes the visa of a Ukrainian political fixer tied to Giuliani http://wapo.st/3istliU “The Ukrainian ambassador to the United States, Volodomyr Yelchenko, praised the administration’s actions against … [Ukrainian fixer Andrii] Telizhenko“
The State Department last month revoked the visa of a Ukrainian political fixer who aided President Trump’s personal attorney, Rudolph W. Giuliani, in his gambit last year to dig up information from Ukraine that would damage former vice president Joe Biden in the 2020 election, according to U.S. officials.
The revocation of Ukrainian fixer Andrii Telizhenko’s visa comes as U.S. officials crack down on Russian efforts to influence the November vote. The revocation, which hasn’t previously been reported, came shortly before the Treasury Department sanctioned a different Ukrainian who was cooperating with Giuliani — lawmaker Andriy Derkach — and dubbed Derkach an “active Russian agent for over a decade” and said he was trying to interfere in the election, the U.S. officials said.
Telizhenko accompanied Giuliani during a trip to Kyiv late last year, which included a meeting with Derkach. Derkach’s visa was pulled by the State Department earlier this year. Both Ukrainians had been interacting regularly with Giuliani, as the former New York mayor sought to obtain information from Ukraine that would help Trump’s electoral chances.
On Monday, in a statement on the Derkach designation, a spokesman for the U.S. Embassy in Ukraine said that anyone who does business with a sanctioned person could themself be subject to sanctions.
Derkach has not responded to requests for interviews since he was sanctioned but in a statement on Facebook described the U.S. action as a “preventive response to my next press conference . . . It is revenge against me, as a representative of the team of investigators.”
The U.S. moves, officials say, show an administration willing to target people furthering Moscow’s efforts to stoke political divisions in American society. They come despite the president’s aversion to acknowledging the Kremlin’s interference activities.
The Ukrainian ambassador to the United States, Volodomyr Yelchenko, praised the administration’s actions against Derkach and Telizhenko. “They are just ruining our efforts to preserve bipartisan support for Ukraine,” he said of the two Ukrainians in an interview. “They’ve tried to torpedo our relationship. When they come up with unsubstantiated stories to help one side on the eve of elections, that’s concerning. I’m glad the United States has seen them for what they are.”
Telizhenko has denied any involvement in Russian interference or disinformation operations and denied working with Derkach. Derkach has denied he is a Russian agent. …
Beginning in 2017, Telizhenko promoted the narrative that Ukraine interfered in the 2016 election. Citing his experience at the Ukraine embassy, he asserted that Ukrainian officials colluded with the Democratic Party to assist Hillary Clinton. That fueled the baseless theory — one pushed by Moscow — that Ukraine, not Russia, interfered in the 2016 election.
Giuliani joined the president’s allies in seizing upon Telizhenko’s theory as a way to defend Trump in the midst of former special counsel Robert S. Mueller III’s investigation of Russian interference and contacts between the Russian government and Trump associates.
Telizhenko first sparked U.S. officials’ concern in early 2019 when he began promoting such pro-Russian narratives by sharing information with Republican lawmakers. Later that year, he began discussions with Giuliani.
Giuliani met with Telizhenko several times last year and relied on him to organize a trip to Hungary and Ukraine during the impeachment proceedings. On that trip, Giuliani met twice with Derkach, according to Telizhenko. Telizhenko said he was present for one of the meetings, but denied arranging them.
Derkach appeared earlier this year on Giuliani’s YouTube podcast “Common Sense,” a platform for Giuliani to share his take on politics. Though Telizhenko denies working with Derkach, he provided the English-language voice-over for Derkach’s Russian comments to Giuliani.
Derkach again drew the attention of U.S. officials this spring when he began releasing leaked edited recordings of then-vice president Biden speaking to former Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko.
Around the time Derkach released the tapes, Telizhenko made public a transcript of Biden speaking with Poroshenko. He claimed he received the document from someone other than Derkach.
In an interview with The Post earlier this year, Telizhenko said he had more transcripts of Biden’s conversations, which he said he provided to someone in the United States who might release them closer to the election.
Telizhenko also became a flash point in Senate Republicans’ probe of Biden and Ukraine this year. Democrats assailed Sens. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) and Charles E. Grassley (R-Iowa) for taking information from Telizhenko in the course of their investigation, which culminated in a report released in September.
Telizhenko told The Post in September that he cooperated extensively with Johnson’s probe. This included handing over “more than 100 emails,” which were drawn mainly from Telizhenko’s previous work at the Ukraine embassy. This prompted Democrats to accuse the Johnson of laundering foreign disinformation.
Johnson denied the allegation and said the Democrats were smearing him to discredit the report. The report said Hunter Biden’s involvement with Burisma gave the appearance of a conflict of interest but it failed to demonstrate that his involvement with the Ukrainian gas firm changed U.S. policy toward Ukraine or influenced Joe Biden’s actions in any way.
🐣 RT @Laurie_Garrett Hiding behind HIPAA when it’s the Leader of the Free World we’re talking about is frankly immoral. The American people have a right to know how well/sick their President is. Refusing to even describe his lung scans = cover-up.
⋙ 🐣 RT @kurteichenwald Normal presidents waive HIPAA. Thats why their medical reports are released. Trump will not, because he cares only about Trump, not US national security. He can keep his privacy if he resigns. Until then, this alone is reason to vote him out.
‼️ 🐣 The Regeneron antiviral cocktail has not been approved for Emergency Use.
⋙ 🐣 RT @real I will be leaving the great Walter Reed Medical Center today at 6:30 P.M. Feeling really good! Don’t be afraid of Covid. Don’t let it dominate your life. We have developed, under the Trump Administration, some really great drugs & knowledge. I feel better than I did 20 years ago!
⭕ 4 Oct 2020
NYT: As Trump Seeks to Project Strength, Doctors Disclose Alarming Episodes http://nyti.ms/3ivjbOo
// The president made a surprise outing from his hospital bed in an effort to show his improvement, but the murky and shifting narrative of his illness was rewritten again with grim new details.
WaPo: Secret Service agents, doctors aghast at Trump’s drive outside hospital http://wapo.st/3cYm0Xa “‘He’s not even pretending to care now,’ one agent said after the president’s jaunt outside Walter Reed National Military Medical Center.”
🐣 RT @SteveSchmidtSES Trump’s ride will be talked about 30 years from now like it happened yesterday. It will be viewed as the worst photo op in Presidential History. It speaks perfectly to his sociopathy, recklessness, neediness and the extremes of his movement.
@ProjectLincoln looks forward to crucifying him (politically) with it this week. He looks completely deranged as he conjures the definitive 21st Century Dr. Strangeglove vibe as he waves at the Q-Anon freak show from inside the hermetically sealed Presidential Suburban with two Secret Service hostages.
Trump’s malevolent insanity and malfeasance have wrecked the country. At least 150,000 are dead who shouldn’t be. The economy is wrecked for the little guy while Trump’s cronies and family engorge themselves. School is ruined and so many pleasures of life are ended because of Covid and Trump’s imbecility.
I wish I was able to be in the room with @SenatorCollins and @TheRickWilson @reedgalen and @stuartpstevens when she sees the ad coming for her with Trump in the limo. Trump ended his Presidency this week. The disclosure that he is a tax cheat combined withhis unhinged and out of control debate performance, which included a call to arms for fascist militia groups, threats of violence and sinister insinuations about a peaceful transition of power being dependent on his victory were more than enough to finish him.
But at long last Karma has found its’ way to Donald John Trump. His recklessness and casual disregard for human life have caused an epic tragedy in America. That same recklessness and buffoonery has destroyed his campaign. It is bankrupt and broken. Its’ leadership is scandalized.
There is chaos in the White House and in the campaign. It is coming apart. The staff are confused and scared. They have been disregarded and treated like disposable dog shit bags. No one trusts anyone or believes anything on the inside. It’s breaking up.
“THE RIDE” will be the Eternal symbol of Trump’s collapse. He looks like a fool. A reckless fool who failed America more than any other American who has ever lived. Get ready for Trump’s version of Dukakis in the tank. It will be our tribute to Roger Ailes with a special dedication to @kimguilfoyle for upholding the highest standards of depravity and insanity at the FNC. America, the sane part, has come to expect nothing less.
🐣 RT @DocJeffD “Pope Francis said on Sunday that the COVID-19 pandemic was the latest crisis to prove that market forces alone and ‘trickle-down’ economic policies had failed to produce the social benefits their proponents claim.”
⋙ Reuters: Pope says free market, ‘trickle-down’ policies fail society http://reut.rs/2HOyYv0
NYT: Trump’s Treatment Suggests Severe Covid-19, Medical Experts Say http://nyti.ms/3iy0klT
// Many of the measures cited by his doctors are reserved for patients severely affected by the coronavirus.
🐣 RT @AndrewFeinberg NEW: @ProjectLincoln is not pulling any negative ads. Here’s a new one. 💽 https://twitter.com/AndrewFeinberg/status/1312880782273376256?s=20/photo/1
// Lincoln Project ad❣ American Nazis
🐣 RT @PhilipRucker Attending physician at Walter Reed —>
⋙ 🐣 RT @DrPhillipsMD That Presidential SUV is not only bulletproof, but hermetically sealed against chemical attack. The risk of COVID19 transmission inside is as high as it gets outside of medical procedures. The irresponsibility is astounding. My thoughts are with the Secret Service forced to play.
🐣 RT @CNNSOTU CNN’s @jaketapper: “Sick and in isolation, Mr. President, you have become a symbol of your own failures. Failures of recklessness, ignorance, arrogance. The same failures you have been inflicting on the rest of us … Get well and get it together” #CNNSOTU
🐣 RT @anneapplebaum Since I wrote this, Trump had himself photographed “working”: signing a blank piece of paper, with a binder photoshopped in afterwards to make it seem more serious. He can’t even lie competently.
⋙⋙ TheAtlantic, Anne Applebaum: Trump Is a Super-Spreader of Disinformation http://bit.ly/34kN9ji
// The president is the single biggest reason why many Americans distrust science, the electoral system, and one another.
⭕ 3 Oct 2020
🐣 RT @KuchelmanAshley Always a great reminder. Please share this powerful video ‼️
💙 ⋙ 🐣 RT @Eleven_Films BREAKING: Remember America? We do. #ImpeachmentDay
💽 https://twitter.com/Eleven_Films/status/1224906560616316930?s=20/photo/1
// powerful Eleven Films ad❣ with Adam Schiff Impeachment Day Midnight in Washington
CBSNews: 1513 Alumni at Amy Coney Barrett’s undergrad school sign letter of concern http://cbsn.ws/3l8IEPt “[T]he letter says the alumni are ‘firmly and passionately opposed to her nomination,’ declaring Barrett fails to represent their views and values”
🐣📋 RT @Strandjunker 2 died of Ebola: They said Obama should resign.
4 died in Benghazi: They had Hillary testify for 11 hours, held 33 hearings, and launched a multiyear probe.
213,543 died thanks to Trump’s malevolence: They cheered him at the Rose Garden superspreader event. #RoseGardenMassacre
🐣 RT @MeidasTouch If Trump tested positive 72 hours ago like the doctor just implied this is one of the biggest scandals and coverups in American history
🐣 RT @davidaxelrod The stunning conclusion from the briefing today is that the @POTUS knew he had COVID-19 at least 3 days ago, did not disclose it, went to events and risked infecting others. ¤ They thought they could hide this until the media outed Hope Hicks and the POTUS developed symptoms.
🐣 RT @Judson4Congress This is the Rose Garden event now known as the #RoseGardenMassacre. ¤ We are now seeing the results of this event. ¤ Please don’t forget that the GOP bullied, threatened, and toiled to make sure that *THIS* was Every. Classroom. In. America. https://twitter.com/Judson4Congress/status/1312389296230469633?s=20/photo/1
// infected attendees circled
🐣 RT @gelliottmorris Early polling suggests the news that POTUS held a mostly-unmasked super-spreader in the Rose Garden last Sat, didn’t get tested b4 the debate on Tues, held an in-person rally on Wed & tried to hide his own case until an aide’s leaked on Thurs is going badly for the White House.
🧵 RT @chrisgeidner So. That presser did not go well. 📌 https://twitter.com/chrisgeidner/status/1312422484306726914?s=20
⋙ 🐣 RT @chrisgeidner The “72 hours” timeline statement is jaw-dropping. The oxygen bit was cartoonish in Conley’s avoidance. The “I’m not going to answer questions about that” refrain started to get jarring as well.
⋙ 🐣 RT @chrisgeidner Then they controvert the presser with this far-more-concerning background statement to the pool reporters:
⋙⋙ 🐣 RT @albamonica Pool reporters at Walter Reed pass along this assessment from a source familiar with Trump’s health: “The President’s vitals over last 24 hours were very concerning and the next 48 hours will be critical in terms of his care. We are still not on a clear path to a full recovery.”
⋙ 🐣 RT @chrisgeidner The background statement appears to have come from White House chief of staff Mark Meadows.
⋙⋙ 🧵(⇈) RT @Olivianuzzi UPDATE: Immediately after the press conference ended and before the anonymous statement was sent out, Mark Meadows briefed reporters without cameras—but he was caught on a feed asking to be off the record. 💽 📌 https://twitter.com/Olivianuzzi/status/1312429131079057409?s=20/photo/1
⋙⋙⋙ 🐣 RT @Olivianuzzi So we have the White House chief of staff on camera, anonymously providing contradictory information to reporters right after the president’s doctors briefed the public.
🐣 RT @Santucci NEW – Sources close to the President tell @ABC Trump was having trouble breathing & received supplemental oxygen on Friday at the White House after his oxygen levels dropped. This in part prompted the Trump to be transferred to Walter Reed w/ @KFaulders – confirming @nytimes
🐣 RT @brhodes Rallies. Debate. Flights. Fundraisers. Think of all the other people infected and put at risk since the White House held a mask and distance free event in the middle of a pandemic to celebrate stealing a SCOTUS seat. The irresponsibility is just staggering to contemplate
🐣 RT @MollyMcKew POTUS knew he had COVID.
They treated him in secret, hoping he wouldn’t show symptoms.
He continued to do events and expose others.
Lies. Endangerment. Lies.
Vote them out. None of these people should ever work in this place again.
🧵 RT @3DTruth Remember last week when trump said his covid numbers would be great if you didn’t count blue states? Good times!!! ¤ Remember in March, when trump wouldn’t give PPE to blue states at the peak of the pandemic, but gave more PPE to red states than they needed or asked for? Fun!!! 📌 https://twitter.com/3DTruth/status/1312309387227090944?s=20
⋙ 🐣 RT @3DTruth Remember when trump scrapped his national covid response in the beginning, because the hardest hit states were blue states, and he wanted all of us to suffer and die? ¤ Yeah, where’s your humanity? We should all be sending Trump get well cards and wishing him a speedy recovery!!!
⋙ 🐣 RT @3DTruth One of MY favorite memories of trump was when he was stealing PPE that individual states paid for with their own money. That was THE BEST! ¤ I guess his ppl have all the PPE they need to treat the Republican outbreak. Too bad our nurses wore garbage bags.
⋙⋙ 🐣 Thank you. I wish no ill on anyone, but I’ll save my “thoughts and prayers” for the victims, not the perpetrators.
⋙⋙⋙ 🐣 RT @3DTruth Exactly. I’m trying to be honest about how I feel and not feed the negativity, but after all he’s put us thru, it’s psychologically unhealthy to pretend to feel a way that we don’t about the situation to earn “I’m a good person points.”
⭕ 2 Oct 2020
🐣 RT @DrEricDing National security risk: when your Secret Service bodyguards rebel against you. ¤ “He’s never cared about us”. Agents who work in field offices complained that they are no longer being tested when they return home from working at a rally for the president.
⋙ WaPo: Trump seemed to defy the laws of science and disease. Then, the coronavirus caught up with him http://wapo.st/3ndiiNY
🐣 RT @georgetconway3d Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus 2
(“SARS-CoV-2”)
⋙ 🐣 RT @owillis hey. who is running the country right now?
🐣 RT @AngrierWHStaff This makes a lot of sense. Will have to look for other photos. ¤ I passed the bulging jacket off as not wearing the girdle he normally does, but very possible he was concealing small o2 tank. I *was* told he was having difficulty breathing. ¤ Would explain wearing suit to hospital
⋙ 🐣 RT @kakkiman Pretty sure Trump boarded Marine One with a portable oxygen concentrator in his pocket with the nasal cannula going up his back, hidden in his hair and tucked under his mask. He is not as well as they say. Liar in chief… https://twitter.com/kakkiman/status/1312215507433517057?s=20/photo/1-3
🐣 RT @SollenbergerRC So far:
The president
The first lady
Counselor to the president
The president’s top aide
The president’s campaign manager
The head of the Republican National Committee
Two GOP members of the senate judiciary
White House communications staffer
Three White House correspondents
🐣 RT @LisaDNews 23 POSITIVE COVID TESTS:
1+2. President & Melania Trump
3. Bill Stepien, Trump campaign mgr
4. Hope Hicks
5. Kellyanne Conway
6. Sen. Mike Lee
7. Sen. Thom Tillis
8. Ronna McDaniel
9. Notre Dame Pres. Jenkins
10-12. Three WH reporters
13-23. Eleven staffers frm Cleveland debate
🐣 RT @SteveSchmidtSES Titanic hit the iceberg at 1140 pm. There was a slight shudder. Most passengers were undisturbed. 2 hours and 40 minutes later she was 14,000 feet deep in the North Atlantic. The lethal event was barely noticed. The consequences played out in spasms of fear and chaos. That is
⋙ 🐣 RT @SteveSchmidtSES The Trump campaign tonight. It is imploding under the staggering weight of its’ lying and corruption. The staffers are enraged about the recklessness of their leadership. It’s all going down. You can feel it. This is the week that finished the Trump presidency. The end is near
🐣 RT @davidplouffe A COVID-19 clusterfuck in the Rose Garden. So sad, so fitting, so infuriating. They are dumb, cynical and dangerous. And may their kind never return to the White House.
🧵 RT @SteveSchmidtSES .@ProjectLincoln We are hearing from many sources within the Trump campaign about the fear and panic in the ranks. Staffers are scared. Some are terrified. They know the walls are crumbling. Some like Miller and Meadows are irredeemable and will face history’s brutal judgement. 📌 https://twitter.com/SteveSchmidtSES/status/1312223572748898304?s=20
⋙ Trump is losing. He is failing. The campaign is out of money. The former campaign manager allegedly stole $40 million and is reported to have beaten his wife and waived a gun at her. 5-0 took him down like he was on COPS. Guilfoye is disgraced and going down.
⋙ Don jr is clearly distressed. It’s Everyman and woman for themselves now. @ProjectLincoln. Old friends, you came to Washington, most of you with idealism in your hearts and a love of country and her people. Look what’s happened. It’s not too late. We will protect your
⋙ Confidentiality. What is happening inside? Is there talk of inciting fascist militia’s like the proud boys? Is there talk of proclaiming illegitimate victory? Is there talk of illegal voter suppression? It is not too late to do right. Remember all you had to do, once upon
⋙ a time was be in the Resistance by midnight on June 6, 1944. The time to act is now. Reach out. We will protect you. What are you seeing in the inside. We know about the mutiny tonight. So many of you are working from home now. No one is watching. Slow it down. Do no more
⋙ Damage. Incite no more racial animus. Incite no more violence and insanity. Be complicit in no more lies. Look at the monuments in Washington. Remember what they stand for. We are your friends. The American people are your friends. Hurt us all no more. Help us end this. Reach out
⋙ @reedgalen @stuartpstevens let us help you help all of us. Be Patriots in this hour of crisis. It is your next act that will be remembered. Trump will ask more of you. If you do as he asks there will be no place to return from. Infamy will linger forever around
⋙ Your names. It is America or Trump in the final analysis. It is time to come home. The sickness is spreading among you because Trump doesn’t care about you. His recklessness has put your families in danger as he has put all Americans in danger. Help us end this nightmare.
⋙ What is happening on the inside? What gears and machinery can you throw sand in ? Fight back at long last. Vote him out.
🐣 RT @PeterAlexander Top White House aide says power has not been transferred to Vice President Mike Pence: “The President is in charge.”
🐣 RT @JenniferJJacob BREAKING: Trump, who revealed early this morning he has coronavirus, is leaving the White House for Walter Reed Military Medical Center.
STATNews (9/29): Regeneron’s Covid-19 antibody may help non-hospitalized patients recover faster, early data show http://bit.ly/3cR5Cro
🐣 RT @kylegriffin1 WASHINGTON (AP) — White House doctor: Trump received experimental antibody cocktail, remains ‘fatigued’ after COVID-19 diagnosis.
WaPo: Justice Dept., FBI planning for the possibility of Election Day violence, voting disruptions http://wapo.st/2GAzM60
🐣 RT @ClaraJeffery Dana Bash reporting that Hicks, Trump, Stephen Miller, Bill Stepien, Chris Christie, among others were basically in a small conference room, unmasked, for days prepping for the debate.
🐣 RT @brianklaas Less than 72 hours ago, Trump was mocking Biden for wearing a mask. What Biden does is leadership: setting a good example that could actually save thousands of lives during the worst pandemic in a century.
⋙ 🐣 RT @ABC Pres. Trump mocks Joe Biden on the issue of masks: “I don’t wear masks like him. Every time you see him, he’s got a mask. He could be speaking 200 feet away and he shows up with the biggest mask I’ve ever seen.” http://abcn.ws/debate #Debates2020 💽 https://twitter.com/brianklaas/status/1311938586745413633?s=20/photo/1
🧵 RT @CaroleCadwalla A reminder to all Americans that the net effect of our prime minister catching COVID-19 was that it prompted a surge of patriotic support. From which he emerged with renewed popularity. Which enabled him to tear up key functions of the state 📌 https://twitter.com/carolecadwalla/status/1311920391842078725?s=20
⋙ 🐣 RT @CaroleCadwalla It also silenced press & parliament at key moment in crisis from asking critical questions. And when it was announced he was moving to intensive care was moment of national shock. Everything about this is rocket fuel for ‘patriotism’
🐣 October. Surprise
🐣 RT @brhodes The whole thing is just so sad. All of it. Everything that has happened in this country.
🐣 RT @NBCNews BREAKING: NBC News Special Report: President Trump and First Lady test positive for coronavirus. https://pscp.tv/w/1lPKqLLQapAxb
// about 12:55amCT
🐣 RT @ashishkjha This is a nightmare.
COVID19 is a serious infection, especially for someone who is older like Mr. Trump.
I can’t believe he was infected. This is a total failure by WH team to protect the President
Wishing both the President and The First Lady and speedy recovery.
⋙⋙ 🐣 RT @realDonaldTrump Tonight, @FLOTUS and I tested positive for COVID-19. We will begin our quarantine and recovery process immediately. We will get through this TOGETHER!
// 12:54amET (11:54pmCT)
⋙ 🐣 RT @DMalebranche “Can’t believe”?
It’s completely believable given his reckless behavior and actions.
It’s no one fault but his own.
He had access to the best scientists, security, and public health officials.
He chose to ignore them all.
No one is celebrating.
But he is not a victim.
⭕ 1 Oct 2020
🧵 RT @vermontgmg THREAD: If you’ll indulge me, I’d like to point how just how embarrassing this list of “national security officials and other senior officials” endorsing Trump is—especially for a Republican president. Especially for an *incumbent* GOP president. There are three major problems: 📌 https://twitter.com/vermontgmg/status/1311836883777921025?s=20
🔆 This❗️⋙ 🐣 RT @KWehsner Maddow: Trump Attack On Election Warrants Vigilance Of Swing State Republicans https://youtu.be/cV1xynOTqAA via @YouTube
AP: In big states, tiny counties, Trump attacking voting rules http://bit.ly/3cNMRVT “‘It’s clearly based on an overall strategy to disrupt the election as much as possible,’ said Barry Richard, who represented President George W. Bush’s campaign in the 2000 Florida recount”
🐣 RT @MuellerSheWrote YEP. Days before he brandished a gun and threatened suicide, Brad Parscale told a friend he was under federal investigation.
⋙ BusinessInsider: Former Trump campaign manager Brad Parscale told friends he was under federal investigation just… http://bit.ly/36or45S
// Brad Parscale told others he was under federal investigation, days before he was detained by police at his Florida home, Trump advisers told Insider
PennCapitalStar: After fiery unveiling, some Republicans express concern with House election integrity panel http://bit.ly/3ig7z1K Republicans in the PA House are seeking to give a select committee — that they would control — subpoena power over the integrity of the election
🧵 RT @ChrisMurphyCT This hasn’t gotten enough attention, but you need to know. Everybody needs to know.
1/ It’s about the massive coverup campaign underway to disguise the octopus-like Russian election interference operation being run on Trump’s behalf.
Please read this whole thing. 📌 https://twitter.com/ChrisMurphyCT/status/1311772832234385409?s=20
WaPo: As debate commission considers rule changes, Trump signals he’ll reject them http://wapo.st/33kEXQu
🐣 RT @AWeissman Breaking: One more reason the Special Counsel investigation should have performed a full financial investigation of Trump. ¤ Read: Where Law Ends: Inside the Mueller Investigation.
⋙ 🐣 RT @ScottMStedman This is the only known instance in the public record of Russian intelligence-connected rubles flowing into the small Deutsche Bank branch. ¤ Experts we spoke with could not find a legitimate reason for the vast amount of money moving from such a small bank in Russia to the US.
⋙ 🐣 RT ScottMStedman BREAKING: Forensic News can reveal, based on exclusive documents, that a small bank in Russia with deep ties to Russian intelligence quietly moved $330 million into Deutsche Bank’s New York branch during the time period that it was lending to Trump.
⋙⋙ ForensicNews, Scott Stedman and Eric Levai: Russian Intelligence Connected Bank Deposited $330 Million Into Deutsche Bank America http://bit.ly/36ntBx5
DBTCA issued large loans to Donald Trump in 2012 and again in 2015 for his properties in Miami, Chicago and Washington, DC, totaling approximately $340 million. The loans have been of intense public interest given their proximity to the branch laundering billions in Russian cash. Robert Mueller’s special counsel team, according to those who worked for the office, did not pursue Trump’s records with Deutsche Bank, and the Supreme Court said earlier this year that a subpoena issued by House Democrats to Deutsche Bank seeking Trump’s records was overly broad.
According to the New York Times, Trump still owes $297 million to Deutsche Bank for the loans for these properties.
🐣 RT @McFaul Trump has autocratic proclivities but not autocratic powers (yet). Dictators count the votes. Trump doesn’t get to count the votes. Dictators call on their armies to stay in power. Not an option for Trump; he’s got the Proud Boys. Stop making Trump sound more powerful than he is.
🐣 I live in Rochester, MN, where we have a large number of Somali and Hmong refugees. Plus, many of our Mayo Clinic doctors are immigrants. We don’t need any advice from @realDonaldTrump on immigrants. We welcome them.
Politico: Trump’s ex-national security adviser says president is ‘aiding and abetting’ Putin http://politi.co/3cQCNex
// H.R. McMaster’s warning represents perhaps his harshest public criticism of the president since the retired general was ousted from the White House in 2018.
🐣 RT @danielsgoldman I am sad to be one of the 1,600+ former DOJ lawyers to sign this letter urging current DOJ lawyers — including some of my former colleagues — to thwart the AG’s clear efforts to politicize the DOJ for the benefit of President Trump’s reelection. We must oppose authoritarianism.
⋙ 🐣 RT @ 🚨NEW🚨1,600+ frmr DOJ lawyers warn of possible elex interference from AG Barr, urge current DOJ personnel, including John Durham, to
1️⃣ report such misconduct
2️⃣ refuse participation
3️⃣ as a last result, “resign[] rather than violate their oaths of office.”
⋙⋙ Medium: DOJ Alumni Open Letter on Protecting Free and Fair Elections http://bit.ly/3nbWySA
⭕ 30 Sep 2020
★ NYT: Study Finds ‘Single Largest Driver’ of Coronavirus Misinformation: Trump http://nyti.ms/3dCxxvy
// Cornell University researchers analyzing 38 million English-language articles about the pandemic found that President Trump was the largest driver of the “infodemic.”
WaPo, Greg Sargent (9/30): Could Trump steal the election? Here’s one way to find out. http://wapo.st/3jxnmKO New laws would be required to change how electors are assigned. Three key swing states, MI PA & WI, have Dem governors. ACB must affirm she stands by this precedent
🧵 RT @davidenrich 1/ Remember how, last year, @DeutscheBank told a federal court that it did not have @realDonaldTrump’s tax returns? 📌 https://twitter.com/davidenrich/status/1311451500133130240?s=20
⋙⋙ NYT, David Enrich (10/10/2019): Deutsche Bank Does Not Have Trump’s Tax Returns, Court Says http://nyti.ms/2SmlgBv
// 10/10/2019
⋙ 🐣 RT @ 4/ In February 2005, when DB agreed to lend Trump $640M to build a skyscraper in Chicago, the bank required that Trump personally guarantee $40M of the loan. ¤ That “Payment Guaranty” agreement was later disclosed in a heap of NY state court filings.
⋙ 🐣 RT @ 5/ The guaranty agreement clearly states that Trump (the Guarantor) was providing DB (the Agent) with copies of his federal income tax returns, as well as statements of his financial condition, etc. See for yourself. https://twitter.com/davidenrich/status/1311452122744000515?s=20/photo/1-3
⋙ 🐣 RT @ 6/ This doesn’t explain what happened to the tax returns that Deutsche at one point had. Nor does this 2005 agreement prove the bank had portions of his returns for later years, as sources have told me. ¤ But, for a DB/Trump obsessive like me, it is interesting. ¤ The End, for now.
⋙ 🐣 RT @ 7/ And this, from the 2005 loan agreement itself, says that @realDonaldTrump was required to provide @DeutscheBank with his federal tax returns *every year* going forward. ¤ Trump defaulted on this loan in November 2008, at which point he presumably stopped providing his returns. https://twitter.com/davidenrich/status/1311456754077757440?s=20/photo/1-2
WaPo, Dana Milbank: Trump backs violent white supremacists. There’s no way around it. http://wapo.st/2GkN7PY He “singled out, and made common cause with, one violent gang characterized by his own FBI as an extremist group with ties to white nationalism”
// “Rather than tell that group, the Proud Boys, to stand down, Trump suggested they ‘stand back and stand by’ — presumably, for further violence when needed.”
🐣 RT @AngrierWHStaff Family is afraid Parscale will flip. ¤ It doesn’t need to be said, but innocent people don’t worry about anyone flipping.
⋙ VanityFair, Gabriel Sherman: “The Family Is Worried Brad Will Start Talking”: Trumpworld Panics Over Debate Fiasco as Campaign Turmoil Mounts http://bit.ly/30mzyGJ
// Over three days, the New York Times dropped a tax bombshell, Florida cops cuffed Brad Parscale, and the president just couldn’t help himself onstage. “Trump didn’t win over any voters,” said a prominent Republican, “and he pissed off a lot of people.”
WaPo Editorial: The debate was a disgrace. It showed us Trump’s assault on democracy is escalating. http://wapo.st/3iiLgIL
🐣 RT @DanRather It’s hard to come to grips with a president who embodies the ugliness of the American story. White supremacy, economic injustice, and entitlement have always lived alongside this nation’s most noble ideals. Perhaps the United States can now reckon with its demons.
💙🐣 RT @ScottMStedman .@HillaryClinton last night on MSNBC: “It appears pretty clear to me… that Russian money was funneled through Deutsche Bank, Russian money was used as guarantees for continuing lending to Trump and his organization”
⋙ 🐣 RT @ScottMStedman I believe this is the first time someone of Clinton’s stature has said this out loud.
🐣 RT @MichaelJMorrell This is the most blatant act of politicization by a DNI that I have ever seen. DNI specifically testified at his nomination hearing that he would never do anything like this.
⋙ NYT: Top Intelligence Official Releases Unverified, Previously Rejected Russia Information http://nyti.ms/347YgMg
// The disclosure appeared to be aimed at helping President Trump benefit politically, and intelligence agencies were said to object to its release.
━━━━━━━▼ First Debate Factchecks
✅ NBCNews: First Presidential debate: Full coverage and fact checks http://nbcnews.to/2GpaaJi
// It was the first time the two candidates faced off on the debate stage after months of tweets and attack ads.
✅ CBSNews: First presidential debate: Fact-checking Trump and Biden on mail ballots, the economy, COVID and more http://cbsn.ws/2S9RJem
✅ WaPo: Fact-checking the first Trump-Biden presidential debate http://wapo.st/2G3OWBd
✅ NPR FactCheck: The 1st Presidential Debate http://n.pr/36fCatY
// Live Updates And Fact Checks
✅ USAToday: Debate fact check: Where Biden, Trump land on COVID-19, campaigning, law and order, more http://bit.ly/34eDJWi
✅ Snopes: Snopes Coverage of the First 2020 U.S. Presidential Debate http://bit.ly/3n3KpiL
// Joe Biden and Donald Trump met in Ohio for the first of four debates this election season. Snopes fact-checked it live.
✅ Politifact: Fact-checking the first 2020 presidential debate, Joe Biden vs. Donald Trump http://bit.ly/3ipLE8x
✅ CNN: Trump unleashes avalanche of repeat lies at first presidential debate http://cnn.it/3iiXqRI
✅ AP FACT CHECK: False claims flood Trump-Biden debate http://bit.ly/36rHQRs
✅ FactCheck.org: FactChecking the First Trump-Biden Debate http://bit.ly/30mtNJ9
// In a chaotic debate with plenty of crosstalk, there was also plenty to fact-check.
✅ NYT: Fact-Checking the First 2020 Presidential Debate http://nyti.ms/3l05Hfd
━━━━━━━▲
💙❤️ WaPo: Comey defends probe of Trump and Russia as Republican insist it was biased http://wapo.st/347qWF8
💙❤️ 🧵 RT @emptywheel The Comey hearing is about to start. Lindsey, Grassley, and Tom Cotton all wearing masks so prolly Trump will make fun of them. http://cs.pn/2ScoAzh 📌 https://twitter.com/emptywheel/status/1311305499346862080?s=20
WaPo: Right-wing extremists take to social media to celebrate Trump’s ‘stand by’ comment http://wapo.st/3n543uD
// Proud Boys, others see support in Trump’s response to a question about white supremacy
🐣 RT @AaronBlake There was literally an interruption for every minute of the debate last night — even if you define “interruption” narrowly. ¤ Trump was responsible for 71 of them. Biden: 22.
⋙ WaPo: Trump was the interrupter-in-chief at Tuesday’s debate. It wasn’t close. http://wapo.st/33fS31o
// According to a Fix tally, Trump was responsible for more than 75 percent of the interruptions Tuesday night.
🐣 RT @RidgeGlobal [TomRidge] If a Republican President is incapable of condemning white supremacists, then the party of Lincoln has expired.
⭕ 29 Sep 2020
💙 🧵 RT @atrupar The Trump-Biden debate, moderated by Chris Wallace, is about to begin. Follow for a video thread. 📌 https://twitter.com/atrupar/status/1311108221990559748?s=20
// 9/29/2020
WaPo: Trump refused to condemn white supremacists, militia members in debate marked by disputes over race http://wapo.st/36guFTD
// “Proud Boys — stand back and stand by,” President Trump said after Democratic rival Joe Biden challenged him to condemn far-right supporters who have taken to the streets in recent months brandishing weapons.
🐣 RT @AngrierWHStaff Jake Tapper: that was a hot mess inside a dumpster fire inside a train wreck. It was the worst debate I’ve ever seen, and it was because of President Trump
NYT: With Cross Talk, Lies and Mockery, Trump Tramples Decorum in Debate With Biden http://nyti.ms/3l0iYV7
// Interrupting Joe Biden nearly every time he spoke, President Trump made little attempt to reassure swing voters about his leadership. Mr. Biden hit back: “This is so unpresidential.”
WaPo: Trump incessantly interrupts and insults Biden as they spar in acrimonious first debate http://wapo.st/3cGQtsN
🐣 RT @PpollingNumbers “Who was more truthful during the debate?”
Biden 65% (+36)
Trump 29%
PBS/CNN
🧵 RT @atrupar The Trump-Biden debate, moderated by Chris Wallace, is about to begin. Follow for a video thread. 📌 https://twitter.com/atrupar/status/1311108221990559748?s=20
⋙ 🐣 RT @atrupar Trump shakes his head as Biden points out that his own DHS and FBI directors say there’s no evidence that mail in ballots are a source of cheating https://twitter.com/atrupar/status/1311131322459529216?s=20
🐣 RT @BeschlossDC Democracy was trashed tonight by a President who ran roughshod over the rules, refused to condemn white supremacists and would not tolerate any form of dissent—a harbinger of what a second term might be like.
🐣 RT @BrianStelter Wallace belatedly tried to exert control, but rarely if ever succeeded. So Trump basically moderated tonight’s debate – and Biden took full advantage of his behavior and used it as an argument to end Trump’s presidency. http://cnn.it/3n4TN5t
🐣 RT @MichaelEMann Jon Meacham is measured and circumspect. He doesn’t make statements like this lightly:
⋙ 🐣 RT @jmeacham No hyperbole: The incumbent’s behavior this evening is the lowest moment in the history of the presidency since Andrew Johnson’s racist state papers.
🐣 RT @MichaelEMann Jon Meacham is measured and circumspect. He doesn’t make statements like this lightly:
⋙ 🐣 RT @jmeacham No hyperbole: The incumbent’s behavior this evening is the lowest moment in the history of the presidency since Andrew Johnson’s racist state papers.
🐣 RT @jdiamond1 Tonight, Trump:
– Refused to condemn white supremacists
– Dismissed the memory of Biden’s late son Beau by responding w/ attack on Hunter
– Refused to commit to accepting election results
– Lied about how much federal income tax he paid in 16 & 17
🐣 RT @EvanMcMullin Tonight’s debate marked a new low in American politics, but let’s be clear about who brought us here. That man is Donald Trump—a bully, an ignoramus, a fraud. It’s time for a change, America. I still believe that we’re better than this. We must be.
🐣 RT @kyledcheney Tonight Trump disavowed:
-His CDC director’s comments on masks and vaccines
-His FBI director’s comments on white supremacist violence
-His intel community’s assessment of mail-in ballot security
⋘ Debate Night ⋙
WaPo Editorial: Trump’s taxes are full of red flags. He must disclose all his financial affairs. http://wapo.st/2GpKs7t
⭕ 28 Sep 2020
WaPo: Courts view GOP fraud claims skeptically as Democrats score key legal victories over mail voting http://wapo.st/3cEIYST ‘Republicans have struggled to offer proof for claims about the risk of widespread voter fraud, acc to court filings & oral arguments reviewed by The Post’
DailyBeast: Ex-Fox News Anchor Shepard Smith Vows to Fight Disinformation With New CNBC Show http://bit.ly/3kTfIea “The News with Shepard Smith” premieres on @CNBC on Wednesday at 7pmET/6pmCT
// “No pundits and no opinion,” the consummate newsman promises of his first show since leaving Fox News, debuting this week on CNBC.
Wednesday night’s debut of The News with Shepard Smith, an hour-long show that replaces the 7 p.m. [6 CT] airing of Shark Tank.
🐣 RT @DeadlineWH “The concerning thing is that until yesterday, none of those transactions were known, so each and every one of those hidden transactions, those hidden payments provide a leverage point for those foreign nations to use over the president” – @petestrzok w/ @NicolleDWallace https://twitter.com/DeadlineWH/status/1310690484457820162?s=20/photo/1
// re: NYT investigation: Trump is a natsec risk, and will continue to be, even if he loses
🐣 RT @DeadlineWH “From a counterintelligence operator’s standpoint, if we saw a target with this kind of debt, this kind of possible fraud and tax avoidance at his country, we would be on him like crazy to recruit him” – @FrankFigliuzzi1 w/ @NicolleDWallace https://twitter.com/DeadlineWH/status/1310689433360965633?s=20/photo/1
🧵 RT @MargLTaylor The committee filed the lawsuit after Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin refused the request[*] and then defied a congressional subpoena seeking the returns, despite a federal law that says the department “shall furnish” such records upon request. 📌 https://twitter.com/MargLTaylor/status/1310671178063900677?s=20
// for Trump’s tax returns
🐣 RT @thedailybeast NEW: Over 3 million Black voters in key states were identified by Trump’s 2016 campaign as people they had to persuade to stay at home on Election Day to help him reach the White House
🔆 This❗️⋙ DailyBeast, Jamie Ross: Trump’s 2016 Campaign Listed Millions of Black Voters It Wanted to Stop From Voting, Leak Reveals http://bit.ly/3mYUptA
// A huge data leak shows that three million Black Americans were unknowingly added to a list of people that Team Trump wanted to keep away from polling places.
Over three million Black voters in key states were identified by President Donald Trump’s 2016 campaign as people they had to persuade to stay at home on Election Day to help him reach the White House.
The revelation comes from an enormous data leak obtained by the British news network Channel 4. It shows that, four years ago, the Trump campaign prepared files on almost 200 million American voters and separated some out into eight different categories. One such category, assigned to 3.5 million Black voters, was titled: “Deterrence.”
The Daily Beast revealed two years ago that Team Trump used audience lists created by Cambridge Analytica to target “dark ads” on Facebook in the final months of the 2016 campaign.
There’s no public record of those “dark ads,” which disappeared when the campaign stopped paying for them, and there’s no public information on the lists that were used to target voters. However, Channel 4 does report that it found some evidence that Team Trump pushed ads at Black voters designed to damage opinions of Trump’s rival, Hillary Clinton.
One video ad showed Clinton talking about “super-predators” in 1996—a comment she apologized for in 2016 after the clip spread online. Channel 4 reports that Cambridge Analytica privately admitted that the campaign did target “AA,” or African Americans, with what it called the “Predators video,” though it’s not known if the ‘Deterrence’ list was used.
.
🐣 RT @AWeissmann_ As you read the NYT Trump tax story, remember the Eric Trump statement in 2014: “We don’t rely on American banks. We have all the funding we need out of Russia.” ¤ Now ask to whom does Trump owe the hundreds of millions of dollars coming due soon?
🐣 RT @MSNBC “This president appears to have over $400 million in debt …To whom? Different countries? What is the leverage they have? …This is a national security question,” Speaker Pelosi says about NY Times report alleging years of tax avoidance by Pres. Trump.
⋙ 💽 MSNBC, Andrea Mitchell: Pelosi voices concern over apparent debt shown in Trump’s tax record http://on.msnbc.com/2FY4oyL
// House Speaker Nancy Pelosi spoke to Andrea Mitchell about revelations from the release of some of President Trump’s tax records. She warned that the president’s debt is a “national security question” and called on him to “pay your fair share.”
WaPo, Max Boot: Trump’s taxes show why he is desperate to stay in office http://wapo.st/3kOA2NI “Trump’s tax returns … show that he is either a terrible businessman or a massive tax cheat”
🐣 RT @pjchatfield The reason we KNOW @realDonaldTrump IS UNDER FOREIGN INFLUENCE IS THAT U.S. BANKS WON’T LOAN MONEY TO TRUMP:
● Banks call it “THE DONALD FACTOR”: 6 MAJOR BANKRUPTCIES & he bilked U.S.BANKS!
● RUSSIAN OLIGARCHS ARE FUNDING TRUMP IN EXCHANGE FOR POWER!
⋙ TheMoscowProject: Mid-1990s: Banks Refuse to Lend to Trump, Citing “The Donald Risk” http://bit.ly/2S8WYuV
🐣 RT @kylegriffin1 Andrew Weissmann on NBC: “When I look at the NYT reporting and I see there are hundreds of millions of dollars in loans that are coming due that the president has personally guaranteed, my question is who does he owe that money to? Is there leverage that those people have?”
WaPo Editorial: Joe Biden for president http://wapo.st/2S8wPfO “He would restore decency, honor and competence to America’s government”
🐣 RT @djrothkopf You know why Trump lies all the time? Because the facts do him in. Trump’s record speaks for itself. He’s the worst president ever. Bernard Schwartz and I detail why.
⋙ USAToday, David Rothkopf and Bernard Schwartz: Trump wants to run on his record. We hope he does. It’s been a disaster for America. http://bit.ly/337NCpm
// Trump’s historically, mind-bogglingly bad record is on the ballot. He has destroyed lives and livelihoods, weakened America and risked our democracy.
Trump’s mishandling of the COVID pandemic helped produce the biggest economic collapse since the Great Depression — including an unemployment rate of nearly 15% in April. Some estimates suggest that over 40 million Americans lost their jobs as a result of the crisis. Only a fraction of those jobs have returned. Some will never return.
The gross domestic product contraction of 31.7% in the second quarter of this year, on an annualized basis, is by far the largest recorded in U.S. history. According to economists tracked by Bloomberg, the annualized growth rate under Trump’s first four years under a reasonable projection for the remainder of his term is likely to be 0.6%. That’s the worst since Herbert Hoover, about a quarter of the growth level under Barack Obama, and just about a seventh the average growth rate during Bill Clinton’s eight years in office.
As a result of the crisis, today 1 in 5 mothers of children under 12 reported that their children were not getting enough to eat.
America’s international standing has also been hammered under Trump. Under Obama, 74% in a Pew Research Center poll of 32 countries had confidence in him to “do the right thing” in international affairs. Only 29% felt Trump would and that was in January, before the COVID-19 catastrophe. Even Russian President Vladimir Putin ranked higher.
This is the toll of Trump attacking our allies, tearing up international agreements and undermining international institutions. Then came the crisis. In a new Pew poll, the U.S. image plunged around the world, in some countries to record lows.
On environmental policy, nine major green organizations rated Trump the “worst president for our environment in history.” Last year, nearly two-thirds of of Americans called the president’s record on the environment “poor” or “fair.” A new study from the Rhodium Group says Trump regulatory gifts to polluters will put an additional 1.8 billion metric tons of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere by 2035 — according to The New York Times that’s “more than the combined energy emissions of Germany, Britain and Canada in one year.”
Some of the areas in which Trump claims a great record are downright offensive — like his assertion that he has done more for Black people than “any president since Abraham Lincoln.” This is belied by his defense of white supremacist groups with his “very fine people on both sides” rhetoric, his abuse of Latin immigrants at our border and his constant use of racist dog whistles.
He is one of only two U.S. presidents to be impeached by the House during their first term in office, one of only three ever to be impeached and the only president to have ever been impeached on national security grounds.
He is the first ever to have been credibly accused of betraying his country to a foreign power. In 2016, and again this year, he has sought the support of foreign enemies to win the election and has taken other active measures, like undermining the U.S. Postal Service, to gain an unfair advantage. He is the only president to be accused of serial sex abuse, tax fraud and violation of emoluments clauses in the Constitution.
He denigrated our troops and refused to rise to their defense when credible reports suggested Russia had put a bounty on the heads of Americans serving in Afghanistan. He even refused to guarantee a peaceful transfer of power should he lose the upcoming election.
No president has been associated with so many people charged with criminal conduct, and no administration has been home to such sweeping corruption. And that’s despite having a Justice Department that has sought to lift the president beyond the reach of the law and a record of packing the courts with unqualified and extremist judges.
The result of all this is that historians and political scientists have concluded there is a key metric by which Trump stands apart from all other presidents. He is the worst.
The president repeatedly says he wants to run on his record. Of course, what he says about that record is not true. (That’s another area he leads all presidents — by a mile. According to fact-checkers at The Washington Post, by July he had made more than 20,000 false or misleading claims.) But when you look at the truth of the damage Trump has done in his four years in office, if you care about America’s future, you can only hope that like Trump, all Americans want to make the 2020 election a referendum on his record.
Let it be a vote on failing to rise to the greatest challenge he faced, the pandemic, and a vote on economic performance and the staggering costs of bad policies. Let it be a vote on corruption. Let it be a vote on his attacks and those of his attorney general on the rule of law, a vote on sending armed federal forces to intimidate peaceful protesters. Let it be a vote on undermining our allies, supporting our enemies and pulling out of international agreements that made us safer. Let it be a vote on children in cages at the border, on the empty promise that Mexico would pay for that wall, on tax cuts funneling the lion’s share of benefits to America’s wealthiest, on not caring about COVID victims if they are Democrats, or too old, or people of color.
Let it be a vote on a record that is historically, mind-bogglingly bad, a record of destroying lives and livelihoods, of weakening America and putting our democracy in peril. So, yes, please, Mr. President, let’s discuss your record. And then, more important, let’s get out and vote on that abysmal record. Vote early if you can. Help others to vote. But whatever you do, recognize that the only way to end this record of abuse, corruption, failure and damage to our country is to remove from office the man who is responsible for it.
Trump wants to be part of history. There is one way to ensure that happens sooner rather than later. Vote.
Alternet: Here’s why there was no mention of Russia or Michael Cohen in NYT tax bombshell: Trump biographer David Cay Johnston http://bit.ly/3cAwEmT “[T]hat would be [in the] business records, not tax records”
🐣 RT @emptywheel The Deputy Campaign Manager who was sending polling data to an intelligence officer tied to the people who attacked the election complains that Mueller flipped “lower-level aides” to get damaging info they didn’t have. Text Block: https://twitter.com/emptywheel/status/1310529384357527552?s=20/photo/1
// TB says Gates is anti-Mueller etc
⋙ WaPo: Trump suggested naming his daughter Ivanka as his running mate in 2016, according to new book by Rick Gates http://wapo.st/3i6qCeV
⭕ 27 Sep 2020
NYT (2018): Cyberattacks Put Russian Fingers on the Switch at Power Plants, U.S. Says http://nyti.ms/2S2iGk8 “‘They have the ability to shut the power off. All that’s missing is some political motivation‘“ ⋙ Be prepared: top off gas tank, get power bank for electronics etc etc
// 3/15/2018
💙 🧵 RT @ RT @JamesMartinSJ Pope Francis: Tax evasion is part of a “structure of sin.” He also quoted this article: “It has become evident that those who do not pay taxes do not only commit a felony but also a crime: if there are not enough hospital beds and artificial respirators, it is also their fault.” 📌 💽 https://twitter.com/JamesMartinSJ/status/1310382258189107202?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @danpfeiffer Reminder: Trump wants to cut your Medicare and Social Security so that someone worth millions only has to pay $750 in taxes
🐣 RT @brhodes Biden should pass a Donald J. Trump Anti-Corruption and Tax Avoidance Act to restore fairness to our system and fund programs to support working people.
🧵 RT @ElieNYC One thing I will say, because I’ve spent too much of my life talking to @matt_levine, is that one of the *problems* with our tax evasion laws is that once the government decides to come at you, they WILL get you, because a BUNCH of stuff is technically “tax evasion.” 📌 https://twitter.com/ElieNYC/status/1310437737846247424?s=20 [ … ]
⋙ 🐣 RT @ElieNYC Uhh… just to be clear, Trump should ABSOLUTELY GO TO JAIL for *apparently* paying $750,000 to his daughter to decrease his taxable income and listing one of his homes as a business to deduct property taxes. That’s the egregious stuff. ¤ I just don’t care about the haircuts is all
🧵 RT @JoyceWhiteVance I am just digging into this now, but “tax avoidance” is typically a federal crime. Failure to pay can be a misdemeanor but lying about your income in forms you sign is a felony. OK, BRB. 📌 https://twitter.com/JoyceWhiteVance/status/1310330612495024129?s=20 [ … ]
⋙ 🐣 RT @JoyceWhiteVance Really the last & most significant one: “within the next four years, more than $300 million in loans—obligations for which he is personally responsible—will come due.” So a president, who appears to be w/out the means to pay the debt, will wheel & deal on it. What could go wrong?
🧵 RT @Heidi_Cuda THE BIGGEST CON AND TRAITOR IN AMERICAN HISTORY—As Trump wages a re-election campaign that he is..losing, his finances are under stress, beset by losses and hundreds of millions of dollars in debt coming due that he personally guaranteed.”-@nytimes 📌 https://twitter.com/Heidi_Cuda/status/1310335040908226561?s=20
🐣 RT @SkinnerPm When I was with CIA, a big thing in your clearance was your debt. Excessive debt made you a candidate for blackmail and therefore a security risk. We’re talking like student loans and stuff. I’m sure $400 million in debt is fine , though. All good.
🐣 RT @JRehling Trump paid a “consultant” $747,622. ¤ Ivanka’s financial disclosures listed income of $747,622 for consulting. ¤ If you think that’s a coincidence, you own a red ballcap with MAGA on it. (And it was made in China.)
🐣 RT @michaelluo Remnick: “It is hard to imagine, though, that every Trumpist—or, more importantly, every undecided voter in the swing states—will relish hearing that he paid, while in office, seven hundred and fifty dollars in federal income taxes.”
⋙ NewYorker, David Remnick: Donald Trump Barely Pays Any Taxes: Will Anyone Care? http://bit.ly/2S1l9LE
🐣 RT @brianstelter The tax story is singularly important because it fills in a big part of Trump’s portrait. Voters and reporters and historians should have the fullest possible portrait of both Trump and Biden. So the NYT has performed a real public service… (http://cnn.it/3kRGW4J)
🐣 RT @ScottMStedman Trump was so desperate for cash that in 2012 that he took out a $100M mortgage on Trump Tower as a payout. ¤ Deutsche Bank then lent him over $150M that year. What bank on earth would ever touch anyone as remotely cash strapped as Trump? Text Block: https://twitter.com/ScottMStedman/status/1310352355938848769?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @business [Bloomberg] Trump may be using consulting fees as a way to pay his children, NYT reports. Between 2010 and 2018, Trump deducted $26 million in “consulting fees” as a business expense.
⋙ Bloomberg: Trump Paid Minimal Income Taxes in 2016, 2017, Times Reports http://bloom.bg/338AKzy
// President Donald Trump paid just $750 in U.S. income taxes in both 2016 and 2017, reported losing millions of dollars from his golf courses and has hundreds
🐣 RT @gtconway3d There is another form of secure federal housing potentially available to him after he leaves office, and it does look like he may qualify.
⋙ 🐣 RT @ProjectLincoln Of course Trump wants to stay president, he’s soon going to need a place to live and a paycheck.
🐣 RT @mrbromwich Trump knew something we didn’t when he started balking at the peaceful transfer of power. If he loses the election, he faces federal and state prosecution for bank fraud, tax fraud, wire fraud, and mail fraud, as does his entire family. No OLC memo will spare him.
🐣 RT @ewarren This is about more than one man’s personal tax scams. Donald Trump is a liar, a cheater, and a crooked businessman, yes. But he’s also taking advantage of a broken, corrupt, and unequal system that’s built for people like him to do what he did.
🐣 RT @SenJeffMerkley We always knew there was a reason @realDonaldTrump was desperate to hide his returns. Now we know exactly why—because he’s a failed businessman who’s rigged his taxes to pay way less than working Americans.
🐣 RT @richsignorelli Important: Trump Tax fraud could not have been done by Trump alone. He was aided & abetted by accountants, tax attorneys, Trump organization officials/employees, and family members. His family members also are principals in the scheme. All are potential co-defendants/cooperators.
⋙ 🐣 RT @arden_messing The IRS Commissioner owns two rental properties at a Trump Hotel in Hawaii. Rettig is from Beverly Hills. He is friends with Mnuchin. The entire Treasury needs to be fumigated, as well.
⋙⋙ 🧵 RT @sarahkendzior I’m making a thread of articles that I think are seminal to understanding the crisis we’re in, but have largely been played down. ¤ They describe massive and horrific crimes that have been carried out with impunity by people in Trump’s camp, often for years or decades. 📌 https://twitter.com/sarahkendzior/status/1084826195206774786?s=20
// 1/14/2019
🐣 RT @tribelaw One thing not to overlook in the blockbuster NYT report on Trump’s taxes is his $410M in personal debt. That represents some pretty massive leverage by people or governments with interests that aren’t necessarily ours as Americans. Kompromat, anyone?
🐣 RT @SpeakerPelosi It is a sign of President Trump’s disdain for America’s working families that he has spent years abusing the tax code while passing a GOP Tax Scam for the rich that gives 83 percent of the benefits to the wealthiest 1 percent.
⋙ Speaker.gov: Pelosi Statement on New York Times Report on President Trump’s Taxes http://bit.ly/2HDbQQb
🐣 RT @NYinLA2121 In 2016 Stormy Daniels got paid $130,000 for fucking Donald Trump.
In 2016 Donald Trump paid $750 to the IRS for fucking America.
🐣 RT @davidfrum It says right in the prayerbook that Yom Kippur is the day that God smites deceivers, wrongdoers, and criminals.
⋙ and: 🐣 RT @ruth_franklin According to Jewish tradition, a person who dies on Rosh Hashanah, which began tonight, is a tzaddik, a person of great righteousness. Baruch Dayan HaEmet. //➔ the day RBG died
🐣 RT @ScottMStedman It’s absolutely shocking to me that really respected journalists seem to be learning for the first time that Trump owes DBTCA hundreds of millions from loans that they gave him as they were washing laundered Russian money.
🐣 RT @Susan_Hennessey This is a national security story and we need to tell it like one.
⋙ 🐣 RT @djrothkopf It is impossible to read this exceptional @NYTimes story on Trump’s taxes & not conclude he is a crook, his kids are crooks, his companies are badly mismanaged & his financial future is precarious. His creditors own him. We need to know who they are.
🐣 RT @BernieSanders Shock of shocks! Donald Trump, the self-proclaimed billionaire, received a $72.9 million tax refund from the IRS while not paying a nickel in federal income taxes in 10 out of 15 years. ¤ Yep. Trump l-o-v-e-s corporate socialism for himself, rugged capitalism for everyone else.
🐣 RT @RepAdamSchiff Trump lives a life of luxury, and lets working families pay the taxes. ¤ The year he was elected, he paid $750 in income taxes. ¤ No wonder his signature policy is cutting taxes for the wealthy and cutting healthcare for everyone else. ¤ It’s who Trump is. It’s who he’s always been.
🐣 RT @Scaramucci He is broke, and in hopes of getting a foreign bailout, he’s betraying his country. The @GOP are accomplices to his treason.
🐣 RT @ScottMStedman Mainly owed to a financial institution that habitually launders Russian money
⋙ 🐣 RT @pwnallthethings Like the little story is he pays ~no income tax ¤ The bigger story is he sucks at business ¤ The much bigger story is there’s v likely accounting fraud ¤ But the really big story is the president has a personal liability of hundreds of millions of dollars due and no way to pay it
🐣 Looks like people who pay taxes are also “suckers” and “losers.”
🐣 RT @NormOrnstein We know they are going to be many more shoes to drop from the tax returns. Including outright tax fraud. But what we know now is he manipulated his taxes in ways that meant the rest of us who pay our fair share were cheated by him. This, ladies and gentlemen, is our President.
🐣 Just when I was – for the umpteenth time – going to cancel my subscription to the @nytimes, they publish another jaw dropper. Curses!
🐣 RT @davidfrum You can read Trump’s tax returns two ways: either Donald Trump is the greatest tax cheat in US history – or he is a financial desperado hopelessly in debt to God knows who & needs every dollar he scams from Secret Service golf car rentals just to pay the electricity bill
🐣 RT @peterstrzok This is a roadmap of some of the ways Trump is compromised. In the hands of a hostile intel service, these millions of dollars represent coercive leverage over @realDonaldTrump as a result of undisclosed foreign financial deals while he was President.
🔆 This❗️⋙ NYT: Trump’s Taxes Show Chronic Losses and Years of Income Tax Avoidance http://nyti.ms/3mZNgsK ● Text Block: https://twitter.com/Auriandra/status/1310329239850418176?s=20/photo/1
Donald J. Trump paid $750 in federal income taxes the year he won the presidency. In his first year in the White House, he paid another $750.
He had paid no income taxes at all in 10 of the previous 15 years — largely because he reported losing much more money than he made.
As the president wages a re-election campaign that polls say he is in danger of losing, his finances are under stress, beset by losses and hundreds of millions of dollars in debt coming due that he has personally guaranteed. Also hanging over him is a decade-long audit battle with the Internal Revenue Service over the legitimacy of a $72.9 million tax refund that he claimed, and received, after declaring huge losses. An adverse ruling could cost him more than $100 million.
⭕ 26 Sep 2020
HuffPo [CA]: Justin Trudeau Tells UN: ‘The World Is In Crisis, And Things Are About To Get Much Worse’ http://bit.ly/3i7doyy He “warned Friday that the current global order will be upended if leaders across the planet fail to come together to uphold human rights and tackle upcoming threats”
// He argued in a UN speech that COVID-19 is a “wake-up call.”
⭕ 25 Sep 2020
💙 DorfonLaw: State Legislatures Cannot Act Alone In Assigning Electors http://bit.ly/3cCNC3R by Grace Brosofsky, Michael C. Dorf, and Laurence H. Tribe
🐣 RT @emptywheel DiFi: Mueller’s findings confirm the FBI was right to open investigation. ¤ Side note: given Bill Barnett’s 302, we now know that an Agent who sent pro-Trump texts on his FBI phone SINGLEHANDEDLY prevented Mueller from finding a quid pro quo.
EmptyWheel, Marcy Wheeler: Billy Barr Releases 302 that Proves View of Pro Mike Flynn Agent Held Sway in Mueller Report Conclusions http://bit.ly/2EyVjvl
// Billy Barr just provided evidence that the only witness who will corroborate their claims that Flynn was railroaded, actually provided evidence that he wasn’t
🐣 RT @joshtpm The Trump GOP is trying to end the democracy more than 200 years of Americans have worked to hand down to us.
🔆 This❗️⋙ WaPo, Dana Milbank: This is not a drill. The Reichstag is burning. http://wapo.st/3mSOxC0 “America, this is our Reichstag moment. We have the power to stop it. Don’t let democracy burn to the ground.”
With his repeated refusals this week to accept the peaceful transfer of power — the bedrock principle that has sustained American democracy for 228 years — President Trump has put the United States, in some ways, where Germany was in 1933, when Adolf Hitler used the suspicious burning of the German parliament to turn a democracy into a totalitarian state.
Trump, as he has done before, has made the villain a minority group. He has sought, once again, to fabricate emergencies to justify greater powers for himself. He has proposed postponing elections. He has refused to commit to honoring the results of the election. And now, he proposes to embrace violence if he doesn’t win.
Overwrought, you say? Then ask Yale historian Timothy Snyder, a top authority on Nazism and Stalinism. “The Reichstag has been on a slow burn since June,” he told me. “The language Trump uses to talk about Black Lives Matter and the protests is very similar to the language Hitler used — that there’s some vague left-wing conspiracy based in the cities that is destroying the country.”
“It’s important not to talk about this as just an election,” Snyder said. “It’s an election surrounded by the authoritarian language of a coup d’etat. The opposition has to win the election and it has to win the aftermath of the election.”
If not? There won’t be another “normal” election for some time, he said. But that doesn’t have to happen, and Snyder is optimistic it won’t. To avoid it, we voters must turn out in overwhelming numbers to deal Trump a lopsided defeat. The military must hold to its oath. Homeland Security police must not serve as Trump’s brownshirts. And we citizens must take to the streets, peacefully but indefinitely, until the will of the people prevails.
“It’s going to be messy,” Snyder said. “He seems pretty sure he won’t win the election, he doesn’t want to leave office,” and he appears to Snyder to have “an authoritarian’s instinct” that he must stay in power or go to prison.
It’s abundantly clear that Trump plans to fabricate an election “emergency.” First, he claimed mail-in balloting, a tried-and-true system, is fraudulent. Now his supporters are trying to harass in-person voters.
When Virginia’s early voting opened this week, Trump supporters descended on a polling station, waving Trump signs and flags, chanting and forming a gantlet through which voters had to walk. When the New York Times reported that this voter intimidation campaign began at a nearby rally featuring the Republican National Committee co-chairman, the Virginia GOP responded mockingly from its official Twitter account: “Quick! Someone call the waaaambulance!”
Let’s be clear. There is only one political party in American politics embracing violence. There is only one side refusing to denounce all political violence. There is only one side talking about bringing guns to the polls; one side attempting to turn federal law-enforcement officials into an arm of a political party. And Trump is trying to use law enforcement to revive tactics historically used to bully voters of color from voting — tactics not seen in 40 years.
But embracing violence to resolve democratic disagreement is another matter. Trump embraced the “very fine people” among the homicidal neo-Nazis in Charlottesville. He embraced as “very good people” armed protesters who stormed the Michigan Capitol to intimidate lawmakers. He embraced his supporter who allegedly shot and killed two people at a protest in Wisconsin. He embraced the “GREAT PATRIOTS” who drove into Portland, Ore., hurling paintballs and pepper spray at demonstrators. He embraced officers who kill unarmed African Americans, saying they simply “choke” under pressure.
Now he’s rejecting the peaceful transfer of power. Worse: Most Republican officeholders dare not contradict him. The Times reported that of all 168 Republican National Committee members and 26 Republican governors it asked to comment on Trump’s outrage, only four RNC members and one governor responded.
In Federalist 48, James Madison prophetically warned that tyranny could triumph under “some favorable emergency.” In 1933, Hitler used the burning of the Reichstag to do just that. Trump now, it appears, is aiming to do likewise.
America, this is our Reichstag moment. We have the power to stop it. Don’t let democracy burn to the ground.
🐣 RT @joshtpm Every argument from Trump’s lawyers is based on his being the **current** President. When he leaves the White House all of it disappears in a flash. He knows it.
⋙ TPM, Josh Marshall: The Law Is Coming http://bit.ly/33UpiGE “Trump certainly imagines that he’ll be all but defenseless – or to put it more precisely, no different from any other defendant – without holding the Presidency. And he’s basically right.“
TPM, Josh Kovensky: Despite SCOTUS, Trump Attorneys Stick With ‘It’s Illegal To Investigate The President’ http://bit.ly/3cxn9EV “At arguments before the Second Circuit Court of Appeals Friday morning, personal attorneys of the President pushed on to block a criminal subpoena issued by a Manhattan grand jury for President Trump’s tax returns.”
EmptyWheel, Marcy Wheeler: Billy Barr Releases 302 that Proves View of Pro Mike Flynn Agent Held Sway in Mueller Report Conclusions http://bit.ly/2EyVjvl
Flynn literally told the Russian Ambassador that Trump was aware of the discussions, but Barnett claims there was no evidence.
FLYNN: I haven’t gotten, I haven’t gotten a, uh, confirmation on the, on the, uh, secure VTC yet, but the, but the boss is aware and so please convey that. [my emphasis]
Now is probably a good time to note that, months ago, I learned that [FBI agent William] Barnett sent pro-Trump texts on his FBI phone, the mirror image of Peter Strzok sending anti-Trump texts.
So Billy Barr has released a 302 completed just a week ago, without yet releasing the Bill Priestap 302 debunking some of the earlier claims released by Billy Barr in an attempt to justify blowing up the Flynn prosecution, much less the 302s that show that Flynn appeared to lie in his first interview with Mueller’s investigators (as well as 302s showing that KT McFarland coordinated the same story).
And the [Barnett’s] 302 is an ever-loving shit show. Besides the key evidence — that his claim that investigators didn’t listen to him even though the conclusion of the Mueller Report is the one that he says only he had — Barnett disproves his claims over and over in this interview.
Barnett’s testimony substantially shows five things:
● He thought there was no merit to any suspicions that Flynn might have ties to Russia
● He nevertheless provided abundant testimony that some of the claims about the investigation (specifically that Peter Strzok and probably Brandon Van Grack had it in for Flynn) are false
● Barnett buries key evidence: he mentions neither that Flynn was publicly lying about his conversations with Sergey Kislyak (which every other witness said was driving the investigation), and he did not mention that once FBI obtained call records, they showed that Flynn had lied to hide that he had consulted with Mar-a-Lago before he called Sergey Kislyak
● Jensen didn’t ask some of the most basic questions, such as whether Barnett thought he had to investigate further after finding the Kislyak call or who the multiple people Barnett claimed joked about wiping their phone were
● Barnett believes that Mueller’s lawyers (particularly Jeannie Rhee and Andrew Weissmann) were biased and pushing for a conclusion that the Mueller Report shows they didn’t conclude, but he didn’t work primarily with either one of them and his proffered evidence against Rhee actually shows the opposite …… Strzok’s order to withdraw the NSL is yet more proof that Strzok was not out to get Flynn.
Barnett also confirmed something else that Strzok has long said — that they chose not to use any overt methods during the election (unlike the Hillary investigation). ¤ Again, this adds to the evidence that no one was out to get Trump. …
Barnett seems to suggest that as new information came in “in BARNETT’s opinion, no evidence of criminal activity and no information that would start a new investigative direction.” If he’s referring to call records (which is what the NSLs would have obtained) that is, frankly, shocking, as the call records would have shown that Flynn also lied about being in touch with Mar-a-Lago before calling Kislyak. It’s what Flynn was trying to hide with his lies! And yet Barnett says that was not suspect. …
What Billy Barr and Jeffrey Jensen have done is show that the only witness they’ve found to corroborate their claims can’t keep his story straight from one paragraph to another, and claims to be ignorant of several central pieces of evidence against Flynn. ¤ That’s all they have.
↥ ↧
WaPo: Justice Dept. disclosures cast fresh doubt on Trump-Russia investigation http://wapo.st/3i6N4Es
It’s still uncertain whether Durham will issue any findings before Election Day, but the two releases may serve a similar purpose: providing fresh ammunition for conservatives’ arguments that the FBI’s pursuit of the president was unfair and unfounded.
In a letter to Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.), Attorney General William P. Barr said the individual whose information was used to assemble much of a dossier of allegations against the Trump campaign had been the subject of a national security investigation between 2009 and 2011, because FBI agents suspected he might be working for Russia.
The individual’s identity has been kept secret for years, but people familiar with the case said it is Igor Danchenko, a lawyer born in Ukraine who worked at a Washington think tank when he came under suspicion by the FBI for his Russian contacts. Danchenko’s lawyer has acknowledged he was a source of Christopher Steele’s.
In 2016, Danchenko took an assignment from Steele, a British former intelligence officer, to gather information about Trump’s dealings with Russia; Steele later wrote reports that claimed Trump and a number of his close advisers were colluding with Russia. Those reports were based in large part on a person Steele called his “primary sub-source,” which was Danchenko, according to people familiar with the matter, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to elaborate on statements in official documents.
Although Steele’s allegations were not relied on as a basis to open the investigation into Trump’s campaign, they were used to justify secret surveillance on a former Trump campaign adviser, Carter Page. The Justice Department’s inspector general, Michael Horowitz, later found the court applications for that surveillance were riddled with serious errors and omissions.
In a statement, Graham said the “failure of the FBI to inform the court that the Primary Sub-source was suspected of being a Russian agent is a breach of every duty owed by law enforcement to the judicial system” and a “small group of individuals” in the FBI and Justice Department should be held accountable for their handling of the case.
The senator, a prominent supporter of Trump, did not identify those officials, but a part of his committee’s reexamination of the 2016 probe has focused intently on former FBI director James B. Comey and his deputy, Andrew McCabe.
Shortly before midnight Friday, prosecutors filed a summary of an interview conducted last week with FBI agent William Barnett, in which the veteran agent assigned to the Flynn case and the office of special counsel Robert S. Mueller III criticized what he called a “get Trump” attitude by some on Mueller’s team.
Barnett said he believed Flynn’s motive for lying to FBI agents about his contacts with Russia’s ambassador was to save his job, rather than to cover up collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia.
The agent said the investigative steps they took were “legally justified” and he felt there was good reason to scrutinize other Trump advisers, but too often Mueller’s team appeared to be pursuing a theory of Russian-Trump campaign collusion built on “supposition upon supposition.”
The disclosure comes four days before U.S. District Judge Emmet G. Sullivan is set to hear arguments over whether to dismiss Flynn’s case, and the Justice Department now cites Barnett’s statements as evidence of the “frail and shifting justifications” for the investigation and the “irregular procedure” of Flynn’s FBI interview.
Barnett’s voluntary interview was conducted last week as part of a review of the Flynn case by Jeff Jensen, the U.S. attorney handpicked by Barr to reexamine the case.
🐣 RT @JamesCarville A nutty week by any standards. But I want to call attention to what @realDonaldTrump is really aiming for. It’s not a distraction, it’s not to motivate his base, it’s not based on anything other than fear. 1/3
⋙ 🐣 RT @JamesCarville The orange perp knows that what awaits him in 39 days is a resounding electoral defeat. Yes, his cronies may pardon him on federal level but his bigger issue is w/ the distinguished Manhattan District Attorney Cy Vance whose team has sniffed out this Trump family scam. 2/3
⋙ 🐣 RT @JamesCarville They are ready to pounce. Everything Trump thinks/breathes everyday is aimed at 1 thing, staying out of jail. He wants leverage to get a pardon from @NYGovCuomo before he will leave 1600 Penn. Prison won’t suit him or family well and his survival instinct has kicked in. 3/3
NYT: ‘I Feel Sorry for Americans’: A Baffled World Watches the U.S. http://nyti.ms/3j4cOmd
// From Myanmar to Canada, people are asking: How did a superpower allow itself to be felled by a virus? And why won’t the president commit to a peaceful transition of power?
😅 🧵 RT @sykescharlie For no particular reason, this morning I’ve been thinking about Nicolae Ceaușescu’s last public appearance. ¤ Too soon? 📌 https://twitter.com/SykesCharlie/status/1309163503861858305?s=20
⋙ EuroNews (2016): See Nicolae Ceausescu’s gold bathroom http://bit.ly/307koFg
// 6/20/2016
💙 🐣 RT @SenAmyKlobuchar Watch my entire response to Senator Ted Cruz about the Supreme Court vacancy: 💽 https://twitter.com/SenAmyKlobuchar/status/1309605367282839558?s=20/photo/1
WeeklyDish [Newsletter], Andrew Sullivan: Yes, This Is The Face Of A Tyrant
// And a competent one at that.
⋙ See under Entire Articles: SullyDish Tyrant 9-25-2020
NYT, Frank Bruni: Will Trump’s Presidency Ever End? http://nyti.ms/33TipFI “The world’s richest and most powerful country has been brought pitifully and agonizingly low.” ● https://twitter.com/Auriandra/status/1309442220358086656?s=20/photo/1
// America is in terrible danger
“It’s all about situational power dynamics,” he continued. “If the situation were reversed, the Dems would be doing the same thing.” He argued that Chuck Schumer and McConnell “play the same game. McConnell just plays it a little better.”
So the lesson for Democrats should be to take all they can when they can? That’s what some prominent Democrats now propose: As soon as their party is in charge, add enough seats to the Supreme Court to give Democrats the greater imprint on it. Make the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico states, so that Democrats have much better odds of controlling the Senate. Do away with the filibuster entirely. That could be just the start of the list.
I wouldn’t begrudge the Democrats any of it. The way I’m feeling right now, I’d cheer them on. But Republicans reach back to Harry Reid’s actions when he was the Democratic majority leader of the Senate to justify their wickedness now. Democrats will cite that wickedness to justify the shattering of precedents in the future. Ugliness begets ugliness until — what? The whole thing collapses of its own ugly weight?
And who the hell are we anymore? The world’s richest and most powerful country has been brought pitifully and agonizingly low. On Tuesday we passed the mark of 200,000 deaths related to the coronavirus, cementing our status as the global leader, by far, on that front. How’s that for exceptionalism?
On Wednesday The Atlantic rushed its November cover story onto the web with an explanatory, almost apocalyptic note by its editor in chief, Jeffrey Goldberg, that some journalism is too important to wait. The article is about the very real chance — essentially confirmed hours later by Trump’s “continuation” comment — that he might contest the election in a manner that keeps him in power regardless of what Americans really want.
“The coronavirus pandemic, a reckless incumbent, a deluge of mail-in ballots, a vandalized Postal Service, a resurgent effort to suppress votes, and a trainload of lawsuits are bearing down on the nation’s creaky electoral machinery,” the article’s author, Barton Gellman, a Pulitzer winner, wrote. “The mechanisms of decision are at meaningful risk of breaking down. Close students of election law and procedure are warning that conditions are ripe for a constitutional crisis that would leave the nation without an authoritative result. We have no fail-safe against that calamity.”
Just a few days before those words screeched across the internet, The New Yorker published a similar, equally chilling opus by one of its star writers, Jeffrey Toobin, who explained how this election might well degenerate into violence, as Democratic poll watchers clash with Republican poll watchers, and into chaos, as accusations of foul play delay the certification of state vote counts.
Several hours after Gellman’s article appeared, Slate published one by Richard Hasen, a professor at the University of California-Irvine School of Law, with the headline: “I’ve Never Been More Worried About American Democracy Than I Am Right Now.”
NYT: Trump Again Sows Doubt About Election as G.O.P. Scrambles to Assure Voters http://nyti.ms/2RX8kC5
// President Trump declined for a second day to commit to a peaceful transfer of power if he lost the election, while Republicans, including Mitch McConnell, implicitly rebuffed him, promising an “orderly transition.”
NYT: At Pentagon, Fears Grow That Trump Will Pull Military Into Election Unrest http://nyti.ms/2G66MD5
// Defense Department officials said top generals could resign if Mr. Trump ordered the active-duty military into the streets to quell election protests.
⭕ 24 Sep 2020
NYMag, Ed Kilgore (4/14): Could State Legislatures Hijack the 2020 Presidential Election? http://nym.ag/3j3kPaZ “No fewer than seven key battlegrounds states (Arizona, Florida, Georgia, Michigan, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin) have Republican-controlled legislature“
// 4/14/2020
So consider this scenario: After a close election and a long count (lengthened by high levels of mail ballots), with court orders and lawsuits flying through the air, one or two or three unresolved states are in a position to give Trump 270 electoral votes, and Republican-controlled legislatures announce they are intervening (much as Florida’s did in 2000) to avoid chaos and “election fraud” and even civil war. No fewer than seven key battlegrounds states (Arizona, Florida, Georgia, Michigan, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin) have Republican-controlled legislature.
↥ ↧
NCSL: The Electoral College http://bit.ly/33Pcv8v
// National College of State Legislatures; laws about electors
WaPo: Trump’s escalating attacks on election prompt fears of a constitutional crisis http://wapo.st/3cstwJH
NYT: Battles Over Voting Rules Fuel Concern About Postelection Fights http://nyti.ms/306elAJ
// Even as early voting has gotten underway, some pivotal states are still litigating how ballots should be cast and counted, creating uncertainty that is being fanned by President Trump.
NYT, Michelle Goldberg: Trump Wants You to Think You Can’t Get Rid of Him http://nyti.ms/3mPvAAe
// His strongman threats are scary. But don’t forget that he’s weak.
NYDailyNews, Alan Blotcky and Seth Norrholm: Say it plainly: The president is a psychopath http://bit.ly/2EurBrk Trump’s “malignant behavior over the past four years is growing and escalating right before our eyes. Trump’s psychopathy will change us forever if he is not stopped”
CNN: How Republicans in key states are preparing to run out the clock on the election http://cnn.it/3cynLdl
DailyBeast, Michael Tomasky: The GOP’s Long March to Fascism Finally Arrives With Trump 2020 http://bit.ly/3hW38J7 Gingrich, Limbaugh, DeLay, Rove, Trump: “I didn’t understand how many millions of people had been persuaded to embrace unreality”
// It turns out the most important anti-truth of recent vintage was the one about voter fraud. This is what Trump will use to steal the election if he can.
WaPo: Internal USPS documents link changes behind mail slowdowns to top executives http://wapo.st/30mAZ8r ‘By an estimate by the office of Sen. Gary Peters (D-Mich), nearly 350 million pieces, or 7%, of the country’s first-class mail were affected over a five-week span’
// Newly obtained records appear in conflict with months of Postal Service assertions that blamed lower-level managers for strategies tied to delivery delays.
By one estimate, nearly 350 million pieces, or 7 percent, of the country’s first-class mail were affected over a five-week span, according to an analysis of USPS and Postal Regulatory Commission data by the office of Sen. Gary Peters (D-Mich).
🐣 RT @Axios NEW: FBI Director Christopher Wray says the agency has “not seen, historically, any kind of coordinated national voter fraud effort in a major election, whether it’s by mail or otherwise.”
⋙ Axios: Christopher Wray: FBI has not seen evidence of national voter fraud effort by mail http://bit.ly/2RVya9v
🐣 RT @stengel The Constitution does not guarantee the peaceful transition of power, but assumes it. It is the most important norm in our history. Every candidate for every office in the country must say they are for it, or else voters will punish them for it. #VOTE
‼️ 🐣 RT @MSNBC President Trump declines to commit to a peaceful transfer of power, if he loses: “Get rid of the ballots and we’ll have a very peaceful — there won’t be a transfer, frankly. There will be a continuation.”
⋙ NBCNews: Trump on peaceful transition if he loses: ‘Get rid of the ballots’ and ‘there won’t be a transfer’ http://nbcnews.to/3mNWWqj
// We’re going to have to see what happens,” Trump said. “You know that I’ve been complaining very strongly about the ballots and the ballots are a disaster.”
🐣 “Those who will not learn from the past … ” http://bit.ly/2FYRFeV ● Text Block: https://twitter.com/Auriandra/status/1309064028321447939?s=20/photo/1
// tags: Hitler’s rise to power propaganda state police terror voter suppression poll monitoring
Federal elections were held in Germany on 5 March 1933, after the Nazi seizure of power on 30 January and just six days after the Reichstag fire. Nazi stormtroopers had unleashed a widespread campaign of violence against the Communist Party (KPD), left-wingers,[1]:317 trade unionists, the Social Democratic Party of Germany,[1] and the Centre Party.[1]:322 They were the last multi-party elections in a unified Germany until 1990.
The 1933 election followed the previous year’s two elections (July and November) and Hitler’s appointment as Chancellor. In the months before the 1933 election, brownshirts and SS displayed “terror, repression and propaganda […] across the land”,[1]:339 and Nazi organizations “monitored” the vote process. In Prussia 50,000 members of the SS, SA and Der Stahlhelm were ordered to monitor the votes by acting Interior Minister Hermann Göring, as auxiliary police.[2]
The National Socialists registered a large increase in votes in 1933. However, despite waging a campaign of terror against their opponents, the National Socialists only tallied 43.9 percent of the vote, well short of a majority. They needed the votes of their coalition partner, the German National People’s Party (DNVP), for a bare working majority in the Reichstag.
This would be the last contested election held in Germany before World War II. Two weeks after the election, Hitler was able to pass an Enabling Act on 23 March with the support of all non-socialist parties, which effectively gave Hitler dictatorial powers. Within months, the Nazis banned all other parties and turned the Reichstag into a rubberstamp legislature comprising only Nazis and pro-Nazi guests.
⭕ 23 Sep 2020
BusinessInsider: The Trump campaign is reportedly planning a way to bypass the 2020 election results in key swing states http://bit.ly/32ZIy6t
● The Trump campaign is weighing a postelection strategy that would bypass the results in key swing states by installing electors who would vote for the president in the Electoral College even if he loses, according to a report by The Atlantic.
● Election experts have said that moves by state legislatures to appoint their own slate of presidential electors after the fact would violate federal law.
● The Trump campaign’s plan would focus on swing states with Republican-led legislatures, including Arizona, Florida, Michigan, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin, The Atlantic reported
Crooks&Liars: Ron Johnson Denounced Over Hunter Biden ‘Report’: ‘As If Putin Wrote It’ http://bit.ly/33WVo4G
// Ron Johnson delivered an “investigation” of Hunter Biden for Donald Trump’s re-election campaign. It was an in-kind campaign contribution, funded by the taxpayers.
The report, which Johnson hopes will impact the November election, accuses Hunter Biden of “conflicts of interest” for a “very awkward” relationship with Ukrainian energy company Burisma. The report, however, found no evidence that the relationship affected U.S. policy.
In a speech on the Senate floor, Schumer suggested that Johnson was doing the bidding of Russian President Vladimir Putin.
“While the rest of the country was busy fighting COVID, Senate Republicans have been abusing the power of the Senate to conduct opposition research for President Trump’s campaign,” Schumer explained. “This morning, the chairman of the Homeland Security Committee released his report, which reads as if Putin wrote it, not United States senators.”
“The bogus narrative of this report peddled by a Russian disinformation campaign was disproved by every witness who testified,” he added. “Despite their zeal to smear [former Vice President] Biden and his family, Senate Republicans found no evidence to support the conspiracy theories pushed by Putin’s intelligence agents.”
TheGuardian: Revealed: pro-Trump activists plotted violence ahead of Portland rallies http://bit.ly/3kVSDrt “The shared allegiances expressed in the group are mostly to the police, the United States and Donald Trump, a person whom some say they are prepared to kill for.”
// 9/23/2020; saboteur provocateur; Patriots Coalition members suggested political assassinations and said ‘laws will be broken, people will get hurt’, leaked chats show
Leaked chat logs show Portland-area pro-Trump activists planning and training for violence, sourcing arms and ammunition and even suggesting political assassinations ahead of a series of contentious rallies in the Oregon city, including one scheduled for this weekend.
The chats on the GroupMe app, shared with the Guardian by the antifascist group Eugene Antifa, show conversations between Oregon members of the Patriots Coalition growing more extreme as they discuss armed confrontations with leftwing Portland activists, and consume a steady diet of online disinformation about protests and wildfires.
At times, rightwing activists discuss acts of violence at recent, contentious protests, which in some cases they were recorded carrying out. At one point, David Willis, a felon currently being sued for his alleged role in an earlier episode of political violence, joins a discussion about the use of paintballs.
Another prolific poster is Mark Melchi, a 41-year-old Dallas, Oregon-based car restorer who claims to have served as a captain in the US army. ¤ Melchi has been recorded leading an armed pro-Trump militia, “1776 2.0” into downtown confrontations in Portland, including on 22 August. At several points in the chat he proposes violence in advance of those confrontations, and appears to confess to prior acts committed in the company of his paramilitary group. …
He also claims police cooperation in interstate violence, writing “Yes, going after them at night is the solution… Like we do in other states, tactical ambushes at night while backing up the police are key. You get the leaders and the violent ones and the police are happy to shut their mouths and cameras.”
Although some members are connected with extremist groups or militias, on the whole they describe themselves as “patriots”, and they express no clear ideology beyond a hatred of the left, and a preparedness to use violence. The shared allegiances expressed in the group are mostly to the police, the United States and Donald Trump, a person whom some say they are prepared to kill for.
Newhouse said that the ideas expressed in the group were entrenched in “extreme nationalism – that a few strong men with guns can together take out an evil that is at once imagined as an existential threat, and pathetically weak”. Newhouse added that the group’s discussions “fit within a broader trend of rightwing extremists becoming more accelerationist over time”.
🧵 RT @AshaRangappa_ THREAD. It is important to take note and be prepared for the unprecedented actions Trump says he intends to take after the election. But it is also important not to allow his *wishful* reality to *become the reality. To do that, consider Trump’s psychological POV right now: 📌 https://twitter.com/AshaRangappa_/status/1308929151789924354?s=20
WaPo, Philip Bump: Parsing Trump’s ‘there won’t be a transfer’ of power comments http://wapo.st/3mPv0Ck (he’s delusional)
TPM: Wyden: RonJohn Stumbled Upon Evidence Of Trump Administration Corruption In Ukraine Probe http://bit.ly/3kMwrQ7 Though nothing could be pinned on Joe or Hunter Biden, Rick Perry and pals may have landed in a heap of trouble
🐣 RT @davidfrum “I fired Comey because of Russia.”
“I asked Ukraine and China for dirt on the Biden family.”
“I want to choose a third Supreme Court justice to help my re-election.”
Trump doesn’t hesitate to explain what he’s doing. ¤ He says it. You should heed it.
⋙ 🐣 RT @CSPAN .@POTUS: “I think this will end up in the Supreme Court. & I think it’s very important that we have 9 Justices. & I think the system is going to go very quickly. I’ll be submitting at 5 o’clock on Saturday, the name of the person I chose for this most important of positions.”
🔆 This❗️⋙ WaPo: Trump won’t commit to a ‘peaceful transfer of power’ if he loses http://wapo.st/3iZJ2iH
NYT: Republican Inquiry Finds No Evidence of Wrongdoing by Biden http://nyti.ms/3mO5n4U
// The report delivered on Wednesday appeared to be little more than a rehashing of unproven allegations that echoed a Russian disinformation campaign.
💙 WaPo, Jennifer Rubin: Democrats lay out a plan to halt the drift toward authoritarianism http://wapo.st/3j0AM1G
↥ ↧
💙 WaPo: Democratic House chairs: Here’s how we can protect democracy from a lawless president http://wapo.st/3cofQza By House committee chairs Adam Schiff, Jerrold Nadler, Carolyn Maloney, John Yarmuth, Zoe Lofgren, Eliot Engel and Richard E. Neal
💙 WaPo: House Democrats unveil changes to ‘prevent future presidential abuses’ http://wapo.st/32WDHDe
🐣 RT @Mimirocah1 This is facism not democracy. This should be a leading story everywhere. And every Republican (even if they won’t answer) needs to be asked about this. Shine a light on it.
🐣 RT @YApplebaum This @bartongellman piece is the stuff of nightmares
🐣 RT @bartongellman When Trump refuses to concede, the cascading effects could break our fragile transition of power. My new cover story in @TheAtlantic.
🔆 This❗️⋙ TheAtlantic, Barton Gellman: The Election That Could Break America http://bit.ly/2FTvxTj
// Nov issue; If the vote is close, Donald Trump could easily throw the election into chaos and subvert the result. Who will stop him?
The danger is not merely that the 2020 election will bring discord. Those who fear something worse take turbulence and controversy for granted. The coronavirus pandemic, a reckless incumbent, a deluge of mail-in ballots, a vandalized Postal Service, a resurgent effort to suppress votes, and a trainload of lawsuits are bearing down on the nation’s creaky electoral machinery.
📋 An authoritative report by the Brennan Center for Justice, a nonpartisan think tank, calculated the rate of voter fraud in three elections at between 0.0003 percent and 0.0025 percent. Another investigation, from Justin Levitt at Loyola Law School, turned up 31 credible allegations of voter impersonation out of more than 1 billion votes cast in the United States from 2000 to 2014. Judges in voting-rights cases have made comparable findings of fact.
⭕ 22 Sep 2020
WaPo, Danielle Allen: The justices themselves can turn down the heat — by creating their own term limits http://wapo.st/2FY5wlA A rule could be adopted to limit terms to 18 years, with a new justice appointed every two years
The Supreme Court has in its own hands the power to turn the heat down on this election. ¤ This the justices can do by establishing, voluntarily among themselves, a rule for their court that each justice will limit service to 18 years, thereafter rotating off the Supreme Court to another bench in the federal judiciary or into senior status. One new justice would be appointed every two years, going forward. …
Our Supreme Court justices hold in their hands the power to begin the healing of our republic. May they use it. They would be following George Washington’s noble example.
‼️ CNN: White House liaisons being removed from their jobs and replaced http://cnn.it/2Eo8ejE “[They] will be replaced with officials who will report directly to the White House instead of the agencies to which they’re assigned”; a “hunt” is on for those disloyal to the president
… Many of the White House liaisons are being removed from their roles in anticipation of President Donald Trump winning a second term, CNN has learned.
The liaisons will be replaced with officials who will report directly to the White House instead of the agencies to which they’re assigned.
Previously the liaisons worked in conjunction with the White House’s Office of Presidential Personnel and the agencies they served, while ultimately reporting to the agencies’ heads. With this change, the liaisons will instead report directly to the White House. Liaisons can be responsible for assisting the White House in placing political appointees at agencies.
While the email, first reported by Axios, was sent by Meadows, the changes will be implemented by the head of the personnel office, Johnny McEntee.
Since returning to the White House after being fired for issues related to his security clearance, McEntee has been on what’s internally referred to as a “hunt” for staffers he believes are disloyal to the President. In February, McEntee told agency officials at a meeting to expect staffing changes and movement across the government, according to people familiar with the meeting.
💙🔄 FBI&CISA: Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3) | Foreign Actors and Cybercriminals Likely to Spread Disinformation Regarding 2020 Election Results http://bit.ly/2RSdQ8V ● Text Block: https://twitter.com/Auriandra/status/1308592721976844288?s=20/photo/1
The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) are issuing this announcement to raise awareness of the potential threat posed by attempts to spread disinformation regarding the results of the 2020 elections. Foreign actors and cybercriminals could create new websites, change existing websites, and create or share corresponding social media content to spread false information in an attempt to discredit the electoral process and undermine confidence in U.S. democratic institutions.
State and local officials typically require several days to weeks to certify elections’ final results in order to ensure every legally cast vote is accurately counted. The increased use of mail-in ballots due to COVID-19 protocols could leave officials with incomplete results on election night. Foreign actors and cybercriminals could exploit the time required to certify and announce elections’ results by disseminating disinformation that includes reports of voter suppression, cyberattacks targeting election infrastructure, voter or ballot fraud, and other problems intended to convince the public of the elections’ illegitimacy.
The FBI and CISA urge the American public to critically evaluate the sources of the information they consume and to seek out reliable and verified information from trusted sources, such as state and local election officials. The public should also be aware that if foreign actors or cyber criminals were able to successfully change an election-related website, the underlying data and internal systems would remain uncompromised.
RECOMMENDATIONS
● Seek out information from trustworthy sources, such as state and local election officials; verify who produced the content; and consider their intent.
● Verify through multiple reliable sources any reports about problems in voting or election results, and consider searching for other reliable sources before sharing such information via social media or other avenues.
● For information about final election results, rely on state and local government election officials.
● Report potential election crimes—such as disinformation about the manner, time, or place of voting—to the FBI.
● If appropriate, make use of in-platform tools offered by social media companies for reporting suspicious posts that appear to be spreading false or inconsistent information about election-related problems or results.VICTIM REPORTING AND ADDITIONAL INFORMATION
The FBI encourages victims to report information concerning suspicious or criminal activity to their local field office (www.fbi.gov/contact-us/field). For additional assistance and best practices, and common terms, please visit the following websites:
Protected Voices: http://www.fbi.gov/investigate/counterintelligence/foreign-influence/protected-voices
Election Crimes and Security: http://www.fbi.gov/scams-and-safety/common-scams-and-crimes/election-crimes-and-security
#Protect2020: http://www.cisa.gov/protect2020
🐣 RT @JonLemire First debate topics. One week from today:
💙 ⋙ 🐣 RT @debates [CPD] NEW: Chris Wallace, moderator of the first presidential debate, has selected topics for the 9/29 debate – The Trump and Biden Records, The Supreme Court, Covid-19, The Economy, Race and Violence in our Cities, The Integrity of the Election #Debates2020 http://debates.org/2020/09/22/moderator-announces-topics-for-first-presidential-debate-2
🐣 RT @AOC Congressional GOP have made one thing extremely clear:
To them, there are no rules.
There are no principles.
There is only power.
They are ruthless, and always have been in my lifetime.
Dems must recognize they cannot be reasoned with at present & better adapt to that reality.
🐣 RT @danielsgoldman As someone privy to some of the impeachment conversations in the House, I can confidently say it would have made a big difference if Mueller had declared that Trump committed obstruction of justice and perjury but could not be charged because of DOJ policy.
WaPo: Mueller prosecutor says special counsel ‘could have done more’ to hold Trump accountable http://wapo.st/2FRLKIv
WaPo, Josh Rogin: Secret CIA assessment: Putin ‘probably directing’ influence operation to denigrate Biden http://wapo.st/3iSX0CJ The whole Rudy/Derkach Ukraine/Burisma/Hunter Biden story goes 💦splat💦 all over Sens Ron Johnson, Chuck Grassley, Lindsey Graham and Devin 🐮
Russian President Vladimir Putin and his top aides are “probably directing” a Russian foreign influence operation to interfere in the 2020 presidential election against former vice president Joe Biden, which involves a prominent Ukrainian lawmaker connected to President Trump’s personal lawyer Rudolph W. Giuliani, a top-secret CIA assessment concluded, according to two sources who reviewed it.
On Aug. 31, the CIA published an assessment of Russian efforts to interfere in the November election in an internal, highly classified report called the CIA Worldwide Intelligence Review, the sources said. CIA analysts compiled the assessment with input from the National Security Agency and the FBI, based on several dozen pieces of information gleaned from public, unclassified and classified intelligence sources. The assessment includes details of the CIA’s analysis of the activities of Ukrainian lawmaker Andriy Derkach to disseminate disparaging information about Biden inside the United States through lobbyists, Congress, the media and contacts with figures close to the president.
The Office of the Director of National Intelligence and the Treasury Department have identified Derkach as a Russian agent, but it has not been publicly reported that the CIA, NSA and FBI believed Putin may be personally directing the campaign. Derkach has denied working on behalf of Moscow.
On Sept. 10, following calls from Democratic lawmakers, the Treasury Department sanctioned Derkach, alleging that he “has been an active Russian agent for over a decade, maintaining close connections with the Russian Intelligence Services.” Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said in a Sept. 10 statement that “Derkach and other Russian agents employ manipulation and deceit to attempt to influence elections in the United States and elsewhere around the world.”
⭕ 21 Sep 2020
ABCNews: The men behind QAnon http://abcn.ws/3mMcvia “If Trump loses, I think that how a lot of people are going to view it is: the deep state has won. Trump has lost. Our god, essentially, has been crucified … and they are going to punish Democrats with political violence“
// Experts and researchers said the key to “Q” is hiding in plain sight.
💙 📋 Vox, Matt Yglesias: Minority rule in America http://bit.ly/35VfgYF “[T]he Senate map gives rural areas 2.5 times the voting power of big cities, meaning Democrats need to win Senate races by 6 to 7 points.” Add to that the gerrymandering in the House. And now, SCOTUS. ● Text Block: https://twitter.com/Auriandra/status/1308522230930964482?s=20/photo/1
// Our various undemocratic institutions are reenforcing each other in a deadly spiral.
Someone should do something about it
Neither Joe Biden nor Senate Democrats seem inclined to pursue these measures yet, but if Democrats win a Senate majority this fall, there is a partial solution at hand:
● End the filibuster so a Senate majority can govern.
● Admit DC, Puerto Rico, and ideally the US Virgin Islands as US states.
● Adopt tough legislative curbs on partisan gerrymandering.
● Expand the lower courts, at a minimum, as a way of improving the operation of the federal judicial system and putting the Supreme Court on notice to behave itself.
In a pinch, you add seats to the Supreme Court itself. Either way, Democrats need to get out of the funk of thinking of these moves as outrageous norm violations. The actual issue is that the American democratic tradition carries within it two overarching norms that are contradictory. One is adherence to the Constitution and to the rule of law. The other is adherence to the concept of political equality — that all citizens are equal and ought to have their interests and views considered equally by the political system.
🧵 RT @Ct_Bergstrom A major goal of modern propaganda is to make the targets despair of ever being able to find the truth. ¤ When the CDC retracts advice like this, time after time and without explanation, it’s even more damaging than concealing information. It undermines public trust more broadly. 📌 https://twitter.com/CT_Bergstrom/status/1308142798709772288?s=20
🐣 RT @RepValDemings The GOP argument that they need another GOP member on the Supreme Court in order to contest the election results is a frank confession that they plan to try to steal the election.
WaPo: Global banks process trillions in dirty money despite suspicions, investigation finds http://wapo.st/2Hea2Ne
🐣 RT @OliviaTroye I’ve seen some of these “changes” in guidelines occur first hand throughout the past 6 months-this is likely what happened: @CDCgov tried to warn & tell the truth, it didn’t fit the President’s narrative & someone got an angry call. This is so dangerous for the American people.
⋙ WaPo: CDC reverses itself and says guidelines it posted on coronavirus airborne transmission were wrong http://wapo.st/
//. CDC removes statement on airborne virus transmission, claiming website error
⋙⋙ ★ WaPo: The CDC says coronavirus is airborne and spread by aerosols, warns of poorly ventilated spaces http://wapo.st/3iRhFaq “There is growing evidence that droplets and airborne particles can remain suspended in the air … and travel distances beyond 6 feet”
// “There is growing evidence that droplets and airborne particles can remain suspended in the air and be breathed in by others, and travel distances beyond 6 feet (for example, during choir practice, in restaurants, or in fitness classes),” the agency says. “In general, indoor environments without good ventilation increase this risk.”
🐣 RT @sarahposner He needs to be fired yesterday.
⋙ 🐣 RT @lachlan New: the pseudonymous managing editor of RedState has been trashing Fauci, Redfield, and the govt’s COVID response generally ¤ Turns out, his day job is a press officer at the National institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases—the agency that Fauci leads
⋙⋙ DailyBeast, Lachlan Markay: A Notorious COVID Troll Actually Works for Dr. Fauci’s Agency http://bit.ly/3iRQxIr
// Bill Crews is a PR official at the National Institutes of Health. But he also has another job: an anonymous RedState editor who rails against the agency for which he works.
William B. Crews is, by day, a public affairs specialist for the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. But for years he has been writing for RedState under the streiff pseudonym. And in that capacity he has been contributing to the very same disinformation campaign that his superiors at the NIAID say is a major challenge to widespread efforts to control a pandemic that has claimed roughly 200,000 U.S. lives.
Under his pseudonym, Crews has derided his own colleagues as part of a left-wing anti-Trump conspiracy and vehemently criticized the man who leads his agency, whom he described as the “attention-grubbing and media-whoring Anthony Fauci.” He has gone after other public health officials at the state and federal levels, as well—“the public health Karenwaffen,” as he’s called them—over measures such as the closures of businesses and other public establishments and the promotion of social distancing and mask-wearing. Those policies, Crews insists, have no basis in science and are simply surreptitious efforts to usurp Americans’ rights, destroy the U.S. economy, and damage President Donald Trump’s reelection effort.
“I think we’re at the point where it is safe to say that the entire Wuhan virus scare was nothing more or less than a massive fraud perpetrated upon the American people by ‘experts’ who were determined to fundamentally change the way the country lives and is organized and governed,” Crews wrote in a June post on RedState.
“If there were justice,” he added, “we’d send and [sic] few dozen of these fascists to the gallows and gibbet their tarred bodies in chains until they fall apart.”
🐣 RT @peterbakernyt Very haunting listening now to the bells at Washington National Cathedral tolling for the 200,000 killed by the coronavirus in the United States.
TheAtlantic, George Packer: The Inside Story of Why Mueller Failed http://bit.ly/32Lijke “Wherever law ends, tyranny begins.” ~ John Locke
// In a new book, Andrew Weissmann, one of Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s top deputies, lays out the limits and letdowns of the years-long Russia investigation.
Andrew Weissmann was one of Robert Mueller’s top deputies in the special counsel’s investigation of the 2016 election, and he’s about to publish the first insider account, called Where Law Ends: Inside the Mueller Investigation. The title comes from an adapted quote by the philosopher John Locke that’s inscribed on the façade of the Justice Department building in Washington, D.C.: “Wherever law ends, tyranny begins.”
Weissmann offers a damning indictment of a “lawless” president and his knowing accomplices—Attorney General William Barr (portrayed as a cynical liar), congressional Republicans, criminal flunkies, Fox News. Donald Trump, he writes, is “like an animal, clawing at the world with no concept of right and wrong.” But in telling the story of the investigation and its fallout, Weissmann reserves his most painful words for the Special Counsel’s Office itself. Where Law Ends portrays a group of talented, dedicated professionals beset with internal divisions and led by a man whose code of integrity allowed their target to defy them and escape accountability.
“There’s no question I was frustrated at the time,” Weissmann told me in a recent interview. “There was more that could be done that we didn’t do.” He pointed out that the special counsel’s report never arrived at the clear legal conclusions expected from an internal Justice Department document. At the same time, it lacked the explanatory power of last month’s bipartisan Senate Intelligence Committee report on the 2016 election. “Even with 1,000 pages, it was better,” Weissmann said of the Senate report. “It made judgments and calls, instead of saying, ‘You could say this and you could say that.’”
Where Law Ends describes numerous instances, large and small, when Mueller declined to pursue an aggressive course for fear of the reaction at the White House. For example, the special counsel shied away from subpoenaing Don Trump Jr. to testify about his notorious June 2016 meeting in Trump Tower with a Russian lawyer offering dirt on Hillary Clinton. Ivanka Trump, who didn’t attend the meeting but talked with participants afterward in the lobby, and later discussed with her father how to conceal details from the press, was never even asked to speak with Mueller’s investigators: They “feared that hauling her in for an interview would play badly to the already antagonistic right-wing press—Look how they’re roughing up the president’s daughter—and risk enraging Trump, provoking him to shut down the Special Counsel’s Office once and for all.”
Weissmann blames this persistent timidity on one of Mueller’s other top deputies, a lawyer named Aaron Zebley, comparing Zebley to George B. McClellan (and more zealous team members, including himself, to Ulysses S. Grant). “Repeatedly during our twenty-two months in operation,” Weissmann writes, “we would reach some critical juncture in our investigation only to have Aaron say that we could not take a particular action because it risked aggravating the president beyond some undefined breaking point.”
By abdicating the role of prosecutor, Mueller cleared the way for Barr to take it on himself. Mueller and Barr were old friends. Several weeks before submitting the report, Weissmann writes, Mueller informed Barr of his intent to omit any legal recommendation. Barr didn’t object. Without telling Mueller, he saw a chance to disfigure the report into an exoneration of the president and thereby make its damning truths disappear. “Barr,” Weissmann writes, “had betrayed both friend and country.”
And Mueller? He was incapable of navigating the world remade by Trump. He conducted himself with scrupulous integrity and allowed his team to be intimidated by people who had no scruples at all. His deep aversion to publicity silenced him when the public badly needed clarity about the special counsel’s dense, ambiguous, at times unreadable report. His sense of fairness surrendered the facts of presidential criminality to an administration that was at war with facts. He trusted his friend Barr to play it straight, not realizing that Barr had gone crooked. He left the job of holding the president accountable to a Congress that had shown itself to be Trump’s willing accomplice. He wanted, above all, to warn the American people about foreign subversion of our democracy, while the greater subversion gathered force here at home.
In our interview, I asked Weissmann if Mueller had let the American people down. “Absolutely, yep,” Weissmann said, before quickly adding: “I wouldn’t phrase it as just Mueller. I would say ‘the office.’ There are a lot of things we did well, and a lot of things we could have done better, to be diplomatic about it.”
And the investigation—was it a historic missed opportunity? ¤ Weissmann’s reply was terse. “That’s fair.”
With the end of the Special Counsel’s Office, the one real check on Trump’s unfettered power was gone, until the next election. Now it’s upon us, and the president remains free to repeat what worked for him in the last one.
⭕ 20 Sep 2020
DailyBeast, Tim Weiner: Trump Makes America More Like Russia Every Day http://bit.ly/2EFlOiW Adapted from THE FOLLY AND THE GLORY: America, Russia, and Political Warfare 1945–2020
// The terrible question at the heart of the matter remains: What is the influence that Putin has on Trump? And that mystery never has been fully investigated.
🧵 RT @SteveSchmidtSES Do Not Be Afraid. Do Not Tremble. Do Not Waiver. Do not doubt either the goodness of our people or the possibilities for our future. Do not let small men with tyranny and malice in their heart (@realDonaldTrump) or hypocrites with no core (@VP) make you afraid for our future
or of your countrymen and women. Do not let the fascists, racists and conspiracy theorists make you afraid of your neighbors or the strangers who could be your friend. We should all be grateful that we have been chosen by this rancid and dangerous hour to stand up and fight.
What we do now matters. Our Capitol is occupied by a cabal of small and low men and women who have betrayed all of us, the American experiment, their oaths and basic decency in service of a corrupt and malignant cult of personality that is vandalizing our principles, ideals,
Inheritance, future and fundamental goodness. 200,000 of our country men and women are dead. At least 150,000 of them could be alive but for Trump’s lethal lying and the immoral; supine complicity of his collaborators and enablers. Let us resolve to rise up and strike down
Trumpism. Let us put it down with righteous anger and fury. Let us resolve to never let this happen again. Let us do our duty as American citizens. Let us be conscious that we are called to safe action when we consider the blood, sacrifice and courage of ordinary people who
Stood their ground on a field in Lexington and Gettysburg. The men who stormed the beaches of Normandy and dropped from the skies over France to crush fascism are smiling at our cause. The men and women who taught the world the meaning of the words “human dignity” as they
Protested segregation, absorbed the beatings and marched across the Edmund Pettus bridge are watching and judging us. We are in the right and for the right. We are fighting for the good. Trumpism is UNAMERICAN. It is illiberal, demagogic,dishonest, cruel, corrupt and disgusting
Let us strike it down. We will. Vote. @ProjectLincoln @JoeBiden @votevets @actblue @RVAT2020 @crookedmedia @prioritiesUSA @PodSaveAmerica @PaulBegala @JamesCarville @davidplouffe @davidaxelrod. Have joy in this fight. RBG is with her husband again. She is arguing with Scalia
and meeting Washington and Lincoln. Harriet Tubman and Frederick Douglas are there. Susan b Anthony is there and so is Elise Wiesel. A great champion of freedom has arrived in heaven. Her work is done. Her burden is now our’s. Let us honor her legacy by doing our duty
⭕ 19 Sep 2020
🐣 RT @ASlavitt HHS clarifies that it WILL interfere with FDA decision making.
⋙ NYT (9/19): In ‘Power Grab,’ Health Secretary Azar Asserts Authority Over F.D.A. http://nyti.ms/3hPbbrp
// Experts said the memo would make it more difficult for the F.D.A. to issue new rules, but it’s unclear how it would affect the vetting of coronavirus vaccines.
🐣 RT @AliVelshi So, @realDonaldTrump, you call my getting hit by authorities in Minneapolis on 5/30/20 (by a rubber bullet, btw, not a tear gas cannister) a “beautiful thing” called “law and order”. What law did I break while covering an entirely peaceful (yes, entirely peaceful) march?
⭕ 18 Sep 2020
JustSecurity, Asha Rangappa and David Shimer: Prepare for the Worst and Fight for the Best: A Citizen’s Guide to 2020 Electoral Interference http://bit.ly/3kKHFVE
🐣 RT @thehill #BREAKING: Joe Biden on Supreme Court: “There is no doubt — let me be clear — that the voters should pick the President and the President should pick the Justice.” 💽 https://twitter.com/thehill/status/1307135323143626752?s=20/photo/1
★ WaPo: Trump’s appointees sought to censor what government scientists said about the coronavirus, emails show http://wapo.st/33Kp4lk How two PR hacks used their “power center at [HHS] to censor, and even humiliate, top scientists and health officials”
// Michael Caputo and his adviser pressed them to use White House talking points as the pandemic raged out control.
In a June 30 email, Paul Alexander, one of those appointees at the Department of Health and Human Services, excoriated Anne Schuchat, CDC principal deputy director, for remarks she made before the group affiliated with one of the nation’s leading medical journals. Schuchat, a physician, had spoken to JAMA Network the day before, saying she hoped the country could “take it seriously and slow the transmission,” adding that “we have way too much virus across the country … right now.” The emails were first reported by the New York Times.
Schuchat’s comments came as cases were surging across several southern and western states — even as the president and his top advisers were intent on reopening the country and boosting the economy. But Alexander wrote to his boss, Michael Caputo, assistant secretary for public affairs at HHS, reprimanding Schuchat and writing a seven-point takedown of her assessment.
“Her comments are in contrast to those of senior members of the Trump administration — notably Vice President Pence, who said on Friday, ‘we have made truly remarkable progress,’” Alexander wrote.
“Importantly, having the virus spread among the young and healthy is one of the methods to drive herd immunity,” Alexander added. “She is duplicitous.”
Both Caputo and Alexander are now gone. But their emails offer new insight into how they created their own power center at the agency overseeing the pandemic response and used it to censor, and even humiliate, top scientists and health officials in an effort to sideline them or make them conform to White House-sanctioned messages. The tone of the emails is often emotional and accusatory, and they put more emphasis on the political import of the messages than on their medical or scientific substance, even as the virus raged out of control.
Caputo, a Trump loyalist engulfed in controversy, left this week on a 60-day medical leave earlier this week after a bizarre Facebook rant in which he accused government scientists of “sedition,” and warned supporters to take up arms to prepare for violence after the election. Alexander, a Canadian PhD he had hired on contract, was permanently let go this week, HHS said in a statement.
Alexander’s attempts to order career civil servants to rewrite CDC guidance, or instruct them on what they should or shouldn’t say quickly caused friction after he joined HHS this spring as Caputo’s adviser. He also instructed Anthony S. Fauci — the top government infectious-disease expert who has led the U.S. response to numerous epidemics — that he should refrain from advocating that children wear masks. Fauci disregarded his advice.
Caputo and Alexander also sought more control over the CDC’s weekly scientific missives, called the Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report. Caputo told The Washington Post he was frustrated they could only see summaries ahead of publication, rather than full drafts.
Tom Inglesby, director of the Center for Health Security at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, said Alexander has no real-world experience responding to a health crisis on this scale. “It is complete nonsense for someone who has not worked on preparing for, or responding to epidemics or pandemics before … to say he knows better than Fauci and CDC when it comes to the response to this pandemic,” he said.
💙 🐣 RT @ruth_franklin According to Jewish tradition, a person who dies on Rosh Hashanah, which began tonight, is a tzaddik, a person of great righteousness. Baruch Dayan HaEmet.
⋙ [ RBG has died ]
💙 🐣 RT @maddow Tough but fair. https://twitter.com/maddow/status/1307009380362211328?s=20/photo/1
⋙ 🐣 RT @ProjectLincoln Your plan will kill millions. https://twitter.com/ProjectLincoln/status/1306739500505206784?s=20/photo/1
// Lincoln Project ad❣ Herd Immunity
tags: herd mentality; thoughts: he clearly doesn’t understand how vaccines work or that vaccines aren’t vaccines 100% effective, plus he’s lying about the timeline while continuing to encourage behavior that seemed designed to infect as many people as possible, soooo, it’s fair
🐣 RT @RyanStruyk KARL: “How is it that you don’t trust your own experts?”
TRUMP: “Oh, I do. Not all of them, no…”
KARL: “Do you think you know better than they do?”
TRUMP: “Yeah, in many cases, I do.”
IHME Projection for Total Deaths with/without Universal Masks http://bit.ly/2QuOKfB
● https://twitter.com/Auriandra/status/1307057910195924993?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @kenklippenstein Dept of Homeland Security’s intelligence division identifies white supremacists as the foremost threat to the 2020 elections, per intel assessment leaked to me: http://bit.ly/3iKYI98 ● https://twitter.com/Auriandra/status/1307058882120908800?s=20/photo/1-2
📔 WARPspeed document http://bit.ly/3iM61gV
NYT, Jensen Interlandi: What the Fall and Winter of the Pandemic Will Look Like http://nyti.ms/33Fz8fJ
// The coronavirus isn’t going away, but a vaccine is coming and so is an election.
🧵 RT @atrupar … come again? 📌 https://twitter.com/atrupar/status/1307035508095291392?s=20
// Trump presser
🔆 This❗️⋙ NYT: Emails Detail Effort to Silence C.D.C. and Question Its Science http://nyti.ms/3mBS7Ac “Current and former C.D.C. officials called it a five-month campaign of bullying and intimidation”
// Emails from a former top Trump health official and his science adviser show how the two refused to accept Centers for Disease Control and Prevention science and sought to silence the agency.
≣ JudiciaryHouse.gov: Letter from Chairs Nadler, Schiff, Maloney and Lofgren to DOJ Inspector General Horowitz [pdf] http://bit.ly/32GFdZS Expressees concern over whether release of interim version of Durham Report is intended to influence election, in violation of DOJ policy
We are concerned by indications that Attorney General Barr might depart from longstanding DOJ principles to take public action related to U.S. Attorney Durham’s investigation that could impact the presidential election.
WaPo (12:24pm): Democrats seek ‘emergency investigation’ into whether Justice officials are improperly influencing the election http://wapo.st/35PKHDt The referral to the DOJ IG from four Dem chairmen expresses concern over political use of Durham investigation to help Trump
💙 WaPo, Philip Bump: Trump claims nothing more could have been done to defeat the coronavirus. He’s wrong. http://wapo.st/35Rj64W ● https://twitter.com/Auriandra/status/1306997764119764992?s=20/photo/1
// The coronavirus response we might have had.
Had the president not downplayed the risk and insisted it would simply go away, had he not pushed mask-wearing into the realm of partisan politics, had he not abandoned his support for containing the virus at the state level, had he not promoted unproven cure-alls — any of these changes would have made it easier for Americans to embrace the short-term difficulties necessary to contain the virus enough to change the trajectory of the pandemic. ¤ Trump chose — and continues to choose — not to do so.
WaPo Editorial: Under a lawless Trump, our system of checks and balances is being destroyed http://wapo.st/33E3TS9 “He has not grown into the office; instead, he has learned how to more effectively abuse its powers”
🐣 RT @ryanstruk MCCONNELL: “After they change the filibuster, they’re going to admit the District as a state. They’re going to admit Puerto Rico as a state. That’s four new Democratic senators in perpetuity. Once they get a hammerlock on the Senate, they’re going to then pack the Supreme Court.”
⋙ 🐣 RT @ryanstruk MCCONNELL: “The one thing the Majority Leader gets to do, that the other 99 don’t get to do, is to decide what we’re going to do… We’re not changing the filibuster rule. We’re not admitting the District and Puerto Rico as states. And we’re not packing the courts.”
⋙⋙ 🐣 … says the guy who’s been packing the courts for four years, after breaking precedent and stealing a SCOTUS seat from Obama. Cry me a river.
💙 🙏 If at 200,000 deaths from COVID-19, we were to have a national “Moment of Silence” lasting one second for each person who has perished, that “Moment” would last for 55.55 hours, or 2 days ✛ 7½ hours 🙏
// 200,000 seconds = 2.31481481 days: .31481481 days = 453.3333264 minutes = 7.555…hrs
🐣 RT @BillKristol Jared Kushner, March 21, 2020: “Cuomo didn’t pound the phones hard enough to get PPE for his state…His people are going to suffer and that’s their problem.” ¤ Like father, like son-in-law. Incompetent and uncaring.
VanityFair, Katherine Ebam: “That’s Their Problem”: How Jared Kushner Let the Markets Decide America’s COVID-19 Fate http://bit.ly/3hHJPmV
// First-person accounts of a tense meeting at the White House in late March suggest that President Trump’s son-in-law resisted taking federal action to alleviate shortages and help Democratic-led New York. Instead, he enlisted a former roommate to lead a Consultant State to take on the Deep State, with results ranging from the Eastman Kodak fiasco to a mysterious deal to send ventilators to Russia.
WaPo: Watchdog group calls on FEC to investigate donations to Trump and others by relatives and associates of Louis DeJoy http://wapo.st/2Ec4ZvC The nonprofit Campaign Legal Center seeks an investigation into irregular GOP campaign bundling practices at DeJoy’s former company
The filing by the nonprofit Campaign Legal Center is the third complaint seeking a state or federal investigation since The Washington Post this month reported allegations that DeJoy and his aides urged employees at New Breed Logistics, his former North Carolina-based company, to write checks and attend fundraisers on behalf of Republican candidates. ¤ DeJoy then defrayed the cost of those political contributions from 2003 to 2014 by boosting employee bonuses, two employees told The Post.
🐣 RT .@esglaude: “William Barr is searching so desperately to find a way to describe white Americans who refuse to wear a mask as victims that he’s reaching for comparisons that not only don’t make any sense, but reveal a kind of moral tone deafness.”
💽 MSNBC, MorningJoe: ‘A very strange speech’: What AG Barr’s words mean http://on.msnbc.com/3kuLCxn
// Attorney General William Barr on Wednesday suggested that nationwide stay-at-home orders to prevent the spread of the coronavirus were the ‘greatest intrusion on civil liberties’ in history ‘other than slavery.’ The panel discusses Barr’s remarks.
⭕ 17 Sep 2020
WashingtonExaminer: Christopher Wray says Russia is ‘very active’ in trying to influence 2020 election http://washex.am/3cq7VSe
“Americans must have confidence in our voting system and our election infrastructure. That’s why the security of our elections is and will continue to be one of our highest priorities,” Wray said. “We will not tolerate foreign interference in our elections, and we’re working closely with our federal, state, and local partners as well as the private sector to share information, bolster security, and identify and disrupt any threats.”
Wray said that “just recently, for example, we shared threat indicators with both Facebook and Twitter that allowed them to take down fake accounts created as part of a Russian disinformation campaign before those accounts could develop a broader following.”
After a tip from the FBI, Facebook announced in early September that it had taken down a small network of 13 Russian accounts and two pages tied to Russia’s Internet Research Agency, and Twitter similarly said that it suspended a small number of accounts “for platform manipulation that we can reliably attribute to Russian state actors” that were operating a site called PeaceData. Graphika, a New York-based social media analysis firm, revealed that “the website employed real and apparently unwitting individuals, typically novice freelance writers, to write its articles” and that it published over 500 articles in English and over 200 articles in Arabic in 2020. The group said that “the network appeared designed to target progressive and left-wing audiences, including in the United States and United Kingdom.”
“They were able to shut down Russian influence accounts really right before they could ever build a following. And the faster we can do that and the more agile way we can do that, the better,” Wray said on Thursday. “Misinformation or disinformation or fake information is only effective if it seems credible. And it’s only credible if it’s built up some reservoir of credibility. … And if we’re able to shut them down and knock them back quickly before they can really build up that credibility, then it’s not going to stop it, but it means it’s much, much less effective. So, we need more of that. We’re having more of that.”
Robert Mueller’s 2019 special counsel report said that Russians interfered in the 2016 election in a “sweeping and systematic fashion” but “did not establish” criminal collusion between Russians and anyone in Trump’s orbit.
“I think, in many ways, what concerns me the most is the steady drumbeat of misinformation and sort of amplification of smaller cyberintrusions that contribute over time. I worry that they will contribute over time to a lack of confidence of American voters and citizens in the validity of their vote,” Wray testified. “I think that would be a perception, not a reality. I think Americans can and should have confidence in our election system and certainly in our democracy. But I worry that people will take on a feeling of futility because of all of the noise and confusion that’s generated, and that’s a very hard problem to combat.”
🐣 RT @MSNBC Fmr. FBI agent Peter Strzok: “When I see people who are quitting and leaving the Dept. of Justice, they’re not doing that based on any political agenda … They’re doing it because what they see is the unacceptable politicization of the Dept. Justice.”
⋙ 💽 MSNBC, Andrea Mitchell: Peter Strzok: ‘I believe that the president is compromised by the Russians’ http://on.msnbc.com/33ISalr
// Former FBI Agent Peter Strzok, who served as an FBI counterintelligence officer and the deputy of the FBI counterintelligence division, joins Andrea Mitchell
NYT: Lev Parnas, Giuliani Associate, Faces New Fraud Charges http://nyti.ms/2FIRDYD
// Mr. Parnas, who participated in a campaign to dig up dirt on the president’s political rivals, is accused of swindling investors.
WaPo: Trump alleges ‘left-wing indoctrination’ in schools, says he will create national commission to push more ‘pro-American’ history http://wapo.st/3hICmno
// President Trump characterized demonstrations against racial injustice as “left-wing rioting and mayhem” that are the result of decades of indoctrination in schools. The federal government has no power over the curriculum taught in local schools.
🐣 RT @CNN Dr. Anthony Fauci says normal life in the US may not be back until the end of 2021, even if there’s a vaccine by the end of 2020: “It’s not going to be an overnight event, where you have a vaccine and then all of a sudden everything is okay” https://cnn.it/2FoYZ2W https://twitter.com/CNNPolitics/status/1304533190133022722?s=20/photo/1
WaPo: Trump contradicts health advisers on coronavirus vaccine timetable as death toll mounts http://wapo.st/3hIxT4m
🔆 This❗️⋙ WaPo: Federal judge temporarily blocks USPS operational changes amid concerns about mail slowdowns, election http://wapo.st/2RDJmri
🐣 RT @SykesCharlie “This is what struck me most during my conversation: she is young, with a long career ahead of her, and she was willing to put it all on the line…Olivia Troye, with much more to lose…had much more courage than all of them.”
⋙ NewYorker, Susan Glasser: “It Was All About the Election”: The Ex-White House Aide Olivia Troye on Trump’s Narcissistic Mishandling of COVID-19 http://bit.ly/2EcemeX
🐣 RT @MikkoAlanne Wow. Pence’s former top aide on the White House COVID Task Force — a lifelong Republican — goes public, confirms Trump deliberately and knowingly lied to the American people about the virus danger.
🐣 RT @RonaldKlain This is the most powerful anti-Trump ad I’ve seen so far. Please watch and share.
⋙ 🐣 RT @BillKristol 🚨🚨NEW from @RVAT2020. ¤ Olivia Troye, VP Pence’s lead staffer on the COVID task force, resigned two months ago. Now she speaks out: ¤ “No matter how hard you worked…the president was going to do something detrimental to keeping Americans safe. It was awful. It was terrifying.” 💽 https://twitter.com/BillKristol/status/1306684848908754945?s=20/photo/1
// Republicans Against Trump ad❣ VP Pence staffer
↥ ↧
🔆 This❗️⋙ WaPo: Former Pence aide says she will vote for Biden because of Trump’s ‘flat-out disregard for human life’ during pandemic http://wapo.st/32E0fsc
Olivia Troye, who worked as homeland security, counterterrorism and coronavirus adviser to Vice President Pence for two years, said that the administration’s response cost lives and that she will vote for Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden this fall because of her experience in the Trump White House.
🐣 RT @peterbakernyt These are the words that Tom Ridge, a former Republican governor and Bush cabinet member, used in reaction to Trump’s statement about not counting virus deaths in blue states: “beyond despicable,” “soulless,” “almost unspeakable.”
⋙ NYT: For Trump, It’s Not the United States, It’s Red and Blue States http://nyti.ms/2FHTU6n
// A statement by the president this week was an insight into how he views the country as composed of parts that either are for him or against him.
💙 WaPo: FBI director affirms Russia’s aim to ‘denigrate’ Biden ahead of election http://wapo.st/2ZM7dt7
🐣 RT @ProjectLincoln This is not normal. But it could be soon. 💽 https://twitter.com/ProjectLincoln/status/1306656256073981952?s=20/photo/1
// Lincoln Project ad 📌 Attack on Lafayette Square; Trump mimics Putin
🧵 RT @kyledcheney TODAY: Chris Wray and National Counterterrorism Center Director Chris Miller testify on threats to the homeland — including foreign election threats and homegrown extremism. ¤ As expected, Chad WOLF has not shown up despite a subpoena from Chairman Bennie Thompson. 📌 https://twitter.com/kyledcheney/status/1306579921377079298?s=20
⋙ 🐣 RT @kyledcheney WRAY reaffirms that there are “very active efforts” by Russia to influence the 2020 election, primarily to “denigrate Vice President Biden” and damage what they see as an “anti-Russia establishment” in the United States.
⋙ 🐣 RT @kyledcheney NEW: WRAY affirms that Russia is undertaking “very active efforts” to interfere in the election and damage Biden. ¤ He also says antifa is “not an organization” but an “ideology” or “movement.” QAnon, he says, is a “complex set of conspiracy theories.
⋙ 🐣 RT @kyledcheney WRAY under questioning from @RepSlotkin, says white supremacist violence is the largest part of the greatest domestic terrorist threat in the country: “racially motivated violent extremism.”
⋙ 🐣 RT @kyledcheney WRAY, without mentioning that Trump is the loudest purveyor, says his greatest worry is that voters will believe “misinformation” that their votes are not secure: ¤ “I worry people will take on a feeling of futility because of all the noise and confusion that’s been generated.”
⋙ 🐣 RT @kyledcheney Last night, AG BARR made case for political role in DOJ and said of FBI agents: “Whose agents do you think you are?” ¤ Today, Rep. Demings gave WRAY a change to respond: ¤ “We, the FBI, work for the American people,” Wray said.
🐣 RT @mmpadellan trump’s FBI Director Christopher Wray confirmed that Russia IS interfering in our elections by attacking Biden, and that Antifa is NOT an organization, but an ideology. ¤ This is trump’s guy, y’all.
🐣 RT @MarshallCohen OANN is trying to cover up its past relationship with Andrii Derkach, an active Russian agent involved in Moscow’s anti-Biden meddling. OANN gave him tons of free airtime and promoted his wacko conspiracy theories.
⋙ 🐣 RT @ChristopherJM Heh. Just noticed @OANN deleted all Derkach tagged stories from its site, including a Reuters story on the Ukrainian MP and US-labeled “active Russian agent” being sanctioned for election interference. But — oops! — it didn’t delete one misspelled with “Derkash,” which remains. https://twitter.com/ChristopherJM/status/1306590170133794816?s=20/photo/1
💙 NYT, Neal Katyal and Joshua Geltzer: This Is How Bad It’s Gotten at the Justice Department http://nyti.ms/2EdmThG “The latest [resignation] appears to be Nora Dannehy, a longtime prosecutor who … was part of a team looking into the Russia investigation” ● Text Block: https://twitter.com/Auriandra/status/1306602613241249792?s=20/photo/1
// When civil servants resign, skeptics often ask what difference one person really can make by leaving. The answer is: a lot.
In his time as the head of the Justice Department, Attorney General William Barr has alienated many federal prosecutors. The latest appears to be Nora Dannehy, a longtime prosecutor who has resigned from the department, where she was part of a team looking into the Russia investigation.
We don’t know for sure exactly what happened; she isn’t talking, nor is Mr. Barr. But The Hartford Courant, which broke the story, reported that Ms. Dannehy’s colleagues said that she departed because of Mr. Barr’s politicization — in particular, because Mr. Barr is evidently eager to break drastically with past practice and issue an incomplete report intended to help President Trump in his re-election efforts.
Her resignation looks like part of an extremely troubling pattern. Earlier this year, highly respected prosecutors in the Michael Flynn and Roger Stone cases dramatically resigned or withdrew. One of them testified to Congress that the Justice Department under Mr. Barr was treating Mr. Stone “differently from any other defendant because of his relationship to the president.” The Justice Department inspector general has opened an investigation.
When civil servants resign, skeptics often ask what difference one person really can make by leaving. The answer is simple: a lot. Ms. Dannehy’s departure isn’t just likely a major assertion of integrity by her; it’s also a big problem for Mr. Barr — and therefore for Mr. Trump. ¤ The resignations are a forceful public signal that something is seriously awry with the Justice Department under Mr. Barr.
v
Mr. Barr’s bizarre project, headed by John Durham, the U.S. attorney for Connecticut, was created to reinvestigate the investigators of Russian election interference and to cover ground already explored in detail by the department’s inspector general. Ms. Dennehy’s departure casts real doubt on Mr. Barr’s design to try to vindicate Mr. Trump’s narrative that he was targeted in 2016 by the “deep state.”Ms. Dannehy poses a looming further threat to Mr. Barr. She didn’t just withdraw from the investigation; she resigned from the department entirely. That means Mr. Barr can’t muzzle her — and, in turn, she can warn Congress and the rest of us …
She will have constraints like attorney-client privilege and classification. But that still leaves plenty of room to unmask Mr. Barr’s shenanigans. That should happen immediately in testimony before the House of Representatives. To lay bare Mr. Barr’s mischief is, in significant part, to defang it. This, not Mr. Durham’s unfinished report, is what needs to happen before the election.
🐣 RT @DavidPriess Dan Coats speaks out; pay attention: ¤ “No American, and certainly no American leader, should want such an outcome. Total destruction and sowing salt in the earth of American democracy is a catastrophe well beyond simple defeat and a poison for generations.”
🐣 RT @BillKristol “We must firmly, unambiguously reassure all Americans that their vote will be counted, that it will matter, that the people’s will expressed through their votes will not be questioned and will be respected and accepted.” — Dan Coats, former Trump DNI
⋙ NYT, Dan Coats: What’s at Stake in This Election? The American Democratic Experiment http://nyti.ms/2H9vumG
// Congress should establish a bipartisan commission to monitor voting and ensure that laws and regulations are followed.
💙 🐣 RT @BerniceKing Here we are: 💽 https://twitter.com/BerniceKing/status/1306229364347068417?s=20/photo/1
The government made an anti-fascism film in 1943
// And it’s eerily similar to 2017
🐣 RT @ForeignAffairs “Future elections in the United States and other democracies will face an onslaught of disinformation and conspiracy theories emanating not just from Russia but also from China, Iran, Venezuela, and beyond.”
⋙ ForeignAffairs, Alina Polyakova: The Kremlin’s Plot Against Democracy http://fam.ag/2FHmcO7
// Sep-Oct 2020; With new players in the disinformation game, the 2020 U.S. election will not be a replay of 2016. It will be far worse.
⭕ 16 Sep 2020
DailyBeast, Julia Davis: Russian Media Is Rooting for Civil War in America: ‘The Worse, the Better’ http://bit.ly/3hBdQoh Julia Davis watches Russian tv so you don’t have to
// “It is better to remain neutral, but if we had to choose, then Trump is certainly ours.”
WaPo: Federal officials stockpiled munitions, sought ‘heat ray’ device before clearing Lafayette Square, whistleblower says http://wapo.st/3my10eq
D.C. National Guard Maj. Adam D. DeMarco told lawmakers that defense officials were searching for crowd control technology deemed too unpredictable to use in war zones and had authorized the transfer of about 7,000 rounds of ammunition to the D.C. Armory as protests against police use of force and racial injustice roiled Washington.
In sworn testimony, shared this week with The Washington Post, DeMarco provided his account as part of an ongoing investigation into law enforcement and military officers’ use of force against D.C. protesters.
🐣 RT @maddow The attorney general has gone off the deep end. This is nuts.
⋙ WSJ: Barr Tells Prosecutors to Consider Charging Violent Protesters With Sedition http://on.wsj.com/3muwjGQ
// To bring a sedition case, prosecutors would have to prove there was a conspiracy to attack government agents or officials that posed an imminent danger
🐣 RT @KellyO HHS official, former Trump campaign operative Michael Caputo taking 60 day leave of absence after apologizing for tirade against government scientists. Caputo associate also leaving permanently. https://twitter.com/KellyO/status/1306280131393183747?s=20/photo/1
⭕ 15 Sep 2020
💙 BlogForArizona (8/21): Joe Biden promises to lead the forces of light over the forces of darkness http://bit.ly/3c1TZ0g Biden’s acceptance speech:
// 8/21/2020
Give people light. Those are words for our time. The current president has cloaked America in darkness for much too long. Too much anger. Too much fear. Too much division.
Here and now, I give you my word: If you entrust me with the presidency, I will draw on the best of us not the worst. I will be an ally of the light not of the darkness. It’s time for us, for We the People, to come together. For make no mistake. United we can, and will, overcome this season of darkness in America. We will choose hope over fear, facts over fiction, fairness over privilege.
* * *
But while I will be a Democratic candidate, I will be an American president. I will work as hard for those who didn’t support me as I will for those who did. That’s the job of a president. To represent all of us, not just our base or our party. This is not a partisan moment. This must be an American moment.It’s a moment that calls for hope and light and love. Hope for our futures, light to see our way forward, and love for one another.
All elections are important. But we know in our bones this one is more consequential.
America is at an inflection point. A time of real peril, but of extraordinary possibilities. We can choose the path of becoming angrier, less hopeful, and more divided. A path of shadow [darkness] and suspicion.Or we can choose a different path, and together, take this chance to heal, to be reborn, to unite. A path of hope and light.
This is a life-changing election that will determine America’s future for a very long time. Character is on the ballot. Compassion is on the ballot. Decency, science, democracy. They are all on the ballot.
Who we are as a nation. What we stand for. And, most importantly, who we want to be. That’s all on the ballot. And the choice could not be clearer.
* * *
[I]’ve learned two things. First, your loved ones may have left this Earth but they never leave your heart. They will always be with you. And second, I found the best way through pain and loss and grief is to find purpose. As God’s children each of us have a purpose in our lives.And we have a great purpose as a nation: To open the doors of opportunity to all Americans. To save our democracy. To be a light to the world once again.
* * *
America’s history tells us that it has been in our darkest moments that we’ve made our greatest progress. That we’ve found the light. And in this dark moment, I believe we are poised to make great progress again. That we can find the light once more. I have always believed you can define America in one word: Possibilities.
* * *
The Irish poet Seamus Heaney once wrote:
“History says,
Don’t hope on this side of the grave,
But then, once in a lifetime
The longed-for tidal wave
Of justice can rise up,
And hope and history rhyme“This is our moment to make hope and history rhyme. With passion and purpose, let us begin — you and I together, one nation, under God — united in our love for America and united in our love for each other.
For love is more powerful than hate.
Hope is more powerful than fear.
Light is more powerful than dark.This is our moment. This is our mission. May history be able to say that the end of this chapter of American darkness began here tonight as love and hope and light joined in the battle for the soul of the nation.
And this is a battle that we, together, will win. I promise you.
💙 ⋙ DailyBeast, Adam Rawnsley and Lachlan Markay: Steve Bannon Is Behind Bogus Study That China Created COVID http://bit.ly/2FzGr0b An author of the study went on Tucker Carlson who suggested “what you just said completely changes everything we think we know about the pandemic”
// The study goes against basically all scientific evidence and expert opinion. But it fits with the former Trump adviser’s anti-China posture.
A new study purporting to show that the novel coronavirus was manufactured in a Chinese lab was published by a pair of nonprofit groups linked to Steve Bannon, the former top Trump strategist now facing felony fraud charges.
The study, co-authored by a Chinese virologist who fled Hong Kong this year, claims that “laboratory manipulation is part of the history of SARS-CoV-2.” Its findings were quickly picked up by a handful of prominent news organizations such as the New York Post, which hyped the “explosive” allegations that run counter to virtually all existing scientific literature on the source of the virus.
The study is the work of the Rule of Law Society and the Rule of Law Foundation, sister nonprofit organizations that Bannon was instrumental in creating. According to documents posted on the Society’s website last year, he served as that group’s chair. The Bannon connection was first spotted by Kevin Bird, a Ph.D. candidate at Michigan State University, and shared by Carl Bergstrom, a biology professor at the University of Washington, who called the study “bizarre and unfounded.”
A search of Google Scholar and the Rule of Law Society and Rule of Law Foundation websites indicates that the organizations have not previously published scientific or medical research, and it’s unclear whether the paper received any peer review. It was posted on Monday on the website Zenodo, a publicly available repository of scientific and academic research to which anyone can upload their work.
Both of the nonprofits behind the study were formed in conjunction with exiled Chinese billionaire Guo Wengui, with whom Bannon has collaborated on a number of advocacy efforts targeting the Chinese government and business endeavors that have drawn the scrutiny of federal law enforcement officials. …
“This virus is not from nature,” declared Dr. Li-Meng Yan, one of the scientists who conducted the study, during a Monday appearance on a British talk show. She called reports that the virus originated in a Wuhan meat market “a smoke screen” designed to obscure its true origins.
But other virologists disagree and say the paper makes false claims about a number of basic facts. “Basically, it’s all circumstantial and some of it is entirely fictional,” Dr. Angela Rasmussen, a virologist at Columbia University, told The Daily Beast of the study.
Unrelated to his work with the Rule of Law groups, Bannon is also facing felony charges over what federal prosecutors say was an effort to extract millions of dollars from a nonprofit seeking to privately finance the construction of a wall on the southern U.S. border. Bannon has pleaded not guilty to the charges.
Following publication of this piece, Yan appeared on Fox News host Tucker Carlson’s primetime program on Tuesday night. After Yan reiterated her claims that the virus was developed in a lab and that the Chinese government released it intentionally, Carlson—who has become one of Fox’s loudest coronavirus skeptics—offered up a big caveat at the end of the interview.
“Unfortunately this is not the forum for the details of your research,” he said. “I don’t have the grounding to ask you the right questions but this is where you wish for a functioning media because what you just said completely changes everything we think we know about the pandemic that is wrecking our country.” ¤ Bannon’s name, meanwhile, did not come up once in the segment.
↥ ↧
So the author goes on Tucker Carlson who suggests “what you just said completely changes everything we think we know about the pandemic.” Pretty soon, they’ll be blaming the pandemic on ‘China-loving’ Biden
📔 ★ GatesFoundation, Bill & Melinda Gates: 2020 GoalKeepers Report: COVID-19 ~ A Global Perspective http://gates.ly/2RviWYH “In the blink of an eye, a health crisis became an economic crisis, a food crisis, a housing crisis, a political crisis” ●Text Block: https://twitter.com/Auriandra/status/1306123270366916608?s=20/photo/1
“Mutually exacerbating catastrophes” is an apt description for the COVID-19 pandemic … . First, there was the disease itself. Then, governments moved resources to try to manage it and people stopped seeking health care to avoid being infected: building blocks of a comprehensive health catastrophe. Consider vaccine coverage, which is a good proxy measure for how health systems are functioning. Our data partner, the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME), found that in 2020 coverage is dropping to levels last seen in the 1990s. In other words, we’ve been set back about 25 years in about 25 weeks. One of the most important questions the world now faces is how quickly low-income countries can catch back up to where they were and start making progress again. The hardest-hit will need support to make sure that what should be temporary reversals don’t become permanent.
🐣 RT @mitchellreports .@ChrisMurphyCT: “Michael Caputo has to go. You cannot encourage the armed insurrection of Americans against the government and have a job in this administration.” #AMRstaff
🐣 RT @BillKristol “Trump isn’t actually running for re-election—or at least not running in the traditional manner…It is not a campaign to persuade the public…It’s a campaign to hold on to power using every tool available to him as president of the United States.”
⋙ NYT, Jamelle Bouie: Trump’s Perverse Campaign Strategy http://nyti.ms/2FC6DXY
// If the president’s allies are talking about the moment “shooting will begin” and “martial law,” it’s not by accident.
‼️ Vice, Carter Sherman: Staggering Number of Hysterectomies Happening at ICE Facility, Whistleblower Says http://bit.ly/33umy2E
// “We’ve questioned among ourselves, like, goodness, he’s taking everybody’s stuff out,” said a former nurse at the facility. “That’s his specialty, he’s the uterus collector.”
Politico: Caputo apologizes to HHS staff, signals desire for medical leave http://politi.co/2ForUEN
// The departure of the administration’s top health spokesperson would be a major blow to Trump’s messaging strategy on coronavirus.
DailyBeast, Lachlan Markay: Inside Kanye’s Operation to Ratf*ck Biden in Iowa http://bit.ly/35Avy91
// A pair of seasoned Republican operatives appear to be giving the famous rapper a boost to get his name on ballots.
⭕ 14 Sep 2020
NBCNews: Justice Department internal watchdog is investigating Roger Stone’s sentencing, say sources http://nbcnews.to/3kjuQRL
// Prosecutor Aaron Zelinsky told Congress that the U.S. attorney’s office in D.C. told him to recommend a lighter sentence because of Stone’s ties to Trump.
🐣 RT @AVindman Truth is a victim in this administration, I think it’s Orwellian—the ultimate goal of this president is to get you to disbelieve what you’ve seen and what you’ve heard. My goal now is to remind people of this.
⋙ 🐣 RT @AVindman This Atlantic interview provides some insight into my motivations for public service, testifying in Congress, and now speaking publicly.
⋙⋙ 🐣 RT @TheAtlantic Exclusive: In his first interview since serving as a key witness in the impeachment trial, Alexander Vindman tells @JeffreyGoldberg that Americans should be worried about Donald Trump’s relationship with Vladimir Putin.
⋙⋙⋙ TheAtlantic, Jeffrey Goldberg: Alexander Vindman: Trump Is Putin’s ‘Useful Idiot’ http://bit.ly/3bXuf5i
// In his first interview, a key witness in the impeachment trial says Trump goes out of his way to try to please the Russian president.
WaPo: Top Trump health appointee Michael Caputo warns of armed insurrection after election http://wapo.st/32wU9d0
🐣 RT @ASlavitt This guy is unwell. He’s accusing our scientists of “sedition.” It’s getting embarrassing. ¤ On the other hand he does fit right in with the Administration. 🔆 This❗️⋙ NYT: Trump Health Aide Alleges Broad Conspiracies and Warns of Armed Revolt http://nyti.ms/2Fs1QIM //➔ Fyi: Wikipedia: Caputo “worked for Gazprom Media in 2000 where he worked on improving the image of Vladimir Putin in the U.S.”
// Michael Caputo, the assistant secretary of health for public affairs, told a Facebook audience without evidence that left-wing hit squads were being trained for insurrection, and he accused C.D.C. scientists of “sedition.”
The top communications official at the powerful cabinet department in charge of combating the coronavirus made outlandish and false claims on Sunday that career government scientists were engaging in “sedition” in their handling of the pandemic and warned that left-wing hit squads were preparing for armed insurrection after the election.
Michael Caputo, 58, the assistant secretary of public affairs at the Department of Health and Human Services, said without evidence that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention was harboring a “resistance unit” determined to undermine President Trump.
Mr. Caputo, who has faced criticism for leading efforts to warp C.D.C. weekly bulletins to fit Mr. Trump’s pandemic narrative, suggested that he personally could be in danger. …
Mr. Caputo delivered his broadside against scientists, the media and Democrats after a spate of news reports over the weekend that detailed his team’s systematic interference in the C.D.C.’s official reports on the pandemic and other disease outbreaks. Former and current C.D.C. officials described to Politico, The New York Times and other outlets how Mr. Caputo and a top aide routinely demanded the agency revise, delay and even scuttle the C.D.C.’s core public health updates, called Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Reports, that they believed undercut Mr. Trump’s message that the pandemic is under control.
Those reports, deemed “the holiest of the holy” by one former top health official for their international respect and importance, have traditionally been so shielded from political interference that political appointees see them only just before they are published.
Mr. Caputo on Sunday complained on Facebook that he was under siege by the media and said that his physical health was in question and his “mental health has definitely failed.”
“I don’t like being alone in Washington,” he said, describing “shadows on the ceiling in my apartment, there alone, shadows are so long.” He then ran through a series of conspiracy theories, culminating in a prediction that Mr. Trump will win re-election but his Democratic opponent, Joseph R. Biden Jr., will refuse to concede.
“And when Donald Trump refuses to stand down at the inauguration, the shooting will begin,” he said. “The drills that you’ve seen are nothing.” He added: “If you carry guns, buy ammunition, ladies and gentlemen, because it’s going to be hard to get.”
His Facebook presentation comes as Mr. Trump has increasingly singled out federal government scientists as targets, complaining without evidence that they were deliberately trying to subvert his administration’s efforts to fight the pandemic for their own political reasons.
Mr. Caputo echoed those sentiments, saying scientists “deep in the bowels of the C.D.C. have given up science and become political animals.”
They “haven’t gotten out of their sweatpants except for meetings at coffee shops” to plot “how they’re going to attack Donald Trump next,” Mr. Caputo said. “There are scientists who work for this government who do not want America to get well, not until after Joe Biden is president.”
Mr. Caputo frequently touched on themes of an obstructive “deep state” that the president has used throughout his tenure and during his re-election campaign. Mr. Trump has portrayed himself as at war with federal bureaucrats determined to thwart his policies and with radical left-wing activists who he claims are sowing violence in American cities.
Mr. Caputo suggested, also without evidence, that the August killing of a Trump supporter in Portland, Ore., by an avowed supporter of the left-wing collective known as antifa was part of a broader left-wing plot to target the administration’s supporters.
“Remember the Trump supporter who was shot and killed?” he said. “That was a drill.”
The man suspected of the shooting, Michael Forest Reinoehl, was later shot dead by officers from a federally led fugitive task force in Washington State. He “went down fighting,” Mr. Caputo said. “Why? Because he couldn’t say what he had inside him.” He then spoke of “hit squads being trained all over this country” — a conspiracy theory unsupported by evidence.
Mr. Caputo continued his social media effort after the Facebook event, retweeting a conspiratorial post that hinted with no evidence that armed camps were being established in Washington, D.C.: “Occupants don’t look like vagrants. Looks like forward basing for militant street ops,” J. Michael Waller, a conservative provocateur, posted.
He accused officials at the C.D.C. and other government agencies — including the Department of Health and Human Services — of deliberately subverting the president’s efforts to contain the pandemic. The C.D.C., he said, was riddled with anti-Trump researchers who “walk around like they are monks” and “holy men” but engage in “rotten science.”
But he singled out Dr. Robert Redfield, the director of the agency, for praise. He “is one of my closest friends in Washington,” he said. “He’s such a good man.”
Former and current agency officials have asserted that Dr. Redfield has allowed so much political interference with the agency’s work that some career scientists are on the verge of resigning.
Mr. Caputo’s scientific adviser, Dr. Paul Alexander, was heavily involved in the effort to reshape the C.D.C.’s weekly reports on morbidity and mortality. The reports are widely read by the nation’s health professionals, who depend upon them for medical guidance.
Mr. Caputo acknowledged in a brief interview this weekend that it was unusual for a public affairs officer to hire his own scientific adviser. But he described Dr. Alexander, an assistant professor at McMaster University in Canada, as “a genius” to his Facebook audience, saying the public criticism had only served to make his position “permanent” as a watchdog over politically motivated scientists.
“To allow people to die so that you can replace the president is a grievous venial sin, venial sin,” he said. “And these people are all going to hell.”
🔆 This❗️⋙ NYT: Is the Mail Getting Slower? We’re Tracking It http://nyti.ms/33nwiM6 Undeniably ~ since Postmaster General DeJoy unveiled major changes in early July
● Timelines: Long-distance Mail (Top) and Local Mail (bottom)
NYT: Is the Mail Getting Slower? We’re Tracking It https://t.co/6k2VHo4Vch Undeniably ~ since Postmaster General DeJoy unveiled major changes in early July
● Timelines: Long-distance Mail (Top) and Local Mail (bottom) pic.twitter.com/hcGoeD4j0k
— 🇺🇸 Auriandra 🇺🇦 (@Auriandra) September 14, 2020
● State-by-State https://twitter.com/Auriandra/status/1305574292277604354?s=20/photo/1
NYT: Biden Creates Legal War Room, Preparing for a Big Fight Over Voting http://nyti.ms/3mhNlYB “Biden officials described the ramp-up as necessary to guard the integrity of a fall election already clouded by President Trump’s baseless accusations of widespread fraud”
// With two former solicitors general and hundreds of lawyers, the Biden campaign is bracing for an extended legal battle and hoping to maintain trust in the electoral process.
The new operation will be overseen by Dana Remus, who has served as Mr. Biden’s general counsel on the 2020 campaign, and Bob Bauer, a former White House counsel during the Obama administration who joined the Biden campaign full-time over the summer as a senior adviser.
Inside the campaign, they are creating a “special litigation” unit, which will be led by Donald B. Verrilli Jr. and Walter Dellinger, two former solicitors general, who are joining the campaign. Hundreds of lawyers will be involved, including a team at the Democratic law firm Perkins Coie, led by Marc Elias, which will focus on the state-by-state fight over vote casting and counting rules. And Eric H. Holder Jr., the former attorney general in the Obama administration, will serve as something of a liaison between the campaign and the many independent groups involved in the legal fight over the election, which is already raging in the courts.
Mr. Trump’s talk of fraud drew a notable Republican rebuke last week, when Benjamin L. Ginsberg, one of the party’s top elections lawyers for decades, wrote a scathing Washington Post op-ed article.
🐣 📋 RT @kylegriffin1 Republican Party affiliation is down 8% this year alone. Democrats have gained 5%.
⋙⋙ 💙 WaPo, Jennifer Rubin: Trump might want to stop fighting the culture wars. He’s losing. http://wapo.st/3mmYasj //➔ tons of data with links to polls
⋙⋙⋙ The Fox News poll from 9/13 indicated that 48% view the demonstrations in NY, Kenosha and Portland to be “Riots,” while 40% said “Protests.” It noted “Thirty percent of Democrats join 68 percent of Republicans in describing the unrest as riots.” ¤ This perception is ominous for Democrats. Incivility and violence of any kind must be vigorously condemned, whether it comes from the right or the left.
⋙ 🐣 Then who are the 44% who support him? I guess those who vote on:
– The Economy
– Abortion
– Guns (lots of hunters where I live)
– Racism (barely disguised)
– “Traditional conservatives”
– In the Fox/OAN/talk radio/conspiracy bubbles
– Those who want to “own the libs”
Miss any?
🐣 “The party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. It was their final, most essential command” – George Orwell, “1984”
“Just remember, what you’re seeing and what you’re reading is not what’s happening” – Donald Trump, 2018
@Morning_Joe @MorningMika @JoeNBC
⭕ 13 Sep 2020
🐣 RT @MeetThePress WATCH: Former FBI Agent Peter Strzok says he continues to believe that “Donald Trump is compromised by the Russians.” #MTP ¤ Strzok claims: Russians “hold leverage over [Trump] that makes him incapable of placing the national interest … ahead of his own.” 💽 https://twitter.com/MeetThePress/status/1305173152415330305?s=20/photo/1
⭕ 12 Sep 2020
DailyBeast, Emily Shugerman (9/12): Giuliani Claims He Had No Idea His Ukraine Pal Andriy Derkach Was a Russian Agent http://bit.ly/302cRYe
// Derkach was sanctioned this week by the U.S. Treasury Department for attempting to interfere in the upcoming U.S. elections by peddling conspiracies on Joe Biden.
🐣 RT @magi_jay Can we just start calling him a fascist at this point? Or at least fascistic? We’re not living under fascism. But he would sure like us to be.
⋙ 🐣 RT @atrupar “We’re gonna win four more years in the White House, and then we’ll negotiate, because based on the way we were treated, we’re probably entitled to another four years after that” — Trump, slurring, began his rally in Nevada by teasing that he intends to serve more than two terms
🐣 RT @JamilSmith I wrote about what Trump told Bob Woodward, and the whistleblower allegations that @DHSgov deliberately downplayed the threat of white-supremacist violence. Trump is running on keeping white people safe, but it’s clear that he doesn’t even care about them.
⋙ RollingStone, Jamil Smith: The No Lives Matter President http://bit.ly/2ZxC5O4
// Trump’s damning admissions on the Woodward tapes betray not merely his duty and the country, but even his promises to white America to keep them safe
🐣 RT @techreview [MIT] Videos spread by right-wing agitators have mobilized white vigilantes to take up arms against racial justice protesters, making them feel justified menacing and attacking them. If social-media companies do not act swiftly, the situation can only get worse. https://bit.ly/3bXnjFq
⭕ 11 Sep 2020
WaPo, Rachel Kleinfeld: The U.S. shows all the signs of a country spiraling toward political violence http://wapo.st/2FsjOL4
// It isn’t too late to bolster our democracy’s resilience and pull back from the brink.
WaPo Editorial: The Trump administration finally takes action against Russian election meddling — even as it tries to deny it http://wapo.st/35tgCth //➔ in a normal world, this would put an end to the Trump/Giuliani/Derkach-concocted Hunter Biden saga ~ but that’s not our world
THERE APPEAR to be two minds in the Trump administration: one that acknowledges Russia is a hostile geopolitical foe; and that of President Trump and his most craven flunkies, who seek to help the Kremlin escape blame and punishment for its persistent wrongdoing.
The first occasionally wins out, as was the case on Thursday, when the Treasury Department placed sanctions on Andriy Derkach, a pro-Russian member of the Ukrainian parliament. The department concluded that Mr. Derkach “has been an active Russian agent for over a decade, maintaining close connections with the Russian Intelligence Services.” In the past two years, “Derkach waged a covert influence campaign centered on cultivating false and unsubstantiated narratives concerning U.S. officials in the upcoming 2020 Presidential Election, spurring corruption investigations in both Ukraine and the United States designed to culminate prior to election day,” Treasury stated.
What Treasury did not mention is that Trump lawyer Rudolph W. Giuliani worked with Mr. Derkach to smear Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden based on the fact that Mr. Biden’s son was once on the board of Burisma, a Ukrainian natural gas company. The smear effort continues with the ongoing Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee investigation led by Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.), who denies the by-now obvious conclusion that hyping Biden-Ukraine conspiracy theories right before the election advances a Russian disinformation plot.
≣ CNN: READ: Former Judge Gleeson’s response to Justice Department efforts to drop Michael Flynn’s prosecution http://cnn.it/3kbcger
↥ ↧
Politico: Court-appointed adviser blasts ‘corrupt’ DOJ move to drop Flynn case http://politi.co/3bT1mqW The advisor, ret. Judge John Gleeson, argued that the grounds for dismissing the case are so weak they “can only be chalked up to Trump’s pressure campaign”
// It’s not clear whether the brief by retired jurist John Gleeson will sway the District Court judge deciding Flynn’s fate.
Former national security adviser Michael Flynn’s lies to the FBI are so clear — and their effect on the FBI’s Russia probe so obvious — that the Justice Department’s decision to drop the case can only be a pretext to help an ally of President Donald Trump, a court-appointed adviser to Judge Emmet Sullivan argued Friday.
In an unsparing, 30-page brief, John Gleeson, tapped by Sullivan to argue against the dismissal of the case, suggests that the Justice Department’s arguments for letting Flynn off the hook conflict with its positions in other cases — and even in earlier rounds of the Flynn case itself — and therefore can only be chalked up to Trump’s pressure campaign.
🐣 RT @AWeissmann_ Let’s not forget that it is just not normal for career prosecutors to resign from the Justice Department or high-profile cases — but that happened in the Stone and Flynn cases, and the Durham investigation, where the #2 just resigned. Barr is destroying the rule of law for POTUS
Politico: Durham aide quits amid pressure on Russiagate probe http://politi.co/3bT4yme
// Veteran prosecutor Nora Dannehy had been drafted to help investigate the origins of the inquiry into the 2016 Trump campaign.
A top aide to Connecticut U.S. Attorney John Durham, who is conducting a politically sensitive investigation into the origins of the federal investigation into potential ties between the Trump campaign and Russia, has resigned from the Justice Department amid mounting pressure from President Donald Trump and his allies to publish results from the probe before the November election.
Veteran federal prosecutor Nora Dannehy, who returned from the private sector to assist Durham in March 2019, exited the government Friday, according to a Durham spokesperson.
In recent interviews, Trump has expressed impatience with the Durham inquiry, suggesting that it should be producing more prosecutions as well as disclosures of information the president contends will be damaging to his political rivals. The situation also seems to have put a chill in Trump’s relationship with Barr.
“Bill Barr has the chance to be the greatest of all time, but if he wants to be politically correct, he’ll be just another guy, because he knows all the answers, he knows what they have, and it goes right to Obama and it goes right to Biden,” Trump said last month in an interview with Fox Business Network’s Maria Bartiromo.
Last month, Barr predicted “significant developments in the probe before the election” and he has indicated he sees Justice Department policy as presenting no obstacle to releasing a report on Durham’s findings in advance of the November vote.
★ 🔆 This❗️⋙ ScienceMag, H Holden Thorp (Editor-in-Chief): Trump lied about science http://bit.ly/2ZvTpmJ “This may be the most shameful moment in the history of U.S. science policy”
🐣 RT @OlgaNYC1211 How surprising that Putin’s employee Caputo who worked for a pro Russian Ukrainian official suspected of ordering the beheading of a journalist is assisting in destroying our agencies and endangering Americans. Despicable regime
⋙ 🧵 RT @ddiamond HHS spokesperson Caputo and his aides have targeted the CDC’s Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Reports — a pillar of U.S. medical research — arguing that scientists are intentionally trying to undermine Trump’s message. ❣https://twitter.com/ddiamond/status/1304609701347328002?s=20/photo/1
⋙⋙ ★ Politico: Trump officials interfered with CDC reports on Covid-19 http://politi.co/33lJ2Tt
// The politically appointed HHS spokesperson and his team demanded and received the right to review CDC’s scientific reports to health professionals.
Lawfare, Michelle Onibokun and Chuck Rosenberg: The Justice Department’s Policy Against Election Interference is Open to Abuse http://bit.ly/2DPY1MC
WaPo, Philip Bump: Trump goes full circle on the politics of embracing Putin http://wapo.st/3hno3EO Trump’s taxes and Putin’s leverage
🔆 This❗️⋙ HartfordCourant: Nora Dannehy, Connecticut prosecutor who was top aide to John Durham’s Trump-Russia investigation, resigns amid concern about pressure from Attorney General William Barr http://bit.ly/3bNPbf3
Colleagues said Dannehy is not a supporter of President Donald J. Trump and has been concerned in recent weeks by what she believed was pressure from Barr – who appointed Durham – to produce results before the election. They said she has been considering resignation for weeks, conflicted by loyalty to Durham and concern about politics.
Durham is notoriously circumspect and neither he nor members of his team have revealed anything about the direction of their work. But Durham associates, none of whom have specific knowledge of the investigation, have said recently that it is their belief he is under pressure to produce something – perhaps some sort of report – before the presidential election in November.
The thinking of the associates, all Durham allies, is that the Russia investigation group will be disbanded and its work lost if Trump loses.
Dannehy was told to expect an assignment of from six months to a year when she agreed to join Durham’s team in Washington, colleagues said. The work has taken far longer than expected, in part because of complications caused by the corona virus pandemic. In the meantime, team members – some of whom are current or former federal investigators or prosecutors with homes in Connecticut – have been working long hours in Washington under pressure to produce results, associates said.
Trump and his supporters have pointed to the Clinesmith arrest and conviction as evidence for the President’s contention that political opponents – including top figures in the FBI and intelligence services – have been trying to hamstring his presidency or force him from office with contrived claims that he or members of his campaign colluded with Russia to win the election.
Barr has dropped hints in public that Durham’s investigation will produce something more significant – before the election – than the arrest of Clinesmith, who was charged with making a false statement.
Critics of the administration have accused it of trying to manipulate the Durham investigation to shore up the President’s poll numbers.
WaPo, Jennifer Rubin: Trump will be in big trouble when he can’t run off stage at the debates http://wapo.st/3bMJ36A
MotherJones: Coronavirus and Russia: Trump and the GOP’s Double Betrayal http://bit.ly/3ma28Vb “They have failed to respond effectively to … a pandemic that has claimed the lives of close to 200,000 Americans, and a foreign attack on the political foundation of the country”
// Not since the Civil War have political leaders engaged in such treachery.
⭕ 10 Sep 2020
★ Medium: Coronavirus Blog, Andy Slavitt: What Else Does He Know? http://bit.ly/3c8eoAS
// orig a thread; The pandemic would have been different under anyone but a madman
WaPo, Aaron Blake: The Trump team welcomed Russian disinformation, the Trump administration further confirms http://wapo.st/3k9oZ1p
President Trump, in August, promoted information that the U.S. government has increasingly connected to a Russian disinformation campaign in the 2020 election — after his personal attorney, Rudolph W. Giuliani, worked with the man promoting it. Now the U.S. government says explicitly that the man behind it is a Russian agent.
The Treasury Department on Thursday identified Ukrainian politician Andrii Derkach as an “active Russian agent for over a decade” — a label that could lead to more direct penalties. It added that Derkach has “directly or indirectly engaged in, sponsored, concealed or otherwise been complicit in foreign interference in an attempt to undermine the upcoming 2020 U.S. presidential election.”
🐣 RT @HannahLiubakova #Belarus That’s a pretty direct allusion. Russian Ambassador Dmitry #Mezentsev gave #Lukashenko a book with maps of Viciebsk, Minsk and Mahiliou from 1866. These territories were part of the Russian Empire back then. Lukashenko replied: “Thank you” 💽 https://twitter.com/HannaLiubakova/status/1303992119976169473?s=20/photo/1
NYT: Federal Court Rejects Trump’s Order to Exclude Undocumented From Census http://nyti.ms/2RjgEvq The court said “Mr. Trump’s proposal exceeded his authority under federal laws governing the census and reapportionment”
// A three-judge panel unanimously said President Trump lacked the authority to remove noncitizens from census counts used to allot House seats.
A federal court on Thursday rejected President Trump’s order to exclude unauthorized immigrants from population counts that will be used next year to reallocate seats in the House of Representatives, ruling that it was so obviously illegal that a lawsuit challenging the order need not go to a trial.
The court, a three-judge panel in Federal District Court in Manhattan, said Mr. Trump’s proposal exceeded his authority under federal laws governing the census and reapportionment. The specially convened panel said there was no need to consider a second claim in the lawsuit that the president’s order violated the Constitution’s requirement to base apportionment of the House on “the whole number of persons in each state.”
“The merits of the parties’ dispute are not particularly close or complicated,” the judges wrote in granting summary judgment to the plaintiffs, a view that was broadly shared by legal scholars. Two of the judges, Richard C. Wesley and Peter W. Hall, were named to the bench by President George W. Bush. The third, Jesse M. Furman, was nominated by President Barack Obama.
NYT: Russian Intelligence Hackers Are Back, Microsoft Warns, Aiming at Officials of Both Parties http://nyti.ms/2Fun6gv
// China is also growing more adept at targeting campaign workers. But contrary to Trump administration warnings, Beijing is mostly aiming at Biden campaign officials.
↥ ↧
WaPo: Russian hackers who disrupted 2016 election targeting political parties again, Microsoft says http://wapo.st/3k99nLs
↥ ↧
WSJ: Russian Hackers Have Targeted 200 Groups Tied to U.S. Election, Microsoft Says http://on.wsj.com/3mkVYBQ
// China has also sought to compromise ‘high-profile individuals’ linked to Joe Biden’s campaign, according to the software giant
🐣 RT @ScottMStedman I’m reliably told that the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ), the group that published the Panama Papers, have massive tranches of leaked financial records from FinCEN and are preparing to publish a slew of articles.
⋙ FinCEN (9/1): Statement by FinCEN Regarding Unlawfully Disclosed Suspicious Activity Reports http://bit.ly/3bJPpE1
The Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) is aware that various media outlets intend to publish a series of articles based on unlawfully disclosed Suspicious Activity Reports (SARs), as well as other sensitive government documents, from several years ago. As FinCEN has stated previously, the unauthorized disclosure of SARs is a crime that can impact the national security of the United States, compromise law enforcement investigations, and threaten the safety and security of the institutions and individuals who file such reports. FinCEN has referred this matter to the U.S. Department of Justice and the U.S. Department of the Treasury’s Office of Inspector General.
WaPo: Former DNI Daniel Coats criticizes suspension of in-person briefings to Congress on election security http://wapo.st/2DO7J25 “It’s imperative that the intelligence community keep Congress fully informed about the threats to our elections” ~ Former ODNI Coats ● Text Block: https://twitter.com/Auriandra/status/1304170270744289280?s=20/photo/1
“It’s imperative that the intelligence community keep Congress fully informed about the threats to our elections and share as much information as possible while protecting sources and methods,” the former director of national intelligence said in an interview.
v
“[T]hese briefings in person should be delivered to both the Senate and the House oversight committees and also should be delivered to the duly elected members of the House and Senate at the appropriate classification level when directed by the bipartisan leadership of both the House and the Senate.” He added: “We must stand united in defending the election security process from being corrupted and ensure that a vote cast is a vote counted.”“The Super Bowl of all elections is coming our way in 2020.”
^
Coats’s stern warning came in response to Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe’s notifying Congress a week and a half ago that he was suspending in-person briefings to lawmakers, though the Senate Intelligence Committee’s acting chairman said his panel will continue to receive such updates.
🚫🧵 RT @EricGarland BRAND NEW INDICTMENT AGAINST RUSSIAN INTELLIGENCE AT EDVA SHOWS KINETIC OPERATIONS ON U.S. SOIL TARGETING AMERICAN ELECTIONS 🔥🔥🔥
Let’s break it down, shall we? 📌 https://twitter.com/ericgarland/status/1304137769900560384?s=20
// unsure about this guy, but posted ⇊
⋙ DOJ: Russian Project Lakhta Member Charged with Wire Fraud Conspiracy http://bit.ly/3ijU6Xy Project Lakhta: “a Russian interference operation targeting citizens in the United States, EU, Ukraine, and Russia” ~ German Marshall Fund ● Text Block: https://twitter.com/Auriandra/status/1304163052355571712?s=20/photo/1
(9/10/2020) According to the allegations in the criminal complaint, Artem Mikhaylovich Lifshits, 27, of St. Petersburg, Russia, serves as a manager in “Project Lakhta,” a Russia-based effort to engage in political and electoral interference operations. Since at least May 2014, Project Lakhta’s stated goal in the United States has been to disrupt the democratic process and spread distrust towards candidates for political office and the political system in general. Since 2014, Project Lakhta has sought to obscure its conduct by operating through a number of entities, including the Internet Research Agency (IRA). The Translator Department, where Lifshits served as a manager beginning around January 2017, is alleged to be responsible for much of Project Lakhta’s influence operations, which are still ongoing.
🐣 RT @MuellerSheWrote This is just the beginning. Strap in.
⋙ 🧵 RT @oneunderscore_ The Oathkeepers, a far-right militia group, has been banned by Twitter. ¤ They recently tweeted there’ll be “open warfare against the Marxist insurrectionists by election night, no matter what you do” and “Civil War is here, right now.” ¤ Its founder Stewart Rhodes is also banned. 📌 https://twitter.com/MuellerSheWrote/status/1304132929346437120?s=20
🐣 RT @AaronBlake The end of Cohen’s book:
“You now have all the information you need to decide for yourself in November.”
The end of Woodward’s book:
“When his performance as president is taken in its entirety, I can only reach one conclusion: Trump is the wrong man for the job.”
Politico: Treasury designates anti-Biden Ukrainian lawmaker Andriy Derkach for sanctions for election interference http://politi.co/2FhxSXR //➔ oh good! will they sanction @RudyGiuliani and @SenRonJohnson, too?
// Andriy Derkach, a pro-Russian Ukrainian, has promoted discredited allegations against the Democratic presidential nominee.
The Treasury Department has designated Andriy Derkach, a pro-Russian Ukrainian promoting discredited allegations against Joe Biden, for sanctions related to foreign interference in the U.S. election.
Derkach, who was previously identified as a malign actor by the intelligence community, met with President Donald Trump’s lawyer Rudy Giuliani in Ukraine in December, as Giuliani mounted an effort to obtain derogatory information on Biden’s relationships in Ukraine. On Thursday, the administration went even further in tying Derkach to the Kremlin.
“Derkach, a Member of the Ukrainian Parliament, has been an active Russian agent for over a decade, maintaining close connections with the Russian Intelligence Services,” Treasury found. “Derkach has directly or indirectly engaged in, sponsored, concealed, or otherwise been complicit in foreign interference in an attempt to undermine the upcoming 2020 U.S. presidential election.”
But Treasury’s announcement underscores growing evidence that Russia is mounting a similar campaign to its efforts in 2016 in an attempt to boost Trump’s candidacy and damage his rival. Trump administration intelligence officials have concluded that Russia is seeking to damage Biden and support Trump through actors like Derkach.
Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin called the sanctions decision an effort to “counter these Russian disinformation campaigns and uphold the integrity of our election system.”
“Andrii Derkach and other Russian agents employ manipulation and deceit to attempt to influence elections in the United States and elsewhere around the world,” Mnuchin said.
In his earlier statement, Derkach denounced efforts “to tie me to the special services of other countries,” like Russia, and said his critics were trying to discredit him by drawing attention to his studies at Moscow’s FSB academy, formerly known as the Dzerzhinsky Higher School of the KGB.
Derkach’s father, Leonid, was a KGB operative for decades before becoming the head of Ukraine’s security services; he was fired in 2004 over his alleged involvement in a murder plot.
Democrats have raised alarms about evidence that Derkach has disseminated packets of anti-Biden information to Republican lawmakers investigating Biden’s role in Ukraine, worrying that he was seeding disinformation into ongoing congressional probes.
The Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, led by GOP Sen. Ron Johnson of Wisconsin, has been investigating Hunter Biden’s work on the board of a Ukrainian energy company. Though Johnson has sharply denied the suggestion that Derkach has supplied the committee with any information, Democrats have accused him of amplifying discredited allegations that have originated from pro-Russia factions in Ukraine.
Derkach has also promoted leaked audio recordings of Biden’s conversations with Ukrainian leaders when he was leading the Obama administration’s diplomatic and anti-corruption efforts in the country. Trump has amplified awareness of the tapes on his Twitter feed, promoting coverage of them by pro-Trump TV station OANN, which has dedicated significant airtime to the leaked tapes.
⭕ 9 Sep 2020
🐣 RT @CuomoPrimeTime Peter Strzok, the fired former FBI agent who played a senior role in the early Russian election meddling investigation, says US is in an event “worse spot” than it was four years in protecting the presidential election from foreign influence. https://cnn.it/3k150lq 💽 https://twitter.com/CuomoPrimeTime/status/1303876611335430144?s=20/photo/1
WaPo: Former DNI Daniel Coats criticizes suspension of in-person briefings to Congress on election security http://wapo.st/2DO7J25 “It’s imperative that the intelligence community keep Congress fully informed about the threats to our elections” ~ Former ODNI Coats ● Text Block: https://twitter.com/Auriandra/status/1304170270744289280?s=20/photo/1
“It’s imperative that the intelligence community keep Congress fully informed about the threats to our elections and share as much information as possible while protecting sources and methods,” the former director of national intelligence said in an interview.
v
“[T]hese briefings in person should be delivered to both the Senate and the House oversight committees and also should be delivered to the duly elected members of the House and Senate at the appropriate classification level when directed by the bipartisan leadership of both the House and the Senate.” He added: “We must stand united in defending the election security process from being corrupted and ensure that a vote cast is a vote counted.”“The Super Bowl of all elections is coming our way in 2020.”
^
Coats’s stern warning came in response to Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe’s notifying Congress a week and a half ago that he was suspending in-person briefings to lawmakers, though the Senate Intelligence Committee’s acting chairman said his panel will continue to receive such updates.
WaPo: Stunning new disclosures blow huge holes in Trump’s Potemkin facade http://wapo.st/3ma4FPi Whistleblower complaint says Admin pressed intelligence agencies to alter intelligence to cover up Russian election interference and to downplay danger from white supremacists
🐣 RT @AWeissmann_ Let’s not forget: If Republican Senators had upheld their sworn oaths during the impeachment trial, as Romney did, we would not have had Trump in office to deliberately mishandle COVID. And so many preventable deaths as a result. Dwarfing 9/11 attacks.
DailyBeast, Michael Tomasky: Trump Wasn’t Just Ignorant—He Was Malevolent in Talking Down Virus He Knew Was ‘Deadly’ http://bit.ly/2ZqByxh “While Trump knew that the coronavirus was deadly, he was telling the people he was elected to serve and protect that it was no big deal” ● Text Block: https://twitter.com/Auriandra/status/1303997168437678081?s=20/photo/1
// Until now, the president could at least claim ignorance. After the Woodward revelation—not anymore.
When the president of the United States was acknowledging to America’s most famous reporter that the coronavirus was far more deadly than your average flu, it was hours after he’d sent out these two successive tweets, at 5:31 a.m.:
⋙ 🐣 RT @real Just had a long and very good conversation by phone with President Xi of China. He is strong, sharp and powerfully focused on leading the counterattack on the Coronavirus. He feels they are doing very well, even building hospitals in a matter of only days. Nothing is easy, but…
⋙⋙ 🐣 RT @real ….he will be successful, especially as the weather starts to warm & the virus hopefully becomes weaker, and then gone. Great discipline is taking place in China, as President Xi strongly leads what will be a very successful operation. We are working closely with China to help!So in sum: While Trump knew that the coronavirus was deadly, he was telling the people he was elected to serve and protect that it was no big deal. While we’re at it, let’s go over some other quotes, from this timeline:
Feb. 10: “I had a long talk with President Xi—for the people in this room—two nights ago, and he feels very confident. He feels very confident. And he feels that, again, as I mentioned, by April or during the month of April, the heat, generally speaking, kills this kind of virus.”
Feb. 27: “It’s going to disappear. One day it’s like a miracle, it will disappear.”
March 4: “Yeah, I think where these people are flying, it’s safe to fly. And large portions of the world are very safe to fly. So we don’t want to say anything other than that.”
March 24: “There is tremendous hope as we look forward and we begin to see the light at the end of the tunnel.”
I could go on (and on and on). You get the picture.
It’s staggering. Pre-Woodward, the conventional wisdom was that Trump was such an idiot, such a superstitious anti-science buffoon, and/or in such denial about the whole thing, that he just didn’t take it seriously.
But now we know that was wrong. He actually wasn’t that stupid. He knew, at least for those few moments when he was talking to Woodward anyway, how deadly the virus was. But he still did next to nothing and kept saying don’t worry, it’ll go away. That’s even worse!
v
… Now, Joe Biden can say not simply that Trump misled the public, which he might have done out of ignorance. Now Biden can credibly say that Trump intentionally misled the public. That’s a whole different charge.And he said exactly that within two hours at a speech in Michigan: “He knew. He knew and purposefully played it down. He knowingly and willingly lied to the American people… a life-and-death betrayal of the American people.”
Difference? It doesn’t have to make much difference. A couple percentage points. Even one. But you take the Atlantic scoop and the non-V-shaped recovery and the imminent 200,000 deaths landmark and, well, it all has to add up eventually. And now we know he lied to the American people about life and death.
🐣 RT @MeidasTouch Trump knew. Trump lied. And we are now sicker and poorer because of it. New from @heathergtv. #TrumpKnewVoteBlue #PretendPresident 💽 https://twitter.com/MeidasTouch/status/1303851588453163009?s=20/photo/1
// Meidas Touch ad❣ Trump Knew
🐣 RT @JoeNBC Historians will remember Woodward’s tapes as being as significant as the Nixon tapes. We’ve all been numbed by one political shock after another. But history’s perspective will be withering, and Trump will likely shoulder the blame for at least 100,000 American deaths.
NYT: Whistle-Blower Says D.H.S. Downplayed Threats From Russia and White Supremacists http://nyti.ms/33bJzap
// The former head of the Homeland Security Department’s intelligence division has accused three senior leaders of warping the agency around President Trump’s rhetoric.
🐣 RT @renato_mariotti Acting DHS Secretary Wolf gave the order to stop intelligence assessments of the Russian threat, and he said the order came from White House National Security Advisor Robert O’Brien. ¤ The Trump Administration is trying to hide the truth about Russia’s efforts to re-elect Trump.
⋙ 🐣 RT @NatashaBertrand NEW whistleblower complaint from former senior DHS official alleges that he was ordered to “cease providing intelligence assessments on the threat of Russian interference in the US, and instead start reporting on interference activities by China and Iran.” 📔 [whistleblower complaint:] http://bit.ly/2GBtHGz
In mid-May 2020, Mr. Wolf instructed Mr. Murphy to cease providing intelligence assessments on the threat of Russian interference in the United States, and instead start reporting on interference activities by China and Iran. Mr. Wolf stated that these instructions specifically originated from White House National Security Advisor Robert O’Brien. Mr. Murphy informed Mr. Wolf he would not comply with these instructions, as doing so would put the country in substantial and specific danger. …
On July 7, 2020, DHS Chief of Staff John Gountanis (“Mr. Gountanis”) sent an e-mail to
Mr. Murphy directing him to cease any dissemination of an intelligence notification regarding Russian disinformation efforts until Mr. Murphy had spoken with Mr. Wolf. The two men met on July 8, 2020, at which time Mr. Wolf stated to Mr. Murphy the intelligence notification should be “held” because it “made the President look bad”. Mr. Murphy objected, stating that it was improper to hold a vetted intelligence product for reasons for political embarrassment.In May 2020 and June 2020, Mr. Murphy had several meetings with Mr. Cuccinelli regarding the status of the HTA. Mr. Cuccinelli stated that Mr. Murphy needed to specifically modify the section on White Supremacy in a manner that made the threat appear less severe, as well as include information on the prominence of violent “left-wing” groups. Mr. Murphy declined to make the requested modifications, and informed Mr. Cuccinelli that it would constitute censorship of analysis and the improper administration of an intelligence program.
… Mr. Wolf relayed the concerns previously outlined by Mr. Cuccinelli regarding the sections on White Supremacy and Russian influence. Mr. Wolf asked for a copy of the HTA so it could be reviewed by policy officials, and so that information regarding the ongoing unrest in Portland, Oregon, could be added into the HTA. Mr. Wolf asked Mr. Murphy if he would accept his edits. Mr. Murphy responded that he would not concur with any edits that altered the underlying intelligence in the HTA, as any such action would constitute an abuse of authority and improper administration of an intelligence program.
Completion of the HTA was subsequently handled by other DHS officials without consultation with Mr. Murphy. Another draft of the HTA was completed in August 2020:
Mr. Murphy did not work on that version of the HTA. On September 3, 2020, Mr. Murphy learned the new draft was provided to Mr. Wolf, who had ordered the HTA to be redesigned with the policy office completing the revisions. It is Mr. Murphy’s assessment that the final version of the HTA will more closely resemble a policy document with references to ANTIFA and “anarchist” groups than an intelligence document as originally formulated by DHS I&A.… Mr. Murphy was instructed by Mr. Wolf and/or Mr. Cuccinelli to modify intelligence assessments to ensure they matched up with the public comments by President Trump on the subject of ANTIFA and “anarchist” groups. Mr. Murphy declined to modify any of the intelligence assessments based upon political rhetoric, and advised both officials he would only report accurate intelligence information as collected by DHS I&A.
🐣 RT @kylegriffin1 Whistleblower Complaint: “Mr. Cuccinelli stated that Mr. Murphy needed to specifically modify the section on White Supremacy in a manner that made the threat appear less severe, as well as include information on the prominence of violent ‘left-wing’ groups.”
⋙ 🐣 RT @kylegriffin1 Inbox: Today, Chairman Schiff announced that the Intelligence Committee received a whistleblower reprisal complaint alleging serious wrongdoing by officials at the Department and reprisal against former I&A Acting Under Secretary Brian Murphy for making protected disclosures.
CNN: Whistleblower alleges top Trump appointees abused authority by telling officials to alter intelligence to match Trump claims http://cnn.it/35nhDTU “to ensure they matched up with misleading public comments from President Donald Trump about Antifa and ‘anarchist’ groups”
President Trump’s head popped up during his top-secret intelligence briefing in the Oval Office on Jan. 28 when the discussion turned to the novel coronavirus outbreak in China.Specifically, acting DHS Secretary Chad Wolf and Acting Director of US Citizenship and Immigration Ken Cuccinelli, both Trump appointees, directed officials to change intelligence assessments based on Trump’s political rhetoric, an order the whistleblower says amounted to an abuse of authority, according to the documents.
Both Wolf and Cuccinelli also tried to alter a report to downplay the threat posed by White supremacists and instead emphasize the role of leftist groups due to concerns about how the initial language would reflect on the President, according to a source familiar with the claims raised by the whistleblower.
Separately, the complaint says, Cuccinelli expressed frustration with intelligence reports detailing conditions in Guatamala, Honduras and El Salvador, late last year and accused “deep-state intelligence analysts” of compiling the information to undermine Trump’s objectives regarding asylum, according to the documents reviewed by CNN.
The allegations were raised in a complaint filed recently by Brian Murphy to the DHS inspector general, according to the source.
If true, the move marks yet another example of Trump officials attempting to adjust or minimize intelligence that does not align with the administration’s political priorities.
The Democratic-led House Intelligence Committee has requested Murphy testify about the claims detailed in his complaint, which “alleges repeated violations of laws and regulations, abuses of authority, attempted censorship of intelligence analysis and improper administration of an intelligence program related to Russian efforts to influence the US elections,” according to a letter sent to Murphy’s lawyers Wednesday.
Murphy says that he refused to modify intelligence assessments so that they more closely aligned with Trump’s rhetoric about Antifa and other groups, telling Wolf and Cuccinelli that he would only report accurate information as collected by DHS, according to the complaint.
He also refused to alter the draft versions of the report warning of the threat posed by White supremacists, prompting Wolf and Cuccinelli to halt work on the document, the complaint states.
The final version of that report has not been publicly released. ¤ The move to block the final report came in July from Wolf and Cuccinelli, the source familiar with the issue said.
Murphy first argued with Cuccinelli then Wolf, pushing back against changes to the draft version of the report that would have watered-down language pertaining to White supremacists and added additional information about leftist groups like those the Trump administration has portrayed as a top threat to the US ahead of the November presidential election, according to the complaint.
When Murphy refused to implement the changes as directed, Cuccinelli and Wolf stopped the report from being finished, the source said.
Drafts of the report, first published by the national security website Lawfare, show that an initial description of White supremacists “presenting the most lethal threat” to the homeland was changed in subsequent drafts to say “domestic violent extremists.” The language about the White supremacist threat varies slightly in the different drafts but they all state it is the deadliest. ¤ It has not been known until now why the changes were made.
DHS spokesperson Alexei Woltornist denied the allegations about Wolf and Cuccinelli related to the report on White supremacists, telling CNN: “These allegations are patently untrue. DHS leadership has called out all threats to the homeland regardless of ideology.”
Wolf did address the threat posed by White supremacists Wednesday while delivering his “State of the Homeland” address, saying: “DHS stands in absolute opposition to any form of violent extremism. Whether by white supremacist extremists or anarchist extremists,” he said.
But news of the whistleblower allegations come amid widespread concerns about politicization within DHS and indications that the agency has suppressed other intelligence that is politically inconvenient for the President.
They also surface at a time when Trump and his top officials, most notably Attorney General William Barr, have emphasized the threat posed by leftist groups like Antifa, but rarely mentioned right-wing groups involved in some of the violence during recent protests in the US.
Barr has created a task force to study the group’s infrastructure, but prosecutors haven’t specifically tied charges to the movement.
Trump himself has regularly downplayed the threat of White supremacist violence during his presidency, most notably when he said there were some “fine people” among the extremists who sparked violence in Charlottesville, Virginia, in 2017. He’s also called Black Lives Matter a “symbol of hate” and has regularly pushed narratives on Twitter that emphasize violence against White Americans as he seeks to curry support in the suburbs.
Officials in his administration, however, have warned against White supremacist extremism.
Last year, CNN reported that White House officials rebuffed efforts by their DHS colleagues for more than a year to make combating domestic terror threats, such as those from White supremacists, a greater priority as specifically spelled out in the National Counterterrorism Strategy.
Then-acting Homeland Security Secretary Kevin McAleenan said last year White supremacist extremism is one of the most “potent ideologies” driving acts violence in the US, when he released the department’s counterterrorism strategy, outlining the ongoing threats from foreign terrorism and focusing on domestic terror threats, particularly White supremacists.
“In our modern age, the continued menace of racially based violent extremism, particularly White supremacist extremism, is an abhorrent affront to the nation, the struggle and unity of its diverse population,” he said in a speech at the Brookings Institution almost a year ago.
The threat assessment was prompted by a 2019 DHS counterterrorism strategy that called for annual reports to inform government officials and the public.
The earliest available version of the “State of the Homeland Threat Assessment 2020” drafts reads: “We judge that ideologically-motivated lone offenders and small groups will pose the greatest terrorist threat to the Homeland through 2021, with white supremacist extremists presenting the most lethal threat.”
The lead section on terror threats to the homeland is changed in the latter two drafts to replace “white supremacist extremists” with “Domestic Violent Extremists presenting the most persistent and lethal threat.”
The reports, however, all contain this language: “Among DVEs [Domestic Violent Extremists], we judge that white supremacist extremists (WSEs) will remain the most persistent and lethal threat in the Homeland through 2021.”
Lawfare’s editor in chief Benjamin Wittes published the documents because he wanted there to be a “benchmark about what the career folks at DHS actually assessed the threats to be against” the final product that is released by the department.
He told CNN that “the most striking thing is in this political atmosphere; they have said what they said” — that White supremacist violence is the threat they are most concerned about.
“I don’t want to criticize them when that language is there. That said it is somewhat different in the first draft than the subsequent two and I do think the nature of the change is notable as a reflection of the political pressure they are under,” he said.
“This will be the biggest national security threat you face in your presidency,” national security adviser Robert O’Brien told Trump, according to a new book by Washington Post associate editor Bob Woodward. “This is going to be the roughest thing you face.”
Matthew Pottinger, the deputy national security adviser, agreed. He told the president that after reaching contacts in China, it was evident that the world faced a health emergency on par with the flu pandemic of 1918, which killed an estimated 50 million people worldwide.
Ten days later, Trump called Woodward and revealed that he thought the situation was far more dire than what he had been saying publicly.
“You just breathe the air and that’s how it’s passed,” Trump said in a Feb. 7 call. “And so that’s a very tricky one. That’s a very delicate one. It’s also more deadly than even your strenuous flu.” ¤ “This is deadly stuff,” the president repeated for emphasis. …
Trump admitted to Woodward on March 19 that he deliberately minimized the danger. “I wanted to always play it down,” the president said.
Aside from exploring Trump’s handling of the pandemic, Woodward’s new book, “Rage,” covers race relations, diplomacy with North Korea and a range of other issues that have arisen during the past two years.
The book also includes brutal assessments of Trump’s conduct from former defense secretary Jim Mattis, former director of national intelligence Daniel Coats and others.
On June 3, two days after federal agents forcibly removed peaceful protesters from Lafayette Square to make way for Trump to stage a photo opportunity outside St. John’s Episcopal Church, Trump called Woodward to boast about his “law and order” stance.
“We’re going to get ready to send in the military slash National Guard to some of these poor bastards that don’t know what they’re doing, these poor radical lefts,” Trump said.
… Woodward suggested that they had a responsibility to better “understand the anger and pain” felt by Black Americans. ¤ “No,” Trump replied, his voice described by Woodward as mocking and incredulous. “You really drank the Kool-Aid, didn’t you? Just listen to you. Wow. No, I don’t feel that at all.” ¤ … [T]he president kept answering by pointing to economic numbers such as the pre-pandemic unemployment rate for Blacks and claiming, as he often has publicly, that he has done more for Blacks than any president except perhaps Abraham Lincoln.
… Upon seeing a shot of Sen. Kamala D. Harris of California, now the Democratic vice-presidential nominee, calmly and silently watching him deliver his State of the Union address, Trump remarked, “Hate! See the hate! See the hate!” Trump used the same phrase after an expressionless Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (N.Y.) appeared in the frame.
Trump was dismissive about former president Barack Obama and told Woodward he was inclined to refer to him by his first and middle names, “Barack Hussein,” but wouldn’t in his company to be “very nice.”
“I don’t think Obama’s smart,” Trump told Woodward. “I think he’s highly overrated. And I don’t think he’s a great speaker.” Trump added that North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un thought Obama was “an asshole.”
… [T]he president told Woodward he is determined to stay the course and dismissively says the CIA has “no idea” how to handle North Korea. ¤ “I met. Big fucking deal,” Trump told Woodward, waving off criticism of his three face-to-face meetings with Kim. “It takes me two days. I met. I gave up nothing.”
Kim welcomed Trump’s overtures with over-the-top prose in letters. Kim wrote that he wanted “another historic meeting between myself and Your Excellency reminiscent of a scene from a fantasy film.” And he said his meetings with Trump were a “precious memory” that underscored how the “deep and special friendship between us will work as a magical force.”
In another letter, Kim wrote to Trump, “I feel pleased to have formed good ties with such a powerful and preeminent statesman as Your Excellency.” And in yet another, Kim reflected on “that moment of history when I firmly held Your Excellency’s hand at the beautiful and sacred location as the whole world watched with great interest and hope to relive the honor of that day.” … Trump also boasted to Woodward that Kim “tells me everything,” including a graphic account of Kim having his uncle killed.
Trump reflected on his relationships with authoritarian leaders generally, including Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. “It’s funny, the relationships I have, the tougher and meaner they are, the better I get along with them,” he told Woodward. “You know? Explain that to me someday, okay?”
Woodward writes that anonymous sources later confirmed that the U.S. military had a secret new weapons system, but they would not provide details, and that the sources were surprised Trump had disclosed it.
Mattis quietly went to Washington National Cathedral to pray about his concern for the nation’s fate under Trump’s command and, according to Woodward, told Coats, “There may come a time when we have to take collective action” since Trump is “dangerous. He’s unfit.”
In a separate conversation recounted by Woodward, Mattis told Coats, “The president has no moral compass,” to which the director of national intelligence replied, “True. To him, a lie is not a lie. It’s just what he thinks. He doesn’t know the difference between the truth and a lie.”
The loathing was mutual. “Not to mention my fucking generals are a bunch of pussies. They care more about their alliances than they do about trade deals,” Trump told White House trade adviser Peter Navarro at one point, according to Woodward.
Jared Kushner, the president’s son-in-law and senior adviser, is quoted by Woodward as saying, “The most dangerous people around the president are overconfident idiots,” which Woodward interprets as a reference to Mattis, Tillerson and former National Economic Council director Gary Cohn.
… Tillerson found Kushner’s warm dealings with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu “nauseating to watch. It was stomach churning,” according to Woodward.
… Woodward writes that Kushner advised people that one of the most important guiding texts to understand the Trump presidency was “Alice in Wonderland,” a novel about a young girl who falls through a rabbit hole. He singled out the Cheshire cat, whose strategy was endurance and persistence, not direction.
The book charts the Trump administration’s failings and missteps on the pandemic, including the decisions and actions of Pottinger, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Director Robert Redfield, infectious-disease expert Anthony S. Fauci and others.
Fauci at one point tells others that the president “is on a separate channel” and unfocused in meetings, with “rudderless” leadership, according to Woodward. “His attention span is like a minus number,” Fauci said, according to Woodward. “His sole purpose is to get reelected.”
In one Oval Office meeting recounted by Woodward, after Trump had made false statements in a news briefing, Fauci said in front of him: “We can’t let the president be out there being vulnerable, saying something that’s going to come back and bite him.” Pence, Kushner, chief of staff Mark Meadows and senior policy adviser Stephen Miller tensed up at once, Woodward writes, surprised Fauci would talk to Trump that way.
Woodward describes Fauci as particularly disappointed in Kushner for talking like a cheerleader as if everything was great. In June, as the virus was spreading wildly coast to coast and case numbers soared in Arizona, Florida, Texas and other states, Kushner said of Trump, “The goal is to get his head from governing to campaigning.”
In their final interview, on July 21, Trump vented to Woodward, “The virus has nothing to do with me. It’s not my fault.”
⭕ 8 Sep 2020
🐣 RT @kylegriffin1 Michael Cohen to @maddow: “You know his hatred for Barack Obama is plain and simple. He’s black, he went to Harvard Law, he graduated the top of his class, he’s incredibly articulate, he’s all the things that Donald Trump wants to be right. And he just can’t handle it.”
WaPo, Benjamin Ginsberg: Republicans have insufficient evidence to call elections ‘rigged’ and ‘fraudulent’ http://wapo.st/3mdGaki Benjamin L. Ginsberg practiced election law for 38 years. He co-chaired the bipartisan 2013 Presidential Commission on Election Administration.
… Republicans trying to make their cases in courts must deal with the basic truth that four decades of dedicated investigation have produced only isolated incidents of election fraud
These are painful conclusions for me to reach. Before retiring from law practice last month, I spent 38 years in the GOP’s legal trenches. I was part of the 1990s redistricting that ended 40 years of Democratic control and brought 30 years of GOP successes in Congress and state legislatures. I played a central role in the 2000 Florida recount and several dozen Senate, House and state contests. I served as counsel to all three Republican national party committees and represented four of the past six Republican presidential nominees (including, through my law firm, Trump 2020).
… The truth is that after decades of looking for illegal voting, there’s no proof of widespread fraud. At most, there are isolated incidents — by both Democrats and Republicans. Elections are not rigged. Absentee ballots use the same process as mail-in ballots — different states use different labels for the same process.
⭕ 7 Sep 2020
🧵 RT @matt_cam This is not a political demonstration, and if this were a BBC story about Uganda or whatever, it would be properly reported as a show-of-force incursion from the paramilitary wing of the country’s countermajoritarian ruling party into rival territory 📌 https://twitter.com/matt_cam/status/1303081194507075587?s=20
⋙ 🐣 RT @EricWasserman1 Hundreds of #Trump-supporters are taking part in a car caravan in the suburbs of #Portland. Proud Boy members in attendance with then continue to #Salem for a planned rally. Most cars have their plates illegally covered. #PortlandProtests (:@ByMikeBaker)
⭕ 6 Sep 2020
💽 CNN: The Atlantic’s editor-in-chief says his story about Trump calling vets ‘losers’ is just the beginning http://cnn.it/332gcYg “We’re not going to be intimidated by the President of the United States. We’re going to do our jobs” ~ Jeffrey Goldberg, editor-in-chief of The Atlantic
🐣 RT @McFaul & in a private message, a senior Trump official, who was with the president yesterday, accused me of “serious subversion of a democratically elected official” & warned/threatened me to “be careful with this language.” When the USG accuses you of “serious subversion,” it’s scary.
⋙ 🐣 RT @McFaul Also, know that the woman threatened here is my friend. http://abc7ne.ws/3lVS0z7 I received lots of private threatening messages today. My family has endured threats towards me in Russia and the US for years. Intimidation works. Doing my best to navigate. It’s not easy.
⋙ 🐣 RT @PoliticalShort Then why delete this? https://twitter.com/McFaul/status/1302362935960858624?s=20/photo/1
⋙⋙ 🐣 RT @McFaul I retweeted with a clarifying sentence. 50,000 + people understood exactly what I meant. But trying to be more precise to the handful who I confused or deliberately distorted my views. But I know @ByronYork personally. There’s NO WAY he could believe that I’d support a coup.
⋙⋙⋙ 🐣 RT @aaronhuertas My personal take is that it’s usually not good to delete when the bad faith bros show up. It just emboldens them more and rewards the tactic. They need something fresh to dunk on every day since they can’t actually defend Trump on the merits. York is really hacky on here, too.
↥ ↧
🐣 RT @ByronYork This tweet has disturbing undertones in our democratic system. Trump is commander-in-chief because he was elected president, and he will remain commander-in-chief as long as he is president, for a second term if re-elected. [@McFaul Tweet]
⋙ 🐣 My husband is a West Point grad, served two tours in ‘Nam. My son is in the National Guard, served in Iraq. Favorability for Trump had fallen to 38% among enlisted wo/men BEFORE the “suckers and losers” story broke. We knew exactly what @McFaul meant.
NYT: Federal Judge Blocks, For Now, Further Winding Down of the 2020 Census http://nyti.ms/2ZaF5Qo
// The Census Bureau had begun ending its count in places where it considered its job done. But a lawsuit claims that stopping now will result in a flawed count.
⭕ 5 Sep 2020
WaPo, David Ignatius: Trump’s bad marriage with the military has finally exploded http://wapo.st/32ZFLJk “Trump just isn’t a guy with whom you’d want to share a foxhole”
Slate, Daniel Politi: Bernie Sanders Says Country Must Get Ready for Trump’s Refusal to Concede http://bit.ly/3bzbd4Q “‘This is not just a constitutional crisis. This is a threat to everything this country stands for,’ Sanders writes”
In his email to supporters, Sanders said Trump is “using his lies and misinformation to sow confusion and chaos in the election process and undermine American democracy.” Sanders goes on to say that Trump “does not intend to accept the results of the election” if he loses. “This is not just a ‘constitutional crisis.’ This is a threat to everything this country stands for,” Sanders writes. The senator says there are several steps that need to be taken to get ready, including making it clear to people that it could take days or weeks to get the results of the election. In order to avoid long delays, state legislatures need to allow counting mail-in ballots before Election Day. And Sanders is also calling for Congressional hearings about how local officials plan to handle the vote-counting process.
💽 Mediaite: Fox News’ Jennifer Griffin Defends Reporting After Trump Calls For Her Firing: ‘My Sources Are Unimpeachable’ http://bit.ly/359cXRj
🐣 RT @RVAT2020 NEW from RVAT: Donald Trump called Americans who died fighting for our country “losers and suckers.” Joe Biden considers them “the spine of this nation.” ¤ This November, we have a choice. Let’s make the right one. 💽 https://twitter.com/RVAT2020/status/1302396564061720577?s=20/photo/1
// Republican Voters Against Trump ad❣ Suckers and Losers
🐣 RT @ProjectLincoln Donald Trump can’t comprehend what it means to sacrifice. He’s un-American. ¤ Serving the nation is the epitome of American honor. 💽 https://twitter.com/ProjectLincoln/status/1302381954340454400?s=20/photo/1
// Lincoln Project ad❣ Un-American
🔄 🔆 This❗️⋙ VOTE as early as possible. Make sure your vote counts. Avoid the mail if there is a safe alternative, like voting early in person or using a dropbox.
https://www.vote.org
~ or ~
NBCNews: Plan Your Vote http://nbcnews.to/2QVP6ML
Beware of scam emails and robocalls‼️
🐣 RT @McFaul Trump has lost the Intelligence Community. He has lost the State Department. He has lost the military. How can he continue to serve as our Commander in Chief? Our soldiers, diplomats, and agents deserve better. We deserve better. #Vote.
WaPo: FBI pondered whether Trump was ‘a Manchurian candidate elected,’ former agent alleges in new book http://wapo.st/2F8zQcC “I do think the president is compromised, that he is unable to put the interests of our nation first” ~ former FBI agent Peter Strzok
Former FBI agent Peter Strzok alleges in a new book that investigators came to believe it was “conceivable, if unlikely” that Russia was secretly controlling President Trump after he took office — a full-fledged “Manchurian candidate” installed as America’s commander in chief.
In the book, “Compromised,” Strzok describes how the FBI had to consider “whether the man about to be inaugurated was willing to place his or Russia’s interests above those of American citizens,” and if and how agents could investigate that. Strzok opened the FBI’s 2016 investigation into whether Trump’s campaign had coordinated with the Kremlin to help his election and later was involved in investigating Trump personally. He was ultimately removed from the case over private text messages disparaging of the president.
“We certainly had evidence that this was the case: that Trump, while gleefully wreaking havoc on America’s political institutions and norms, was pulling his punches when it came to our historic adversary, Russia,” Strzok writes. “Given what we knew or had cause to suspect about Trump’s compromising behavior in the weeks, months, and years leading up to the election, moreover, it also seemed conceivable, if unlikely, that Moscow had indeed pulled off the most stunning intelligence achievement in human history: secretly controlling the president of the United States — a Manchurian candidate elected.”
Strzok seems to believe now that is not the case — though he told the Atlantic that Trump’s conduct is deeply problematic.
“I don’t think that Trump, when he meets with Putin, receives a task list for the next quarter,” Strzok said, referencing the Russian president, Vladimir Putin. “But I do think the president is compromised, that he is unable to put the interests of our nation first, that he acts from hidden motives, because there is leverage over him, held specifically by the Russians but potentially others as well.”
Strzok’s book is the latest by former FBI officials — including former director James B. Comey and former deputy director Andrew McCabe — to disclose new insights into the bureau’s investigation of Trump, while lambasting the president for his conduct.
Strzok, a veteran counterintelligence investigator, tries to bring his experience in that area to the discussion of Trump, alleging repeatedly that the president seemed to be compromising himself as he lied publicly about his business dealings in Russia, or his interactions with that country’s officials. That, Strzok writes, essentially gave Russia leverage over the president.
“Trump’s apparent lies — public, sustained, refutable, and damaging if exposed — are an intelligence officer’s dream,” Strzok writes. “For that very reason, they are also a counterintelligence officer’s nightmare.”
Even as he says Clinton’s use of a private server is what fueled investigators’ interest, Strzok allows that had her email been housed on the State Department system, “it would have been less secure and probably much more vulnerable to hacking.” He also concedes that Comey’s decision in October 2016 to reveal to Congress that the investigation had resumed — less than two weeks before voters were to go to the polls — probably altered the results of the election in Trump’s favor.
“Reflecting back on 2016 reveals another hard truth: small margins matter in an election in which the total number of Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Michigan voters needed to swing the Electoral College would fit in one football stadium,” Strzok writes. “Pundits who argue that it’s hard to substantively change public opinion miss the point: when you’re dealing with razor-thin margins, it doesn’t take much to move the needle. And as much as it pains me to admit it, the Russians weren’t the only ones who pushed the needle toward Trump. The Bureau did too.”
⭕ 4 Sep 2020
━━━━━━━▼ WaPo Series on Trump
WaPo: Our Democracy in Peril: A series of editorials on the damage President Trump has caused — and the danger he would pose in a second term. [Index:] http://wapo.st/35ho5vk
Part One: WaPo Editorial (8/21): A second Trump term might injure the democratic experiment beyond recovery http://wapo.st/3hk5CSe “Four years ago, … we told you that we could never …endorse Donald Trump for president. He was, we said, ‘uniquely unqualified’ to be president”
// 8/21/2020; Our Democracy in Peril: Part one of a series of editorials on the damage President Trump has caused — and the danger he would pose in a second term.
Four years ago, after Mr. Trump was nominated in Cleveland, we did something in this space we had never done before: Even before the Democrats had nominated their candidate, we told you that we could never, under any circumstances, endorse Donald Trump for president. He was, we said, “uniquely unqualified” to be president.
“Mr. Trump’s politics of denigration and division could strain the bonds that have held a diverse nation together,” we warned. “His contempt for constitutional norms might reveal the nation’s two-century-old experiment in checks and balances to be more fragile than we knew.”
Part Two: WaPo Editorial (8/28): Global freedom would suffer grievous harm in a second Trump term http://wapo.st/3gF2nUh “A 21st-century victory for democracy, like those that came in World War II and the Cold War, is inconceivable without the leadership of the United States”
//. 8/28/2020; Our Democracy in Peril: Part two of a series of editorials on the damage President Trump has caused — and the danger he would pose in a second term.
THE 21st century, like the one that came before it, has seen the emergence of a fateful struggle over the nature of human governance. Regimes founded on democracy and human rights, which 25 years ago appeared to have triumphed, now face a grave challenge from a resurgent authoritarianism, which employs new technologies to refashion the tyranny that Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union could not sustain. At stake is not only which nations will dominate global affairs, but also whether individual freedoms — of expression, of assembly, of religious faith — will survive.
Part Three: WaPo Editorial (9/4): Presidents are expected to set the national tone. What we got with Trump has been catastrophic. http://wapo.st/2R1xXkS “The great fear of these early Americans was that the presidency could fall into the hands of a demagogue: someone like … Donald Trump”
// 9/4/2020; Our Democracy in Peril: Part three of a series of editorials on the damage President Trump has caused — and the danger he would pose in a second term.
The great fear of these early Americans was that the presidency could fall into the hands of a demagogue: someone like the current incumbent, Donald Trump, whose impact on the nation’s political culture over the past three-plus years has been, if anything, more damaging than his impact on public policy. Where past occupants of the office have at least paid lip service to its inspirational aspects, and where both of his immediate predecessors, George W. Bush and Barack Obama, actively campaigned on themes of unity, Mr. Trump lives by a different credo: “When someone attacks me, I always attack back . . . except 100x more.” This is a formula for upwardly spiraling conflict. Consistent with it, Mr. Trump has used the bully pulpit — magnified by social media — to debase public discourse.
Part Four: WaPo Editorial (9/7): Four more years of Trump’s contempt for competence would be devastating http://wapo.st/328mGFO
// 9/7/2020; Our Democracy in Peril: Part four of a series of editorials on the damage President Trump has caused — and the danger he would pose in a second term.
President Trump thinks he knows better than anyone, but not because he actually knows very much. His 2016 campaign was run from the gut, under the explicit rationale that “experts are terrible” and that whatever someone with a degree and years of experience could do in any area of government, he could do better relying on instinct. His White House has conducted itself according to this philosophy, to devastating effect. ¤ Today, Americans are feeling the effects of a government at an utter loss as a disease ravages the country. The problem is bigger than one missing directorate, or one rebuffed scientist: The response to this outbreak required coordination across agencies that have been systematically depleted, because they were full of experts.
Part Five: WaPo Editorial (9/11): In a new term, Trump would further seal the gates of a Fortress America http://wapo.st/3cc8lLG
// 9/11/2020; Our Democracy in Peril: Part five of a series of editorials on the damage President Trump has caused — and the danger he would pose in a second term.
Without the assent of Congress, President Trump has remade almost every major facet of America’s immigration system over the past three-plus years, slashing levels of legal and illegal arrivals; refugees and asylum seekers; Muslim and Christian migrants. He has sought to strip citizenship from naturalized Americans and subject “dreamers” raised in this country to deportation. He tried to deter illegal border crossings by sundering families, thereby traumatizing migrant teens, tweens and toddlers. If reelected, it is likely Mr. Trump would do more of the same in pursuit of a Fortress America hostile to newcomers — a goal radically at odds with the nation’s long-term interest and the views and wishes of most Americans.
Part Six: WaPo Editorial (9/16): Trump shattered his promise to ‘drain the swamp.’ The self-dealing would be epic in a second term. http://wapo.st/2RDTmAL
// 9/16/2020; Our Democracy in Peril: Part six of a series of editorials on the damage President Trump has caused — and the danger he would pose in a second term.
“Drain the swamp” was a signature promise of Donald Trump’s first campaign: He would uproot corruption from the capital and install a government that served ordinary Americans, not the special interests. That pledge has not merely gone unmet, like most of his campaign promises. It has been shattered by a president and an administration unprecedented and unapologetic in their mingling of public and private interests. In an unfettered second term, the self-dealing would be epic.
Part Seven: WaPo Editorial (9/18): Under a lawless Trump, our system of checks and balances is being destroyed http://wapo.st/33E3TS9 “He has not grown into the office; instead, he has learned how to more effectively abuse its powers”
// 9/18/2020; Our Democracy in Peril: Part seven of a series of editorials on the damage President Trump has caused — and the danger he would pose in a second term
President Trump promised in 2016 that he would protect the Constitution’s “Article I, Article II, Article XII.” (There is no Article XII.) Instead, he has shown how fragile the constitutional order can be when a president does not respect the rule of law. He has not grown into the office; instead, he has learned how to more effectively abuse its powers. The damage of a second term might be irreparable.
A president’s core responsibility is to use the awesome power of his office fairly and with neutrality. Mr. Trump has shown that he has a different understanding: The law is a weapon with which to reward loyalists, punish enemies and frighten everyone else to fall in line.
━━━━━━━▲
Politico, Betsy Swan: DHS draft: White supremacists are greatest terror threat http://politi.co/3lUjaGH
● “Russia ‘probably will be the primary covert foreign influence actor and purveyor of disinformation’”
● “None of the drafts POLITICO reviewed referred to a threat from Antifa”
// The documents are slightly different drafts of the same annual threat assessment, which is not yet published.
Two later draft versions of the same document — all of which were reviewed by POLITICO — describe the threat from white supremacists in slightly different language. But all three drafts describe the threat from white supremacists as the deadliest domestic terror threat facing the U.S., listed above the immediate danger from foreign terrorist groups.
“Foreign terrorist organizations will continue to call for Homeland attacks but probably will remain constrained in their ability to direct such plots over the next year,” all three documents say. ¤ Russia “probably will be the primary covert foreign influence actor and purveyor of disinformation and misinformation in the Homeland,” the documents also say.
Former acting DHS Sec. Kevin McAleenan last year directed the department to start producing annual homeland threat assessments. POLITICO reviewed three drafts of this year’s report — titled DHS’s State of the Homeland Threat Assessment 2020 — all of which were produced in August. Ben Wittes, the editor in chief of the national security site Lawfare, obtained the documents and shared them with POLITICO. The first such assessment has not been released publicly, and a DHS spokesperson declined to comment on “allegedly leaked documents,” and on when the document will be made public.
None of the drafts POLITICO reviewed referred to a threat from Antifa, the loose cohort of militant left-leaning agitators who senior Trump administration officials have described as domestic terrorists. Two of the drafts refer to extremists trying to exploit the “social grievances” driving lawful protests.
Wittes, meanwhile, said the change in language on white supremacist terrorism is significant. ¤ “It diminishes the prominence of white supremacy relative to other domestic violent extremism, and, without being inaccurate, puts it in a basket along with other violent activity that may be more palatable for the administration to acknowledge,” he said.
The earliest draft has the strongest language on the threat from white supremacists, in an introductory section labeled “Key Takeaways.” ¤ “Lone offenders and small cells of individuals motivated by a diverse array of social, ideological, and personal factors will pose the primary terrorist threat to the United States,” the draft reads. “Among these groups, we assess that white supremacist extremists – who increasingly are networking with likeminded persons abroad – will pose the most persistent and lethal threat.” ¤ The “Key Takeaways” section of the next two drafts calls “Domestic Violent Extremists” the “most persistent and lethal threat,” rather than specifically naming white supremacists.
All three documents note that 2019 was the most deadly year for domestic violent extremists since the Oklahoma City Bombing in 1995. ¤ “Among DVE [domestic violent extremist] actors, WSEs [white supremacist extremists] conducted half of all lethal attacks (8 of 16), resulting in the majority of deaths (39 of 48),” the drafts read.
… Two former top DHS political appointees told POLITICO last month that White House national security officials shied away from addressing the problem and didn’t want to refer to killings by right-wing extremists as domestic terrorism.
“I have no qualms criticizing the white supremacy threat,” said Ken Cuccinelli, DHS’s second-in-command, in a recent interview on MSNBC. “Neither does the secretary, neither does the Department of Homeland Security. We recognize when those people act out violently, that they show the highest level of lethality, meaning if you compare the number of violent incidents to the numbers of deaths, the numbers of deaths relative to the incidents is very high compared to other types of threats.”
DHS leaders have been much more vocal of late in highlighting federal efforts to target Antifa. In a recent Fox News interview, host Tucker Carlson asked Acting DHS Sec. Chad Wolf why the Justice Department hadn’t arrested and charged the leaders of Antifa and Black Lives Matter. “This is something I’ve talked to the AG personally about, and I know that they are working on it,” he replied.
And Attorney General Bill Barr has zeroed in on the group in the context of the federal law enforcement response to long-running vandalism, violence, and unrest in Portland, Oregon. After U.S. Marshals killed a murder suspect, Michael Reinoehl, who had described himself online as “100% ANTIFA,” Barr touted the operation as a success. The suspect tried to escape arrest and “produced a firearm,” according to a statement from Barr.
“The tracking down of Reinoehl — a dangerous fugitive, admitted Antifa member, and suspected murderer — is a significant accomplishment in the ongoing effort to restore law and order to Portland and other cities,” Barr said.
WaPo: Trump, Biden clash over military support after president’s alleged disparagement of fallen troops http://wapo.st/3btdjn5 “‘Who the heck does he think he is?’ said Biden, whose late son Beau served in Iraq with the Delaware National Guard”
🐣 RT @renato_mariotti Trump official: “The president means no disrespect to our troops; it’s just that the way he speaks, he can sound like an asshole sometimes.” ¤ Their defense is that Trump means no disrespect because he’s just an asshole. What kind of defense is that?
⋙ DailyBeast, AsawinSuebsaeng: Trump’s Defenders: He Doesn’t Hate the Troops, He Just ‘Sounds Like an Asshole’ http://bit.ly/320YPb2
// Yes, his allies admit, Trump routinely makes callous comments about U.S. military personnel. But it’s because he hates the wars they’re forced to fight, not the troops themselves.
🐣 RT @nytimes Joe Biden’s campaign seized on a report in The Atlantic that President Trump privately referred to American soldiers who had died in combat as “losers” and “suckers,” holding a call with Khizr Khan, a Gold Star father, and Sen. Tammy Duckworth on Friday.
⋙ NYT: President Trump canceled a 2018 visit to the Aisne-Marne American Cemetery in France, where American World War I veterans are buried. http://nyti.ms/2F2HLsd
// Calling Trump a ‘coward,’ Biden campaign seizes on a report that he insulted fallen soldiers.
🐣 RT @DrBiden We will always stand with those who serve, their families, survivors, and caregivers. ¤ Always.
⋙ Joe Biden for President: Official Campaign Website Statement by Vice President Biden on the Atlantic Article http://bit.ly/3jMw2Nd
🐣 RT @duty2warn Malignant narcissism in a leader with power is responsible for the most catastrophic events and the most inhumane behavior in history. Malignant narcissism combined with acute Dunning-Kruger effect have probably never been seen to this extent before.
⋙ “The Dunning-Kruger effect is a cognitive bias in which people wrongly overestimate their knowledge or ability in a specific area” ~ PsychologyToday
🐣 RT @benjaminwittes .@petestrzok chose very wisely. The first interview he has given is to someone who truly understands the stakes in L’Affaire Russe: the great @anneapplebaum. This conversation is worth your time.
💙 ⋙ TheAtlantic, Anne Applebaum: ‘Who’s Putting These Ideas in His Head?’ http://bit.ly/3i0Tg1v
// The former FBI agent Peter Strzok worries that Americans will never learn the full story about Trump’s relationship with Russia.
🐣 RT @MeidasTouch Everyone needs to watch this new ad from @votevets 💽 https://twitter.com/MeidasTouch/status/1301882009405411328?s=20/photo/1
// Vote Vets ad❣ Honoring those killed in battle
🐣 RT @CharlesPPierce I’m not sure what this is all about, but I feel confident that there’s something deep and hinky about it.
⋙ Esquire, Charles Pierce: Nothing This Administration* Does Is Unfathomable http://bit.ly/31Y54fu
// The Pentagon has ordered the shuttering of Stars & Stripes for no reason other than “because we can.”
🐣 RT @jimsciutto What possible public interest does this serve?
🐣 RT @SteveBeynon I read Stars and Stripes on a mountain in Afghanistan when I was a 19 year old aspiring journalist. Now I work there. This doesn’t stop the journalism. I’m juggling 3 future news stories today.
⋙ 🐣 RT @DefenseBaron NEW: Trump orders the military’s legendary independent newspaper @starsandstripes to stop publishing on Sept. 30. Shutdown plan due by Sept. 15. @USATODAY has the Pentagon memo:
🐣 RT @MollyJongFast What if trump doesn’t actually love the troops at all?
⋙ USAToday: The Pentagon has ordered Stars and Stripes to shut down for no good reason http://bit.ly/3h8Rmel
// Trump wants to pull funding from Stars and Stripes, a newspaper for American troops that began in the Civil War and has been serving our soldiers.
⭕ 3 Sep 2020
📋 ★ NYT: What We Know About the C.D.C.’s Covid-19 Vaccine Plans http://nyti.ms/3jTIcns
// CDC Vaccine Plans, vaccine distribution, Pfizer Astrageneca; The agency told public health agencies that two unidentified vaccines might be ready by October or November. We explain how vaccine trials work, when one might be ready, and who may get them first.
Who will get it first?
In the documents sent to public health agencies, the C.D.C. said certain groups would have priority, beginning with health care workers, essential workers (like police officers or those who work in critical industries like food production), “national security populations,” and workers and residents of long-term care facilities like nursing homes.
Those priority groups include millions of people. At a meeting last week of the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices of the C.D.C., an agency official presented a slide showing that in the United States, there are about 17 to 20 million health care workers, 60 to 80 million essential workers and about 53 million people older than 65.
On Wednesday, the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine unveiled a 114-page plan, sponsored by the C.D.C. and the National Institutes of Health, that proposed a complicated four-phase system for priority.
🚫 WaPo, Rosa Brooks: What’s the worst that could happen? http://wapo.st/334VGpA
// Election Integrity Project; The election will likely spark violence — and a constitutional crisis
🐣 RT @PaulRieckhoff General Mattis, General Kelly, General Dunford, General Milley, it’s long past time for you to finally spill the beans about Trump—on the record. Voters need to know the truth. You can be important nails in Trump’s political coffin. Silence now is complicity.
🐣 RT @anneapplebaum one more thing that’s at stake in November: Will the US leave the WHO, and leave China to dominate the world’s most important public health institution?
⋙ Laurie_Garrett The @StateDept just released a statement on withdrawal from @WHO — #Trump admin is already diverting $$ away. Last date of US/WHO coexistence is July 2021, which leaves the future of American global health locked to the U.S. election outcome. https://twitter.com/Laurie_Garrett/status/1301601440960598019?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @MuellerSheWrote Fuckin @tedlieu FTW. https://twitter.com/MuellerSheWrote/status/1301756475459530753?s=20/photo/1
// letter from Ted Lieu to Barr in HUGE LETTERS: “Federal law prohibits voting twice in the same election 52 USC § 10307”
⋙ 🐣 (e) Voting more than once
(1) Whoever votes more than once in an election referred to in paragraph (2) shall be fined not more than $10,000 or imprisoned not more than five years, or both.
🐣 🖼 RT @Acyn The President didn’t attend the memorial at the cemetery but he did show up at an event the following day to greet Putin https://twitter.com/Acyn/status/1301755426342449152?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @Acyn The President responds 💽 https://twitter.com/Acyn/status/1301717022905049088?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @rumpfshaker Now here’s WaPo. Believing this story is false requires believing that 5 individual reporters all lied, AND the editorial and legal teams at @TheAtlantic @AP and @washingtonpost were all fine with their reporters making up fake quotes by fake sources.
🐣 RT @stevel_pifer I served on US-Russia POW/MIA Commission in early 1990s and saw how hard Pentagon works to bring fallen home, whether they fell in WWII, Korea, Cold War shoot-downs or Vietnam. ¤ It’s sad @realDonaldTrump does not understand how important that is to US military.
⋙ 🐣 RT @mviser “In one account, the president told senior advisers that he didn’t understand why the U.S. government placed such value on finding soldiers missing in action because they had performed poorly and gotten caught and deserved what they got.”
⋙⋙ WaPo: Trump said U.S. soldiers injured and killed in war were ‘losers,’ magazine reports http://wapo.st/350ubQV
🐣 RT @TheLastWord .@kerreybob, who was awarded the Medal of Honor for his service as a Navy SEAL in Vietnam, and @sethmoulton, who served 4 combat tours of duty in Iraq in the Marine Corps, discuss reporting that Trump called Americans killed in war “suckers” and “losers.” https://on.msnbc.com/31Xxp5z
🐣 RT @duty2warn The FULL TRUTH about Trump’s aberrant pathology is neither spoken about nor understood. Yet THAT’S the source of our GREATEST danger! Nobody who understood it, would ever vote for him! FINALLY, experts speak on the record! Everyone needs to see this film! http://unfitfilm.com https://twitter.com/duty2warn/status/1301726098686840834?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @JohnJHarwood Trump plainly grasps how damaging this story is ¤ says he’d “swear on whatever, or whoever, I was asked to swear on” that he never made quoted comments ¤ but they track his public remarks on McCain, and he lacks credibility ¤ 66% in Quinnipiac Poll this summer called him dishonest
⋙⋙ 🐣 RT @@real https://twitter.com/realdonaldtrump/status/1301710819349204992
⋙ 🐣 RT @john_sipher Too bad for him. This is what happens when you throw away your credibility. You can’t get it back when you want. Lots have consequences.
WaPo/AP, James LaPorta: Report: Trump disparaged US war dead as ‘losers,’ ‘suckers’ http://wapo.st/2Z7vCJr James LaPorta checked with two of his own Defense Department sources who confirmed the story first reported by Jeffrey Goldberg for the Atlantic
NYT: President Trump’s vaccine chief sees a ‘very, very low chance’ of a vaccine by Election Day. http://nyti.ms/354FlUA
Moncef Slaoui, the chief adviser for the White House vaccine program, said on Thursday that it was “extremely unlikely but not impossible” that a vaccine could be available by the end of October.
In an interview with National Public Radio, Dr. Slaoui, the chief scientific adviser of the Trump administration’s coronavirus vaccine and treatment initiative, called Operation Warp Speed, explained that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s guidance to states to prepare for a vaccine as early as late October — a notification Dr. Slaoui said he had learned of through the news media — was “the right thing to do” in case a vaccine was ready by that time. “It would be irresponsible not to be ready if that was the case,” he said. ¤ However, he described that as a “very, very low chance.”
★ CDC: Hydroxychloroquine and Chloroquine Prescribing Patterns by Provider Specialty Jan-Jun 2020 http://bit.ly/3lPkFGc New Rx’s by specialists who did not typically prescribe these medications increased 80-fold (from 1,143 in Feb to 75,569 in March 2020) vs March 2019
// by Laura Bull-Otterson et al
Full: New prescriptions by specialists who did not typically prescribe these medications (defined as specialties accounting for ≤2% of new prescriptions before 2020) increased from 1,143 prescriptions in February 2020 to 75,569 in March 2020, an 80-fold increase from March 2019
★ JAMANetwork, D Meltzer et al (UChicago): Association of Vitamin D Status and Other Clinical Characteristics With COVID-19 Test Results http://bit.ly/3lKUtwm Vitamin D deficiency appears assc’d w increased risk of testing positive for COVID-19 (cohort study of 489 patients) ● Text Block: https://twitter.com/Auriandra/status/1301708590777077760?s=20/photo/1
Findings: In this cohort study of 489 patients who had a vitamin D level measured in the year before COVID-19 testing, the relative risk of testing positive for COVID-19 was 1.77 times greater for patients with likely deficient vitamin D status compared with patients with likely sufficient vitamin D status, a difference that was statistically significant.
Meaning: These findings appear to support a role of vitamin D status in COVID-19 risk; randomized clinical trials are needed to determine whether broad population interventions and interventions among groups at increased risk of vitamin D deficiency and COVID-19 could reduce COVID-19 incidence.
★ ForeignPolicy, Laurie Garrett: Trump’s Vaccine Can’t Be Trusted http://bit.ly/3lHX9e6
// If a vaccine comes out before the election, there are very good reasons not to take it.
🐣 RT @DemWrite From the moment he descended on that escalator, Trump has wielded a rhetoric of violence. ¤ America today is in many ways a reflection of his dark, twisted soul. #ViolentTrump #DemCast 💽 https://twitter.com/DemWrite/status/1301685913680977920?s=20/photo/1
// Really American ad❣ Violent Trump
🐣 RT @NotThatBase SHOCK POLL: It would be a shame if @realDonaldTrump saw this. Even biglier shame if you retweeted it. https://twitter.com/NotAbouThatBase/status/1300405354162008065?s=20/photo/1
// 📊 MilitaryTimes Poll Favorable (2016-now) 46% ➔ 38%, Unfavorable 37% ➔ 50%
🧵 RT @cmclymer Today’s report from @TheAtlantic that Trump called Marines who died at Belleau Wood “losers” and “suckers” isn’t surprising. He’s insulted the military and their families constantly since the start of his presidential campaign in 2015. I’ve got the highlights here. (thread) 📌 https://twitter.com/cmclymer/status/1301667670962638849?s=20
USAToday: NC elections chief says ‘It is illegal to vote twice in an election’ after Trump comment on double voting http://bit.ly/2DxsoYg “‘Attempting to vote twice in an election OR SOLICITING SOMEONE TO DO SO also is a violation of North Carolina law,’ Brinson Bell added” (emph added)
🐣 RT @tribelaw Trump clearly has no power to withhold congressionally appropriated funds from cities whose governance he or his attorney general dislike. Congress, not the president, controls the pursestrings in America. He can’t even pretend not to know that.
⋙ TheGuardian: Trump signs memo to defund ‘lawless’ cities but experts raise legality doubts http://bit.ly/3jI0IiG
// Legal scholars say Trump has little power to make good on the document in which he threatened to cut funding to Democratic-led cities
🐣 RT @brianklaas If you had written that any other president wouldn’t go to a veteran’s cemetery because he thought that people killed in combat were “losers,” nobody would believe it. With Trump, it’s impossible not to believe it. It’s completely, utterly in line with his character and behavior.
🐣 RT @mjhegar I’m one of the pilots that got shot down. Our Commander-in-Chief thinks that makes me a loser. ¤ He thinks the many friends I lost & soldiers I medevac’d were suckers. ¤ This is disgraceful. @realDonaldTrump is unfit to be Commander-in-Chief.
🐣 RT @JimLaporta A senior Defense Department official I just spoke with confirmed this story by @JeffreyGoldberg in its entirety. Especially the grafs about the late Sen. John McCain and former Marine Gen. John Kelly, President @realDonaldTrump former chief of staff.
🐣 RT @CaseyNikoloric Four sources. Four. And @JeffreyGoldberg would be super meticulous about a story this explosive. Bottom line to Americans of every ideological stripe, If you are still asleep, wake the hell up. Donald Trump is a thoroughly despicable and thoroughly ignorant human being.
🐣 RT @mviser On Memorial Day 2017, Trump visited Arlington National Cemetery with John Kelly, then homeland security secretary. Standing by the grave of Robert Kelly — who died in Afghanistan at age 29 — Trump turned directly to his father and said, “I don’t get it. What was in it for them?”
🐣 RT @sbg1 Seriously, @JeffreyGoldberg piece is important and terrific reporting. Where the hell were these sources when it happened? Did I miss the part where any of those who heard the President attack war heroes quit in protest, or went on the record to tell us about this now?
🐣 RT @kylryssdal Quite a piece by @JeffreyGoldberg ¤ The president, who never served in the military, canceled a visit to a cemetery where American troops are buried, saying: “Why should I go to that cemetery? It’s filled with losers.”
💙 🔆 This❗️⋙ TheAtlantic, Jeffrey Goldberg: Trump: Americans Who Died in War Are ‘Losers’ and ‘Suckers’ http://bit.ly/32XMVO3 “Trump referred to the more than 1,800 marines who lost their lives at Belleau Wood as ‘suckers’ for getting killed”
// The president has repeatedly disparaged the intelligence of service members, and asked that wounded veterans be kept out of military parades, multiple sources tell The Atlantic.
When President Donald Trump canceled a visit to the Aisne-Marne American Cemetery near Paris in 2018, he blamed rain for the last-minute decision, saying that “the helicopter couldn’t fly” and that the Secret Service wouldn’t drive him there. Neither claim was true.
Trump rejected the idea of the visit because he feared his hair would become disheveled in the rain, and because he did not believe it important to honor American war dead, according to four people with firsthand knowledge of the discussion that day. In a conversation with senior staff members on the morning of the scheduled visit, Trump said, “Why should I go to that cemetery? It’s filled with losers.” In a separate conversation on the same trip, Trump referred to the more than 1,800 marines who lost their lives at Belleau Wood as “suckers” for getting killed.
Belleau Wood is a consequential battle in American history, and the ground on which it was fought is venerated by the Marine Corps. America and its allies stopped the German advance toward Paris there in the spring of 1918. But Trump, on that same trip, asked aides, “Who were the good guys in this war?” He also said that he didn’t understand why the United States would intervene on the side of the Allies.
CNN: Intelligence bulletin warns Russia amplifying false claims mail-in voting will lead to widespread fraud http://cnn.it/34YgjXk “The warning comes one day after Attorney General Bill Barr condemned states for encouraging mail-in voting in an interview with CNN’s Wolf Blitzer”
⭕ 2 Sep 2020
Politico: Hahn, HHS in ‘tit for tat’ feud over Covid-19 messaging http://politi.co/3gSXTcI a slew of firings and contract terminations including of the guy who convinced Hahn to walk back his wild over-statement of the effectiveness of convalescent plasma
// Food and Drug Administration Commissioner Stephen Hahn ousts a spokesperson installed by the White House, while HHS removes a consultant close to him.
🐣 RT @gregpmiller The Attorney General on CNN says he doesn’t know whether it’s illegal to vote twice (it is), that Jacob Blake was armed (he wasn’t), and that counterfeit ballots from another country are real threat (no evidence).
⋙ 🐣 RT @atrupar “I don’t know what the law in the particular state says” — Wolf Blitzer has to explain to the Attorney General of the United States that it’s actually illegal to vote twice
💽 https://twitter.com/atrupar/status/1301299333938151424?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @JStein_WaPo President Trump signed a memo today to restrict federal $ from going to “anarchist jurisdictions” – the memo cites Seattle, Portland, NYC & D.C. ¤ Per the memo, below is how DOJ is supposed to determine what the “anarchist jurisdictions” are: https://twitter.com/JStein_WaPo/status/1301314853747990530?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @ChrisMurphyCT Joe Biden condemns violence, no matter who commits it. ¤ Donald Trump refuses to condemn violence when his supporters are the assailants. ¤ Under Obama and Biden, violent crime went down 15%. ¤ This year, under Trump, murders are up 26% in American cities. ¤ So now you know.
⭕ 1 Sep 2020
NYT: U.S.-Russia Military Tensions Intensify in the Air and on the Ground Worldwide http://nyti.ms/32Rm5Y3
// Recent altercations in Europe, the Middle East and off the coast of Alaska have heightened tensions between the two rival powers.
🐣 RT @BandyXLee1 Freshly out! 📌 https://twitter.com/BandyXLee1/status/1300979110123012097?s=20
💙 ⋙ 🐣 RT @MeidasTouch NEW VIDEO ¤ Trump’s mentally deranged pathology is a weapon of mass destruction which will destroy America if given four more years. ¤ #TrumpsMentalUnhealth
// Meidas Touch ad❣ about #Unfit documentary link to 💽 http://bit.ly/3lGsTk0
NYT: Russians Again Targeting Americans With Disinformation, Facebook and Twitter Say http://nyti.ms/2QLWgD8 “[T]he online networks were linked to Yevgeny Prigozhin, the Russian oligarch who was indicted by the United States and accused of interfering in the 2016 presidential election
// The companies said the F.B.I. had warned them that the Kremlin-backed Internet Research Agency set up a network of fake user accounts and a website.
WaPo: ‘Thugs’ on a plane: Trying to paint Biden as extreme, Trump ramps up promotion of conspiracy theories http://wapo.st/31N5dCp “[E]xperts on extremist groups warned that the president’s embrace of conspiracy theories has helped accelerate the mainstreaming of once-fringe ideas”
WaPo (9/1): Portland killing renews focus on tactics of far-right group Patriot Prayer http://wapo.st/2YV5rFV “‘What they really want to do is silence their political enemies, and they want to do that through violence and intimidation, and that’s kind of their predominant purpose’”
// 9/1/2020; saboteur provocateur;
💙 🧵 RT @steveschmidtSES Contemplating this American moment is essential because the crisis will worsen and become more dangerous. What is it that we are watching unfold in front of us? What does it mean? What is at stake? What was the meaning of the Republican Convention? What happened there? (1) 📌 https://twitter.com/SteveSchmidtSES/status/1300857365764374529?s=20
🐣 RT @brhodes We’re finding out what people would do if fascism came to America. Never forget what you learn about people now, especially the politicians who will want you to forget.
🐣 RT @TheRickWilson Lordy
⋙ 🐣 RT @JF991 Russian hackers post complete personal data of 7 million Michigan voters from the state electoral commission onto Russian dark web. All data is now for sale, in addition to similar data bases from several other swing states. [link] https://twitter.com/JF991/status/1300678700606935040?s=20
🔲 FoxNews: Laura Ingraham Interview with Trump (unhinged)
WaPo: Trump blames people in ‘dark shadows’ for protest violence, cites mysterious plane full of ‘thugs’ in black http://wapo.st/34U8ORk Trump’s unhinged interview with Laura Ingraham
⭕ 31 Aug 2020
🐣 RT @NatSecMulligan I continue to be concerned that Barr chose to replace my exceptional former boss Brad Wiegmann with a random AUSA with no experience with national security policy making. Replacing substantive expertise with partisan credentials is bad news for DOJ.
⋙ ABCNews: Barr’s removal of career national security official, weeks before election, raises concerns http://abcn.ws/2GlqWJD
// A little-known office in the Justice Department has lost its long-time chief.
DailyBeast: HHS Spending $250M to ‘Defeat Despair’ Over Coronavirus: Report http://bit.ly/2QHYSC8 iow: lie
⋙ (🐣 Reminder: HHS’s new PR guy is Michael Caputo who “worked for Gazprom Media in 2000 where he worked on improving the image of Vladimir Putin in the U.S.” ~ Wikipedia)
The Department of Health and Human Services is bidding out a communications contract worth over $250 million intending to “defeat despair and inspire hope” about the coronavirus pandemic, Politico reports. In what would shape up as a massive public relations campaign, the agency reportedly says its goals include “sharing best practices for businesses to operate in the new normal” and “instill[ing] confidence to return to work and restart the economy.” The campaign would also help build a “coalition of spokespeople” around the country, providing important public health information relating to a potential coronavirus vaccine and phases of reopening. Most money, the document says, would be spent from now until January 2021.
🧵 RT @AVindman Please send this thread out far and wide. Retweet, post on FB, Instagram, etc. let’s get a million eyes on this!! 📌 https://twitter.com/AVindman/status/1300533874221613056?s=20
⋙ 🐣 RT @ Trump’s popularity slips in latest Military Times poll — and more troops say they’ll vote for Biden
⋙⋙ 📊 MilitaryTimes: Trump’s popularity slips in latest Military Times poll — and more troops say they’ll vote for Biden http://bit.ly/2EHVswE 49.9% of active duty troops disapprove of Trump (42% “strongly”); 38% approve. Who they plan to vote for: ● https://twitter.com/Auriandra/status/1300599653076008961?s=20/photo/1
In the latest results — based on 1,018 active-duty troops surveyed in late July and early August — nearly half of respondents (49.9 percent) had an unfavorable view of the president, compared to about 38 percent who had a favorable view. Questions in the poll had a margin of error of up to 2 percent. ¤ Among all survey participants, 42 percent said they “strongly” disapprove of Trump’s time in office.
WaPo Editorial: The director of national intelligence is providing cover for Putin http://wapo.st/2YTaw1h “If Americans are not aware of precisely what Moscow is doing to sow misinformation, they are more likely to be swayed by it”
WaPo, Jennifer Rubin: Joe Biden smacks down Trump in Pittsburgh http://wapo.st/2QCGA58 “‘This president long ago forfeited any moral leadership in this country. He can’t stop the violence — because for years he has fomented it,’ Biden declared”
WaPo, Max Boot: This isn’t an administration. It’s an ongoing criminal conspiracy. http://wapo.st/3jwMwsS “I am convinced that Trump’s wrongdoing is so pervasive & brazen that he must be prosecuted to uphold the rule of law & deter even greater lawbreaking by future presidents”
If elected, President Biden should appoint a special counsel of unimpeachable integrity — a widely respected former U.S. attorney or federal judge — with a wide-ranging mandate to investigate Trump and his administration. That prosecutor should finally summon Trump to testify orally under oath or assert his Fifth Amendment privilege against self-incrimination — something Mueller never did. If Trump did testify, it would almost certainly result in perjury charges.
WaPo: Michael Flynn case does not have to be immediately dismissed, appeals court rules http://wapo.st/3bd25Tk The decision “gives U.S. District Judge Emmet G. Sullivan the go-ahead to question prosecutors’ unusual move to dismiss Flynn’s case ahead of sentencing”
⭕ 30 Aug 2020
WaPo, Ishaan Tharoor: In Trump, much of the world sees an act that’s wearing thin http://wapo.st/31HS39G “Still, numerous commentators hope that a Trump defeat in November may lead to a kind of restoration”
🧵 RT @McFaul For those of us who study autocracies, including elections in autocracies, there were a lot of familiar messages, symbols, and methods on display this week at the #RNCConvention. THREAD 📌 https://twitter.com/McFaul/status/1299393438522077190?s=20
1. Cult of the Personality. This show was all about Trump. (3 years after the death of Stalin, Khrushchev’s gave his secret speech in 1956, titled “On the Cult of Personality and Its Consequences.” I wonder if a future GOP leader will give a similar speech someday?)
2. Administrative resources. Autocrats and semi-autocrats frequently use government resources for personal electoral gain. We have #HatchAct to prevent such behavior in the U.S. It’s obviously not working.
3. Blatant disregard for the law. That Trump’s team dared anyone to charge them with violating the #HatchAct is exactly what Putin and others autocrats do all the time. Laws don’t apply to the king & his court, only to the subjects.
4. Blatant disregard for facts. As U.S. ambassador to Russia, I found this Putin regime trait most frustrating. We – the U.S. government- were constrained by facts. They were not. Trump obviously was not constrained by facts last night. He usually isn’t:
⋙ Glenn Kessler (WaPo): Donald Trump and His Assault on Truth: The President’s Falsehoods, Misleading Claims and Flat-Out Lies http://amzn.to/31FCv6w5. Us versus Them populism. “Elites” versus “the people” nationalism. Autocratic populists use polarizing identity politics to divide societies all the time. Many populist leaders actually have little in common with the “masses.” (Putin is very rich.)
6. The opposition is the “enemy of the people.” Putin & other autocratic populists cast their opponents as radicals & revolutionaries. They don’t focus on their own records – often there is little to celebrate – but the horrors that will happen if they lose power. Sound familiar? ¤ There is one difference between Putin and Trump so far. Putin also claims falsely that his political opponents are supported by foreign enemies, the U.S. & the West. Trump has not gone there full-throated yet. But my guess it’s coming. “Beijing Biden” is a hint.
7. Law and Order. Autocratic populists all shout about it, even when the opposite is happening on their watch.
8. The good tsar versus the bad boyars. Kings and tsars always blamed bad provincial leaders for national ills. Putin blames the governors all the time… just like Trump.
9. Individual acts of royal kindness. Putin, like the tsars he emulates, does this all the time. Trump offering a pardon or “granting” citizenship (which of course he didnt & doesn’t have the power to do) are typical, faux gestures of royal kindness toward his subjects.
10. Homage and fealty. Vassals must signal their complete loyalty and absolute devotion to kings and autocrats. Those that don’t are banished from the royal court or the party. (Where were the Bushes last night?)
11. The royal family. In this dimension, Trump acts more like a monarch than even Putin. (but watch Lukashenko and his gun-toting teenage son in Belarus)The many Trump family members who performed this week – even a girlfriend got a slot – went beyond even what Putin does.
12. There’s still one big difference. We still don’t know who will win the November election. That uncertainty is a crucial difference between electoral democracies & electoral autocracies. Its also a difference that has no guarantee of lasting, depending on the outcome this year
For further reading on populists in comparative perspective, see this report by
@AnnaGBusse @FukuyamaFrancis @didikuol and me:
⋙ New Report: Anna Grzymala-Busse, Didi Kuo, Francis Fukuyama and Michael McFaul: Global Populisms and Their Challenges http://bit.ly/3lIqkhk
// A new report explains the nature of the threat and potential solutions for the rise of global populism. Download it now.For further reading on electoral autocracies, see this review article:
⋙ WorldPolitics, Yonatan Morse: Review: The Era of Electoral Authoritarianism http://bit.ly/3gNzfdn
🐣 RT @davidaxelrod Bonkers.
⋙ 🐣 RT @nytimes President Trump’s Twitter barrage overnight Saturday and early Sunday included embracing a supporter charged with murder and threatening to use force against demonstrators outside the White House.
NYT: Trump Embraces Fringe Theories on Protests and the Coronavirus http://nyti.ms/3hWc8Pz
// In a Twitter barrage, the president advanced conspiracy theories claiming that protests are an organized coup and that the virus death toll is inflated. He also reposted a call to imprison New York’s governor.
🐣 RT @VDJ364 “The numbers are overwhelming: Most of the violence is coming from the extreme right wing,” said Clint Watts, a former FBI agent who studies extremist political activity for the Foreign Policy Research Institute, a think tank in Philadelphia.
// 8/30/2020
⋙ WaPo (6/17): As Trump warns of leftist violence, a dangerous threat emerges from the right-wing boogaloo movement http://wapo.st/
🐣 RT @JuliaDavisNews It’s a message. Not a love letter. ¤ The Russian navy has conducted major war games near Alaska involving dozens of ships & aircraft, the biggest such drills in the area since the Soviet times that included the Omsk nuclear submarine surfacing near Alaska.
⋙ ABC: Russian navy conducts major maneuvers near Alaska http://abcn.ws/2EOVnXP
// The Russian navy has conducted major war games near Alaska involving dozens of ships and aircraft, the biggest such drills in the area since the Soviet times
WaPo: As clashes between armed groups and leftist protesters turn deadly, police face complaints of tolerating vigilantes http://wapo.st/3lFJ699 “[P]olice officers have been photographed smiling or fist-bumping with members of far-right armed groups”
// 8/30/2020; saboteur provocateur
WaPo, Max Boot: Trump cannot be allowed to incite his way to reelection http://wapo.st/3jGppfB “The horrors that Trump claims will unfold in Biden’s America are actually happening right now in Trump’s America”
🐣 RT @JoeBiden The deadly violence we saw overnight in Portland is unacceptable. Shooting in the streets of a great American city is unacceptable. ¤ I condemn violence of every kind by anyone, whether on the left or the right. And I challenge Donald Trump to do the same.
⋙ 🐣 ● https://twitter.com/Auriandra/status/1300206403752206336?s=20/photo/1
// Biden statement
🐣 RT @donwinslow MY NEW VIDEO: #OpenLetterToRepublicans SOUND UP!! ¤ We don’t have to reach all of them, BUT we do need to reach some of them. ¤ We need 20,000 retweets of this video. ¤ Please make sure you watch to the very end. 💽 https://twitter.com/donwinslow/status/1300191230328856576?s=20/photo/1
// Don Winslow ad❣ Open Letter to Republicans
🐣 RT @edokeefe NEW: Wisconsin @GovEvers ask @realDonaldTrump to reconsider his Kenosha trip: “I am concerned your presence will only hinder our healing. I am concerned your presence will only delay our work to overcome division and move forward together.” (H/t @adam_brew @victorjacobo_) https://twitter.com/edokeefe/status/1300195524872728576?s=20/photo/1-2
🐣 RT @Acyn Wheeler: Do you seriously wonder Mr. President why this is the first time in decades that Americans have seen this level of violence? It’s you who have created the hate and the division. 💽 https://twitter.com/Acyn/status/1300168822972846080?s=20/photo/1
// Mayor Ted Wheeler (Portland) presser
EmptyWheel, Marcy Wheeler: Both Rod Rosenstein and Richard Burr Chose Not to Investigate Trump’s Biggest Counterintelligence Vulnerability http://bit.ly/2DaKP4C
🐣 RT @TimothyDSnyder Social media nudges us towards fascism 2.0. My piece in @washingtonpost
⋙ WaPo, Timothy Snyder: Fascism is back. Blame the Internet. http://wapo.st/2YKgotx Timothy Snyder, a Yale Professor, is author of “On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from The Twentieth Century”
// It’s polarizing our politics, making us ignore inconvenient facts and impeding real activism.
Democracy depends upon a certain idea of truth: not the babel of our impulses, but an independent reality visible to all citizens. This must be a goal; it can never fully be achieved. Authoritarianism arises when this goal is openly abandoned, and people conflate the truth with what they want to hear. Then begins a politics of spectacle, where the best liars with the biggest megaphones win. Trump understands this very well. As a businessman he failed, but as a politician he succeeded because he understood how to beckon desire. By deliberately spreading unreality with modern technology, the daily tweet, he outrages some and elates others, eroding the very notion of a common world of facts.
In fascism, feeling is first. Fascists of the 1920s and 1930s wanted to undo the enlightenment and appeal to people as members of a tribe, race or species. What mattered was a story of us and them that could begin a politics of conflict and combat. Fascists proposed that the world was run by conspirators whose mysterious hold must be broken by violence. This could be achieved by a leader (führer, duce) who spoke directly to and for the people, without laws and institutions. Totalitarianism meant domination of the whole self, without respect for private and public.
🐣 RT @JoyceWhiteVance New reporting: Rosenstein prevented Mueller from pursuing a counterintelligence investigation into Trump’s Russia ties & limited him to the criminal investigation at hand, telling him “this is a criminal investigation. Do your job, and then shut it down.”
⋙ NYT: Justice Dept. Never Fully Examined Trump’s Ties to Russia, Ex-Officials Say http://nyti.ms/3lx2xRj
// The former deputy attorney general maneuvered to keep investigators from completing an inquiry into whether the president’s personal and financial links to Russia posed a national security threat.
The special counsel who finished the investigation, Robert S. Mueller III, secured three dozen indictments and convictions of some top Trump advisers, and he produced a report that outlined Russia’s wide-ranging operations to help get Mr. Trump elected and the president’s efforts to impede the inquiry.
But law enforcement officials never fully investigated Mr. Trump’s own relationship with Russia, even though some career F.B.I. counterintelligence investigators thought his ties posed such a national security threat that they took the extraordinary step of opening an inquiry into them. Within days, the former deputy attorney general Rod J. Rosenstein curtailed the investigation without telling the bureau, all but ensuring it would go nowhere.
A bipartisan report by the Republican-led Senate Intelligence Committee released this month came the closest to an examination of the president’s links to Russia. Senators depicted extensive ties between Trump associates and Russia, identified a close associate of a former Trump campaign chairman as a Russian intelligence officer and outlined how allegations about Mr. Trump’s encounters with women during trips to Moscow could be used to compromise him. But the senators acknowledged they lacked access to the full picture, particularly any insight into Mr. Trump’s finances.
🐣 RT @DrPresage “Trumpism is something akin to a fascist social and political movement. We’ve got militias roaming the street. We have one of our political parties turning into a cult of the leader.”
⋙ CNN: Media shouldn’t normalize ‘fascist’ Trumpism, Yale professor says http://cnn.it/32C8eoh
// on Reliable Sources
The media has a habit — a bad one, some argue — of “both-sidesing” issues to appear unbiased and neutral. But that doesn’t work in President Donald Trump’s America, Yale professor Jason Stanley says.
On “Reliable Sources” Sunday, Stanley told CNN’s Chief Media Correspondent Brian Stelter that Trump uses propaganda and messaging similar to fascist leaders in other countries and of the past.
“Trumpism is something akin to a fascist social and political movement,” said Stanley, author of “How Fascism Works.” “We’ve got militias roaming the street. We have one of our political parties turning into a cult of the leader.”
The result is a skewing of facts and a preponderance of conspiracy theories and misinformation. That’s not living up to the promise of America, and the press shouldn’t fall for Trump’s trap, Stanley argues.
“I want the press not to normalize,” he said. “I want the press to call out when laws are being violated, to be clear about the statistics about violent crime — we have very low violent crime in the United States historically. So I want the press not to normalize and not to consistently do both-siderism and to call the facts as they are.”
🐣 RT @EvanMcMullin We’re living through an attempted authoritarian take over of America. We can’t afford not to call it what it is because we’re afraid of sounding alarmist or alienating swing voters. More people need to understand what’s at stake in 2020 and they only will if we say it clearly.
⭕ 29 Aug 2020
🔆 This❗️⋙ Eudaimonia, Umair Haque: We Don’t Know How to Warn You Any Harder. America is Dying. http://bit.ly/3hOhwE5 “This is it, and you’re blowing it, sleepwalking into collapse, letting the fascists steal your futures. Do not let it happen here”
// We Survivors of Authoritarianism Have a Message America Needs to Hear: This is Exactly How it Happens, and It’s Happening Here.
Right about now, something terrible is happening in America. Society is one tiny step away from the final collapse of democracy, at the hands of a true authoritarian, and his fanatics. Meanwhile, America’s silent majority is still slumbering at the depth and gravity of the threat.
Take it from us survivors and scholars of authoritarianism. This is exactly how it happens. The situation could not — could not — be any worse. The odds are now very much against American democracy surviving.
We survivors of authoritarianism have a terrible, terrible foreboding, because we are experiencing something we should never do: deja vu. Our parents fled from collapsing societies to America. And here, now, in a grim and eerie repeat of history, we see the scenes of our childhoods played out all over again. Only now, in the land that we came to. We see the stories our parents recounted to us happening before our eyes, only this time, in the place they brought us to, to escape from all those horrors, abuses, and depredations.
We survivors are experiencing this terrible feeling of deja vu right now as a group, as a class. We talk about it, how eerie and grim this sense of deja vu is. It’s happening all over again! Do you remember this part of your childhood? When the armed men roamed the streets? When the secret police disappeared opponents? When the fascist masses united — and that was enough to destroy democracy for good? We talk about it, believe me — but you don’t hear it because we have no real voice. America’s pundits are named Chris and Jake and Tucker. They are not named Eduardo and Ravi and Xiao and Umair. But Chris and Jake and Tucker can’t help you now. They don’t know what the hell they’re dealing with. They literally have no idea because they have no experience whatsoever.
This is not a joke. This is not a drill. When we survivors of authoritarianism experience, as a group, a class, a cohort, something that we never, ever should — the horrific deja vu that the horrors of our childhoods, that our parents knew, are happening, all over again, here, something is much, much more wrong than you know. [ … MORE … ]
This is it, and you’re blowing it, sleepwalking into collapse, letting the fascists steal your futures. ¤ Do not let it happen here.
🐣 RT @FrankFigliuzzi Democracy is dying in the dark: ODNI cancels future election security briefings for Congress – Axios @ODNIgov #Election2020
⋙ Axios: ODNI cancels future election security briefings for Congress http://bit.ly/2Qzknoz
🐣 RT @brhodes Obstruction of justice accompanies the crime this time.
⋙ 🐣 RT @RepAdamSchiff The ODNI has cancelled all further briefings on foreign election interference. ¤ The Administration clearly does not want Congress or the country informed of what Russia is doing. ¤ The last DNI was fired for doing so, and the IC has now been fully brought to heel. ¤ Our statement: https://twitter.com/RepAdamSchiff/status/1299786966867865601?s=20/photo/1
━━━━━━━▼ How Trump could steal the election
🧵 How could Trump steal the election? Let us count the ways. (Thread)
NewYorker, Eric Lach (8/21): What Happens if Donald Trump Fights the Election Results? http://bit.ly/2EC3BTi “[T]he Transition Integrity Project, a … group devoted to evaluating how a disputed election might unfold, hosted a series of ‘war games’ to play out various scenarios”
// 8/21/2020; Stealing a Presidential election in America is difficult, but it has been done before.
In June, the Transition Integrity Project, a newly formed group devoted to evaluating how a disputed election might unfold, hosted a series of “war games” to play out various scenarios for what might happen on and after November 3rd. Zoe Hudson, a former Open Society Foundation analyst who serves as the director of the project, told me that the idea was to “socialize” potential risks. “Surprise doesn’t work for us,” she said. “We really need people to understand that this will be an unusual election year.”
More than a hundred people participated, most of them prominent names in academia, politics, and the media—Foley was there, as were the former Hillary Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta, former Michigan governor Jennifer Granholm, and former Republican National Committee chairman Michael Steele. Participants assumed roles as members of the Trump or Biden campaigns, state officials, and the media. The games, which were played under the Chatham House rule—participants are allowed to discuss what happened as long as they don’t reveal who in the room said or did what—proceeded by turns, with certain developments determined by dice rolls. “One of the big takeaways on all sides is that what you have here potentially is a situation where neither side accepts a loss,” Adam Jentleson, a former aide to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid who participated in the war games, told me. “And that’s a very difficult circle to square.”
WaPo, Robert McCartney (8/17): Here’s one way Trump could try to steal the election, voting experts say http://wapo.st/3gJdVps “Trump could declare himself the victor, saying the mailed ballots should be ignored because of the (baseless) risk of significant fraud”
// 8/17/2020
So, on election night, initial returns based on in-person voting could show Trump winning, even though large numbers of mailed ballots remain uncounted. ¤ At that point, the experts warn, Trump could declare himself the victor, saying the mailed ballots should be ignored because of the (baseless) risk of significant fraud. In states where Republicans control the voting process, he might get away with it.
“It is possible that he will say, ‘We should stop counting ballots because all those absentee ballots are illegitimate,’ ” said Trevor Potter, president of the nonpartisan Campaign Legal Center. ¤ “If his supporters believe that, it would be false but unfortunate in terms of the country accepting the credibility of the final election results,” said Potter, a former Republican-appointed chairman of the Federal Election Commission, who was general counsel for the presidential campaigns of the late senator John McCain (R-Ariz.).
USAToday, Jason Sattler (8/16): Trump has a plan to steal the election and it’s not clear Democrats have a plan to stop him http://bit.ly/34IeTjy Trump “has a plan to swipe this election. And it’s not at all clear that Democrats have a plan to stop him”
// 8/16/2020; Trump has shown he’s much better at crushing democracy than our institutions are at preserving it. This compulsion to believe he’s a fool has real costs.
There is the voter suppression. But instead of just preventing voting in key states with needless ballot restrictions, the Trump campaign is fighting all efforts to make voting in the middle of pandemic easier and safer, including hobbling the U.S. Postal Service and increasing the cost of mail-in voting. And the president isn’t even hiding his goal — preventing voting by mail (probably so he can claim victory on election night regardless of the eventual results).
The need to believe that Trump is a bumbling, deteriorating fool who is totally losing it and just somehow managed to avoid indictments his entire adult life is a huge reason our republic is the closest it has ever been to dictatorship. Multiply this by the fantasy that viral attack ads highlighting the things Trump opponents hate about Trump are going to win over disaffected Republican voters, and we’re headed for a repeat of November 2016.
Underestimating Trump got us William Barr as attorney general, Trump’s human pardon who seems to be doing all he can to sneak in some “Comey memo”-style interference before the election. Underestimating Trump has gotten us disciples of QAnon — a near religious sect centered around the belief that Trump’s opponents must be rounded up for imaginary crimes — headed to Congress. Underestimating Trump has left us with a post office we can’t rely on for voting, medication or anything.
What’s undeniable is that the Republican president, utilizing the unqualified immunity he has been given by the Republican Senate, has a plan to swipe this election. And it’s not at all clear that Democrats have a plan to stop him.
Salon, Amanda Marcotte (8/14): Forget ads, speeches, poll numbers — this election will be determined by whether Trump can steal it http://bit.ly/3b9Gawo “The president is trying to steal the election, he has the means to do it, and he very well may succeed”
// Trump’s efforts to steal the election by sabotaging the post office will work, unless we focus on stopping him
The bad news right now is so bad that it’s hard to look at it directly. Trump’s efforts to undermine the Postal Service, so Americans can’t reliably or effectively vote by mail, are working. They could very well be sufficient to steal an election, especially since Biden’s healthy national lead in the polls is much tighter in swing states like Florida, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.
There are already slowdowns in mail delivery, caused by the “reforms” of Postmaster General Louis DeJoy, a major Trump donor. Things are expected to get much worse in the coming weeks, as Trump and the White House focus on the fact that sabotaging the post office could very well be the key to tanking an election that is expected to be primarily conducted by mail, due to the coronavirus pandemic. The postal workers’ union in Iowa reports that mail sorting machines are being removed from some post offices, which will slow things down more.
USAToday, David Rothkopf and Bernard Schwartz (8/14): Trump is determined to rig this election, defraud voters and thwart the will of the people http://bit.ly/34KuGhS
// 8/14/2020; Amid Trump’s war on mail voting and the post office, we need our living ex-presidents to lead a bipartisan drive to ensure the 2020 election is fair.
NYT, Jamelle Bouie (8/11): How to Foil Trump’s Election Night Strategy http://nyti.ms/3b953Z3 “If in-person voters are disproportionately pro-Trump, and mail-in voters are disproportionately pro-Biden, then you have the ingredients for an election night standoff”
// 8/111/2020; To keep the president from claiming victory on Nov. 3, Biden supporters who can vote in person may well have to.
TheIntercept, Francis Fox Piven (8/11): What If Trump Won’t Leave? http://bit.ly/3bbu1qE “[H]e will adapt the standard playbook of authoritarians everywhere: cast doubt on the election results by filing numerous lawsuits and launching coordinated federal and state investigations”
// 8/11/2020; and Deepak Bhargava; Trump is prepared to do whatever it takes to keep power. Can he be stopped?
TheWeek, Ryan Cooper (8/11): Donald Trump is trying to steal the election http://bit.ly/2QDu2dQ “If he succeeds in wrecking the Post Office, enough Democrats may be unable to vote that he will be able to steal the election”
// 8/11/2020;
TheBulwark, Dmitri Mehlhorn (8/6): How to Steal an Election http://bit.ly/2YMWoqq ● /photo/1
// 8/6/2020; Four ways Trump can still win, 89 days out.
(1) Trump can use normal tactics to win outright or make the race closer.
(2) COVID problems with election administration can take up to 6 percent off of Biden’s margin.
(3) Trump and the GOP might use historically unprecedented tactics to stay in power despite losing.
(4) Pro-Trump foreign actors will be using similar but more aggressive tactics to their 2016 interference.
Slate, Mark Stern (8/3): How Trump Could Steal the Election http://bit.ly/3bcMwLt “Far more Democrats than Republicans plan to vote by mail in November”
// 8/3/2020; One increasingly likely scenario where everything goes wrong.
OpenDemocracy (7/24): How Trump could steal the election – and how we could stop him http://bit.ly/2EM7uVo by Joel McCleary, Gary Hart, Mark Medish and Timothy E Wirth
// 7/23/2020; We need to be ready for a president who may abuse every gap in the constitution.
Salon, Bob Cesca (7/21): We all know Donald Trump is preparing to rig or steal the election — but exactly how? http://bit.ly/34LYwSU “I believe I know how Trump will try to interfere with the process as well as the outcome, and it’s more than a little unnerving. … Warning: Hang on tight”
// There’s zero possibility that Trump will accept defeat with dignity. We need to prepare for weeks of dreadful chaos
Newsweek, Timothy Worth and Tom Rogers (7/3): How Trump Could Lose the Election—And Still Remain President http://bit.ly/3gtfaJT What if Trump declares “that there was mail-in ballot fraud and that the Chinese were behind a plan to provide fraudulent mail-in ballots”?
// 7/3/2020; Timothy E. Wirth is a former U.S. senator from Colorado.
For Trump, there are two broad pathways to maintaining power. First, we can already see very clearly a strategy designed to suppress voter turnout with the purging of registration rolls of large numbers of mostly urban voters; efforts to suppress mail-in ballots, which are more necessary than ever, given COVID-19; a re-election apparatus that is training 50,000 poll watchers for the purpose of challenging citizens’ right to vote on Election Day; and significant efforts to make in-person voting in urban areas as cumbersome as possible in order to have long lines that discourage people from exercising their voting rights.
The second pathway to subverting the election is even more ominous—but we must be cognizant of it because Trump is already laying the groundwork for how he can lose the popular vote, and even lose in the key swing states necessary for an Electoral College victory, but still remain president.
This spring, HBO aired The Plot Against America, based on the Philip Roth novel of how an authoritarian president could grab control of the United States government using emergency powers that no one could foresee. Recent press reports have revealed the compilation by the Brennan Center at New York University of an extensive list of presidential emergency powers that might be inappropriately invoked in a national security crisis. Attorney General William Barr, known for his extremist view of the expanse of presidential power, is widely believed to be developing a Justice Department opinion arguing that the president can exercise emergency powers in certain national security situations, while stating that the courts, being extremely reluctant to intervene in the sphere of a national security emergency, would allow the president to proceed unchecked.
WashingtonMonthly, Nancy LeTourneau (6/24): How Trump Will Try to Steal the Election http://bit.ly/3hLc19e
1) Voter Suppression
2) Foreign Interference
3) October Surprise(s)
4) If He Loses, Challenge the Results
// 6/24/2020; If voter suppression and foreign influence don’t work, he’ll contest the results.
VanityFair (6/14): The Hive Interview: Could Trump Steal the Election? http://bit.ly/3gFoYju “The fear? If Trump loses, he could very well claim voter fraud and refuse to cede power. Imagine Florida during the 2000 election by new orders of magnitude”
// Attorneys Marc Elias of the DNC and Dale Ho of the ACLU talk about the raging battle over voter suppression, the twin challenges of Trump and the coronavirus, and why, says Elias, “I think we’re winning more than we’re losing.”
DailyBeast, Michael Tomasky (5/27): Trump’s Five Simple Tricks for Stealing the Election http://bit.ly/2EBRPYY “Everyone knows he’ll cheat. Even his supporters know he’ll cheat. … So that he’ll cheat—while loudly accusing the other side of cheating—is a given.”
// 5/27/2020; Sure, he could use ordinary cheating to eke out another narrow Electoral College win and popular vote loss. But he has other cards up his sleeve if that doesn’t work out this time.
NYT, Reid Epstein (5/24): Trump Sows Doubt on Voting. It Keeps Some People Up at Night. http://nyti.ms/3hIwJX9 Several groups have formed to map out scenarios and options should Trump interfere in the election of refuses to cede power if he loses
// 5/24/2020; A group of worst-case scenario planners — mostly Democrats, but also some anti-Trump Republicans — have been gaming out how to respond to various doomsday options for the 2020 presidential election.
[A] group of worst-case scenario planners — mostly Democrats, but some anti-Trump Republicans as well — … have been gaming out various doomsday options for the 2020 presidential election. Outraged by Mr. Trump and fearful that he might try to disrupt the campaign before, during and after Election Day, they are engaged in a process that began in the realm of science fiction but has nudged closer to reality as Mr. Trump and his administration abandon longstanding political norms.
Marc Elias, a Washington lawyer who leads the Democratic National Committee’s legal efforts to fight voter suppression measures … is engaged in multiple lawsuits aimed at making it easier to cast absentee ballots by mail and making in-person voting more available, either on Election Day or in the preceding weeks.
“Since 2016, Donald Trump has shown that he is always ready to sacrifice our basic democratic norms for his personal and political interests,” said Bob Bauer, a Biden senior adviser who is a lawyer for the campaign. “We assume he may well resort to any kind of trick, ploy or scheme he can in order to hold onto his presidency. We have built a strong program to plan for and address every possibility to ensure that he does not succeed.”
“In the eight to 10 months I’ve been yapping at people about this stuff, the reactions have gone from, ‘Don’t be silly, that won’t happen,’ to an increasing sense of, ‘You know, that could happen,’” said Rosa Brooks, a Georgetown University law professor. Earlier this year, Ms. Brooks convened an informal group of Democrats and never-Trump Republicans to brainstorm about ways the Trump administration could disrupt the election and to think about ways to prevent it.
Ms. Brooks’s group at Georgetown is not the only one forecasting doomsday scenarios for the election. Ian Bassin, the executive director of Protect Democracy, a nonprofit group dedicated to resisting authoritarian government, last year convened the National Task Force on Election Crises, a bipartisan 51-member group that includes Republicans such as Michael Chertoff, the former homeland security secretary. The group is dedicated to envisioning and presenting plans for scenarios that could wreck the 2020 presidential election.
The task force began with 65 possibilities before narrowing the list early this year to eight potential calamities, including natural disasters, a successful foreign hack of voting machines, a major candidate’s challenging the election and seeking to delegitimize the results, and a president who refuses to participate in a peaceful transfer of power.
Among the scenarios they eliminated when making final cuts in January, ironically, was a killer pandemic that ravaged the country and kept people homebound before Election Day. After the coronavirus struck, the group reconstituted to publish pandemic-related recommendations for state governments to follow.
The group also produced a 200-page document, which has not been made public. Several members said they had worked on specific scenarios but had not seen the complete draft. They said that while many of the possibilities envisioned an incumbent president’s using the forces of government to his advantage, the report’s authors had been careful not to make the document explicitly about Mr. Trump.
Edward B. Foley, a law professor at Ohio State University who participated in the task force, said the 2020 election could resemble the contest of 1876, which nearly split the country a decade after the Civil War.
DemocracyDocket, Marc Elias (3/31: No, Trump Cannot Move the General Election http://bit.ly/2YIb3TG The date is designated by statute
// 3/31/2020
In 1845, Congress enacted a statute to exercise its power to set a uniform date for “choosing” electors: “The electors of President and Vice President shall be appointed, in each State, on the Tuesday next after the first Monday in November, in every fourth year succeeding every election of a President and Vice President.”
TheAtlantic, Jeffrey Davis (3/29): How Donald Trump Could Steal the Election http://bit.ly/34RqY5Q “The danger begins with the fact that, regardless of what people believe, the Constitution does not give Americans the right to vote for their president”
// 3/29/2020; The president can’t simply cancel the fall balloting, but his state-level allies could still deliver him a second term.
Legal protections for the election do exist and are strong. The Constitution and federal law require the election of a president this November and state that the president’s term ends the following January. The Supreme Court has repeatedly held that once states grant their residents the right to vote, doing so becomes a fundamental right. Forty-nine states recognize the right to vote in their state constitutions and 26 guarantee that elections must be free and open. Any attempt by the president or state legislatures to deprive people of the right to vote, in order to ensure Trump’s reelection, would blatantly violate these rights. But a lot could still go wrong, especially at the state level.
The danger begins with the fact that, regardless of what people believe, the Constitution does not give Americans the right to vote for their president. Rather, the Constitution says that a college of electors votes for the president, and Article II of the Constitution gives states nearly unlimited power to decide how these electors are chosen.
Today, all 50 states grant their residents the right to vote for president, and the people’s vote determines which electors from each state will select the next president. However, any state could change its law and instead allow its legislature to decide which electors will choose the next president. ¤ In other words, states have a lot of power in deciding how the election will run. Today, Republicans control 30 state legislatures and Democrats only 19, with one state divided.
━━━━━━━▲
⭕ 28 Aug 2020
🧵 RT @SteveSchmidtSES The desecration of the White House for Trump’s perverse political use is an abomination. The question of whether voters care about the Hatch Act is beside the point. It is the law. Trump’s convention was a pageant of breathtaking dishonesty, racial incitement and demagoguery. 1/ 📌 https://twitter.com/SteveSchmidtSES/status/1299390432602980353?s=20
⭕ 27 Aug 2020
🐣 RT @brhodes Don’t look back years from now and wonder what more you could have done to stop this. Two months with literally everything on the line.
🧵 RT @LincolnsBible The President and Organized Crime:
“GOOD G*D, THE FBI HAS TAPES!”
– Thread –
Seatbelts on.
You’re gonna hear some audio.
Let’s f*cking do this, shall we?
First, context:
What does it mean to be “mobbed-up”? Well…
It depends on what you do for them – the mafia. /1 📌 https://twitter.com/LincolnsBible/status/1299149010561769472?s=20
// Netflix series “Fear City”
⋙ Esquire: Netflix’s Fear City Hints at Trump’s Mob Connections. The Real Story Goes Even Deeper. http://bit.ly/2QAfBXC
// Fear City: New York vs. the Mafia; For years, the president did business in industries with strong mafia ties.
🐣 RT @MSNBC “You’re going to see a very, very desperate politician tonight that understands that his impending doom, while not certain, is highly likely,” James Carville says of Pres. Trump ahead of his #RNC2020 address.
⋙ 💽 MSNBC, Ayman Mohyeldin: James Carville predicts Trump will have a ‘tough election night’ http://on.msnbc.com/3gAjoyQ
// James Carville predicts that President Donald Trump will have a ‘tough election night’ and the days after his presidency will be difficult as well: “You’re going to see a very desperate politician tonight … He’s going to have a tough election night and a tough go after it cause he’s gone [sic] a lot of very terrible things and they have to be accounted for.”
🐣 RT @MarshallCohen NEW: A federal judge has ordered the Trump administration to answer questions and turn over evidence about USPS policy changes within 10 days as part of a lawsuit brought by Democratic state AGs over recent mail slowdowns and the impact on the 2020 election. (h/t @kpolantz)
🐣 RT @McFaul Putin is pledging to protect the sovereignty of a single dictator and his regime. He could care less about the sovereignty of the people of #Belarus.
⋙ 🐣 RT @AlexKokcharov #Russia’s president Putin “pledged to protect sovereignty of #Belarus”. ¤ This sounds like the Kremlin has made plans for an incursion into Belarus. https://twitter.com/AlexKokcharov/status/1298942489240449026?s=20
🐣 Left: Putin. Right: Trump. See a pattern? ● https://twitter.com/Auriandra/status/1299093174246350849?s=20/photo/1
// entering room with soldiers opening doors
CNN: White House says it is creating ‘very large’ dossier on Washington Post journalist and others http://cnn.it/2EnTMsb “White House spokesperson Judd Deere accused The Washington Post of ‘blatantly interfering with the business relationships of the Trump Organization’”
In a statement, White House spokesperson Judd Deere accused The Washington Post of “blatantly interfering with the business relationships of the Trump Organization” and demanded “it must stop.” ¤ “Please be advised that we are building up a very large ‘dossier’ on the many false David Fahrenthold and others stories as they are a disgrace to journalism and the American people,” Deere said.
💙 🧵 RT @NickBauman Vigilante killings are the opposite of “law and order.” 📌 https://twitter.com/NickBaumann/status/1299069289673220097?s=20
⋙ TheAtlantic, Elaine Godfrey: The Violence Could Get Much Worse http://bit.ly/2G56zQE “When law enforcement reacts leniently to far-right militant organizations, those groups tend to believe any violence on their part is authorized”
// 8/7/2020; saboteur provocateur; Unless police and political leaders begin to crack down on the armed vigilantes monitoring protests, more bloodshed could soon follow the killings in Kenosha.
Late Tuesday night, a young white man with an AR-15-style rifle slung over his shoulder sprinted down a darkened street. He had, according to the narrative later pieced together from cellphone footage, just shot a person in the head and left them to bleed out in the parking lot of a car dealership. As he ran, a scattered group of people gave chase, and he fired at them, hitting at least one. A bystander called out to the police stationed at the end of the block: “Hey, dude right here shot them!” Yet the officers did nothing. When the shooter reached the squad cars, his arms raised in surrender, they let him pass.
Seventeen-year-old Kyle Rittenhouse, who has described himself as a militia member and appeared in videos that night next to other armed men linked to a local militia group known as the Kenosha Guard, has since been arrested and charged with killing two people. … Rittenhouse and the other men, who claimed to be protecting local businesses, are not the first armed right-wing counterprotesters to evade police scrutiny this summer. In May and June, such extremists appeared on 187 occasions at protests around the country, according to the Institute for Research and Education on Human Rights, a left-leaning organization that tracks extremist groups. Vigilantes appeared to receive the support or approval of police in about two dozen of those instances, says Alexander Reid Ross, a researcher at the Center for Analysis of the Radical Right and the author of Against the Fascist Creep.
On June 2, amid the nationwide demonstrations to protest the killing of George Floyd, officers in Philadelphia allowed men armed with bats to linger outside a police station past curfew, then looked on while members of the group beat protesters. Around the same time, authorities in Curry County, Oregon, seemed to welcome “local boys” defending the community against a rumored appearance from the left-wing group antifa. A constable in Texas called on members of a far-right paramilitary organization called Oath Keepers to guard a hair salon from threats of looting and arson. A police officer in Salem, Oregon, was filmed politely asking a group of armed men to disperse ahead of curfew “so we don’t look like we’re playing favorites.”
But deferential treatment of armed counterprotesters suggests that police are playing favorites. When law enforcement reacts leniently to far-right militant organizations, those groups tend to believe any violence on their part is authorized, says Michael German, a retired FBI agent who spent months in the early 1990s working undercover among white supremacists and right-wing militants. Consistent leniency, he told me, “has created a monster that’s going to be hard to contain.”
DailyBeast, David Lurie: Trump’s Voter Fraud ‘Proof’ Turned Out to Be the Real Fraud http://bit.ly/31uHiYq
// A Keystone State judge—a Trump appointee, no less—asked the president’s lawyers for proof of vote-by-mail fraud. He got none—because there is none.
A database maintained by the conservative Heritage Foundation indicates that, over a period of nine years, there were all of 15 cases of voter fraud in the five states that employ universal mail voting; furthermore, as election expert Rick Hasen has explained, it would likely require thousands of counterfeit or otherwise fraudulent ballots to sway the outcome of a state’s election, something that would be virtually impossible to carry off. A senior FBI official similarly recently stated that “[i]t’s extraordinarily difficult to change a federal election outcome through [coordinated] fraud alone.”
⭕ 26 Aug 2020
🐣 RT @starsandstripes U.S. officials said that a Russian vehicle sideswiped a light-armored U.S. military vehicle, injuring four Americans, while two Russian helicopters flew overhead.
⋙⋙ StarsAndStripes: US and Russia blame each other for military vehicle collision in Syria that injured four American troops http://bit.ly/32uifnv
⋙ 🐣 Russian troops known Putin has their backs while Trump will never stand up to Putin.
🧵 RT @GoAngelo 1/ I want to share a bit about Fox News, advertisers, revenue and accountability. ¤ Let me first start by saying that, Fox News is actually suffering quite severely on the advertiser front. (The next chart will illustrate just how badly)… 📌 https://twitter.com/GoAngelo/status/1244819790650322944?s=20
🐣 RT @marlowNYC Colbert: “Why should we pay attention to what they’re saying if none of what they’re saying tonight is about what’s happening in America right now? Why should we watch their reality show if it doesn’t reflect our reality?”
⋙ DailyBeast, Marlow Stern: Stephen Colbert Explains Why He Boycotted the RNC: ‘It Doesn’t Reflect Our Reality’ http://bit.ly/2YFNXx7
// “Donald Trump does not care if you live or die of COVID, or racism, as long as he wins,” the “Late Show” host told his audience Thursday night.
Stephen Colbert opened his show Wednesday night with a confession. ¤ “Now, full disclosure: I did not watch much of the convention tonight. And fullest disclosure: I did not watch any of it,” the Late Show host said. “Because right now in America, we’re facing a global pandemic that has killed 180,000 Americans, heavily armed Rambo wannabes are murdering people in our streets, the strongest hurricane in the history of the Gulf Coast is making landfall as I speak, and the RNC’s message is: Who’s up for four more years?”
“I know by not watching the RNC I didn’t do my job tonight. And I just want to say: I feel great about it,” Colbert continued. “Why should we pay attention to what they’re saying if none of what they’re saying tonight is about what’s happening in America right now? Why should we watch their reality show if it doesn’t reflect our reality? Why subject ourselves to their lies that stick to your soul like hot tar? Lies like: Donald Trump cares whether you live or die.”
🐣 RT @statnews The #Covid19 testing guidance was crafted not by the CDC but by the White House coronavirus task force, and the nation’s best-known infectious disease expert, Anthony Fauci, didn’t sign off on it.
⋙ ‼️ ★ STATNews: New Covid-19 testing guidelines, crafted at the White House, alarm public health experts http://bit.ly/3jlkH6O
🐣 RT @SteveSchmidtSES It is important to remember that Kayleigh McEnany and Kellyanne Conway are congenital liars who have deceived the American people thousands of times. They have desecrated their oaths and their appearance as Sr. White House officials is illegal and grossly inappropriate.
💙 CNN: US intelligence officials say there’s no evidence to back up Trump’s claims about threats to mail-in voting http://cnn.it/
🐣 RT @julietkayyem “Stochastic terrorism — noun- the public demonization of a person or group resulting in the incitement of a violent act, which is statistically probable but whose specifics cannot be predicted.” @Dictionarycom #trump https://twitter.com/juliettekayyem/status/1298770538991677440?s=20
// re: Kenosha killer
NewYorker, Elizabeth Kolbert: What P. T. Barnum Understood About America http://bit.ly/3aYlNSI
// The “Prince of Humbugs” was a liar, a racist, and an entertainer who would do anything for a crowd. He even considered running for President
🐣 RT @DeadlineWH “We’ve seen a 3.5 year assault on the idea of truth, the concept of objective truth, and it’s dangerous because a democratic society cannot be sustained on a garbage heap of lies. It requires the bedrock granite of truth” – @SteveSchmidtSES w/ @NicolleDWallace 💽 https://twitter.com/DeadlineWH/status/1298732801458659331?s=20/photo/1
NYT, Frank Bruni: The Epic Shamelessness of the Republican Convention http://nyti.ms/2G1Z2SD “The convention crystallized and formalized the Republican Party’s journey, under Trump, into a mythical realm of unrestrained idolatry”
// Norms are for chumps, not for Trumps.
⭕ 25 Aug 2020
◕ MSN/Bloomberg: Republicans’ TV Audience Tumbles on Every Network Except Fox http://bit.ly/3gpOMjr On Monday, Fox gained 5.0 million viewers; combined, other networks lost 7.9 million compared to last Monday when the Democratic Convention aired ● https://twitter.com/Auriandra/status/1298469574569013250?s=20/photo/1
🔆 New Book ⋙ Kevin Sullivan and Mary Jordan: Trump on Trial: The Investigation, Impeachment, Acquittal and Aftermath http://amzn.to/2Ex5ss8 book by Pulitzer Prize–winning Washington Post reporters
🔆 New Book ⋙ Brian Stelter: Hoax: Donald Trump, Fox News, and the Dangerous Distortion of Truth http://amzn.to/3ljXPWQ
🔆 New Book ⋙ John W Dean and Bob Altemeyer: Authoritarian Nightmare: Trump and His Followers http://amzn.to/2Qqstzy
DailyBeast, Matt Wilstein: Stephen Colbert Brutally Mocks Donald Trump Jr. and Kimberly Guilfoyle’s RNC Speeches http://bit.ly/2Yzazzj Colbert: “Trump Jr. girlfriend and vengeful banshee who will haunt your dreams, Kimberly Guilfoyle, who screamed this message of hope.”
// After zooming in on Jr.’s “sweaty face and wet, bloodshot eyes,” Colbert added, “Either he’s high or that’s what happens when you live in the splash zone of Screamin’ Guilfoyle.”
⭕ 24 Aug 2020
JustSecurity, Asha Rangappa and Ryan Goodman: Manafort’s Reward: Sen. Ron Johnson and the Ukraine Conspiracy Investigation: Part II http://bit.ly/3jftgA2
↥ ↧
JustSecurity, Asha Rangappa and Ryan Goodman: How Sen. Ron Johnson’s Investigation Became an Enabler of Russian Disinformation: Part I http://bit.ly/3kzvQSL
// 8/11/2020
PoliticoMag, Tim Alberta: The Grand Old Meltdown http://politi.co/3htpwtU
// What happens when a party gives up on ideas?
💽 DailyBeast, Marlowe Stern: George Conway’s Tearful Plea: Trump Is ‘a Racist, He Is Evil’ http://bit.ly/31rIYC4 ¤ “#Unfit” will be available on multiple digital platforms on 9/1
// In exclusive clips from “#Unfit” filmed prior to his wife’s White House exit, George Conway—Lincoln Project co-founder, Kellyanne hubby—gets emotional about why he opposes Trump.
DailyBeast, Julia Davis: Russian Media Turns to QAnon Conspiracies to Help Re-Elect Trump http://bit.ly/2QltHMq Julia Davis watches Russian tv ~ so you don’t have to
// Russia is using the unhinged QAnon playbook to boost the president who they believe will pay them back if he’s re-elected.
WaPo: New York attorney general files legal action against Trump Organization, revealing state investigation into the company’s financial dealings http://wapo.st/3laH5l3 The filing seeks a subpoena for an interview with the president’s son Eric
The filing asks a New York state judge to compel the Trump Organization to provide information it has been withholding from investigators — including a subpoena seeking an interview with the president’s son Eric
WSJ: New York Attorney General Investigating Trump Organization, President Trump’s Assets http://on.wsj.com/2Ezejtb “They have stalled, withheld documents, and instructed witnesses, including Eric Trump, to refuse to answer questions under oath” ~ AG Letitia James
// New documents ask New York court to order the Trump Organization and Eric Trump to comply with subpoenas
🐣 RT @duty2warn Peter Navarro confronted the heads of the FDA for “delaying” the vaccine: “You’re ALL deep state. You have to get on Trump time” When you’re failing scream conspiracy.
⋙ 🐣 “Trump time” ~ he must mean watching tv 12 hours a day, ”working” 2 hours, Tweeting crazy stuff incessantly, and golfing 3 days a week at your own golf course
━━━━━━━▼ Rightwing saboteur provocateurs among BLM Protests
Right wing Right-wing White Supremacy Boogaloo
TheGuardian: ‘Boogaloo Boi’ charged in fire of Minneapolis police precinct during George Floyd protest http://bit.ly/38GF4bR
// 10/23/2020; saboteur provocateur; Ivan Harrison Hunter, a Texas rightwing extremist, bragged about helping to set the fire then was seen shooting 13 rounds at the building
DailyBeast: Sixteen ‘Boogaloo’ Followers Have Been Busted in 7 Days http://bit.ly/30TchwB
// 10/9/2020; saboteur provocateur; The takedown of the plot against Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer was just the tip of the iceberg.
WaPo, Dana Milbank: Trump backs violent white supremacists. There’s no way around it. http://wapo.st/2GkN7PY He “singled out, and made common cause with, one violent gang characterized by his own FBI as an extremist group with ties to white nationalism”
// 9/30/2020; saboteur provocateur; “Rather than tell that group, the Proud Boys, to stand down, Trump suggested they ‘stand back and stand by’ — presumably, for further violence when needed.”
WaPo: Right-wing extremists take to social media to celebrate Trump’s ‘stand by’ comment http://wapo.st/3n543uD
// 9/30/2020; saboteur provocateur; Proud Boys, others see support in Trump’s response to a question about white supremacy
NYT: Portland Prepares for Violent Showdowns, Proud Boys and Tear Gas http://nyti.ms/3i2vl0Z
// 9/25/2020; saboteur provocateur; The nation’s divisive political scene has increasingly spilled from social media into public rallies. Portland is bracing for possible violent clashes between far-right and left-wing activists.
TheGuardian: Revealed: pro-Trump activists plotted violence ahead of Portland rallies http://bit.ly/3kVSDrt “The shared allegiances expressed in the group are mostly to the police, the United States and Donald Trump, a person whom some say they are prepared to kill for.”
// 9/23/2020; saboteur provocateur; Patriots Coalition members suggested political assassinations and said ‘laws will be broken, people will get hurt’, leaked chats show
Politico, Betsy Swan (9/4): DHS draft: White supremacists are greatest terror threat http://politi.co/3lUjaGH
● “Russia ‘probably will be the primary covert foreign influence actor and purveyor of disinformation’”
● “None of the drafts POLITICO reviewed referred to a threat from Antifa”
// 9/4/2020; saboteur provocateur; The documents are slightly different drafts of the same annual threat assessment, which is not yet published.
WaPo: Suspect in Portland slaying killed when authorities moved to arrest him, official says http://wapo.st/32UQEw6
// 9/3/2020; Investigators were seeking to take Michael Forest Reinoehl into custody in connection with the fatal shooting of 39-year-old Aaron J. Danielson on Saturday after confrontations between supporters of President Trump and Black Lives Matter counterprotesters.
WaPo (9/1): Portland killing renews focus on tactics of far-right group Patriot Prayer http://wapo.st/2YV5rFV “‘What they really want to do is silence their political enemies, and they want to do that through violence and intimidation, and that’s kind of their predominant purpose’”
// 9/1/2020; saboteur provocateur;
WaPo: As clashes between armed groups and leftist protesters turn deadly, police face complaints of tolerating vigilantes http://wapo.st/3lFJ699 “[P]olice officers have been photographed smiling or fist-bumping with members of far-right armed groups”
// 8/30/2020; saboteur provocateur
🐣 RT @mmpadellan You can’t be the “Law & Order” President if you’re ACTIVELY inciting Civil War on the streets of America. ¤ OUTSIDE AGITATORS are causing #TrumpRiots. ¤ PASS IT ON. 💽 https://twitter.com/mmpadellan/status/1300116332877414402?s=20/photo/1
// 8/30/2020; saboteur provocateur; Real American ad❣ Gestapo Trump
TheGuardian, Mike German (8/28): The FBI warned for years that police are cozy with the far right. Is no one listening? http://bit.ly/31ANRbV
// 8/28/2020; saboteur provocateur
TheAtlantic, Elaine Godfrey (8/27): The Violence Could Get Much Worse http://bit.ly/2G56zQE “When law enforcement reacts leniently to far-right militant organizations, those groups tend to believe any violence on their part is authorized”
// 8/27/2020; saboteur provocateur; Unless police and political leaders begin to crack down on the armed vigilantes monitoring protests, more bloodshed could soon follow the killings in Kenosha.
On June 2, amid the nationwide demonstrations to protest the killing of George Floyd, officers in Philadelphia allowed men armed with bats to linger outside a police station past curfew, then looked on while members of the group beat protesters. Around the same time, authorities in Curry County, Oregon, seemed to welcome “local boys” defending the community against a rumored appearance from the left-wing group antifa. A constable in Texas called on members of a far-right paramilitary organization called Oath Keepers to guard a hair salon from threats of looting and arson. A police officer in Salem, Oregon, was filmed politely asking a group of armed men to disperse ahead of curfew “so we don’t look like we’re playing favorites.”
But deferential treatment of armed counterprotesters suggests that police are playing favorites. When law enforcement reacts leniently to far-right militant organizations, those groups tend to believe any violence on their part is authorized, says Michael German, a retired FBI agent who spent months in the early 1990s working undercover among white supremacists and right-wing militants. Consistent leniency, he told me, “has created a monster that’s going to be hard to contain.”
TheGuardian (8/26): Kenosha: teen charged with murder after two Black Lives Matter protesters killed http://bit.ly/34AZUaZ
// (8/26/2020); saboteur provocateur; Three shot by gunman thought to be linked to a militia as Wisconsin city rocked by further violence
WaPo (8/26): 17-year-old charged with homicide after shooting during Kenosha protests, authorities say http://wapo.st/3liE4PH
// 8/26/2020; saboteur provocateur;
His social media feeds contained messages supporting the police and photos of himself with assault rifles. He had been a member of cadet programs for local police and fire departments, according to department newsletters and statements.
🐣 RT @julietkayyem “Stochastic terrorism — noun- the public demonization of a person or group resulting in the incitement of a violent act, which is statistically probable but whose specifics cannot be predicted.” @Dictionarycom #trump https://twitter.com/juliettekayyem/status/1298770538991677440?s=20
// 8/26/2020; re: Kenosha killer
↥ ↧
BuzzFeedNews: The Kenosha Shooting Suspect Was In The Front Row Of A Trump Rally In January http://bit.ly/2QoI6Yu
// 8/26/2020; saboteur provocateur; Kyle Rittenhouse’s social media is filled with references to “Blue Lives Matter.”
WWeek, Laura Jedeed (8/17): A Far-Right Protester Fired Two Gunshots at Black Lives Matter Demonstrators Last Weekend http://bit.ly/3aRFdZy The reporter and two other witnesses recognized the driver as a rightwing figure who has made threats against the “antifa”
// 8/17/2020; saboteur provocateur; This reporter and two other eyewitnesses at the scene recognized the driver of the Dodge Dart as Skylor Jernigan.
Reuters (8/4): U.S. prosecutors do not charge Portland protesters with antifa ties http://reut.rs/34rsLP2 “U.S. federal prosecutors have produced no evidence linking dozens of people arrested in anti-racism protests in Portland, Oregon, to the antifa or anarchist movements”
// 8/4/2020; saboteur provocateur; despite President Donald Trump’s assertions they are fueling the unrest
WaPo, Joshua Partlow (7/28): Politics at the point of a gun http://wapo.st/3fdxRzX ¤ background on groups #longread
// 7/28/2020; saboteur provocateur (background on groups); Conservative armed groups move into politics as backlash builds against protests, stay-at-home orders
DailyBeast (7/28): This Is the Alleged White Supremacist ‘Umbrella Man’ Police Suspect of Minneapolis Chaos http://bit.ly/3fambyb
// 7/28/2020; saboteur provocateur; 32-year-old Mitchell Carlson is not charged with a crime in connection with the George Floyd protests but has a documented history of violence.
The video, filmed on May 27, showed a man dressed in all black methodically smashing windows of an AutoZone in Minneapolis during racial justice protests over the police killing of George Floyd. The man also spray painted “free shit for everyone zone” on the building’s doors. The man appeared to be dressed as an anti-fascist, but was eyed as a possible infiltrator or “outside agitator” when protesters tried to question him over his activities. He became known as “Umbrella Man” on social media alongside debunked theories that he was a police officer attempting to discredit the protests.
Now, in a search warrant affidavit first reported by The Minneapolis Star-Tribune, police say they have received a tip that the man is Mitchell Carlson, “a full‐fledged member of the Hell’s Angels” and “a known associate of the Aryan Cowboys. The Aryan Cowboys are a known prison gang out of Minnesota and Kentucky.”
complex.com (7/28): Officials Say White Supremacists Infiltrated Black Lives Matter Protest in Richmond to Instigate Riots http://bit.ly/3hqkrCB
// 7/28/2020; saboteur provocateur
🔄 10News (NBC) (7/27): Police: Richmond riots instigated by white supremacists disguised as Black Lives Matter http://bit.ly/3hStvAn //➔ have to wonder how frequent this is and, if apprehended by Trump’s Gestapo and not local police, we would ever find out
// 7/27/2020; saboteur provocateur
📋 TheGuardian (7/27): Anti-fascists linked to zero murders in the US in 25 years http://bit.ly/2ByUiSF “As Trump rails against ‘far-left’ fascism, new database shows leftwing attacks have left far fewer people dead than violence by rightwing extremists” ● https://twitter.com/Auriandra/status/1287714329450754050?s=20/photo/1
// 7/27/2030; saboteur provocateur
Victims killed
0 in anti-fascist attacks since 1994
21 in left-wing violence since 2010
95 in jihadist attacks since since 2010
117 in right-wing violence since 2010
329 in right-wing violence since 1994
‘Leftwing violence has not been a major terrorism threat’
The database was assembled by researchers at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), a centrist thinktank, and reviewed by the Guardian.
Its launch comes as Trump administration officials have echoed the president’s warnings of a violent “leftwing” revolution. “Groups of outside radicals and agitators are exploiting the situation to pursue their own separate, violent and extremist agenda,” the attorney general, William Barr, said amid nationwide protests following the death of George Floyd. A new justice department taskforce on violent anti-government extremists listed “antifa” as a major threat, while making no mention of white supremacy.
Today, Jones said, “the most significant domestic terrorism threat comes from white supremacists, anti-government militias and a handful of individuals associated with the ‘boogaloo’ movement that are attempting to create a civil war in the United States.”
Daily interpersonal violence and state violence pose a much greater threat to Americans than any kind of extremist terror attack. More than 100,000 people have been killed in gun homicides in the United States in the past decade, according to estimates from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. US police officers shoot nearly 1,000 Americans to death each year. Black Americans are more than twice as likely to be shot by the police as white Americans, according to analysis by the Washington Post and the Guardian.
But the president’s rhetoric about “antifa” violence has dangerous consequences, not just for anti-fascists, but for any Americans who decide to protest, some activists said.
🐣 RT @MattWDC Hey @mattzap, an interesting piece but leaving out the story that two right wing TERROR attacks have been foiled in recent weeks, one which involved a transnational network, seems like a major oversight; and the Boogaloo boys in Oakland killed/assassinated two cops, not just one.
⋙ 🐣 RT @ Additionally, Antifa is not anti-government, it is anti-fascist. ¤ No left wing groups have an ideological rationale for disrupting the protests. ¤ Barr’s venal bothsiderism here is a cover for rise of right wing political violence in US.
🐣 RT @mattzap JUST IN: Barr has formed task force to counter “anti-government extremists.” In memo, he singles out antifa and Boogaloo, but notes extremists come from “all persuasions.” He also says groups “may be fortified by foreign entities seeking to sow chaos.”
⋙ WaPo (7/26): Barr forms task force to counter ‘anti-government extremists’ http://wapo.st/31lOK8k
// 7/26/2020; saboteur provocateur
WaPo (6/17): An officer was gunned down. The killer was a ‘boogaloo boy’ using nearby peaceful protests as cover, feds say. http://wapo.st/2EXVQqJ
// 6/17/2020; saboteur provocateur;
CSIS, Seth Jones (6/17): The Escalating Terrorism Problem in the United States http://bit.ly/2EcSYGv “[T]he most significant threat likely comes from WHITE SUPREMACISTS, though anarchists and [Islamic] extremists … could present a potential threat as well” (emphasis added)
// 6/17/2020; saboteur provocateur
🐣 RT @VDJ364 “The numbers are overwhelming: Most of the violence is coming from the extreme right wing,” said Clint Watts, a former FBI agent who studies extremist political activity for the Foreign Policy Research Institute, a think tank in Philadelphia.
// 8/30/2020
⋙ WaPo (6/17): As Trump warns of leftist violence, a dangerous threat emerges from the right-wing boogaloo movement http://wapo.st/3fwWTe4 “federal authorities [are] accusing some of its adherents of working to spark violence at largely peaceful protests roiling the nation”
// 6/17/2020; saboteur provocateur
NYT (6/28): Minneapolis Police Link ‘Umbrella Man’ to White Supremacy Group http://nyti.ms/2X4Ale3 //➔ There have been a number of incidents at the Black Lives Matters protests of right wing provocateurs disguised as violent left-wingers
// A search warrant affidavit seeks cellphone records for a man the police believe smashed store windows with a sledgehammer to provoke racial unrest.
// 6/28/2020; saboteur provocateur;
In a search warrant affidavit filed in Hennepin County District Court on Monday, the police requested cellphone records that would establish the suspect’s whereabouts on May 27, when the store was vandalized. They have not charged anyone with a crime.
Erika Christensen, an arson investigator with the Minneapolis police, wrote in the affidavit that the vandalism “created an atmosphere of hostility and tension” two days after Mr. Floyd’s death. It unleashed a chain reaction of arson and looting in the Twin Cities, she wrote, after protests had been relatively peaceful.
The suspect is a member of the Hells Angels and an associate of the Aryan Cowboys, a prison gang in Minnesota and Kentucky, the affidavit said. Neither group could be immediately reached.
The Trump administration has often sought to blame the vandalism that took place during nationwide protests on leftist agitators. Attorney General William P. Barr claimed that “in many places” the protests were led by “far-left extremists,” but there is no evidence that anti-fascists coordinated demonstrations.
WaPo (6/16): Scant evidence of antifa shows how sweeping the protests for racial justice have become http://wapo.st/2UIcRtN “This is very different. This is about something bigger.”
// 6/16/2020; saboteur provocateur
The absence of antifa from protests roiling Berkeley — a crucible of left-wing activism — is a sign, [Berkeley Mayo Jesse] Arreguín said, of the scale and possible significance of the protests. They are not driven by left-wing zealots, he said, but by multiracial and multigenerational crowds seeking a reckoning with systemic problems of racism and policing.
“Anti-fascist protesters thought that because of the threat that white supremacists and fascists brought to their communities, particularly after the deadly events in Charlottesville in 2017, that they had to defend themselves,” Arreguín said. “This is very different. This is about something bigger.”
NBCNews (6/11): Man charged in deputy ambush scrawled extremist ‘Boogaloo’ phrases in blood http://nbcnews.to/2MMXSKO Steven Carrillo scrawled phrases tied to an online far-right extremist movement in blood on a car shortly before he was detained.
// 6/11/2020; saboteur provocateur; Steven Carrillo, accused of killing a sheriff’s deputy in Santa Cruz County, California, wrote the words on the hood of a car, prosecutors said
WaPo Editorial (6/10): Trump is spreading a dangerous conspiracy theory about antifa http://wapo.st/37kmzYA “The real provocateur here is the president”
// 6/10/2020; saboteur provocateur
PRESIDENT TRUMP spread a deranged and dangerous conspiracy theory this week when he accused a 75-year-old man pushed to the ground by police in Buffalo of faking the force of his fall — as well as attempting to “scan” the cops. The man, claimed the president, was “antifa,” a member of a militant activist network known for violent tactics.
This allegation was entirely baseless, a shameful smear of a victim of state violence. It was also part of a pattern. The White House, with the help of Attorney General William P. Barr, is inventing a domestic terror threat from whole cloth, blaming the loose, left-wing anti-fascist, or antifa, movement for the unrest roiling the country these past weeks. The only thing that’s missing is the evidence.
Yet experts point out that disrupting demonstrations in general alignment with antifa’s goal of dismantling white supremacy is hardly the group’s ideological bailiwick. They’ve also pointed out that the group isn’t much of a group at all: that antifa is too diffuse and too small to mount a coordinated co-option campaign.
The government’s own analysis agrees. The FBI’s internal situation report on the May 31 protests in Washington says the field office “has no intelligence indicating Antifa involvement/presence”; Justice Department records show no links to antifa in relevant cases. A new multiagency bulletin identifies the primary threat as “lone offenders with racially or ethnically motivated violent extremist ideologies” and domestic violent extremists “with personalized ideologies.”
Meanwhile, three men arrested for plotting violence in connection with protests in Las Vegas are indeed allegedly involved with a militant group: the right-wing “Boogaloo” movement. When asked about these arrests over the weekend, how did the administration respond? By talking about antifa again.
These words matter. They exist in an ecosystem crawling with misinformation. White nationalist networks are masquerading as antifa and vowing to “move into residential areas,” and people are believing what they hear. Citizens of rural communities believe buses and even planes stuffed with antifa activists are coming to town, so they’re gathering with baseball bats and guns to confront them. They’re finding only peaceful protesters, no different from the innocent man shoved into unconsciousness in Buffalo.
What Mr. Trump is doing today is even more appalling than an attempt to distract from deeply felt discontent. By inventing a violent, even terrorist, effort with not a scintilla of proof, he makes an excuse for military escalation — and for impunity when the state engages in the same brutality these protests are responding to. The real provocateur here is the president.
DailyBeast (6/5): Minneapolis Neighborhood Patrols Fear White Supremacists Are Infiltrating to Derail Protests http://bit.ly/3dEbsfg “In recent days, even the mayor of Minneapolis and governor of Minnesota publicly warned of white supremacists”
// 6/5/2020; saboteur provocateur; Minneapolis residents are forming patrols to protect their city from people who would mar the protests with violence—and some report having strange run-ins with armed white men.
🧵 RT @NoahSchachtman Barr keeps squealing about ‘Antifa.’ But Antifa is not referenced — not once — in any of the first 22 federal criminal cases from the protests.
⋙ DailyBeast, Wm Bredderman and Spencer Ackerman (6/5): Antifa’ Is Literally Never Mentioned in the First Prosecutions of Protest Violence http://bit.ly/371eIPk
// 6/5/2020; saboteur provocateur; Trump called them terrorists. Bill Barr claimed they are “instigating” violence at the protests. But antifa is not referenced in any of the 22 criminal cases from the protests.
⋙ 🐣 RT @NoahSchachtman But! Surprise! There is *one* organized political movement that is specifically cited by the feds: the right-wing boogaloo movement.
⋙ 🐣 RT @NoahSchachtman Crazier still? How flimsy some of these charges are. One prosecutor in Pennsylvania brought up the accused igniter of a local coffee shop on federal charges on the grounds that the cafe had engaged in interstate commerce by ordering cups from New York.
🐣 RT @glennkirschner Thank you @PierreTABC for calling out Barr on only mentioning (deamonizing) one group by name – Antifa – and not naming a single alt-right hate group, when DOJ had ARRESTED 3 members of the far-right extremist Boogaloo Boys group. #BillBarrBias
// 6/4/2020; saboteur provocateur
🐣 RT @kevincollier In DOJ press conference right now, AG Barr and FBI director Wray each blamed “antifa” for some of the violence at protests. Neither named any right-wing extremists, like the three “boogaloo”-tied men that DOJ charged with conspiracy last night.
⋙ NBCNews (6/4): Three men connected to ‘boogaloo’ movement tried to provoke violence at protests, feds say http://nbcnews.to/306n6eX //➔ “boogaloo” means civil war ~ Steve Bannon must be so proud
// 6/4/2020; saboteur provocateur; NBC News reported last weekend that members of the “Boogaloo” movement were seen at protests in states including Minnesota and Texas, as well as in Philadelphia.
LATimes (6/4): 3 men with ties to right-wing extremists plotted to terrorize Vegas protests, prosecutors say http://lat.ms/34rkaMg
// 6/4/2020; saboteur provocateur;
Three Nevada men with ties to a loose movement of right-wing extremists advocating the overthrow of the U.S. government have been arrested on terrorism-related charges in what authorities say was a conspiracy to spark violence during recent protests in Las Vegas.
Federal prosecutors say the three white men with U.S. military experience are accused of conspiring to carry out a plan that began in April in conjunction with protests to reopen businesses closed because of the coronavirus.
More recently, they sought to capitalize on protests over the death of George Floyd, a black man who died in Minneapolis after a white officer pressed his knee into his neck for several minutes even after he stopped moving and pleading for air, prosecutors said.
The three men were arrested Saturday on the way to a protest in downtown Las Vegas after filling gas cans at a parking lot and making Molotov cocktails in glass bottles, according to a copy of the criminal complaint obtained by the Associated Press.
Reuters (6/3): U.S. assessment finds opportunists drive protest violence, not extremists http://reut.rs/2YxnamB Trump has blamed leftwing extremist groups for nights of looting and violence in cities, but an intelligence assessment offers limited evidence of organized extremists
// 6/3/2020; saboteur provocateur;
CNN (6/2): White supremacists pose as Antifa online, call for violence http://cnn.it/3eLpETQ
// 6/2/2020; saboteur provocateur
↥ ↧
ADL: Murder and Extremism in the United States in 2018 http://bit.ly/3gPT6Kg
Murders by Ideology 2018 https://twitter.com/Auriandra/status/1268063939696492544?s=20/photo/1
● Murders by Ideology 2009-18 https://twitter.com/Auriandra/status/1268064319067115520?s=20/photo/1
BusinessInsider (6/2): A white supremacist channel on Telegram encouraged followers to incite violence during police protests http://bit.ly/3jr9Bgq
// 6/2/2020; Multiple media outlets have reported on white supremacist groups weaponizing protests against police brutality to start violence.
CourthouseNews (5/30): Some of the 40 arrests made in the Twin Cities Friday night were of people linked to white supremacist groups and organized crime according to Department of Safety Commissioner John Harrington http://bit.ly/2XJoUIe
// 5/30/2020; saboteur provocateur
JustSecurity, Mia Bloom (5/30): Far-Right Infiltrators and Agitators in George Floyd Protests: Indicators of White Supremacists http://bit.ly/2FJsDQv (entered into House record)
// 5/30/2020; saboteur provocateur
The accelerationists, if you have never heard the term, are an extreme subset of white nationalism whose goal is to bring about chaos and destruction. The basic tenet of accelerationism argues that since Western governments are inherently corrupt, the best (and only) thing supremacists can do is to accelerate the end of society by sowing chaos and aggravating political tensions. “Accelerationist ideas have been cited in mass shooters’ manifestos — explicitly, in the case of the New Zealand killer — and are frequently referenced in white supremacist web forums and chat rooms,” Zack Beauchamp explained.
White Supremacists pretending to host a protest to honor Floyd George on Facebook to whip up violence in San Diego were posted on the BLMSD social media warning people not to go and that it was a white supremacist organized rally. People attending demonstrations remarked on the fact that the demographics were wrong, in places like Oakland where the majority of the destruction was perpetrated by young Caucasian men has inspired not just people on social media but reporting in the mainstream media to properly question whether this is a form of infiltration by outside extremist elements.
A report by Vice News about right-wing infiltrators in the protests notes “hardcore ‘accelerationists’ … are encouraging their neo-Nazi followers to go to the protests and carry out acts of violence against black people.”
Accelerationists follow the blueprint laid out by neo-Nazi James Mason in The Siege (not the film with Denzel Washington) whose writing inspires Charles Manson types of killing sprees. Mason, living in obscurity in Denver until he was brought out of retirement by Atomwaffen, a right wing Neo Nazi group. The goal of accelerationism is to burn everything down and to use violence both to target enemies and instigate an overt and extreme response from the government. Their strategy echoes Gustavo Gorriti’s writings about the Shining Path terrorist group that the movement’s “goal was to provoke blind, excessive reactions from the state… Blows laid on indiscriminately would also provoke among those unjustly or disproportionately affected an intense resentment of the government.”
Similarly accelerationists hope to “demolish the state apparatus that stands between them and a white-dominated future.” And the White Supremacists here could be of a different orientation too – organized to discredit the protestors with no clear or deliberate vision for greater political change in mind.
Bellingcat has documented the involvement in the protests of a largely white, and far-right movement called the Boogaloo, whose leaders “expect, even hope, that the warmer weather will bring armed confrontations with law enforcement, and will build momentum towards a new civil war in the United States.” “As protests over the death of George Floyd heated up in Minneapolis on May 26th, members of Boogaloo groups across Facebook considered it a call to arms,” wrote Bellingcat’s Robert Evans.
On Twitter, Evans has said he does not think the Boogaloo group is behind the destruction of property. Vice News’ Tess Owen wrote about the Bugaloo Bois, anti-government extremists recognizable by their Hawaiian shirts, that “in addition to their physical presence at the protests, the #boogaloo hashtag on social media has been flooded with memes in the last couple days egging on violence, and talking about how they hope this is the beginning of a civil war.”
x It is worth reiterating what Loren DeJonge Schulman argued, that even if the protests include outsider participation to foment chaos and spark an overreaction it doesn’t mean that the driving sentiment launched by these protests should be minimized or ignored.
If the protests are being infiltrated by police provocateurs, accelerationists or other bad actors, we can expect a lot more violence in the lead up to the 2020 election.
🐣 RT @GovHowardDean Bellingcat is a source I trust and one of for most successful counter intel groups I know. This stuff about outside agitation from the right is real and needs maximum investigation now.
⋙ 🐣 RT @MichelleGoldberg People who think that Minnesota leaders are just deflecting by blaming outside agitators should read this. Keith Ellison, the State AG, had already seen the Boogaloo Bois in town when I talked to him on Thursday.
❤️ ⋙⋙ Bellingcat (5/30): The Boogaloo Movement Is Not What You Think http://bit.ly/2Md4CBB
// 5/30/2020; saboteur provocateur
🐣 RT @FrankFigliuzzi Worth a read: Far-Right Extremists Are Hoping to Turn the George Floyd Protests Into a New Civil War – VICE #MAGANIGHT
⋙ VICE, Tess Owen (5/27): Far-Right Extremists Are Hoping to Turn the George Floyd Protests Into a New Civil War http://bit.ly/36MSZdL
// 5/27/2020; saboteur provocateur; Armed extremists are showing up to protests and urging a “boogaloo” — code for civil war — online.
━━━━━━━▲
⭕ 23 Aug 2020
WaPo: Portland police stand by as Proud Boys and far-right militias flash guns and brawl with antifa counterprotesters http://wapo.st/3laWG3S
// Police said they did not stop the violence because too few officers were available to respond and they deemed it too dangerous to intervene
🐣 RT @ActiveMeasures Not even pretending to be anything less than a cult of personality.
⋙ 🐣 RT @jentaub The GOP just announced that there is no 2020 platform this year other than to reassert “the Party’s strong support for President Donald Trump and his Administration.” https://twitter.com/jentaub/status/1297695676680343552?s=20/photo/1
⋙⋙ 🐣 Compare this to Biden’s “Unity” task force report ~ the product of intense discussion and compromise among the progressive and more moderate wings of the party: ¤ Biden-Sanders Unity Task Force Recommendations [pdf] http://bit.ly/2O7a5dZ
WaPo: Kellyanne Conway to leave the White House at the end of the month, citing the need to focus on her family http://wapo.st/31pwwTj
// In her role as counselor to President Trump, Conway has been one of his longest-serving and closest advisers. Her husband, George T. Conway III, a conservative lawyer and outspoken critic of the president, is also stepping back from his role on the Lincoln Project, an outside group of Republicans devoted to defeating Trump in November.
🐣 RT @KenRoth Belarus Pres Lukashenko predictably tries to pass off pro-democracy protests as Western inspired–that’s a classic autocratic lines–but he dangerously calls on the army to defend the country, when there’s no external threat, just pro-democracy protests. https://trib.al/7oK69Ou
⋙ 🐣 Thank God our army refused to turn against the demonstrators; Trump had to call up Barr’s “irregular” police forces instead
🐣 RT @ProjectLincoln “We must defend freedom. We must vote. We must organize. We must participate. We must never ever let any person or any nation threaten our right to vote. It is an inheritance paid for in blood.” ¤ By co-founder @SteveSchmidtSES
⋙ BusinessInsider: Trump’s attacks on the US Postal Service are a threat to American democracy http://bit.ly/3lbtNoh
// Trump’s attempts to undermine the Post Office and sow chaos around the election are an affront to the idea of America’s democracy.
💙 🧵 RT @gtconway3d I *may* be taking a Twitter hiatus soon. If I do, I’d like to leave all of you with a few thoughts. 📌 https://twitter.com/gtconway3d/status/1297590460530163713?s=20
🐣 RT @CNNPolitics Acting Homeland Security chief says department does not have authority to send agents to polling locations, after President Trump said he would deploy law enforcement in November to protect against voter fraud
⋙ CNN: Acting Homeland Security chief says department does not have authority to send agents to polling locations http://cnn.it/31j9n4O
// Chad Wolf
🐣 📊 RT @Dbwagner104 A CBS poll indicates that 57% of Republicans believe the 176k Coronavirus deaths to be “acceptable” losses. ¤ It’s been clear for decades that the GOP is fine with letting the most vulnerable people in our nation suffer & die unnecessarily, but this is still stark & disgusting. https://twitter.com/Dbwagner104/status/1297567549346009091?s=20/photo/1
// CBS Battleground Poll, (8/19-21/2020; RV): COVID-19 Deaths
Acceptable/Not Acceptable: GOP 57/43, Dem 10/90, Ind 33/67
🐣 RT @TheDailyShow For some reason, the DNC decided to pass on this Biden biopic we made narrated by Steve Buscemi:
// Daily Show ad❣ Joe Biden Acceptable Under The Circumstances
⭕ 22 Aug 2020
🐣 RT @atrupar “He has no principles. None. None … His goddamned tweet and lying, oh my God. I’m talking too freely, but you know. The change of stories. The lack of preparation. The lying. Holy shit.” — Donald Trump’s sister & former federal judge Maryanne Trump Barry
⋙ WaPo: In secretly recorded audio, President Trump’s sister says he has ‘no principles’ and ‘you can’t trust him’ http://wapo.st/31kixhf … and more appalling details
↥ ↧
🐣 🔊 RT @ProjectLincoln In secretly recorded audio released to @washingtonpost, Donald Trump’s sister says someone took his SATs for him. https://twitter.com/ProjectLincoln/status/1297332382660546563?s=20
// audio w subtitles
🐣 RT @donwinslow From the great filmmaker Albert Hughes (Menace to Society, Dead Presidents, Book of Eli) ¤ #CommanderAndThief 💽 https://twitter.com/donwinslow/status/1297302608789397504?s=20/photo/1
// Albert Hughes ad❣ Command And Thirf
WaPo: How Trump, Mnuchin and DeJoy edged the Postal Service into a crisis http://wapo.st/3j6MRSJ
NYT: Mnuchin Paved Way for Postal Service Shake-Up http://nyti.ms/2Ys9dWT
// At President Trump’s behest, the Treasury Secretary sought out appointees who would restructure the United States Postal Service.
WaPo: In tense Belarus, strongman Lukashenko turns back toward Moscow for help http://wapo.st/3j6NcoE
⭕ 21 Aug 2020
Lawfare: A Collusion Reading Diary: What Did the Senate Intelligence Committee Find? http://bit.ly/2EmWv4L
// By Todd Carney, Samantha Fry, Quinta Jurecic, Jacob Schulz, Tia Sewell, Margaret Taylor, Benjamin Wittes
Whether one describes this activity as collusion or not, there’s a lot of it: The report describes hundreds of actions by Trump, his campaign, and his associates in the run-up to the 2016 election that involve some degree of participation by Trump or his associates in Russian activity. In this post—which we are generating serially as we read through the document—we attempt to summarize, precisely and comprehensively, what the eight Republicans on the committee, along with their seven Democratic colleagues, report that the president, members of his campaign and his associates actually did.
The report provides a brief overview of Manafort’s “connections to Russia and Ukraine,” which date to “approximately 2004.” In brief, Manafort began work then for the Russian oligarch Oleg Deripaska and pro-Russian oligarchs in Ukraine, which eventually led to his role in engineering the 2010 election to the Ukrainian presidency of pro-Russian candidate Viktor Yanukovych. While the Mueller report described Deripaska as “closely aligned with Vladimir Putin,” the committee’s report is much more direct: “The Russian government,” the committee writes, “coordinates with and directs Deripaska” in conducting influence operations, with which Manafort also assisted. At another point, the committee states that “Manafort’s influence work for Deripaska was, in effect, influence work for the Russian government and its interests.”
In other words, as a baseline matter, the Trump campaign was—for a time—run by a man who himself had carried out influence operations on behalf of Russian interests.
It gets worse, however.
Manafort’s work in Ukraine and with Deripaska also led him to have a long-term business relationship with a man named Konstantin Kilimnik, the report states, who “became an integral part” of Manafort’s business. Kilimnik is no stranger to those who have followed L’Affaire Russe. The Mueller report had reported that “[t]he FBI assesses that Kilimnik has ties to Russian intelligence.”
But here again, the Senate report goes much further, bluntly stating that “Kilimnik is a Russian intelligence officer.” What’s more, Manafort was likely aware of this fact, the committee states: In a footnote, the committee states that “Manafort … at some point harbored suspicions that Kilimnik had ties to intelligence services. Manafort was undeniably aware—often from first-hand experience—of suspicious aspects of Kilimnik’s behavior and network. Nevertheless, Manafort later asserted to [Mueller’s team] that Kilimnik was not a spy.”
… The report states that Manafort “was actively seeking a position on the Trump campaign” in January 2016 on the grounds that it would help iron out his financial disputes with Deripaska and the Ukrainian oligarchs. Trump associate Roger Stone reached out directly to Trump and helped Manafort lobby for that role, the committee writes. …
The report states that Manafort “likely made Kilimnik aware of the possibility [that] he would join the Trump Campaign prior to its public announcement” in March 2016. After the public announcement, “Manafort used Kilimnik to send private messages to three Ukrainian oligarchs—at least one of whom Manafort believed owed him money—and to Deripaska.”
During his time on the Trump campaign, the committee writes, Manafort also worked with Kilimnik on developing a peace plan to end the conflict in eastern Ukraine on terms favorable to Russia. And, the committee states, “On numerous occasions over the course of his time on the Trump campaign, Manafort sought to secretly share internal Campaign information with Kilimnik.” Most notably, Gates told investigators that Manafort had instructed him to share internal campaign polling data with Kilimnik. Gates “understood” that the data would be shared with Deripaska as well. Notably, the committee writes that “Kilimnik was capable of comprehending the complex polling data,” given his “significant knowledge of, and experience with” such material. On the basis of testimony by Kilimnik’s business partner Samuel Patten, it appears that the data involved information about the public’s negative views of Hillary Clinton, which Manafort felt could give Trump a chance to win the election.
In other words, throughout his work on the Trump campaign, Manafort maintained an ongoing business relationship with a Russian intelligence officer, to whom he passed nonpublic campaign material and analysis.
Perhaps the most tantalizing suggestion in this section involves the redacted pages following the committee’s assertion that “[s]ome evidence suggests Kilimnik may be connected to the GRU hack-and-leak operation related to the 2016 election”—that is, the hacking of the Democratic National Committee and Clinton campaign chair John Podesta. …
Notably, the committee states that “Kilimnik almost certainly helped arrange some of the first public messaging that Ukraine had interfered in the U.S. election”—the same false idea that led to Trump’s animosity toward Ukraine and precipitated the scandal at the center of the president’s impeachment. Some of the material in this section is redacted, but the unredacted text sketches how Manafort and Kilimnik sought to discredit Ukrainian investigations of Manafort and seed the idea that the real 2016 election interference was by Ukraine in support of Clinton, including contacts between Kilimnik and the Ukrainian prosecutor whose false allegations against U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine Marie Yovanovitch became a central component of the impeachment scandal.
WaPo, George Will: A President Biden’s first priority must be restoring foreign confidence in the U.S. http://wapo.st/2FQkt9j
🐣 RT @NatashaBertrand Just in: John Brennan’s spokesman says Brennan was interviewed earlier today by John Durham, who told Brennan “that he is not a subject or a target of a criminal investigation and that he is only a witness to events that are under review.” Full statement: https://twitter.com/NatashaBertrand/status/1296978219648811013?s=20/photo/1-2
DailyBeast: Top Psychologists Compare Trump to Hitler and Mussolini in New Documentary #Unfit http://bit.ly/3glntqH
NYT, Michelle Goldberg: Trumpism Is a Racket, and Steve Bannon Knew It http://nyti.ms/3grryK5 “The social philosopher Eric Hoffer wrote that in America, every mass movement ‘ends up as a racket, a cult or a corporation.’ Trumpism reversed this. The racket came first”
// In the MAGA movement, you’re either a predator or a mark.
NYT, Frank Bruni: With the Speech of His Life, Joe Biden Becomes the Man for This Moment http://nyti.ms/2Eudou0 “Biden was saying that toughness and faith go a long way, toward a brighter day. And he was telling us that he could show us that path”
// A country in pain gets a lesson in perseverance
WaPo: ‘Are you really going to impeach me?’: How the Ukraine bombshell unfolded over 48 hours and laid bare Trump’s fixation with Biden http://wapo.st/2EqHHSm Excerpt from “Trump on Trial” by WaPo’s Kevin Sullivan and Mary Jordan, which will be published Aug. 25
WaPo Editorial: A second Trump term might injure the democratic experiment beyond recovery http://wapo.st/3hk5CSe ● https://twitter.com/Auriandra/status/1296910752511664131?s=20/photo/1
America’s standing in the world, loyalty to allies, commitment to democratic values, constitutional checks and balances, faith in reason and science, concern for Earth’s health, respect for public service, belief in civility and honest debate, beacon to refugees in need, aspirations to equality and diversity and basic decency — Mr. Trump torched them all.
🐣 RT @mlcalderone Many GOP leaders in Congress and powerful donors “are privately horrified” at the spread of QAnon. But “fearful” of inviting blowback, few “elected Republicans have been willing to speak out publicly.”
⋙ NYT: The Republican Embrace of QAnon Goes Far Beyond Trump http://nyti.ms/3hjAVfR
// As the president all but endorses the internet-driven conspiracy theory, it is shifting from the fringes of the internet to become an offline political movement.
WaPo, Michael McFaul: A Russian dissident is fighting for his life. Where is the U.S.? http://wapo.st/2YpjtPP “Navalny’s heroic struggle is no different from what Gandhi, King, Mandela and Havel fought for. … [T]here should be no doubt that his cause is good and just”
NYT, Oleg Kashin: Why Would Vladimir Putin Want to Get Rid of Aleksei Navalny Now? http://nyti.ms/3aP5Kqj
// The unchanging leader of the regime is Mr. Putin; the unchanging leader of the opposition is Mr. Navalny. But everything changes.
⭕ 20 Aug 2020
TheGuardian: William Barr told Murdoch to ‘muzzle’ Fox News Trump critic, new book says http://bit.ly/2YsmOgV Trump sicc’d Barr on Judge Napolitano, per book by CNN’s Brian Stelter: Hoax: Donald Trump, Fox News and the Dangerous Distortion of Truth
● Attorney general met media mogul in October 2019
● Judge Andrew Napolitano said Trump should be impeached
🐣 RT @deanofdublin [Pelosi:] “Letters to Santa, messages to the tooth fairy, families communicating—& importantly, our health: 1.2B prescriptions through the mail—80% of prescriptions to veterans. So when mail slows—the health of our veterans is affected.” #SaveThePostOffice #SaveUSPS 💽 https://twitter.com/deanofdublin/status/1297219521422352384?s=20/photo/1
WaPo: Trump calls FDA the ‘deep state,’ accuses agency of delaying vaccine trials to hurt his reelection http://wapo.st/3aLgaHF “This was a very dangerous statement on the part of the president, even for him,” Pelosi said of Trump’s Tweet
🐣 RT @RepAdamSchiff Trump’s personal lawyer: Guilty.
Trump’s campaign manager: Guilty.
Trump’s deputy campaign manager: Guilty.
Trump’s National Security Advisor: Guilty.
Trump’s political advisor: Guilty.
And now, Trump’s chief strategist: Indicted.
A pattern of lies, graft and corruption.
WaPo, David Ignatius: Hard evidence at last that shreds Trump’s lies about a Russia ‘hoax’ http://wapo.st/3j1hEjN The Republican-led Senate Intelligence Committee’s Russia investigation “offers the detailed accounting of how Russian spies worked with the Trump team”
🐣 Reminded me of when I was a child, my father would drive us for an hour down dark roads to “The Cities” (Mpls/StP) to watch fireworks on the 4th of July from our car. Then we’d stop and get Henry’s Hamburgers for the drive home. Sweet Home Minnesota ♡ #DemConvention2020
🐣 RT @atrupar Fox News’s Chris Wallace praises Biden’s speech: “I thought it was an enormously effective speech. Remember, Donald Trump has been talking for months about Joe Biden as mentally shot … I thought that he blew a hole, a big hole in the characterization.”
💽 https://twitter.com/atrupar/status/1296649419895513088?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @Acyn Dana Perino: Joe Biden just hit a home run in the bottom of ninth 💽 https://twitter.com/Acyn/status/1296649923782299648?s=20/photo/1
// FoxNews
🐣 RT @Acyn Dana Perino: Joe Biden just hit a home run in the bottom of ninth 💽 https://twitter.com/Acyn/status/1296649923782299648?s=20/photo/1
// FoxNews
🐣 RT @RadioFreeTom People in masks in their cars during a pandemic, enjoying the fireworks as a major party presents its challenger for the mantle to lead a great democracy, and I am not getting choked up it’s just dusty in here
🐣 RT @brhodes A good man who cares about the right things, works for you instead of himself, and will fight injustice. We’ve learned we can’t take that for granted and Joe Biden showed he will be that President.
🐣 RT @davidgura On @FoxNews, @KarlRove says, “It was a very good speech.”
⋙ DEM CONVENTION, LAST NIGHT: Joe Biden’s Speech
🐣 RT @MSNBC “QAnon is dangerous lunacy that should have no place in American politics,” Rep. Liz Cheney says.
⋙ NBCNews: Trump’s QAnon embrace draws GOP backlash http://nbcnews.to/31d5mPo
// “Why in the world would the president not kick QAnon supporters’ butts?” former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush tweeted.
💙 NYT: Top Republican National Security Officials Say They Will Vote for Biden http://nyti.ms/3hhhXXo They accuse him of “undermining the rule of law, aligning himself with dictators and engaging ‘in corrupt behavior that renders him unfit to serve as president.’”
// In a letter released hours before Joe Biden is set to deliver his nomination acceptance speech, over 70 senior officials called President Trump “unfit to lead” and outlined their support for his opponent.
The new letter, released just hours before Mr. Biden formally accepts the nomination, lays out a 10-point indictment of Mr. Trump’s actions, accusing him of undermining the rule of law, aligning himself with dictators and engaging “in corrupt behavior that renders him unfit to serve as president.”
They also accused him of “spreading misinformation” and “undermining public health experts,” making him “unfit to lead during a national crisis.”
⋙ Letter: Former GOP NATSEC Officials For Biden: We are profoundly concerned about our nation’s security and standing in the world under the leadership of Donald Trump. The President has demonstrated that he is dangerously unfit to serve another term. http://bit.ly/326aHXU ● https://twitter.com/Auriandra/status/1296544148523290625?s=20/photo/1
⋙ Letter: Former GOP NATSEC Officials For Biden: Through his actions and his rhetoric, Trump has demonstrated that he lacks the character and competence to lead this nation and has engaged in corrupt behavior that renders him unfit to serve as President http://bit.ly/326aHXU ● https://twitter.com/Auriandra/status/1296548707605807104?s=20/photo/1
1. Donald Trump has gravely damaged America’s role as a world leader.
2. Donald Trump has shown that he is unfit to lead during a national crisis.
3. Donald Trump has solicited foreign influence and undermined confidence in
our presidential elections.
4. Donald Trump has aligned himself with dictators and failed to stand up for
American values.
5. Donald Trump has disparaged our armed forces, intelligence agencies, and
diplomats.
6. Donald Trump has undermined the rule of law.
7. Donald Trump has dishonored the office of the presidency.
8. Donald Trump has divided our nation and preached a dark and pessimistic view
of America.
9. Donald Trump has attacked and vilified immigrants to our country.
10. Donald Trump has imperiled America’s security by mismanaging his national
security team.
WaPo: Judge rejects Trump’s latest bid to shield his tax records from Manhattan district attorney http://wapo.st/3aKAM2t
🔄 💙 💽 CNN: Biggest moments from the DNC http://cnn.it/3j019EJ videos videos videos!
// DNC night three moments and speeches
WaPo, Dan Balz: Democrats attack Trump as a threat to the country’s foundations, raising the stakes for November http://wapo.st/3gheiYj Obama called for people to “vote in massive numbers & warned that the president & his allies will seek to make voting as difficult as possible”
DailyBeast, Matt Wilstein: Fox News’ Judge Napolitano: Steve Bannon Facing 20 Years and ‘It Doesn’t Look Good’ http://bit.ly/3hfq4DV
// Fox News’ senior judicial analyst explained the biggest “problem” Steve Bannon faces as he heads to court on wire-fraud charges.
💽 DailyBeast, Kevin Fallon: Barack Obama and Billie Eilish Made DNC TV Great Again http://bit.ly/31eMuQ7 videos: Harris, Eilish, Obama (full)
// The Democratic National Convention had seemed like a cheesy telethon, but an emotional night of speeches—plus Kamala making history—prove this virtual format makes for great TV.
WaPo, Dan Balz: Democrats attack Trump as a threat to the country’s foundations, raising the stakes for November http://wapo.st/3gheiYj Obama called for people to “vote in massive numbers & warned that the president & his allies will seek to make voting as difficult as possible”
🐣 RT @MSNBC Historian Jon Meacham on fmr. Pres. Obama’s DNC speech: “I know everybody’s talking about how blistering … how tough he was on Trump. Really, was he? I mean Trump rose to national power by deploying baseless, disproven, racist attacks against this man.”
⋙ 💽 MSNBC, MorningJoe: Meacham: Obama took the ‘wise’ high road during speech http://on.msnbc.com/34l6geu
// Former President Obama spoke frankly Wednesday evening during the DNC about President Trump not rising to meet the presidency and calling him a threat to democracy. Historian Jon Meacham discusses Obama’s remarks.
🐣 RT @SDNYnews Leaders of ‘We Build The Wall’ online fundraising campaign charged with defrauding hundreds of thousands of donors https://twitter.com/SDNYnews/status/1296438759198687232?s=20/photo/1
// Audrey Strauss US Attorney SDNY; Steve Bannon, others indicted
⋙ SDNY: Leaders Of ‘We Build The Wall’ Online Fundraising Campaign Charged With Defrauding Hundreds Of Thousands Of Donors http://bit.ly/34gnnOv
// Brian Kolfage, Stephen Bannon, and Two Others Alleged to Have Funneled Hundreds of Thousands of Dollars From the Organization to Kolfage; All Four Defendants Allegedly Profited From Their Roles in the Scheme
🐣 RT @AWeissmann_ Looking forward: will Bannon flip? And even if pardoned by Trump (in spite of Trump’s denigrating him), SDNY can then put Bannon in the Grand Jury to obtain his testimony.
🐣 RT @JoyceWhiteVance Enjoying this morning’s preview of the GOP convention: Bannon indicted for fraud & Trump’s taxes headed to the Manhattan DA.
🐣 RT @NatashaBertrand In other news, the assistant director of DHS’ Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, Brian Harrell, has just submitted his resignation to Trump, per letter I obtained. Says he is returning to the private sector.
⭕ 19 Aug 2020
NYT Editorial: The Trump Campaign Accepted Russian Help to Win in 2016. Case Closed. http://nyti.ms/34g4StC “[A] timely rebuke to the narrative that Attorney General William Barr has been hawking since before he took office early last year — that ‘Russiagate’ is a ‘bogus’ scandal”
// “Cooperation” or “collusion” or whatever. It was a plot against American democracy.
It’s … a timely rebuke to the narrative that Attorney General William Barr has been hawking since before he took office early last year — that “Russiagate” is a “bogus” scandal. Mr. Barr and other Trump allies claim that the Russia investigation was begun without basis and carried out with the intent of “sabotaging the presidency.” That argument has been debunked by every investigative body that has spent any time looking into what happened, including the nation’s intelligence community, Mr. Mueller’s team, the Justice Department’s inspector general and now the Senate Intelligence Committee.
[T]he committee report, which is nearly 1,000 pages long and is the fifth in a series examining Russian interference in 2016, goes further than Mr. Mueller’s investigation. ¤ [T]he Senate committee found that the president “did, in fact, speak with Stone about WikiLeaks and with members of his campaign about Stone’s access to WikiLeaks on multiple occasions.”
The committee documented that, on Oct. 7, 2016, Mr. Stone received advance notice of the impending release of the “Access Hollywood” tape, in which Mr. Trump brags about sexually assaulting women. In response, Mr. Stone made at least two phone calls arranging for WikiLeaks to release stolen internal emails from the Democratic National Committee.
The report also found that Konstantin Kilimnik, a longtime business associate of Mr. Trump’s former campaign chairman, Paul Manafort, was a Russian intelligence officer, and may have been linked to the Russian military’s hacking and leaking of the D.N.C. emails in the first place.
The Intelligence Committee report shows clear coordination between Russians and the Trump campaign, though there is no evidence of an explicit agreement. The evidence the report lays out suggests Mr. Trump knew this at the time. Whether or not it can be proved that he ordered this interference or violated the law in doing so, the fact remains that neither he nor anyone else in his campaign alerted federal law-enforcement authorities, as any loyal American should have.
And remember: Mr. Trump tried this scheme again. The president was impeached for his efforts to invite foreign interference in the 2020 election, this time by Ukraine, again on his behalf. Part of that requested interference involved an attempt to smear Joe Biden. But the other part involved pinning the 2016 election interference on Ukraine rather than on Russia. Who was “almost certainly” one of the primary sources spreading that claim in the media, according to the senators’ report? None other than Konstantin Kilimnik.
There has never been any reliable evidence that Ukraine interfered in 2016; the Senate committee concluded as such, in line with all previous investigations.
… What has Mr. Trump done? On Sunday night, he retweeted Russian propaganda* that the U.S. intelligence community had already flagged as part of that country’s efforts to skew the election.
There’s no way to sugarcoat it. In less than three months, the American people could re-elect a man who received a foreign government’s help to win one election and has shown neither remorse nor reservations about doing so again.
⋙ *CNN: Trump retweets Russian propaganda about Biden that US intel agencies say is intended to influence 2020 election http://cnn.it/31cNNyG
// 8/17/2020
Four years ago, the first WikiLeaks releases arrived on the eve of the Democratic convention in July 2016, and Trump used the stolen emails to inflame divisions within the Democratic Party, tweeting, “The Wikileaks e-mail release today was so bad to Sanders that it will make it impossible for him to support her.” Mueller’s investigation later revealed that this intraparty tension was exactly what the Russians were hoping to stoke. ¤ The major difference is that, this time around, the US intelligence community has publicly put Trump and the entire world on notice early on of what the Russians are up to.
Even so, some Republicans and right-wing news outlets have embraced the baseless claims being levied by these controversial Ukrainian figures, some of whom, including Derkach, have worked closely with Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani.
Many of these false narratives being promoted by Derkach and others, and now being amplified by the President, played a central role in his impeachment proceedings. At that time, Fiona Hill, who was Trump’s top adviser on Russia, testified that some Republicans were promoting a “fictional narrative” that was concocted by Russian intelligence agencies, and were thus peddling “politically derivative falsehoods that so clearly advance Russian interests.”
🐣 RT @brhodes What’s happening in Russia, Belarus, Hong Kong, America and many other places is connected. People shouldn’t have to live with a boot on their throat to serve corrupt and valueless leaders.
WaPo: How Paul Manafort promoted Russian disinformation that has been embraced by Trump http://wapo.st/3j1AaIH “[T]he idea that Ukraine interfered in the 2016 campaign began as a Russian influence operation designed to distract attention from the Kremlin’s own activities”
[T]he idea that Ukraine interfered in the 2016 campaign began as a Russian influence operation designed to distract attention from the Kremlin’s own activities that year, the Senate Intelligence Committee concluded after an exhaustive three-year investigation.
It was advanced for years by Manafort’s employee, Konstantin Kilimnik, whom the committee identified as a Russian intelligence officer who, among other things, used a false persona on Twitter to circulate and promote the Ukrainian counternarrative, the report found.
Manafort was personally involved in promoting the disinformation, as well, the committee found, strategizing with Kilimnik in secret meetings in Madrid in early 2017 and pushing the idea with the president’s son Donald Trump Jr. around the same time.
Kilimnik’s role — and his influence in getting Trump and his supporters to seize on the propaganda — shows how the interests of the president and the Kremlin have aligned, long after the 2016 election.
[Director of the National Counterintelligence and Security Center William] Evanina cited the recent release by pro-Russian parliamentarian Andriy Derkach of leaked phone calls dating to 2016 between Biden and the former Ukrainian president as part of a Russian effort to hurt Biden.
Derkach, the son of a KGB officer who also attended a school associated with the former Soviet intelligence service, has met at least twice in the past year with Trump attorney Rudolph W. Giuliani.
In a statement to The Washington Post earlier this year, Derkach said allegations that he is working in the interests of foreign intelligence services are attempts to pressure him into stopping his activity. “There is not a single confirmed or reliable fact of my illegal activity or wrongful connections,” he said.
“The bottom line is that Senate investigations must not be based on conspiracy theories propagated by Russian intelligence officers and discredited foreign nationals,” [Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.)] said. “This one is, which is why Republicans should abandon it immediately.”
FBI Director Christopher A. Wray has said there is “no evidence” to support the theory. Fiona Hill, who served on Trump’s National Security Council, told Congress last year that it was a “fictional narrative” advanced by the Russian security services.
The Senate Intelligence Committee found that Kilimnik was probably behind some of the first public suggestions that Ukrainians were interfering in the election to help Democrats. Behind the scenes, he pushed the claim that the “black ledger” that tracked Manafort’s payments as a private consultant in Kyiv before he went to work for Trump — the document that led to Manafort’s ouster from the campaign — had been forged and leaked by Clinton allies, the report said.
According to the committee, Manafort and Kilimnik were in close contact during the campaign and after the campaign. Manafort on “numerous occasions” shared with Kilimnik internal information about the Trump campaign, including polling data and its battleground strategy, the committee wrote.
The panel said it had difficulty discerning why Manafort passed along the material or with whom Kilimnik shared the information. But the committee noted that the two took steps to hide their communications by using encrypted apps and a burner phone and by saving their most sensitive conversations for in-person contact.
One key meeting between the two took place at a Manhattan cigar bar while Manafort was still leading Trump’s election effort, according to the report.
According to the committee, Kilimnik privately promoted to journalists the idea that Ukraine interfered in the U.S. election — not Russia — as early as August 2016. He later helped ghostwrite a February 2017 opinion piece that argued that pro-Clinton Ukrainians had “manufactured” a case against Manafort, the report found.
The column, which ran under the byline of a Ukrainian parliamentarian in U.S. News & World Report, also dismissed possible ties between Trump and Russia.
For his part, Manafort pressed the same theory with Trump Jr. in February 2017, the committee found, citing an email Manafort wrote the president’s son. It linked to a Politico report that Manafort claimed laid out “the conspiracy to implement the disinformation campaign on me between the DNC/Obama Administration and the Govt of Ukraine.” […]
🐣 RT @mmcintire A reminder that QAnon is cited several times in this FBI intelligence bulletin warning of dangerous fringe groups https://tinyurl.com/y7d7rfwb https://twitter.com/mmcintire/status/1296210964472385543?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @thedailybeast BREAKING: Alexei Navalny, the prominent Russian anti-corruption activist and outspoken critic of Vladimir Putin, was reportedly “poisoned with a toxin” and rushed in an unconscious state to the hospital on Wednesday night, according to his press secretary
⋙ DailyBeast: Putin Opponent Alexei Navalny Reportedly Poisoned by ‘Toxin’ in His Tea http://bit.ly/34i6iE6
// The Russian anti-corruption activist was rushed to the hospital in an unconscious state on Wednesday night, according to his press secretary.
🐣 RT @davidplouffe From farms in Iowa to diners in New Hampshire to auto plants in Ohio and for 8 years in the White House, @BarackObama said consistently he would be a leader who told you not what you wanted to hear, but what you needed to. If tonight’s message alarmed you, that was the point.
💽 CNN: Obama: Our president should be custodian of this Democracy http://cnn.it/31aV2as
// During his speech at the 2020 Democratic National Convention, former President Barack Obama gave a full-throated endorsment for Joe Biden and made the case that Biden was a better choice than President Donald Trump in the 2020 presidential election.
↥ ↧
≣ CNN: Transcript: Barack Obama’s DNC speech http://cnn.it/329efZp
🐣 RT @JRubinBlogger Trump had a meltdown as Dems were giving speeches .. demonstrating everything they said was true. He is out of control, out of his depth and, frankly, out of his mind
🐣 RT @SpeakerPelosi Earlier today, I spoke with Postmaster General DeJoy regarding his alleged pause in operational changes. During our conversation, he admitted he has no intention of replacing the sorting machines, blue mailboxes and other infrastructure that have been removed.
⋙ 🐣 RT @SpeakerPelosi This, taken with his unwillingness to plan for adequate worker overtime, directly jeopardizes the election and threatens to disenfranchise voters in communities of color, while also slowing delivery of medicines to veterans.
⋙⋙ Speaker.gv: Pelosi Statement After Conversation with Postmaster General http://bit.ly/2Q8uLmX
⋙ 🐣 RT @SpeakerPelosi Democrats remain committed to protecting the @USPS, and will vote this Saturday on @RepMaloney’s Delivering for America Act, providing $25 billion in support of the Postal Service as the USPS Board of Governors recommended, 100 percent appointed by Trump.
⁉️🐣 RT @RudyGiuliani Tomorrow we will expose information that is vital to protect the proper functioning of our Republic.
🐣 RT @BillKristol The president of the United States is attacking the Goodyear Tire & Rubber Company and defending QAnon.
🐣 RT @JRubinBlogger Imagine being such a pathetic hack that you’d rationalize voting for a president who embraces QAnon…. Every R deserves to lose.
🐣 RT @thedailybeast The Trump campaign went after a lone GOP lawmaker criticizing the conspiracy theory labeled a potential domestic terrorism threat by the FBI
⋙ DailyBeast, Will Sommer and Asawin Suebsaeng: Team Trump Isn’t Even Hiding Its Support for QAnon Kooks Anymore http://bit.ly/3iTM8UQ Translation: They’re really scraping the bottom of the barrel
// The Trump campaign went after a lone GOP lawmaker criticizing the conspiracy theory labeled a potential domestic terrorism threat by the FBI.
🐣 RT @kylegriffin1 Biden campaign: “After calling neo-Nazis and white supremacists … ‘fine people’ and tear gassing peaceful protesters following the murder of George Floyd, Donald Trump just sought to legitimize a conspiracy theory that the FBI has identified as a domestic terrorism threat.”
// re: QAnon
Salon, Heather Digby Parton: Senate Intelligence report reveals a vast network of — yes! — Trump-Russia collusion http://bit.ly/32cl6RM The “Hoax” is no hoax: “the Trump campaign was crawling with Russians”
// Bipartisan committee finds a massive conspiracy of dunces and dupes. Does anyone really think Trump didn’t know?
Essentially, the report shows the Trump campaign was crawling with Russians, many more than is commonly realized, and the evidence strongly indicates that any intelligence or law enforcement officials who didn’t look into this bizarre circumstance would have been derelict in their duty.
🐣 RT @ProjectLincoln We celebrated after WWII. We mourned after 9/11 until we could laugh again. ¤ We will not allow the weakest president in our nation’s history to crush this spirit. ¤ We will defeat this enemy, too — and smile while doing it. 💽 https://twitter.com/ProjectLincoln/status/1296047094579388417?s=20/photo/1
// Lincol Project ad❣ Anti-racism Anti-fascism
⭕ 18 Aug 2020
🐣 RT @lukeharding1968 Here’s my @GuardianUS story on today’s stunning Senate intelligence committee report. It suggests Vladimir #Putin’s spies snooped on #Trump during his 2013 visit to Moscow. And that Trump’s campaign fed intel to Konstantin Kilimnik, a career #GRU officer
⋙ TheGuardian: US Senate report goes beyond Mueller to lay bare Trump campaign’s Russia links http://bit.ly/2E6vGSt
// Bipartisan intelligence panel says that Russian who worked on Trump’s 2016 bid was career spy, amid a stunning range of contacts
🐣 SENATE INTEL COMMITTEE Republicans:
Marco Rubio, Acting Chairman, FL
Richard Burr, NC
James Risch, ID
Susan Collins, ME
Roy Blunt, MO
Tom Cotton, AR
John Cornyn, TX
Ben Sasse, NE
🐣 SENATE INTEL COMMITTEE Democrats:
Mark Warner, Vice Chairman, VA
Dianne Feinstein, CA
Ron Wyden, OR
Martin Heinrich, NM
Angus King, ME
Kamala Harris, CA
Michael Bennet, CO
// tags: Senate Intel members SSCI members Senate Select Committee on Intelligence
🐣 RT @benjaminwittes On @Morning_Joe just now, @clairecmc, @JoeNBC and I had a clarifying idea about the #SSCI report: Let’s call it the “Rubio Report” so people remember that its devastating findings are brought to you by Senate Republicans now trying to deny what it says:
⋙ Lawfare, Benjamin Wittes: Republican Senators Misrepresent Their Own Russia Report http://bit.ly/3hciTMC
🐣 RT @nycsouthpaw The SSCI report named Kilimnik’s pseudonymous twitter account, pbaranenko, which is frustratingly unsearchable. You can scroll it tho, and it’s mostly what you’d expect—pushing lee stranahan and john solomon stuff alongside aaron mate. This retweet broke the mold, however. https://twitter.com/nycsouthpaw/status/1295950406410018817?s=20/photo/1
⋙ “Petro Baranenko retweeted
🐣 RT @DarthPutinKGB If it looks like a duck, denies it’s a duck, demands you prove it’s a duck and then accuses you of being a duck, it’s a Russian duck.”
// 4/27/2028
NBCNews: Senate Intelligence Committee made criminal referral of Trump Jr., Bannon, Kushner, two others to federal prosecutors http://nbcnews.to/3h6gZgt //➔ So, Mr Barr, where are we on that? @TheJusticeDept
// The Intelligence Committee detailed its concerns in a letter to the U.S. attorney’s office in Washington, D.C., in June 2019, an official said.
ForeignPolicy: State Department Cancels Hill Briefings on Counterterrorism Issues and China as Tensions Escalate Between Pompeo and Lawmakers http://bit.ly/34didTC
// A congressional investigation into the firing of the department’s inspector general has caused friction between the secretary of state and members of Congress.
WaPo: Trump dismisses new report on 2016 election interference as his allies continue to pursue theories it debunks http://wapo.st/2Ee5dSD
Manafort worked with a Russian intelligence officer “on narratives that sought to undermine evidence that Russia interfered in the 2016 U.S. election,” including the idea that purported Ukrainian election interference was of greater concern, the report found.
The Ukrainian interference theory has been repeatedly challenged and parts of it debunked multiple times, even before Trump began giving voice to it. But since 2016, the Republican Party’s fixation on it has only expanded, with a new twist: Now, instead of being a purported problem unto itself, it has become a vehicle to bolster the GOP’s charges of bias run amok at the FBI, and corrupt activities by Biden while he served as vice president and took the lead in dealing with Ukraine.
The Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee is expected to release a report next month examining whether certain Ukrainians with a record of corruption had inappropriate influence over U.S. foreign policy, because Biden’s son, Hunter, served on the board of a Ukrainian energy company that had come under investigation by Ukrainian authorities while his father, as vice president, had primary responsibility for Ukraine foreign policy.
The contention has been promoted not only by the president and his allies but by a cadre of Ukrainian operatives with Kremlin ties, who have also claimed to have been supplying information — including tapes of Biden in Ukraine — to the committee and others.
Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee Chairman Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) and other Republicans have denied taking any such information from Ukrainians, save for Andriy Telizhenko, who works for a Democratic-led lobbying firm and has alleged that Burisma, the Ukrainian energy company that put Hunter Biden on its board, was discussed during a White House meeting in early 2016.
But earlier this month, William Evanina, director of the National Counterintelligence and Security Center, said that some Kremlin-linked actors, including pro-Kremlin Ukrainian parliamentarian Andriy Derkach, who made allegations regarding the Bidens, have been “spreading claims about corruption. . . to undermine former vice president Biden’s candidacy and the Democratic Party.”
💙 💽 DemConvention: National Security Leaders and Top Diplomats Tout Joe Biden’s Foreign Policy Experience, Explain Why Biden Is Ready To Be Commander-In-Chief http://bit.ly/2FFTflH
🐣 RT @DonWinslow NEW VIDEO! #IsItFakeNews ¤ Everything Trump says is fake news is actually THE TRUTH. ¤ Here’s my new video called #IsItFakeNews ¤ Watch twice and help me get 15,000 retweets! 💽 https://twitter.com/donwinslow/status/1295877737005977601?s=20/photo/1
// Don Winslow ad❣ Is It Fake News? Trump with Satan horns
🐣 RT @allinwithchris .@chrislhayes on the Senate report on Russian interference: “The president got away with cheating in 2016. He was the beneficiary of two illegal conspiracies on his behalf, and wants to cheat again. He’s been very public about that.” 💽 https://twitter.com/allinwithchris/status/1295884179129991172?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @MeidasTouch He keeps saying it. It’s not a joke. When he tells you he thinks he is entitled to three terms, trust that he means it. And do everything in your power to save our democracy.
⋙ 🐣 RT @atrupar The first words out of Trump’s mouth in Yuma, Arizona tease that he wants to shred the Constitution and serve at least 3 terms: “Considering we caught President Obama and sleepy Joe Biden spying on our campaign — treason — we’ll probably be entitled to another four more years.” 💽 https://twitter.com/atrupar/status/1295839443673374721?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @RVAT Yes there’s more…. ¤ NEW @MilesTaylorUSA/@RVAT2020 video in light of Senate Intel Report as discussed with @JakeTapper: Trump “blew off” briefings on Russian election interference & silenced security staff who wanted to speak out about pressing election security threats. 💽 https://twitter.com/RVAT2020/status/1295817202671800320?s=20/photo/1
// Republican Voters Against Ttrump ad❣ Miles Taylor Homeland
🐣 RT @jennycohn1 Not enough people understand what a big deal this is. For years, officials claimed that elections cld not be hacked w/o hacking many individual voting machines, a huge task. The news that county tabulators connect to the internet &/or allow remote access obliterates that claim.
💙 🐣 RT @davidplouffe
1) Prime time hearings, now.
2) Subpoenas to Trump WH and camp officials. This is a RICO case
3) Visit local post offices with cameras – show people what is happening.
4) Events with those getting Rx late
5) Involve governors
5) No rest, no vacation. Go to war for our country.
// 8/14/2020
💙 🔆 This❗️⋙ WaPo: At least 20 states plan to sue the Postal Service over service delays, threat to election http://wapo.st/2CDttNA ● Text Block: https://twitter.com/Auriandra/status/1295832725111414791?s=20/photo/1
The suits, including one filed Tuesday afternoon in federal court in Washington state, will argue that the Postal Service broke the law by making operational changes without first seeking approval from the Postal Regulatory Commission. They will also argue that the changes will impede states’ ability to run free and fair elections, officials from several state attorney general’s offices told The Washington Post. The Constitution gives states and Congress, not the executive branch, the power to regulate elections.
🐣 RT @tedlieu It’s a felony campaign finance violation to solicit a foreign power to help your campaign, especially when the foreign power weighed in on such a massive scale. The Mueller team just didn’t have the guts to go there.
⋙ 🐣 RT @matthewamiller The SSCI report seems to confirm two things we knew:
1. Trump solicited, welcomed, and benefited from Russian interference.
2. There wasn’t sufficient evidence to charge anyone with a crime.
The fact we’ve let 2. become the excuse to ignore 1. was and is a national failure.
NYT: Trump and Miss Moscow: Report Examines Possible Compromises in Russia Trips http://nyti.ms/3gbEweu
// The Senate committee report says that President Trump may have had a relationship with a Russian beauty pageant winner. But investigators say they “did not establish” that Russia had compromising information on Mr. Trump.
🐣 RT @ScottMStedman 16 months post-Mueller, 49 months post-FBI opening the Russia investigation. Collusion is confirmed.
💙 ⋙ 🐣 RT @ Here’s the most damning of the Senate report: ¤ “Konstantin Kilimnik is a Russian intelligence officer,” the Trump campaign gave him secret polling data and campaign strategy, and “Kilimnik may have been connected to the GRU’s hack and leak operation”
🐣 RT @JuliaDavisNews Trump’s letters to Putin. Beautiful letters! Most perfect letters! Or, as Trump would put it, “He begged like a dog.” https://twitter.com/JuliaDavisNews/status/1295807978650636288?s=20/photo/1
// three letters from Trump to Putin
🐣 RT @gtconway3d Imagine what we’d learn if the same level of scrutiny applied by the Senate Intelligence Committee to the Russia matter were applied to the Ukraine scandal, and to any number of other @realDonaldTrump scandals. ¤ We need the mother of all investigations to start this January.
🧵 RT @carolecadwalla Wow. A lot to digest here. But reading new Senate Intel report about Paul Manafort’s relationship with Konstantin Kilimnik, a Russian intelligence officer, & who should pop up but Frank Mermoud. This has never been properly explored. But Mermoud is Arron Banks’s business partner ❣https://twitter.com/carolecadwalla/status/1295760473628053504?s=20
🐣 RT @mmcintire Fascinating artifact from Senate Intel report: old fan mail from Trump to Putin https://twitter.com/mmcintire/status/1295774654225960961?s=20/photo/1
// Trump to Putin 2007 “I am a big fan of yours!”
🐣 RT @DavidCornDC A hoax? The bipartisan Senate intelligence committee report says “Kilimnik likely served as a channel to Manafort for Russian intelligence services.” That is, Trump’s campaign manager was being exploited by Russia intelligence, as Russia attacked the election to help Trump. Wow. Text Block: 📌 https://twitter.com/DavidCornDC/status/1295731511115882501?s=20/photo/1
🧵 RT @SenBlumenthal The Trump campaign is clearly comfortable allowing Vladimir Putin to help choose the next President of the United States, but the American people should not be. This report is more than an investigation of past actions—it’s a clarion warning call for the upcoming election. 📌 https://twitter.com/SenBlumenthal/status/1295789421137100800?s=20
🐣 RT @ChrisAlbertoLaw BOMBSHELL! ¤ Bipartisan Senate Report’s factual findings & inescapable conclusion: ¤ Trump & his campaign coordinated & colluded with Russian intelligence & urged Russia to continue their computer hacking & leaks. ¤ Gee, I wonder what he & Putin have been talking about lately?
⋙ 🐣 RT @NBCNews BREAKING: In a thousand-page bipartisan report, US Senate Intel Cmte. says the Trump admin. obstructed its investigation with “novel claims” of executive privilege, and paints portrait of a Trump campaign eager to accept help from a foreign power in 2016.
💙 ⋙⋙ NBCNews: Bipartisan Senate report describes 2016 Trump campaign eager to accept help from foreign power http://nbcnews.to/3kPVva1
// The report highlights some never-before-seen evidence, including allegations about women and potentially compromising material tied to Trump trips to Russia.
🐣 RT @EricLiptonNYT The Russian government undertook an extensive campaign to try to sabotage the 2016 election to help Mr. Trump become president and some members of Mr. Trump’s circle of advisers were open to the help from an American adversary. @MarkMazzettiNYT @npfandos
💙 ⋙ NYT: G.O.P.-Led Senate Panel Details Ties Between 2016 Trump Campaign and Russian Interference http://nyti.ms/3iQoyYZ
// A nearly 1,000-page report confirmed the special counsel’s findings at a moment when President Trump’s allies have sought to undermine that inquiry.
💙 WaPo: Trump’s 2016 campaign chair was a ‘grave counterintelligence threat,’ had contact with Russian intelligence, Senate panel finds http://wapo.st/326mbe3
// The Senate Intelligence Committee has released the fifth and final volume of its report into Russian interference in the 2016 election.
🐣 RT @MuellerSheWrote Cheers today to @CNN and @MSNBC who wouldn’t have us on because they considered us “partisan”! ¤ (Okay, to be fair we called Matthew Whitaker “big dick toilet wine [she means “guy”]” and had a Fantasy Indictment League)
🔆 This❗️⋙ Axios: Senate Intel Committee report finds Manafort passed campaign data to Russian intelligence officer http://bit.ly/3kPnZR4
🧵 RT @petestrzok 1/ Today’s bipartisan SSCI report – and each Republican Senator signatory – conclusively debunk Barr’s mendacious assertions that the FBI’s investigations were based on “a very thin, slender reed,” which “should have been obvious to anyone, that there was nothing there.” 📌 https://twitter.com/petestrzok/status/1295878590928695296?s=20
🧵 RT @SethAbramson (OPEN THREAD) I’m the author of 3 books on the counterintelligence threat posed to the U.S. by Trump and his aides and associates. The most recent—Proof of Corruption—is out in 21 days. I hope you’ll read and retweet this long open thread detailing my read of today’s SSCI report. 📌 https://twitter.com/SethAbramson/status/1295882329190215680?s=20
🧵 RT @kyledcheney Per Senate Intellgence Committee, Konstantin KILIMNIK — who Manafort provided internal Trump campaign polling data to — is “a Russian intelligence officer.” 📌 https://twitter.com/kyledcheney/status/1295711366712627200?s=20
🧵 RT @NatashaBertrand JUST OUT: Volume 5 of the Senate Intelligence Committee’s Russia report, focused on counterintelligence threats and vulnerabilities. It’s 966 pages long.
↧ 📌 https://twitter.com/NatashaBertrand/status/1295710499322159104?s=20
⋙ 🐣 RT @ann_rees Interesting snapshot of who Kilimnik follows as Petro Baranenko @PBaranenko Some very familiar faces. @mattgaetz @DevinNunes @GenFlynn [List:] https://twitter.com/ann_rees/status/1295775933056524288?s=20/photo/1
💙 USAToday: Paul Manafort was ‘a grave counterintelligence threat,’ Republican-led Senate panel finds http://bit.ly/2Q1mMbl
🐣 RT @MuellerSheWrote Cheers today to @CNN and @MSNBC who wouldn’t have us on because they considered us “partisan”! ¤ (Okay, to be fair we called Matthew Whitaker “big dick toilet wine [she means “guy”]” and had a Fantasy Indictment League)
💙 🔆 This❗️⋙ Axios: Senate Intel Committee report finds Manafort passed campaign data to Russian intelligence officer http://bit.ly/3kPnZR4
🧵 RT @kyledcheney Per Senate Intellgence Committee, Konstantin KILIMNIK — who Manafort provided internal Trump campaign polling data to — is “a Russian intelligence officer.” 📌 https://twitter.com/kyledcheney/status/1295711366712627200?s=20
🐣 RT @AndrewDesiderio Gotta say, I was not expecting the Senate Intel report to include this type of exhaustive detail that goes well beyond even what Mueller uncovered. ¤ Also worth noting that this is really the only bipartisan product to come out of Capitol Hill on the Russia probe.
⋙ 🐣 RT @AndrewDesiderio Wow. Senate Intel report bluntly states that Manafort associate Konstantin Kilimnik is a Russian intelligence officer. That’s further than Mueller went.
⋙ 🐣 RT @AndrewDesiderio >> “Taken as a whole, Manafort’s high-level access and willingness to share information with individuals closely affiliated with the Russian intelligence services, particularly Kilimnik and associates of Oleg Deripaska, represented a grave counterintelligence threat.”
⋙⋙ 📔 Senate Intelligence Committee’s Russia report Document [pdf] http://bit.ly/3ayY0c1 966p
⭕ 17 Aug 2020
💙🐣 RT @DemConvention Thanks @theebillyporter + Steven Stills for helping us close night one of the #DemConvention! ♫ So much more to come! Come back tomorrow ⇊ http://demconvention.com/watch 💽 https://twitter.com/DemConvention/status/1295558907293769728?s=20/photo/1
// tags: song music For What It’s Worth Somethin’s happenin’ here Paranoia strikes deep Young speakin’ their minds Black Lives Matter Vietnam protests
🐣 RT @washingtonpost Perspective: Michelle Obama’s speech was a warning full of sorrow over what our country has become
⋙ 💽 WaPo, Robin Givhan: Michelle Obama’s speech was like an empathetic neighbor expressing sorrow for what our country has become http://wapo.st/2YeJzVv
🐣 RT @MSNBC “Michelle Obama said it best in her speech tonight,” Billy Porter says. “We have been double speaking for three years. Everybody has been afraid to say exactly what the truth is — and the truth is — Donald Trump has destroyed our country.”
⋙ 💽 MSNBC, 11thHour: Billy Porter: Trump’s destroyed our nation. We have to get it back. http://on.msnbc.com/3iWiZbt
// Multi-award winning actor and activist Billy Porter joins to discuss his performance of ‘For What It’s Worth’ for the DNC and his support of Joe Biden for President.
💙 🐣 .@MarchfortheDead Your slogan reminds me of something labor leader Mother Jones said: ¤ “Pray for the dead – and fight like hell for the living!” ¤ She “adopted” the labor movement after her husband and all her children died of yellow fever. @kdurquiza @MarkedByCovid ● https://twitter.com/Auriandra/status/1295770651576414208?s=20/photo/1
// photo of Mother Jones
↥ ↧
💙 🐣 RT @MSNBC Kristin Urquiza speaks about her father who died from COVID-19: “My dad was a healthy 65-year-old. His only pre-existing condition was trusting Donald Trump, and for that, he paid with his life.” #DemConvention 💽 https://twitter.com/MSNBC/status/1295543382882877440?s=20/photo/1
↥ ↧
💙 🐣 RT @CNN “My dad was a healthy 65-year-old. His only preexisting condition was trusting Donald Trump, and for that he paid with his life,” says Kristin Urquiza, who wrote an obituary decrying politicians for a “lack of leadership” following her father’s death from Covid-19. #DemConvention 💽 https://twitter.com/CNN/status/1295546682181001216?s=20/photo/1
💙 🐣 RT @CNN Sen. Bernie Sanders: “This is not normal and we must never treat it like it is. Under this administration, authoritarianism has taken root in our country. I and my family and many of yours know the insidious way authoritarianism destroys democracy, decency and humanity” 💽 https://twitter.com/CNNPolitics/status/1295559849820991488?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @ddale8 Trump, who is trailing in every major national poll and in numerous swing state polls, in a Wisconsin speech today: “The only way we’re going to lose this election is if the election is rigged.”
⋙ CNN, Kevin Liptak: Trump warns of ‘rigged election’ as he uses conspiracy and fear to counter Biden’s convention week http://cnn.it/314q6Zk
WaPo, William McRaven: Trump is actively working to undermine the Postal Service — and every major U.S. institution http://wapo.st/3iKkoSz “As Trump seeks to undermine the U.S. Postal Service and stop mail-in voting, he is taking away our voice to decide who will lead America”
// William H. McRaven, a retired Navy admiral, was commander of the U.S. Special Operations Command from 2011 to 2014.
Today, as we struggle with social upheaval, soaring debt, record unemployment, a runaway pandemic, and rising threats from China and Russia, President Trump is actively working to undermine every major institution in this country. He has planted the seeds of doubt in the minds of many Americans that our institutions aren’t functioning properly. And, if the president doesn’t trust the intelligence community, law enforcement, the press, the military, the Supreme Court, the medical professionals, election officials and the postal workers, then why should we? And if Americans stop believing in the system of institutions, then what is left but chaos and who can bring order out of chaos: only Trump. It is the theme of every autocrat who ever seized power or tried to hold onto it.
Our institutions are the foundation of a functioning democracy. While they are not perfect, they are still the strongest bulwark against overzealous authority figures. The institutions give the people a voice; a voice in the information we receive, a voice in the laws we pass, a voice in the wars we fight, the money we spend and the justice we uphold. And a voice in the people we elect.
As Trump seeks to undermine the U.S. Postal Service and stop mail-in voting, he is taking away our voice to decide who will lead America. It is not hyperbole to say that the future of the country could depend on those remarkable men and women who brave the elements to bring us our mail and deliver our vote. Let us ensure they have every resource possible to provide the citizens of this country the information they need, the ballots that they request and the Postal Service they deserve.
⭕ 16 Aug 2020
🐣 RT @ESCochrane New: The House WILL return this week, cutting short the summer recess, to vote on USPS legislation. Senior Dem aide says votes will likely happen Saturday, Aug. 22.
🔆 This❗️⋙ Speaker.gov: Dear Colleague on House Returning from Recess to Save the Postal Service http://bit.ly/2DPclFn “In a time of a pandemic, the Postal Service is Election Central. Americans should not have to choose between their health and their vote”
The Postal Service is a pillar of our democracy, enshrined in the Constitution and essential for providing critical services: delivering prescriptions, Social Security checks, paychecks, tax returns and absentee ballots to millions of Americans, including in our most remote communities.
Alarmingly, across the nation, we see the devastating effects of the President’s campaign to sabotage the election by manipulating the Postal Service to disenfranchise voters. Postmaster General Louis DeJoy, one of the top Trump mega-donors, has proven a complicit crony as he continues to push forward sweeping new operational changes that degrade postal service, delay the mail, and – according to the Postal Service itself – threaten to deny the ability of eligible Americans to cast their votes through the mail in the upcoming elections in a timely fashion. These delays also threaten the health and economic security of the American people by delaying delivery of life-saving medicines and payments. In 2019, 1.2 billion prescriptions were delivered through the Postal Services, including almost 100 percent from the VA to veterans.
Lives, livelihoods and the life of our American Democracy are under threat from the President.
That is why I am calling upon the House to return to session later this week to vote on Oversight and Reform Committee Chairwoman Maloney’s “Delivering for America Act,” which prohibits the Postal Service from implementing any changes to operations or level of service it had in place on January 1, 2020. House Democratic Leader Hoyer will soon be announcing the legislative schedule for the coming week.
To save the Postal Service, I am also calling upon Members to participate in a Day of Action on Tuesday by appearing at a Post Office in their districts for a press event. In a time of a pandemic, the Postal Service is Election Central. Americans should not have to choose between their health and their vote.
As we protect the Postal Service and access to the ballot, we continue to lead the fight for The Heroes Act as the coronavirus crisis continues to spiral further out of control.
I am grateful to Members for their enthusiasm about returning to Washington, and I am grateful for their suggestions for what else we may consider acting upon when we return.
Thank you for your enthusiasm, leadership and friendship. ¤ NANCY
🐣 RT @chrislhayes Something I just keeping back to over and over is the tremendous continuity between the last two Republican presidents, both of whom left the country in ruins, amidst historic catastrophes. The entire party and movement are rotten to the core and unfit to govern.
DailyBeast, Alexander Heffner: Trump’s Postal Purge Is an Assault on Our Election http://bit.ly/2FuRk3c “This past week, mailboxes vanished from streets. Sorting machines were removed from USPS facilities for no explicable reason”
// The question is what Joe Biden and the Democrats are doing to expose and stop it while there’s still time.
🐣 RT @EricHolder We know why this is happening. They know they can’t win fair elections. ¤ We not only want the destruction to stop-we want machines put back in working order, overtime restored, mailboxes placed back. We want a fully functioning, fully funded Postal Service – now. ¤ 18 USC 1701
⭕ 15 Aug 2020
WaPo: Senate panel told Justice Dept. of suspicions over Trump family members’ Russia testimony http://wapo.st/3ayxdfN The list included Donald Trump Jr., Jared Kushner, Stephen K. Bannon, Sam Clovis and Erik Prince
WaPo: Amid national Postal Service crisis, D.C. area residents struggle without consistent mail http://wapo.st/346jyM0
Politico: Pelosi weighs bringing House back early to address Postal Service crisis http://politi.co/2E9apHg
// The chamber has no votes scheduled until mid-September, but Speaker Nancy Pelosi might bring lawmakers back sooner.
🐣 RT @brhodes Something is profoundly and irredeemably wrong with a political party that is cool spending a trillion new dollars on nukes but defunds and cripples the post office in the middle of a pandemic and election. The GOP must be beaten and badly.
💙 🐣 RT @jbouie michigan, wisconsin, ohio, pennsylvania, florida, texas. weird coincindence
⋙ 🧵 🌎 RT @_cingraham NEW: @jacobbogage got USPS data showing at least 671 USPS mail sorting machines have been removed across the country since June. Represents a reduction in national mail sorting capacity of 21.4 million pieces of mail per hour. 📌 http://wapo.st/31NvH5A https://twitter.com/jbouie/status/1294353994215821313?s=20/photo/1
⋙ 🐣 🌎 RT @FlossedInParadise Here, I made an overlay of the 2016 election map by county. Feast your eyes on blue blobs surrounded by a red circle. Sounds like a new symptom of fascism. https://twitter.com/FlossdnParadise/status/1294380298474524678?s=20/photo/1
⋙⋙ 🐣 🌎 RT @XydexUnicorn A map that overlays the places where mail sorting machines are being removed with places where Clinton had a lead in the 2016 election: https://twitter.com/XydexxUnicorn/status/1294409854854078465?s=20/photo/1
⋙ 🐣 🌎 RT @FlossedInParadise This edit might look worse, but it helps see the smaller sorting facilities/rural areas better. https://twitter.com/FlossdnParadise/status/1294414160474836992?s=20/photo/1
🔄 State Attorneys General Look-up http://bit.ly/3h1dyHH
🐣 RT @POLITICOMag “To admit this out loud is stunning, because it is political sabotage: He’s using his power of the veto to interfere with the democratic process and keep mail-in balloting from being more successful,” says Phil Rubio, an expert on the postal system
⋙ Politico Mag, Philip Rubio: How Trump’s Attack on the Post Office Could Backfire http://politi.co/3h0kdlN
// If the USPS slows down, mail-in ballots won’t be the only collateral damage, says Philip Rubio.
🐣 RT @kylegriffin1 Trump’s new Postmaster General Louis DeJoy, who instituted the recent changes that have slowed mail nationwide, is “in frequent contact with top Republican Party officials” and met with the president in the Oval Office last week.
⋙ WaPo: Trump opposes election aid for states and Postal Service bailout, threatening Nov. 3 vote http://wapo.st/2POlPTp
“They need that money in order to make the post office work, so it can take all of these millions and millions of ballots,” said the president, claiming again that mail ballots would be “fraudulent,” one of more than 80 attacks he has made against the election’s integrity since March, according to a tally by The Washington Post. Many of his assertions have been misleading or unfounded.
“If we don’t make a deal, that means they don’t get the money,” he added. “That means they can’t have universal mail-in voting. They just can’t have it.”
Later Thursday, Trump told reporters at the White House that he would not veto legislation that has funding for the Postal Service but added that “the reason the post office needs that much money is they have all of these millions of ballots coming in from nowhere and nobody knows from where and where they’re going.”
🐣 RT @kylegriffin1 Trump’s new Postmaster General Louis DeJoy, who instituted the recent changes that have slowed mail nationwide, is “in frequent contact with top Republican Party officials” and met with the president in the Oval Office last week.
🐣 RT @tribelaw Trump can fire the USPS Inspector General for blowing the whistle on Louis DeJoy, and he can pardon the federal crimes DeJoy is overseeing by sabotaging the Postal Service, but he can’t fire state AGs or local DAs whose grand juries nail the goons for state felonies. Go get ‘em!!
🐣 RT @AWeissmann_ Here’s a hint at what Durham may be up to: the Clinesmith charge (para 2) says that Crossfire Hurricane was opened as a FARA violation (Foreign Agents Registration Act). That is false. As the IG found, it was opened as a counterintelligence investigation. 1/2
⋙ 🐣 RT @AWeissmann_ IG found the two potential crimes listed in the FBI opening document were: FARA and 18 USC 951 (foreign government agents). IG also found FBI was not required to differentiate criminal vs counterintelligence goals. Why is Durham trying to narrow FBI goals, counterfactually?
⋙ 🐣 RT @AWeissmann_ And then compare this with Durham’s unprecedented press release (12/9/19) when the IG issued his report saying he disagreed with some IG conclusions as to how the Crossfire Hurricane investigation “was opened.”
⭕ 14 Aug 2020
VICE: Internal USPS Documents Outline Plans to Hobble Mail Sorting http://bit.ly/2PTevG7
// ‘This will slow mail processing,’ a union official wrote on one of the documents announcing the machine removals.
The move to slash the agency’s mail-sorting capacity just as the post office prepares to play a pivotal role in the upcoming election has raised alarm among elected officials. On Wednesday, 47 Senators sent a letter to DeJoy urging him “not to take any action that makes it harder and more expensive for Americans to vote.”
The removal of so many letter-sorting machines also does little to quell concern that President Trump—who has stated his opposition to giving the USPS additional money to handle the election because he doesn’t want mail-in ballots to be properly handled and counted—is intentionally interfering in the USPS’s operations to achieve his desired ends.“Donald Trump made clear that he is dismantling the Postal Service so he can steal the election by making it harder to vote by mail,” said Oregon Senator Ron Wyden, a signatory of the letter. “Removing 20 percent of the Postal Service’s sorting and processing equipment looks like another part of his plan to bulldoze a vital American institution just to cling to power.”
“The Trump Administration is launching an all-out war on the U.S. Postal Service,” said West Virginia Senator Joe Manchin, another letter signatory. “Several weeks ago we learned they had unexpectedly announced closures of several West Virginia post offices. Then we learned of their plans to change the regulations surrounding the first class mail and election mail. Now we’re hearing reports that the post office is removing sorting machines and reducing capacity a few months before an election where we’ll see more mail-in ballots than ever before. This is insane.”
🐣 RT @EricHolder Federal criminal law (18 USC 1701): ¤ Whoever knowingly and willfully obstructs or retards the passage of the mail, or any carrier or conveyance carrying the mail, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than six months, or both.
// illegal mail
🐣 RT @tribelaw “Americans heard a sitting president tell a national broadcast audience that his opponents are guilty of treason, & he expects DOJ to use the levers of power to target his enemies shortly before an election.” That this isn’t even news IS the news.
⋙ 🐣 RT @stevebenen Trump insisted his opponents are guilty of “treason,” and he expects his AG to target them ahead of the election. ¤ Normally, this would be a presidency-defining moment. Under Trump, it was maybe the 17th biggest political story of the day.
WaPo, Paul Waldman: Trump’s attack on the Postal Service is now a national emergency http://wapo.st/2CsuWGq
🐣.📊📋 RT @johngramlich Presidential candidates often like to say the next election is the most important one yet. Voters seem to agree this year: 83% say it “really matters who wins,” the highest percentage in two decades of presidential election-year polling. More here: https://pewrsr.ch/3fW6FpO https://twitter.com/johngramlich/status/1293977519662739457?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @JRubinBlogger Mitt Romney slams politicians attacking mail-in voting – once more the only decent Republican inside the Beltway
⋙ PBS: Mitt Romney slams politicians attacking mail-in voting http://to.pbs.org/3apyINm
🐣 RT @AWeissman_ Trump Is turning us into a so-called third world banana republic, only masquerading as a first world democracy. Is that how you make America great again? We broke from England to have voter representation. His motto shd be Make America Great Britain Again.
⋙ 🐣 RT @maddow Let it be noted that they’re not just turning them off, or deciding to use them less, or unplugging them — they’re *removing them* from these processing centers. ¤ It makes no sense at all as cost-cutting. This is just sabotage.
⋙⋙ 🐣 RT @MaggieNYT Postal workers are sounding the alarm as mail sorting machines are removed from processing facilities
⋙⋙⋙ YahooNews: Postal workers are sounding the alarm as mail sorting machines are removed from processing facilities http://yhoo.it/33Zl2HD
🐣 RT @GovCTW [Christie Todd Whitman] @realDonaldTrump is once again attempting to abuse the power of his office to undermine democracy. Each time this President makes a statement that has to be walked back, we have a glimpse of exactly what he really means. The right to choose our own leaders through free and (1/3)
⋙ 🐣 RT @ @GovCTW …fair elections is one of our most precious possessions as Americans. It is ironic that, as we approach the 100th anniversary of the passage of the 19th Amendment and the enfranchisement of women in the electoral process, (2/3)
⋙ 🐣 RT @GovCTW we have an administration that is trying to disenfranchise millions of American voters. This is shameful. The #USPS must be fully funded and every vote must be counted. #SaveTheUSPS (3/3)
🐣 RT @cingraham NEW: @jacobbogage got USPS data showing at least 671 USPS mail sorting machines have been removed across the country since June. Represents a reduction in national mail sorting capacity of 21.4 million pieces of mail per hour.
⋙ 🌎 WaPo: Postal Service warns 46 states their voters could be disenfranchised by delayed mail-in ballots http://wapo.st/31NvH5A ● https://twitter.com/Auriandra/status/1294350986165858305?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @SpeakerPelosi The Postal Service is a pillar of American Democracy. President Trump’s assault on @USPS threatens to starve it of the funds that it needs to deliver Americans’ absentee ballots. The President’s actions and even his own words confirm: he needs to cheat to win. #DontMessWithUSPS
⋙ RT @SpeakerPelosi Read my full statement with @SenSchumer here:
⋙⋙ Speaker.gov: Pelosi, Schumer Statement on President’s Assault on the Postal Service and Elections http://bit.ly/3arAkGq “The President’s own words confirm: he needs to cheat to win”
“The United States Postal Service is a pillar of our American Democracy and is enshrined in the Constitution, which empowers Congress to ‘establish Post Offices and Post Roads.’ The Postal Service provides services that are critical to the lives and livelihoods of the American people: ensuring that seniors receive their medicines, workers receive paychecks, taxpayers receive refunds and voters receive absentee ballots. Postmaster General DeJoy must quickly reverse his operational changes that have led to delays and service reductions for too many Americans and threaten to undermine our democracy.
“Yet, the President, his cronies and Republicans in Congress continue to wage their all-out assault on the Postal Service and its role in ensuring the integrity of the 2020 election. Yesterday, the President threatened to further starve the Postal Service of the funds that it needs to deliver the absentee ballots necessary to ensure that people do not have to choose between their health and their vote this fall – threats that he doubled down on last night.
“The President’s comments today affirm that no patriotic tradition is immune from his abuse of power. The President made plain that he will manipulate the operations of the Post Office to deny eligible voters the ballot in pursuit of his own re-election. The President’s own words confirm: he needs to cheat to win.
🐣 RT @BarackObama Everyone depends on the USPS. Seniors for their Social Security, veterans for their prescriptions, small businesses trying to keep their doors open. They can’t be collateral damage for an administration more concerned with suppressing the vote than suppressing a virus.
⋙ 🐣 RT @BarackObama If you’re in a state where you have the option to vote early, do that now. The more votes in early, the less likely you’re going to see a last minute crunch, both at polling places and in states where mail-in ballots are permitted. Then tell everyone you know.
NBCNews: Congressional watchdog finds acting DHS chief Wolf and senior aide Cuccinelli not legally qualified to hold their jobs http://nbcnews.to/2PTgJFO
The Government Accountability Office said Wolf and Cuccinelli assumed those jobs under an order of succession that was issued by an acting secretary who, himself, had no authority to hold his job. That was Kevin McAleenan, who took over after the the last homeland security secretary to be confirmed by the Senate, Kirstjen Nielsen, resigned. ¤ GAO’s conclusion has no force of law, but the agency said it is referring its conclusion to the Department of Homeland Security’s inspector general.
🐣 Get your ballot as soon as possible. Use a drop box if available or drop it off in person. In some states like mine (MN) a person can drop off up to three ballots (my daughter will drop of mine and my husband’s). Avoid the mail if you can. If you must, send it in as early as possible.
🐣 RT @davidplouffe 1) Prime time hearings, now.
2) Subpoenas to Trump WH and camp officials. This is a RICO case
3) Visit local post offices with cameras – show people what is happening.
4) Events with those getting Rx late
5) Involve governors
5) No rest, no vacation. Go to war for our country.
🐣 RT @NatSecAction It’s no wonder the U.S. leads the world in coronavirus cases. ¤ In the critical first months of the pandemic, Trump held large campaign rallies and golfed instead of implementing a cohesive government response. 💽 https://twitter.com/natsecaction/status/1294275242114908160?s=20/photo/1
// National Security Action Ad❣ Golfing
🐣 RT @MuellerSheWrote Where’s the IG report on the leaks from the NY FBI field office? Who paid Kavanaugh’s debts? What is the mystery company from country A in the Mueller probe? What happened to the 12 redacted cases Mueller handed off to other offices? I won’t go away until I get these answers.
⭕ 13 Aug 2020
WaPo: Trump signals impatience with FBI director’s cooperation with reviews of Russia investigation http://wapo.st/3g0BLws Barr “knows all the answers, he knows what they have, and it goes right to Obama and it goes right to Biden,” said Trump.
“Bill Barr has the chance to be the greatest of all time, but if he wants to be politically correct, he’ll be just another guy, because he knows all the answers, he knows what they have, and it goes right to Obama and it goes right to Biden,” said Trump, alluding to his frequent accusation that the Obama White House directed the investigation of his campaign, something that officials in the Obama administration and the Justice Department at that time have denied.
WaPo: Trump opposes election aid for states and Postal Service bailout, threatening Nov. 3 vote http://wapo.st/2POlPTp
🧵 RT @Teri_Kanefield (Thread) Nov. 3: What Can Possibly Go Wrong? ¤ Trump knows he probably won’t get enough votes to win, so his plan is evidently to create chaos with the postal service so that the election will be a disaster, and then use the excuse of the chaos to try to delegitimize the election. 📌 https://twitter.com/Teri_Kanefield/status/1294121797260984320?s=20
⋙ 🐣 RT @abbydphillip Trump saying clearly on Fox why he won’t fund USPS. “Now they need that money in order to make the post office work so it can take all of these millions and millions of ballots…But if they don’t get those two items that means you can’t have universal mail-in voting…”
🐣 RT @matthewmiller Barr has been on a right wing media tour promising an October surprise – a rerun of 2016 except worse, because as bad as Comey’s decisions were, at least they weren’t partisan. This is straight up open abuse of power.
⋙ 🐣 RT @Isikoff Barr says on @seanhannity there will be “developments” on Durham tomorrow but not “earth-shattering.” Adds that “the story of what happened in 2016 and 2017” will be out before the election.
WaPo: Trump opposes election aid for states and Postal Service bailout, threatening Nov. 3 vote http://wapo.st/2POlPTp
⭕ 12 Aug 2020
🐣 RT @Republicist1 Romney We are outraged 4 Senators are obstructing Ron Johnson’s investigation. The usual VILLAIN, Mitt Romney leads the PERPS. He’s joined w/Portman, Langford & Enzi. POTUS won their states. We must rapture these clowns out of REP PARTY!
↥ ↧
Politico: Ron Johnson says committee Republicans blocking Comey, Brennan subpoenas http://politi.co/3aiy3NA “Sen. Mitt Romney (R-Utah), one of the eight Republicans on Johnson’s panel, raised concerns about the investigation’s political overtones in the spring”
// “We had a number of my committee members that were highly concerned about how this looks politically,” he says.
The interview [with Hugh Hewitt] underscores the degree to which there’s a reluctance among some Senate Republicans to advance an investigation that Democrats have viewed as a conduit for foreign disinformation aimed at former Vice President Joe Biden less than three months before the election as well as to amplify allegations of corruption by the FBI in its Trump-Russia probe. Sen. Mitt Romney (R-Utah), one of the eight Republicans on Johnson’s panel, raised concerns about the investigation’s political overtones in the spring, though he ultimately has backed some of the panel’s subpoena requests.
Johnson said Republican resistance had delayed his effort to subpoena Blue Star Strategies, a Democratic public relations firm that did work for Burisma, the Ukrainian gas company that Hunter Biden served on the board of. He also cited the lengthy criminal investigations and the coronavirus pandemic for delaying his committee’s ability to get documents from the FBI, which he said were essential before seeking live testimony from central witnesses.
🐣 RT @MuellerSheWrote Since the federal government investigation into the podcast and my subsequent removal from my position in the government is now complete, feel free to follow my personal account @allisongill
⭕ 11 Aug 2020
Politico (Mar 3): 55 Things You Need to Know About Joe Biden http://bit.ly/3akEmAb
// A career politician who has lived his life in the public eye is getting a closer look from voters. ↥ ↧
Politico: 55 Things You Need to Know About Kamala Harris http://politi.co/2Csbyti
// A trailblazing prosecutor-turned-politician sits on the cusp of history.
🐣 RT @NewsAlliance “Stanford University—with support from the Google News Initiative— have launched the COVID-19 Global Case Mapper, which makes it possible for journalists anywhere in the world to embed up-to-date visualizations of the pandemic on their sites for readers.”
🔄 ⋙ Google: A new global COVID-19 map for journalists http://bit.ly/3h1PxAF
// With Google News Initiative support, Stanford University is launching a new global embeddable map showing coronavirus cases around the world.
🚫🐣 RT @DefenseBaron JUST IN: Open Letter to Gen. Milley: “If Donald Trump refuses to leave office at the expiration of his constitutional term, the United States military must remove him by force, and you must give that order.” Commentary by @DrJohnNagl & Paul Yingling
⋙ DefenseOne, John Nagl and Paul Yingling: “. . . All Enemies, Foreign and Domestic”: An Open Letter to Gen. Milley http://bit.ly/30OabhW
// Not sure if this is protocol; If the commander in chief attempts to ignore the election’s results, you will face a choice.
🧵 RT @SimonWDC So, a thread about all the ways Trump is cheating/breaking rules and laws in the 2020 Election. ¤ This is a big issue, and we need to be talking about it. ¤ Let’s start w/his visit to Ohio yesterday. 📌 https://twitter.com/SimonWDC/status/1291717857852760065?s=20
🐣 RT @AshaRangappa_ Are you having trouble following the crazy when it comes to the congressional “investigation” Sen. Ron Johnson is trying to cook up into Joe Biden? @rgoodlaw and I have created a roadmap for you to follow, complete with a list of key players at the top to help you keep up
⋙ 🐣 RT @JustSecurity “How Sen. Ron Johnson’s Investigation Became an Enabler of Russian Disinformation: Part I” ¤ A deep dive analysis by @AshaRangappa_ and @rgoodlaw #RonJohnson #disinformation #Russia
💙 ⋙⋙ JustSecurity, Ryan Goodman and Asha Rangappa: How Senator Johnson’s Probe Became an Enabler of Russian Disinformation: Part I http://bit.ly/3kzvQSL
// “There are three channels of Russian disinformation that have apparently affected Sen. Johnson’s Ukraine-related investigations.”
🐣 RT @JoyceWhiteVance The Flynn argument reduced to its essence: DOJ is afraid of what will come out if the judge inquires into the process that led it to dismiss charges against Flynn. This appeal is only about preventing that inquiry, as the Judge is highly likely to ultimately grant the motion.
WaPo: Appeals court questions Justice Department bid to immediately close Michael Flynn’s criminal case http://wapo.st/30MvdNJ
A divided three-judge panel in late June ordered Sullivan to close the case and said he was wrong to appoint a retired federal judge to argue against the government’s position and call for a hearing. But the full court, sitting Tuesday with 10 judges, agreed to take a second look at the unusual case that tests the power of the judiciary to check the executive branch.
“The integrity and independence of the court is also at play here,” Pillard told acting solicitor general Jeffrey B. Wall, who represented the government. ¤ “What self-respecting judge would jump and enter an order without doing what he could do to understand both sides?”
“That means the judge has to do some thinking about it. The judge is not simply a rubber stamp,” [Judge Thomas B.] Griffith said during the more than three-hour argument carried via live stream because of the coronavirus pandemic.
Judge Neomi Rao, who previously sided with Flynn in the panel decision, asked if reassigning the case to a different judge would satisfy the retired general’s concerns.
Powell said removing Sullivan and requiring Gleeson’s withdrawal would “go a long way toward solving the problem.”
Wall, the acting solicitor general, agreed Tuesday with Flynn’s defense that it may be appropriate to reassign the case. Sullivan’s actions, Wall said, suggest a “problematic” degree of investment in the case, and he should not be allowed to prolong a harmful, unnecessary and “intrusive inquiry” into the Justice Department’s motivations.
⭕ 10 Aug 2020
🧵 RT @weareoversight (8/10) U.S. Attorney John Durham’s investigation — targeting the investigators who helped expose Russian interference in the 2016 election — has been badly politicized from the start. We’ve been demanding answers about Attorney General Bill Barr’s role. 📌 https://twitter.com/weareoversight/status/1292881338631061506?s=20
Crooks&Liars/NPR: Biden Won’t ‘Stand In Way’ Of Future Prosecution Of Trump http://bit.ly/2DFeCmk Hmmm, wonder who he’ll tap to be AG? ● Text Block: https://twitter.com/Auriandra/status/1293105692883202048?s=20/photo/1
// What are the odds that Donnie just pardons himself?
Presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden told NPR on Thursday that while he was unsure if it was “good for democracy,” if elected he would not stand in the way of a hypothetical Justice Department prosecution of President Donald Trump for crimes committed in office.
“Look, the Justice Department is not the president’s private law firm,” the former vice president said. “The attorney general is not the president’s private lawyer. I will not interfere with the Justice Department’s judgment of whether or not they think they should pursue the prosecution of anyone that they think has violated the law.”
🐣 RT @joshscampbell As the nation tops 5 million coronavirus cases, the U.S. President is in the White House press briefing room talking about Brennan, Comey, Clapper, Page, Strzok, and, without providing any evidence, is accusing his predecessor’s administration of treason.
🧵 RT @brianklaas 1. The Belarus elections were almost certainly badly rigged, the result a foregone conclusion. When I did field research in Minsk, a former regime official told me that Lukashenko handpicked his margin of victory. Once, he had told his subordinates that he wanted 75% of the vote. 📌 https://twitter.com/brianklaas/status/1292745425779335168?s=20
🐣 So, how long until we hear Putin’s account of what happened in the “election“ in Belarus coming out of Trump’s mouth?
⭕ 9 Aug 2020
🧵 RT @DaveMicRot This unhinged lunatic is the US Attorney General. 📌 https://twitter.com/DavMicRot/status/1292634075115794435?s=20
⋙ 🐣 RT @DaveMicRot AG Barr’s greatest hits (1) Lied to US about Mueller Report (2) Reversed guilty plea of person who conspired w/ Russia to undermine US policy (3) Fired prosecutors who come too close to investigating/prosecuting Trump Family crimes (4) Ordered/Led tear gassing peaceful protesters
⋙ 🐣 RT @DaveMicRot (5) Started “investigations” into President Trump’s political “enemies” (including folks long retired) (6) Spread conspiracy theories to undermine election integrity (7) Ignores threat of right-wing terrorism, commits resources to attacking make-believe left-wing organizations.
⋙ 🐣 RT @DaveMicRot (8) AG Barr authorized invasion of multiple Democratic cities by MAGA Paramilitary (using DOJ and DHS personnel), all of them after Portland (randomly, I assume) in swing states, under the flimsiest of pretexts.
💙 🔆 This❗️⋙ Slate, William Saletan: The Trump Pandemic http://bit.ly/2DRX9He wow
// A blow-by-blow account of how the president killed thousands of Americans.
✅ CNN: Breaking down the executive actions Trump signed on coronavirus relief http://cnn.it/3kDUcuK “[A] close read of the actual text of executive actions he signed Saturday suggests that even if they are deemed constitutional, they will not quickly deliver”
WaPo: Trump’s familiar routine after failing to cut deals with Congress: Signing legally dubious executive actions http://wapo.st/3gJvkiD
🐣 RT @stuartpstevens If you actually needed more proof that the Republican Party was a non-serious party with no interest in governing, Trump signing meaningless executive orders he doesn’t understand at a golf club he’s using to scam more taxpayer dollars is pretty much the perfect trifecta.
🐣 RT @McFaul What?! That is your job! You & your NSC team are supposed to prepare the briefing papers, write the talking points, orally brief the president before the call, and then discuss action items after the call. It’s literally one of the most important parts of your portfolio.
🐣 RT @ChrisMurphyCT What does this mean? What is the job of the National Security Advisor if not to “get involved” in the President’s conversations with foreign leaders?
🐣 RT @brhodes His job is literally to be in those conversations. Trump has spent four years building a government of sycophants, grifters and ideologues.
⋙ 🐣 RT @RudyMehrbani National Security Advisor Robert O’Brien on @FaceTheNation right now, in response to whether Trump has told Putin to stop meddling in US elections: “Unlike my predecessors, I don’t get involved in conversations the President has with foreign leaders.” ¤ No kidding.
🐣 RT @duty2warn We believe there are people in the GOP who are in a position to adversely impact Trump to a great degree who have considered it. These people know right from wrong. But their fears are overpowering. Their ego’s are overblown. And their love of power transcends their love overall.
🐣 RT @RepAdamSchiff By slowing down deliveries, prohibiting overtime, and freezing hiring, ¤ Trump’s handpicked donor is sabotaging the USPS during a pandemic, and just before an election when its services are even more vital. ¤ We must save the Postal Service to protect our democracy. ¤ And we will. 📌 https://twitter.com/RepAdamSchiff/status/1292500038296440832?s=20
⭕ 8 Aug 2020
KyivPost, Oleksiy Sorokin and Matthew Kupfer [UKR]: US intelligence leader says Russia using Ukrainian MP Derkach to interfere in 2020 election http://bit.ly/3a9A2nh
🐣 RT @IlvesToomas A stunning, gobsmacking article: it’s all far worse than even I, with my preternatural pessimism, could ever have imagined. The US is in genuinely serious, serious security trouble. As are we, America’s allies.
🐣 RT @AnneApplebaum We suspected this, and here’s the proof: Trump is destroying US intelligence agencies. If he gets a second term, there will be nothing left
💙⋙ NYT, Robert Draper: Unwanted Truths: Inside Trump’s Battles With U.S. Intelligence Agencies http://nyti.ms/2DBp1zh
// Last year, intelligence officials gathered to write a classified report on Russia’s interest in the 2020 election. An investigation from the magazine uncovered what happened next.
In early July of last year, the first draft of a classified document known as a National Intelligence Estimate circulated among key members of the agencies making up the U.S. intelligence community. N.I.E.s are intended to be that community’s most authoritative class of top-secret document, reflecting its consensus judgment on national-security matters ranging from Iran’s nuclear capabilities to global terrorism. The draft of the July 2019 N.I.E. ran to about 15 pages, with another 10 pages of appendices and source notes.
According to multiple officials who saw it, the document discussed Russia’s ongoing efforts to influence U.S. elections: the 2020 presidential contest and 2024’s as well. It was compiled by a working group consisting of about a dozen senior analysts, led by Christopher Bort, a veteran national intelligence officer with nearly four decades of experience, principally focused on Russia and Eurasia. The N.I.E. began by enumerating the authors’ “key judgments.” Key Judgment 2 was that in the 2020 election, Russia favored the current president: Donald Trump.
… “Trump’s first encounter with the intelligence community as president-elect was in meetings with James Comey, John Brennan and James Clapper, all of whom turned out to be involved with spying on President Trump’s campaign,” Kayleigh McEnany, the White House press secretary, said in a statement responding to a list of factual queries for this article. The investigation of Trump’s campaign, McEnany said, was “the greatest political scandal and crime in U.S. history.” (Although the F.B.I. investigated links between Trump campaign associates and Russian officials, a 2019 report by the Justice Department’s inspector general found no evidence that it had tried to place informants inside the campaign. No claims of spying on the campaign by other American intelligence agencies have ever been substantiated.)
… Representative Sean Patrick Maloney, a Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, compared the O.D.N.I.’s decline under Trump to that of the Justice Department, where “they have, step by step, set out to destroy one of the crown jewels of the American government,” he told me. “And they’re using the same playbook with the intelligence community.”
… This “wearing down” has extended well beyond the dismissal of a few top intelligence officials whom the president perceived to be disloyal. It has also meant that those who remain in the community are acutely mindful of the risks of challenging Trump’s “alternative facts,” as the White House counselor Kellyanne Conway once memorably described them — with consequences that are substantive, if often hidden from view.
I spoke with Schiff on Friday, July 24. Earlier that day, the O.D.N.I. released an official statement about election security threats by William Evanina, director of the National Counterintelligence and Security Center and a Trump appointee. “At this time,” Evanina’s statement said, “we’re primarily concerned with China, Russia and Iran — although other nation states and nonstate actors could also do harm to our electoral process.”
Once again, the compromise was small but hardly meaningless: As several retired intelligence officials pointed out to me, it conflated the aboveboard “influence” campaign conducted by China — pressuring politicians, countering criticism — with the clandestine “interference” efforts by Russia to subvert the voting process. A week later during a classified briefing, Nancy Pelosi, the speaker of the House, upbraided Evanina for his misleading statement.
It called to mind something the former C.I.A. acting director Michael Morell said several months before, when we were discussing Russia’s interference in the 2016 election. “This is the only time in American history when we’ve been attacked by a foreign country and not come together as a nation,” Morell said. “In fact, it split us further apart. It was an inexpensive, relatively easy to carry out covert mission. It deepened our divisions. I’m absolutely convinced that those Russian intelligence officers who put together and managed the attack on our democracy in 2016 all received medals personally from Vladimir Putin.”
🐣 RT @KyivPost United States Intelligence has accused Ukrainian lawmaker Andrii Derkach of acting in the interests of Russia and attempting to interfere in the 2020 U.S. presidential election.
⋙ KyivPost [UKR]: US intelligence leader says Russia using Ukrainian MP Derkach to interfere in 2020 election http://bit.ly/3a9A2nh “Democrats have warned Republicans that, by investigating the accusations against Biden, they risk laundering disinformation from Russia”
WaPo: Trump attempts to wrest tax and spending powers from Congress with new executive actions http://wapo.st/2PECWqY //➔ he’s just hallucinating a new government at this point; it’s all just P.R. that ignores the fact the real people are suffering
// The actions aim to temporarily extend unemployment aid and eviction protections
Trump cites statutory authority in most of the actions, and some of his new actions appear to be only instructions to his Cabinet secretaries and department heads to look for ways to address certain problems. Others involve more questionable actions such as the suspension of tax payments and transfers of money Congress has appropriated for another use.
🧵 RT @SteveSchmidtSES 📌 https://twitter.com/SteveSchmidtSES/status/1292259010184445952?s=20
I find it necessary to reach for the language and colorful colloquialisms of my native land, New Jersey, in order to express my feelings about today’s event in Bedmimster. It was a fucking travesty. Truly. An utter Fucking disgrace.
The President of the United States of America stood behind the Seal of his office framed by American flags and his private club’s membership slurring and raving about his victimization. His titanic self pity was only exceeded by his dishonesty and uncontrolled lying. His lying was only 2.
Subordinate to his staggering idiocy, ignorance, ineptitude and incompetence. The incompetence, even after all this time, shocks the conscience. 162,000 Americans are dead and the economy is shattered. So many more will die. The evictions, foreclosures and small business closings
are just beginning. We are in the early hours of one of the greatest tragedies in our countries history. None of it had to be, but it has happened because Donald Trump is President. His malice, stupidity, ego and insecurity are a lethal combination. He has wrecked this country 4/
in less than four years. He has induced a national nosedive, a decline that is precipitous, dangerous and humiliating. The world is more dangerous. American soldiers are hunted like animals by Taliban killers who are paid bounties by Russian killers and Trump does nothing 5/
But KowTow to Putin and advance his agenda. Trump has divided the country and pitted Americans against each other. He has loosed violence against Peacefully assembled US Citizens and deployed militarized paramilitary forces to escalate tensions in American cities in the name of 6
Law and order when the real purpose and mission is to stoke the embers of chaos and create Fear. Fear, built on a mountain of lies, is the Autocrats sword and shield. Trump stokes fear to abuse his power and press forward with his assaults on the rule of law, our essential 7/
Institutions and our national comity all in the name of his corruption, aggrandizement and cult of personality. It is a despicable hour in the life of this country. This will be ended because it must end. We will lose the country if Trump isn’t repudiated. Make no mistake 8/
About the intentions of a President who is openly undermining the 231 year old tradition of American elections. He is undermining the legitimacy of the coming election with no regard for the consequences to liberal democracy here and around the world. Fascism didn’t rise 9/
In the thirties because it was strong. It rose because Democracy was weak. American Democracy is weak, decayed and led by an illiberal man who, I’d he could would cancel the election, lock up his political opponents, enrich his friends and remain in power for life 10/
Trump is the greatest failure in American History. No American has failed history’s test in a more spectacular fashion. His stoking of racial tensions and a cold civil war in our land will live in infamy. His disgrace will be eternal. @ProjectLincoln
Politico: American Bridge posts 1,043-page Trump oppo book online http://politi.co/3gHfm8R
// It wants other Democratic groups to have at it.
💙 ⋙ 🔄📔AmericanBridge: Trump Oppo Website: https://trumpresearchbook.com
Welcome to American Bridge 21st Century’s Donald Trump opposition research hub. This website exists to help allies find the research needed to defeat Donald Trump in 2020. It’s organized into three main categories, each divided into multiple reports designed to help you tell the full story about Trump’s failed presidency.
🐣 RT @NBCPolitics The US Census Bureau says it is ending its count one month early. Experts say this could become a 10-year mistake that skews the balance of power in the country for years to come.
⋙ NBCNews: ‘An insidious ploy’: Trump admin’s decision to cut census short could have dire consequences http://nbcnews.to/2Dyi7uL
// Undercounting populations like Black Americans and Native tribes could skew the balance of power in the U.S. for years to come.
🐣 RT @ewarren This is the clearest example yet of Trump and his puppet Postmaster General’s attempts to sabotage the USPS before November’s election. ¤ This kind of behavior is why we’re demanding an investigation into Trump’s USPS—the Inspector General should add this to their list.
⋙ 🐣 RT @TheProspect The Postal Service has informed states that they’ll need to pay first-class 55-cent postage to mail ballots to voters, rather than the normal 20-cent bulk rate. That nearly triples the per-ballot cost.
⋙⋙ AmericanProspect: Unsanitized: Federal Benefit Extension Looks Remote as Anger Mounts http://bit.ly/2XHaycd
// price of stamps; Plus, the post office tries to stick up states. This is The COVID-19 Daily Report for August 7, 2020.
The Postal Service has informed states that they’ll need to pay first-class 55-cent postage to mail ballots to voters, rather than the normal 20-cent bulk rate. That nearly triples the per-ballot cost at a time when tens of millions more will be delivered. The rate change would have to go through the Postal Regulatory Commission and, undoubtedly, litigation. But the time frame for that is incredibly short, as ballots go out very soon.
A side benefit of this money grab is that states and cities may decide they don’t have the money to mail absentee ballots, and will make them harder to get. Which is exactly the worst-case scenario everyone fears.
🧵 RT @danielsgoldman Short thread: ¤ Latest ODNI election interference [sic] provides some more important detail about election interference but seems to (intentionally) conflate public statements from foreign countries (China/Iran) with covert malign influence efforts (Russia). They are not the same. 1/ 📌 https://twitter.com/danielsgoldman/status/1292054374991175680?s=20
⋙⋙ 🐣 RT @CNNPolitics NEW: Intelligence community’s top election official says China and Iran don’t want President Trump to win reelection and Russia is working against Joe Biden https://cnn.it/3gEShDw
⋙⋙ 🐣 RT @CNNPolitics READ: Intelligence community’s top election official’s statement warning of threats from China, Russia and Iran https://cnn.it/3gDhezf
⋙ 🐣 RT @danielsgoldman Once again, the ODNI release reveals that Russia is trying to secretly and covertly influence our election. Notably, ODNI calls out KGB graduate Derkach for spreading disinformation to harm Biden. Why is this important? 5/
⋙ 🐣 RT @danielsgoldman Because @SenRonJohnson is using information that our intelligence community has assessed to be an effort to influence the election in 3 months as a basis for his sham Ukraine investigation. Either wittingly or unwittingly, Johnson appears to be a Russian intelligence asset. END
🐣 I love that Twitter is identifying Russian and Chinese-affiliated accounts. I hope this will apply to their sock puppets as well. @TwitterSupport @Twitter
💙 🐣 RT @anneapplebaum “in each scenario other than a Biden landslide, we ended up with a constitutional crisis that lasted until the inauguration, featuring violence in the streets and a severely disrupted administrative transition.” Read this in what might happen in November
⋙ AmericanInterest, Nils Gilman: Getting from November to January http://bit.ly/3gGb7uc
// Wargaming shows that, short of a landslide victory for Joe Biden in the upcoming elections, we may be headed for a severe constitutional crisis. Here are six strategies for averting the worst outcomes.
// Nils Gilman is vice president of programs at the Berggruen Institute, contributing editor for The American Interest, and deputy editor of Noema Magazine.
⋙ See under Entire Articles: AmInt Wargaming 8-7-2020
⭕ 7 Aug 2020
WaPo, Richard Blumenthal: The threat to U.S. elections is real, and frightening. The public has a right to know. http://wapo.st/2PCKCdk “[B]y swearing Congress to secrecy, the Trump administration is keeping… a grave, looming threat to democracy hidden from the American people”
On Friday, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence issued a statement that only hints at the threats. ¤ The facts are chilling. I believe the American public needs and deserves to know them. The information should be declassified immediately.
The publicly available facts are terrifying enough. A report released on Wednesday by the State Department outlined in detail attempts by Russian front groups, fake individual online identities and state-funded media to sow disinformation and dissension about U.S. allies around the world. Russian intelligence operations have perfected the art of laundering distorted and fabricated narratives through media networks, covert hacking, international proxies and others to undermine democracies, attack the United States’ global image and silence criticism of Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Though the report was focused on Russia’s global influence campaign, there is no reason to think the United States is immune from its destructive and destabilizing efforts. The sophisticated tactics and techniques described in the report make Moscow’s past interference and nefarious actions look like child’s play.
Public sources such as the State Department’s report, other intelligence assessments and excellent investigative journalism, as well as special counsel Robert S. Mueller III’s fact-finding, have shed some public light on the shadowy world of foreign spying and sabotage threatening U.S. elections from countries including not just Russia but possibly China and Iran. But there is much more — much of it even more chilling.
I understand the utility of a classification system that shields intelligence sources and methods. Responsibly limiting access to sensitive information is a critical tool to safeguard Americans and U.S. allies who collect the intelligence that informs critical national security decisions. Used appropriately, classifying certain information is essential to protecting the country.
Unnecessary classification politicizes the national security apparatus and, in this case, keeps the American people in the dark about efforts by foreign adversaries to destroy the bedrock of the nation’s democracy: free and fair elections.
The Trump administration’s refusal to share with the American public any information about the Russian threat to the November election is simply unacceptable. Making parts of intelligence reports public is hardly unprecedented. In fact, classified reports frequently include declassified summaries in recognition of the fundamental role transparency plays in a functioning democracy.
Instead, by keeping the facts cloaked in secrecy, the Trump administration and its Republican allies on Capitol Hill invite disinformation and give deception a toehold in the American electorate. And it now appears that such disinformation and deception are gaining a toehold in Congress as well:
On Wednesday, The Post reported that Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.), chairman of the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, is moving ahead with an investigation into presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden’s family using documents provided to the senator by the son of a former KGB officer. Johnson’s actions are of such concern to the CIA, according to news reports, that the agency has refused to brief him. Think of it: Congress may become a forum for debunked conspiracy theories peddled by Kremlin proxies.
There is no excuse for perpetuating Russian disinformation in the U.S. Senate, just as there is there is no excuse for barring the American public from learning more about the genuine foreign threats to the November election. The Trump administration appears to be failing to take the danger seriously, failing to prepare adequately.
Protecting the nation’s democratic values should be a bipartisan imperative. Those of us in Washington should not risk looking back and saying, if only we’d known, we could have done something. We do know. We can do something. It starts with sharing the truth.
🐣 RT @MarshallCohen Remember this from December? When OANN featured Ukrainian lawmaker Andrii Derkach and his anti-Biden conspiracies? Many warned at the time that his motives were suspect. Today, the US government confirmed that he is part of the Kremlin’s effort to weaken Biden. OANN is complicit.
⋙ 🐣 RT @OANN CONFIRMED – @OANN’s @ChanelRion concluded over a half dozen interviews with Ukrainian officials, including Ukrainian MP Andrii Derkach, pic shown. ¤ Part III of “Ukrainian Witnesses Destroy Schiff’s Case w/ Rudy Giuliani” to air Saturday, Dec 15 at 10pm EST!
// 12/6/2019
WaPo, Dana Milbank: We are only beginning to suffer the consequences of Trump’s failures http://wapo.st/31z7vUf “We have sacrificed half a year, $3 trillion of our treasure and 157,000 lives — and it has been squandered by one man’s incompetence”
🐣 RT @FrankFigliuzzi Better late than never: House can sue to force former White House counsel Donald McGahn to comply with subpoena – The Washington Post
🐣 RT @FrankFigliuzzi Better late than never: House can sue to force former White House counsel Donald McGahn to comply with subpoena – The Washington Post
⋙ WaPo: House can sue to force former White House counsel Donald McGahn to comply with subpoena http://wapo.st/30ApR8i
House Democrats initially subpoenaed McGahn before the start of the chamber’s formal impeachment investigation of the president that ended with Trump’s acquittal in the Senate in February. But House lawyers told the court that McGahn’s testimony is still relevant to ongoing oversight and will help the Judiciary Committee determine whether Trump “committed impeachable offenses” in Robert S. Mueller III’s special counsel investigation.
In reversing the panel decision Friday, the majority cited a long tradition of presidential cooperation with Congress in turning over documents and providing testimony. That history is in stark contrast, the court said, to the “apparently categorical direction by President Trump that no member of the Executive Branch shall cooperate with the Committee’s impeachment investigation.”
The administration’s disregard for constitutional obligations “likely explains the infrequency of subpoena enforcement lawsuits such as the present one,” wrote [Judge Judith W.] Rogers [for the majority], who was nominated to the bench by President Clinton.
WaPo: Postal Service overhauls leadership as Democrats press for investigation of mail delays http://wapo.st/2PFX77D
// Lawmakers want the inspector general to examine Postmaster General Louis DeJoy’s cost-cutting measures and investments
Postmaster General Louis DeJoy unveiled a sweeping overhaul of the nation’s mail service, displacing the two top executives overseeing day-to-day operations, according to a reorganization memo released Friday. The shake-up came as congressional Democrats called for an investigation of DeJoy and the cost-cutting measures that have slowed mail delivery and ensnared ballots in recent primary elections.
Twenty-three postal executives were reassigned or displaced, the new organizational chart shows. Analysts say the structure centralizes power around DeJoy, a former logistics executive and major ally of President Trump, and de-emphasizes decades of institutional postal knowledge. All told, 33 staffers included in the old postal hierarchy either kept their jobs or were reassigned in the restructuring, with five more staffers joining the leadership from other roles.
The reshuffling threatens to heighten tensions between postal officials and lawmakers, who are troubled by delivery delays — the Postal Service banned employees from working overtime and making extra trips to deliver mail — and wary of the Trump administration’s influence on the Postal Service as the coronavirus pandemic rages and November’s election draws near.
🐣 RT @jgeltzer Trump has a 3-pronged attack: slow postal service; urge stage legislatures to call the election failed; & discredit vote-counting post-Election Day. ¤ But states can act NOW to protect electoral integrity. @tribelaw, @jentaub, & I show how in @TheAtlantic:
⋙ TheAtlantic: Trump Has Launched a Three-Pronged Attack on the Election http://bit.ly/3gDS3MZ by Laurence Tribe, Jennifer Taub and Joshua Geltzer
// And it starts with undermining the U.S. Postal Service.
🐣 RT @CindyOtis_ I share concerns about any suggestion that Russia, China, and Iran have the same capability/intentions in influencing our election. ¤ But it’s dangerous to discount countries like China that are increasingly using disinfo against us. The IC rightly included them as a threat. [ODNI Statement] https://twitter.com/CindyOtis_/status/1291884335092637697?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @danielsgoldman This is eerily close to a quintessential cover story. Do you stand with Ukraine in the face of much greater Russian aggression?
⋙ 🐣 RT @SenRonJohnson On the 12th anniversary of Russia’s invasion of Georgia, the US continues to stand with Georgia in the face of Russian aggression. Russia must withdraw its forces to pre-conflict lines.
🧵 RT @atrupar Trump begins his August 7 Bedminster news conference with some casual xenophobia 📌 https://twitter.com/atrupar/status/1291881109907800064?s=20
NYMag, Jonathan Chait: U.S. Intelligence Says Republicans Are Working With Russia to Reelect Trump http://nym.ag/31C0UZA “In reality, it is not a scandal about Biden at all. It’s a scandal about Republican cooperation with a Russian propaganda campaign“
WaPo, Greg Sargent and Paul Waldman: Trump’s own intelligence officials just undercut efforts to smear Joe Biden http://wapo.st/3a4zI9D “Those claims about alleged Biden corruption are part of the series of claims that Johnson is pursuing in his ‘investigation.’”
President Trump’s own intelligence officials just released a statement confirming something we all know: Russia is interfering in our election with the express goal of harming Trump’s opponent, presumptive Democratic nominee Joe Biden.
But there’s another element to this surprise move that is also worth noting: In so doing, Trump’s intel officials made it a whole lot harder for Trump’s allies to push narratives they’ve been using to smear Biden.
In an interview, Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.), the chair of the House Intelligence Committee, said the new statement from the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) confirmed the need for members of Congress to be extra cautious about Russian efforts to manipulate them with disinformation.
“Members of Congress are on notice and need to be very careful not to advance narratives that may be coming from the Kremlin,” Schiff told us.
The new ODNI statement contains this judgment:
We assess that Russia is using a range of measures to primarily denigrate former Vice President Biden and what it sees as an anti-Russia “establishment.” This is consistent with Moscow’s public criticism of him when he was Vice President for his role in the Obama Administration’s policies on Ukraine and its support for the anti-Putin opposition inside Russia. For example, pro-Russia Ukrainian parliamentarian Andriy Derkach is spreading claims about corruption – including through publicizing leaked phone calls – to undermine former Vice President Biden’s candidacy and the Democratic Party. Some Kremlin-linked actors are also seeking to boost President Trump’s candidacy on social media and Russian television.
Schiff told us he sees this statement was “an improvement on previous statements, in that it discloses more information to the public.” ¤ But Schiff added: “I still don’t feel that it goes far enough in providing some of the information that the public needs and deserves.” ¤ “There’s more that the IC should be telling the public,” Schiff told us, referring to the intelligence community.
The document also contains an assessment that the government of China would prefer to see Trump lose. But critically, it does not suggest that China is actually doing anything to bring that outcome about other than publicly criticizing the Trump administration’s policy decisions.
By contrast, the statement is clear that Russia is taking active measures to undermine Biden. So you have to wonder whether the ODNI included this false equivalence with China to muddy the waters, since Trump has privately raged when intelligence officials have taken steps to inform Congress about Russia’s intention to help Trump in the election.
“The IC needs to distinguish between the intentions of these foreign powers and the actions of these foreign powers,” Schiff told us. “The China section begins by expressing a preference. The Russia section begins by assessing that Russia is actually using measures to denigrate the Vice President.”
We’re talking about Senator Ron Johnson (R-Wis.), the chair of the homeland security committee. It isn’t often that a U.S. senator has to publicly deny participating in a Russian disinformation campaign, but Johnson recently had to do just that, in connection with his committee’s “investigation” into Ukraine, Burisma, and Joe and Hunter Biden.
As you’ll note, the new ODNI statement explicitly confirms that the pro-Russian Ukrainian Andriy Derkach’s efforts to spread “claims about corruption” to “undermine” Biden’s candidacy are also part of this outside Russian interference effort.
Those claims about alleged Biden corruption are part of the series of claims that Johnson is pursuing in his “investigation.”
Johnson’s probe dredges up some stuff that we heard during Trump’s impeachment. In particular, Rudy Giuliani is acting as a conduit for a group of Ukrainians with ties to Russia who appear to be trying to feed questionable information to Johnson.
One of those people is none other than Derkach, whose father was a KGB officer and who attended the Dzerzhinsky Higher School of the KGB in Moscow.
Derkach has sent packets of anti-Biden information to American lawmakers, including Johnson. Derkach has also met with Giuliani and released pieces of recorded conversations Biden had with Ukrainian leaders as vice president.
Those recorded conversations released by Derkach are supposed to confirm a narrative in which Biden, as vice president, helped oust a Ukrainian prosecutor, supposedly as part of an effort to protect Burisma, on whose board Hunter Biden sat.
But the tapes don’t actually confirm that. Instead, they confirm what we already know, which is that Biden was working to oust a corrupt prosecutor, which was backed by international institutions. The narrative of supposed Biden corruption has been completely debunked.
This has prompted Democrats to ask whether Johnson is using the information Derkach is feeding him to discredit Biden, and to point out that if he is, Johnson may be participating in a Russian disinformation campaign.
This is also why top Democrats have pressed intelligence officials to brief Congress on what it knows about this Russian disinformation campaign, specifically on whether intelligence officials assess this information being sent to Johnson is part of that Russian effort.
Johnson has denied using information from Derkach. But he has conceded getting information from Andriy Telizhenko, a former Ukrainian diplomat who, along with Derkach, is working with Giuliani to spread the same story lines about Biden.
Yet Trump’s own intelligence officials have now tied those same narratives to a Russian disinformation effort to undermine Biden and interfere in our election. This might not dissuade Johnson from continuing to pursue his “investigation” of them, but it’ll make that investigation look a whole lot more ridiculous.
🐣 RT @MarshallCohen October 7, 2016 was a historic day. The @ODNIgov announced that Russia was meddling in the election and was behind the anti-Clinton released on WikiLeaks. Well, today was that day for 2020, with the landmark statement from ODNI on Russia, China, Iran.
⋙ CNN: Intelligence community’s top election official: China and Iran don’t want Trump to win reelection, Russia working against Biden http://cnn.it/2DmBt69
🧵 RT @jseldin NEW: @SpeakerPelosi, House Intelligence Committee Chair @RepAdamSchiff call latest public US intel #Election2020 threat assessment an improvement, but not enough ¤ “Unfortunately, today’s statement still treats 3 actors of differing intent & capability as equal threats” 📌 https://twitter.com/jseldin/status/1291859171462254594?s=20/photo/1
⋙ 🐣 RT @jseldin “The American ppl must be provided w/specific information that would allow voters to appraise for themselves the respective threats posed by these foreign actors & distinguish these actors’ different & unequal aims, current actions & capabilities” – @SpeakerPelosi @RepAdamSchiff
⋙ 🐣 RT @jseldin “We hope and expect that the Intelligence Community will be even more forthcoming with the public moving forward, & we will continue to press for greater transparency” per @SpeakerPelosi @RepAdamSchiff in statement
⋙⋙ Speaker.gov: Pelosi, Schiff Statement Following ODNI Announcement Regarding Election Security and Foreign Threats http://bit.ly/3kotBS7
NYT: Pompeo Warned Russia Against Bounties on U.S. Troops in Afghanistan http://nyti.ms/2XFJ1HZ
// Secretary of State Mike Pompeo is said to have sternly discussed payouts and red lines in a telephone call with Sergey V. Lavrov, Russia’s foreign minister.
≣ ODNI Press Release: Statement by NCSC Director William Evanina: Election Threat Update for the American Public http://bit.ly/3ii2ypO
↥ ↧
🔆 This❗️⋙ WaPo: Russia is trying to ‘denigrate’ Biden while China prefers ‘unpredictable’ Trump not be reelected http://wapo.st/2PBe3MS William Evanina, director of the National Counterintelligence and Security Center, portrayed Russia as the most active source of interference
The government of China prefers that President Trump not win reelection in November, seeing the incumbent as “unpredictable,” and Russia is using a range of measures to try to “denigrate” the president’s opponent, former vice president Joe Biden, including selective leaks of information and efforts on social media, a top U.S. intelligence official said in a statement Friday.
The statement by William Evanina, director of the National Counterintelligence and Security Center, was notable for identifying three countries seeking to influence the 2020 election — China, Russia and Iran. But he portrayed Russia as the most active source of interference. Evanina also said that a Ukrainian lawmaker who has been in contact with Rudolph W. Giuliani, Trump’s personal lawyer, is part of a Russian disinformation effort.
“[P]ro-Russia Ukrainian parliamentarian Andriy Derkach is spreading claims about corruption — including through publicizing leaked phone calls — to undermine former Vice President Biden’s candidacy and the Democratic Party,” Evanina said.
⭕ 6 Aug 2020
RollingStone, Wade Davis: The Unraveling of America http://bit.ly/2PBY0yf
// Anthropologist Wade Davis on how COVID-19 signals the end of the American era
COVID-19 didn’t lay America low; it simply revealed what had long been forsaken. As the crisis unfolded, with another American dying every minute of every day, a country that once turned out fighter planes by the hour could not manage to produce the paper masks or cotton swabs essential for tracking the disease. The nation that defeated smallpox and polio, and led the world for generations in medical innovation and discovery, was reduced to a laughing stock as a buffoon of a president advocated the use of household disinfectants as a treatment for a disease that intellectually he could not begin to understand.
📋 As a number of countries moved expeditiously to contain the virus, the United States stumbled along in denial, as if willfully blind. With less than four percent of the global population, the U.S. soon accounted for more than a fifth of COVID deaths. The percentage of American victims of the disease who died was six times the global average. Achieving the world’s highest rate of morbidity and mortality provoked not shame, but only further lies, scapegoating, and boasts of miracle cures as dubious as the claims of a carnival barker, a grifter on the make.
CNN, Jim Sciutto: Trump advisers hesitated to give military options and warned adversaries over fears he might start a war http://cnn.it/3gEP8nw
🐣 RT @benjaminwittes Ten thoughts on the situation:
(1) The last line of defense of democracy is the hearts and minds of the citizenry. Where is your heart? Where is your mind?
(2) Our political culture has developed entire industries devoted to distracting you from the big picture. Round all these distractions to zero, and retain focus on the big picture. See if you can articulate in a single sentence the stakes in this election.
(3) Now, on a scale of 1 to 10, ask yourself how much you care about the sentence you formulated for yourself in (2).
(4) Do you know the earliest day you can vote in whatever jurisdiction you are registered in?
(5) How certain are you that you are, in fact, registered at all?
(6) Learn the answer to question (4) and verify the answer to question (5) even if you think you’re sure you know.
(7) Do you know the mechanics of how to vote in your jurisdiction, step by step, during this crisis? Spend a little time to make sure. Literally millions of votes will not be counted “because people will make mistakes. Don’t give anyone the excuse the throw out your ballot.
(8) Commit to yourself to voting as early as possible and then working to make sure others are voting too.
(9) Nobody is coming to save you.
(10) You are the cavalry.
🐣 RT @EricHolder If you find your mail is delayed/late blame Trump/Dejoy. This is about politics; it’s not about poor performance by the people at the Postal Service. Dejoy is starving the Postal Service of the resources it had and still needs. It’s an anti vote by mail/privatize move. Outrageous
⋙ 🐣 RT @EricHolder Attacks on the Postal Service are designed to hurt the vote by mail process in November election. We must do all we can to support Postal Service and ensure a safe, healthy election. Everyone affected by this. Don’t make people choose between their health and their desire to vote
⋙⋙ 🐣 RT @mikeljollett This is Louis DeJoy. He is the huge Trump DONOR who Trump made the Postmaster General of the United States. He is trying to DESTROY the US Postal Service to help Trump steal an election. ¤ We need to make him famous. https://twitter.com/Mikel_Jollett/status/1289190430974738433?s=20/photo/1
🧵 RT @EllenLWeintraub I can’t be more blunt about this: Mr. President, Members of Congress, should you fail to provide the funds America needs for its elections, you will be derelict in your duty to your country. It would be a devastating failure to protect our democracy in a moment of historic need. 📌 https://twitter.com/EllenLWeintraub/status/1291388111692472320?s=20/photo/1
WaPo, Max Boot: Trump chooses for ambassador to Germany a racist Fox commentator who is pro-Putin and anti-Merkel http://wapo.st/2C9xRDW Douglas Macgregor “even thinks that Germany has gone too far in making penance for Nazi crimes”
I suppose I shouldn’t be shocked by Douglas Macgregor’s selection to be U.S. ambassador to Germany. When it comes to the appointment of officials, the Trump administration appears bent on refuting Darwin. Instead of evolution, we are seeing devolution. No matter how unqualified, dangerous or extremist an appointee, odds are that whoever comes next will be even worse.
While Tillerson was merely ineffectual, Pompeo is actively malign: helping Trump ratchet up tensions with countries such as China and Iran, while alienating U.S. allies such as Germany and South Korea — and trying to blackmail Ukraine.
Mark Meadows is a worse White House chief of staff than Reince Priebus, John F. Kelly or even Mick Mulvaney. More so than his predecessors, Meadows actively enables Trump’s worst abuses, such as tear-gassing peaceful demonstrators and mismanaging the pandemic.
Chad Wolf is a worse secretary of homeland security than Kirstjen Nielsen was. While Nielsen was willing to torment undocumented immigrants, Wolf has become Trump’s favorite because he is also eager to wage war on unarmed demonstrators.
William P. Barr is a worse attorney general than Jeff Sessions was. While Sessions appointed a special counsel to investigate the Trump campaign’s ties to Russia, Barr has appointed a U.S. attorney to investigate the investigators — and generally acted as Trump’s personal attorney.
And so we come to the choice of Macgregor, a retired Army colonel, as U.S. ambassador to Germany. If confirmed, he would succeed Richard Grenell, a right-wing Twitter troll and Trump propagandist who most recently served as acting director of national intelligence. As I noted when he was appointed in February to briefly run the U.S. intelligence community, Grenell had a reputation for dishonesty and abusive behavior online. He alienated his hosts in Berlin by loudly lecturing them, and by seeking to promote right-wing populists in Europe.
Grenell did nothing to improve Trump’s toxic relationship with Chancellor Angela Merkel, whom the president reportedly bullies and abuses. In fact, Grenell is widely seen as the architect of Trump’s recent decision to withdraw nearly 12,000 U.S. troops from Germany without consulting Berlin. Trump claims the redeployment is punishment for Germany being “very delinquent on their 2% fee to NATO.” In reality, no such fee exists (2 percent is a long-term goal set by the alliance for defense spending as a percentage of gross domestic product), and Trump is sending some of the troops to Italy and Belgium, which spend even less on defense than Germany does.
Macgregor is the last person you would choose to pour oil on these troubled waters. He would be more likely to set fire to the oil and revel in the flames.
Macgregor is a genuine war hero — he commanded a pivotal tank battle during the 1991 Gulf War — who developed a reputation as a maverick and innovator within the army. But since retiring, he has gone very far off the deep end. He is reminiscent of retired Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn, Trump’s first national security adviser who recently endorsed the QAnon cult, and retired Brig. Gen. Anthony J. Tata, who has just been appointed as acting deputy undersecretary of defense after failing to win Senate confirmation thanks to his racist rants.
Macgregor has also been an outspoken critic of Merkel’s government. He claims that Germany “seems more concerned about providing free services to millions of unwanted Muslim invaders, to be blunt, than it does about its own armed forces in the defense of its country.” He even thinks that Germany has gone too far in making penance for Nazi crimes: “There’s sort of a sick mentality that says that generations after generations must atone for the sins of what happened in 13 years of German history and ignore the other 1,500 years of Germany.”
Like Trump, Macgregor has cast doubt on the NATO alliance, saying that we should withdraw our troops in Germany and make it clear “that we are not going to be the first responder” if allies are attacked by Russia. Also like Trump, Macgregor has a disquieting tendency to echo Vladimir Putin’s propaganda. While appearing on Russia’s state-owned RT, he justified the Russian invasion of Ukraine by falsely saying that eastern and southern Ukrainians are “clearly Russian” and “should be allowed to join Russia.” By contrast, he criticized the U.S. intervention to stop the ethnic cleansing of Muslims by “Orthodox Christian Serbs in Kosovo.”
Macgregor is a racist crackpot who is pro-Russia, anti-Merkel, anti-Muslim and anti-Mexican. He has no business representing the United States in any embassy, much less in one for an important ally. But I fully expect that if Macgregor is confirmed and Trump stays in office long enough to choose a successor, whoever comes next will be even more odious.
━━━━━━━▼ Election Interference
🔆 This❗️⋙ NYT: Russia Continues Interfering in Election to Help Trump, U.S. Intelligence Says http://nyti.ms/3fFaMX8 “China [also] seeks to gain influence in American politics … [b]ut officials briefed on the intelligence said that Russia was the far graver, and more immediate, threat”
// 8/7/2020 But a new assessment says China would prefer to see the president defeated, though it is less clear how much Beijing is doing to meddle in the 2020 campaign to help Joseph R. Biden Jr.
↥ ↧
≣ ODNI Press Release: Statement by NCSC Director William Evanina: Election Threat Update for the American Public http://bit.ly/3ii2ypO
// 8/7/2020
↥ ↧
🔆 This❗️⋙ WaPo: Russia is trying to ‘denigrate’ Biden while China prefers ‘unpredictable’ Trump not be reelected http://wapo.st/2PBe3MS William Evanina, director of the National Counterintelligence and Security Center, portrayed Russia as the most active source of interference
// 8/7/2020
Politico, Andrew Desiderio and Natasha Bertrand: CIA steers clear of Senate Republican probe into Bidens http://politi.co/3igHlMO “The spy agency’s resistance comes amid intelligence officials’ deep skepticism of the probe, which is being led by Sen. Ron Johnson (R-WI)” [ ⇊ See excerpts below ⇊ ]
// 6/5/2020; The spy agency’s reluctance to engage with Sen. Ron Johnson’s panel underscores the intelligence community’s doubts about the investigation.
NYT: State Department Traces Russian Disinformation Links http://nyti.ms/30v9WrG
// 8/5/2020; A new government report avoids direct discussion of American election interference by Moscow, despite lawmakers’ call for more information.
🐣 RT @MSNBC “These reports are chilling,” Sen. Blumenthal says, discussing Russian interference in the election. “The techniques and tactics now underway by the Russians globally make their past destruction look rudimentary and quaint — in fact, … like child’s play.”
💽 https://twitter.com/MSNBC/status/1291223496455061504?s=20/photo/1
// 8/5/2020
↥ ↧
🐣 RT @SenBlumenthal In advance of the classified briefing I’ll hear later today, I reviewed classified documents this morning. They are chilling. Declassify this information. Americans deserve & need to know about ongoing foreign interference (even sabotage) in our election system.
// 8/4/2020
Politico, Natasha Bertrand and Kyle Cheney: Pelosi upbraids counterintel chief in private briefing over Russian meddling http://politi.co/3fCwxXz
// 7/31/2020; “What I’m concerned about is that the American people should be better informed,” the speaker said.
CSIS, Maggie Tennis (7/20): Russia Ramps up Global Elections Interference: Lessons for the United States http://bit.ly/2EQLJDP @SenBlumenthal
// 7/20/2020; Russian election interference 2020
Rand.org (7/14): How You Can Fight Russia’s Plans to Troll Americans During Campaign 2020 http://bit.ly/33vomtP “Everyone has the opportunity to fight Russian efforts to drive U.S. citizens to extremes before the November election”
// 7/14/2020
━━━━━━━▲
⭕ 5 Aug 2020
StateDept: Rewards for Justice – Reward Offer for Information on Foreign Interference in U.S. Elections http://bit.ly/33yQL26
The U.S. Department of State’s Rewards for Justice (RFJ) program, which is administered by the Diplomatic Security Service, is offering a reward of up to $10 million for information leading to the identification or location of any person who works with or for a foreign government for the purpose of interfering with U.S. elections through certain illegal cyber activities.
The reward offer seeks information on the identification or location of any person who, while acting at the direction of or under the control of a foreign government, interferes with any U.S. federal, state, or local election by aiding or abetting a violation of section 1030 of title 18, which relates to computer fraud and abuse. The Rewards for Justice program is administered by the Diplomatic Security Service.
Persons engaged in certain malicious cyber operations targeting election or campaign infrastructure may be subject to prosecution under the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, 18 U.S.C. § 1030, which criminalizes unauthorized computer intrusions and other forms of fraud related to computers. Among other offenses, the statute prohibits unauthorized accessing of computers to obtain information and transmit it to unauthorized recipients.
More information about this reward offer is located on the Rewards for Justice website at http://www.rewardsforjustice.net. We encourage anyone with information on foreign interference in U.S. elections to contact the Rewards for Justice office via the website or e-mail (info@rewardsforjustice.net), or contact the Regional Security Officer at the nearest U.S. embassy or consulate.
💙 WaPo: Senate Republicans advance Ukraine probe aimed at Biden despite foreign interference concerns http://wapo.st/3a11Om5 Are the documents Ukrainian Andrii Telizhenko gave to Sen. Ron Johnson (R-WI) the new “Hillary’s e-mails”?
“Senator Johnson is diverting his committee from oversight of the failing response to the pandemic — even though over 4.5 million Americans have been infected — and is instead facilitating a foreign influence operation to undermine our democracy,” Biden campaign spokesman Andrew Bates said.
Johnson’s probe is proceeding as Ukrainians with a variety of competing agendas and links to Trump attorney Rudolph W. Giuliani have been releasing apparently pilfered official conversations that Biden conducted while vice president with Ukraine’s then-President Petro Poroshenko, aiming to tarnish the presumptive Democratic nominee and his longtime interlocutor in Kyiv, as The Washington Post has previously reported.
Critics say the efforts of the Ukrainians align with the interests of certain Ukrainian oligarchs and Russia, which for years has sown doubt about cooperation between Washington and Kyiv in an effort to eject the United States from the region.
At least one of those Ukrainians, former diplomat Andrii Telizhenko, who recently released transcripts of the Biden conversations in Kyiv from an unknown source, told The Post he has been giving information to Johnson’s staff. And another Ukrainian releasing tapes, former prosecutor Kostiantyn Kulyk, last year made contact with the staff of Rep. Devin Nunes (Calif.), the top Republican on the House Intelligence Committee, according to documents released during the impeachment probe and interviews with Lev Parnas, Giuliani’s former associate. Kulyk did not respond to requests for comment. In the past, he has denied having contact with any U.S. officials.
Leading the charge in Kyiv is Andrii Derkach, a Ukrainian lawmaker previously affiliated with a Russian-leaning party. The son of a former KGB officer who later ran Ukraine’s intelligence service, Derkach was educated at the Higher School of the KGB in Moscow and met Giuliani at least twice since late last year before releasing the Biden tapes at joint news conferences with Kulyk.
[Derkach] has dubbed his Biden campaign “DemoCorruption,” complete with an English-language website and YouTube channel and a conspiratorial flowchart featuring the former vice president and financier George Soros at the center. Among other things, the chart lists influential Americans pursuing Derkach’s agenda in the United States — including Johnson and Grassley.
Derkach told The Post this month that he has sent documents to Johnson’s and Grassley’s Senate committees.
“Congress appears to be the target of a concerted foreign influence campaign, which seeks to launder and amplify disinformation in order to influence congressional activity, public debate, and the presidential election in November,” Pelosi and Schumer wrote in a July 13 letter to the FBI.
After a briefing to members of the House on Friday by U.S. intelligence officials, Pelosi said the Trump administration was refusing to share critical information about the matter with the public.
“Leader Schumer and I wrote to them and said tell the truth to the American people, and for some reason, they are withholding it,” Pelosi said. “That’s what I’m concerned about.”
Other Republican senators, including Richard Burr (R-N.C.) and Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.), have also expressed concerns about Senate staffers taking what could be Russian disinformation sent through Ukrainians and using it as the basis for a probe.
Bipartisan staff members from Johnson’s and Grassley’s panels have interviewed three witnesses — Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs George Kent, who testified during the impeachment inquiry; David Wade, who was chief of staff to then-Secretary of State John F. Kerry; and Foreign Service officer Liz Zentos, deputy political counselor at the U.S. Embassy in Afghanistan, who served as National Security Council director for Eastern Europe during the Obama administration.
The decision to interview Zentos appears to stem from an interview Telizhenko gave to journalist John Solomon, who was working closely with Giuliani last year, in which he alleged that Burisma was discussed during a White House meeting with Ukrainian officials in January 2016 at which Zentos was present.
Joshua A. Levy, a lawyer for Zentos, said she told congressional staffers that “in all of the government meetings in which she participated, she has no recollection of Burisma or Hunter Biden coming up in any of them.”
“That includes the January 2016 meeting with Ukrainian and U.S. officials she recalls attending,” Levy said in a statement.
Sen. Ron Wyden (Ore.), the top Democrat on the Finance Committee, said nothing he had seen in the current probe showed that U.S. policy toward Ukraine, which Johnson supported, changed as a result of Hunter Biden’s involvement with Burisma. Wyden said the investigation “started as an effort to distract from Donald Trump’s impeachment and has morphed into an effort to boost Donald Trump’s campaign.”
Johnson’s inquiry appears to be pursuing an allegation Giuliani has made for months but failed to prove: that Joe Biden pushed for the firing of Ukraine’s prosecutor general in late 2015 and early 2016 to help Burisma, whose owner, a former government minister from the now-defunct Russian-leaning Party of Regions, was under scrutiny by Ukrainian authorities.
In fact, at the time, Biden was the lead voice in a coalition of U.S. and European officials who were demanding the prosecutor general’s ouster for failing to go after high-level corruption cases and stalling reforms. Biden has said he never discussed the company with his son.
In a 2016 letter, one of the U.S. officials demanding reform in the Ukrainian prosecutor general’s office was Johnson.
Bates, the Biden campaign spokesman, said Johnson is “engaged in an act of stunning hypocrisy,” given that he endorsed Biden’s activities at the time and for years after.
In a statement last year, Johnson said his change in tune was not hypocritical, suggesting he may have been subject to a “misinformation campaign against the Ukrainian prosecutor general, perpetrated by representatives of the U.S. government.”
As part of their inquiry, Johnson and Grassley requested that the National Archives provide records of White House meetings with officials from the Ukrainian government and the Democratic National Committee, appearing to follow up on unsubstantiated accusations, also promoted by Giuliani, that the Democratic National Committee colluded with Ukraine to interfere in the 2016 election on Hillary Clinton’s behalf.
For years, the main proponent of that theory has been Telizhenko.
Telizhenko originally worked at the Ukrainian prosecutor general’s office, then at the Ukrainian Embassy in Washington, and later for Blue Star. More recently, he has been coordinating with Giuliani, organizing the former mayor’s trip to Kyiv in late 2019, and promoting Trump.
In the past, the former diplomat has told The Post that he has been working as a consultant with various Ukrainian tycoons and political figures, not always on a paid basis, but more recently he said he had temporarily dropped his clients.
Originally, Telizhenko appeared on track to serve as a key witness in Johnson’s inquiry, but Sen. Mitt Romney (R-Utah) withheld support for subpoenaing him.
Earlier this year, the committee staff received a classified briefing regarding Telizhenko that raised significant questions, according to U.S. officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe the confidential session.
Telizhenko said that Democrats on the committee “tried to politicize some information that they had on file.” He said he has been providing information voluntarily.
In an interview with The Post earlier this year in Kyiv, Telizhenko said he has been keeping in touch with U.S. officials and people close to Congress and the White House, whom he declined to identify, as well as Giuliani.
At the same time, back in Kyiv, Telizhenko also has been publishing transcripts of private taped conversations Biden had with Poroshenko.
Telizhenko originally told The Post he received tapes of the calls from a former top Ukrainian official close to Poroshenko, whom he declined to name, but later said he obtained the tapes from “a journalistic source connected to the government.”
In the WISN interview Sunday, Johnson said the committee was going to subpoena records only from when Telizhenko worked for Blue Star, the U.S. lobbying firm that Burisma hired. “How could that be Russian disinformation?” Johnson asked.
But earlier this year, Telizhenko told The Post he had forwarded more than 100 old emails to Johnson’s staff, including messages from his time at the Ukrainian Embassy to and from members of the White House National Security Council. He said he also had been answering questions posed by Johnson’s staff.
Telizhenko has said he isn’t operating in conjunction with Derkach, the Ukrainian lawmaker who began leaking some of the same tapes at the same time. Derkach has said he received the tapes from “investigative journalists.”
In recent months, Derkach has been publishing portions of the tapes — which are unverified and appear to be heavily edited — during joint news conferences with Kulyk, the former Ukrainian prosecutor who was introduced to Nunes’s staff by Parnas last year.
Derkach, who visited the United States as recently as February to meet with Giuliani, said in March that the State Department revoked his U.S. visa, suggesting the U.S. government has been keeping tabs on his work.
In an interview with The Post, Murphy said that the intelligence community knows a lot about what Russia is trying to do to interfere in the 2020 election, and “there’s no reason for that information not to be made public before the election.”
If the administration has information connecting Derkach’s actions to Russia, Murphy said, “then it is nearly treasonous for them not to disclose that fact to the American public before the election.”
↥ ↧
💙 Politico, Andrew Desiderio and Natasha Bertrand: CIA steers clear of Senate Republican probe into Bidens http://politi.co/3igHlMO “The spy agency’s resistance comes amid intelligence officials’ deep skepticism of the probe, which is being led by Sen. Ron Johnson (R-WI)”
// The spy agency’s reluctance to engage with Sen. Ron Johnson’s panel underscores the intelligence community’s doubts about the investigation.
The spy agency’s resistance comes amid intelligence officials’ deep skepticism of the probe, which is being led by Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) and focuses on Hunter Biden’s role on the board of the Ukrainian energy company Burisma. Democrats argue the investigation is based on Russian disinformation aimed at tipping the outcome of the election toward President Donald Trump — a charge Johnson rejects.
Some intelligence officials similarly fear the Biden probe will only boost the Russian intervention. And while the motivations of the CIA are not certain, Johnson is considered “toxic” by some members of the intelligence community, according to people with direct knowledge of the dynamic.
The agency’s reluctance to engage with the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, which Johnson chairs, underscores the intelligence community’s doubts about the probe. And while it is unlikely to deter Johnson from moving forward, it could give Democrats more support as they seek to rebut Trump and GOP allegations that Biden is corrupt.
“There is a significant trust gap there,” said one current national security official. “At what point does someone turn from an ‘unwitting’ participant in that to a witting one?” [Re: Johnson]
The official added that enough is known about certain bad actors that it should be “out of the question to consider their information legitimate investigative material,” referring to the Ukrainians who have sought to feed information to Johnson and other Trump allies on Capitol Hill.
Democrats first called for the briefings in March, when the FBI’s Foreign Influence Task Force briefed committee staffers about Andrii Telizhenko, a Ukrainian who has amplified disputed claims about coordination between Kyiv and the Democratic National Committee in 2016. Johnson was set to subpoena Telizhenko, but he scrapped plans for a committee vote on the matter after the briefing, according to sources familiar with the matter.
The day before, FBI Director Christopher Wray had briefed all senators in a classified setting about election security. POLITICO previously reported that Democratic senators pressed him about Telizhenko in the context of Russia’s efforts to sow disinformation in American politics, including about whether Telizhenko was a willing partner in the Kremlin-backed campaign.
The briefing was described as “combative” and “personal” by attendees, who said Johnson engaged directly with some of his detractors in the Senate as he sought to defend his investigation.
More recently, though, as Johnson has sought to highlight, all senators have received briefings from the intelligence community on threats to the integrity of the 2020 vote. Those briefings have touched on Telizhenko and Andrii Derkach, a Ukrainian lawmaker who has sent information about the Bidens to Trump allies on Capitol Hill, including Johnson.
Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe and other national security and intelligence officials briefed senators on Monday about election security and foreign influence, and they appeared to signal that they were preparing to disclose more information to the public about Russia’s intentions.
The House received a similar briefing last week, during which William Evanina, director of the National Counterintelligence and Security Center, acknowledged that Russia is again trying to boost Trump’s reelection and denigrate his Democratic opponent.
Pelosi told CNN on Monday morning that it “could be unwitting on [Johnson’s] part — I don’t know what he knows. That’s why we want the intelligence community to tell the American people what they know, not jeopardizing sources and methods.”
“There is plenty they could be telling the American people,” Pelosi said, “and including the United States senators who may be associating with some of these people.”
NYT: State Department Traces Russian Disinformation Links http://nyti.ms/30v9WrG
// 8/5/2020; A new government report avoids direct discussion of American election interference by Moscow, despite lawmakers’ call for more information.
🐣 RT @MSNBC “These reports are chilling,” Sen. Blumenthal says, discussing Russian interference in the election. “The techniques and tactics now underway by the Russians globally make their past destruction look rudimentary and quaint — in fact, … like child’s play.”
💽 https://twitter.com/MSNBC/status/1291223496455061504?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @ResisterSis20 On November 3rd, you’re the jury in the case of The People versus Donald Trump.’ ¤ Born with a silver spoon, Trump has never been held accountable. ¤ No more. There will be #ConsequencesForTrump ¤ Pass it on.@donwinslow 💽 https://twitter.com/ResisterSis20/status/1291142429446483968?s=20/photo/1
// Don Winslow ad❣ Consequences for Trump
WaPo, Greg Sargent: If Biden wins, the post-Trump corruption purge will have to be epic http://wapo.st/3fyO6YP “A new report from the Democratic-allied Center for American Progress … offers a suggested road map”
⋙ AmProg: How a Future President Can Hold the Trump Administration Accountable http://ampr.gs/2XuEGqQ
⋙⋙ 📔 AmProg, Sam Berger: How a Future President Can Hold the Trump Administration Accountable [pdf] http://ampr.gs/31iMD3E 12p; “If the rule of law is to have any meaning, it is incumbent on a future administration to make clear that it applies to everyone”
// 8/6/2020
WaPo: Ex-DOJ official says Michael Flynn secretly ‘neutered’ Obama’s moves on Russia http://wapo.st/3fyHrxy “Seeking to use Yates to discredit the FBI’s investigations around the 2016 Trump campaign, Republicans instead got a spirited defense of that work as ethical & necessary”
// Republicans called former deputy attorney general Sally Yates to testify about the Russia investigation.
NYT, Ryan Goodman and Andrew Weissmann: James Comey Wrote a Letter in 2016. What Will Bill Barr Do? http://nyti.ms/2EYpz2R ‘What can be done if Mr. Barr seeks to take actions in service of the president’s political ambitions? Employees asked to participate can refuse’
// Two investigations appear to be potential fodder for pre-election political machinations.
WaPo: State Department watchdog resigns in another shake-up at IG’s office http://wapo.st/2C63qys
🧵 RT @moscow_project In testimony before the Senate today, Sally Yates thoroughly shut down Trump’s half-rate Flynn conspiracy theories. Again. 📌 https://twitter.com/moscow_project/status/1291036096252567558?s=20
⋙⋙ Politico: Yates says Obama, Biden didn’t influence Flynn investigation http://politi.co/33vFaRl
// The testimony counters repeated insinuations by President Donald Trump and his top allies.
⋙ 🐣 RT @moscow_project “Yates corrected Graham for incorrectly asserting that the FBI had closed its case on Flynn before it interviewed him on 1/24/2017. She also called it highly irregular that DOJ recently dropped the case against Flynn, who reversed course and sought to withdraw his guilty plea”
⋙ 🐣 RT @moscow_project Yates has been consistent about Flynn since the beginning. Lindsey Graham’s partisan tricks just couldn’t hold up against her
⋙ 🐣 RT @moscow_project Yates on interference: “This is not just something that happened in the past. This is happening right now as we sit here today.”
⋙ 🐣 RT @moscow_project Yates: “Let’s be really clear on this– this was an attack on our democracy. And this attack was absolutely unprecedented. The Russians were coming at us through multiple means.”
🧵 RT @ericgarland
// Sally Yates hearing ⇈ ⇊
🧵 RT @atrupar 🤔🤔🤔 📌 https://twitter.com/atrupar/status/1291016466914041857?s=20
// Sally Yates hearing ⇈ ⇊
🧵 RT @emptywheel Tuned into the Yates hearing for a whole 2 minutes thus far, and thus far Yates has had to correct Lindsey 5 times for calling the Kislyak intercept an investigation.
📌 https://twitter.com/emptywheel/status/1291024319469039620?s=20
// Sally Yates hearing ⇈ ⇊
🧵 RT @kyledcheney Just as GRAHAM says Sally Yates appeared to act properly, Trump says she has no credibility. 📌 https://twitter.com/kyledcheney/status/1291015749117652993?s=20
🐣 RT @Heidi_Cuda CORROSIVE POWER: My interview with money laundering expert Martin Sheil, who spent 30 years as an IRS investigator, retiring as a Supervisory Special Agent in the Criminal Investigation Division. ¤ Read on for Q & A on Trump’s taxes, why the rich crave secrecy and corrosive power.
// 12/29/2019; tags: Trump’s tax returns DeutscheBank tax shelters Russian oligarchs money laundering
⭕ 4 Aug 2020
📋 CNN, Marshall Cohen: 37 times Trump was soft on Russia http://cnn.it/3j7X6WQ
★ MedScape: Lessons Lost: How ‘Outbreak Culture’ Is Shaping the COVID Response http://bit.ly/2DPjTYa Interview with journalist Lara Salahi who, with evolutionary geneticist Pardis Sabeti, MD, from Harvard, wrote Outbreak Culture: The Ebola Crisis and the Next Epidemic
In examining the Ebola outbreak and other major outbreaks around the world — SARS, MERS, AIDS, but also smaller ones — we found a pattern in outbreak response. Regardless of the pathogen, early in the outbreak, the response is driven by overriding fear or politics rather than science or public health. That pattern is what we call “outbreak culture.”
In outbreak culture, the pathogen becomes the backdrop to advancing agendas amid competing interests and misaligned incentives, which can lead to inconsistencies in response efforts. Sometimes, outbreak culture helps propagate the epidemic rather than mitigate it.
An outbreak is a crucible—a melding of forces in this intense, high-stakes, pressure-filled environment. There are so many unknowns. The environment is volatile. The situation is rapidly evolving. After the outbreak, we’ll have clarity on a lot of what went wrong and what we can do better. But we have to acknowledge that during the outbreak [itself], there is going to be fear and we’ll be making decisions based on things we don’t know. …
Much as in the Ebola epidemic, the seriousness of [the COVID-19] pandemic was initially downplayed, which resulted in certain public health measures being overlooked.
Another parallel we saw is the lack of preparedness — shortages and inadequate levels of equipment needed for frontline healthcare workers to do their job.If we continue to see outbreaks as a political issue rather than a humanitarian one, we’re going to keep responding to them that way. Outbreak culture won’t change without shifting to a culture of preparedness.
There are bad actors in any outbreak scenario because there’s a lot at stake. People can use fear to interpret data and dictate policy. But I think it’s indulging outbreak culture to place blame on one group or another; the U.S. withdrawal from the World Health Organization (WHO) plays into outbreak culture, for example. …
🐣 RT @SenBlumenthal In advance of the classified briefing I’ll hear later today, I reviewed classified documents this morning. They are chilling. Declassify this information. Americans deserve & need to know about ongoing foreign interference (even sabotage) in our election system.
NYT, Charlie Warzel: Is QAnon the Most Dangerous Conspiracy Theory of the 21st Century? http://nyti.ms/2PrI55p
// “It’s a collaborative fiction built on wild speculation that hardens into reality.”
🐣 RT @MSNBC “He is not confronting reality when it comes to the virus,” @jonathanvswan says of Pres. Trump. “He is reaching for data points that are good for publicity, or sound good, but are not actually the best metrics for revealing what’s going on.”
⋙ 💽 MSNBC, LastWord: Jonathan Swan: Trump is not confronting reality about coronavirus http://on.msnbc.com/30txsW7
// Axios National Political Reporter Jonathan Swan, who conducted a stunning interview of President Trump, tells Ali Velshi that Donald Trump is “reaching for data points that are good for publicity but not the best metric for revealing what is going on in this country.”
🐣 RT @RBReich If Trump loses big, he’ll quit before the inauguration. Pence then pardons him of all crimes he might be found to have committed, like Gerald Ford did for Nixon.
⋙ 🐣 I think he’ll continue to dismantle institutions and norms until the last possible moment ~ that is, if he doesn’t call his followers to armed insurrection
🧵 RT @Teri_Kanefield (Thread) Voter Suppression is Coming Your Way⚠️ ¤ In her daily newsletter, @HC_Richardson explained the problem ⤵️ ¤ Trump (and everyone else) knows he will lose the popular vote. ¤ So the Trump-GOP plan is to put lots of barriers in the way of voters. Text Block: https://twitter.com/Teri_Kanefield/status/1290790927087222784?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @tribelaw I wouldn’t put this past him. This kind of low-blow, unethical, baseless, late-October attack on Biden would be exactly Barr’s style. He’s basically signaled that this is what he’s planning with Durham’s help. We’ve got to inoculate the country against that sick sort of attack.
⋙ 🐣 RT @JoyceWhiteVance Given Barr’s history with misrepresenting the Mueller Report, he could come out late-October with scathing, untrue allegations about Biden who wouldn’t have time to respond. DOJ policies prohibits actions that could influence elections but Barr signaled he’s not bound by them.
⋙⋙ 🐣 RT @jgeltzer The scariest thing Attorney General Barr told Congress this week wasn’t about his past interference in the Flynn or Stone cases. ¤ It was about the Durham investigation & Barr’s plan to use it to influence the November election. ¤ @rgoodlaw & I explain: WaPo: http://wapo.st/3fkZqHQ
💙 🐣 RT @chrislhayes hey this is super nuts and dangerous and also probably wrong, but sure, just wing it about their being a massive attack in the heart of the middle east
⋙ 🐣 RT @ddale8 Asked if he’s confident this was an attack and not an accident, Trump says, “It would seem like it, based on the explosion.” He says he met with some “great generals” and they “seem to feel” that it was an attack. He then adds it was a “bomb of some kind.” ?
⋙⋙ 🐣 RT @ddale8 Note of caution: The president has repeatedly fabricated alleged conversations with “generals” and many others.
⋙⋙ 🐣 RT @RicoSoaveJD Yeah, the Lebanese officials are saying the opposite.
⋙⋙⋙ 🐣 RT @BillNeelyNBC BREAKING: Lebanese Prime Minister says #Beirut explosions caused by an estimated 2,750 tons of ammonium nitrate left unsecured for 6 years in a warehouse. He vows to punish officials responsible. 50+ dead, 3,000 injured, hospitals overwhelmed.
⋙⋙⋙⋙ 🐣 RT @wfpetrie2 If I have read the analysis correctly, 2700 tons of ammonium nitrate=over 1100 tons of TNT. So this would be the equivalent of a 1.1 kiloton nuclear warhead. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TNT_equivalent
⭕ 3 Aug 2020
Politico: Trump claims right to issue executive order on vote-by-mail http://politi.co/3gtUaCX “… in spite of the Constitution’s expressly giving states the right to run their elections”
// The president, who is trailing Joe Biden in the polls, did not elaborate on what any such order would entail.
CBSNews: Manhattan DA cites reports of “protracted criminal conduct” at Trump Organization in bid for records http://cbsn.ws/3ka3LRJ Manhattan DA Cyrus Vance suggested the investigation extends beyond hush-money payments made to two women ahead of the 2016 election
Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance was sent following a Supreme Court ruling last month, New York prosecutors suggested the grand jury investigation into Mr. Trump and his business dealings extends beyond hush-money payments made to an adult film actress and model before the 2016 presidential election.
TheIndependent [UK]: Trump will use emergency powers to remain in White House if he loses election, says House majority whip James Clyburn http://bit.ly/3gD5sVu
// President has previously floated idea of delaying 2020 vote
Donald Trump could use emergency powers to extend his term in the White House, a senior Democrat has said, as fears grow that the president may attempt to hold onto office should he lose November’s election.
James Clyburn, the House majority whip, said he believes Trump has no intention of “peacefully” transferring power to presumptive Democratic candidate Joe Biden, who is well ahead in several major polls in the race for the Oval Office.
“I don’t think he plans to leave the White House,” Mr Clyburn, the Democrat Rep. for South Carolina, told CNN on Sunday. “He doesn’t plan to have fair and unfettered elections. I believe that he plans to install himself in some kind of emergency way to continue to hold onto office.”
WaPo: Prosecutor calls Trump’s new bid to shield tax returns an end-run around Supreme Court ruling http://wapo.st/2XoHmpU
WaPo, George T Conway III: Trump’s name should live in infamy http://wapo.st/2DggpOx “[H]e should be remembered, if at all, for precisely what he was — not a president, but a blundering cheat”
WaPo, Paul Waldman: Democrats are threatening to expand the Supreme Court. Good. http://wapo.st/3i0QhGb
AP: Prosecutor seeking Trump’s taxes cites probe of his business http://bit.ly/33nSw24 “… citing public reports of ‘extensive and protracted criminal conduct at the Trump Organization’”
NYT: D.A. Is Investigating Trump and His Company Over Fraud, Filing Suggests http://nyti.ms/3k71PJD
// The office of the district attorney, Cyrus R. Vance Jr., made the disclosure in a new court filing arguing Mr. Trump’s accountants should turn over his tax returns.
⭕ 2 Aug 2020
🚫 WaPo: How the Trump campaign came to court QAnon, the online conspiracy movement identified by the FBI as a violent threat http://wapo.st/33m6EJo
// don’t want to amplify
CNN: Trump directed controversial Pentagon pick into new role with similar duties after nomination failed http://cnn.it/2BQ7imS His new title is “the official Performing the Duties of [the position the Senate refuses to confirm him for]” ~ an blatant affront to balance of powers
Retired Army Brig. Gen. Anthony Tata has formally withdrawn his nomination to be the Defense Department undersecretary of defense for policy and has been designated “the official Performing the Duties of the Deputy Undersecretary of Defense for Policy reporting to the Acting Undersecretary of Defense for Policy Dr. James Anderson,” a Pentagon spokesperson said in a statement.
When the nomination hearing for Tata was canceled Thursday, President Donald Trump told aides the plan was to put him in a position he could have without a confirmation hearing, according to a source familiar with the discussions. The role he’ll be in now is essentially the deputy of the role he had been nominated for.
In several tweets from 2018, Tata said that Islam was the “most oppressive violent religion I know of” and claimed former President Barack Obama was a “terrorist leader” who did more to harm the US “and help Islamic countries than any president in history.” Following the publication of KFile’s story, Tata deleted several of his tweets, screenshots of which were captured by KFile.
Tata, in one radio appearance, speculated the Iran deal was born out of Obama’s “Islamic roots” in an attempt “to help Iranians and the greater Islamic state crush Israel.”
He also lashed out at prominent Democratic politicians and the media on Twitter, such as California Reps. Maxine Waters and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who he said “have always been the same violent extremists.” In another tweet, Tata called Waters a “vicious race baiting racist.” He used a hashtag in a different tweet that insinuated CNN anchor Don Lemon was on “the liberal plantation.”
⭕ 1 Aug 2020
🐣 RT @stengel Let’s see, it’s safe to mail Social Security checks, prescription drugs, and your driver’s license, but not to vote? Undermining the USPS is the backdoor of undermining the election. Support USPS.
⋙ NYT: Mail Delays Fuel Concern Trump Is Undercutting Postal System Ahead of Voting http://nyti.ms/3fn5vDJ
// The president’s long campaign against the Postal Service is intersecting with his assault on mail-in voting amid concerns that he has politicized oversight of the agency.
Members of Congress and state officials in both parties rejected the president’s suggestion and his claim that mail-in ballots would result in widespread fraud. But they are warning that a huge wave of ballots could overwhelm mail carriers unless the Postal Service, in financial difficulty for years, receives emergency funding that Republicans are blocking during negotiations over another pandemic relief bill.
At the same time, the mail system is being undercut in ways set in motion by Mr. Trump. Fueled by animus for Jeff Bezos, the founder of Amazon, and surrounded by advisers who have long called for privatizing the post office, Mr. Trump and his appointees have begun taking cost-cutting steps that appear to have led to slower and less reliable delivery.
In recent weeks, at the direction of a Trump campaign megadonor who was recently named the postmaster general, the service has stopped paying mail carriers and clerks the overtime necessary to ensure that deliveries can be completed each day. That and other changes have led to reports of letters and packages being delayed by as many as several days. ¤ Voting rights groups say it is a recipe for disaster.
During his eulogy on Thursday for Representative John Lewis, former President Barack Obama lamented what he said was a continuing effort to attack voting rights “with surgical precision, even undermining the Postal Service in the run-up to an election that is going to be dependent on mailed-in ballots so people don’t get sick.”
Louis DeJoy, the postmaster general, defended the changes, saying in a statement that the ban on overtime was intended to “improve operational efficiency” and to “ensure that we meet our service standards.”
The president has repeatedly blamed Mr. Bezos, who is also the owner of The Washington Post, for the financial plight of the Postal Service, insisting that the post office charges Amazon too little, an assertion that many experts have rejected as false.
Two board members have since departed. David C. Williams, the vice chairman, left in April over concerns that the Postal Service was becoming increasingly politicized by the Trump administration, according to two people familiar with his thinking. Ronald Stroman, who oversaw mail-in voting and relations with election officials, resigned in May. ¤ One of the remaining members, Robert M. Duncan, is a former Republican National Committee chairman who has been a campaign donor to Mr. Trump.
🚫‼️ 🐣 RT @LincolnsBible Reporting yesterday in Vanity Fair that Jared’s solution for keeping his father-in-law in power was to let COVID-19 ravage blue states. ¤ His logic is twisted & ignorant, as are both men. ¤ Jared also seized tests & PPE, via FEMA, 2 advance his solution. ¤ It’s mass murder. ¤ Charge him.
// inflammatory
WaPo: The Lincoln Project’s plan for preserving the union: Drive Trump out of office by driving him nuts http://wapo.st/31dNJ0J “The ads are slick, scathing and more shocking than anything Joe Biden’s official campaign has produced”
// George Conway and a team of Republican activists are creating the most talked-about ads of the 2020 campaign.
“Donald Trump is so completely at odds with every institution in America and so completely at odds with anything that the Republican Party allegedly stood for: the rule of law, constitutional fealty, institutions, norms, traditions, all of those things are out the window,” says Rick Wilson, a co-founder of the group. “So you’re either going to make a choice between Trump or this country. We made the choice for the country, even if it doesn’t immediately seem to fit with all of our ideological or political priors.”
Pick your motto: Politics makes strange bedfellows. The enemy of my enemy is my friend. Desperate times call for desperate measures.
“I’ll be really honest with you: My time horizon is the election,” says Charlie Sykes, a conservative political commentator who is not part of the Lincoln Project but wants to see Trump voted out. “I feel like the house is burning. I want to put out the fire. I’m going to worry about the redecorating later.”
Three of the Lincoln Project founders — Wilson, Steve Schmidt and George T. Conway III — sat down this week to talk about their motives and their methodology. Wilson and Schmidt are longtime hired guns for Republican candidates (George W. Bush, John McCain and many more); Conway, a lawyer and spouse of presidential adviser Kellyanne Conway, has a long career representing Republican clients.
Schmidt is the firebrand, furious and effusive. Wilson is shrewd and sly. And Conway is fiercely protective of the Constitution, which he feels Trump has repeatedly violated.
The three didn’t know each other well before December, when they founded the group — named after the president who “led the United States through its bloodiest, most divisive and most decisive period of our history” — but bonded over their disillusionment with Trump. Conway and Wilson were both deeply influenced by the book “Trump on the Couch” by psychiatrist Justin A. Frank.
“Trump is a narcissist and he cannot help but react to threats to his delicate psyche,” explains Conway. “He is a very sensitive, weak human being who cannot take criticism.” The other factor, he adds, is that “he can’t think ahead. He merely reacts to things. And what we do is take advantage of both of those psychological defects.”
The group approaches its task with a military precision, with a few dozen staffers churning out new videos overnight. “We don’t mess around,” says Wilson. “It’s this concept of moving faster than your enemy’s ability to decide to act in a battle.”
You can call it trolling, and it is: The Lincoln Project buys ad time in Washington and Bedminster for an audience of one. “He is a creature who exists only on television, the Chauncey Gardiner of our time,” says Wilson, evoking the movie “Being There.” “The fact that we’re able to use his mental infirmity and addiction to television to freeze him and manipulate him serves a broader purpose for the overall campaign in terms of taking him off message, disorganizing and disorienting him.”
Sarah Longwell, founder of Republican Voters Against Trump, has taken a different tack. Her group has collected hundreds of testimonials from 2016 Trump voters who are planning to vote for Biden in 2020 and is using the $13 million they’ve raised — a droplet in the sea of campaign spending — to air them in swing states.
Now the [Lincoln Project] has expanded its operations to Senate races around the country — targeting Susan Collins, Joni Ernst, Thom Tillis and Lindsey O. Graham — to drum out Republican enablers. The group has also pledged to pour money into vote-by-mail education and assistance.
“You can’t take your foot off the gas, but he’s going to lose and he’s going to lose big,” says Conway. “The reason why I’m confident of that is not because of the polls, but because of his essential nature, his self-destructive nature. He doesn’t know how to handle the current situation. He can’t lie his way out of it anymore. And if we keep the pressure on, keep doing what we’re doing, he’s going to dig himself deeper.”
WaPo, Joshua Geltzer and Ryan Goodman: Barr may try to spin his ‘investigation’ before the election. Don’t believe him. http://wapo.st/3fkZqHQ ‘Barr has a history of mischaracterizing and even lying about the results of investigations like Robert S. Mueller III’s investigation’ ● Text Block: https://twitter.com/Auriandra/status/1289641251432628224?s=20/photo/1
// The attorney general has previously mischaracterized a government report ahead of time
There were several other flat-out lies by Barr during the course of those events: He misrepresented the role that the Justice Department’s view that a sitting president can’t be indicted had played in how Mueller approached his work, claiming it hadn’t constrained Mueller’s conclusions when Mueller clearly said it had; he told Congress he was unaware that Mueller’s team was upset with his summary of their report, when in fact Mueller had conveyed his concern and frustration to Barr in writing; and he declared that the White House had “fully cooperated” with Mueller, when Trump refused to testify under oath, sit down for an interview or answer a whole set of questions.
WaPo, Alexander Vindman: Coming forward ended my career. I still believe doing what’s right matters. http://wapo.st/3fj9st8 “At no point in my career or life have I felt our nation’s values under greater threat and in more peril than at this moment”
At no point in my career or life have I felt our nation’s values under greater threat and in more peril than at this moment. Our national government during the past few years has been more reminiscent of the authoritarian regime my family fled more than 40 years ago than the country I have devoted my life to serving.
Our citizens are being subjected to the same kinds of attacks tyrants launch against their critics and political opponents. Those who choose loyalty to American values and allegiance to the Constitution over devotion to a mendacious president and his enablers are punished. The president recklessly downplayed the threat of the pandemic even as it swept through our country. The economic collapse that followed highlighted the growing income disparities in our society. Millions are grieving the loss of loved ones and many more have lost their livelihoods while the president publicly bemoans his approval ratings.
… I remain hopeful for the future for both my family and for our nation. Impeachment exposed Trump’s corruption, but the confluence of a pandemic, a financial crisis and the stoking of societal divisions has roused the soul of the American people. A groundswell is building that will issue a mandate to reject hate and bigotry and a return to the ideals that set the United States apart from the rest of the world. I look forward to contributing to that effort.
To this day, despite everything that has happened, I continue to believe in the American Dream. I believe that in America, right matters. I want to help ensure that right matters for all Americans.
⭕ 31 Jul 2020
WaPo, Norman Eisen: The moment impeachment managers realized how corrupt Trump’s defense was http://wapo.st/3ggMIuZ The article is adapted from the new best seller “A Case for the American People: The United States v. Donald J. Trump”
// impeachment trial Pat Philbin Jerrold Nadler Adam Schiff; The White House claimed it hadn’t been given rights it had refused to use.
Nadler rose and blasted Trump’s lawyers: “They lie, and lie and lie and lie.” He explained that they didn’t want the Senate to hear from Bolton “because they know he knows too much.” And then he lit into the senators themselves, warning that the Senate was “on trial in the eyes of the American people.” Voting against testimony from Bolton and other witnesses was “voting for a coverup” and “obviously a treacherous vote.”
As Nadler returned to our table, all hell broke loose, with Trump’s counsel furiously arguing back and Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine) complaining to Chief Justice John Roberts, who ultimately reprimanded both sides. Nadler kept his face studiously neutral through it all. As he pointed out to me and Berke in a low voice, “It is treacherous and they are lying.”
🐣 RT @Amy_Siskind Anyway TikTok is a shiny coin to distract us from the 155,000 dead and no plan, -33% GDP, Russia bounty and interfering, Epstein, postponing our election, gassing Americans in PDX, corruption, and so on. ¤ Send your one tweet and move back to what he doesn’t want us focused on.
// on Trump saying he’ll ban TikTok
⋙ 🐣 RT @educated_educ8r He can’t do it anyways. They are a private company and from the U.K., right? Trump is just incredibly scared of losing in November. Very scared.
🐣 RT @AstorAaron But I was told the protestors would burn the courthouse down once the Feds left. Turns out, the protests died down when the agitators – the Feds – left. It’s almost like Trump was the chaos agent.
⋙ WaPo: Trump ordered federal forces to quell Portland protests. But the chaos ended as soon as they left. http://wapo.st/39PX1DR
🐣 RT @businessinsider Kushner’s axed coronavirus team shied away from a national strategy, believing the virus was hitting Democratic states hardest and they could blame the governors, report says
‼️ ⋙ BusinessInsider: Kushner’s axed coronavirus team shied away from a national strategy, believing the virus was hitting Democratic states hardest and they could blame the governors http://bit.ly/3hUWQtL //➔ So, iow, they were fine with COVID-19 killing Democrats
// Parts of Kushner’s COVID-19 team thought it was better to leave Democrat-voting areas to their fate, according to a source who spoke to Vanity Fair.
⋙ 🐣 RT @TheFirstKingAI This says everything you need to know about Trump and his family’s mentality. They were willing to let you die because they thought it would be a good political move. There was no national strategy because they thought it would be only liberals suffering.
⋙ 🐣 RT @ronmcd1969 A criminal act resulting in untold suffering and thousands of unnecessary deaths. Trump administration now entering the Pol Pot and Stalin levels of belligerence.
⋙⋙ 🐣 “belligerence” ~ you misspelled “murder”
⭕ 30 Jul 2020
DailyKos (Jul): Trump’s October Surprise: Obama’s Vaccine http://bit.ly/3kD9kqI ‘Operation Warp Speed is not a Trump invention. It’s a rebranding of an Obama initiative to develop new rapid response vaccine platforms for the viral challenges that epidemiologists knew were coming’
// 7/30/2020, by docmidwest; Obama initiative to develop new vaccine platforms capable of rapid response
The vaccine work of Moderna, the first US vaccine developer to get to Phase 3 trials, was jump-started under Obama by a $25M 2013 DARPA grant and a 2016 BARDA grant ( > $8M). Rumor has it (I don’t have documentation) that Obama personally asked a group of scientists if they were really still culturing vaccines in chicken eggs, and whether they could develop something much better. That’s how the mRNA vaccine work got off the ground.
WaPo, Joe Scarborough: You have echoed lies and defended demagoguery. It must sting to still be defending Trump. http://wapo.st/315RyEX “None dare call it treason, but perhaps one day they will.”
// Addressed to Republicans
NYT, Alexander Burns: Trump Attacks an Election He Is at Risk of Losing http://nyti.ms/
// Mr. Trump has become a heckler in his own government, failing to marshal leaders in Washington to form a robust response to the health and economic crises. Instead, he is raising doubts about holding the election on time.
For several years, it has been the stuff of his opponents’ nightmares: that President Trump, facing the prospect of defeat in the 2020 election, would declare by presidential edict that the vote had been delayed or canceled.
Never mind that no president has that power, that the timing of federal elections has been fixed since the 19th century and that the Constitution sets an immovable expiration date on the president’s term. Given Mr. Trump’s contempt for the legal limits on his office and his oft-expressed admiration for foreign dictators, it hardly seemed far-fetched to imagine he would at least attempt the gambit.
The most powerful leaders in Congress immediately shot down the idea of moving the election, including the top figures in Mr. Trump’s own party.
“Never in the history of the country, through wars, depressions, and the Civil War have we ever not had a federally scheduled election on time, and we’ll find a way to do that again this Nov. 3,” Mitch McConnell, the Senate Majority Leader, said in an interview with WNKY television in Kentucky. “We’ll cope with whatever the situation is and have the election on Nov. 3 as already scheduled.”
Faced with the kind of economic wreckage besieging millions of Americans, any other president would be shoulder-deep in the process of marshaling his top lieutenants and leaders in Congress to form a robust government response. Instead, Mr. Trump has been absent this week from economic-relief talks, even as a crucial unemployment benefit is poised to expire and the Federal Reserve chairman, Jerome H. Powell, warned publicly that the country’s recovery is lagging.
And any other president confronted with a virulent viral outbreak across huge regions of the country would be at least trying to deliver a clear and consistent message about public safety. Instead, Mr. Trump has continued to promote a drug of no proven efficacy, hydroxychloroquine, as a potential miracle cure, and to demand that schools and businesses reopen quickly — even as he has also claimed that it might be impossible to hold a safe election.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, the most powerful Democrat in government, replied to Mr. Trump’s tweet simply by posting on Twitter the language from the Constitution stating that Congress, not the president, sets the date of national elections. Representative Zoe Lofgren of California, a Democrat who chairs the congressional committee that oversees elections, suggested in no uncertain terms that Mr. Trump’s tweet was another symptom of his inability to master the coronavirus.
The timing of Mr. Trump’s tweet, as much as the content, highlighted the extent to which he has become a loud but isolated figure in government, and in the public life of the country. In addition to failing to devise a credible national response to the coronavirus pandemic, he has not played the traditional presidential role of calming the country in moments of fear and soothing it in moments of grief.
Never was that more apparent than on Thursday, when Mr. Trump spent the morning posting a combination of incendiary and pedestrian tweets, while his three immediate predecessors — Barack Obama, George W. Bush and Bill Clinton — gathered in Atlanta for the funeral of John Lewis, the congressman and civil rights hero.
🐣 RT @tatatfender 91% of Ukrainians identify themselves ethnically as Ukrainian, 4% – as Russian, – KIIS poll, June 2020
🐣 RT @ifindkarma Cambridge Analytica has reincarnated as #DataPropria. ¤ Just in time to mess with the 2020 election, concurrent with Palantir and Michael Caputo manipulating our national COVID19 data.
⋙ 🐣 RT @ifindkarma “For Trump 2020 the band is back together. Cambridge Analytica chief data scientist Matt Oczkowski launched new firm Data Propria… Trump is testing limits… Can he spread mail-in fraud lies [and] threaten #BlackLivesMatter protesters with violence? Yes.” [ link to TheGuardian https://twitter.com/ifindkarma/status/1288615433591906305?s=20 ]
🐣 RT @danielsgoldman Why won’t @DevinNunes disclose what he did with the package that he received in December from Andriy Derkach, a pro-Russia Ukrainian parliament official who has publicly declared his desire to help Trump in November’s election?
⋙ Politico: Intel Dems press Nunes for details on anti-Biden package from Ukrainian official http://politi.co/30ZcjlI
// The former chairman’s office has declined requests to respond to inquiries about whether he ever received the package or learned of its contents.
🐣 RT @PDXEleven MUST WATCH from @donwinslow #TrumpsEvilPlan 💽 https://twitter.com/PDXEleven/status/1289040382823522306?s=20/photo/1
// Don Winslow ad❣ Trump’s Evil Plan Civil War
CNN: Appeals court revives Michael Flynn case for another round of arguments about DOJ versus judge’s power http://cnn.it/310ZGqg
WaPo, Marc Fischer: Three presidents embrace the struggle for rights. Trump suggests postponing the election. http://wapo.st/33atTWA
🐣 RT @myhlee NEW: Postal Service is experiencing days-long backlogs across the country after a top Trump donor running the agency put in new procedures. Workers warn it could undermine their ability to deliver ballots on time for November. W/@jacobbogage
⋙ WaPo: Postal Service backlog sparks worries that ballot delivery could be delayed in November http://wapo.st/310JYM0
WaPo Editorial: 50,000 more people are dead, and there’s no end in sight. It didn’t have to be this way. http://wapo.st/30j7Vix “‘It is what it is,’ Pres Trump said when asked about the death count by Fox News interviewer Chris Wallace. The rest of us must not be so indifferent”
🐣 RT @costareports From @shaneharris: “The Department of Homeland Security has compiled ‘intelligence reports’ about the work of American journalists covering protests in Portland, Ore.”
⋙ WaPo: DHS compiled ‘intelligence reports’ on journalists who published leaked documents http://wapo.st/2X8Tj32
🐣≣ RT @BarackObama John believed that in all of us, there exists the capacity for great courage and a longing to do what’s right. We are so lucky to have had him show us the way. I offered some thoughts today on his life and how, like him, we can give it all we have.
⋙ Medium, Barack Obama: My Eulogy for Congressman John Lewis http://bit.ly/2CXwatI
⇈ ⇊
💙 ≣💽 NYT: Read the Full Transcript of Obama’s Eulogy for John Lewis http://nyti.ms/2EEoddr plus full video
// Mr. Obama praised Mr. Lewis, saying “he as much as anyone in our history brought this country a little bit closer to our highest ideals.”
💙 🐣 RT @ABC James M. Lawson: “We do not need bipartisan politics if we’re going to celebrate the life of John Lewis. We need the Constitution to come alive!” https://abcn.ws/3hVkvud https://twitter.com/ABC/status/1288876547068301312?s=20/photo/1
WaPo: Obama delivers call to action in eulogy for Lewis, links Trump to racist Southern leaders who fought civil rights in 1960s http://wapo.st/3hRZS22
TPM: Obama Calls For Nixing The Filibuster If It’s Blocking Measures To Expand Voting Rights http://bit.ly/2D3uzT1
💙🐣 RT @atrupar OBAMA: “This country is a constant work in progress. We’re born with instructions. To form a more perfect union. Explicit in those words is the idea that we’re imperfect. That what gives each new generation purpose is to take up the unfinished work of the last & carry it further” 📌 💽 https://twitter.com/atrupar/status/1288894830131720196?s=20/photo/1
// Obama eulogy for John Lewis
🐣 RT @gtconway3d Um, no. The relevant questions are governed by very specific provisions in Article II of, and the Twelfth Amendment to, the U.S. Constitution, some very specific provisions of Title 3 of the U.S. Code, and by state law.
⋙ 🐣 RT @BeschlossDC Secretary of State Pompeo this morning, in response to Senator Tim Kaine, on whether a President can delay a Presidential election: ¤ “In the end, the Department of Justice and others will make that legal determination.”
🐣 RT @tribelaw So great that Obama didn’t shrink during his eulogy from calling out the crime of voter suppression we’re witnessing in the runup to November. That’s what John Lewis would’ve wanted. Satyagraha!
🐣 RT @CharlesPPierce I don’t recall ever hearing Obama speaking with this kind of unforgiving outrage. Maybe I missed it, but this is one pissed-off patriot up there.
WaPo: Three former presidents — Obama, Bush, Clinton — pay tribute to civil rights icon John Lewis http://wapo.st/3hRZS22
🧵 RT @SteveSchmidtSES Fascism. Authoritarianism. The question has always been, could it happen here? Because the answer has been NO does not mean that it will always be so. It is happening here. It is happening right now. Trump crossed the rubicon this morning. For the first time in American 1/ 📌 https://twitter.com/SteveSchmidtSES/status/1288857374506323974?s=20
🐣 RT @duty2warn The wages of gaslighting are death. Herman Cain dies of Covid after attending Trump’s rally in Tulsa
⋙ WaPo: Herman Cain, former Republican presidential hopeful, has died of coronavirus, his website says http://wapo.st/3fdjgVi
‼️ WaPo: Trump floats idea of delaying the November election, a power granted to Congress, as he ramps up attacks on voting by mail http://wapo.st/33bgAFd
President Trump drew immediate rebukes from Republicans and Democrats alike on Thursday after floating the prospect of delaying the November election and claiming without evidence that widespread mail balloting would be a “catastrophic disaster” leading to fraudulent results.
“With Universal Mail-In Voting (not Absentee Voting, which is good), 2020 will be the most INACCURATE & FRAUDULENT Election in history,” Trump tweeted. “It will be a great embarrassment to the USA. Delay the Election until people can properly, securely and safely vote???”
As more states have turned to mail-in voting in response the pandemic, Trump has repeatedly sought to undermine the method, often with unsubstantiated claims. He has attacked mail voting nearly 70 times since late March in interviews, remarks and tweets, including at least 17 times this month, according to a tally by The Washington Post.
Even if Congress voted to delay the general election, the electoral college is still required to elect a president under federal law. If for some reason that didn’t happen, Trump and Vice President Pence would still be required to leave office by noon on Jan. 20. With no successor, the speaker of the House of Representatives, currently Pelosi, would be next in line.
⭕ 29 Jul 2020
VanityFair: First Look at The Comey Rule: The TV Drama That Will Enrage Trump http://bit.ly/2PaFbBU Brendan Gleeson as Trump, Jeff Daniels as Comey, and Holly Hunter as Yates, airs on Showtime Sept 27-28
// The miniseries reveals everything former FBI director James Comey couldn’t say before. V.F. presents the first footage and an exclusive look at Brendan Gleeson as Trump, Jeff Daniels as Comey, and Holly Hunter as Yates.
The Comey Rule will air on Showtime over two nights starting September 27, which itself was a source of controversy. Comey’s announcement about reopening the Clinton email probe 11 days before the last election, and his subsequent pronouncement clearing her two days before voters went to the polls, was blamed by many, including Clinton herself, for her narrow loss in key swing states. Executives at Showtime’s parent company, ViacomCBS, initially wanted to hold off on airing the miniseries until after the 2020 election, according to Ray, who publicly objected to such a delay, leading ViacomCBS to relent.
WaPo, Max Boot: In a new interview, Trump again shows that he’s Putin’s puppet http://wapo.st/3gdsHWd “Even on the dubious assumption that Trump was previously unaware of the intelligence (which first reached the White House in early 2019), he is certainly aware of it now”
DailyBeast: U.S. Warns Russia on Bounties While Trump Cries ‘Fake News’ http://bit.ly/3jVgg3l ‘The U.S. State Department has issued warnings to Russia that there will be ‘serious’ repercussions if Moscow pays bounties to the Taliban for successfully killing American soldiers’
// The secret warnings stand in contrast to what President Trump has said about the intelligence in question.
NYT, Stuart Stevens: We Lost the Battle for the Republican Party’s Soul Long Ago http://nyti.ms/39Fexe7 “This collapse of a major political party as a moral governing force is unlike anything we have seen in modern American politics”
// Only fear will motivate the party to change — the cold fear only defeat can bring.
Racism is the original sin of the modern Republican Party. While many Republicans today like to mourn the absence of an intellectual voice like William Buckley, it is often overlooked that Mr. Buckley began his career as a racist defending segregation.
In the Richard Nixon White House, Pat Buchanan and Kevin Phillips wrote a re-election campaign memo headed “Dividing the Democrats” in which they outlined what would come to be known as the Southern Strategy. It assumes there is little Republicans can do to attract Black Americans and details a two-pronged strategy: Utilize Black support of Democrats to alienate white voters while trying to decrease that support by sowing dissension within the Democratic Party.
That strategy has worked so well that it was copied by the Russians in their 2016 efforts to help elect Mr. Trump.
How did this happen? How do you abandon deeply held beliefs about character, personal responsibility, foreign policy and the national debt in a matter of months? You don’t. The obvious answer is those beliefs weren’t deeply held. …
Mr. Trump has served a useful purpose by exposing the deep flaws of a major American political party. Like a heavy truck driven over a bridge on the edge of failure, he has made it impossible to ignore the long-developing fault lines of the Republican Party. A party rooted in decency and values does not embrace the anger that Mr. Trump peddles as patriotism.
This collapse of a major political party as a moral governing force is unlike anything we have seen in modern American politics. The closest parallel is the demise of the Communist Party in the Soviet Union, when the dissonance between what the party said it stood for and what citizens actually experienced was so great that it was unsustainable.
This election should signal a day of reckoning for the party and all who claim it as a political identity. Will it? I’ve given up hope that there are any lines of decency or normalcy that once crossed would move Republican leaders to act as if they took their oath of office more seriously than their allegiance to party. Only fear will motivate the party to change — the cold fear only defeat can bring.
That defeat is looming. Will it bring desperately needed change to the Republican Party? I’d like to say I’m hopeful. But that would be a lie and there have been too many lies for too long.
NBCNews: GOP Sen. Ron Johnson is first target of new Democratic congressional ‘integrity’ group http://nbcnews.to/3fcZadK
// The Congressional Integrity Project http://bit.ly/311oazE is raising questions about the senator’s public actions and his personal finances in its initial report.
↥ ↧
≣CongressIntegityProject: Covering for Corruption Part One: Senator Ron Johnson http://bit.ly/3hOojgO
Investigations to Distract Voters. Johnson is using his committee to investigate the nonsensical “Obamagate” conspiracy. The Senator is a high-profile cheerleader for a key falsehood that President Trump is trying to push in his bid for reelection: “that [Trump] and his associates were targeted unfairly by the outgoing Obama administration.” To gin up spectacle and distract the public from Trump’s dismal performance, Johnson’s committee recently authorized subpoenas http://bit.ly/3375l0
for a list of people who investigated ties between Russia and the Trump campaign in the 2016 election. Now, there is credible reporting http://politi.co/3fYBCKM that suggests Johnson may have accepted pro-Russian disinformation during the course of his investigation.Meanwhile, Johnson defended President Trump’s request that China investigate his 2020 election opponent, Joe Biden. Even as Trump was being impeached for asking Ukraine to interfere in American politics, Johnson saw nothing wrong with the president making those transparently corrupt requests of other countries. “I don’t think there’s anything improper about doing that,” Johnson said. ¤ Even Johnson’s Republican colleagues warn that his baseless investigations resemble, and maybe even abet, Russian disinformation. Sen. Mitt Romney (R-UT) called he political motivation behind Johnson’s investigations “apparent on its face,” and Sen. Richard Burr (R-NC) warned Johnson that he was aiding “Russian efforts to sow chaos and distrust in the U.S. political system.”
⭕ 28 Jul 2020
NBCNews/AP: Ex-FBI agent Strzok due out with book about Trump, Russia http://nbcnews.to/3jPSbv6 “[H]ow the elevation by President Trump [of his] own personal interests over the interests of the country allowed Putin to succeed beyond Stalin’s wildest dreams”
// Due out two months before the November election, the book adds to the list of first-person accounts from other senior FBI and Justice Department officials during the Trump era.
Former FBI counterintelligence agent Peter Strzok, who played a key role in the Russia investigation but whose pejorative text messages about Donald Trump during the 2016 campaign made him a target of the president’s wrath, is releasing a book on his concerns the president could be compromised.
“Compromised: Counterintelligence and the Threat of Donald J. Trump” is due out Sept. 8, publisher Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Books & Media said in a statement to The Associated Press.
The book will offer an insider’s view on some of the most sensational and politically freighted investigations in modern American history, including into whether the 2016 Trump campaign coordinated with Russia to sway the presidential election. Due out two months before the November election, the book adds to the list of first-person accounts from other senior FBI and Justice Department officials during the Trump era.
“Russia has long regarded the United States as its ‘Main Enemy,’ and I spent decades trying to protect our country from their efforts to weaken and undermine us,” Strzok said Tuesday in a statement accompanying the book announcement.
“In this book,” he added, “I use that background to explain how the elevation by President Trump and his collaborators of Trump’s own personal interests over the interests of the country allowed Putin to succeed beyond Stalin’s wildest dreams, and how the national security implications of Putin’s triumph will persist through our next election and beyond.”
He remains a frequent target of Trump’s scornful tweets. In a statement announcing the book, the publishing company said “the Trump administration used his private expression of political opinions to force him out.” ¤ “But by that time,” the statement added, “Strzok had seen more than enough to convince him that the commander in chief had fallen under the sway of America’s adversary in the Kremlin.”
Strzok “grapples with a question that should concern every U.S. citizen: When a president appears to favor personal and Russian interests over those of our nation, has he become a national security threat?”
Former FBI Director James Comey and former Deputy Director Andrew McCabe have each released books that describe aspects of the Trump investigation. ¤ Andrew Weissmann, a former Justice Department prosecutor who served on Mueller’s team, is due out with a book in September.
WaPo, Dana Milbank: Bill Barr’s election meddling is a total riot http://wapo.st/3jWIEm3 “This time, there really is a caravan ‘putting our country in great danger’— and Barr leads it.”
Repeatedly blurring the distinction between the masses of peaceful, racial-justice demonstrators and the small band of violent vandals, Barr said peaceful demonstrators in Lafayette Square hit with chemical agents, stun grenades and rubber bullets had been “unruly.” Pressed about the many times force has been used against nonviolent demonstrators, he declared that “protesters” — he made quotation marks with his fingers — “are not following police directions.” He justified the use of weapons against peaceful demonstrators by saying “it’s hard to separate” them from the criminals.
Barr sounded as if he were channeling Trump’s Twitter account as he denounced “the bogus Russiagate scandal,” defended Trump’s pardon of Roger Stone after Stone refused to incriminate Trump, defended the attempted dismissal of Michael Flynn’s guilty plea, defended the imprisonment of Michael Cohen after he refused to disavow criticism of Trump, defended the dismissal of the prosecutor overseeing investigations of Rudolph W. Giuliani, defended the baseless allegation that voting by mail is fraudulent, and defended armed, right-wing protesters who invaded the Michigan Capitol and called for killing the governor. (They were against “crazy rules.”) He even defended Trump’s handling of the pandemic as “superb,” while blaming the Obama administration.
DailyBeast, David Lurie: Bully Boy Bill Barr is America’s Ultimate Chaos Agent http://bit.ly/2X5846R (this was posted before today’s hearing)
// The attorney general is putting legal arguments behind the president’s deranged fantasies of reopening, despite the virus, as the feds save “Democrat” cities from American carnage.
🔆 This❗️⋙ AP: US officials: Russia behind spread of virus disinformation http://bit.ly/2DcuqfJ Russian intelligence services are using a trio of English-language websites to spread disinformation about the coronavirus pandemic
Russian intelligence services are using a trio of English-language websites to spread disinformation about the coronavirus pandemic, seeking to exploit a crisis that America is struggling to contain ahead of the presidential election in November, U.S. officials said Tuesday.
Two Russians who have held senior roles in Moscow’s military intelligence service known as the GRU have been identified as responsible for a disinformation effort reaching American and Western audiences, U.S. government officials said. They spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly.
The information had previously been classified, but officials said it had been downgraded so they could more freely discuss it. Officials said they were doing so now to sound the alarm about the particular websites and to expose what they say is a clear link between the sites and Russian intelligence.
Though U.S. officials have warned before about the spread of disinformation tied to the pandemic, they went further on Tuesday by singling out a particular information agency that is registered in Russia, InfoRos and that operates a series of websites — InfoRos.ru, Infobrics.org and OneWorld.press — that have leveraged the pandemic to promote anti-Western objectives and to spread disinformation.
A headline Tuesday on InfoRos.ru about the unrest roiling major American cities read “Chaos in the Blue Cities,” accompanying a story that lamented how New Yorkers who grew up in the tough-on-crime approach of Mayors Rudy Giuliani and Michael Bloomberg “must adapt to life in high-crime urban areas.”
Another story carried the headline of “Ukrainian Trap for Biden,” and claimed that “Ukrainegate” — a reference to stories surrounding Biden’s son Hunter’s former ties to a Ukraine gas company — “keeps unfolding with renewed vigors.”
Two individuals who have also held leadership roles at InfoRos, identified Tuesday as Denis Valeryevich Tyurin and Aleksandr Gennadyevich Starunskiy, have previously served in a GRU unit specializing in military psychological intelligence and maintain deep contacts there, the officials said.
In 2019, a European Union task force that studies disinformation campaigns identified One World as “a new addition to the pantheon of Moscow-based disinformation outlets.” The task force noted that One World’s content often parrots the Russian state agenda on issues including the war in Syria.
A report published last month by a second, nongovernmental organization, Brussels-based EU DisinfoLab, examined links between InfoRos and One World to Russian military intelligence. The researchers identified technical clues tying their websites to Russia and identified some financial connections between InfoRos and the government.
“InfoRos is evolving in a shady grey zone, where regular information activities are mixed with more controversial actions that could be quite possibly linked to the Russian state’s information operations,” the report’s authors concluded.
On its English-language Facebook page, InfoRos describes itself as an “Information agency: world through the eyes of Russia.”
💙 NYT: Barr Testimony: Highlights of Combative Hearing on Protests, Stone Case and More http://nyti.ms/39zoV77
// The attorney general forcefully asserted that federal agents were sent to cities to fight violence at protests and elsewhere.
💙 WaPo: Democrats seek to shame Barr over politics at the Justice Department http://wapo.st/3335gLj
🐣 RT @JillWineBank Reason no one likes Trump is that he lies, misleads, recommends dangerous drugs, doesn’t wear a mask and says covid will just go away. Americans are smart and know he cannot be relied on for helpful info and that Fauci can.
⋙ 🐣 RT @Yamiche President Trump on Dr. Fauci: “He’s got this high approval rating…Why don’t I have a high approval rating?…Nobody likes me. It could only be my personality. I don’t know.”
💙❤️ NYT, Michael Chertoff: The Hijacking of Homeland Security http://nyti.ms/2P4MriI Mr. Chertoff served as the secretary of homeland security under President George W. Bush
// A former leader of the department says Trump is politicizing the agency and putting the nation at risk.
[Reverse chrono]
[🧵] RT @matthewamiller Gee, I wonder what’s going on here. For the second presidential election in a row, a DOJ October surprise is in the works.
⋙⋙ 🐣 RT @joshgerstein Barr just said that he doesn’t view the expected Durham report as subject to the DOJ policy against politically sensitive investigative moves in advance of an election. ‘Any report will be one not covered by the policy.’ And he wouldn’t commit to NOT release before election
⋙ 🐣 RT@matthewamiller “You should let the witness answer the question” is one of those otherwise fair points that Jim Jordan is uniquely unqualified to make.
⋙ 🐣 RT@matthewamiller We should never get used to an AG being this partisan: the line on Captain DeMarco being a Democrat, the attacks on the Obama admin over CDC policies (which is totally outside Barr’s remit), his claim there were two forms of justice under Obama, the Antifa BS. Way over the line.
He really let the mask slip there. It’s regurgitated Fox propaganda all the way down with Barr.
⋙⋙ 🐣 RT@harrylitman Barr invokes supposed two forms of justice under Obama. Mistake. Getting hot under the collar with Swalwell.
⋙ 🐣 RT@matthewamiller Really great job by @RepSwalwell, drawing the key admission from Barr: the only sentencing he has intervened in is for Roger Stone.
⋙ 🐣 RT@matthewamiller Yelling at a member is never a good look for an AG, no matter the issue.
⋙ 🐣 RT@matthewamiller I believe Barr’s response to Cohen was the first time he’s said he found out Trump wanted to go to St John’s sometime in the afternoon, before he ordered Lafayette Square cleared. Makes his contention that it was for law enforcement reasons pretty damn suspect.
⋙ 🐣 RT@matthewamiller Barr is often seen as impervious to criticism, but he’s showing so far that it has very much gotten under his skin.
⋙ 🐣 RT@matthewamiller This Barr lecture is so arrogant. I think African Americans are well aware of the cost of crime to their communities and that’s one of the reasons why they want the police to operate within the law and not harass, intimidate, and abuse innocent people.
⋙ 🐣 RT@matthewamiller Well this is certainly a new exhibit at the circus.
⋙ 🐣 RT@matthewamiller I think I’ve followed DOJ and the Russia probe about as closely as anyone, and I still have trouble keeping track of what Jim Jordan is talking about when he starts Carrie Mathesoning. I can’t imagine how non-obsessed people understand this.
⋙ 🐣 RT@matthewamiller My eternally springing hope for today’s Barr hearing: fewer speeches, fewer open-ended “how do you respond to X” questions, and more factual, yes/no q’s that don’t lend themselves to obfuscation or dodges.
⋙ 🐣 RT@matthewamiller Like most Cabinet members, Barr is not going to come in and cop to everything you think he did, and he knows the issues better than the members, so extended exchanges accrue to his favor. Do it right, and the news will be as much in what he refuses to answer as in what he says.
💙📋MIT Election Lab (4/28/2020): Voting by mail in the U.S. is safe, honest, and fair. http://bit.ly/2X2iQLq “Vote fraud in the United States is exceedingly rare. … We are talking about an occurrence that translates to about 0.00006 percent of total votes cast” #HouseJudiciary
// 4/28/2020; vote-by-mail voter fraud
“Widespread calls to conduct the 2020 elections by mail, to protect voters from COVID-19 exposure, are being met with charges that the system inevitably would lead to massive voter fraud. This is simply not true.
“Vote fraud in the United States is exceedingly rare, with mailed ballots and otherwise. Over the past 20 years, about 250 million votes have been cast by a mail ballot nationally. The Heritage Foundation maintains an online database of election fraud cases in the United States and reports that there have been just over 1,200 cases of vote fraud of all forms, resulting in 1,100 criminal convictions, over the past 20 years. Of these, 204 involved the fraudulent use of absentee ballots; 143 resulted in criminal convictions.
Let’s put that data in perspective. ¤ One hundred forty-three cases of fraud using mailed ballots over the course of 20 years comes out to seven to eight cases per year, nationally. It also means that across the 50 states, there has been an average of three cases per state over the 20-year span. That is just one case per state every six or seven years. We are talking about an occurrence that translates to about 0.00006 percent of total votes cast.
‼️ 🐣 RT @mkraju “Depends what kind of assistance,” Barr says when asked if it’s ever appropriate to solicit or accept foreign assistance in an election. Cicilline asks again. Barr pauses and says: “No, it’s not appropriate.”
🐣 I listen to only the Democrats in these hearings. Then later I go back to the threads made by people like @atrupar @JenTaub and @emptywheel to fill in what the GOP guys say. Otherwise, it’s simply too stressful for me. Plus, the Dems case is so much clearer. #HouseJudiciary #BLM
💙🧵 RT @JenTaub Will be live-tweeting when the @HouseJudiciary committee hearing on “Oversight of the Department of Justice” begins at 10:45 am. Attorney General Barr is the sole witness. ¤ (Delay in start time due to Chair Nadler’s car accident. Don’t worry; no one was injured).1/ 📌 https://twitter.com/jentaub/status/1288122833415987203?s=20/photo/1
// AG William Barr testifies to the House Judiciary Committee
💙🧵 RT @BarbMcQuade 1/ When Barr refers to “bogus Russiagate scandal,” House should ask him to read these quotes aloud from Mueller Report: 📌 https://twitter.com/BarbMcQuade/status/1288130377203232774?s=20
// Mueller report questioning
💙🧵RT @atrupar Jim Jordan having a normal one 📌 💽 https://twitter.com/atrupar/status/1288132361591324673?s=20/photo/1
// AG William Barr testifies to the House Judiciary Committee
💙🧵 RT @emptywheel And now the hearing is live. I’ll do a separate thread. 📌 https://twitter.com/emptywheel/status/1288129608743706625?s=20
// AG William Barr testifies to the House Judiciary Committee
🐣 RT @duty2warn Federal forces beating up a 14 year old girl.
⋙ 🐣 RT @pcbrynn She is 14 years old. 💽 https://twitter.com/pcbrynn/status/1287745837393641473?s=20/photo/1
⋙⋙ 🐣 RT @xcliburrnity I found this on an earlier post: “Eugene, OR: multiple EPD cops brutalize an unarmed 14yo girl for sport, while ignoring the counter-protestor assaulting people”
🐣 RT @TheRickWilson Messily.
⋙ 🐣 RT @Ftwjudy1010 How will it all end, Rick??
🐣 RT @tedwheeler Commissioner @JoAnnPDX and I are calling for an immediate meeting with Department of Homeland Security leadership on the ground in Portland and with Acting Secretary @DHS_Wolf to discuss a cease-fire and the removal of heightened federal forces from Portland.
🐣 RT @alllocalpolitic “An officer in the D.C. National Guard delivered a damning account of the events surrounding the federal crackdown on protesters in Lafayette Square in testimony released by the House of Representatives on Monday.”
⋙ RawStory: Here are 7 disturbing revelations from a National Guard officer about Trump’s Lafayette Square disaster http://bit.ly/3fepJj3
Adam DeMarco, a senior officer tapped to serve as a liaison between the National Guard and the Park Police, was on the scene during the June 1 assault on protesters, as his opening statement for a planned hearing on Tuesday explained. While the president gave a speech to reporters at the White House, federal officers, including the Park Police, violently cleared demonstrators, the media, and others from the nearby area. Shortly thereafter, the president walked across the street that had been cleared for a photo-op at St. John’s Church.
1. DeMarco had no indication that protesters would be moved prior to 7 p.m., which was when the city’s curfew would be in place.
2. Federal officials didn’t even set up a new barrier until much later.
3. The warnings given to the protesters were entirely insufficient.
4. As others who were on the scene have said, the protesters were peaceful.
5. DeMarco provides direct evidence that CS tear gas was used by officials on the scene, despite repeated denials from the Trump administration.
6. DeMarco described extreme and excessive violence being used against civilians.
7. Even DeMarco was unaware of all the federal agencies involved.
MSN/BI: A journalist who’s worked with PBS and National Geographic tells us what it was like being shot in the eye by law enforcement in Portland http://bit.ly/2DekJgI
// Trip Jennings talked to Business Insider about being shot in the face with a less-lethal round while covering a protest in Portland, Oregon.
🐣 RT @nytimes The Wall of Moms has garnered a swell of attention that Black mothers protesting in Portland for months did not receive. That attention is not lost on the participants. “Moms didn’t just show up a couple nights ago. Black moms have always been there.”
⋙ NYT: ‘The Moms Are Here’: ‘Wall of Moms’ Groups Mobilize Nationwide http://nyti.ms/3g23kXc
// The movement that started with a few dozen moms in Portland now has offshoots in cities across the country.
🚫 🐣 RT @santiagomayer_ I’m sorry, but I’m hearing that the Feds gassed protesters with chlorine gas and then shouted “leave no evidence” as they collected the canisters? https://twitter.com/santiagomayer_/status/1288008398269583360?s=20
🧵 RT @GriffinMalone6 Reports of air smelling like chlorine, lots more throwing up on the streets, lots more lingering affects this morning. ¤ If you saw / collected / took photos of any canisters that look different, please, please send them my way or share them. ¤ Nothing is confirmed yet. 📌 https://twitter.com/GriffinMalone6/status/1287513021418356736?s=20
⋙ 🐣 RT @Metztli888 Late last night/early morning protester struck by unknown projectile. It left glittery metallic appearing residue. Not having seen this before we’ve been wondering if it was exploding CS canister or something new. Ever seen anything like this? https://twitter.com/Metztli888/status/1287598431402209286?s=20/photo/1
// eye with glittery sheen
⋙ 🐣 RT @pacificc22 “CAT scan showed no brain damage/skull injury, did reveal “foreign substance” all over forehead & even in one of my eyes. The doctors couldn’t see it, but they pointed out the appearance of tiny fragments that had pierced my skin, like gravel but there was no gravel to recover.” https://twitter.com/pacificc22/status/1287773002868744192?s=20/photo/1
// history professor
⋙ 🐣 RT @iam_sysop I have at least TWO videos from last night that show a DISTINCT DIFFERENCE IN GAS COLORS. ¤ TWICE I saw locations with both WHITE and YELLOW gas. ¤ I will find and upload. They were pulled from last night’s protests.
⋙⋙ 🐣 RT @iam_sysop This is one of them – the other is in one of my retweets – I will find and upload. 💽 https://twitter.com/iam_sysop/status/1287981966495809537?s=20/photo/1
⋙⋙ 🐣 RT @iam_sysop More YELLOW gas — 25-27 seconds in – further down the block. ¤ #portlandProtests #PDXprotests ¤ #WallOfMoms #WallOfVets #DAY60 ¤ #TrumpRegime
⋙⋙⋙ 🐣 RT @TheRealCoryElia Second federal response and this time there is canisters of tear gas being fired from the roof as well that I noticed https://twitter.com/TheRealCoryElia/status/1287650850194644993?s=20/photo/1
⭕ 27 Jul 2020
WaPo: Wall of Moms, Black Lives Matter protesters sue Trump administration for use of tear gas, force in Portland http://wapo.st/2X3qfds The suit alleges “that several agencies … have violated their constitutional rights of free speech, assembly and due process“
A group of five women and two organizations, including longtime Black Lives Matter protesters and the yellow-clad Wall of Moms group that assembles nightly to stand between protesters and federal law enforcement officers, filed a lawsuit alleging that several agencies — the Department of Homeland Security, Customs and Border Protection, Immigration and Customs Enforcement and the Federal Protective Service — have violated their constitutional rights of free speech, assembly and due process and against unreasonable seizures.
WaPo, Norman Eisen: Trump wanted his Roy Cohn. In William Barr, he found his John Mitchell instead. http://wapo.st/30NFtUQ “Barr’s assiduous work on Trump’s behalf — distorting both facts and law to support the president — has overtones of Mitchell as attorney general”
🐣 RT @TheBeatWithAri Check out the full segment here: https://youtu.be/JLyXQIs2iAo
⋙ 🐣 RT @April_On_ILL Thank you! Thank you! Thank you! @AriMelber for the nuanced coverage of @KamalaHarris career as AG and DA in CA.
TheAtlantic, Paul Rosenzweig and Arthur Rizer: There Is Nothing Conservative About What Trump Is Doing in Portland http://bit.ly/39ySu8F “[T]he president’s actions have undermined the Constitution and transgressed norms of acceptable presidential behavior”
// Unconstitutional police activity is not conservative. It’s authoritarian.
🐣 RT @donwinslow His statement is a cartoon.
⋙ 🐣 RT @ READ: Attorney General William Barr’s opening statement for House hearing https://cnn.it/2CRDwi4
TheGuardian, Ed Pilkington: ‘These are his people’: inside the elite border patrol unit Trump sent to Portland http://bit.ly/3g6sQdR “Todd Miller, the author of Empire of Borders, has dubbed Bortac as ‘the robocops of US border patrol’”
// Bortac, a quasi-militarised outfit equivalent to the Navy Seals, has been deployed in Iraq and Afghanistan
🐣 RT @areidross National Geographic videographer, Trip Jennings, was shot in the face by an impact munition in Portland. The round went through the eye of his gas mask, causing eye lacerations, and he was pepper sprayed so bad that the doctor had to wear a respirator. His account posted on FB: Text Block: https://twitter.com/areidross/status/1287841917447757824?s=20/photo/1-4
// first att is photo of injuries plus three pages of description of incident from FB
WaPo: Wall of Moms, Black Lives Matter protesters sue Trump administration for use of tear gas, force in Portland http://wapo.st/2CWn2VU
WaPo: Trump administration sending more federal agents to reinforce Portland courthouse http://wapo.st/301zqwK “the U.S. Marshals Service decided last week to send 100 deputy U.S. Marshals” to supplement the 114 there in mid-July to fight “anarchists”
🐣 RT @soychick w00t! Nadler FINALLY went there! ¤ If the President can’t be charged while in office, in the same way it is if someone conceals their crimes or evading capture by fleeing to another state – the statute of limitations must be tolled. ¤ Thank you @RepJerryNadler!
UNNews (7/24): United Nations Human Rights Office decries disproportionate use of force in US protests http://bit.ly/3jUBH4S Statement by U.N. Human Rights Office Spokesperson Elizabeth Throssell: ● Text Block: https://twitter.com/Auriandra/status/1287799693230178304?s=20/photo/1
“Peaceful demonstrations that have been taking place in cities in the US, such as Portland, really must be able to continue without those participating in them – and also, the people reporting on them, the journalists – risking arbitrary arrest or detention, being subject to unnecessary, disproportionate or discriminatory use of force, or suffering other violations of their rights,” said Ms. Throssell.
Ms. Throssell said federal and local security forces must be properly and clearly identified. They also should use force only when necessary and in accordance with international standards. [=No tear gas]
“Also, it is important that any victims of unnecessary or excessive use of force do have the right to remedy, and there should be, as we often say, prompt, independent, impartial and transparent investigations into any allegations of human rights violations, and that should ensure that those responsible are held accountable,” she added.
TheIndependent [UK]: United Nations calls on US police to halt use of force against journalists covering protests http://bit.ly/2CK6zV3
// The plea comes amid a rise in attacks on members of the press by American authorities – as well as more arrest
📋 TheIndependent (7/15)[UK]: Editorial: Journalism is not a crime – protecting a free press is vital http://bit.ly/30U8Oga Amnesty International says 60 journalists have been arrested in US protests: This is “the kind of thing that is only supposed to happen in dictatorships”
// 6/15/2020; Violations of journalistic freedom are sadly becoming more commonplace, including in America and Britain. Growing hostility to the press is a threat to everyone ¤ Amnesty International says there have been at least 60 reported arrests of journalists covering these protests in the US
10News (NBC): Police: Richmond riots instigated by white supremacists disguised as Black Lives Matter http://bit.ly/3hStvAn //➔ have to wonder how frequent this is and, if apprehended by Trump’s Gestapo and not local police, we would ever find out
// “The mayor of Richmond thanked the Black Lives Matter protesters he said tried to stop the white supremacists from spearheading the violence.”
TheBulwark, Charlie Sykes: Burn It All Down? http://bit.ly/3g67D3E “Trump himself is a horror show, but the most horrific story of the last four years has been the complete surrender of the GOP to Trumpism, not just on policy but on everything”
// The Senate Republicans who protected and enabled Trump have to be held accountable.
🐣 RT @Amy_Siskind Another woman was shot in the head last night in Portland by Trump’s storm troopers: Professor Maura Healy, chair of the history department at Lewis & Clark College. Read her story here: [FB] http://bit.ly/32YIBQr
⇈ ⇊
Margie Boulé Sharing:
Professor Maureen Healy is the chair of the history department at Lewis & Clark College in Portland. (https://college.lclark.edu/live/profiles/152-maureen-healy) She was shot in the head by federal agents on Monday night and is recovering from the injury and the concussion, but shared a statement of her experience, and gave permission to share.
—
Statement by Maureen Healy, July 22, 2020
For Immediate Release
Since June, I have been attending peaceful protests in Portland neighborhoods in support of Black Lives Matter. I have gone with family and friends.
I am a 52-year-old mother. I am a history professor.
I went downtown yesterday to express my opinion as a citizen of the United States, and as a resident of Portland. Of Oregon. This is my home. I was protesting peacefully. So why did federal troops shoot me in the head Monday night?
I was in a large crowd of ordinary folks. Adults, teens, students. Moms and dads. It looked to me like a cross-section of the City. Black Lives Matter voices led the crowd on a peaceful march from the Justice Center past the murals at the Apple store. The marchers were singing songs. We were chanting. We were saying names of Black people that have been killed by police. We observed a moment of silence in front of the George Floyd mural.
I wanted to, and will continue to, exercise my First Amendment right to speak. Federal troops have been sent to my city to extinguish these peaceful protests. I was not damaging federal property. I was in a crowd with at least a thousand other ordinary people. I was standing in a public space.
In addition to being a Portland resident, I am also a historian. My field is Modern European History, with specialization in the history of Germany and Eastern Europe. I teach my students about the rise of fascism in Europe.
By professional training and long years of teaching, I am knowledgeable about the historical slide by which seemingly vibrant democracies succumbed to authoritarian rule. Militarized federal troops are shooting indiscriminately into crowds of ordinary people in our country. We are on that slide.
It dawned on me when I was in the ER, and had a chance to catch my breath (post tear gas): my government did this to me. My own government. I was not shot by a random person in the street. A federal law enforcement officer pulled a trigger that sent an impact munition into my head.
After being hit I was assisted greatly by several volunteer medics. At least one of them was with Rosehip Medic Collective. To take shelter from the teargas I was hustled into a nearby van. Inside they bandaged my head and drove me several blocks away. From there my family took me to the ER. I am grateful for the assistance, skill, and incredibly kind care of these volunteer medics.
We must take this back to Black Lives Matter. Police brutality against Black people is the real subject of these peaceful protests that have been happening in my city and across the country. What happened to me is nothing. It is nothing compared to what happens to Black citizens at the hands of law enforcement, mostly local police, every day. And that is why we have been marching. That is why I will continue to march.
JustSecurity, George Croner: What Durham Is Investigating and Why It Poses a Danger to US Intelligence Analysis http://bit.ly/3f4LKR1 Barr has said that he thinks the Russia investigation was a “travesty.” Look for the release of Durham’s report to be an “October surprise”
As the November election draws closer, the notion becomes more persistent that Durham’s efforts are now viewed by Trump supporters as a potential key element in the Trump reelection strategy. In the most recent public comments by Barr made on June 21, in an interview with Fox News, Barr said that, “Durham is pressing ahead as hard as he can,” and that he [Barr] expected “developments” in the probe “this summer.” Barr coupled this progress report with the lamentation that he was “surprised” at the lack of public interest in Durham’s work and “that people aren’t concerned about civil liberties and the integrity of our governmental process.”
Barr followed with this tendentious assessment of the merits of the matters Durham is investigating:
I think what happened to [Trump] was one of the greatest travesties in American history. Without any basis, they started this investigation of of his campaign, and even more concerning, actually is what happened after the campaign, a whole pattern of events while he was president. So I – to sabotage the presidency, and I think that – or at least have the effect of sabotaging the presidency.
So much for the tenets of Justice Manual §1-7.400.B which provides, “DOJ generally will not confirm the existence of or otherwise comment about ongoing investigations.”
[E]ven assuming that another probe was needed to fill in a lacuna or two left by these other investigations, the events surrounding the Durham inquiry and, most specifically, Barr’s running commentary, have nullified any contribution that this effort might otherwise have made to a principled, unbiased evaluation of this unprecedented counterintelligence undertaking. Given that reality, it is disturbing that the attorney general’s relentless pursuit of a politically useful outcome from Durham poses both immediate and long-term dangers to the work of the U.S. IC.
[Examples of standard hedges refined and typical of intelligence assessment.] It is an unfortunate irony, however, that this same analytic phraseology if used in reporting the results of a criminal inquiry, for example, lends itself to opportunistic manipulation by partisans devoted to using that phraseology to support a particular narrative of the events in question.
Moreover, as his handling of the Mueller Report shows, these dangers are exacerbated by the ability and willingness of the attorney general to redact and declassify selectively in a way that manages the information publicly available to ensure public perception is receptive to his view of events.
These dangers seem particularly gratuitous considering that the Republican-controlled Senate Intelligence Committee performed its own independent and exhaustive review of the ICA and, as expressed in Volume IV of its report titled “Review of the Intelligence Community Assessment and Additional Views,” expressed, inter alia, these “Findings”: (1) “The Committee found the ICA presents a coherent and well-constructed intelligence basis for the case of unprecedented Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. presidential election;” (2) “The ICA reflects proper analytic tradecraft despite being tasked and completed within a compressed timeframe;” (3) “The differing confidence levels on one analytic judgment are justified and properly represented;” and (4) “In all the interviews of those who drafted and prepared the ICA, the Committee heard consistently that analysts were under no politically motivated pressure to reach specific conclusions. All analysts expressed that they were free to debate, object to content, and assess confidence levels, as is normal and proper for the analytic process.”
Unfortunately, some of those dissatisfied are at the highest levels of the U.S. government and, their determination to pursue a factual recounting that undermines the completed work of Mueller, Horowitz and, for that matter, the Senate Intelligence Committee, they appear willing to sacrifice, as collateral damage, the integrity and credibility of the U.S. IC and the analytic processes used to produce foreign intelligence.
It is this exact willingness to pursue political objectives at the long-term expense of the nation’s foreign intelligence collection and analytic processes that reveals the significant dangers that the Durham investigation, and its architect, William Barr, pose to the U.S. Intelligence Community.
TheGuardian: Anti-fascists linked to zero murders in the US in 25 years http://bit.ly/2ByUiSF “As Trump rails against ‘far-left’ fascism, new database shows leftwing attacks have left far fewer people dead than violence by rightwing extremists” ● https://twitter.com/Auriandra/status/1287714329450754050?s=20/photo/1
Victims killed
0 in anti-fascist attacks since 1994
21 in left-wing violence since 2010
95 in jihadist attacks since since 2010
117 in right-wing violence since 2010
329 in right-wing violence since 1994
‘Leftwing violence has not been a major terrorism threat’
The database was assembled by researchers at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), a centrist thinktank, and reviewed by the Guardian.
Its launch comes as Trump administration officials have echoed the president’s warnings of a violent “leftwing” revolution. “Groups of outside radicals and agitators are exploiting the situation to pursue their own separate, violent and extremist agenda,” the attorney general, William Barr, said amid nationwide protests following the death of George Floyd. A new justice department taskforce on violent anti-government extremists listed “antifa” as a major threat, while making no mention of white supremacy.
Today, Jones said, “the most significant domestic terrorism threat comes from white supremacists, anti-government militias and a handful of individuals associated with the ‘boogaloo’ movement that are attempting to create a civil war in the United States.”
Daily interpersonal violence and state violence pose a much greater threat to Americans than any kind of extremist terror attack. More than 100,000 people have been killed in gun homicides in the United States in the past decade, according to estimates from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. US police officers shoot nearly 1,000 Americans to death each year. Black Americans are more than twice as likely to be shot by the police as white Americans, according to analysis by the Washington Post and the Guardian.
But the president’s rhetoric about “antifa” violence has dangerous consequences, not just for anti-fascists, but for any Americans who decide to protest, some activists said.
RT @MSNBC “Part of the reason we know this is a political stunt is because it’s being pushed in a Democrat / Republican, a liberal / conservative way,” @selectedwisdom says about actions conducted by federal agents in Portland, Oregon.
⋙ 💽 MSNBC, AliVelshi: Trump’s troops violate the First Amendment and undermine faith in federal agencies http://on.msnbc.com/30TBvde
// 7/25/2020; Former FBI special agent Clint Watts and former U.S. attorney Joyce Vance discuss Donald Trump’s assault on democracy.
DailyBeast, Marlowe Stern: John Oliver Exposes Sean Hannity’s Lies About Portland Protesters http://bit.ly/2WYYrGY “Masked individuals throwing people into an unmarked van is never a good idea if you want to de-escalate a situation”
// The “Last Week Tonight” host revealed how the Fox News pundit misrepresented the “violence” committed by Black Lives Matter protesters in Portland, Oregon.
⭕ 26 Jul 2020
🧵 RT @RadioFreeTom What’s happening right now – Portland, outing of an FBI source, empowering of DHS as an Interior Ministry – are all the result of the United States operating without an actual president, and the emergence of Bill Barr as the de fact head of the Executive Branch. /1 📌 https://twitter.com/RadioFreeTom/status/1287601020370067457?s=20
⋙ 🐣 RT @RadioFreeTom Only Barr and DHS have the ability to extend state power immediately to U.S. citizens, inside the United States. Defense, State, etc, have none of these powers at hand. Trump is functionally incapacitated, and Barr knows it, and he’s stepped in as the Acting President. /2
⋙ 🐣 RT @RadioFreeTom The president has gone bye-bye at this point; that makes Barr, without any control on his powers, a kind of super-Interior Minister, keeping “order” as he sees fit. This is a total collapse of constitutional order within the Executive branch, because of Trump’s incapacity. /3
⋙ 🐣 RT @RadioFreeTom This makes Barr the most dangerous man in the United States government right now. ¤ Courts and state AGs and state authorities – and not naked protesters – need to step into his way. (Protesters, stop helping Barr. Because you are.) /4x
🐣 Portland seems to have come up with a new approach to protest in defiance of unwarranted police action: #WallOfMoms, #DadsWithLeafBlowers, #WallOfVets, Nurses, Lawyers. Now, if they could organize to control the destruction of property, it would be perfect.
🐣 RT @WallOfDocs Proud to stand in solidarity with @WallOfMoms @wallofdads and @VetsWall. #HandsUpPleaseDontShoot ¤ #WallofMoms ¤ #WallOfDads ¤ #WallofVets ¤ #WallofDocs 💽 https://twitter.com/WallOfDocs/status/1287376023940665344?s=20/photo/1
// crowd shining phone flashlights
🐣 RT @TheLincolnProject Good
🐣 RT @TheRickWilson Oh boy
⋙ 🐣 RT @JuliaDavisNews Another unfavorable mention of the Lincoln Project @ProjectLincoln on Russian state TV. Putin’s buddy/fawning Kremlin propagandist Vladimir Soloviev sounds triggered. [photo]
🐣 RT @CNNsotu “The very least the President can do is to try to get to the bottom of what role Putin may have played… and the very least interviewers can do is ask the President about those who serve and sacrifice for us.” – @jaketapper on the lack of accountability over Russian bounty intel 💽 https://twitter.com/CNNSotu/status/1287407976584708096?s=20/photo/1
WaPo, Dan Balz: America’s global standing is at a low point. The pandemic made it worse. http://wapo.st/2D6QeJF
// Under Trump, the United States retreats from collaborative leadership at a time of global crisis
🐣 RT @chipfranklin #DicatorTrump [sic] doesn’t like this video at all. ¤ In fact, pretty sure he hates it. ¤ Actually, 100% he hates it. 💽 https://twitter.com/chipfranklin/status/1287564054396047361?s=20/photo/1
// Really American ad❣ Dictator Trump #DictatorTrump; Trump loves dictators and hates our allies. Click on the link in video and visit secure.actblue.com to help us produce more videos.
WaPo, Fred Hiatt: In just one month, Trump commits a whole new set of potentially impeachable offenses http://wapo.st/3g4WC2z Outlines the four Articles he laid out in June plus three more “as a warning of what we might expect if he is returned to office for a second term” ● Text Block: https://twitter.com/Auriandra/status/1287569884868739073?s=20/photo/1
Additional Potentially Impeachable Offenses
1. Willful endangerment of the American people (COVID-19 response)
2. Abuse of law-enforcement powers (orig: Lafayette Park; add: Portland etc)
3. Abuse of appointment power (add: Lt Col Vindman)
4. Abuse of power in foreign affairs (add: Uighurs, bounties)
5. New: Abuse of power for personal enrichment (British Open, campaign funds)
6. New: Abuse of the reprieve and pardon power (Roger Stone)
7. New: Undermining faith in the electoral process (mail-in ballots)
In June, I proposed four additional articles. The first was for willful endangerment of the American people, for political ends, with his fatally negligent response to the covid-19 pandemic.My month-old Article 2, abuse of law-enforcement powers, will have to be retopped, because the offenses I included a month ago pale beside the recent, reckless deployment of federal forces into U.S. cities for political purposes.
My Article 3, abuse of appointment power, will have to be updated, too, now that the courageous Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman has been not only drummed out of the White House but bullied out of the military altogether.
Article 4, abuse of power in foreign affairs, gets a new count. The original cited Trump’s acquiescence to China’s concentration camps in western China in exchange for the campaign help of promising to buy soybeans from Midwest farmers. ¤ Now we would have to add his unexplained, and thus far inexplicable, supine acquiescence to Russia’s reported bounty payments for the killing of U.S. servicemen in Afghanistan.
And we would need some new articles as well, starting with Article 5: Abuse of power for personal enrichment. ¤ But if you want actual payments, we have those, too, as Post reporter David Fahrenthold has helped uncover. In this election cycle, according to the Center for Responsive Politics, Trump’s campaign, Trump-affiliated committees and the Trump-controlled Republican Party have steered more than $4 million to Trump-owned businesses.
Article 6 would be abuse of the reprieve and pardon power. The Constitution allows the president to free felons, including one who has been convicted of lying to Congress and the FBI to protect the president. That doesn’t make it okay.
Finally, Article 7 would charge Trump with undermining faith in the electoral process. The president’s lies about the possibility of fraud in mail-in balloting, combined with his threats to disregard the results of the election, wouldn’t register as transgressions in the U.S. criminal code. But could there be any higher crime and misdemeanor than deliberately seeking to suppress the vote, seed chaos and lay the groundwork to obstruct a peaceful transfer of power?
Reuters: Germany rejects Trump’s proposal to let Russia back into G7: foreign minister http://reut.rs/3g4V3Sf “…did not see any chance for allowing Russia back into the G7 as long as there was no meaningful progress in solving the conflict in Crimea as well as in eastern Ukraine”
🐣 RT @justateaspoon And they can’t give hospital workers proper PPE or retrofit schools and provide rapid testing and PPE to teachers and student to safely return to school – or alternately get every educator online teaching PDs, and every kid a device and WiFi? This is utter bullshit!
⋙ 🐣 RT @SkrilJay WTAF is this? https://twitter.com/justateaspoon/status/1287440128139354112?s=20/photo/1
// riot gear helmet like Nazi helmet
🐣 RT @BarbMcQuade At long last, AG Barr testifies before House Judiciary Committee Tues. Roger Stone, Michael Flynn, Mueller Report, Lafayette Park … so many questions. Here is a list from @jgeltzer @rgoodlaw @AshaRangappa_ @just_security
⋙ JustSecurity: Specific Questions for Congress (and News Media) to Ask Attorney General Barr http://bit.ly/326y96P by Joshua Geltzer, Ryan Goodman and Asha Rangappa
// 6/22/2020
♫ LATimes: Why Paul Simon’s ‘American Tune’ is the anthem for our troubled nation. Again http://lat.ms/2WVXdwg
Verse 2: And I don’t know a soul who’s not been battered
I don’t have a friend who feels at ease
I don’t know a dream that’s not been shattered
or driven to its knees
But it’s all right, it’s all right
We’ve lived so well so long
Still, when I think of the road
we’re traveling on
I wonder what went wrong
I can’t help it, I wonder what went wrong
🐣 RT @BillMoyers Rather than declare war on a coronavirus outbreak that he has mismanaged at every turn, Trump has attacked Dr. Fauci and the truth.
⋙ Moyers&Co: Anatomy of a Character Assassination: Trump Goes All-In Against Dr. Fauci http://bit.ly/2D4VWfh
// 7/22/2020
🐣 RT @benjaminwittes Internal memo from head of DHS I&A formally changing the blame for Portland violence from “Violent Opportunists” (VO) to Antifa.
Glossary:
FIR=field intelligence report
OSIR=open source intelligence report
⋙ 🐣 RT @benjaminwittes Understand this document as responsive to POTUS pressure to “designate” Antifa as a terrorist organization.
🐣 RT @MSNBC “There’s nothing about Donald Trump that won’t stick on these folks. When the Republican Party tries to emerge from this and run to the showers, it’s not going to work,” Lincoln Project co-founder Rick Wilson says about the GOP. “This is an authoritarian personality cult.” 💽 https://twitter.com/MSNBC/status/1287075520417497088?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @BrianBensimon Detailed explanation on the series of events that occurred in Austin tonight from James Sass (@jman722). Here’s a look at what he had to say: Text Block: https://twitter.com/BrianBensimon/status/1287267823958528000?s=20/photo/1-4
⭕ 25 Jul 2020
USAToday, Tom Nichols: As America tops 4 million COVID cases, the cult of Donald Trump has become a death cult http://bit.ly/32YSVrO “Their national motto is not ‘E Pluribus Unum,’ it’s ‘You’re not the boss of me.’”
// People who refuse to wear a mask are bolstering their sore egos. Their national motto is not ‘E Pluribus Unum,’ it’s ‘You’re not the boss of me.’
🐣 RT @jonathanalter The “Wall of Moms” in Portland is a brilliant tactic that may forever change social protest. If adopted everywhere–and protesters mostly stay behind it–this “good wall” (like non-violence) will reinforce that demonstrators have the moral high ground. It wrecks Trump’s argument.
⋙ 🐣 If there [were] leadership, it could insist on adopting this brilliant approach, but with totally grassroots movements, there’s not; so a tiny number of bad actors (perhaps even provocateurs) can hijack the message. Trump relies on this.
WaPo: Leaf-blower wars: How Portland protesters are fighting back against tear gas and forming ‘walls’ of veterans, lawyers, nurses http://wapo.st/2BwbfNz
🐣 RT @aasdanny Chants down at APD HQ as the victim’s fiancé returned to mourn with friends and supporters. 💽 https://twitter.com/aasdanny/status/1287275415669809152?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @chadloder [?] 🐣 The pedestrians are walking in crosswalk, crossing with the light. ¤ They have the right of way at all times. ¤ Driver ACCELERATES through a red light, nearly running them over, drives INTO a crowd, and then shoots someone and kills them. ¤ Bad shoot. Multiple felonies. Prison time.
⋙ 🐣 RT @chadloder AUSTIN: Another angle of the shooting confirms exactly what witnesses described. ¤ The car is stopped at the light, away from the march. The driver deliberately and accelerates and corners into the marchers.The marchers did not surround the car; THE DRIVER DROVE INTO THE CROWD. 💽 https://twitter.com/chadloder/status/1287283430007349255?s=20 /photo/1
Show this thread
⋙ 🐣 RT @chadloder RIP Garrett Foster. Say his name. 💔 Pray for his family. #austinprotests #atx #GarrettFoster
⋙ 🐣 RT @chadloder A distraught witness describes the shooting. Garrett was beloved by his community and he leaves behind his wife. 💔 💽 https://twitter.com/chadloder/status/1287268166016483330?s=20/photo/1
// ‘his wife is a paraplegic and he was her caregiver’
🐣 RT @Richie029 This is an interview of the man shot and killed in Austin this evening. His predictions couldn’t be any more wrong from the way things played out. 💽 https://twitter.com/Richie0829/status/1287285085356593152?s=20/photo/1
// “They won’t let us march in the streets anymore, so gotta practice some of our rights” ~ said he didn’t think he would have to use it
🐣 RT @MoseBuchele At scene of shooting at protest downtown, a protester gave me his account of what happened. ¤ “As we’re walking down passing 4th street, a blue car just comes swerving out into the middle of the street almost runs over a bunch of protesters…” (1/4)
⋙ 🐣 RT @MoseBuchele “Everybody around starts, like, smacking the car trying to get him to slow down. And they stop. And some guy, he walks up and he’s like ‘hey just don’t do that you’re going to get somebody hurt.'” (2/4)
⋙ 🐣 RT @MoseBuchele “And he [in car] pulls down his window and he fires three shots into the guy. From point blank. No words no nothing. And then rolls up his window and zooms off…” (3/4)
⋙⋙ 🐣 On the video posted to FB (news stations have posted it), the shots are very loud. There were 8-10 shots.
⋙ 🐣 RT @MoseBuchele “He just fired straight into the mess of the crowd. Not away from it, but towards it.” (4/4)
⋙⋙ 🐣 RT @lmarytweets Definitely more than three shots fired. More like 8.
🐣 RT @bloonstwrdfense i was there. without warning the suspect ran his car into the crowd, opened his window and started shooting. APD is covering this up.
⋙ 🐣 RT @storydashtrain I’m sorry all of these people are calling you a liar. I knew Garrett as well, I believe you.
⋙ 🐣 It’s pretty clear on the video posted on FB that the car plowed into the crowd.
⋙ 🐣 Call the APD and tell them what you saw.
⋙ 🐣 Also, call the news media. I thought the APD was quick to repeat the shooter’s version of events without talking to witnesses. Had they even seen the video? Who needs 10 shots?
🐣 RT @ Watch on #Periscope: PIO briefing on Homicide 202071411 💽 https://twitter.com/Austin_Police/status/1287256345666891777?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @IamShaneMorris Tonight, we lost Garrett Foster in Austin. A fellow Texan. A white man who was standing up for his black wife, a paraplegic black woman. ¤ There is only one response to this: Keep showing up and being armed against fascists. Never backing down. Real talk, this shit got me crying. /photo/1-2
🐣 RT @Datum_Lines Multiple witnesses say the shooter purposefully drove into the crowd. ¤ Many people at the scene had weapons. The shooter had a weapon. Having a weapon absolutely cannot denote fault here.
🐣 RT @MatthewKeysLive #BREAKING: Eyewitnesses identify the victim of tonight’s shooting at a Black Lives Matter protest in Austin as Garrett Foster of Austin.
‼️ 🐣 RT @leahmcelrath #BREAKING ¤ One person reportedly shot to death at the #BlackLivesMatter protest in downtown Austin tonight:
⋙⋙ KKVUEabc: One person dead in shooting at protest in Downtown Austin http://bit.ly/2ZXUDrp
// In a video posted to social media, multiple gunshots could be heard.
Neither the identities of the victim nor the shooter have been reported. ¤ You can hear the gunshots in this video:
⋙ 🐣 RT @anthonyfartino Clip of the shooting at the protest in Austin Texas from Hiram Gilberto on FB 💽 https://twitter.com/anthonyfartino/status/1287223265631576067?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @MSNBC “Without protest, America would still be a British colony. There would still be slaves. Women still wouldn’t be able to vote and you could still be fired because you love someone of the same gender or a different race,” @AliVelshi says.
⋙ 💽 MSNBC, AliVelshi: Velshi: Protests are the sound of democracy in action http://on.msnbc.com/3008xt1
// MSNBC’s Ali Velshi says Trump’s use of federal troops in Portland violates the fundamentally American right to protest and represents a shift from democracy to fascism.
🐣 RT @lajasa THIS is @realDonaldTrump’s America. 😢We need real leadership. #Biden2020 #TrumpIsUnwell #Seattle #BLM
⋙ 🐣 RT @SimoneReports This nurse in scrubs gets blasted by spray while trying to grab someone away from police. Her “day job” is RN at Seattle Cancer Care Alliance. She told me helping people is her calling and that’s why she’s here. And yes, her skin burns all over. #Q13FOX #SeattleProtests 💽 https://twitter.com/lajasa/status/1287221003874193409?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @SteveSchmidtSES Inscribed on President Reagan’s grave “I know in my heart that man is good. That what is right will always eventually triumph and there is purpose and worth to each and every life.” Ronald and Nancy Reagan would have been appalled by Trump’s malice, stupidity and desecrations.
⋙ 🐣 RT @ktumulty NEW: The Reagan Foundation — which runs the Reagan Library — has issued a warning to the Trump campaign and the RNC: Quit raising money off Ronald Reagan’s legacy.
⋙⋙ WaPo, Karen Tumulty: Reagan Foundation to Trump, RNC: Quit raising money off Ronald Reagan’s legacy http://wapo.st/30Pr5vc The RNC agreed in a phone call to stop selling “Trump-Reagan Commemorative Coin Sets,” though the offer wasstill online Saturday
🐣 RT @PaulaChertok I may turn blue saying this: Republicans helping Trump discredit the Russia investigation really help Putin. ¤ Barr declassified FBI interview w/ Steele source, GOP posts it, “blog” names source. Next day RT amplifies ID’d source “used to fabricate” dossier https://nyti.ms/32XVdHt
⋙ 🐣 RT @NatSecLisa If Congress needed this 302 for oversight, DOJ/FBI could have made it available without handing it over to be leaked. If true, this cld get people killed, and they don’t care. No source will trust the FBI, and they don’t care. They are doing generational harm, and they don’t care
⋙⋙ 🐣 RT @charlie_savage Promised confidentiality by the FBI, a Russia expert who had collected Trump-Russia chatter for the Steele dossier agreed to cooperate with agents vetting it. Barr directed the FBI to declassify a road map to identifying him. w/ @adamgoldmanNYT
⋙⋙⋙ NYT: The F.B.I. Pledged to Keep a Source Anonymous. Trump Allies Aided His Unmasking. http://nyti.ms/3hETVp8
// After a Russia expert who had collected research on Donald Trump for a disputed dossier agreed to tell the F.B.I. what he knew about it, law enforcement officials declassified a road map to identifying him.
DailyBeast: After Doubling Down, Sinclair Broadcasting Backs Off Airing Discredited Coronavirus Conspiracy Theories http://bit.ly/3g2gNhA
NYT, Frank Bruni: Donald Trump Is the Best Ever President in the History of the Cosmos http://nyti.ms/32U3bRP “Many Americans believe that Trump is an underappreciated martyr because they marinate in selective, manipulated and outright fraudulent factoids”
NYT, Nicholas Kristof: In Portland’s So-Called War Zone, It’s the Troops Who Provide the Menace http://nyti.ms/32UIG7R “Trump isn’t trying to quell violence in Portland. No, he’s provoking it to divert attention from 140,000 Covid-19 deaths in the United States”
// If President Trump is actually trying to establish order, he is stunningly incompetent.
🐣 RT @pbump Andrew Crespo, with whom I spoke for my police accountability article, has a longer look at legal issues surrounding detentions by the federal officers in Portland.
⋙ WaPo, Andrew Crespo: The federal police in Portland don’t even understand what ‘arrests’ are http://wapo.st/2ZYtnsH
// Andrew Manuel Crespo is a professor of criminal law at Harvard University; The government cannot lawfully exercise its power of arrest if it doesn’t realize it is, in fact, arresting people in the first place.
This past week, the Department of Homeland Security held a news conference to clear up a few things about the federal paramilitary police force grabbing protesters on the streets of Portland, Ore. If the goal was to reassure everyone that these armor-clad agents were acting lawfully, it did not go well. Instead the conference revealed, with painstaking clarity, a very big problem: The deputy director of President Trump’s new federal police force does not know what the word “arrest” means.
This isn’t just semantics. In our legal system, the definition of the word “arrest” is critical because it marks an important dividing line under the Fourth Amendment. For an arrest to be legal, it must be supported by probable cause. That means the arresting officer must be able to point to specific facts that would make a reasonable person think that the person being arrested committed a specific criminal offense.
In other words, you can think of the word “arrest” as an on-off switch for the Fourth Amendment’s essential protections. When the police arrest someone, they are constrained by the Constitution. Before then, the Constitution’s protections are substantially weaker — if they exist at all.
So, according to the Supreme Court, the federal agents in that video really did arrest the man they put in the van — without probable cause, by the government’s own admission. That means they violated the Fourth Amendment.
Crucially, what happened in that video is not an isolated incident. A man named Mark Pettibone describes a similar event in which, according to his account in The Washington Post, “men in green military fatigues” put him in “an unmarked minivan,” took him “to the federal courthouse and placed him in a holding cell” for questioning. Conner O’Shea, who was with Pettibone at the time, recorded audio of the incident and says a second unmarked van pursued him as well. Beyond these incidents, there are also disturbing videos of federal agents using excessive force against a peaceful Navy veteran and, on a separate occasion, shooting a young man in the face with a nonlethal bullet that fractured the man’s skull.
All of these episodes raise serious concerns that the newly beefed up federal paramilitary police force deployed to the streets of Portland is breaking the law, with dire consequences. Arresting people is a large part of what police officers do, and the impact of an arrest can last a lifetime. It is thus absolutely essential that arrests be lawful — that they be supported by probable cause and not be executed via excessive force, as the Constitution demands.
The government, however, cannot lawfully exercise this awesome power of arrest if it doesn’t realize it is, in fact, arresting people in the first place — in Portland, or wherever the president sends these officers next.
🚫 🐣 RT @AlexandraChalup When the U.S. Counter Intel drops in the near future, it will show that Donald Trump is more than a billion dollars in debt. He’s owned by the Russian Mafia, Deutsche Bank, the Bank of China, and the Saudis. He’s broke and working for Putin to work it off and strong-arming China.
// maybe
🐣 RT @AnneApplebaum “What the Canadian example does show, however, is what the United States could have looked like if the U.S. effort had not been led by malicious, self-seeking incompetents.” from @davidfrum
⋙ TheAtlantic, David Frum: Canada Got Better. The United States Got Trump. http://bit.ly/3jOysvM
// Two North American nations seemed to be on the same path—and then they diverged.
[T]he Trump administration and Trump-swayed governors have turned a crisis into a catastrophe—a catastrophe that continues to get uniquely worse in the United States even as it ebbs almost everywhere else in the developed world. In retrospect, the most humiliating fact about the coronavirus pandemic was that under responsible leadership and with some moderate amount of social cohesion, it was a highly manageable threat. Within less than six months of the first cases, it became apparent what to do. Almost everybody else in the developed world then did it. Almost everybody else in the developed world is now collecting the benefits of having done it. Donald Trump, following the imperatives of his own ego, refused to do it. He then imposed that refusal on the federal government, and encouraged it in Republican-led states, as Fox News hosts and Facebook posters applauded.
It could have been otherwise. It still could be. But in July as in January, the biggest difference between the United States and the rest of the developed world is that the U.S. has the misfortune of having Donald Trump in charge.
🐣 RT @AnneApplebaum This is sheer madness. The deliberate mass spread of a damaging conspiracy theory, designed to create distrust in public health officials, is what happens in a crazy theocracy or an unhinged dictatorship.
🧵 🐣 RT @oliverdarcy Sinclair’s local TV stations across the country are set to air the discredited “Plandemic” researcher’s conspiracy theory about Dr. Fauci this weekend. The segment that is set to air suggests Fauci is responsible for the creation of the coronavirus.
📌 https://twitter.com/oliverdarcy/status/1286864655550500868?s=20
⋙⋙⋙ CNN: Local TV stations across the country set to air discredited ‘Plandemic’ researcher’s conspiracy theory about Fauci http://cnn.it/2P14Nkx
In this week’s episode of the show, Bolling spoke with Judy Mikovits, the medical researcher featured in the discredited “Plandemic” video that went viral earlier this year and which was banned from platforms such as Facebook and YouTube. Throughout the segment, the on-screen graphic read, “DID DR. FAUCI CREATE COVID-19?”
⭕ 24 Jul 2020
🐣 RT @MSNBC “If you’re not protesting now, this would be a good time to start.” — Yale historian Timothy Snyder, author of “On Tyranny”
💽 MSNBC, Rachel Maddow: American activism is best hope to save U.S. democracy from Trump http://on.msnbc.com/2P0qhhq
// Timothy Snyder, author of “On Tyranny,” talks with Rachel Maddow about how Donald Trump’s actions echo the behavior of governments that slip away from democracy and into authoritarianism.
↥ ↧
🐣 RT @MaddowBlog “History shows that mass, peaceful protest works. So if you’re not protesting now, this would be a good time to start.” [~Timothy Snyder] 💽 https://twitter.com/MaddowBlog/status/1286874121968680960?s=20/photo/1
⋙ 🐣 🖼 RT @No1RealWolfy Dear Rachel @maddow:
We protested with flowers.
Pulitzer prize photo by photographer Bernie Boston of now-defunct newspaper The Washington Star. Taken on October 21, 1967.
Flower Power https://twitter.com/No1RealWolfy/status/1287020975209537536?s=20/photo/1
// young man putting flowers in soldiers’ guns
💙 🐣 RT @Amy_Siskind Hearing from a friend in Portland that there are 10-15k marching tonight. The “Walls of Moms” (wearing yellow) & Dads (orange), joined by “Wall of Vets,” “Teachers Against Tyrants” (green), Healthcare Workers (in scrubs) & Lawyers for BLM (purple)
🐣 RT @tribelaw “When paramilitary-style units have no identifying insignia, there is no transparency, no accountability — setting the scene for Trump’s own ‘state of emergency’ if he does not like the November election result.”
⋙ NYT, Roger Cohen: American Catastrophe Through German Eyes http://nyti.ms/2BxnYzy
// Trump says he wants to protect law-abiding citizens. In 1933, Hitler issued his ‘Decree of the Reich President for the Protection of People and State.’
BusinessInsider: Constitutional scholars are alarmed by Trump’s planned ‘surge’ of federal agents to major US cities http://read.bi/39sIQ7A
“We’ll go into all of the cities, any of the cities. We’re ready. We’ll put in 50,000, 60,000 people that really know what they’re doing,” Trump said.
🐣 RT @Mimirocah1 Hugely important piece by @JoyceWhiteVance about Trump/Barr’s abuse of federal law enforcement for seemingly political purposes & the dangers that presents.
⋙ TIME, Joyce White Vance: Trump’s Surge in Portland May Go Beyond What Is Lawful. Here’s how we can get answers about what’s going on http://bit.ly/3g0jKPZ
🐣 RT @IwriteOK A literal tear gas tornado in downtown Portland. 💽 https://twitter.com/IwriteOK/status/1286585525365768193?s=20/photo/1
TheAtlantic, Mike Mullen (6/2): I Cannot Remain Silent http://bit.ly/2Xqiv5x Mike Mullen was the Seventeenth chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
// Our fellow citizens are not the enemy, and must never become so.
💙 🐣 RT @AdamParkhomenko I tweet this out once a month. 💽 https://twitter.com/AdamParkhomenko/status/1286527177203294208?s=20/photo/1
// Eleven Films ad❣ Midnight in Washington; impeachment w Adam Schiff
⭕ 23 Jul 2020
🐣 RT @MikeCarpenter Applebaum is right: the attack on demonstrators in Portland is political performance art, carefully staged to cast the enemy as a left-wing “mob.” The rationale for doing this is identical to that of Mussolini’s blackshirts: the more violence, the better.
⋙ TheAtlantic, Anne Applebaum: Trump Is Putting On a Show in Portland http://bit.ly/2WSCoS9 “The chaos in Portland is not an accident. The chaos is the point.”
// The president is deploying the kind of performative authoritarianism that Vladimir Putin pioneered.
Welcome to the world of performative authoritarianism, a form of politics that reached new heights of sophistication in Russia over the past decade and has now arrived in the United States. Unlike 20th-century authoritarianism, this 21st-century, postmodern influence campaign does not require the creation of a total police state. Nor does it require complete control of information, or mass arrests. It can be carried out, instead, with a few media outlets and a few carefully targeted arrests.
💙 🐣 📔 RT @RepJerryNadler No one is above the law. I intro’d the No President Is Above the Law Act w/ @RepSwalwell @RepTedDeutch, enshrining that principle in law by suspending the statute of limitations for federal offenses committed by a sitting POTUS. ¤ The President is not King.
⋙ 📔 HouseJudiciary: Chairman Jerrold Nadler Statement for the Markup of H.R. 2678, the No President is Above the Law Act http://bit.ly/3eVqCN2
💙 🐣 RT @BarackObama I sat down with @JoeBiden to talk about the most pressing issues of our time. He’s exactly the leader we need right now––with the vision, the plans, and character to move America forward. ¤ Let’s get to work: http://JoeBiden.com/together 💽 https://twitter.com/BarackObama/status/1286300267642851329?s=20/photo/1
// Obama and Biden video 16mins
WaPo, David Ignatius: How to safeguard against the worst possible outcomes in November http://wapo.st/2OTKzct “Be prepared; be patient.”
The United States isn’t Russia or China, whatever fantasies of lifetime rule Trump may entertain. Our top military leaders — from Gen. Mark A. Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, on down — have stated emphatically that their oath is to the Constitution, not to Trump. And the Supreme Court under Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. this year reaffirmed the independence and the integrity of our judicial system.
These are safeguards against the dark scenarios that some analysts are spinning. The worst could happen, to be sure, but there are strong counter-pressures to prevent a post-election crackup. And a caution to Trump nightmare scenarists on the left: Conspiracy theorizing by one side seems to encourage similar feverish thinking and mobilization by the other.
🐣 RT @kyle_teamjoe This ad is a devastating take down of Donald Trump… 💽 https://twitter.com/kyle_teamjoe/status/1286288313670938626?s=20/photo/1
// Vote Vets ad❣ #TraitorTrump Portland Trump playing soldier
🧵 RT @SteveSchmidtSES There is an urgent necessity for Congress and the media to investigate if there are ANY security contractors deployed alongside Federal “Agents” thugs in any American city. There should be no opaqueness around this operation. Who are these men armed with M-4’s equipped with […] 📌 https://twitter.com/SteveSchmidtSES/status/1286286188597465093?s=20
🐣 RT @ACLU BREAKING: A federal court just issued a restraining order on the federal agents in Portland, Oregon. ¤ We said we would deploy the full firepower of the ACLU in this fight to save our democracy — and we meant it.
⋙ 🐣 RT @ACLU The ruling, which comes in a case brought by the @ACLU_OR, temporarily blocks federal agents from attacking or arresting journalists and legal observers at Portland protests. ¤ We’ll keep fighting until these protections are permanent.
🐣 RT @ZevShalev NEW: A judge rules to release sealed documents in the Ghislaine Maxwell case. These date back to a defamation case from 2015.
⋙ CNN: Judge rules to unseal documents in 2015 case against Ghislaine Maxwell, Jeffrey Epstein’s alleged accomplice http://cnn.it/39pmeou
🐣 RT @DeadlineWH “An election is the last guardrail of any democracy and President Trump is now raising questions about whether he will accept the result… This is going to be a fight by all accounts” – @costareports w/ @NicolleDWallace 💽 https://twitter.com/DeadlineWH/status/1286412931845038080?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @joshgerstein BREAKING: Judge says he’s ‘leaning in direction of issuing’ restraining order prohibiting federal agents in Portland from interfering with journalists or legal observers. Obama appointee Michael Simon says he expects to issue written ruling by 8PM ET.
TheGuardian, Andrew Gawthorpe: Trump is unleashing authoritarianism on US cities – just in time for the election http://bit.ly/3fUVL4L “The essence of fascism, and authoritarianism more generally, is violent spectacle”
// Andrew Gawthorpe is a historian of the United States at Leiden University; Democratic-run, minority-populated cities portrayed as plagued by anarchy are a much more useful political foil for Trump than peaceful metropolises
The essence of fascism, and authoritarianism more generally, is violent spectacle. This is why uniformed security forces and the violence they unleash are venerated in authoritarian regimes. They represent the unity, strength and virility of the nation – not least when they are suppressing dissenters and undesirables who they believe threaten these attributes.
Only the thirst for violent spectacle can explain the president’s decision in recent days to send federal security forces – including paramilitary teams from Customs and Border Protection (CBP) – to Portland and elsewhere. Clad in the same woodland camouflage that American troops wear into combat, this is precisely how they are supposed to be understood: as soldiers suppressing America’s enemies.
This theater is not being staged for the benefit of people who live in the affected areas. Democratic-run, minority-populated cities which can be portrayed as plagued by anarchy and lawlessness are a much more useful political foil for Trump than peaceful, prosperous metropolises. And predictably enough, the appearance of paramilitary federal security forces – who have reportedly violated the rights of protesters and shot one in the head with a riot munition – has inflamed rather than calmed the situation.
The real audience is to be found on one of the few things Donald Trump truly understands: television. As other authoritarian leaders have understood, television is the perfect medium both for knitting a country together and for tearing it apart. Simplistic in its framing and visceral in its impact, it recreates far-away events right in our living room.
… It also demonstrates the links that exist between the treatment of outsiders and the treatment of those deemed internal enemies. Just as the military support CBP at the southern border, now the border patrol itself appears in the heartland to suppress dissent and unrest, while its officials condemn fellow Americans as “anarchists” and “terrorists”. What this drives home is not just the interchangeability of America’s security forces, but also of their targets.
… Between now and November, he can be expected to use and abuse his power over America’s paramilitary security forces to try to bolster this case. It is clear that many conservative politicians and voters who claim to believe in individual rights and to fear abuses of federal power are now too deeply invested in authoritarianism, too convinced of the depravity of their opponents, to restrain him. Once their power is taken away peacefully at the ballot box, reforms to the behemoth which America’s security apparatus has become will be vital. Without them, there is no telling how far a future president might take the spectacle of violence.
🐣 RT @ZoeTillman Here is the letter from the DHS IG’s office to Congress announcing they’re coordinating with their DOJ watchdog counterpart to investigate the federal response in Portland. https://twitter.com/ZoeTillman/status/1286395260680241152?s=20/photo/1-2
⋙ ≣ BuzzfeedNews: Multiple Government Watchdogs Are Investigating The Use Of Force By Federal Officers In Portland And DC http://bit.ly/2WKtYwf
// More than 100 federal law enforcement officers have been deployed to respond to protests in Portland, according to the Justice Department.
🐣 RT @Auntiemels Court documents reveal secretive federal unit deployed for ‘Operation Diligent Valor’ in Oregon
⋙ Reuters: Court documents reveal secretive federal unit deployed for ‘Operation Diligent Valor’ in Oregon http://reut.rs/3eT6lHZ
According to the [court] documents, there are currently 114 federal law enforcement officers in Portland to patrol federal buildings, including personnel from the FPS, Immigration and Customs Enforcement, U.S. Marshals Service and U.S. Customs and Border Protection.
The crackdown in the city has drawn widespread criticism and legal challenges as videos surfaced of officers without clear identification badges using force and unmarked vehicles to arrest protesters without explanation.
Portland’s mayor called the intervention an abuse of federal power and said it was escalating the violence. Oregon’s attorney general filed a lawsuit against the federal agencies on Friday, saying they had seized and detained people without probable cause.
🐣 RT @AndrewDesiderio SCOOP: Dem leaders wrote in a classified letter to Wray that Graham/Grassley/Nunes/Mulvaney were mailed packets of info about Joe Biden from Ukraine. It fueled their demand for an urgent briefing on election security. ¤ w/ @NatashaBertrand @kyledcheney
❤️ ⋙⋙ Politico: Democrats: Packets sent to Trump allies are part of foreign plot to damage Biden http://politi.co/30EtKb7
// by Natasha Bertrand, Andrew Desiderio and Kyle Cheney; The packets were shipped to leading Republicans by a Ukrainian lawmaker who has met with the president’s attorney, Rudy Giuliani.
⋙ 🐣 RT @AndrewDesiderio The classified addendum to Dems’ letter states that the four Republicans were sent the information by Andrii Derkach, a Ukrainian lawmaker who has teased dirt on Biden for months and has met with Giuliani. Graham/Grassley deny having received anything.
WaPo: Michael Cohen to be released from prison after judge sides with claims of retaliation http://wapo.st/2OPUpft In a scathing finding, Judge Hellerstein said Cohen had been sent back to jail in retaliation for his plans to publish a tell-all book about Trump
🔆 This❗️⋙ CNN: Justice Department watchdog to investigate federal use of force in Portland and Washington http://cnn.it/2Ef0pMX Justice Department Inspector General Michael Horowitz will work with his counterpart at DHS, per WaPo
NYT, Gary Hart: How Powerful Is the President? http://nyti.ms/2ZVlgNq It’s time for a new Church Committee: “[T]here is no justification for a president to have dictatorial powers kept secret from Congress, the press and the American people”
// It is time for Congress to investigate the emergency authorities given to the chief executive.
NYT, Emily Badger: Federal Forces Have Gone Into US Cities Before. This Time Is Different http://nyti.ms/3hrESPp “‘The [theme] here is not the protection of federal property,’ said Kelly Hernandez, a historian at UCLA. ‘It’s the effort to suppress the uprising for Black life’”
// Legal scholars fear the president is trying to take on a job that the Constitution did not give the federal government.
🧵 RT @BandyXLee1 Madeleine Albright said a phrase I often use: “Fascism is not a political ideology.” I usually add: “It is mental pathology writ large.” It would be good if we could finally recognize what we are seeing: disease taking over a system, political or otherwise.
⋙ 🐣 RT @BandyXLee1 Fascism is merely the result of political power being handed to a person who cannot handle it. Surely, the disease causes the person to seek power in the first place, but once given the power, the limits of his or her sense of self will lead only to its abuse.
⋙ 🐣 RT @BandyXLee1 The pathological pursuit of power is in the first place to compensate for the inadequacy in handling one’s own affairs. If one cannot even handle one’s own affairs, how can one handle a nation’s? Paranoia then takes over, and quickly follows the use of force.
⋙ 🐣 RT @BandyXLee1 This is why it is critically important to screen in advance for mental pathology, to detect the warning signs that are familiar to mental health experts but not always obvious to the untrained eye. We should not gamble with matters of health and disease, or life and death.
🐣 RT @Lucian_Kim (7/3/3018) “We are competitors but don’t necessarily need to be adversaries,” @SenShelby tells Lavrov as he leads all-Republican congressional delegation to Moscow.
⋙ 🐣 RT @Lucian_Kim 🐣 Meeting with Lavrov in Moscow, from left to right: @JerryMoran, @SenJohnHoeven, @RepKayGranger, @JonHuntsman, @SenShelby, @SenJohnThune, @SteveDaines, @SenJohnKennedy, @SenRonJohnson. No Dems, no coastal states (unless you count TX, AL, LA).
⋙ 🐣 RT @Lucian_Kim Kremlin: Unfortunately Putin won’t have time to meet guests from Congress, but we’re very happy they’re here and contacts with US are intensifying.
// 7/3/2018: over Fourth of July
WaPo: Portland Mayor Ted Wheeler tear-gassed alongside protesters by federal officers http://wapo.st/2Brpu6g
⭕ 22 Jul 2020
🐣 RT @ACLU Trump’s militarized federal agents have used sharpshooters to maim people, shot a protester in the head with rubber bullets, swept protesters away in unmarked cars, and brutally attacked protesters, journalists, legal observers, and medics with sonic weapons and tear gas.
🐣 RT @DanRather I predict the Wall of Moms in Portland may become a far more enduring representation of the future of America than the “wall” along the Mexican border.
WaPo, Karen Tumulty: Four years ago, Trump said he alone could fix things. What isn’t worse now? http://wapo.st/2Ecgva3 “Americans know all too well what their lives look like in 2020. They are in touch with reality, even if their president is not”
🐣 RT @goldengateblond it’s literally Donald Trump’s America, you disingenuous ding dong
⋙ 🐣 RT @BorisEP This would be @JoeBiden’s America. ¤ It’s a very scary place. 💽 https://twitter.com/BorisEP/status/1285947226750164993?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @J_Mei21 .@ReallyAmerican1 putting in that work once AGAIN ¤ What is happening in this country is utterly unprecedented. ¤ #GestapoTrump 💽 https://twitter.com/J_Mei21/status/1286056506065133575?s=20/photo/1
// Really American ad❣ Gestapo Trump Portland
RT @steve_vladeck “Indeed, we can think of no better example of the police power, which the Founders denied the National Government and reposed in the States, than the suppression of violent crime and vindication of its victims.” ¤ Chief Justice Rehnquist for #SCOTUS in U.S. v. Morrison (2000).
💙 🐣 RT @ThePlumLineGS NEWS: ¤ Michael Chertoff, former homeland security secretary under Bush, tells me Trump’s law enforcement push is “very problematic” and “very unsettling.” ¤ Operating on streets is “damaging” DHS and “raises issues under the 10th Amendment,” he says.
⋙ WaPo: Trump’s authoritarian crackdown is so bad that even some in the GOP are blasting it http://wapo.st/2CZUqe2
// Tom Ridge and Michael Chertoff: Former homeland security chiefs under George W. Bush sound the alarm.
“While it’s appropriate for DHS to protect federal property, that is not an excuse to range more widely in a city and to conduct police operations, particularly if local authorities have not requested federal assistance,” Chertoff told me. “That’s our constitutional system.”
Of course, the fact that two of Bush’s homeland security chiefs — both of whom were involved in prosecuting that war on terror — are now condemning what’s happening might also be read as a sign of how far Trump has strayed into such abuses.
Indeed, it’s worth recalling that only weeks ago, Trump’s authoritarian fever dreams were doused by some of his other top officials. After Trump threatened to invoke the Insurrection Act of 1807 to send the military into cities, Defense Secretary Mark T. Esper distanced himself, and Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Mark A. Milley put out a remarkable statement calling on members of the military to remember their commitment to our founding documents and values.
Chertoff suggested to me that DHS officials might ask themselves whether they have a similar duty, now that Trump has turned to them to create the TV imagery he thinks will help him get reelected.
💙 WaPo, Max Boot: The Lincoln Project is trying to save the Republican Party from itself http://wapo.st/32L4O4v “If we are ever again to have a sane and sober center-right party in America — something we desperately need — then the Trumpified GOP must first be demolished”
🐣 RT @Sifill_LDF Philadelphia’s Top Prosecutor Is Prepared to Arrest Federal Agents
⋙ Bloomberg: Philadelphia’s Top Prosecutor Is Prepared to Arrest Federal Agents http://bloom.bg/39mW4m4
// After Trump said he would send agents to more cities, Philly’s district attorney lays out how he might criminally charge federal officers.
🐣 RT @kylegriffin1 Biden on Trump blaming China: “No Republican president has done this. No Democratic president. We’ve had racists, and they’ve existed, they’ve tried to get elected president. He’s the first one that has. And the way he pits people against one another is all designed to divide.”
🐣 RT @DeadlineWH “We have an authoritarian president out of control. He’s long admired the tactics of Putin and Duterte and Erdogan and other strong-men around the world, and now he’s brought their secret police tactics to the streets of our country” – @SenJeffMerkley w/ @NicolleDWallace 💽 https://twitter.com/DeadlineWH/status/1286052249672835073?s=20/photo/1
WaPo: ‘What choice do we have?’: Portland’s ‘Wall of Moms’ faces off with federal officers at tense protests http://wapo.st/2ZThYdT
📔 JustSecurity, Scott Harschbarger: Why 27 Distinguished DC Lawyers Filed a Complaint with Bar Association Against Attorney General William Barr http://bit.ly/2CDkBr9
The complaint is a sober and comprehensive “bill of particulars.” It challenges Mr. Barr’s actions as to four basic matters:
● 1. Unconstitutionally ordering, overseeing and supporting the forcible dispersal of constitutionally protected peaceful protests at Lafayette Square. In so doing, Mr. Barr unethically represented Mr. Trump’s personal interests in a “photo op” rather than carrying out his ethical duty to represent his client — the people of the United States — to protect their fundamental interest in their constitutional rights.
● 2. Misleading Congress and the public by asserting that the Mueller Report did not contain sufficient evidence to establish that President Trump committed the crime of “obstruction of justice.”
● 3. Deceiving the American people in his unprecedented December 2019 attack on a report from a Justice Department Inspector General. Mr. Barr misrepresented the IG’s determination that the FBI had a proper basis for launching its 2016 counterintelligence investigation — by leaving out crucial evidence on which the IG relied.
● 4. Issuing harmful and totally unnecessary public prejudgments of FBI personnel during a pending criminal investigation he was overseeing in which they were potential defendants – seriously interfering with the administration of justice.Among the remarkable list of signers are four former DC Bar Presidents – former leaders of the organization they now call upon to investigate Mr. Barr – and a former DC Bar senior discipline lawyer, now ethics counsel to Georgetown University’s Law Center. Signers include former Watergate prosecutor Philip Lacovara (who argued and won U.S. v. Nixon in the U.S. Supreme Court) and former Justice Department prosecutor Paul Butler, now a law professor, who knows what is required for ethical behavior by Justice Department lawyers. Also among the signers are former law school deans, eminent legal ethics professors, and distinguished former government officials.
↥ ↧
⋙ JustSecurity: To Office of Disciplinary Council, DC Bar Court of Appeals: Professional Responsibility Investigation of William P. Barr (letter; pdf) http://bit.ly/30AeGvd 40p
💙 DailyBeast, Masha Gessen: How the Fall of the Berlin Wall Radicalized Putin http://bit.ly/3fP5d9y (updated from original 2014 article)
// 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.
🧵 💽 RT @DefendPDX People fill every inch of street in front of both the JC and the Courthouse, overflows into Chapman Square and Lownsale Park. Chanting, clapping. Thousands ¤ This is what it looks like when the feds “quell” protest ¤ – @1misanthrophile https://twitter.com/defendpdx/status/1285813151410253824?s=20
//➔ @1misanthrophile tweets as @DefendPDX to livetweet protests
⭕ 21 Jul 2020
🐣 RT @EUvsDisinfo NATO’s visualisation of the Russian #disinformation amplification network, used to sow confusion during COVID-19. Substantial update describing NATO’s approach to countering disinformation: https://twitter.com/EUvsDisinfo/status/1285524118243336197?s=20/photo/1
⋙NATO.int: NATO’s approach to countering disinformation: a focus on COVID-19 http://bit.ly/2OOBK3K
// 1/17/2020
🐣 RT @JoeBiden Let me say what President Trump won’t: Russian interference in our elections is a violation of our sovereignty. And if I’m president, I’ll respond accordingly.
💽 https://twitter.com/JoeBiden/status/1285675414732431360?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @NoahPinion “Proactive arrests”??!!
⋙ 🐣 RT @NikkiMcR Acting DHS Secretary Chad Wold says the actions of his department in Portland are “proactive” arrests of individuals and argues that his stormtroopers aren’t bound by the physical jurisdiction of federal property. 💽 https://twitter.com/Noahpinion/status/1285742421037289472?s=20/photo/1
WaPo: ‘MomBloc’ and protest first-timers march into Portland streets, moved by the aggressive tactics of federal agents http://wapo.st/3ePBCvm “Self-identified moms in yellow shirts, bike helmets and masks mingled with dads wearing orange and holding signs”
🧵 💽 RT @LindseyPSmith7 I’m in beautiful (?) downtown Portland, Oregon! ¤ Here’s a spray painting of a hand doing the middle finger, and underneath it says 12 in curly numbers. 📌 https://twitter.com/LindseyPSmith7/status/1285801344024973312?s=20/photo/1
💙 NYT, Jamelle Bouie: The Border War in Portland http://nyti.ms/2BjuVnB “A secretive, nationwide police force … is a power that cannot and should not exist in a democracy, lest it undermine and destroy the entire project”
// How can this be a job for Homeland Security?
On Sunday, [the acting secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, Chad] Wolf’s deputy, Ken Cuccinelli (whose official title is “Senior Official Performing the Duties of the Deputy Secretary for the Department of Homeland Security”), told NPR that Homeland Security would be taking these tactics nationwide. Wolf affirmed this, telling Fox News that his agency can act with or without local cooperation. “I don’t need invitations by the state, state mayors or state governors to do our job,” he said. “We’re going to do that, whether they like us there or not.” President Trump likewise vowed to send federal law enforcement agents to several more cities, amid reports that a Portland-like force was headed to Chicago.
A secretive, nationwide police force — created without congressional input or authorization, formed from highly politicized agencies, tasked with rooting out vague threats and answerable only to the president — is a nightmare out of the fever dreams of the founding generation, federalists and antifederalists alike. It’s something Americans continue to fear and for good reason. It is a power that cannot and should not exist in a democracy, lest it undermine and destroy the entire project.
But rhetoric isn’t enough. The House must act and act now. In addition to holding hearings and investigations — including eliciting testimony from Wolf and other officials — Democrats should condition final passage of its Homeland Security appropriations bill on a complete halt to operations in Portland and other cities and the dissolution of the response force. Should Democrats find themselves in control of both legislative branches and the White House next year, they should also use the opportunity to amend the relatively obscure Federal Vacancies Reform Act, which Trump has used to install loyalists in high-level positions without Senate confirmation.
There’s also the issue of the Department of Homeland Security itself. Since its creation in the wake of the Sept. 11 attacks, the department has been criticized for its size, scope and waste. … Report after report — from congressional oversight committees, from the Government Accountability Office — show an agency practically defined by waste and dysfunction. And if the Trump years have shown anything, it is that the agencies within D.H.S., and especially ICE and C.B.P., are in desperate need of root-and-branch reform or some other fundamental change.
… Just as local communities do not need militarized police officers, the federal government does not need an alphabet soup of militarized law enforcement agencies, as well as the cultures of prejudice and brutality that have gone along with them. If and when we close the book on Trump, perhaps we should use the opportunity to close the book on Homeland Security too.
💙 TheAtlantic, Quinta Jurecic & Benjamin Wittes: Nothing Can Justify the Attack on Portland http://bit.ly/2CELFGu “The message is as simple as it is ugly: The caravan isn’t just coming north through Mexico… The caravan, in fact, is the city. & only Trump can protect you from it”
// The question of whether these arrests are appropriate has a clear answer—at least in a nation that purports to live under the rule of law.
🐣 RT @Acyn General Honoré: As you see right here, they beat this man up. Police don’t do this. What kind of bullshit is this? 💽 https://twitter.com/Acyn/status/1285783458053120000?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @tribelaw McCulloch v. Md (1819) and In re Neagle (1890) frame the complex issue of intergovernmental immunities. Federal agents aren’t free simply to ignore state laws (eg, against assault and battery or kidnapping) when purporting to follow the Attorney General’s orders.
⋙ 🐣 RT @tribelaw The Supremacy Clause of Article VI provides only a limited shield for federal officers violating state laws of general applicability in the course of discharging their duties. State criminal prosecution of Trump’s stormtroopers is thus entirely possible. [link]
🐣 RT @benrhodes In a shift in tone, unmarked militias brutalized peaceful protesters in Portland as the death toll from COVID climbed over 140,000 and the President threatened to not accept the results of the election.
⋙ 🐣 RT @Reuters President Trump, in a shift in rhetoric and tone, encouraged Americans to wear masks if they cannot maintain social distance and warned that the coronavirus pandemic would get worse before it got better https://reut.rs/32JaETY 💽 https://twitter.com/Reuters/status/1285781614442672129?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @cliffordlevy NEW: Trump has warm words for Ghislaine Maxwell, who is charged with luring girls for Jeffrey Epstein. ¤ “I just wish her well,” Trump said.
⋙ NYT: Trump’s Warm Words for Ghislaine Maxwell: ‘I Just Wish Her Well’ http://nyti.ms/2OI8b3V
// The president’s comments about Ms. Maxwell, who is charged with luring girls into Jeffrey Epstein’s orbit, drew new attention to Mr. Trump’s friendship with Mr. Epstein.
🧵 RT @TwitterSafety We’ve been clear that we will take strong enforcement action on behavior that has the potential to lead to offline harm. In line with this approach, this week we are taking further action on so-called ‘QAnon’ activity across the service. 📌 https://twitter.com/TwitterSafety/status/1285726277719199746?s=20
⋙ 🐣 RT @TwitterSafety We will permanently suspend accounts Tweeting about these topics that we know are engaged in violations of our multi-account policy, coordinating abuse around individual victims, or are attempting to evade a previous suspension — something we’ve seen more of in recent weeks.
⋙ 🐣 RT @TwitterSafety In addition, we will:
1️⃣ No longer serve content and accounts associated with QAnon in Trends and recommendations
2️⃣ Work to ensure we’re not highlighting this activity in search and conversations
3️⃣ Block URLs associated with QAnon from being shared on Twitter
🐣 RT @ejeancarroll Sir, you just sent a signal to Ghislaine Maxwell. And we ALL know why. @realDonaldTrump
🐣 RT @woodruffbets Trump on Ghislaine Maxwell: “I just wish her well, frankly. I’ve met her numerous times over the years…I just wish her well, whatever it is”
CNBC: Twitter bans 7,000 QAnon accounts, limits 150,000 others as part of broad crackdown http://cnb.cx/2OJYNN7 //➔ thank you, @Jack
QAnon is a right-wing conspiracy theory that centers around the baseless belief that an anonymous tipster is revealing how President Donald Trump is leading a secret war against a so-called Deep State — a collection of political, business and Hollywood elites who, according to the theory, worship Satan and abuse and murder children. The conspiracy theory draws its roots from Pizzagate, which claimed Hillary Clinton ran a pedophile ring outside of a Washington D.C. pizza shop.
QAnon emerged from the fringes of the internet’s conspiracy community to become a recognized political phenomenon, with Trump supporters showing up at events with “Q” merchandise. Qanon followers have also been implicated in armed standoffs, attempted kidnappings, harassment and murder since the conspiracy theory first gained traction in in the internet in October 2017.
Last year, the FBI designated QAnon as a potential domestic terror threat. The FBI’s report on QAnon’s ties to dangerous real-world activities led in part to Twitter’s decision, a spokesperson said.
WaPo, Jennifer Rubin: How to avoid a repeat of 2016 and the Ukraine extortion plot http://wapo.st/3jsEulp “If this sounds like deja vu all over again, that’s because it is — unless Democrats put an end to it. … This is also a test for the media”
Earlier this month, QAnon conspiracy theorists falsely claimed on Twitter, Reddit, and TikTok that the furniture company Wayfair was shipping trafficked children because price glitches raised the price of pillows and cabinets to tens of thousands of dollars. The company’s name was the top trend on Twitter in the United States on July 10 as Twitter users posted links to expensive furniture.
Still, the conspiracy theory has continued to rage on TikTok among some users who did not know it was initially posited by a QAnon influencer on Twitter.
Reddit has similarly banned the process of “brigading,” where users of one community target another community with harassment in a coordinated fashion, on its service.
🐣 RT @chicagosmayor Under no circumstances will I allow Donald Trump’s troops to come to Chicago and terrorize our residents.
🐣 RT @dbfunke So, uh, there are several things wrong with this.
1. Not all protesters are antifa activists
2. Antifa is not a terrorist organization
3. Even if it were, activists would still have due process rights
4. The Patriot Act is… not relevant here
So, uh, there are several things wrong with this.
⋙ ✅ Politifact: “Since Trump labeled ANTIFA a terrorist organization their rights were stripped by the Patriot Act which states if someone is labeled a terrorist they are not afforded due process.” FALSE http://bit.ly/2WILSj4
🐣 RT @DeadlineWH “A lot of intelligence officials believe the Burisma accusations that are being revived are once again trying to obscure what Russia is up to… The only remedy that really works is resilience of a population that knows what’s going on” – @julianbarnes w/ @NicolleDWallace 💽 https://twitter.com/DeadlineWH/status/1285691968467750918?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @IvoHDaalder Tom Ridge, first Sec of DHS: “The department was established to protect America from the ever-present threat of global terrorism. It was not established to be the president’s personal militia.”
⋙ PACapitalStar: Former Gov./DHS boss Ridge: ‘It’d be a cold day in hell’ before he’d let ‘uninvited’ federal agents into Pa. http://bit.ly/3g136zq
The nation’s first secretary of the Department of Homeland Security had sharp words for his former agency Tuesday, condemning the Trump administration’s decision to send federal officers into the streets of Portland, Ore. to quell protests, saying it was “counterproductive,” and that it was not the agency’s mission to act as domestic law enforcement.
“The department was established to protect America from the ever-present threat of global terrorism. It was not established to be the president’s personal militia,” ex-Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge said during an interview with Sirius XM host Michael Smerconish.
Ridge, the former two-term Republican Pennsylvania governor, who was tapped by President George W. Bush to lead the domestic security agency two decades ago, said “it would be a cold day in hell before I would consent to an uninvited, unilateral intervention into one of my cities.”
Today: Wall of Moms’ at Portland protests on getting tear-gassed: ‘We held the line’ http://on.today.com/39hZ6YU
// The group, which includes hundreds of mothers, has said the protests are peaceful, but the police have been violent.
🧵 RT @HouseJudiciary[Dems] After the Supreme Court rejected Trump’s efforts to illegally ask for citizenship information on the census, the President now seeks to unlawfully change the census count through executive fiat. 📌 https://twitter.com/HouseJudiciary/status/1285678750559096836?s=20
⋙ 🐣 RT @HouseJudiciary The President’s memorandum violates the plain text of the Constitution, which requires that all ‘persons’ be counted in the census and that congressional apportionment be based on the ‘whole number of persons’ in each state.
⋙ 🐣 RT @HouseJudiciary The memorandum would violate this Constitutional requirement by seeking to discount any persons believed to be undocumented. The Constitution, however, could not be clearer.
⋙ 🐣 RT @HouseJudiciary The President’s order is intended to sway future elections by skewing electoral apportionment against areas, like cities, with large immigrant populations.
⋙ 🐣 RT @HouseJudiciary Refusing to count any persons in the United States would effectively deny representation to diverse communities in future elections, undermining the Constitution’s guarantee of equal representation.
⋙ 🐣 RT @HouseJudiciary This is just the latest desperate attempt by this President to distract from his disastrous coronavirus response by scapegoating immigrants. Unfortunately, the Administration’s anti-immigrant zeal and desire to divide us as a nation knows no bounds.
⋙ 🐣 RT @HouseJudiciary This is another blatantly unlawful executive order by this lawless President. As a nation we deserve better.
🐣 RT @AndrewFeinberg NEW: Ex-Wisconsin Senator @RussFeingold voted against creating @DHSGov in 2002 and warned that a future president could use it as an unaccountable federal police force. ¤ He says that’s exactly where we are today with @realDonaldTrump’s war on Portland.
⋙ TheIndependent, Andrew Feinberg [UK]: Senators thought the idea of an abusive president with a secret police force was so absurd they allowed it — now they regret it http://bit.ly/2OMsayu ● Text Block: https://twitter.com/Auriandra/status/1285653566749908992?s=20/photo/1
// Article: ‘The majority of training the agents do is military-style, so they’re going to deal with crowds of people like you would see soldiers dealing with crowds in Iraq or in Afghanistan’
// Twitter: For weeks now, camouflage-clad officers — including members of the United States Border Patrol’s elite Tactical Unit and the US Marshal Service Special
Feingold said both the Trump administration’s actions in Portland and President Trump’s threats to send federal agents to patrol cities with Democratic mayors are part of a “truly dystopian picture” that is worse than anything that was imagined during the George W Bush administration. These actions, he added, are more appropriate for “a completely lawless country without any protection of the rule of law” than the United States of America.
v
“This is right out there in the open and is a direct affront to American democracy. People should be able to express their political views consistent with the First Amendment and not be afraid of reprisal from the federal government,” [Former Sen. Russ Feinberg (D-WI)] said. “What I was warning about in 2001 was what would happen if we elected somebody who really didn’t have any respect for our system of government, and that’s where we are today. He [Trump] and his administration are doubling down on the most frightening series of threats that any of us have ever seen in our democracy.”
^
Juliette Kayyem — who served as an Assistant Secretary of Homeland Security from 2009 to 2010 and was on the Homeland Security Council during Jeh Johnson’s time leading DHS — said Trump has turned to DHS because Defense Department leadership indicated that they wouldn’t follow orders to use National Guard troops against protesters as was done in Washington, DC last month.“DHS is the weak link,” she explained. “The White House experienced considerable pushback from the Pentagon after Lafayette Square, but you won’t get that at DHS because its leadership is totally beholden to Trump.”
“This kind of misuse and abuse is particularly plausible in an agency like DHS, which is weakened by its lack of history, its lack of settled processes, and by the fact that that Trump has systematically denuded it of anybody with any authority to push back at him,” Rosenzweig said. “Trump has systematically [emasculated] anybody who gave him the least little bit of pushback, you know, even people who were totally on his side in terms of results they wanted to achieve.”
He also posited that the situation in Portland is “a particular product of the fact that Trump and [White House Senior Policy Adviser] Stephen Miller have converted DHS into this subservient entity that has no leadership that refuses to do their bidding”.
… [D]espite their lack of familiarity with Americans’ basic constitutional rights, she said Border Patrol agents are eager to embrace their newfound freedom to inflict themselves on American protesters because doing so as a “national police force” has long been their goal. Because most Border Patrol agents hold what is known as “1801 authority” — which only grants the power to make arrests and enforce federal law but not conduct investigations — rather than the “1811” authority held by Special Agents at other agencies, Budd said the USBP has long had both an agency-wide inferiority complex and designs on a larger role in the nation’s law enforcement apparatus.
“The Border Patrol has always had this elective low self-esteem, that they’re not considered to be like, ‘real cops,’ and they’re just always pissin’ and moanin’ about how they feel that they should be able to go around and grab anybody up off the streets and do whatever they want,” she said. “And that’s what you’re seeing out there.”
TIME: Former Trump Lawyer Michael Cohen Is Being Kept in Prison to Stop Him Finishing Tell-All Book, Lawsuit Claims http://bit.ly/32F3W1e
⭕ 20 Jul 2020
🐣 RT @ChrisAlbertoLaw It’s Barr’s goal to trigger violence & riots to help Trump win back the white suburban vote in six swing states. ¤ The best countermeasure – since @OregonGovBrown will not activate the National Guard – is to practice @repjohnlewis’s non-violence civil disobedience tactics.
CNN: The White House is pushing a conspiracy theorist fired from the NSC for a top Pentagon position http://cnn.it/32FvsM8
// Rich Higgins, a former aide who says he was fired from the National Security Council in 2017 for sending a conspiratorial memo, is currently being considered to serve as chief of staff to retired Brig. Gen. Anthony Tata, the White House’s nominee for the under secretary of defense for policy at the Pentagon.
🐣 RT @matthewamiller Of all the thorny problems a President Biden would face, what to do with DHS will be high on the list. DOJ will bounce back because the culture is strong, but DHS has not so much been corrupted as unleashed. Huge challenge.
💙 🐣 RT @MeidasTouch VOTE OUT HATE! https://twitter.com/MeidasTouch/status/1285442851577331712?s=20/photo/1
// Meidas Touch ad❣ Vote Out Hate
🐣 RT @MaddowBlog Sen. Johnson, either inadvertently or on purpose, has apparently been taking disinformation created by a foreign intelligence service in order to mess with our election and he has been using it in his committee as if it’s a real thing. 💽 https://twitter.com/MaddowBlog/status/1285400729117700097?s=20/photo/1
🐣 🖼 RT @ByMikeBaker The protest crowds in Portland continue to grow in response to the arrival of the feds. ¤ There are probably about 2,000 people here right now in front of the Justice Center, with moms in yellow lined up in front, stretching across a whole block.
💽 https://twitter.com/ByMikeBaker/status/1285431298136276992?s=20/photo/1
🧵 RT @MrOlmos #Portlandprotests day 53 📌 https://twitter.com/MrOlmos/status/1285418677278355457?s=20
⋙ 🐣 RT @MrOlmos Portland moms singing lullaby chants of “Hands up Please don’t shoot me” at Trump’s secret police in Portland right now is moving and beautiful. 💽 https://twitter.com/MrOlmos/status/1285432618029219840?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @duty2warn Speaker Pelosi, when asked about Trump possibly not honoring election results, said – “it has nothing to do with him. He will be fumigated out.”
🐣 RT @kylegriffin1 Biden says he’ll “treat foreign interference in our election as an adversarial act” and plans to “direct the U.S. Intel Community to report publicly and in a timely manner on any efforts by foreign governments that have interfered … with U.S. elections.”
⋙ Politico, Natasha Bertrand: Inside the Biden campaign’s pushback against foreign interference http://politi.co/30tjcvi
// Many of the former vice president’s top aides witnessed Russia’s attack on Hillary Clinton in 2016. They see history repeating itself — and are determined to fight back.
He added that he would direct his administration “to leverage all appropriate instruments of national power and make full use of my executive authority to impose substantial and lasting costs on state perpetrators”—including potential sanctions and cyber responses—and will call on the the Pentagon, DHS, the FBI, and the State Department “to develop plans for disrupting foreign threats to our elections process.”
In a well-choreographed, 75-minute presentation set against the logo of Russian news agency Interfax—and overlaid with English subtitles by the time it was posted on YouTube—Ukrainian lawmaker Andrii Derkach accused Biden, his son and members of his team of an elaborate conspiracy to steal hundreds of millions of dollars from Ukraine through bribery and extortion. Many of the misconduct accusations against Biden, which were examined during President Donald Trump’s impeachment trial last year, have been debunked; others remain unsubstantiated. But the former vice president’s advisers are bracing for an onslaught of accusations that, they say, recall Russia’s efforts to damage Hillary Clinton and the Democrats in 2016.
Derkach, an independent MP who was formerly aligned with Ukraine’s pro-Russia Party of Regions, told POLITICO in a lengthy statement that his press conferences were focused on “international corruption,” and called it “nonsense” that he is trying to interfere in the U.S. election. He also denounced efforts “to tie me to the special services of other countries,” like Russia, and said his critics were trying to discredit him by drawing attention to his studies at Moscow’s FSB academy, formerly known as the Dzerzhinsky Higher School of the KGB.
Derkach’s father, Leonid, was a KGB operative for decades before becoming the head of Ukraine’s security services until he was fired in 2004 over his alleged involvement in a murder plot.
Derkach was openly hostile to efforts by Ukraine to assist former special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation of Paul Manafort—Trump’s former campaign chairman who was convicted of bank and tax fraud stemming from his work in Ukraine, where he was also investigated by the country’s National Anti-Corruption Bureau (NABU) over alleged illegal payments. NABU is now one of Derkach’s chief targets.
Meanwhile, Andrii Telizhenko, a former political officer in the Ukrainian Embassy who has also worked with Trump’s former personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani to undermine Biden, told POLITICO in a phone interview on Wednesday that he gave more recorded conversations between Biden and Poroshenko to a third party who will decide whether and how to release them.
“I’m not releasing anything on my own,” Telizhenko said. “I don’t want to interfere in anything. I gave it to a U.S. source and had them decide what to release and what not to release, not to interfere in any political situation in the United States.” He also vehemently denies any allegations that he’s working with the Russians, saying, “I’m not supporting Russia in any way” and “I again see myself as a patriot of Ukraine.” [ … much more … ]
NYT, Michelle Goldberg: Trump’s Occupation of American Cities Has Begun http://nyti.ms/2CQIiMv “U.S. Customs and Border Protection, however, is under federal authority, has leadership that’s fanatically devoted to Trump and is saturated with far-right politics”
// Protesters are being snatched from the streets without warrants. Can we call it fascism yet?
The month after Donald Trump’s inauguration, the Yale historian Timothy Snyder published the best-selling book “On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons From the Twentieth Century.” It was part of a small flood of titles meant to help Americans find their bearings as the new president laid siege to liberal democracy.
One of Snyder’s lessons was, “Be wary of paramilitaries.” He wrote, “When the pro-leader paramilitary and the official police and military intermingle, the end has come.” In 2017, the idea of unidentified agents in camouflage snatching leftists off the streets without warrants might have seemed like a febrile Resistance fantasy. Now it’s happening.
The Trump administration has announced that it intends to send a similar force to other cities; on Monday, The Chicago Tribune reported on plans to deploy about 150 federal agents to Chicago. “I don’t need invitations by the state,” Chad Wolf, acting secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, said on Fox News Monday, adding, “We’re going to do that whether they like us there or not.”
In Portland, we see what such an occupation looks like. Oregon Public Broadcasting reported on 29-year-old Mark Pettibone, who early last Wednesday was grabbed off the street by unidentified men, hustled into an unmarked minivan and taken to a holding cell in the federal courthouse. He was eventually released without learning who had abducted him.
A federal agent shot 26-year-old Donavan La Bella in the head with an impact munition; he was hospitalized and needed reconstructive surgery. In a widely circulated video, a 53-year-old Navy veteran was pepper sprayed and beaten after approaching federal agents to ask them about their oaths to the Constitution, leaving him with two broken bones.
… Police officers in many cities are willing to brutalize demonstrators, but they’re under local control. U.S. Customs and Border Protection, however, is under federal authority, has leadership that’s fanatically devoted to Trump and is saturated with far-right politics.
It is true that C.B.P. is not an extragovernmental militia, and so might not fit precisely into Snyder’s “On Tyranny” schema. But when I spoke to Snyder on Monday, he suggested the distinction isn’t that significant. “The state is allowed to use force, but the state is allowed to use force according to rules,” he said. These agents, operating outside their normal roles, are by all appearances behaving lawlessly.
On Friday, the House speaker, Nancy Pelosi, tweeted about what’s happening in Portland: “Trump and his storm troopers must be stopped.” She didn’t mention what Congress plans to do to stop them, but the House will soon vote on a homeland security appropriations bill. People outraged about the administration’s police-state tactics should demand, at a minimum, that Congress hold up the department’s funding until those tactics are halted.
Through the Trump years, there’s been a debate about whether the president’s authoritarianism is tempered by his incompetence. Those who think concern about fascism is overblown can cite several instances when the administration has been beaten back after overreaching. But all too often the White House has persevered, deforming American life until what once seemed like worst-case scenarios become the status quo.
🐣 RT @NatashaBertrand NEWS: Among intel that prompted Schumer/Schiff/Pelosi/Warner letter to FBI is concern that Senate probe being led by Ron Johnson has become a vehicle for “laundering” a foreign operation to damage Joe Biden, according to people familiar with the demand.
🔆 This❗️⋙ Politico: Dem leaders demand FBI briefing on ‘foreign interference campaign’ targeting lawmakers http://politi.co/3fYBCKM ‘Among the Dems’ concerns is that a Senate investigation led by Sen Ron Johnson (R-WI) has become a vehicle for a foreign influence campaign’
// In a letter to FBI Director Christopher Wray, the Democratic leaders describe mounting alarm about the potential foreign threat.
Johnson renewed his demand for transcribed interviews and documents from the former officials days after a Ukrainian lawmaker — Andriy Derkach, who has met with Trump’s personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani to discuss investigating the Biden family — used a news conference to accuse the Bidens and Amos Hochstein, a former special envoy for international energy affairs at the State Department, of an elaborate conspiracy to steal hundreds of millions of dollars from Ukraine.
The last time senators were briefed on election security and foreign influence operations, Democratic lawmakers confronted Johnson behind closed doors about his investigation, arguing that it threatens the integrity of the 2020 election and relies on Russian disinformation to tar a political opponent.
They cited in particular Johnson’s initial effort to subpoena Andrii Telizhenko, who has pushed unsubstantiated claims about coordination between the Ukrainian government and the Democratic National Committee in 2016. Johnson dropped plans to subpoena Telizhenko after the FBI’s foreign influence task force briefed senators about him, focusing on concerns over his credibility.
Some Senate Republicans, too, have previously signaled unease with Johnson’s investigation. In December, Sen. Richard Burr (R-N.C.), who was chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee at the time, privately told Johnson that his inquiry could aid Russia, according to two congressional sources familiar with the meeting. And Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) warned in February that any derogatory information coming out of Ukraine about any American should be vetted by intelligence agencies because “Russia is playing us all like a fiddle.”
🔆 This❗️⋙ Medium, Joe Biden: My Statement on Foreign Interference in U.S. Elections http://bit.ly/3heq6v8 ● Text Block: https://twitter.com/Auriandra/status/1285381042887708672?s=20/photo/1
In spite of President Trump’s failure to act, America’s adversaries must not misjudge the resolve of the American people to counter every effort by a foreign power to interfere in our democracy, whether by hacking voting systems and databases, laundering money into our political system, systematically spreading disinformation, or trying to sow doubt about the integrity of our elections.
That is why, today, I am putting the Kremlin and other foreign governments on notice. If elected president, I will treat foreign interference in our election as an adversarial act that significantly affects the relationship between the United States and the interfering nation’s government.
🐣 RT @BWJones Im old enough to remember when the NRA was lobbying for guns to prevent just this sort of thing. ¤ Now? It’s crickets from them and the rest of the GOP. ¤ This is dangerous folks. ¤ This is authoritarianism, writ large.
⋙ 🐣 RT @thehill #BREAKING: President Trump says he may send “more federal law enforcement” to New York, Chicago, Philadelphia, Detroit, Baltimore, Oakland, and other cities to deal with unrest: “In Portland they’ve done a fantastic job.” 💽 https://twitter.com/thehill/status/1285244981322690560?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @atrupar “I don’t need invitations by the state, state mayors, or state governors to do our job. We’re going to do that, whether they like us there or not.” — acting DHS Secretary Chad Wolf 💽 https://twitter.com/atrupar/status/1285224329878306817?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @TIME Navy vet beaten by federal agents at Portland protests in viral video: ‘They came out to fight’
⋙ TIME: Navy Vet Beaten by Federal Agents at Portland Protests in Viral Video: ‘They Came Out to Fight’ http://bit.ly/2OEBjJc
🐣 RT @SenatorRomney The proposed withdrawal of US troops from Germany is a slap to our ally and a gift to a malevolent adversary like Russia. I urge my colleagues to support my #FY21NDAA amendment to prevent a withdrawal that would reduce military readiness, weaken alliances & threaten our security.
🐣 RT @meggophone DHS is crafting plans to deploy about 150 federal agents to Chicago this week, @chicagotribune reports. ¤ “A specific plan on what the agents will be doing — and what their limits would be — had not been made public.”
⋙ ‼️ ChicagoTribune: Trump expected to send new federal force to Chicago this week to battle violence, but plan’s full scope is a question mark http://bit.ly/3fNAUQG
🐣 RT @tribelaw On Friday, Oregon Attorney General Rosenblum sued Trump’s Department of Homeland Security and the Marshals Service in federal court to stop Bill Barr’s military police from illegally arresting peaceful protesters in Portland and escalating “fear and violence.” Oregon should win.
💙 TheBulwark, Carrie Cordero: How the Portland Secret Police Happened http://bit.ly/3huLCfx “The extent to which DHS is becoming almost a rogue arm of federal law enforcement should not surprise anyone who has followed the department for the last four years”
// America needs to pump the brakes on expanding domestic security activities.
🐣 RT @kylegriffin1 A whistleblower complaint from a State Department employee about Mike Pompeo’s conduct, made public for the first time, reveals that eyewitnesses made repeated attempts to inform executive leadership and legal advisers about his “questionable activities.”
⋙ McClatchy: Pompeo whistleblower complaint reveals ongoing inquiry over ‘questionable activities’ http://bit.ly/2CnEvqi
💙 🐣 RT @ProjectLincoln Portland is how it starts. 💽 https://twitter.com/ProjectLincoln/status/1284978834127953920?s=20/photo/1
// Lincoln Project ad❣ Portland is how it starts: What if Trump refuses to leave office?
DailyBeast, Nick Schager: Netflix Exposes Trump’s Shady Mob Ties in ‘Fear City: New York vs. The Mafia’ http://bit.ly/2ZJbT3j
// Premiering July 22, this three-part docuseries examines how lawmen took down the New York City mob—and features an eye-opening cameo from one Donald J. Trump.
In the 1970s and 1980s, New York City was controlled by five major mob outfits—the Bonanno, Colombo, Gambino, Genovese and Lucchese families—that not only ran the region’s various illegal rackets, but also effectively operated the billion-dollar construction industry that was transforming the metropolitan landscape. Fear City: New York vs. The Mafia is the true story of the law enforcement and prosecutorial efforts to take down those kingpins, which played out in a manner eerily reminiscent of The Wire. And unsurprisingly, at least for those who lived in or around the five boroughs during that era, it’s a tale of crime and vice that invariably involves Donald Trump.
The current commander-in-chief factors into the final episode of director Sam Hobkinson’s three-part Netflix miniseries (debuting July 22), since his Fifth Avenue Trump Tower was one of countless projects the mafia had a hand in completing. “So I told him that there’s jobs in here that did count, like Trump. Nineteen million,” says a gangster on a federal wiretap recording, thereby directly linking the future president to the shady mobsters who governed New York’s concrete and cement unions (and businesses). These crooks regulated which of eight chosen firms would get contracts and, in the process, kickback points from the gigs to their criminal superiors. As Fear City makes clear in just a few short minutes, anyone like Trump, who was knee-deep in the real estate scene, was invariably a bedfellow (either directly or indirectly) with the mafia.
⭕ 19 Jul 2020
JustSecurity, Ryan Goodman and Danielle Shulkin (7/19): Portland’s Pretext: Barr’s Long History Manipulating Law to Put Federal Forces on U.S. Streets http://bit.ly/3eZ6ARQ
DailyBeast, Benjamin Ferencz: Nuremberg Prosecutor’s Warning About Trump’s War on the Rule of Law http://bit.ly/2WG8JM1
// I was a prosecutor at Nuremberg. I know an attempt to thwart the law and flout international norms when I see one. And I see one.
WaPo: Federal officials dismiss Portland leaders’ calls to leave city as clashes with protesters continue http://wapo.st/2WEoAup @Morning_Joe
WaPo: The crisis that shocked the world: America’s response to the coronavirus http://wapo.st/2WxkNPy
// Dysfunctional politics, a lack of funding for public health and a rush to reopen the economy ignited the resurgence of the virus
🐣 RT @nytopinion The words that issued from Paris and Philadelphia two centuries ago have served the cause of freedom, even if they were the product of flawed minds and cultures, @NYTimesCohen writes
💙 ⋙ NYT, Roger Cohen: The Tenacity of the Franco-American Ideal http://nyti.ms/2OCf32L Can a slave owner be celebrated for writing a liberating sentence? ● Text Block: https://twitter.com/Auriandra/status/1284992022655520770?s=20/photo/1
💙📋 DailyBeast, Justin Baragona: Trump Shrugs Off COVID Death Toll in Fox News Interview: ‘It Is What It Is’ http://bit.ly/2CirRZD Wallace corrected Trump to say the US has the 7th worst mortality rate in the world; and that, although testing has gone up 37%, test positivity has gone up 194%
// In a combative interview, Fox News Sunday host Chris Wallace pressed the president about the seriousness of the pandemic.
The Fox host, highlighting numbers from Johns Hopkins University, shot back that the United States currently has the “seventh highest mortality rate in the world” and that the European Union is currently banning American travelers.
Trump, however, falsely claimed that America has among the lowest fatality rates, asking White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany to bring him a document to prove him right. He further accused Wallace of being “fake news.” Wallace, for his part, inserted a separate reporting segment at that point in the interview, informing viewers that the White House used a misleading chart to make Trump’s case.
The president would continue to assert that the only reason American cases are spiking is due to increased testing, causing Wallace to retort that while testing has risen by 37 percent, cases are up 194 percent and the positivity rate has increased in recent weeks.
↥ ↧
🐣 RT @rgoodlaw Painful to watch, but good job by Chris Wallace.
Displays the psychological test that President Trump said he “aced” and claimed doctors were “very surprised” by his “unbelievable” results.
Wallace: The test asks you to identify an elephant.
💽 https://twitter.com/rgoodlaw/status/1284860680773017600?s=20/photo/1
↥ ↧
💙 💽 FoxNews: Transcript: ‘Fox News Sunday’ interview with President Trump http://fxn.ws/3jhEnZU
// President Trump appeared on ‘Fox News Sunday’ with Chris Wallace on July 19, 2020
⋙ 🐣 RT @SteveSchmidtSES Trump was stripped bare and exposed this morning as the incompetent and mendacious buffoon that he is. “It is what it is” shows how sick and callous he is. He is a grotesque and abominable man. He is also weak, brittle and self pitying. He is the antithesis of manly virtue.
🐣 RT @lauferlaw Looks like Judge ABJ is allowing parties to fight Stone’s putative pardon. @LouiseMensch
⋙ 🐣 RT @ericgarland ROGER STONE CASE UPDATE: Judge Amy Berman Jackson grants leave to file a motion to consider an amicus brief on the issue of president pardons. http://bit.ly/2ZLD11X https://twitter.com/ericgarland/status/1285009667429720064?s=20/photo/1
⭕ 18 Jul 2020
NYT: Federal Officers Deployed in Portland Didn’t Have Proper Training, D.H.S. Memo Said http://nyti.ms/2BdPDFo
// Rather than tamping down persistent protests in Portland, Ore., a militarized presence from federal officers seems to have re-energized them.
🔄 💙 🐣 RT @TimothyDSnyder 0/20 The next few months will determine the future of our republic. Here are some principles for the preservation of freedom I wrote nearly four years ago, when all of this was beginning. I share them again now in admiration of Americans who protest for justice and work for truth 📌 https://twitter.com/TimothyDSnyder/status/1284545320458887168?s=20
// 20 Principles from Snyder’s On Tyranny
● 1/20. Do not obey in advance. #OnTyranny
● 2/20. Defend institutions. #OnTyranny
● 3/20. Beware the one-party state. #OnTyranny
● 4/20. Take responsibility for the face of the world. #OnTyranny
● 5/20. Remember professional ethics. #OnTyranny
● 6/20. Be wary of paramilitaries. #OnTyranny
● 7/20. Be reflective if you must be armed. #OnTyranny
● 8/20. Stand out. #OnTyranny
● 9/20. Be kind to our language. #OnTyranny
● 10/20. Believe in truth. #OnTyranny
● 11/20. Investigate. #OnTyranny
● 12/20. Make eye contact and small talk. #OnTyranny
● 13/20. Practice corporeal politics. #OnTyranny
● 14/20. Establish a private life. #OnTyranny
● 15/20. Contribute to good causes. #OnTyranny
● 16/20. Learn from peers in other countries. #OnTyranny
● 17/20. Listen for dangerous words. #OnTyranny
● 18/20. Be calm when the unthinkable arrives. #OnTyranny
● 19/20. Be a patriot. #OnTyranny
● 20/20. Be as courageous as you can. #OnTyranny
DailyBeast: Trump’s Election Hail Mary: Bring Back Bob Mueller and Relitigate Russiagate http://bit.ly/2OBsHTx
// by Sam Brodey, Asawin Suebsaeng and Justin Baragona; The strategy is equal parts brazen and crazy. And it’s making life difficult for the man who has to lead the charge: Lindsey Graham.
🐣 RT @SenJeffMerkley Summary of our letter to Barr and Wolf: Your authoritarian police state is not welcome here. Get out of Oregon. Text Block: https://twitter.com/SenJeffMerkley/status/1284279762140180480?s=20/photo/1-2
🐣 RT @SpeakerPelosi We live in a democracy, not a banana republic. We will not tolerate the use of Americans as props in President Trump’s political games. ¤ Read my full statement with Rep. Earl Blumenauer here: http://bit.ly/32vn1Tq
// #Portland
Washington, D.C. – Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Representative Earl Blumenauer of Portland, Oregon issued this statement regarding the Trump Administration’s violent tactics used against protestors in Portland, Oregon:
“As our nation mourns the loss of our colleague and beloved civil rights leader John Lewis, we are again reminded of the immense power of peaceful protest in the fight against racial injustice and police brutality. Yet time and time again, the Trump Administration shows its lack of respect for the dignity and First Amendment rights of all Americans.
“Last month, the Administration tear-gassed peaceful protestors in Washington, D.C. Now, videos show them kidnapping protestors in unmarked cars in Portland – all with the goal of inflaming tensions for their own gain. While Portland is the President’s current target, any city could be next.
“We live in a democracy, not a banana republic. We will not tolerate the use of Oregonians, Washingtonians – or any other Americans – as props in President Trump’s political games. The House is committed to moving swiftly to curb these egregious abuses of power immediately.”
NYT, Nick Kristof (6/3): Trump Uses the Military to Prove His Manhood http://nyti.ms/3hipyod re-upping this for #Portland
// The president’s response to the coronavirus that killed more than 100,000 people was lethargic and ineffective. But when it came to anti-racism protesters, it was time to call in the troops.
🐣 RT @joshtpm Deputy Secretary of DHS Ken Cuccinelli tells NPR not only are they not stopping the Portland tactics they’re going to take them nationwide.
⋙ TPM, Josh Marshal: DHS Under Boss: We’re Taking This National http://bit.ly/3jeCX2n
⭕ 17 Jul 2020
DailyBeast, Spencer Ackerman: ‘It’s Spooky Right Now’: Inside the Creepy Federal Crackdown on Portland Protesters http://bit.ly/2OAN4R1
// When Customs and Border Protection joined the protest crackdown in D.C., they were made into U.S. Marshals. In Portland, they’re using new powers provided by Trump.
🐣 RT @SpeakerPelosi Unidentified stormtroopers. Unmarked cars. Kidnapping protesters and causing severe injuries in response to graffiti. ¤ These are not the actions of a democratic republic. ¤ @DHSgov’s actions in Portland undermine its mission. ¤ Trump & his stormtroopers must be stopped.
⋙ 🐣 RT @SpeakerPelosi First Amendment speech should never be met with one-sided violence from federal agents acting as Trump’s secret police, especially when unidentified. This is disgraceful behavior we would expect from a banana republic — not the government of the United States.
🐣 RT @JoyceWhiteVance It’s hard to not view this as dangerous lawlessness in proximity to the election. If no GOP voices object to this, what will they do if Trump refuses to abide by election results?
🐣 RT @stengel When Putin illegally annexed Crimea he used unmarked soldiers and unmarked vehicles.
🐣 RT @SamanthaJPower Chris Wallace on what happened when he corrected Trump’s claim that #JoeBiden had pledged to defund police: defiant Trump went thru 100-page-Biden-Sanders agt highlights & “couldn’t find any indication-because there isn’t any-that Biden has sought to defund & abolish the police.”
🐣 RT @NormEisen Wow. ¤ Once again rule of law is pushing back from within Trump own admin on its worst excesses. ¤ That too is a vital part of the story of the Age of Trump. ¤ I explain in my book out 7/28: http://bitly.ws/8UJh
⋙ 🐣 RT @ryanjhaas The U.S. Attorney for Oregon is now calling for an investigation into the Department of Homeland Security’s actions in having officers nab people off Portland streets. ¤ Says there are TWO arrests that need to be looked into.
⋙⋙ OPB: US Attorney For Oregon Calls For Investigation Into Portland Protester Arrests http://bit.ly/3h3HS4i
✅ AP Fact Check: Trump team distortions on Biden and police http://bit.ly/2OCqk38
● Text Block: https://twitter.com/Auriandra/status/1284231514830536704?s=20/photo/1
Biden’s criminal justice agenda, released long before he became the Democrats’ presumptive presidential nominee, proposes more federal money for “training that is needed to avert tragic, unjustifiable deaths” and hiring more officers to ensure that departments are racially and ethnically reflective of the populations they serve.
Specifically, he calls for a $300 million infusion into federal community policing grant programs. ¤ That adds up to more money for police, not defunding law enforcement.
Biden also wants the federal government to spend more on education, social services and struggling areas of cities and rural America, to address the root causes of crime.
🐣 RT @BillKristol What federal agency is most ripe for abuse by Donald Trump? How about DHS? It’s a bunch of disparate agencies, without strong department-wide norms and guidelines (unlike DOJ and DOD), led by acting officials all operating under the direction of a very political White House aide.
⋙ 🐣 RT @BillKristol In other words–and with all respect for the many fine officials and civil servants working conscientiously at their jobs in its various agencies–overall, DHS is the closest thing in the U.S. federal government to…Venezuela.
⋙⋙ 🐣 Secret State Police
GEheimnise STAats POlizei
Gestapo
🐣 RT @stevenmazie BREAKING [correcting earlier tweet, now deleted]: Supreme Court grants request to issue judgment in Trump v. Vance immediately. Text Block: https://twitter.com/stevenmazie/status/1284175113718583299?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @RepAdamSchiff This is how democracies die. ¤ When party leaders tolerate lies and deceit to cover up for a president of their party. ¤ When they refuse to defend their own institution. ¤ When they care about nothing but the perpetuation of their power and office. ¤ When they become Kevin McCarthy.
⋙ 🐣 RT @mkraju Just asked Kevin McCarthy if he supports Trump’s move to commute sentence of Roger Stone after Stone was convicted of lying to the GOP-led House Intelligence Committee, as well witness tampering and obstructing a proceeding. “I support” Trump’s move to commute sentence, he said
🐣 RT @MollyJongFast Because no dystopia is complete without a terrifying secret police force.
⋙ WaPo: It was like being preyed upon’: Portland protesters say federal officers in unmarked vans are detaining them http://wapo.st/3h9ayZB WaPo: It was like being preyed upon’: Portland protesters say federal officers in unmarked vans are detaining them http://wapo.st/3h9ayZB
⭕ 16 Jul 2020
🐣 RT @howardfineman This can’t happen. It’s not us. By what authority are they there? What laws are they enforcing? We do not have a national police force nor do we want one. This is an illegally assembled posse of ad hoc #Trump putschists and enforcers — and yet another grounds for impeachment.
🐣 RT @mccaffreyr3 This is seems to be lawless, armed, senseless action by Trump and DOJ and unknown Federal law enforcement agents. These are state and municipal law enforcement responsibilities. WHERE IS THE GOVERNOR? Where is the Oregon Congressional Delegation?
⋙⋙ .@OregonGovBrown, @RonWyden and @SenJeffMerkley have all tweeted objections tonight. Hopefully, legal action will be taken. Trump is clearly ~ dangerously ~ trying to distract from COVID-19 failure, his niece’s book. @SenSchumer @SpeakerPelosi
⋙ 🐣 RT @dburbach Oregon Public Broadcasting confirms tweets today that federal officers in camouflage but no agency identification or badges, driving unmarked non-government rental cars, are grabbing protestors off streets in Portland and not talking w local authorities
🐣 RT @maggieNYT Federal Law Enforcement Use Unmarked Vehicles To Grab Protesters Off Portland Streets . News | OPB
⋙ OPB: Federal Law Enforcement Use Unmarked Vehicles To Grab Protesters Off Portland Streets http://bit.ly/3jeuWKz
⋙ 🐣 RT @mccaffreyr3 Trump is out of control. Illegal behavior. Where is the Governor?
⋙⋙ 🐣 She’s calling it a political stunt, theater. She’s right.
🐣 RT @chipfranklin I stand with Portland protesters in resistance of #FascistTrump. ¤ Who’s with me? ¤ Common folks. Hands up.
⋙ 🐣 We all resist them, but they’re in Portland for one reason, so they can say they’re fighting anarchists and “antifa.” ¤ So resist, but peacefully. Otherwise it’s just fodder for FoxNews and campaign ads. ¤ Trump is trying to distract from COVID-19, his polls and his niece’s book.
🐣 RT @SenJeffMerkley Federal forces shot an unarmed protester in the face. These shadowy forces have been escalating, not preventing, violence. If @DHS_Wolf is coming here to inflame the situation so @realDonaldTrump can look like a tough guy, he should turn around and leave our city now.
🐣 RT @RonWyden A peaceful protester in Portland was shot in the head by one of Donald Trump’s secret police. Now Trump and Chad Wolf are weaponizing the DHS as their own occupying army to provoke violence on the streets of my hometown because they think it plays well with right-wing media.
TheWeek, Ryan Cooper: Donald Trump is destroying the Post Office http://bit.ly/2Wsw1Vk //➔ Just in time for mail-in ballots
🧵 RT @OregonGovBrown This political theater from President Trump has nothing to do with public safety. The President is failing to lead this nation. Now he is deploying federal officers to patrol the streets of Portland in a blatant abuse of power by the federal government. 📌 https://twitter.com/OregonGovBrown/status/1283913151700860928?s=20
🐣 RT @MSNBC “Part of me thinks it may well be a lost cause, and it may deserve to be a lost cause,” Bill Kristol says of the Republican Party. https://twitter.com/MSNBC/status/1283929697257234439?s=20
TheAtlantic, Corey Brettschneider and Jeffrey Tulis: The Traditional Interpretation of the Pardon Power Is Wrong http://bit.ly/3h4dE15
// Properly understood, the commutation of Roger Stone’s sentence is unconstitutional.
↥ ↧
🐣 RT @MSNBC Professor Corey Brettschneider argues Pres. Trump’s commutation of Roger Stone is unconstitutional. ¤ “In broad daylight, people…have just lost the meaning of the constitution to the point where they think ‘well, that’s allowed.’”
⋙ 💽 MSNBC, MorningJoe: Commutation of Roger Stone is unconstitutional, says law scholar http://on.msnbc.com/30gyvHz
//. Author and professor Corey Brettschneider joins First Look to discuss his latest piece in The Atlantic on why the commutation of Roger Stone is unconstitutional.
🐣 RT @neal_katyal Phenomenal thread about what the court did today in the Trump tax returns case in Manhattan. This is moving quickly. Briefing all done in under a month.
⋙ 🧵 RT @jentaub Getting ready for the Trump v. Vance teleconference at the SDNY with Judge that begins at 10 a.m. Just dialed in. Will “live tweet” when it commences. Back soon ¤ 1/ 📌 https://twitter.com/jentaub/status/1283761364566188037?s=20
🧵 RT @selectedwisdom New from me this morning @FPRI “Election 2020: Russia Cares, China Doesn’t” – 1 year into #FIE2020 project I offer an updated assessment on what we’ve observed regarding foreign interference headed into November. 📌 https://twitter.com/selectedwisdom/status/1283722204405018625?s=20
⋙ FPRI, Clint Watts: Election 2020: Russia Cares, China Doesn’t http://bit.ly/2CigeBQ
// Foreign influence: What America should worry about this year and next
⭕ 15 Jul 2020
WaPo, George Will: The nation is in a downward spiral. Worse is still to come. http://wapo.st/2WmrRyg “Given Trump’s reckless lying and the supine nature of most Republican officeholders, it is imperative that the Nov. 3 result be obvious that evening”
// 2020 will decide whether we continue on our unserious trajectory.
🐣 RT @kylegriffin1 NEW: Trump has just announced on Facebook that Brad Parscale is OUT as Trump’s campaign manager. Bill Stepien is the new campaign manager.
🐣 Reporting of COVID-19 hospitalizations will now bypass the CDC and go to HHS. The new comms director for HHS is Michael Caputo, an acolyte of Roger Stone, who lived in Russia and was a media consultant to ~ you guessed it ~ Vladimir Putin. From his Wikipedia bio: ● Text Block: https://twitter.com/Auriandra/status/1283560734409056259?s=20/photo/1
⋙ Wikipedia: Michael Caputo: Section: Russian advisor and media consultant
After the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991, Caputo established residence in Russia in 1994.[7][4][8] He served as an adviser to Boris Yeltsin in 1995.[2] In his capacity as advisor to Yeltsin, he was employed with the United States Agency for International Development.[7][9][2] He served as president of The Florence Group from 1994 to 1999, and stated he “played a pivotal role in electing Boris Yeltsin to his second term as President of the Russian Federation.”[10]
Caputo was employed by Moscow-headquartered subsidiary of Gazprom, Gazprom-Media.[11][9][8] He was contracted by Gazprom in 2000 to work for Russian leader Vladimir Putin.[7][9] His task was to increase Putin’s public relations standing, specifically his support level in the U.S.[11][9][8] He moved back from Russia to the U.S. in the year 2000.[4]
After returning to the U.S., Caputo was called by his former mentor Roger Stone, who convinced him to move to Miami Beach, Florida, and then Caputo founded his media advising company Michael Caputo Public Relations.[4] Caputo moved back to Europe in 2007 while advising a politician’s campaign for parliament in 2007 Ukrainian parliamentary election.[4]
OutsideTheBeltway, James Joyner: There is No Plan http://bit.ly/2DMH2KU
// 5/5/2020; A sober assessment of President Trump’s plan to get the country running again.
Quoting Jay Rosen, “The Plan is to Have No Plan:
“The plan is to have no plan, to let daily deaths between one and three thousand become a normal thing, and then to create massive confusion about who is responsible— by telling the governors they’re in charge without doing what only the federal government can do, by fighting with the press when it shows up to be briefed, by fixing blame for the virus on China or some other foreign element, and by “flooding the zone with shit,” Steve Bannon’s phrase for overwhelming the system with disinformation, distraction, and denial, which boosts what economists call “search costs” for reliable intelligence.
“Stated another way, the plan is to default on public problem solving, and then prevent the public from understanding the consequences of that default. To succeed this will require one of the biggest propaganda and freedom of information fights in U.S. history, the execution of which will, I think, consume the president’s re-election campaign. So much has already been made public that the standard script for a White House cover up (worse than the crime…) won’t apply. Instead, everything will ride on the manufacture of confusion. The press won’t be able to “expose” the plot because it will all happen in stark daylight. The facts will be known, and simultaneously they will be inconceivable.”
🐣 RT @JoyceWhiteVance Trump is trying to run down the clock to prevent turning over his taxes to the Manhattan DA after a SCOTUS ruling cleared the path. It will be up to the courts to expedite proceedings & hold Trump accountable.
⋙ NBCNews: Trump to raise new objections to N.Y. prosecutor’s subpoena for his tax returns after Supreme Court ruling http://nbcnews.to/3eAf1CS
// The president plans to take full advantage of the avenues the Supreme Court left open to him in its ruling last week, his lawyers said.
⭕ 14 Jul 2020
NYT, Peter Baker: The White House Called a News Conference. Trump Turned It Into a Meandering Monologue. http://nyti.ms/3gZ16YM everything except the strawberries #TrumpBlatherthon
// Peter Baker; The president spoke in the Rose Garden for 63 minutes. He spent only six of those minutes answering questions from reporters.
Even for a president who rarely sticks to the script and wanders from thought to thought, it was one of the most rambling performances of his presidency. ¤ He weighed in on China and the coronavirus and the Paris climate change accord and crumbling highways. And then China again and military spending and then China again and then the coronavirus again. And the economy and energy taxes and trade with Europe and illegal immigration and his friendship with Mexico’s president. And the coronavirus again and then immigration again and crime in Chicago and the death penalty and back to climate change and education and historical statues. And more. ¤ “We could go on for days,” he said at one point, and it sounded plausible.
For instance, in discussing cooperation agreements with Central American countries to stop illegal immigration, he had this to say: “We have great agreements where when Biden and Obama used to bring killers out, they would say don’t bring them back to our country, we don’t want them. Well, we have to, we don’t want them. They wouldn’t take them. Now with us, they take them. Someday, I’ll tell you why. Someday, I’ll tell you why. But they take them and they take them very gladly. They used to bring them out and they wouldn’t even let the airplanes land if they brought them back by airplanes. They wouldn’t let the buses into their country. They said we don’t want them. Said no, but they entered our country illegally and they’re murderers, they’re killers in some cases.”
🐣 RT @dlippman NEW: After months of silence, Lt. Col. Yevgeny Vindman has joined his twin brother Alexander in speaking out about how they were treated by President Trump. Yevgeny, who’s on active duty, also has shared criticism of his ultimate civilian boss, Mark Esper.
⋙ Politico, Daniel Lippman: Vindman twin joins brother in sharing comments critical of Trump, Esper http://politi.co/30fX5IA
// Lt. Col. Yevgeny Vindman, a National Security Council lawyer who was forced out along with his more famous twin Alexander, remains on active duty.
⋙ 🐣 .@AVindman and @YVindman should write a book. I’ll be the first to buy. They are true American heroes with a story to tell
🐣 RT @BillKristol “The heavy price we will pay for Trump’s presidency is not that we will feel bad as a people about his lack of virtue…but that his lies and abuse will leave the government itself, along with the political system and our civic culture, degraded.”
⋙ NationalReview, Kevin Williamson: The Venezuelafication of American Politics http://bit.ly/38UVgoq
USAToday, Joyce White Vance: Trump’s clemency for Roger Stone is an admission of the president’s guilt in Russia probe http://bit.ly/2DHGeqG
// It is painful but necessary to review the lies and self-serving rationales Trump offers to disguise the quid pro quo that is Stone’s reward for concealing the truth.
WaPo, Dana Milbank: The one constant in Trump’s presidency: Tomorrow will be worse http://wapo.st/3fu9sr2 “Trump is lashing out every which way … even at Fox News (‘the Radical Left has scared Fox into submission’)“
🐣 RT @MarloweNYC Hillary Clinton tn: “The one thing that Trump is fearful of..is that finally we will see how illegitimate his victory actually was. And how he was involved in the seeking of foreign help and the utilization of it. And how Roger Stone was critical to that.”
⋙ DailyBeast, Matt Wilstein: Hillary Clinton: We Have to Be Ready if Trump Doesn’t ‘Go Quietly’ http://bit.ly/3gQs1G2
// Clinton also explained why Trump “had to” commute Roger Stone’s sentence in order to “cover up” his “illegitimate” 2016 victory.
⭕ 13 Jul 2020
🐣 RT @MSNBC Fmr. CIA officer Douglas London says President Trump will “continue to try to redirect the message” regarding purported Russian bounties to Taliban fighters to kill Americans and will “wait until the next change in the news cycle to hope it goes away.”
💽 MSNBC, LastWord: Fmr. CIA officer: ‘Trump knew what Russia was doing’ http://on.msnbc.com/3gVvoeM
// Douglas London, a former CIA senior operations officer, joins Lawrence O’Donnell to discuss President Trump’s silence on suspected Russian bounties and why he “wouldn’t expect Trump to be forthcoming,” especially about intelligence matters.
DailyBeast, Sam Brodey: Ousted U.S. Attorney Geoffrey Berman: Deal Barr Offered ‘Could Be Seen as a Quid Pro Quo’ http://bit.ly/3j3mZI4
// A transcript of the former U.S. attorney’s testimony before the House Judiciary Committee, released Monday, offers new insight into how his firing played out.
🐣 RT @kylegriffin1 Breaking: A judge has freed Mary Trump from a gag order, allowing the president’s niece to speak freely about her family and promote her book.
⋙ DailyBeast: Mary Trump Free to Dish on Her Family and Tell-All Book, Judge Rules http://bit.ly/2ZnIbkl
// A judge has freed Mary Trump from a gag order that prevented her from discussing Trump family drama and promoting her bombshell book.
🐣 RT @tribelaw Totally insane. A conspiracy of doctors to exaggerate the pandemic to hurt Trump’s re-election prospects? Talk about paranoid lunacy! And he’s still armed with the nuclear codes?!?!
⋙ 🐣 RT @thedailybeast Trump is pushing a ludicrous theory that doctors are purposefully lying about the novel coronavirus pandemic because they want to harm his chances of re-election later this year
⋙⋙ DailyBeast: Trump Pushes Conspiracy Theory That Doctors Are Lying About COVID-19 to Damage His Re-Election Chances http://bit.ly/3gZ1Vkr
// As U.S. hits new case number records, the president retweeted the conservative conspiracy theorist and former game show host Chuck Woolery.
NYT, Douglas London: I Was a Counterterrorism Chief. Trump Knew What Russia Was Doing. http://nyti.ms/3emI3WJ “He has still, despite weeks of public debate over Russian bounties, not offered a clear and unambiguous condemnation of such Russian aggression“
// Neglecting aggression by Vladimir Putin inevitably invites more of it.
WaPo: New York Times shreds Trump campaign lawsuit over Russia op-ed http://wapo.st/2DGWp7L “The court will have an easy time with this one — so easy that the Times argues that it should be awarded legal fees in the case”
💙 Stars&Stripes/AP: Former Mueller probe prosecutor writing book on investigation http://bit.ly/3fwjdFi Andrew Weissmann’s book, “Where The Law Ends ~ Inside The Mueller Investigation,” is to be published 9/29/2020 @tribelaw @benjaminwittes @qjurecic
NYT, Nick Akerman: Did Mueller Ever Stand a Chance Against Trump and Roger Stone? http://nyti.ms/3fqiiG7
// I was a Watergate prosecutor. I know why he didn’t.
⭕ 12 Jul 2020
🐣 RT @JRubinBlogger DOJ attys should face immediate termination for misrepresenting facts and/or law to a court or Congress (or failing to report orders to do so). Violation of DOJ ethical guidelines should trigger automatic referral to the attorney’s home-state bar authority
⋙ WaPo, Jennifer Rubin: Post-Roger Stone: Ten ideas for repairing Trump’s justice system http://wapo.st/3erMRtM ● Text Block: https://twitter.com/Auriandra/status/1282564650694053888?s=20/photo/1
Stone virtually confessed to a quid pro quo, telling Howard Fineman, “He [Trump] knows I was under enormous pressure to turn on him. It would have eased my situation considerably. But I didn’t.” Silence for clemency. A separate system of justice for the president’s henchmen. This is the very definition of corruption.
“By this action, President Trump abused the powers of his office in an apparent effort to reward Roger Stone for his refusal to cooperate with investigators examining the President’s own conduct,” House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerrold Nadler (D-N.Y.) and Oversight and Reform Committee Chairwoman Carolyn B. Maloney (D-N.Y.) said in a written statement released Friday. “No other president has exercised the clemency power for such a patently personal and self-serving purpose.”
Stone’s clemency should remind all Americans of the necessity of removing Trump at the ballot box and seeking a full accounting of Attorney General William P. Barr’s role in running interference for the president (e.g., spinning the Mueller report, turning a blind eye toward criminality in the Ukraine scandal, intervening to block Stone’s and Michael Flynn’s punishments). It should remind voters that if not for the spinelessness of every Republican senator save Utah’s Mitt Romney, Trump would not have survived impeachment to seek vengeance on witnesses (e.g., Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman), corruptly protect his friends and incompetently manage a pandemic, leading to the unnecessary deaths of tens of thousands. With the pardon of Stone, we can affirm that Maine Republican Sen. Susan Collins’s assertion that he learned his lesson from impeachment was delusional.
1. A thorough redo of the special counsel/independent counsel law
2. Congress must reassert the power of the purse
3. Severe criminal penalties should be exacted for revealing the identity of whistleblowers
4. A new, speedy enforcement mechanism is required for contempt of Congress citations
5. We need a barrier between the White House and Justice Department to prevent political interference
6. Legislation should specify that solicitation of campaign help from a foreign government is illegal
7. Beefed-up ethical training and guidelines for Justice attorneys … to report any political interference in cases involving the president, his relatives and associates
8.The order of succession (before confirmation of a replacement) in the event of termination or resignation of the attorney general or a U.S. attorney should be written into law
9. The president and vice president must be required to release 10 years of tax returns and to place all financial holdings in a blind trust
10. [E]nact a proposed law directing DOJ to provide Congress with “all investigative materials related to an offense for which the President pardons an individual if the offense arises from an investigation in which the President, or a relative of the President, is a target, subject, or witness.”
Politico, Tina Nguyen: Trump isn’t secretly winking at QAnon. He’s retweeting its followers. http://politi.co/3epMlMV
// There were 14 retweets on July 4th. And those around Trump are even more explicit. It’s giving a boost to the sprawling, Trump-centric conspiracy movement.
⋙ MMFA, Alex Kaplan (2019): Trump has repeatedly amplified QAnon Twitter accounts. The FBI has linked the conspiracy theory to domestic terror. http://bit.ly/
// 8/1/2019
🐣 RT @jdickerson “President Trump has commuted the sentence of Roger Stone. The timing, late on Friday, suggests internal embarrassment over the move, and we wish there were more.”
⋙ NationalReview Editorial: An Indefensible Commutation http://bit.ly/2DBKZlz
// It is another indication of Trump’s perverse view of the law — and another reminder of the loathsome characters he’s always surrounded himself with.
🐣 RT @brhodes We are much further down the road to authoritarianism than people recognize. Democracy itself is at stake in November.
🐣 RT @TruthsOverTrump You killed American citizens by ignoring science. You killed American troops with your treason. You killed the truth with your lies. You killed democracy with your collusion. You killed law & order with your crime. ¤ #PardonMeTrump, I’m voting #Biden2020 💽 https://twitter.com/TruthsOverTrump/status/1282156777396740096?s=20/photo/1
// Meidas Touch ad❣ #PardonMeTrump Drain the Swamp felons
⭕ 11 Jul 2020
🐣 RT @tribelaw It really looks like Trump will face time in NY State prison for tax fraud even if Pence pardons all his federal crimes on his way out of the White House. It’s far from full justice for all his offenses, but it’s not nothing either. @DavidCayJ explains:
⋙ RawStory (7/11): Trump is going to get indicted’ when New York gets his tax returns: David Cay Johnston http://bit.ly/2CGbNjU “Donald Trump is going to be indicted if the business records do not match up. They won’t match up. … I have a lot of his records. They won’t match up”
// elipsis=“Trust me”
🐣 RT @davidplouffe The line between democracy and autocracy in America is thinner than we realized. He’s asking to be re-hired while openly and gleefully acting like his idols Putin, Erdogan and Orban. If he is given a second term? No boundaries, no bottom, no coming back.
Lawfare, Quinta Jurecic and Benjamin Wittes: The Roger Stone Commutation Is Even More Corrupt Than It Seems http://bit.ly/303NPXR “In a normal world, this pattern of conduct would constitute an almost prototypical impeachable offense. But this is not a normal world.”
🐣 RT @ProjectLincoln Trump’s campaign manager is a felon.
His deputy campaign manager is a felon.
His national security advisor is a felon.
His foreign policy advisor is a felon.
His personal lawyer is a felon.
His long time advisor is a felon.
It’s not a campaign, it’s a criminal enterprise.
💽 https://twitter.com/ProjectLincoln/status/1282104708308635648?s=20/photo/1
// Lincoln Project ad❣ Criminal Enterprise
🐣 RT @MuellerSheWrote This right here will be the reason Barr won’t testify July 28th, if he had actually planned to at all. The Stone commutation makes it very dangerous for him to answer questions. I’ll be shocked if he shows up.
⋙ 🐣 RT @harrylitman From Barr’s confirmation hearing: “Q: Do you believe a president could lawfully issue a pardon in exchange for the recipient’s promise to not incriminate him?” Barr: “No, that would be a crime.”
NYT: In Rare Public Comments, Mueller Defends Prosecution of Roger Stone http://nyti.ms/303agwA
// Breaking his silence, the former special counsel rebutted President Trump’s attacks on the Russia investigation and said Mr. Stone had been prosecuted “because he committed federal crimes.”
In the year since the Mueller report was released, Mr. Trump has alternately characterized it both as a “total exoneration” and a “total ‘hit job,’” while his attorney general, William P. Barr, has embarked on a multifaceted effort to question the legitimacy of the special counsel’s inquiry and various prosecutions that resulted. In its statement announcing clemency for Mr. Stone, the White House called him “a victim of the Russia Hoax.”
“As it became clear that these witch hunts would never bear fruit, the Special Counsel’s Office resorted to process-based charges leveled at high-profile people in an attempt to manufacture the false impression of criminality lurking below the surface,” the statement said. It added: “This is why the out-of-control Mueller prosecutors, desperate for splashy headlines to compensate for a failed investigation, set their sights on Mr. Stone.”
In his op-ed, Mr. Mueller rejected that characterization, noting that his investigation had documented a serious threat to American democracy both through illegal hacking of Democratic Party emails and through an online campaign of fake messages meant to damage Hillary Clinton.
“We also identified numerous links between the Russian government and Trump campaign personnel — Stone among them,” Mr. Mueller wrote. “We did not establish that members of the Trump campaign conspired with the Russian government in its activities. The investigation did, however, establish that the Russian government perceived it would benefit from a Trump presidency and worked to secure that outcome. It also established that the campaign expected it would benefit electorally from information stolen and released through Russian efforts.”
He added that Mr. Stone had lied about his communications with WikiLeaks, which published the hacked emails, and about his communications with the Trump campaign about the group’s plans. “When a subject lies to investigators,” Mr. Mueller said, “it strikes at the core of the government’s efforts to find the truth and hold wrongdoers accountable.”
🐣 RT @JoyceWhiteVance Mueller responds to Trump’s statement: “We made every decision in Stone’s case, as in all our cases, based solely on the facts & the law..The women & men who conducted these…[cases] acted with the highest integrity. Claims to the contrary are false.”
🔆 This❗️⋙ WaPo, Robert S. Mueller III: Roger Stone remains a convicted felon, and rightly so http://wapo.st/3ekDyMf “When a subject lies to investigators, it strikes at the core of the government’s efforts to find the truth and hold wrongdoers accountable”
WaPo: The once-mocked ‘Never Trump’ movement becomes a sudden campaign force http://wapo.st/3gReaiU “Groups such as the Lincoln Project and Republican Voters Against Trump … emphasize guerrilla tactics and scathing ads as they troll the president”
CNN, Marshall Cohen: Debunking 12 lies and falsehoods from the White House statement on Roger Stone’s commutation http://cnn.it/2OgoQv8
NYT: In Commuting Stone’s Sentence, Trump Goes Where Nixon Would Not http://nyti.ms/3030SJ4 history of pardons/commutations by recent presidents
// Senator Mitt Romney called the commutation an act of “unprecedented, historic corruption.”
🐣 RT @neal_katyal The same lawlessness that leads Trump to commute Stone’s sentence is what enables him to take further corrupt action, like indicting Obama+Biden in October for made-up crimes. That’s what he said should happen to Hillary C before last election. He has crushed DOJ,so anything poss
NewYorker, Jeffrey Toobin: The Roger Stone Case Shows Why Trump Is Worse Than Nixon http://bit.ly/2ZXvJXL “The Stone commutation isn’t just a gift to an old friend—it is a reward to Stone for keeping his mouth shut during the Mueller investigation”
🐣 RT @john_sipher “An American private citizen worked with foreign spies to damage one presidential candidate and help the other. That president accepted the help. When caught, the private citizen lied. When… punished, the president commuted his sentence.”
🐣 RT @IntheNoosphere “[Stone] clowned, he cavorted, he demanded limelight—which made it in some ways impossible to imagine that he could have done anything seriously amiss,” @davidfrum writes:
⋙ TheAtlantic, David Frum: Stone Walks Free in One of the Greatest Scandals in American History http://bit.ly/3gMqLDU
// The amazing thing about the saga is how much of it happened in the full light of day.
🐣 RT @ChrisMurphyCT Republicans don’t care about democracy. They are willing to let it die in sycophantic service to their party’s out of control leader. ¤ THE REST OF US must save the republic. By working our asses off to vote out every single last one of the enablers, apologists, and cowards.
⋙ 🐣 RT @ChrisMurphyCT To be clear, outside of Washington, there are plenty of Republicans who care about preserving the rule of law. I meet them all the time in Connecticut. ¤ And they are going to join with Democrats and unaffiliateds to vote out Trump and his backers in Congress.
🐣 RT @RichardHaass The US is now exceptional where we should not be—in terms of our mishandling of COVID-19 and the subsequent human & economic costs —and we have joined the pack of countries where rule of law is in decline. We have it exactly backwards, and it is impossible not to be sad & worried
💙 🧵 RT @kpolantz Since all eyes are on Roger Stone (+Trump) tonight, let’s take a stroll through all the OMG, WHAT JUST HAPPENED moments in this case. Thread: 📌 https://twitter.com/kpolantz/status/1281725967191412737?s=20
🐣 RT @BillKristol In Donald Trump’s America, Roger Stone is rewarded for lying and Lt. Col. Vindman is punished for telling the truth.
🐣 RT @RepJerryNadler A jury found Roger Stone guilty. By commuting his sentence, President Trump has infected our judicial system with partisanship and cronyism and attacked the rule of law. @HouseJudiciary will conduct an aggressive investigation into this brazen corruption. [Statement:] http://bit.ly/2ObHkwS
🐣 RT @MittRomney Unprecedented, historic corruption: an American president commutes the sentence of a person convicted by a jury of lying to shield that very president.
🐣 RT @JohnBrennan Trump has made a mockery of our Constitution, values, & way of life. ¤ His record of criminal & sociopathic behavior is a precursor of greater danger & harm to our country. ¤ What else must he do before his supporters see the threat he poses to America?
🐣 RT @SpeakerPelosi President Trump’s decision to commute the sentence of top campaign advisor Roger Stone, who could directly implicate him in criminal misconduct, is an act of staggering corruption. [Statement:] http://bit.ly/2ZnMxbr
🐣 RT @AshaRangappa_ Worth noting that Stone’s admission that he could have incriminated Trump would make Trump’s pardon an act of obstruction, even under Barr’s legal view — Barr (in his dumb long 2018 memo) acknowledged that if POTUS were attempting to conceal evidence, it would be obstruction
⭕ 10 Jul 2020
🐣 RT @MSNBC Fmr. Asst. U.S. Attorney Goldman: “If there was any question as to what was on the mind of Roger Stone or what was on the mind of President Trump, Stone cleared it up today when he said he could have flipped on Trump and it would have eased his situation.
⋙ 💽 MSNBC, 11thHour: Goldman on Roger Stone: Trump basically commuted a co-conspirator http://on.msnbc.com/2Drm43U
// Fmr. Asst. U.S. Attorney Daniel Goldman reacts to the shocking commutation of Roger Stone by Trump just months before he faces re-election.
🐣 RT @RepDonBeyer Roger Stone committed crimes for Donald Trump and Trump rewarded him by giving him a get out of jail free card. ¤ Trump is openly corrupt, he isn’t trying to hide it. It’s that simple.
🧵 RT @qjurecic New portions of the Mueller report relating to the Stone case were recently unsealed thanks to @buzzfeednews and @EPICprivacy. Here is what they said. 📌 https://twitter.com/qjurecic/status/1281745733968945160?s=20
⋙⋙ Lawfare, Quinta Jurecic: What’s New in the Unredacted Mueller Report? http://bit.ly/2W52Oje
⋙ 🐣 RT @qjurecic “Roger Stone made several attempts to contact WikiLeaks founder Assange, boasted of his access to Assange, and was in regular contact with Campaign officials about the releases that Assange made and was believed to be planning.”
⋙ 🐣 RT @qjurecic “Stone spoke about WikiLeaks with senior Campaign officials, including candidate Trump.”
⋙ 🐣 RT @qjurecic Michael Cohen told Mueller that he heard Stone tell Trump over the phone that Wikileaks would son release information on Clinton. After the first Wikileaks dump in July, Trump “said to Cohen something to the effect of, ‘I guess Roger was right.’”
⋙ 🐣 RT @qjurecic At another point, after a phone call with Stone, Trump turned to a campaign official and said “that more releases of damaging information would be coming.”
⋙ 🐣 RT @qjurecic But Trump gave Mueller contradictory written answers saying he had no memory of conversations with Stone about Wikileaks. Then, when it turned out Mueller was looking into Stone, he started tweeting flattering things about Stone.
⋙ 🐣 RT @qjurecic Mueller hints that Trump did this to prevent Stone from cooperating with Mueller, in order to prevent Mueller from figuring out that Trump had been untruthful.
⋙ 🐣 RT @qjurecic Mueller writes that Trump’s statements “support the inference the President intended to communicate a message that witnesses could be rewarded for refusing to provide testimony adverse to the President[.]”
⋙ 🐣 RT @qjurecic In other words, the report indicates that Stone knew about the emails hacked by Russia and he told Trump about it; Mueller suspected that Trump lied to Mueller about it; and then Trump hinted publicly that Stone could be rewarded if he refused to contradict Trump.
⋙ 🐣 RT @qjurecic Seems above board
💙 WaPo: With wave of major rulings, Roberts and Supreme Court emerge as powerful counterweight to Trump and Congress http://wapo.st/3iOT3PY “‘Roberts is the most powerful chief justice since John Marshall,’ said Harvard constitutional law professor Noah Feldman”
// 📋 List of SCOTUS decisions
DailyBeast, Rick Wilson: Trump’s No Billionaire. He’s a Bullshit Artist. Soon We’ll Have the Taxes to Prove It http://bit.ly/2ATRPlu ‘He can pose & posture all he wants—the biggest buildings, the biggest dick, the biggest crowds, the best, the first, the most—but it’s all b.s.’
// He pretended he was too rich to be bought. Now we know that he’d chase a dollar bill on a string through a trailer park, and that he’s sold this country on the cheap.
WaPo Editorial: Trump’s commutation of Roger Stone’s sentence is an unforgivable betrayal of his office http://wapo.st/2Och8SI “… one of the most nauseating instances of corrupt government favoritism the United States has ever seen”
// Trump just confirmed that the greatest threat to the Republic is the president himself.
There is no doubt about Mr. Stone’s guilt. During the 2016 presidential campaign, he tried to play intermediary between WikiLeaks, which had become a front for the Kremlin, and the Trump campaign, which reaped the benefits of WikiLeaks’s publication of stolen Democratic emails. A jury concluded that Mr. Stone obstructed Congress, lied to investigators and tampered with a witness in the investigations that followed the 2016 race — “covering up for the president,” as the judge in his case noted.
As Mr. Trump discussed granting clemency to his criminal friend, Mr. Barr publicly defended the sentence, perhaps to prevent a mutiny among Justice Department staff who signed up because they believe in the rule of law, not the arbitrary rule of an unusually petty man in the White House. ¤ Now, the department’s career investigators and prosecutors must absorb yet another insult to their profession from political leaders who abuse their trust.
… The president seems to be doing his best, within the confines of the U.S. constitutional system, to emulate the gangster leadership of Russian President Vladimir Putin, a man whose ruinous reign Mr. Trump has always admired. If the country needed any more evidence, Friday confirmed that the greatest threat to the Republic is the president himself.
WaPo, Howard Fineman: Roger Stone is saved http://wapo.st/2ZiQVZ2 “No one can make up Roger Stone. No one should want to.”
🐣 RT @Lawrence In this statement Roger Stone in effect admits he has criminal information about @realDonaldTrump that he refused to give to prosecutors.
🐣 RT @gtconway3d So here’s Roger Stone explicitly asking @realDonaldTrump for executive clemency on the ground that Stone refused to provide evidence against Trump.This couldn’t be more corrupt.
‼️ ⋙⋙ 🐣 RT @howardfineman Just had a long talk with #RogerStone. He says he doesn’t want a pardon (which implies guilt) but a commutation, and says he thinks #Trump will give it to him. “He knows I was under enormous pressure to turn on him. It would have eased my situation considerably. But I didn’t.”
⋙ 🐣 RT @gtconway3d I mean, even Tony Soprano would have used only a pay phone or burner phone to say something like this.
⋙ 🐣 RT @gtconway3d And he would have said, “You know, about that guy, you know, that friend of ours, I could have done that other thing with those other people, you know, them Brylcreem guys, but I didn’t, you know, so I think our friend owes me some ziti.”
⋙⋙ 🐣 RT @qjurecic Worth remembering this humdinger of an unredacted section from the New And Improve Mueller Report http://bit.ly/3iSN6S9 📌 https://twitter.com/qjurecic/status/1281698444130779137?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @ChrisMurphyCT This is, like, super simple, right? ¤ Stone had info that would have put Trump in jail. He told Trump he’d obstruct justice if he got clemency. Trump agreed. ¤ If you think it went down another way, you haven’t been paying attention to the last 40 years of Donald Trump.
🐣 RT @kylegriffin1 Speaker Pelosi on CNN: “There ought to be a law, and I’m recommending that we pass a law that presidents cannot issue a pardon if the crime that the person is in jail for is one that is caused by protecting the president, which this was.”
🐣 RT @kylegriffin1 A reminder that just yesterday, Bill Barr said that Roger Stone’s prosecution was “righteous.”
🐣 RT @AWeissmann_ Time to put Roger Stone in the grand jury to find out what he knows about Trump but would not tell. Commutation can’t stop that.
🐣 RT @danielsgoldman Hundreds of federal prosecutors will undoubtedly be thinking about resigning this weekend. Perhaps the fact that the election is only four months away keeps them in their jobs. But every one of them knows they are witnessing unprecedented corruption in the White House.
🐣 Roger Stone already has a tattoo of Nixon on his back. ¤ The one of Trump will have to go on his ass.
🐣 RT @mkraju House Intelligence Chairman Adam Schiff: “Commuting the sentence of Roger Stone, a crony who lied and obstructed our investigation to protect Trump himself, is among the most offensive to the rule of law and principles of justice.“
🐣 RT @MSNBC Rep. Schiff: “With this commutation, Trump makes clear that there are two systems of justice in America: one for his criminal friends, and one for everyone else. Donald Trump, Bill Barr, and all those who enable them pose the gravest of threats to the rule of law.”
🐣 RT @danielsgoldman Stone told Trump in advance abt Wikileaks dumps and lied to Congress to cover for him. And he’s now made it known he could flip on Trump. ¤ Only one explanation for this blatant corruption makes any sense: Trump has given up on reelection and is just trying to save his own hide.
🐣 RT @kylegriffin1 Don’t miss: Barr has pulled the U.S. Attorney for EDNY to take a role at Main Justice. ¤ Richard Donoghue was tasked with supervising DOJ investigations involving Ukraine. His office played a major role in the investigation into Trump’s inaugural committee.
⋙ DailyBeast: AG Barr Moves EDNY Prosecutor Richard Donoghue to Main Justice, Installs Top DOJ Official at EDNY http://bit.ly/2W2fojl
🐣 RT @ewarren This president both commits crimes and pardons guys who commit crimes for him. The future of American democracy rests on us electing @JoeBiden: http://JoeBiden.com
⋙ 🐣 RT @nytimes Breaking News: President Trump commuted the sentence of his longtime friend Roger Stone on seven felony crimes just before he was to report to prison https://nyti.ms/2BPwjPl
🐣 RT @danielsgoldman Within the DOJ, the ONLY way Stone could have “eased [his] situation” by “turn[ing]” on Trump was to provide prosecutors with significant information about criminal activity by Trump. Stone implies he has such information about our President.
🐣 RT @gtconway3d So here’s Roger Stone explicitly asking @realDonaldTrump for executive clemency on the ground that Stone refused to provide evidence against Trump. ¤ This couldn’t be more corrupt.
🐣 RT @howardfineman Just had a long talk with #RogerStone. He says he doesn’t want a pardon (which implies guilt) but a commutation, and says he thinks #Trump will give it to him. “He knows I was under enormous pressure to turn on him. It would have eased my situation considerably. But I didn’t.”
⋙ 🐣 RT @AdamParkhomenko So he’s admitting he wants a favor in exchange for keeping his mouth shut.
⋙ 🐣 RT @ParryPierce Quid pro Quo?
🐣 RT @dsamuelsohn NEWS: The DC Circuit US Court of Appeals has stayed its decision ordering Judge Emmet Sullivan to end former Trump national security adviser Michael Flynn’s criminal case while the entire en banc panel of appellate judges considers the issues. Text Block: https://twitter.com/dsamuelsohn/status/1281621129468289026?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @dandrezner I mean on the one hand this sounds like a classic vacuous Trump threat but on the other hand I don’t like that the norm is to shrug this stuff off as inconsequential. [@real]
⋙ 🐣 RT @brianklaas It’s the classic Trump dilemma with authoritarian threats: he may not actually do them, but you can’t ignore that he’s priming a bit less than half the country to think they are not only normal but actually desirable. And that doesn’t go away when Trump leaves.
⭕ 9 Jul 2020
🐣 RT @dsamuelsohn JUST IN: Judge Sullivan is seeking a rehearing before the entire DC Circuit in the Michael Flynn case after a three-judge panel ordered him to accept DOJ’s request to nix the former Trump aide’s guilty plea.
🐣 RT @jaketapper New Yorker: “in a final act of revenge,” WH made clear “Trump opposed Vindman’s promotion. Senior Administration officials told Esper and Ryan McCarthy, the Secretary of the Army, to dig for misconduct that would justify blocking Vindman’s promotion.”
⋙ NewYorker, Robin Wright: Trump’s Impeachment Revenge: Alexander Vindman Is Bullied Into Retiring http://bit.ly/2ZbJjaK
WaPo: The plot thickens on Attorney General William Barr’s removal of a prosecutor who probed Trump http://wapo.st/3gFZmn2 “We don’t know yet if the attorney general’s conduct is criminal, but that kind of quid pro quo is awfully close to bribery”– Judiciary Chair Jerrold Nadler
⋙ ≣ Berman’s Statement: WaPo: http://wapo.st/3emFTXb
// closed door testimony to House Judiciary Committee; open statement from Berman
CNN: Ousted Manhattan federal prosecutor tells House panel that Barr’s plans to replace him were ‘unprecedented, unnecessary and unexplained’ http://cnn.it/3emuHd7 ‘part of Democrats push to scrutinize what they charge is Barr’s unprecedented politicization of the DOJ’
// Full: The closed-door interview was part of Democrats’ push to scrutinize Barr’s actions and what they charge is unprecedented politicization of the Justice Department
💙📙 SCOTUS Ruling, Chief Justice John Roberts: TRUMP ET AL. v. MAZARS USA, LLP, ET AL. [pdf] http://bit.ly/2Oanj9N 49p; 7-2; Alito and Thomas dissenting
💙📙 SCOTUS Ruling, Chief Justice John Roberts: TRUMP v. VANCE, DISTRICT ATTORNEY OF THE COUNTY OF NEW YORK, ET AL. [pdf] http://bit.ly/3efopvE 68p; 7-2; Alito and Thomas dissenting
💙 Lawfare, Jack Goldsmith and Nathaniel Sobel: The Durham Investigation: What We Know and What It Means http://bit.ly/2W0lgJF
🐣 RT @FrankFigliuzzi Chairman of Joint Chiefs concedes Trump not doing enough to push back Russia.You think? #Trump
⋙ 🐣 RT @KenDilanianNBC Gen. Mark Milley, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told Congress Thursday the Trump administration was “perhaps not” doing “as much as we could or should” to deter Russia and other foreign powers from providing weapons and support to America’s enemies in Afghanistan.
⋙⋙ 🐣 RT @KenDilanianNBC By saying the US isn’t “doing as much as we could or should” strategically to push back on Russian support for the Taliban, the chairman of the joint chiefs essentially just called out @realDonaldTrump.
🐣 RT @prahme When is someone going to point out that Trump is happy with doing nothing to stem the sores of Coronavirus because he is counting on more black and brown voters dying in districts favorable to him…ultimate voter suppression
⋙ 🐣 I consider Trump’s allowing the pandemic to rage – knowing full well it disproportionately affects minorities – to be a form of genocide that should be prosecuted by the International Criminal Court.
🐣 RT @PreetBharara No judge, justice, general, prosecutor, author, or benevolent angel will save us. Only the votes of true patriots on Nov 3 will.
⋙ 🐣 RT @steve_vladeck Not for the first time, and not for the last time, #SCOTUS isn’t going to save us.
🧵 RT @marty_lederman Preliminary thread on Trump v. Mazars:
1. Judicious opinion by the CJ. The strongest statement ever by the Court in support of the traditional “accommodation” process between the political branches, which has been shot to smithereens in recent years. /1 📌 https://twitter.com/marty_lederman/status/1281243510419701766?s=20
⋙ 🐣 RT @marty_lederman The Court won’t look kindly on any efforts by either branch to undermine/pretermit that process (which shouldn’t bode well for DOJ’s absurd “testimonial immunity” theories in McGahn, et al.). /2
⋙ 🐣 RT @marty_lederman The Court reaffirms very broad congressional investigatory powers generally. But it also says that there are special concerns when it comes to investigations of the POTUS–and that in such cases certain congressional objectives are impermissible, namely, … /3
⋙ 🐣 RT @marty_lederman … Congress may not look to the POTUS as a “case study” for general legislation; and the investigatory demand may not “aim to harass the President or render him ‘complaisan[t] to the humors of the Legislature.’” (which doesn’t bode well for the FSC subpoena) /4
⋙ 🐣 RT @marty_lederman On the other hand, *HPSCI’s* objectives, including “whether the President and his associates had been compromised by foreign actors or interests,” are legitimate & important bases for a properly tailored subpoena. The Chief’s reliance on the quote from Rumely is important: /5
Text Block: https://twitter.com/marty_lederman/status/1281243513871622144?s=20/photo/1
⋙ 🐣 RT @marty_lederman So my initial impression is that the HPSCI and possibly Oversight Committee subpoenas should withstand the inquiry that the Court directs the lower courts to perform–at least if they’re tailored a bit–but probably not the Financial Services subpoena. /6
⋙ 🐣 RT @marty_lederman Which is basically where Justice Kagan was pointing at oral argument, as I discussed here:
⋙⋙ JustSecurity, Marty Lederman (5/15): Oversight and “Undermining”: Reflections on the Supreme Court Oral Arguments About Subpoenas for Trump’s Financial Information http://bit.ly/3iLXpaI /7
⋙ 🐣 RT @marty_lederman HPSCI therefore should eventually be able to review the records to ascertain whether Trump is influenced by foreign entanglements. But make no mistake: It almost surely won’t be able to do so until after the election, because the remand proceedings will take a while. /8
⋙ 🐣 RT @marty_lederman P.S. The Rumely quote is from Woodrow Wilson, about the legitimacy of Congress’s “informing” function. It’s the centerpiece of our amicus brief. For some reason, Roberts doesn’t note that it’s Wilson. Cf. Princeton. [SCOTUS:] http://bit.ly/2ZTJvuj /9
🐣 RT @tedlieu The Supreme Court in #TrumpTaxReturns case just crushed Bill Barr’s radical view that @realDonaldTrump is the law. Barr’s legacy will be the reckless politicization of @TheJusticeDept and the shrinking of the power of the presidency due to multiple losses in federal courts.
⋙ 🐣 RT @abbydphillip These rulings mean that Trump’s tax returns will not be released anytime soon. But they affirm the principle that no one, even the president, is above the law. The president is subject to investigation. Particularly important given Trump’s claims that his “authority is total.”
🐣 RT @ManhattanDA [Cyrus Vance Jr] This is a tremendous victory for our nation’s system of justice and its founding principle that no one – not even a president – is above the law.
⋙ manhattanda.org: Statement from Manhattan D.A. Cy Vance, Jr. on U.S. Supreme Court Opinion in Trump v. Vance http://bit.ly/2OaKYXG
“This is a tremendous victory for our nation’s system of justice and its founding principle that no one – not even a president – is above the law. Our investigation, which was delayed for almost a year by this lawsuit, will resume, guided as always by the grand jury’s solemn obligation to follow the law and the facts, wherever they may lead.”
🐣 RT @Michaelart123 Nancy Pelosi[:] This is clearly achievable for us and we will follow up with the lower courts. It is a path we will take. Chief Justice Roberts specifically stated in the decision the Pres is not above the law. The Court has reaffirmed Congress’ responsibility to oversight.
🐣 RT @Mimirocah1 I’m glad & not surprised. People are vowing this purely through political lense. Even saying “Trump’s justices” made this happen to protect him. No. Even they upheld the obvious, reasonable, fundamental principle of law & left the details to be worked out below as they often do.
🔆 This❗️⋙ WaPo: Supreme Court says Manhattan prosecutor may see Trump’s financial records, denies Congress access for now http://wapo.st/3efLfmX
⭕ 8 Jul 2020
🐣 RT @CheriJacobus Every Trump Republican should now wonder what happens to them in post-Trump Nuremburg-type of accountability. Where everything you did or said to enable Trump’s corrupt, deadly terror regime is exposed, reviewed & judged: Your lies. Racism. Lives ruined. Lives lost. ¤ We see you.
🐣 RT @NatSecLisa I’m so sorry to learn this, Alex. It’s another sad loss for our country at the hands of this retributive and vindictive President and his sycophants. ¤ But you will be fine, I have no doubt. Because you were right all along. Because, “here, right matters.” ¤ Be well.
⋙ 🐣 RT @AVindman Today I officially requested retirement from the US Army, an organization I love. My family and I look forward to the next chapter of our lives.
‼️ JustSecurity: Trump Pushed CIA to Give Intelligence to Kremlin, While Taking No Action Against Russia Arming Taliban http://bit.ly/3iSqots
🐣 RT @kylegriffin1 Lt. Col. Vindman is retiring from the US Army after 21+ years because he determined his future “will forever be limited” due to retaliation by Trump and his allies. Vindman endured a “campaign of bullying, intimidation, and retaliation,” his attorney said.
⋙ CNN: Vindman to retire from military. His lawyer blames White House ‘campaign of bullying, intimidation and retaliation’ http://cnn.it/38OTlSx
🐣 RT @NatashaBertrand Full statement from Lt. Col. Alex Vindman’s lawyer on Vindman’s retirement: “Through a campaign of bullying, intimidation, and retaliation, the President of the United States attempted to force LTC Vindman to choose: Between adhering to the law or pleasing a President.” https://twitter.com/NatashaBertrand/status/1280882921793085440?s=20/photo/1
⭕ 7 Jul 2020
STATNews, Helen Branswell: Trump admin submits formal notice of withdrawal from WHO http://bit.ly/3gDtZK0 “The move, however, would not be effective until July 6, 2021 … leaving open the possibility that, should Trump lose reelection, a Biden admin could reverse the decision”
Jeremy Konyndyk, a fellow at the Center for Global Development, called the move “reckless and entirely unjustified.” ¤ “The disastrous state of the outbreak in the United States is not the result of following WHO guidance but rather is the result of ignoring the agency’s increasingly urgent warnings from late January onward,” he said in a statement. “Had the U.S. followed WHO’s advice on early preparedness, aggressive testing, contact tracing, and other response measures, we would be in a far better place today than we are.”
Lawrence Gostin, the faculty director at Georgetown’s O’Neill Institute for National and Global Health Law, called the move “ruinous” — both for United States and for the world. ¤ “This is the end of an era of United States global health leadership,” he said.
Gostin and more than 750 public health leaders, deans of schools of public health, even former heads of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Food and Drug Administration have signed a letter asking Congress to block the withdrawal. They argue the president does not have the unilateral authority to cancel the country’s membership in the global health agency.
The WHO’s constitution does not include provisions for members to withdraw. But in 1948, after the United States joined the United Nations’ global health agency, Congress passed a joint resolution outlining the circumstances under which withdrawal could be achieved. It requires a member country to give the WHO one year’s notice of its intention to withdraw. It also stipulates that all outstanding dues must be paid before withdrawal.
🐣 RT @digiphile Ford pardoned Nixon.
Bush pardoned Iran-Contra felons.
No Bush administration officials went to jail over Iraq.
No CEOs went to jail after 2008 $ crisis.
Without accountability, trust withers.
Congress needs a special commission, like Truman’s, to investigate Trumpian corruption:
⋙ 🐣 RT @KevinMKruse My new piece in @VanityFair. ¤ Even if Democrats retake the White House, we’ll still need a full accounting of the Trump administration’s misdeeds and full accountability for those responsible for them.
⋙⋙ VanityFair, Kevin Kruse: Why a Biden Administration Shouldn’t Turn the Page on the Trump Era http://bit.ly/3iElFLz
🐣 RT @kylegriffin1 Mary Trump: “For some of the Trump kids, lying was a way of life … For Donald, lying was primarily a mode of self-aggrandizement meant to convince other people he was better than he actually was.”
⋙ NBCNews: ‘Sociopath’, ‘clown’: 8 unflattering anecdotes from Mary Trump’s book http://nbcnews.to/38D9bzb
// The president’s family had filed suit to try to stop his niece’s book from being published.
🐣 RT @chrislhayes Definitely just a weird coincidence that the last two Republican presidencies both featured legacy cases who coasted on their inheritance, didn’t win the popular vote to get elected, and then once in power ushered in world-historical catastrophe and suffering.
🐣 RT @SteveSchmidtSES .@realDonaldTrump You can trust no one. If they are so smart how come you are the POTUS? They all talk about how crazy and inept you are. Your meetings are compromised. Whenever you meet with your political team and wherever outside groups gather Abe is there. @ProjectLincoln
⋙ 🐣 RT @ProjectLincoln. @realDonaldTrump has a loyalty problem. 💽 https://twitter.com/ProjectLincoln/status/1280457599884935168?s=20/photo/1
// Project Lincoln ad❣ paranoia
🐣 RT @nytopinion When did America start losing its war against the coronavirus? The turning point, @PaulKrugman writes, was April 17, when Trump tweeted “LIBERATE MINNESOTA,” followed by “LIBERATE MICHIGAN” and “LIBERATE VIRGINIA.”
⋙ NYT, Paul Krugman: How America Lost the War on Covid-19 http://nyti.ms/38EEOsu
// It wasn’t because of our culture, it was because of our leadership.
NYT: Mary Trump’s Book Accuses the President of Embracing ‘Cheating as a Way of Life’ http://nyti.ms/2Z871ET
// The president’s niece, Mary L. Trump, is the first to break ranks with the family and release a tell-all memoir.
WaPo: Trump’s worldview forged by neglect and trauma at home, his niece says in new book http://wapo.st/2OgHcMJ
⭕ 6 Jul 2020
🐣 RT @rgoodlaw 1/2
⋙ 🐣 RT @rgoodlaw 2/2 ¤ Our analysis includes “a painful conclusion to put forward as it would mean the country’s top intelligence official is manipulating intelligence processes for political purposes in the context of a direct threat to American service members’ lives.”
⋙⋙ JustSecurity, Nicholas Rasmussen and Ryan Goodman: Unpacking the National Intelligence Council’s Memo on Russian Bounty Operation http://bit.ly/2Azdcbz
HuffPo: John Bolton Suggests Trump Spends Much Of His Time Glued To TV http://bit.ly/3ea9va9
// The advice of his own advisers presents little competition for the president’s attention, says his former national security adviser.
The New York Times reported in April that Trump was watching as much as seven hours of cable news programs each morning and not arriving in the Oval Office until noon. The story’s headline even referred to TV as Trump’s “constant companion.”
Bolton also undermined Trump’s claim that he wasn’t told about American intelligence that the Russians were offering a bounty to Taliban-linked militants to kill U.S. soldiers in Afghanistan. The president and his press secretary insist Trump wasn’t briefed on the intelligence because the information wasn’t credible.
Bolton said that’s not the way the system works. ¤ All intelligence is distributed along the spectrum of uncertainty,” he said. “And this intelligence in 2020, by the administration’s own admission, was deemed credible enough to give to our allies. So the notion that you only give the really completely 100 percent verified intelligence to the president would mean you give him almost nothing. And that’s just not the way the system works.”
🐣 RT @JuliaDavisNews Putin sent a telegram congratulating Trump on America’s Independence Day. Interesting move. By avoiding a phone call Putin also avoided any direct pressure to address reports about the Kremlin paying bounties to the Taliban to kill American soldiers.
⋙ DailyBeast, Julia Davis: Moscow Has a Field Day With Trump’s Fireworks at Mt. Russia http://bit.ly/38ur9nD
// Kremlin-controlled media continue to flatter the American president they sometimes call their “agent.” But they know he’s in trouble, and the Putin bromance is on ice for now.
⭕ 5 Jul 2020
WaPo, EJ Dionne: A vicious culture war is all Trump has left http://wapo.st/2C3lHMl “[W]e face months of being led by someone so desperate to avoid defeat that he will warp our history, shatter what little unity we have left, and leave it to others to clear the wreckage”
// Trump’s spiteful and hostile moves over the July 4 weekend are alarming. But they are also a sign of weakness.
💙 WaPo, Jennifer Rubin: Trump’s ‘Toe-tally-terry-tism’ speech http://wapo.st/2ZDiTh7 “It is all froth, anger and white resentment … His enemies are other Americans; his understanding of American greatness is utterly defective“
// Trump delivers a bookend to his “American carnage” speech.
NYRB, David Rothkopf: ‘The Most Ignorant and Unfit’: What Made America’s Worst Ever Leader? http://bit.ly/2AA1j5a “November’s election is a judgment day for this nation’s form of republican government. Or else, only ‘civil commotion’ awaits us”
🐣 RT @McFaul According to reporting including @MeetThePress, Trump called Putin 6 times in 2 months – March 30th, April 9th, April 10th, April 12, May 7th, June 1 ! That would be a crazy number of calls to any foreign leader. But to Putin? What on earth were they discussing? So strange.
🐣 RT @MeetThePress “We are at a moment where our democracy is at stake, where our leadership role in the world is at stake, where the lives of tens of thousands of Americans are on the line — lost to incompetence and callous leadership.” — @AmbassadorRice exclusively on #MTP. #IfItsSunday
🐣 RT @JoyceWhiteVance Trump survives via distraction. No matter how bad the next scandal is, the country moves on & so, he avoids any accountability. Boggles the mind to think the GOP will give Trump a pass for kowtowing to Putin who paid for Taliban to kill our troops, but it sure looks that way.
⋙ 🐣 RT @Weinsteinlaw So are the Republicans in Congress just going to move right past Trump letting Russia target our troops?
⭕ 4 Jul 2020
🐣 RT @GeorgeTakei Listen up. The second half of 2020 will likely deliver all manner of chaos, with new lows we yet sink to. From the banal, to the horrifying, to the deadly…it’s all on the table. That means, more than ever, we need to stay focused and determined. Eyes on the prize, friends.
NYT: 239 Experts With 1 Big Claim: The Coronavirus Is Airborne http://nyti.ms/38E0XXX
// The W.H.O. has resisted mounting evidence that viral particles floating indoors are infectious, some scientists say. The agency maintains the research is still inconclusive.
💙 🐣 RT @danielsgoldman 99 years ago, my grandmother was a baby when her family escaped anti-Semitism in Russia and made it to the US. She was six months old and began to cry as her family crossed the border river at night. As others threatened to throw her overboard, she miraculously stopped crying.
⋙ 🐣 RT @danielsgoldman Coming through Ellis Island, she was welcomed by the Statue of Liberty. She and her five older brothers lived the American dream — one brother ran a store to put the rest through school. ¤ Happy Birthday America. We will restore our faith in you on November 3rd.
🐣 RT @BillKristol A 4th of July video from Republican Voters Against Trump: Happy Birthday, America. Let’s make the next 4th of July better than this one.@RVAT2020 💽 https://twitter.com/BillKristol/status/1279018413051052032?s=20/photo/1
// Republican Voters Against Trump ad❣
💽 WaPo: On the country’s birthday, Biden offers hopeful counterpoint to Trump’s message http://wapo.st/31MgIui “We have a chance to rip the roots of systemic racism out of this country. We have a chance to live up to the words that have founded this nation.”
💙 TheGuardian, Ted Widmer: Love of science, not Trump’s ignorance, will make America great again http://bit.ly/3e0lSFF “More than 20,000 patents were issued in the North during the war years. In the South, it was different. … [S]lavery depended on the suppression of information”
// Amid a pandemic, the president rails against reason itself. The passions of his predecessors throw his failure into sharp relief
⭕ 3 Jul 2020
NYT: New Administration Memo Seeks to Foster Doubts About Suspected Russian Bounties http://nyti.ms/31M2tFT
// Criticized for its inaction, the Trump administration commissioned a new look at a months-old intelligence assessment. It emphasizes gaps.
🐣 RT @votevets This July 4th, there is a new name synonymous with traitor. Move over Benedict Arnold. Meet… ¤ #BenedictDonald ¤ #TRE45ON https://twitter.com/votevets/status/1279097817240305670?s=20/photo/1
// Vote Vets ad❣ West Point Russian bounties Afghanistan
🧵 RT @atrupar [7/3/2020 Trump in South Dakota] 📌 https://twitter.com/atrupar/status/1279236923945553920?s=20
🐣 RT @McFaul Trump obviously has no idea what words like facism and totalitarianism mean. To those who wrote that speech, shame on you. To those that cleared on this speech, shame on you. Perhaps the most un- American speech ever delivered by an American president, on the eve of July 4th.
🐣 RT @duty2warn Malignant narcissists cannot apologize, empathize, or show contrition. They harbor such grandiose opinions of self, that they cannot admit any imperfection. They cannot reverse course. They cannot pivot. The GOP will learn it hard. They cannot control nor fix their naked Emperor.
WaPo: New York prosecutors appeal in Manafort case seen as a backstop if Trump pardons him http://wapo.st/3gqeDIE
🐣 RT @danielsgoldman This is scary. And while the fact that Trump never denounced Russia’s interference in the 2016 election — much less called it a national security emergency — consistency has never been his thing. ¤ Be forewarned: Trump will do anything to stay in power.
⋙ Newsweek: Timothy Wirth and Tom Rogers: How Trump Could Lose the Election—And Still Remain President http://bit.ly/3gtfaJT
🐣 RT @renato_mariotti U.S. Attorneys are supposed to be appointed by the president and confirmed by the Senate. ¤ It looks like Barr is once again trying to install a loyalist into a key U.S. Attorney’s Office in order to increase his control over prosecutions there.
⋙ 🐣 RT @holmescnn The Justice Department is considering replacing the US attorney in Brooklyn with a senior department official close to Attorney General William #Barr, officials briefed on the matter said. By @davidgshortell @evanperez @KaraScannell #JusticeDepartment
⋙⋙ CNN: Justice Department considering replacing US attorney in Brooklyn with Barr ally http://cnn.it/2BseUMt
🐣 RT @alfonslopeztena How long can a political system seek to remake itself before triggering either a backlash from those most threatened by change or a realization by the change makers that their goals can no longer be realized within the present order?By @charleskingdc
⋙ ForeignAffairs, Charles King: How a Great Power Falls Apart http://fam.ag/3dX7A8o “the antidote to hopelessness isn’t hope. It’s planning”
// Jul-Aug issue, 6/30/2020; Decline Is Invisible From the Inside
⭕ 2 Jul 2020
🧵 RT @rgoodlaw A Timeline of Trump’s acts of accommodation to Russia while US intelligence agencies reported Putin was paying militants to kill American soldiers (February-June 2020) from @jgeltzer @DaniSchulkin and me. #RussianBounty 📌 https://twitter.com/rgoodlaw/status/1278676571352637441?s=20
FinTimes, Edward Luce: How America could fail its democracy test http://bit.ly/3iodQcY
// High risk that Donald Trump and Joe Biden could dispute November’s presidential result
⭕ 1 Jul 2020
WaPo, Michael McFaul: Trump would do anything for Putin. No wonder he’s ignoring the Russian bounties. http://wapo.st/31KdhnP Michael McFaul was US Ambassador to Russia under President Obama
// Russia’s pattern of hostility matches Trump’s pattern of accommodation.
🐣 RT @giacomonyt Oh my goodness. The Lincoln Project is not letting up on Trump.
⋙ 🐣 RT @gtconway3d Помогите нам удалить товарища Д. Дж. Трампа из Белого дома! ¤ Поддержите @ProjectLincoln! 💽 https://twitter.com/gtconway3d/status/1278434731454017536?s=20/photo/1
// Project Lincoln ad❣ in Russian
NYT: Afghan Contractor Handed Out Russian Cash to Kill Americans, Officials Say http://nyti.ms/2YSeCaA
// A small-time businessman became a key middleman for bounties on coalition troops in Afghanistan, U.S. intelligence reports say. Friends saw him grow rich, but didn’t know how.
NYT, Timothy Naftali: How Generations of Russians Have Tried to Influence American Elections http://nyti.ms/3ipNozx Review of “America, Russia, and One Hundred Years of Covert Electoral Interference” by David Shimer
🐣 RT @tribelaw Donald Trump now says he doesn’t believe our intelligence community’s conclusion that Russia is paying bounties to Taliban who kill U.S. troops. Why not? Because . . . wait for it: ¤ Because Putin TOLD him Russia isn’t doing that. Shades of Helsinki. Can this really be happening?
‼️WaPo: White House does not plan any immediate response over intelligence reports on Russian bounties targeting U.S. troops http://wapo.st/3dPCtM7 “President Trump does not believe the reports are true or ‘actionable,’ according to two senior administration officials”
🐣 RT @TheRickWilson Hearing that even though the Senate Coward Caucus is publicly sticking with Trump over letting Putin pay the Taliban to murder American soldiers that there is a Great Disturbance In the Farce inside the caucus.
NYT, David Sanger and Eric Schmitt: Trump’s New Russia Problem: Unread Intelligence and Missing Strategy http://nyti.ms/2NMZ9SM “[T]he president repeatedly objected to criticizing Russia & pressed us not to be so critical of Russia publicly,” John Bolton notes in his memoir
// High-level clearance is not required to see that the list of Russian aggressions in recent weeks rivals some of the worst days of the Cold War.
🐣 RT @ProjectLincoln Former U.S Navy Seal Dr. Dan Barkhuff wants to know if @realDonaldTrump is a coward who can’t stand up to Putin or if he’s complicit.
Well, Donald, which is it? 💽 https://twitter.com/ProjectLincoln/status/1278028522863427584?s=20/photo/1
// Project Lincoln ad❣
🐣 RT @McFaul If American patriots are willing to deploy to Afghanistan to defend our country, the least our Commander in Chief could do to honor and support their service is spend 20 minutes a day reading his PDB.
⭕ 30 Jun 2020
🐣 RT @MSNBC .@mccaffreyr3 says President Trump “is someone who refuses to confront Russian adversarial efforts.”
⋙ 💽 MSNBC, DeadlineWH: Retired four star general: ‘In 50 years I’ve never seen anything like this’ http://on.msnbc.com/2ZFDeCf
// Former National Security Council member General Barry McCaffrey and former special presidential envoy for the Global Coalition to Defeat ISIS Brett McGurk on why they believe the national security process is broken amid reports the U.S. had intelligence that Russia offered and paid the Taliban bounty to kill U.S. troops
🐣 RT @MSNBC .@neal_katyal on Pres. Trump’s Supreme Court tax return case: ¤ “The idea that he can just say ‘hey, hell no, I’m not going to give this to you.’ … In an American democracy, when the president does that, generally the courts don’t accept such things.”
⋙ 💽 MSNBC, TheBeatWithAri: SCOTUS about to rule against Trump on tax returns, says Obama’s SCOTUS lawyer http://on.msnbc.com/
// The Supreme Court will rule on the fate of Pres. Trump’s long-secret tax returns by mid-July and possibly sooner, and Pres. Obama’s Supreme Court litigator says it will likely be a partial loss for Trump. “This whole Russia story may very well color” the decision, says Neal Katyal, explaining that legitimate questions about Trump’s links to Russia argue in favor of a legal probe of his taxes. Katyal discusses the case with MSNBC Chief Legal Correspondent Ari Melber.
WaPo: Intelligence reports on Russian bounty operation first reached White House in early 2019 http://wapo.st/2Vx0n92
NYT, Susan Rice: Why Does Trump Put Russia First? http://nyti.ms/3eRt8F4
// It’s exceedingly difficult to believe that no one told the president about the intelligence on Russian efforts to harm Americans in Afghanistan.
🐣 RT @TheRickWilson Because Vlad is Daddy.
⋙ 🐣 RT @ProjectLincoln When will President Trump condemn Putin? ¤ Why won’t President Trump simply say he will defend our troops from Russia at all costs?
⋙⋙ 🐣 This is why Mary Trump’s book could be helpful. She has a PhD in Clinical Psychology. The book’s publication has been held up by a judge. ¤ The obvious scenario is that Trump felt rejected by an authoritarian father, whose affection he nonetheless craved.
🐣 RT @rgoodlaw HUGE change in WSJ story.*
On the left (in blue) from earlier: NSA and CIA differed on #RussiaBounty assessment.
On the right (in yellow) now: NSA and CIA “differences WEREN’T over the central assessment” of #RussiaBounty
*WSJ editors keep same headline, and no editor’s note.
● https://twitter.com/Auriandra/status/1278126395944841216?s=20/photo/1
// my reformatted text with original on top, revised on bottom
Politico: Russians squeeze U.S. troops in Syria amid uproar over Trump’s dealings with Moscow http://politi.co/31zEs4G ‘The growing friction comes against a backdrop of deepening mistrust between the NatSec community and Trump’s White House over dealings with Moscow’
// The dispute over intelligence about bounty payments in Afghanistan is exposing a deep rift in the government over how to handle Russia.
🐣 RT @JuliaDavisNews The officials with knowledge of Bolton’s apparent briefing for Trump in 2019 said that the classified assessment of Russian bounties was the sole purpose of the meeting.
⋙ AP: AP sources: White House aware of Russian bounties in 2019 http://bit.ly/38eP9uT
🐣 RT @MaxBoot Nobody forced so many Americans to act so recklessly – first by placing their faith in a president who doesn’t deserve it and now in ignoring widely publicized scientific findings. ¤ We are living – and now dying – in an idiocracy of our own creation.
⋙ WaPo: Welcome to the United States of ‘Idiocracy’ http://wapo.st/2BnP3oA
🐣 RT @FrankFigliuzzi Here’s all you need to know about our elections: Senate strips provision from intelligence bill requiring campaigns to report foreign election help #Senate
⋙ CNN: Senate strips provision from intelligence bill requiring campaigns to report foreign election help http://cnn.it/3gcUqWv
WaPo, Leon Panetta: Trump has no excuse for his failure to take action to defend America’s troops http://wapo.st/3dJdhXL “For the sake of those who lost their lives because of Russian bounties, someone must be held responsible”
NYT: Father of Slain Marine Finds Heartbreak Anew in Possible Russian Bounty http://nyti.ms/2AgNgkI “‘I am a Republican and I am a Trump supporter,’ he said. ‘But there would be no way he didn’t know about it if Russians were paying off these cowards like mafia payoff hit men’”
// “If it does come out as true, obviously the heartache would be terrible,” said Erik Hendriks, whose son was killed while on patrol in Afghanistan.
🐣 RT @charlie_savage EXCLUSIVE: Data intercepts showed GRU-to-Taliban $ transfers & a key intermediary fled to Russia, bolstering earlier detainee accounts about a Russian bounty op. Trump WH omitted in its briefing to GOP lawmakers as it downplayed intel as murky/contested.
⋙ NYT: Data on Financial Transfers Bolstered Suspicions That Russia Offered Bounties http://nyti.ms/31xyKk2
// Analysts have used other evidence to conclude that the transfers were likely part of an effort to offer payments to Taliban-linked militants to kill American and coalition troops in Afghanistan.
Though the United States has accused Russia of providing general support to the Taliban before, analysts concluded from other intelligence that the transfers were most likely part of a bounty program that detainees described during interrogations. Investigators also identified by name numerous Afghans in a network linked to the suspected Russian operation, the officials said — including, two of them added, a man believed to have served as an intermediary for distributing some of the funds and who is now thought to be in Russia.
The intercepts bolstered the findings gleaned from the interrogations, helping reduce an earlier disagreement among intelligence analysts and agencies over the reliability of the detainees. The disclosures further undercut White House officials’ claim that the intelligence was too uncertain to brief President Trump. In fact, the information was provided to him in his daily written brief in late February, two officials have said.
They said that several businessmen who transfer money through the informal “hawala” system were arrested in Afghanistan over the past six months and are suspected of being part of a ring of middlemen who operated between the Russian intelligence agency, known as the G.R.U., and Taliban-linked militants. The businessmen were arrested in what the officials described as sweeping raids in the north of Afghanistan, as well as in Kabul.
A half-million dollars was seized from the home of one of the men, added a provincial official. The New York Times had previously reported that the recovery of an unusually large amount of cash in a raid was an early piece in the puzzle that investigators put together.
Democrats and Senate Republicans were also separately briefed at the White House on Tuesday morning. Democrats emerged saying that the issue was clearly not, as Mr. Trump has suggested, a “hoax.” They demanded to hear directly from intelligence officials, rather than from Mr. Trump’s political appointees, but conceded they had not secured a commitment for such a briefing.
The Times reported last week that intelligence officials believed that a unit of the G.R.U. had offered and paid bounties for killing American troops and other coalition forces and that the White House had not authorized a response after the National Security Council convened an interagency meeting about the problem in late March.
Investigators are said to be focused on at least two deadly attacks on American soldiers in Afghanistan. One is an April 2019 bombing outside Bagram Air Base that killed three Marines: Staff Sgt. Christopher Slutman, 43, of Newark, Del.; Cpl. Robert A. Hendriks, 25, of Locust Valley, N.Y.; and Sgt. Benjamin S. Hines, 31, of York, Pa.
On Monday, Felicia Arculeo, the mother of Corporal Hendriks, told CNBC that she was upset to learn from news reports of the suspicions that her son’s death arose from a Russian bounty operation. She said she wanted an investigation, adding that “the parties who are responsible should be held accountable, if that’s even possible.”
Intelligence about the suspected Russian plot was included in Mr. Trump’s written President’s Daily Brief in late February, according to two officials, contrasting Mr. Trump’s claim on Sunday that he was never “briefed or told” about the matter.
Two former Afghan officials said Monday that members of local criminal networks have carried out attacks for the Taliban in the past — not because they share the Taliban’s ideology or goals, but in exchange for money.
In Parwan Province, where Bagram Airfield is, the Taliban are known to have hired local criminals as freelancers, said Gen. Zaman Mamozai, the former police chief of the province. He said the Taliban’s commanders are based in two districts of the province, Seyagird and Shinwari, and that from there they coordinate a network that commissions criminals to carry out attacks.
And Haseeba Efat, a former member of Parwan’s provincial council, also said the Taliban have hired freelancers in Bagram district — including one of his own distant relatives in one case.
“They agree with these criminals that they won’t have monthly salary, but they will get paid for the work they do when the Taliban need them,” Mr. Efat said.
Twenty American service members were killed in combat-related operations in Afghanistan last year, the most since 2014.
🧵 RT @SteveSchmidtSES President Ulysses S Grant, “I leave comparisons to history, claiming only that I have acted in every instance from a conscientious desire to do what was right, constitutional, within the law and for the very best interests of the whole people. failures have been errors in 📌 https://twitter.com/SteveSchmidtSES/status/1277820446658965505?s=20
🐣 RT @SteveSchmidtSES Judgement not intent.” These are the words of a great and honorable man. Let’s compare them to Trump’s record of self interest, corruption, cowardice, betrayal, idiocy, insanity and maliced indifference towards the suffering of our country and her people. We are fated (2)
🐣 RT @SteveSchmidtSES to suffer death and loss on an epic scale in the months ahead. The economic catastrophe will worsen. The Trump regime is in its death throes and thus has arrived at its most dangerous hour. He is failing and falling apart mentally and physically. He has lost control. (3)
🐣 RT @SteveSchmidtSES But it will get worse before it can get better. The Maliced indifference of Trump to the American people and our country will grow more lethal and dangerous between now and November. He will divide the country, incite racial tensions and stoke violence all in the name of (4)
🐣 RT @SteveSchmidtSES Law and Order. He will continue his assault on the Rule of Law and vandalism of the American Justice system. He will seek to conjure chaos in our country hoping the resulting foul winds can fill his sagging political sails. He will continue to betray our men and women in (5)
🐣 RT @SteveSchmidtSES Harms way who have been targeted for death by Russian contracts through faithlessness to his oath. He will steepen the angle of our decline and weaken us more with each instance of his bloviating incompetence. Trump will seek to destroy the integrity of the election process (6)
🐣 RT @SteveSchmidtSES And when he loses he will question the legitimacy of the election and further erode the faith of his followers in democracy, liberty and the American ideal. Trump and his party will seek do disenfranchise millions of Americans from their god given right to vote because they (7)
🐣 RT @SteveSchmidtSES Smell the pungent scent of political repudiation moving ever closer. The stench will envelop all of them. The GOP Senate Majority has enabled all of this. Trump could not have desecrated the dignity of his office, disgraced America, dishonored (8)
🐣 RT @SteveSchmidtSES the US Military and sundered the American people absent the malignant collaboration and despicable silence of the GOP Senators. Their cowardice at a moment when they were called to stand for the right and decent will be their eternal shame. They all deserve defeat. They deserve (9)
🐣 RT @SteveSchmidtSES It because America needs Senators who aren’t afraid of Tweets, Fox News Rush Limbaugh or a Presidential nickname. The Country needs Patriots not collaborators. When Trump and a Platoon of defeated Republican Senators look in the early morning mirror upon the first dawn after (10)
🐣 RT @SteveSchmidtSES The election they can all be assured that ignominy is their destiny for remembrance, Timid men and Women who failed America in an hour of great crisis and testing. None will ever be able to say what Grant did at the hour of his death. (11)
That is a tragedy for all of us . # @ProjectLincoln
🐣 RT @AndrewDesiderio WSJ reports the NSA “strongly dissented” on the Russian bounty assessment
⋙ WSJ: NSA Differed From CIA, Others on Russia Bounty Intelligence http://on.wsj.com/2VvZU71 //➔ Note that the AP has reported that John Bolton did in fact brief Trump in March 2019 ● Text Block: https://twitter.com/Auriandra/status/1278009456870264835?s=20/photo/1
// Lawmakers say intelligence contains evidence that Russia paid bounties to insurgent for attacks on Americans
The National Security Agency strongly dissented from other intelligence agencies’ assessment that Russia paid bounties for the killing of U.S. soldiers in Afghanistan, according to people familiar with the matter.
The disclosure of the dissent by the NSA, which specializes in electronic eavesdropping, comes as the White House has played down the revelations, saying that the information wasn’t verified and that intelligence officials didn’t agree on it.
Because of that, President Trump was never personally briefed on the threat, the White House said, although a key lawmaker said the information apparently was included in written intelligence materials prepared for Mr. Trump.
🐣 RT @duty2warn The more he’s losing, the crazier he gets. The crazier he gets, the more aides mollify him. The more they mollify him, the more he’s unchecked. The more he’s unchecked, the more mistakes he makes. The more mistakes he makes, the more he’s losing, and the crazier he gets. Repeat.
🐣 RT @atrupar SCHIFF: “I find it inexplicable in light of these public allegations that POTUS hasn’t come before the country & assured people that he’ll get to the bottom of whether Russians are putting bounties on the heads of troops, & he’ll do everything in his power to protect US troops.” 💽 https://twitter.com/atrupar/status/1277966586901487616?s=20/photo/1
DailyBeast, Rick Wilson: Trump’s F*cked. That Means America Is Too Until November. http://bit.ly/3eKLPu0 //➔ Actually, until Jan 20, right? As in: Turn out the lights on your way out.
// He’s tired of the job, but he knows that without the power of his office (and Bill Barr to protect him), every conceivable chicken will come home to roost.
🐣 RT @kylegriffin1 The mother of a Marine killed last year in Afghanistan wants an investigation of reports that her son and two other Marines may have been the targets of Taliban-linked fighters who collected a bounty on US soldiers offered by a Russian military intel unit.
⋙ CNBC: Mom of Marine killed in Afghanistan wants investigation of claim Russians paid Taliban to kill U.S. soldiers http://cnb.cx/2BUZgbX
// Felicia Arculeo, whose son Cpl. Robert Hendriks died in the April 8, 2019, attack, also told CNBC “that the parties who are responsible should be held accountable, if that’s even possible.”
🐣 RT @mjgerson “This is an enormity, wrapped in a treachery, inside a debacle.”
⋙ WaPo, Michael Gerson: Trump’s diminished moral capacity is on full display http://wapo.st/2CSRy2O
Outrages committed by President Trump generally come in an undifferentiated mass of scandals, travesties, betrayals, absurdities and abuses of the public trust.
Consider recent days. The president tweeted a video of a supporter shouting “white power,” seemingly to distract from his inaction on Russian-paid bounties for the killing of U.S. troops, which had drawn attention away from his tragically botched pandemic response. This is an enormity, wrapped in a treachery, inside a debacle.
🐣 RT @danielsgoldman We warned everyone. Senate Republicans ignored the warnings.
⋙ 🐣 RT @brhodes Over the last few months, the consequences of the Trump presidency have caught up with us, and hit us all at once in every dimension of American life. Our democracy will not survive four more years of this.
🐣 RT @cbouzy Trump’s presidency is over, the question now is will it take the November election to remove him or will he be forced to resign. I predict we will know as early as today which way the political winds are blowing.
🐣 RT @carolecadwalla The advertising boycott of Facebook is totally genius. Finally – *FINALLY* – something’s working. It is extraordinary that it has come to this – Congress, the combined clout of 7 parliaments, the EU, FTC, SEC, nothing & no-one has been able to do this. Take a bow, all 👏👏👏
⋙ 🐣 RT @slpng_giants Honestly, when we launched #StopHateForProfit 10 days ago with the @NAACP @ColorOfChange @ADL @CommonSense & @freepress, we had no idea if it would amount to anything. ¤ To watch these major brands finally hold Facebook accountable is completely surreal and humbling. ¤ What a day.
⭕ 29 Jun 2020
🐣 RT @CT_Bergstrom So various media are reporting a new pandemic flu virus discovered in China. ¤ What does this actually mean? ¤ Let’s look at the original paper. Actually, that’s not so easy to do because—unconscionably in my opinion—@PNAS has put it behind a paywall.
⋙ 🐣 RT @CT_Bergstrom The main finding is that a new genotype of H1N1 flu, known as G4, emerged and by 2016 became the dominant strain in pigs. ¤ So that’s the first thing to notice. This is not a *new* new virus; it’s been very common in pigs since 2016.
⋙ 🐣 RT @CT_Bergstrom But every indication is that the G4 virus would have to undergo some evolutionary change to spread readily in people, and it may never do that. ¤ If it does? We know how to make vaccines for influenza viruses. It could be included in the seasonal vaccine; the only issue is timing.
WaPo, Ignatius: Were Trump’s aides afraid to tell him about the Russian bounties? http://wapo.st/3gckJfz “Trump is an obstacle to good policy. Either people don’t tell him the truth, or he doesn’t want to hear it. Whichever way, he’s defaulting on his most basic responsibility“
A basic truth about Russian President Vladimir Putin, which President Trump evidently doesn’t understand: Putin is in the payback business. He believes the United States destroyed his former country, the Soviet Union. He likes the United States to feel pain, in Afghanistan and everywhere else.
Trump has his own, much rosier take on Putin. And I can’t help wondering whether that explains why, assuming his account is true, the American president was never briefed about intelligence reports early this year that Russia was offering bounties to Taliban fighters to kill U.S. and coalition troops in Afghanistan. Perhaps Trump’s national security aides were afraid to upset him.
First, we must understand that the Russians wish us ill in Afghanistan. Putin’s generation remains bitter about their forced withdrawal that finished in 1989, under American pressure, which presaged the collapse of the Soviet Union.
What makes Afghanistan especially painful for Russia is that the Soviet Union’s final defeat resulted from a secret CIA program to supply the Afghan mujahideen with Stinger antiaircraft missiles, which could shoot down Soviet helicopters and were a death sentence for Moscow’s recruits.
🧵 RT @MuellerSheWrote THREAD: 1/ I know this sounds likes super space beans, but I need to get it out of my head so I’m putting it here. Some is public reporting (labeled AP=Associated Press), some is speculative (labeled AG=me). 📌 WHAT IF: https://twitter.com/MuellerSheWrote/status/1277833687640334336?s=20
⋙ 🐣 RT @MuellerSheWrote ● 2/ Jan 2019: The White House is briefed on Russian bounties to the Taliban to murder allied troops in Afghanistan (AP)
● Mar 2019: Bolton discusses the bounties with trump (AP)
● Apr 2019: 3 US Marines are murdered in an ambush in Afghanistan. The Taliban claims responsibility (AP)
⋙ 🐣 RT @MuellerSheWrote 3/ If that ambush was part of the bounty operation, trump had blood on his hands & began hiding the intel, keeping it under wraps for the last 14 months (AG). He fired 5 inspectors general, replaced the DNI with a yes-man, & gutted the NCTC & the US agency for global media (AP)
⋙ 🐣 RT @MuellerSheWrote 4/ Former Director of National Intel Maguire briefs the gang of 8 in February and trump fires him for not briefing him first (AP)
Maybe that briefing including the bounties, and maybe that ‘s the first congress has heard of it (AG)
⋙ 🐣 RT @MuellerSheWrote 5/ Trump does damage control & uses Barr to get rid of the non-cooperative GOP chair of the Senate Intel Cmte (Burr) ahead of their counterintelligence report (AG). Think of everyone he’s fired since last April, and then think of all the favors he’s done for Russia since then.
⋙ 🐣 RT @MuellerSheWrote 6/ Think of all the clandestine Pooty calls & secret meetings. Think about the fact that he blocked the DNI threat assessment from coming out in March for the first time in 14 years (AP). We need a full investigation, the PDBs, testimony, documents, EVERYTHING #TrumpTraitor
⋙ 🐣 RT @MuellerSheWrote 7/ This all sounds nuts to me, but a long time ago when we speculated that Roger Stone told trump about the Wikileaks dumps ahead of time & Manafort & Gates knew, I also thought we sounded crazy. Please note this is only conjecture based on public reporting. END
🐣 RT @Oriana0214 JUST IN from the Pentagon: “The Department of Defense continues to evaluate intelligence that Russian GRU operatives were engaged in malign activity against United States and coalition forces in Afghanistan… (1/2)
⋙ 🐣 RT @Oriana0214 DOD has no corroborating evidence to validate the recent allegations found in open-source reports. Regardless, we take the safety & security of our forces in Afghanistan—& around the world—most seriously & continuously adopt measures to prevent harm from potential threats” (2/2)
⋙⋙ 🐣 RT @AdamBlicksteim This is so oddly stated. Typically the intelligence itself, if deemed credible, is corroborating. And we know according to other USG sources DOD protected US forces because of the intelligence. So if DOD took action based on the intel they must’ve deemed it credible
🐣 RT @ScottMStedman Photo of the attack in April 2019 in Afghanistan that killed 3 US troops and that is under investigation as a possible bounty hit paid for by Russia.
⋙ 🐣 RT @qadir_sidiqi #AFG. Car bomb hit foreign forces’ convoy close to the entrance gate of Bagram airbase, in #Bagram district of central #Parwan province on Monday evening. ¤ #Taliban claimed responsibility by sharing the picture with media. https://twitter.com/qadir_sediqi/status/1115270537578713088?s=20/photo/1
// 4/8/2019
PressRelease: Romney, Colleagues Introduce Measure to Defense Bill to Limit Troop Reductions in Germany http://bit.ly/3eLxM7r Senators Mitt Romney (R-UT), Lindsey Graham (R-SC), Marco Rubio (R-FL), Chris Coons (D-DE), Tim Kaine (D-VA), and Jeanne Shaheen (D-NH)
🐣 RT @jedshug I still won’t call it “treason.” ¤ But damn, it is time for a mutiny over these bounties. ¤ Dasvidaniya, Donnie.
🐣 RT @tedlieu The specificity and large number of leaks to multiple news organizations suggests current and/or former @realDonaldTrump officials are very angry that @POTUS coddled Russia while Putin paid people to kill US troops. These patriots want the American people to know the truth.
🐣 RT @MuellerSheWrote BREAKING: Bolton told trump about the Russian bounties paid to the Taliban to kill US troops in March 2019. LAST YEAR. How do you feel about Bolton refusing to testify now?
🔆 This❗️⋙ AP: AP sources: White House aware of Russian bounties in 2019 http://bit.ly/38eP9uT
Top officials in the White House were aware in early 2019 of classified intelligence indicating Russia was secretly offering bounties to the Taliban for the deaths of Americans, a full year earlier than has been previously reported, according to U.S. officials with direct knowledge of the intelligence.
The assessment was included in at least one of President Donald Trump’s written daily intelligence briefings at the time, according to the officials. Then-national security adviser John Bolton also told colleagues he briefed Trump on the intelligence assessment in March 2019.
Bolton declined to comment Monday when asked by the AP if he had briefed Trump about the matter in 2019. On Sunday, he suggested to NBC’s “Meet the Press” that Trump was claiming ignorance of Russia’s provocations to justify his administration’s lack of a response. ¤ “He can disown everything if nobody ever told him about it,” Bolton said.
🐣 RT @PaulaChertok Shocker: Trump, Grenell, Ratcliffe, McEnany lied. Trump Got Written Briefing ~February 27 on Russian Bounty Intel, Officials say. ¤ Why would they lie, if not to hide profound dereliction of duty & betrayal? Whenever GOP covers for Trump, they shield Putin.
🐣 RT @BillKristol “The intelligence was included months ago in Trump’s President’s Daily Brief document — a compilation…that is prepared for him to read. One of the officials said the item appeared in Trump’s brief in late February; the other cited Feb. 27, specifically.”
⋙ 🔆 Breaking❗️⋙ NYT: Trump Got Written Briefing in February on Possible Russian Bounties, Officials Say http://nyti.ms/31q47gh
// The investigation into Russia’s suspected operation is said to focus in part on the killings of three Marines in a truck bombing last year, officials said.
American officials provided a written briefing in late February to President Trump laying out their conclusion that a Russian military intelligence unit offered and paid bounties to Taliban-linked militants to kill U.S. and coalition troops in Afghanistan, two officials familiar with the matter said.
The investigation into the suspected Russian covert operation to incentivize such killings has focused in part on an April 2019 car bombing that killed three Marines as one such potential attack, according to multiple officials familiar with the matter.
The new information emerged as the White House tried on Monday to play down the intelligence assessment that Russia sought to encourage and reward killings — including reiterating a claim that Mr. Trump was never briefed about the matter and portraying the conclusion as disputed and dubious.
But that stance clashed with the disclosure by two officials that the intelligence was included months ago in Mr. Trump’s President’s Daily Brief document — a compilation of the government’s latest secrets and best insights about foreign policy and national security that is prepared for him to read. One of the officials said the item appeared in Mr. Trump’s brief in late February; the other cited Feb. 27, specifically.
But that stance clashed with the disclosure by two officials that the intelligence was included months ago in Mr. Trump’s President’s Daily Brief document — a compilation of the government’s latest secrets and best insights about foreign policy and national security that is prepared for him to read. One of the officials said the item appeared in Mr. Trump’s brief in late February; the other cited Feb. 27, specifically.
The Associated Press first reported that the intelligence community was examining the deaths of the three Marine reservists: Staff Sgt. Christopher Slutman, 43, of Newark, Del.; Cpl. Robert A. Hendriks, 25, of Locust Valley, N.Y.; and Sgt. Benjamin S. Hines, 31, of York, Pa. ¤ They were killed when a vehicle laden with explosives hit their truck, wounding an Afghan contractor as well. The huge blast set fire to the truck, engulfing those inside in flames, while their fellow Marines tried to extricate them, a defense official said. A brief firefight ensued.
🐣 RT @danielsgoldman The consequences of attacking the Ukraine whistleblower: concerned officials go to the media instead of proper channels. When you take away the proper route through vindictive retribution, you cannot then complain about leaks.
🐣 RT @VickyPJWard In hundreds classified phone calls with foreign heads of state, Trump was so consistently unprepared and so often outplayed that the calls helped convince some senior officials that Trump himself posed a danger to national security. ¤ Per @carlbernstein:
🔆 This❗️⋙ CNN: From pandering to Putin to abusing allies and ignoring his own advisers, Trump’s phone calls alarm US officials http://cnn.it/2YGDH8a
The calls caused former top Trump deputies — including national security advisers H.R. McMaster and John Bolton, Defense Secretary James Mattis, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, and White House chief of staff John Kelly, as well as intelligence officials — to conclude that the President was often “delusional,” as two sources put it, in his dealings with foreign leaders. … [H]e continued to believe that he could either charm, jawbone or bully almost any foreign leader into capitulating to his will, and often pursued goals more attuned to his own agenda than what many of his senior advisers considered the national interest.
… [T]he President regularly bullied and demeaned the leaders of America’s principal allies, especially two women: telling Prime Minister Theresa May of the United Kingdom she was weak and lacked courage; and telling German Chancellor Angela Merkel that she was “stupid.”
Trump incessantly boasted to his fellow heads of state, including Saudi Arabia’s autocratic royal heir Mohammed bin Salman and North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un, about his own wealth, genius, “great” accomplishments as President, and the “idiocy” of his Oval Office predecessors, according to the sources.
In his conversations with both Putin and Erdogan, Trump took special delight in trashing former Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama and suggested that dealing directly with him — Trump — would be far more fruitful than during previous administrations. “They didn’t know BS,” he said of Bush and Obama — one of several derisive tropes the sources said he favored when discussing his predecessors with the Turkish and Russian leaders.
Like Bolton, CNN’s sources said that the President seemed to continually conflate his own personal interests — especially for purposes of re-election and revenge against perceived critics and political enemies — with the national interest.
… More than a dozen officials either listened to the President’s phone calls in real time or were provided detailed summaries and rough-text recording printouts of the calls soon after their completion, CNN’s sources said. The sources were interviewed by CNN repeatedly over a four-month period extending into June.
One person familiar with almost all the conversations with the leaders of Russia, Turkey, Canada, Australia and western Europe described the calls cumulatively as ‘abominations’ so grievous to US national security interests that if members of Congress heard from witnesses to the actual conversations or read the texts and contemporaneous notes, even many senior Republican members would no longer be able to retain confidence in the President. [ ✛ worse ]
🐣 RT @JuliaDavisNews Intelligence on Russian bounty plot was included in the President’s Daily Brief earlier this year. ¤ If Trump was doing his job—and not just golfing and Tweeting—he would have read it.
⋙ CNN: Intelligence on Russian bounty plot was included in the President’s Daily Brief earlier this year, source says http://cnn.it/2BfsJOa
🐣 RT @lrozen includes House Ds who have intelligence & military experience (Spanberger, Slotkin, Gallego), chair of House intel comm Schiff,
⋙ 🐣 RT @JakeSherman 🚨 DEMS going to the White House tomorrow for Afghanistan briefing: Hoyer, Engel, Schiff, Smith, Meeks, Sherman, Spanberger, Slotkin, Gallego and Keating.
🐣 RT @MJGerson “It is usually better to have responsible people in the room where the president makes strategic choices. But if the commander in chief knew of the Russian bounties in Afghanistan and refused to confront them — then resignation would be an act of honor.”
⋙ WaPo, Michael Gerson: If Trump ignored bounties on U.S. soldiers, this represents a new level of debasement http://wapo.st/2CSRy2O
🐣 RT @atrupar Tammy Duckworth: “While he spent his wknd golfing, lying, & making sure the buck stopped anywhere but w/ him, our troops in hot spots were forced to wonder whether they might be next, whether a bounty might be placed on them, and whether POTUS would even care enough to respond.” 💽 https://twitter.com/atrupar/status/1277714864258121730?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @kurtbardella Expect Republicans in Congress to play for time and accuse Democrats of trying to politicize the Russia-Trump bounty story … my recommendation is for Democrats to exhibit the same level of restraint that Republicans showed during #Benghazi
🐣 RT @casternoel Exactly. This reminds me of the fundraiser at Howard Lutnick’s townhouse next to Epstein’s (#9 & #11 E.71st.) shortly before his arrest. In attendance: Trump, Giuliani, Steve Wynn and 27 other pervs. @realDonaldTrump
⋙ 🐣 RT @glennkirschner2 In fairness, Trump may just be gathering the Rs together to remind them what was on the RNC server that was hacked by a Russia . . .
⋙⋙ 🐣 RT @BillKristol You’ve got to be kidding.
⋙⋙⋙ 🐣 RT @JakeSherman The Afghanistan briefing this afternoon at the White House is for House Rs only.
🐣 RT @Klasfeld Speaker Pelosi asks DNI Ratcliffe and CIA director Haspel about reports of Russian bounties to the Taliban to kill U.S. troops: ¤ “Was the President briefed, and if not, why not, and why was Congress not briefed?” Text Block: https://twitter.com/KlasfeldReports/status/1277607295397085185?s=20/photo/1
⋙ Speaker.gov: http://bit.ly/3i7d8k6
🐣 RT @AshaRangappa_ Folks, we are about to experience the mother of all gaslights in response to the Putin bounties. ¤ My wager: Bill Barr is going to launch an “investigation” into the “leaker” who gave the story to the NY Times which is also going to somehow become magically connected to Obamagate
🐣 RT @tedlieu Dear @RepJimBanks: Why does the story keep changing? The DNI at the time, @RichardGrenell, flatly denies ever hearing of the Russian bounty information. Now you are saying there was an actual investigation. Also, why were no Democrats allowed in the briefing?
⋙ 🐣 RT @RepJimBanks The real scandal: We’ll likely never know the truth… Because the @nytimes used unconfirmed intel in an ONGOING investigation into targeted killing of American soldiers in order to smear the President. The blood is on their hands.
⋙ 🐣 RT @RepJimBanks [⇈ ⇊ Top of Thread:] I just left the White House where I was briefed by CoS @MarkMeadows and top intelligence officials. They discussed @nytimes’ hit piece falsely accusing @realDonaldTrump of ignoring reports that Russia placed bounties on American soldiers in Afghanistan.A thread, 📌 https://twitter.com/RepJimBanks/status/1277684823063171073?s=20
🐣 RT @MichaelSSmithII Gonna wager a very safe bet here for the whole world to see: ¤ @DNI_Ratcliffe’s career as director of @ODNIgov is about to be the shortest one in the history of that office.
⋙ 🐣 RT @kaitlincollins Seven lawmakers were just briefed on the reports about Russians offering bounties to Taliban-linked militants to kill U.S. troops. Cheney, Thornberry, McCaul, Biggs, Banks, Kinzinger & Stefanik were briefed by O’Brien, Ratcliffe and Meadows, I’m told.
⋙⋙ 🐣 RT @GeraltOfPhilly It’s not a briefing unless democrats were also invited. This is a cover up.
“This makes Benghazi look like they’re playing with toys” – Claire McCaskill on @DeadlineWH
🐣 RT @AndrewDesiderio Sen. Young (R-Ind.) urges Trump to take punitive action against his own intel officials if they didn’t brief him. ¤ “I stand ready to hold any members of your administration accountable for their gross negligence in performing such a grave responsibility.” http://bit.ly/2CTjDXL
RawStory: Pentagon officials were ‘pounding on the door’ to get Trump to do something about Russia’s assassination bounty: WaPo’s Ignatius http://bit.ly/3geDBdX ● https://twitter.com/Auriandra/status/1277695027339296768?s=20/photo/1
Appearing on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe,” longtime political columnist David Ignatius said that his own follow-up on the New York Times’ explosive report that Donald Trump’s administration was well aware that the Russians were offering a bounty for the death of U.S. military members revealed that Pentagon officials have “pounding on the door” and trying to get Donald Trump to do something about it.
v
“Based on my reporting trying to confirm the New York Times’ excellent story it’s clear in late March you had senior U.S commanders, senior civilian intelligence officials, in effect pounding on the door of the White House saying we need to do something about this, we need to come to a conclusion about what damage the Russian program is doing, we need to reassess our programs in Afghanistan and they couldn’t get an answer,” [Ignatius] reported.
^
“To this day there’s not an answer, there’s not a real response. Was this because the president was briefed and did nothing or because he wasn’t briefed because people were afraid to give him bad news and kept it to themselves? I don’t know.”
🐣 RT @SteveSchmidtSES It is slightly past 1800 hrs in Afghanistan. Americans are being hunted. Americans have been marked for death by Putin and Russian intelligence. The President knows this but does nothing. In fact, he rewards Russia. It is a singular and astounding betrayal. Trump shames us.
🐣 RT @McFaul Dmitri, do you/did you work at the National Security Council ? I did for three years. This is not how it works (at least under normal circumstances.) https://twitter.com/McFaul/status/1277501759674478595?s=20
⋙ 🐣 The Trump admin is so incompetent that I’d guess little works the same, including alerting the POTUS and VP of dire threats. That’s why I like @gtconway3d’s assessment of “Dereliction of Duty.” Iow, when incompetence results in deaths and failure to protect. Applies to CV19 too.
🔆 More❗️⋙ AP: Trump denies briefing on reported bounties against US troops http://bit.ly/3i834HE “The Trump administration [is] set to brief select members of Congress on the matter on Monday.” “Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C. … golfed with Trump on Sunday”
President Donald Trump on Sunday denied that he was made aware of U.S. intelligence officials’ conclusions that Russia secretly offered bounties to Taliban-linked militants for killing American troops in Afghanistan. The Trump administration was set to brief select members of Congress on the matter on Monday.
… The assessment was first reported by The New York Times and then confirmed to The Associated Press by American intelligence officials and two others with knowledge of the matter.
There were conflicting reports about whether Trump was aware of Russia’s actions. The intelligence officials told the AP that the president was briefed on the matter earlier this year; Trump denied that, tweeting on Sunday that neither he nor Vice President Mike Pence had been briefed. The president tweeted Sunday night that he was just told that intelligence officials didn’t report the information to him because they didn’t find it credible.
Rep. Liz Cheney of Wyoming, the No. 3 Republican in the House, called for the White House to share more information with Congress, saying if true, lawmakers need to know “Who did know and when?” and, referring to Russian leader Vladimir Putin, “What has been done in response to protect our forces & hold Putin accountable?”
Bolton told NBC’s “Meet the Press” that he thinks the answer “may be precisely because active Russian aggression like that against the American service members is a very, very serious matter and nothing’s been done about it, if it’s true, for these past four or five months, so it may look like he was negligent. But, of course, he can disown everything if nobody ever told him about it.”
Democratic presumptive presidential nominee Joe Biden said reports that Trump was aware of the Russian bounties would be a “truly shocking revelation” about the commander in chief and his failure to protect U.S. troops in Afghanistan and stand up to Russia.
In early 2020, members of the elite Naval Special Warfare Development Group, known to the public as SEAL Team Six, raided a Taliban outpost and recovered roughly $500,000. The recovered funds further solidified the suspicions of the American intelligence community that the Russians had offered money to Taliban militants and other linked associations.
One official said the administration discussed several potential responses, but the White House has yet to authorize any step.
Biden criticized Trump for “his embarrassing campaign of deference and debasing himself” before Putin. Trump tweeted that “nobody’s been tougher” on Russia than his administration.
⭕ 28 Jun 2020
🐣 RT @SallyQYates Trump tries to wrap himself in faux love for our military but looks the other way when Russia puts a bounty on American service members’ lives. It’s time for a president who will stand with our allies and stand up to our adversaries.
⋙ NYT: Spies and Commandos Warned Months Ago of Russian Bounties on U.S. Troops http://nyti.ms/388oNuz
// The recovery of large amounts of American cash at a Taliban outpost in Afghanistan helped tip off U.S. officials. It is believed that at least one U.S. troop death was the result of the bounties.
🐣 RT @duty2warn When a sitting President is repeatedly accused of being compromised, acts like he’s compromised, takes steps to avoid any investigative oversight, and fights to the death to keep taxes, financials, and business dealings secret, how does ALL of America not ask: WTF is he hiding?
🐣 RT @mccaffreyr3 Trump and team are the most incompetent liars in the history of American politics. There will be a paper trail on all of this. We need to hear who else in government knew? What were the options discussed in the March NSC? Why was ZERO ACTION taken?
⋙ 🐣 RT @tedlieu Dear @realDonaldTrump: Your story conflicts with the story the DNI Director at the time @RichardGrenell told. He said he “never heard” of the Russian bounty info, not that he found it not credible enough to tell you. ¤ Also, UK confirmed the bounty info.
⋙⋙ 🐣 RT @adamgoldmanNYT British security officials have confirmed to Sky News that the reports about the plot are true. @AliBunkallSKY
⋙⋙⋙ SkyNews, Alistair Bunkall [UK]: Russia offered Taliban-linked fighters bounties to attack British troops – as senior Tory MP seeks answers http://bit.ly/31reFeU
// The group responsible for the payments is the same Russian intelligence outfit behind the Skripal poisonings, Sky News is told.
WaPo, Manuel Roig-Franzia: John Bolton’s been a political brawler for decades, but his rumble with Donald Trump is extreme — even for him. http://wapo.st/3dGuwJb “Neither has resorted to saying, ‘Nyah, nyah, nyah, nyah’ — yet”
In his book, Bolton calls Trump “erratic” and “stunningly misinformed” and says he’s obligated to share his take on the president with Americans before November’s election. Trump has responded by calling Bolton an “idiot” and a “wacko.” Neither has resorted to saying, “Nyah, nyah, nyah, nyah” — yet.
Bolton’s animosity toward Trump now goes so deep that he said in an interview with The Washington Post that he’d rank Democratic presidents Bill Clinton and even Barack Obama — whose Iran nuclear deal Bolton has savaged repeatedly — as handling foreign policy better than Trump. (Bolton rates Ronald Reagan as the best of the past six presidents on that count and Trump dead last.)
WaPo, Fred Hiatt: Trump’s articles of impeachment — updated http://wapo.st/2VqaqMS
● Negligence, leading to thousands of deaths, in the handling of the novel coronavirus
● Abuse of law enforcement powers
● Abuse of his appointment power
● Abuse of power in foreign affairs
🔆 This❗️⋙ WaPo: Russian bounties to Taliban-linked militants resulted in deaths of U.S. troops, according to intelligence assessments http://wapo.st/2NCBPHd
// The issue has generated disagreement within the Trump administration about how to confront Moscow.
Russian bounties offered to Taliban-linked militants to kill coalition forces in Afghanistan are believed to have resulted in the deaths of several U.S. service members, according to intelligence gleaned from U.S. military interrogations of captured militants in recent months.
Several people familiar with the matter said it was unclear exactly how many Americans or coalition troops from other countries may have been killed or targeted under the program. U.S. forces in Afghanistan suffered a total of 10 deaths from hostile gunfire or improvised bombs in 2018, and 16 in 2019. Two have been killed this year. In each of those years, several service members were also killed by what are known as “green on blue” hostile incidents by members of Afghan security forces, which are sometimes believed to have been infiltrated by the Taliban.
The intelligence was passed up from the U.S. Special Operations forces based in Afghanistan and led to a restricted high-level White House meeting in late March, the people said.
The meeting led to broader discussions about possible responses to the Russian action, ranging from diplomatic expressions of disapproval and warnings, to sanctions, according to two of the people.
The disturbing intelligence — which the CIA was tasked with reviewing, and later confirmed — generated disagreement about the appropriate path forward, a senior U.S. official said. The administration’s special envoy for Afghanistan, Zalmay Khalilzad, preferred confronting the Russians directly about the matter, while some National Security Council officials in charge of Russia were more dismissive of taking immediate action, the official said.
It remained unclear where those discussions have led to date. Verifying such intelligence is a process that can take weeks, typically involving the CIA and the National Security Agency, which captures foreign cellphone and radio communications. Final drafting of any policy options in response would be the responsibility of national security adviser Robert C. O’Brien.
Asked to comment, John Ullyot, an NSC spokesman, said that “the veracity of the underlying allegations continue to be evaluated.”
Russia and the Taliban have denied the existence of the program. ¤ Among the coalition of NATO forces in Afghanistan, the British were briefed late last week on the intelligence assessment …
[T]he primary controversy in Washington over the weekend revolved around denials by President Trump and his aides that the president was ever briefed on the intelligence.
Trump on Sunday confirmed statements by Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe and the White House press secretary that he received no briefing on the subject …
“… [T]he president will not confront the Russians on this score, denies being briefed,” Pelosi said on ABC News’s “This Week.” ¤ “But he wants to ignore,” she said, “he wants to bring them back to the G-8 despite the annexation of Crimea and invasion of Ukraine, despite what they yielded to [Putin] in Syria, despite [Russian President Vladimir Putin’s] intervention into our election, which is well documented by our intelligence community, and despite now possibly this allegation, which we should have been briefed on.”
So the issue is not when the president was briefed, [a person familiar with the issue] said, but rather, “now that you are aware of it, what are you going to do about it? That’s where the focus should be.” … Carter Malkasian, who served as a senior adviser to the previous chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. Joseph F. Dunford Jr. … now a scholar at CNA, said the bounty operation, if true, could be a “random” initiative, rather than one that reflected a well-coordinated program ordered by the highest levels of the government.
WaPo: Zuckerberg once wanted to sanction Trump. Then Facebook wrote rules that accommodated him. http://wapo.st/3dAKkgw “[A]s Trump grew in power, the fear of his wrath pushed Facebook into more deferential behavior toward its growing number of right-leaning users”
// Starting as early as 2015, Facebook executives started crafting exceptions for the then-candidate that transformed the world’s information battlefield for years to come.
💙 🐣 RT @donwinslow When America needed a Commander in Chief, America got a traitor. ¤ Trump knew since March that Putin had placed and paid the Taliban $$ bounties $$ to kill American soldiers in Afghanistan. ¤ When his soldiers needed him, he looked the other way. Our latest video: #TrumpTraitor 💽 https://twitter.com/donwinslow/status/1277341022167564288?s=20/photo/1
// wow: Don Winslow ad❣
🐣 RT @votevets Donald Trump can take all his empty words about respecting our service and shove them. #TRE45ON #TraitorTrump 💽 https://twitter.com/votevets/status/1277295496105807873?s=20/photo/1
// Vote Vets ad❣
🐣 RT @duty2warn Our president asked at least three foreign governments to help rig a US election for his benefit. That would be the scandal of all time, if this was any other time. Today, he golfed with Graham. When they debut the new narrative, remember – everything is confession or projection.
🐣 RT @NormOrnstein There are fundamentally two possibilities here. One is that Trump was told months ago about Russian bounties to kill American soldiers and did nothing as our troops were killd. Two is that he wasn’t told. If #2 what would a competent, patriotic American president do? 1/
⋙ 🐣 RT @NormOrnstein Immediately drop everything, fire the national security advisor and everyone on the NSC staff dealing with Russia. Fire your chief of staff. Haul in the DNI and CIA director and demand to know why it was not in the PDB. Announce serious sanctions against Russia. 2/
⋙ 🐣 RT @NormOrnstein Apologize to the American people and especially to our military for this despicable failure in governance. What does this president do? Plays golf with Lindsey Graham. Issues a tweet of denial which includes neither an apology nor any action against his BFF Putin. Breathtaking.
🐣 RT @selectedwisdom GRU attacks Election 2016, White House attacks FBI, corrodes DOJ in response. GRU plots assassinations on Troops in AFG, White House tries bringing Russia back into G8. What if GRU kills Americans in America, what would the White House do?
🐣 RT @duty2warn “Donald Trump is the second president of the Confederacy.” —Steve Schmidt.
🐣 RT @davidplouffe He’s trying to deflect attention from Russia with the white power tweet. But most people can digest that we have a President who is a confirmed racist who also knew his political idol Putin paid bounties to kill American troops and he rewarded not punished him.
🐣 RT @ChrisMurphyCT Our President is openly working to help a deadly virus spread that has killed 120,000.
Russia is putting bounties on the heads of American soldiers and he seems ok with it.
He’s distributing white power videos.
And that’s just the last 48 HOURS.
🐣 RT @lrozen at least 6 Trump Putin phone calls since March 30. Trump’s staff never thought to brief him on intelligence that Russia military intelligence allegedly paid a bounty to kill US and UK troops in Afghanistan before he chatted up his Kremlin buddy? not once in 6 calls over 2 months?
⋙ 🐣 RT @lrozen There were Trump Putin phone calls on:
March 30
April 9
April 10
April 12
June 1
Trump and Putin also issued a joint statement on April 25
NewYorker, Ben Taub (2018): Why an expert in counterterrorism became a beat cop. http://bit.ly/3dAlU6M “‘We have to stop treating people like we’re in Fallujah,’ Patrick Skinner said. ‘Just look what happened in Fallujah.’” //➔ wow profile of @SkinnerPm on community policing
// 4/30/2018; Why an expert in counterterrorism became a beat cop.
⋙ [To Walter:] This is a great person to follow on Twitter (owner of #MeanCat). Tweets about his pets, community policing and insights from working in counter-intelligence. Excellent writer, insightful and very funny when it comes to his pets. Follow this link:
Home. MeanCat convened an emergency meeting of his coronavirus task force, which consists of SweetDog, MeanCat, and occasionally the Potatoes, though MeanCat finds their enthusiasm a bit taxing in this heat. He will put out his guidance for us all later today. It won’t be nice… pic.twitter.com/swOcWMeDlD
— Patrick Skinner (@SkinnerPm) June 26, 2020
⭕ 27 Jun 2020
🐣 RT @McFaul Time for a hearing. Trump officials need to tell the truth under oath.
⋙ 🐣 RT @adamgoldmanNYT One American official had told The Times that the intelligence finding that the Russians had offered and paid bounties to Afghan militants and criminals had been briefed at the highest levels of the White House.
⋙⋙ 🐣 RT @adamgoldmanNYT Another said it was included in the President’s Daily Brief, a written document which draws from spy work to make analytic predictions about longstanding adversaries, unfolding plots and emerging crises around the world.
💙 ⋙⋙⋙ NYT: Biden Criticizes Trump Over Intelligence on Russian Bounties on U.S. Troops http://nyti.ms/3dHkis3 The White House denied that President Trump was briefed on the classified assessment, even though his staff has been discussing the matter since March.
● Text Block: https://twitter.com/Auriandra/status/1277116635476885510?s=20/photo/1
“Not only has he failed to sanction or impose any kind of consequences on Russia for this egregious violation of international law, Donald Trump has continued his embarrassing campaign of deference and debasing himself before Vladimir Putin,” Mr. Biden said in a virtual town hall event held by a voter group, Asian and Pacific Islander American Vote.
“His entire presidency has been a gift to Putin, but this is beyond the pale,” Mr. Biden added. “It’s a betrayal of the most sacred duty we bear as a nation, to protect and equip our troops when we send them into harm’s way.”
^
[A]s criticism of the administration’s inaction swelled on Friday and Saturday, the White House claimed that Mr. Trump had never been told about the intelligence assessment.“While the White House does not routinely comment on alleged intelligence or internal deliberations, the C.I.A. director, national security adviser and the chief of staff can all confirm that neither the president nor the vice president were briefed on the alleged Russian bounty intelligence,” the White House press secretary, Kayleigh McEnany, said in a statement Saturday afternoon, about 25 hours after the article was posted on The Times’s website.
About six hours later on Saturday night, the director of national intelligence, John Ratcliffe, issued a statement echoing the White House’s assertion that Mr. Trump had not been briefed on the intelligence finding.
🐣 RT @john_sipher You know the system. Ambassador, military and intelligence officers in Kabul would know. Allies would know. Secretary of State would know. National Security Advisor would know. Intelligence would immediately be sent to the NSC and all relevant officials. This is BS. [iow everyone knew]
⋙⋙ 🐣 Acc to the NYT article, this was a ‘closely held secret’ and the British were just recently briefed. Perhaps that’s why the story came out now.
⋙ 🐣 RT @McFaul And, if true, why on earth was the president not briefed on his intelligence?
⋙⋙ 🐣 RT @biannagolodryga Why on earth would the WH wait 24 hours to respond with this given how damning the story is? [link to @PressSecy denial]
⋙⋙⋙ 🐣 RT @AshaRangappa_ They needed a day to get their story straight with the [GOP] members of Congress and Fox News who are also going to repeat this lie
🐣 The White House denial that Trump was briefed on the Russians paying the Taliban to kill US troops is a tacit admission that the matter is serious and that action should now be taken against Russia, though it’s possible they don‘t realize that.
🐣 RT @MuellerSheWrote I urge @HouseDemocrats @RepAdamSchiff to find out whether trump fired DNI Maguire before or after he was briefed on the GRU bounties for US troops, and why the DNI threat assessment report was blocked by this administration. I have 746 more questions, too. DMs open #TraitorTrump
💙 🐣 RT @HouseForeignGOP LR @RepMcCaul: “I have seen the press reports that a Russian military intelligence unit offered Afghan militants bounties to kill American troops. If true, it would only deepen my grave concerns about the Putin regime’s malicious behavior globally.
⋙ 🐣 RT @HouseForeignGOP From invading Ukraine, propping up dictators around the world and interfering in U.S. and European elections, the Putin regime has shown time and again it cannot be trusted and is not our friend.
⋙ 🐣 RT @HouseForeignGOP I immediately reached out to the Administration and will be talking with them in the very near future. If accurate, the Administration must take swift and serious action to hold the Putin regime accountable.”
🐣 So that’s CNN, The Guardian, WaPo and the WSJ confirming NYT story after checking their sources. White House and Russian Embassy deny. So it’s true.
🐣 RT @McFaul More and more confirming tho story. Has anyone in the Trump Administration denied it?
⋙ 🐣 RT @AnaCabrera #BREAKING: A European intelligence official tells CNN that Russian intelligence officers for the military intelligence GRU had recently offered Taliban militants in Afghanistan money as rewards if they killed US or UK troops there. 💽 https://twitter.com/AnaCabrera/status/1276993313002991616?s=20/photo/1
TheGuardian: Russia offered bounty to kill UK soldiers http://bit.ly/3g9iqdf
// Moscow accused of trying to give money to the Taliban as part of its campaign to destabilise America and its allies
🐣 RT @JuliaDavisNews Coming soon: “President Putin was extremely strong and powerful in his denial.”
🐣 RT @maggieNYT The @PressSec doesn’t address what the US is doing about the matter, just taking the usual whack at the NYT. Also would be quite something for intel officials not to brief the president on this.
🐣 RT @RonaldKlain Well, I mean, it’s not like she would lie or anything like that.
🐣 RT @BradMossEsq Not believable
⋙🐣 RT @JoshNBCNews JUST IN – @PressSec says neither Trump nor Pence were briefed on the “alleged Russian bounty intelligence” first reported by NYT
⋙⋙ 🐣 RT @JoshNBCNews This raises the obvious and very serious question: The US had intelligence that Russia was paying militants to kill US & allied troops, and officials decided NOT to tell the president or VP about it?
🐣 RT @john_sipher Thread. Nothing new here. The Kremlin always looks for weakness to exploit. Trump has presented weakness at all turns. Until someone makes Putin stop, he’ll keep pushing.
⋙ 🐣 RT @NedPrice The story may seem unbelievable — and it IS unfathomable that an American President could know about this and yet fail to authorize even a weak diplomatic protest. ¤ But it’s not unbelievable that Moscow embarked on this initiative. Far from it.
🐣 RT @McFaul I am really outraged by Trump’s indifference to Putin paying Taliban terrorists to kill American soldiers. I can’t imagine my anger if one of my sons were deployed in Afghanistan right now.
🐣 RT @McFaul To my followers urging restraint until more details are confirmed, I will retract all statements if NYT reporting is proved to be inaccurate. But others are confirming. I look forward to on-the-record statements/testimony from Pompeo, Esper, or O’Brien correcting the record.
🐣 RT @glubold We matched @nytimes great reporting on how US intel has assessed that Russians paid Taliban to target US, coalition forces in Afg which is a pretty stunning development. Me and @wstrobel
⋙ WSJ: Russian Spy Unit Paid Taliban to Attack Americans, U.S. Intelligence Says http://on.wsj.com/2NxgDT3
// Bounties paid by GRU are disclosed as U.S. plans troops drawdown, Taliban peace plan
🐣 RT @ChrisMurphyCT Here’s what Trump said 2 months after finding out Russia was paying bounties to the Taliban to kill American troops: ¤ “We have this great friendship. And, by the way, getting along with Russia is a great thing.” ¤ Basically a green light for Putin to keep executing our soldiers.
🐣 RT @Linda_STLN10 John Bolton’s new book reveals that Trump thought Finland was under Russian control. ¤ Finnish Prime Minister Sanna Marin says, “To be fair, we’ve thought the same thing about the United States since January 20, 2017.” ¤ I love her! ❤️ 🇫🇮
🐣 RT @JoeNBC Russians are paying Islamic radicals to kill American troops in Afghanistan. Donald Trump has known about Putin targeting Americans for months and has refused to even condemn Russia diplomatically. What Republican senator will speak out against this shocking dereliction of duty?
🐣 RT @McFaul I hope we get to hear from Pompeo, Esper, and O’Brien regarding this dereliction of duty to defend American soldiers. I hope there is an explanation. I really do. Because otherwise, their willingness to enable Trump on this issue is unforgivable.
🐣 RT @NatSecLisa This is horrifying. Absolutely unconscionable. And regardless of what drivel comes out of the White House, it is indefensible.
⋙ 🐣 RT @SangerNYT For those keeping score at home: In the months since the Administration knew about these bounties, the President invited Putin to join the G-7 summit, planned for pulling troops out of Germany and failed to act against growing Russian cyber action in the U.S.
🐣 RT @20committee US IC has gotten credible reports of GRU helping the Taliban and offering a bounty on dead US personnel in Afghanistan for several years. Which should surprise nobody who knows the Kremlin. Why you’re just hearing about this now seems like a relevant question.
🐣 RT @McFaul Agreed. Putin has become increasingly unhinged. Annexation in 2014, then intervention in US election in 2016, then assassination attempt against Skripal in 2018, and now contract killing of US soldiers in 2020. There is a pattern of increasingly risky, belligerent, immoral acts.
⋙⋙ 🐣 RT @mschwirtz Political implications for the Trump admin aside, it’s hard to overstate what a major escalation this is from Russia. Election meddling and the occasional poisoning are one thing. Paying the Taliban to kill American troops, that’s something entirely new. [nyt link]
⋙ 🐣 RT @DanielGoldman Because he knows he can get away with more?
🐣 RT @IlvesToomas Orders to kill foreigners abroad without a declaration of war are left to the head of state. https://twitter.com/IlvesToomas/status/1276805032936177665?s=20
🐣 SCOTUS has said it can only be Treason if it involves a country we’re at war with, right? Looks like Russia’s “hybrid war” with the US in Afghanistan just became very real – and very relevant. #TraitorTrump
🐣 RT @XSovietNews If you didn’t keep killing people perhaps someone would believe you.
⋙ 🐣 RT @RusEmbUSA Baseless and anonymous accusations [published by @nytimes] of Moscow as mastermind behind killing of U.S. soldiers in Afghanistan have already led to direct threats to the life of employees of the Russian Embassies in Washington D.C. and London. ¤ @StateDeptDSS https://twitter.com/RusEmbUSA/status/1276692847698337792?s=20/photo/1-2
⋙⋙ 🐣 RT @RusEmbUSA In the absence of reasons to #BlameRussians, @nytimes is there to invent new fake stories. @mschwirtz @EricSchmittNYT @charlie_savage obviously lack information on cooperation between Russia and #US on the Afghan peace process, on Syrian, North Korean, Venezuelan, Iranian agendas https://twitter.com/RusEmbUSA/status/1276692847698337792?s=20/photo/1-4
⭕ 26 Jun 2020
💙 NYMag, Andrew Sullivan: You Say You Want a Revolution? http://bit.ly/31MPWSs on iconoclasm ● Text Block: https://twitter.com/Auriandra/status/1279774848609329155?s=20/photo/1
And there is no escaping this. The woke shift their language all the time, so that words that were one day fine are now utterly reprehensible. You can’t keep up — which is the point. (A good resource for understanding this new constantly changing language of ideology is “Translations From the Wokish.”) The result is an exercise of cultural power through linguistic distortion.
v
So, yes, this is an Orwellian moment. It’s not a moment of reform but of a revolutionary break, sustained in part by much of the liberal Establishment. Even good and important causes, like exposing and stopping police brutality, can morph very easily from an exercise in overdue reform into a revolutionary spasm. There has been much good done by the demonstrations forcing us all to understand better how our fellow citizens are mistreated by the agents of the state or worn down by the residue of past and present inequality. But the zeal and certainty of its more revolutionary features threaten to undo a great deal of that goodwill.
^
The movement’s destruction of even abolitionist statues, its vandalism of monuments to even George Washington, its crude demonization of figures like Jefferson, its coerced public confessions, its pitiless wreckage of people’s lives and livelihoods, its crude ideological Manichaeanism, its struggle sessions and mandated anti-racism courses, its purging of cultural institutions of dissidents, its abandonment of objective tests in higher education (replacing them with quotas and a commitment to ideology), and its desire to upend a country’s sustained meaning and practices are deeply reminiscent of some very ugly predecessors.But the erasure of the past means a tyranny of the present. In the words of Orwell, a truly successful ideological revolution means that “every record has been destroyed or falsified, every book rewritten, every picture has been repainted, every statue and street building has been renamed, every date has been altered. And the process is continuing day by day and minute by minute. History has stopped. Nothing exists except an endless present in which the Party is always right.” We are not there yet. But unless we recognize the illiberal malignancy of some of what we face, and stand up to it with courage and candor, we soon will be.
💙 🐣 RT @MaddowBlog So if this NYTimes report is correct, U.S. intelligence has concluded that Russia offered bounties for dead U.S. troops in Afghanistan, AND has paid out on some of those bounties. And Donald Trump was told in March and so far has opted to have no response. 💽 https://twitter.com/MaddowBlog/status/1276740944184979456?s=20/photo/1
⋙ 🐣 RT @MaddowBlog This is hard to fit in a brief Twitter clip. Here is full video of Rachel Maddow’s review of the NYT report: 💽 https://twitter.com/MaddowBlog/status/1276741245008850945?s=20/photo/1
💙 ⋙⋙ 💽 MSNBC, RachelMaddow: Russia paid bounties to kill US troops, US intel says; Trump mum: NYT http://on.msnbc.com/2B8pyrw
// Rachel Maddow reviews the details of a New York Times report that U.S. intelligence told Donald Trump in March that Russia was paying bounties to Taliban fighters to kill coalition troops, including U.S. troops. Trump has yet to respond and instead has advocated for Russia’s return to the G8.
WaPo: Russian operation targeted coalition troops in Afghanistan, intelligence finds http://wapo.st/2CMXhan Russia’s G.R.U. “offered bounties to Taliban-linked militants to attack coalition forces in Afghanistan, including U.S. and British troops” [confirms @nytimes story]
Russian involvement in operations targeting Americans, if confirmed, is likely to lead to outrage on Capitol Hill and questions about why the administration has not responded to it.
The attempt to stoke violence against Americans, if confirmed, would also represent a signifiant departure from Moscow’s earlier position toward Islamist militants in Afghanistan. Previously, U.S. officials had cited what they characterized as sporadic, low-level Russian support for the Taliban, including the supply of small arms via Afghanistan’s northern neighbors.
While [the Skripal] attack, along with Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and its role in the war in Syria, have generated strong criticism in Europe and from many of Trump’s most senior advisers, the president himself has frequently appeared to have a chummy relationship with Putin, downplaying Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. election and other Russian transgressions.
WaPo: Russian operation targeted coalition troops in Afghanistan, intelligence finds http://wapo.st/2CMXhan Russia’s G.R.U. “offered bounties to Taliban-linked militants to attack coalition forces in Afghanistan, including U.S. and British troops” [confirms @nytimes story]
🐣 RT @duty2warn So for months, Trump has known that Russians are paying to have locals kill American troops in Afghanistan. If Trump has said anything, we haven’t heard it. Certainly no public rebuke to Russia. GOP SENATORS: Have your vocal chords been severed? Do ANY of you know how to speak?
🐣 RT @MollyJongFast So trump signed up off on both the Chinese concentration camps and the Russian murders of United States soldiers?
🐣 RT @TheRickWilson What part of “support the troops” includes ignoring Russians paying bounties to Taliban forces to murder American soliders? ¤ #TraitorTrump’s part.
🐣 RT @drothkopf This.
⋙ 🧵 RT @brett_mcgurk If the White House has been sitting on credible intelligence about Russian threats to US forces overseas since MARCH, it further begs the question as to why it’s keeping an unclassified DNI threat assessment from the public for the first time ever. What’s in it? 📌 https://twitter.com/brett_mcgurk/status/1276712068343664640?s=20
⋙⋙⋙ 🧵 RT @brett_mcgurk [Apr] Some background on the bottled-up report in thread below. This is the first year since the DNI’s first threat assessment in 2006 that there has been no public report. Someone doesn’t want the public to see it. WHY? Presumption: because its authors—IC professionals—tell the truth. 📌 https://twitter.com/brett_mcgurk/status/1246274792124067842?s=20
🐣 RT @TheRickWilson “Hey, Mr. President, Russia is paying the Taliban a bounty to kill American soliders.”
TRUMP: “Let’s put Russia back in the G8.”
WaPo: Roger Stone ordered to report to prison July 14, as judge denies request for two-month delay http://wapo.st/2Z7CfL2
🐣 RT @kasparov Bingo. This was what first occurred to me as well, to look back at every Trump statement & action re Putin & Russia after he found out the Kremlin was paying for US soldiers to be murdered. Treasonous.
⋙ 🐣 RT @biannagolodryga Keep in mind that AFTER being briefed on this intelligence, Trump once again pushed to have Russia readmitted into the G8. [nyt]
🐣 RT @MattWDC Hey @mattzap, an interesting piece but leaving out the story that two right wing TERROR attacks have been foiled in recent weeks, one which involved a transnational network, seems like a major oversight; and the Boogaloo boys in Oakland killed/assassinated two cops, not just one.
⋙ 🐣 RT @ Additionally, Antifa is not anti-government, it is anti-fascist. ¤ No left wing groups have an ideological rationale for disrupting the protests. ¤ Barr’s venal bothsiderism here is a cover for rise of right wing political violence in US.
🐣 RT @mattzap JUST IN: Barr has formed task force to counter “anti-government extremists.” In memo, he singles out antifa and Boogaloo, but notes extremists come from “all persuasions.” He also says groups “may be fortified by foreign entities seeking to sow chaos.”
⋙ WaPo: Barr forms task force to counter ‘anti-government extremists’ http://wapo.st/31lOK8k
🐣 RT @kylegriffin1 Breaking via NYT: The European Union will bar most travelers from the United States, Russia, and dozens of other countries considered too risky because they have not controlled the coronavirus outbreak, E.U. officials said.
⋙ NYT: Most U.S. Travelers Will Be Barred From E.U. When Bloc Reopens http://nyti.ms/31l9oWo
// Europe will allow outsiders to begin entering again on July 1, but the U.S. and Russia are among the nations considered too risky because they have not controlled the coronavirus outbreak.
💙 ⋙⋙ NYT: Russia Secretly Offered Afghan Militants Bounties to Kill U.S. Troops, Intelligence Says http://nyti.ms/2A6hPti
// The Trump administration has been deliberating for months about what to do about a stunning intelligence assessment.
American intelligence officials have concluded that a Russian military intelligence unit secretly offered bounties to Taliban-linked militants for killing coalition forces in Afghanistan — including targeting American troops — amid the peace talks to end the long-running war there, according to officials briefed on the matter.
Islamist militants, or armed criminal elements closely associated with them, are believed to have collected some bounty money, the officials said. Twenty Americans were killed in combat in Afghanistan in 2019, but it was not clear which killings were under suspicion.
The intelligence finding was briefed to President Trump, and the White House’s National Security Council discussed the problem at an interagency meeting in late March, the officials said. Officials developed a menu of potential options — starting with making a diplomatic complaint to Moscow and a demand that it stop, along with an escalating series of sanctions and other possible responses, but the White House has yet to authorize any step, the officials said.
An operation to incentivize the killing of American and other NATO troops would be a significant and provocative escalation of what American and Afghan officials have said is Russian support for the Taliban, and it would be the first time the Russian spy unit was known to have orchestrated attacks on Western troops.
Any involvement with the Taliban that resulted in the deaths of American troops would also be a huge escalation of Russia’s so-called hybrid war against the United States, a strategy of destabilizing adversaries through a combination of such tactics as cyberattacks, the spread of fake news and covert and deniable military operations.
The Kremlin had not been made aware of the accusations, said Dmitry Peskov, the press secretary for President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia. “If someone makes them, we’ll respond,” Mr. Peskov said. A Taliban spokesman did not respond to messages seeking comment.
The officials familiar with the intelligence did not explain the White House delay in deciding how to respond to the intelligence about Russia.
While some of his closest advisers, like Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, have counseled more hawkish policies toward Russia, Mr. Trump has adopted an accommodating stance toward Moscow.
… Mr. Trump criticized a bill imposing sanctions on Russia when he signed it into law after Congress passed it by veto-proof majorities. And he has repeatedly made statements that undermined the NATO alliance as a bulwark against Russian aggression in Europe.
The officials spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe the delicate intelligence and internal deliberations. They said the intelligence has been treated as a closely held secret, but the administration expanded briefings about it this week — including sharing information about it with the British government, whose forces are among those said to have been targeted. …
Moreover, as Mr. Trump seeks re-election in November, he wants to strike a peace deal with the Taliban to end the Afghanistan war.
While officials were said to be confident about the intelligence that Russian operatives offered and paid bounties to Afghan militants for killing Americans, they have greater uncertainty about how high in the Russian government the covert operation was authorized and what its aim may be.
The officials briefed on the matter said the government had assessed the operation to be the handiwork of Unit 29155, an arm of Russia’s military intelligence agency, known widely as the G.R.U.
Western intelligence officials say the unit, which has operated for more than a decade, has been charged by the Kremlin with carrying out a campaign to destabilize the West through subversion, sabotage and assassination.
The disclosure comes at a time when Mr. Trump has said he would invite Mr. Putin to an expanded meeting of the Group of 7 nations, but tensions between American and Russian militaries are running high.
🐣 RT @mattyglesias I guess we’re not supposed to talk anymore about how the president’s relationship with the Russian government seems fishy, since he got Paul Manafort to break his cooperation agreement which somehow proved the whole thing was a hoax but I do kinda wonder.
⋙ 🐣 RT @charlie_savage EXCLUSIVE: A Russian spy unit secretly offered bounties to militants in Afghanistan for killing American troops, U.S. intelligence officials found. Trump and White House have known for months, but not authorized any response.w/ @EricSchmittNYT @mschwirtz
💙 ⋙⋙ NYT: Russia Secretly Offered Afghan Militants Bounties to Kill U.S. Troops, Intelligence Says http://nyti.ms/2A6hPti
// The Trump administration has been deliberating for months about what to do about a stunning intelligence assessment.
⭕ 25 Jun 2020
🐣 RT @eliehonig Absolutely outrageous: Barr tried to get SDNY to un-do the part of the Michael Cohen conviction that implicated the President, per NYT. ¤ But the SDNY resisted. Which helps explain last weekend’s attempted takeover.
⋙ NYT: Inside Barr’s Effort to Undermine Prosecutors in N.Y. http://nyti.ms/2YwbOiW “More than any other federal prosecutor’s office, the Manhattan office had pursued investigations that angered Mr. Trump”
// The firing of the top federal prosecutor in Manhattan was foreshadowed by a disagreement over a case linked to President Trump.
Shortly after he became attorney general last year, William P. Barr set out to challenge a signature criminal case that touched President Trump’s inner circle directly, and even the president’s own actions: the prosecution of Michael D. Cohen, Mr. Trump’s longtime fixer.
The debate between Mr. Barr and the federal prosecutors who brought the case against Mr. Cohen was one of the first signs of a tense relationship that culminated last weekend in the abrupt ouster of Geoffrey S. Berman, the United States attorney in Manhattan. It also foreshadowed Mr. Barr’s intervention in the prosecutions of other associates of Mr. Trump.
⭕ 24 Jun 2020
🚫 🐣 RT @Evan_McMullin Russia protects Trump. Trump protects Russia. Flynn protects Russia and Trump. Barr protects Trump, Russia and Flynn. Trump loyalist judge protects Trump, Russia, Flynn and Barr. Russia keeps protecting Trump. Textbook banana republic corruption.
🐣 RT @RadioFreeTom This is what years of Facebook and chat groups do to people who probably have some problems to begin with.
⋙ 🐣 RT @RexChapman This angry Florida woman argued today against the mask mandate, while bringing up the devil, 5G, Bill Gates, Hillary Clinton, “the pedophiles” and the deep state. ¤ Enjoy… 💽 https://twitter.com/RadioFreeTom/status/1275914667148402693?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @tribelaw Let’s do more than get scared. Let’s get even. By which I mean getting a step ahead of those crooks and outscheming them.
⋙ 🐣 RT @RVAwonk Speaking about AG Bill Barr, former Deputy Attorney General Donald Ayer tells the House Judiciary Committee: ¤ “The drumbeat of his misbehavior is accelerating as we get closer to the election. I don’t know what’s next, but I’m scared to think about what it might be.” 💽 https://twitter.com/tribelaw/status/1275875540516380673?s=20/photo/1
TheAtlantic, David Frum: It All Happened In Full View http://bit.ly/2NsqKIz “The president is staring the country in the eye and acknowledging: ‘Sure I did it. I’ll do it again. And again. Because nobody’s going to stop me. Cover-ups are for losers.‘“
// What if there is no cover up?
💙 TheAtlantic, Tom McTague: The Decline of the American World http://bit.ly/3ey0oAJ “In the United States, the world sees itself, but in an extreme form: more violent and free, rich and repressed, beautiful and ugly”
// Other countries are used to loathing America, admiring America, and fearing America (sometimes all at once). But pitying America? That one is new.
🐣 RT @swin24 “Even before the president’s brother—represented by [Charles] Harder, one of…Trump’s personal attorneys and the Gawker-killing lawyer—filed the order against Mary…court this week, Trump had actively weighed his options for legal retribution against his own niece.”
⋙ DailyBeast, Lachlan Cartwright and Asawin Suebsaeng: Trump’s Brother spent at least 10 days in a Neuro ICU Just Before Filing Suit Over Tell-All http://bit.ly/3dvDatX //➔ strange ⇊
● https://twitter.com/Auriandra/status/1275981433459347456?s=20/photo/1
// Robert Trump, Donald’s younger brother, spent at least 10 days in a neuro intensive care unit just before launching legal action to stop the publication of his niece’s book.
Robert, 72, had been at Mount Sinai hospital’s Neurosciences Intensive Care Unit (NSICU) in New York since at least June 11th, being treated for a serious condition. …
On its website Mount Sinai boasts that its 16-bed NSICU specializes in “state of the art, compassionate care of patients who suffer from subarachnoid hemorrhage, acute ischemic stroke, intracerebral hemorrhage, subdural hematomas, coma, tumors of the brain and spine, severe or prolonged seizures, neuro-infections, [and] spinal cord injury among others.” …
[Robert] was discharged on Sunday and despite his stay in the hospital, he wasted no time in filing and signing complicated legal documents aided by his celebrity attorney Charles Harder and releasing a statement.
“Her attempt to sensationalize and mischaracterize our family relationship after all of these years for her own financial gain is both a travesty and injustice to the memory of my late brother, Fred, and our beloved parents. I and the rest of my entire family are so proud of my wonderful brother, the president, and feel that Mary’s actions are truly a disgrace,” Robert said in his statement to The New York Times roughly 48 hours after he was discharged from hospital.
❤️ 🐣 RT @glenkirschner2 I’ll be posting a video on YouTube this evening discussing today’s Flynn opinion and a three-point plan to remedy McConnell’s nefarious attempt to trash the federal judiciary by flooding it with unqualified judges. We will not give up or give in. No retreat, no surrender.
TheAtlantic, Adam Serwer: Trump Is Struggling to Run Against a White Guy http://bit.ly/2Z5tXU2
// The president is having a difficult time deploying his traditional culture-war playbook against Biden.
It’s not that Biden, as compared to his predecessors, lacks flaws for Trump to exploit. In fact, while the two candidates are different in most of the ways that really matter—Biden has a baseline respect for democracy and the ability to express remorse—they possess superficial similarities. Watching Republicans struggle to land a punch on an elderly white man with suspicious hair, a reputation for exaggerations and fibs, questionable policy judgment, and a track record of racist remarks who is running a nostalgic campaign for a bygone era, and yet whom voters seem willing to give the benefit of the doubt no matter what—well let’s just say their opponents know what that’s like.
🐣 RT @RohdeD The extremism of Barr’s views didn’t emerge during his first tenure as AG because the president he served then (Bush 41) was a traditionalist. Trump is contemptuous of congressional & judicial oversight. It’s ideologue meets grifter. Thank you @seanilling
⋙ Vox, Sean Illing: “It’s ideologue meets grifter”: How Bill Barr made Trumpism possible http://bit.ly/31fZ2Ho
// Bill Barr is the most powerful law enforcement officer in the country. What does he want?
🐣 RT @MSNBC Chuck Rosenberg on AG Barr and the politicization of the Justice Department: “What I see is incredibly repugnant. It undermines the rule of law. It’s despicable.”
⋙ 💽 MSNBC, DeadlineWH: Chuck Rosenberg on Bill Barr: ‘What I see is incredibly repugnant’ http://on.msnbc.com/3fWajjW
// Former senior FBI official Chuck Rosenberg to Attorney General Bill Barr undermining the rule of law after DOJ officials testify on Barr’s politicization of the agency
🐣 RT @davidcicillini Attorney General Barr’s conduct is corrupt, dangerous, and must be stopped. He is corrupting the law in order to protect President Trump and influence the 2020 presidential election.
🐣 RT @MMineiroCNS Judge Amy Berman Jackson wants more info from DOJ on why the government is unopposed to Stone’s request to push his date to report to prison from 6/30 to 9/3. @CourthouseNews [Minute Order:] Text Block: https://twitter.com/MMineiro_CNS/status/1275871177215553536?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @peoplefor During today’s House Judiciary Committee hearing, @RepTedLieu spoke about how AG Williams Barr’s Department of Justice intervened after Roger Stone was convicted to lower Stone’s sentencing recommendation: ¤ “That is a perversion of justice.”
🐣 RT @gregolear From what I’m hearing, MAGA celebrating Flynn’s legal escape is akin to the 49ers celebrating winning the last Super Bowl at the end of the third quarter.
🐣 RT @imillhiser I’m starting to think that Neomi Rao is not a very good judge.
Vox, Ian Millhiser: The court decision dismissing charges against Michael Flynn is astonishingly bad http://bit.ly/3erbpUy
// Neomi Rao rides again.
🐣 RT @jgeltzer Astonishing: ¤ The DC Circuit panel that just ruled for Flynn is saying that DOJ has zero obligation even to explain to a judge why it’s going easy on a Trump crony–literally 2 hours before a career DOJ lawyer will testify to Congress about DOJ going easy on another Trump crony!
⋙ 🐣 RT @ Key majority phrase: ¤ “The district court’s judicial supervision ‘threatens to chill law enforcement by subjecting the prosecutor’s motives & decisionmaking to outside inquiry.’” ¤ What the majority calls a “chill,” many of us call transparency, judicial responsibility, & Rule 48.
🚫 🐣 RT @FBI Cyber actors affiliated with the People’s Republic of China have tried to seize public health research related to #COVID19 treatments. The potential theft of this information jeopardizes the delivery of secure, effective, and efficient treatment options. http://ow.ly/vsqT50AfwZI
🐣 RT @AaronBlake There it is. ¤ Zelinsky says the supervisor who told him the motivation for changing Roger Stone’s sentencing memo was political was J.P. Cooney, the chief of fraud and public corruption in the D.C. U.S. attorney’s office.
⋙ 🐣 RT @AaronBlake Amazing that it took 2 hours to get to this — and under questioning from Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio), rather than a Democrat.
⋙⋙ 🐣 RT @knox_hughes It’s better that it came from a Jordan question. That way, clips of the answer include a Republican and NOT a Democrat. Makes it tougher to smear as partisan.
🐣 RT @glennkirschner2 Silver lining? Flynn can now be charged with ALL crimes come January, including the other felonies he admitted to in the Statement of Offenses in this case AND the prosecutors will not have to fight to undo a corrupt Trump pardon (and no 6-month cap).
⋙ CNBC: U.S. appeals court orders judge to dismiss case against former Trump national security advisor Michael Flynn http://cnb.cx/31cDzPn
🧵 RT @atrupar Republicans are wasting no time turning the House Judiciary Committee hearing into a clown show 📌 💽 https://twitter.com/atrupar/status/1275830505003528192?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @mjs_DC Ultra-Trumpy Trump Judge Neomi Rao—who else?—writes the 2–1 decision ordering the Flynn judge to dismiss the prosecution. She is really just the worst.
⋙ [Google Doc of Opinion] http://bit.ly/3hXFJbs
[ … ]
🐣 RT @mjs_DC Neomi Rao’s Flynn decision is totally indefensible and incredibly dangerous, placing federal prosecutors above judicial scrutiny despite clear evidence of political interference. She has made her court complicit in the Trump administration’s corruption.
⋙ Slate, Mark Stern: Trump Judge Neomi Rao’s Flynn Opinion Is Dangerous and Anti-Democratic http://bit.ly/2Nq0fDH
🐣 RT @KerriKupecDOJ The Attorney General has accepted an invitation to appear before the House Judiciary Committee for a general oversight hearing on July 28th.
💙 🐣 RT @cspan Former Deputy Attorney General Donald Ayer: “I am here because I believe that William Barr poses the greatest threat in my lifetime to our rule of law and to public trust in it. That is because he does not believe in its core principle; that no person is above the law.” 💽 https://twitter.com/cspan/status/1275838616778964992?s=20/photo/1
💙 🐣 RT @jedshug Re: Flynn If you think about how long it will take the appeals process just on this question, it is likely that this case does not get resolved until 2021… When a new DOJ will take over and could reverse Barr and Trump, ask for sentencing.
⋙ 🐣 RT @jedshug Re: Flynn: En banc review would take a few months. Even if the Circuit decided the case this fall, 4 Justices could grant cert, scheduling oral argument in 2021. ¤ And before SCOTUS hears the case, a new DOJ reverses Barr and Trump, and Flynn gets sentenced in 2021.
⋙⋙ 🐣 RT @RDiffering So, let’s say, arguendo, en banc rehearing, same result (I don’t think so, but….) Sullivan can then petition SCOTUS for cert.? Or would it have to be an amicus? That next step just feels procedurally icky.
⋙⋙⋙ 🐣 RT @jedshug I’m assuming en banc goes against Flynn. ¤ If en banc rules for Flynn, it would be complicated, but if Sullivan wanted to file cert petititon, all you need is 4 Justices to think it’s a plausibly valid move and they could grant it.
💙 🧵 RT @emptywheel The HJC hearing livestream has begun. Note that at least Zelinsky will be testifying remotely. http://cs.pn/3g0coeZ 📌 https://twitter.com/jentaub/status/1275825424405323776?s=20
↥ ↧
💙 🧵 RT @jentaub Here we go! ¤ House Judiciary Committee Hearing on “Oversight of the Department of Justice: Political Interference and Threats to Prosecutorial Independence.”
1/ 📌 https://twitter.com/jentaub/status/1275825424405323776?s=20
🔆 This❗️⋙ WaPo: Appeals court orders Judge Emmet Sullivan to dismiss criminal case against Michael Flynn http://wapo.st/3dwq8wi “The ruling from a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit … can be reviewed by the full court”
🐣 RT @kylegriffin1 65 faculty members from A.G. Barr’s law school alma mater say he has “failed to fulfill his oath of office to ‘support and defend the Constitution of the United States.'” ¤ “Attorney General Barr stands on the wrong side of history,” the statement says.
⋙ CNN: 65 faculty members from AG Barr’s law school alma mater say he has ‘failed to fulfill his oath of office’ http://cnn.it/2YtA85b
⭕ 23 Jun 2020
🐣 RT @DemWrite If a president “slows the testing down” because he doesn’t want bad press, thereby dramatically increasing the body count, what do you call that?
From @MeidasTouch: #TrumpKillsUS #DemCast 💽 https://twitter.com/DemWrite/status/1275585487357399041?s=20/photo/1
// last frame: dictionary definition of murder; Meidas Touch ad❣
⋙ 🐣 Trump also knows that minority communities are disproportionately killed by COVID-19. There’s an additional word for that: ¤ Genocide. ¤ It’s a crime against humanity.
🐣 RT @matthewamiller Reading Zelinsky’s testimony in full just leaves me extraordinarily sad. Sad that this could even happen, sad that no R will care, sad that Barr can stay in office even a single additional day in the face of it. It is an outrage what they’ve done to DOJ.
⋙ ≣ [Zelinsky Testimony:] http://bit.ly/3dqeXVF
⋙ 🐣 RT @Mimirocah1 As I was just discussing with other former DOJ people – I keep thinking we can’t be shocked anymore and then are.
⋙⋙ 🐣 RT @matthewamiller right, exactly. just not even in the same ballpark of anything you could have imagined happening before this admin.
‼️🐣 RT @ Delusional stuff from Trump: “The radical left demands absolute conformity from every professor, researcher, reporter, journalist, corporation, entertainer, politician, campus speaker, and private citizen.”
🐣 RT @atrupar “The left-wing mob is trying to demolish our heritage so they can replace it with a new repressive regime that they alone control. They’re tearing down statues, desecrating monuments, & purging dissenters … it’s the behavior or totalitarians & tyrants.” — Trump
🐣 RT @atrupar On coronavirus, Trump claims Democrats “are trying to do their best to keep the country shut down and closed because they’d love those numbers not to be good, but there’s not a lot they’re going to be able to do about it.”
CNN: Top Pentagon nominee pushed conspiracy theories that former CIA director tried to overthrow Trump and even have him assassinated http://cnn.it/3du5YD8 ‘Tata’s nomination comes as the WH seeks to install loyalists to key positions throughout the administration’
// tags: former CIA Director John Brennan Cicero quote Jeremiah Wright Weather Underground
WaPo: Prosecutor to tell Congress of pressure from ‘highest levels’ of Justice Dept. to cut Roger Stone ‘a break’ http://wapo.st/2Z6hbol Asst US Atty Aaron Zelinsky was pressured to treat Stone “differently and more leniently … because of his relationship with the President”
A federal prosecutor is expected to tell House lawmakers Wednesday that the senior-most Justice Department officials pressured government lawyers in Roger Stone’s criminal trial to treat him “differently and more leniently” during his trial, “based on political considerations” and “because of his relationship with the President.”
Aaron Zelinsky, an assistant U.S. attorney in Maryland who previously served on former special counsel Robert S. Mueller III’s team, is one of two current Justice Department employees expected to tell the House Judiciary Committee that Attorney General William P. Barr ordered agency officials to pursue politically motivated investigations and court motions, in deference to President Trump and his own preferred policies.
According to a copy of his prepared remarks, Zelinsky plans to testify that prosecutors experienced “heavy pressure from the highest levels of the Department of Justice to cut Stone a break,” and request a lighter sentence he characterized as “virtually unprecedented.” Zelinsky formally objected to the “significant pressure” placed on line prosecutors “to water down and in some cases outright distort events” that led to Stone’s prosecution, activity he called unethical. His objections, Zelinsky intends to say, went unheeded, and he ultimately resigned from the case.
John Elias, the acting chief of staff for the Justice Department’s Antitrust Division, is expected to appear alongside Zelinsky to describe how Barr often issued orders to investigate company mergers, not because of antitrust concerns but because he “did not like the nature of their underlying business.”
🐣 RT @harrylitman The New York City Bar Association has written to Congressional leaders “in response to continuing actions by Attorney General William P. Barr that raise the most serious questions about Mr. Barr’s fitness for the high office that he holds.”
🐣 RT @JoyceWhiteVance Barr must resign immediately. trump should, but won’t, be impeached. And any Republican who doesn’t call this out & demand both resignations has no further standing to complain about anything a future AG does because they’ve abdicated all responsibility.
💙 ⋙ 🐣 RT @NatashaBertrand A bombshell statement to Congress from Aaron Zelinsky, the prosecutor in the Roger Stone case who says he withdrew because of “wrongful political pressure”: Text Block: https://twitter.com/NatashaBertrand/status/1275502875058286592?s=20/photo/1
// “ … and because the U.S. Attorney was ‘afraid of the President’”
⭕ 22 Jun 2020
WaPo, Max Boot: The unraveling of the rule of law under Trump is picking up speed http://wapo.st/2YoOQtZ “Trump is in the midst of purging the executive branch of anyone who refuses to put loyalty to him above loyalty to the country”
🐣 RT @rgoodlaw Here’s the @joshtpm scoop that @PreetBharara just mentioned on @AC360 ¤ Barr reportedly misled US Attorney of NJ—told him that Berman was voluntarily resigning—in asking him to replace Berman. ¤ Carpenito was shocked to learn he’d been misled by Barr.
⋙⋙ TPM, Josh Marshall: More On Bill Barr’s Friday Night Caper http://bit.ly/2BzQ6Bv
⋙ 🐣 RT @rgoodlaw 2. Another indication that Barr’s effort to replace Berman was rushed: ¤ Barr reportedly called Carpenito on Friday afternoon to ask him to replace Berman. It was the first Carpenito had heard of it.
⋙ 🐣 RT @rgoodlaw 3. This reporting also raises question whether Carpenito dropped out of the deal upon learning of Berman’s true position. ¤ Carpenito “seems to have been clear with staff that Berman’s late Friday night press release had changed the equation for him considerably.”
⋙⋙ 🐣 Question I have is whether SDNY has to just “notify” Main Justice that they are ready to proceed with indictments in a case or if they have to “get permission”? If the latter and Barr says “no” – what’s the next step?
🐣 RT @MSNBC Fmr. SDNY Chief David Kelley says President Trump and AG Bill Barr are attempting to “subvert the independence of the Southern District,” following the firing of Manhattan U.S. Attorney Geoffrey Berman.
⋙ 💽 MSNBC: Fmr SDNY Chief: Trump fired ‘independent’ prosecutor to replace with someone he can ‘keep an eye on’ http://on.msnbc.com/2NoYfvj
// In an exclusive interview with MSNBC Chief Legal Correspondent Ari Melber, Former SDNY Chief David Kelley speaks out for the first time since Trump fired the NYC prosecutor. Kelley argues Trump and AG Bill Barr are attempting to “subvert the independence of the Southern District,” and adds to his latest attack on the rule of law. Kelley argues the DOJ has “become politicized” and adds “it is sad” that the “Executive Branch” not “untouchable.”
🐣 RT @RichardHaass This is as self-defeating as it gets. @realDonaldTrump has opted for short-term anti-immigrationism over pro-US competitiveness. China and others will be the big winners here while American businesses, workers, and consumers will be big losers.
⋙ NYT: Trump Suspends Visas Allowing Hundreds of Thousands of Foreigners to Work in the U.S. http://nyti.ms/2YmAIl8
// The move is fiercely opposed by business leaders, who say it will block their ability to recruit critically needed workers from countries overseas.
🐣 RT @mpadellan trump cowers in the bunker ¤ while America needs a leader.
We need to EVICT that squatter ¤ and reclaim #OurHouse. 💽 https://twitter.com/mmpadellan/status/1275255725296623616?s=20/photo/1
// MeidasTouch ad❣ Our House
NewYorker, Adam Entous: What Fiona Hill Learned in the White House http://bit.ly/3dpy1U4 “Hill did not realize where her real challenges lay: ‘I know the intrigue in Russia better than the intrigue at home.’”
// The senior fellow at Brookings and expert on modern Russia had hoped to guide the U.S.-Russia relationship. President Trump had other ideas.
🐣 RT @tribelaw “Trump-friendly legislatures could seize on fraud claims to exercise their constitutional power to bypass voters and appoint representatives to the Electoral College themselves.” Theoretically possible under Art. II but virtually inconceivable.
⋙ CNN, John Harwood: Why Trump is already sowing doubts about November’s vote http://cnn.it/2B2oPb0
🧵 RT @AshaRangappa_ THREAD. The “mail voter fraud” narrative is about more than a fear of increased turnout among Dems. It’s also about facilitating foreign interference, including Russia tampering with voter registrations and actual votes, and distracting the public from that effort. Here’s why: 📌 https://twitter.com/AshaRangappa_/status/1275106533714669570?s=20
🐣 RT @waltshaub “Pack’s coup d’état is so potentially damaging to the US government’s overall effort to stop Chinese and Russian disinformation that some wonder if that isn’t the point. ‘Maybe they don’t want to fight Russian disinformation,’ one staff member speculated.”
⋙ TheAtlantic, Anne Applebaum: The Voice of America Will Sound Like Trump http://bit.ly/3enBljS
// Under the president’s control, U.S.-funded broadcasters could turn into a presidential propaganda machine.
Or maybe the idea is to help Trump politically, at home. This would be illegal: An act of Congress passed in 1948 explicitly prohibits U.S.-government-funded foreign-information services from making programs targeted at domestic audiences. But the act’s strictures were eased somewhat in 2013, and it’s very hard to enforce: In a digital world, it’s impossible to stop domestic audiences from reading the material put out by VOA online. As he grows less enamored of Fox News, Trump may want something that he can control completely. If Pack can produce the rough equivalent of “Trump TV,” then the president will finally have a true state media at his command and no longer need to rely on Rupert Murdoch.
Whatever the real reason, the damage could be deep, wide, and long-term. In a world where airwaves are flooded with authoritarian disinformation, the effectiveness of American messaging depends on the perceived credibility and independence of the messengers. Anything that resembles “Trump TV” or even just old-fashioned propaganda will have neither. America’s international broadcasters are an important part of the face we present to the world. Thanks to congressional negligence, presidential malice, and general indifference, that face has just gotten uglier.
DailyBeast, Harry Siegel, Asawin Suebsaeng and Erin Banco: Berman Leaves SDNY in Trusted Hands After Bill Barr Fucks Up His Ouster http://bit.ly/3hTYQDh //➔ Trump’s lack of interest in the legal details and instinct to ”take no responsibility at all” ruined Barr’s sinister plot
DailyBeast, Harry Siegel, Asawin Suebsaeng and Erin Banco: Berman Leaves SDNY in Trusted Hands After Bill Barr Fucks Up His Ouster http://bit.ly/3hTYQDh //➔ Trump’s lack of interest in the legal details and instinct to ”take no responsibility at all” ruined Barr’s sinister plot
// cap1: Who’s in charge? Can crucial deadlines be hit? And what happens to all those big, politically-charged cases?; cap2: Barr said Berman had resigned, and Berman said he had not. Then, Barr said Trump had fired Berman, and Trump said he had not. Finally, Berman stepped away, and left Barr exposed.
💙 🔆 This❗️⋙ DailyBeast, Tomasky: Bill Barr Has Pie on His Face, and One More Trick Up His Sleeve With John Durham’s October Surprise http://bit.ly/2CnNNC2 //➔ Dems need to get out in front of plan to issue indictments against Trump’s “enemies” (Obama loyalists, incl Biden)
// People had better be paying renewed attention to what Durham might be up to. Democrats need to pre-bake public opinion on this.
🐣 RT @jaketapper Despite what House Judiciary Committee Chairman Nadler said on @CNNSotu today, there are several House Democrats eager for @AmbJohnBolton to testify
⋙ 🐣 Nadler was an embarrassment in that interview. He said the Senate wouldn’t impeach. The House impeaches, not the Senate. Calling him, in any case, is to educate the American people, not the Senate. It would also expose Bolton as trying to have it both ways.
🐣✅ RT @ddale8 In addition to the general lie about mail voting being rife with fraud, the claim about wartime voting makes no sense. ¤ Soldiers voted by mail in large numbers — in the low millions — during WWII. A substantial number of soldiers also voted by mail during the Civil War. https://twitter.com/ddale8/status/1275069087714951169?s=20/photo/1
// Trump tweet about WW2
⭕ 21 Jun 2020
🐣 RT @atrupar “Erratic, foolish, behaved irrationally [&] bizarrely, can’t leave him alone for a minute, he saw conspiracies behind rocks, he couldn’t see the difference between his personal interests & the country’s interests” – how former national security adviser John Bolton describes Trump 💽 https://twitter.com/atrupar/status/1274914020408135681?s=20
⋙ 🐣 RT @atrupar Bolton on how history will remember Trump: “I hope it will remember him as a one-term president who didn’t plunge the country irretrievably into a downward spiral we can’t recoil from.” 💽 https://twitter.com/atrupar/status/1274921369004843008?s=20
NYT: For Barr, Standoff w Prosecutor Adds to String of Miscues http://nyti.ms/37OOC2x “‘As attempted power plays go, this was an abject failure & served only to further undermine the credibility of both the [Barr] & the president,’ said Greg Browser, a former federal prosecutor”
// The attorney general has found himself at odds with the White House on high-profile issues in recent weeks.
💙 🐣 RT @JoeBiden It’s in some of our darkest moments of despair that we’ve made some of our greatest progress. If we stand together, as one America, we’ll rise stronger than before. https://twitter.com/JoeBiden/status/1274785156050464768?s=20/photo/1
// Biden for President ad❣ showing demonstrators assailed by police: “Is this who we are?”
🧵 RT @SethAbramson (THREAD) I’m reading John Bolton’s book The Room Where It Happened, and in this thread I’ll tell you a lot about it so you won’t have to buy or read it. I’ll also discuss the larger problems with coverage of Trump that the book’s content raises. I hope you’ll read on and RETWEET. 📌 https://twitter.com/SethAbramson/status/1274843414778073094?s=20
TheAtlantic, Paul Rosenzweig: Why Bill Barr Got Rid of Geoffrey Berman http://bit.ly/2ANloFl “Like strongmen everywhere, Barr (and Trump) seek to exalt their interests over those of the nation”
// This is how an authoritarian works to subvert justice.
… Why replace Berman now, just five months before the election? ¤ The answer lies in the firing earlier this year of Jessie Liu, the former U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia. By firing Liu, Barr and his team took control of the Washington, D.C., U.S. attorney’s office. Until they did that, the office was following up on various indictments and charges that had been brought against Trump’s associates. Once they seized control, Barr’s team intervened to short-circuit that process. They interceded in the sentencing of Roger Stone, and more recently, they have made an effort to dismiss the case against Michael Flynn. In both circumstances, career prosecutors were so outraged that they withdrew from the case, and some resigned from the Department of Justice altogether.
That may be the game plan for New York as well. Barr may want Berman out so that he can use his newly enhanced control to dismiss or short-circuit all of the pending cases in Manhattan that implicate Trump or his associates.
We know those are many. We know that Trump’s various organizations, including his inauguration committee, are under investigation. We know that Trump attorney Rudy Giuliani is under investigation. We know that Trump’s bank, Deutsche Bank, is under investigation.
Since taking office, Barr has repeatedly intervened to protect Trump. In addition to the behavior already mentioned, we might identify his attempt to protect Trump’s tax records from disclosure, or the way he distorted the true contents of the Mueller report. Barr’s actions are more like those of a consigliere to Don Trump than those of an attorney general of the United States, working for the American people.
Even that characterization is too kind to Barr. The attorney general’s apparent goal is to turn the Department of Justice into an arm of the president’s personal interests. He seems to have no regard for the department’s independence, and is doing long-term damage to the fabric of American justice.
Given the authoritarian structure of what Barr is attempting to achieve—preserving the forms of liberty while destroying their substantive content—we might call this the Orbánification of the American system of governance. Like strongmen everywhere, Barr (and Trump) seek to exalt their interests over those of the nation. And this latest effort—seemingly to short-circuit the ongoing criminal investigation of Trump’s affiliates and associates—is only the most recent evidence. As he continues down this road, Barr is doing his best to make John Mitchell, President Richard Nixon’s disgraced attorney general, look like a man of principle.
NYT, Preet Bharara: The Wrong Justice Department Official Lost His Job This Weekend http://nyti.ms/3dnEfnk “Sovereign” as the SDNY is often called, “does not mean rogue. It signifies respect for law and scorn for political considerations”
// The attorney general, Bill Barr, undermined the rule of law by forcing out Geoffrey Berman, the United States attorney in Manhattan.
To understand the uproar over the termination in legal circles, some context helps. S.D.N.Y. is famously and proudly independent. It embraces its nickname, the “Sovereign District of New York,” as a badge of honor. Sovereign, in the understanding of those who have served there, does not mean rogue. It signifies respect for law and scorn for political considerations. Republicans and Democrats are equally in the cross hairs.
Forcing out a well-performing U.S. attorney of the same party, without explanation, on the eve of election, in favor of a less qualified candidate who golfs with the president (as Mr. Clayton does), in the midst of investigations known to be irksome to the president, does not reflect a commitment to law enforcement independence.
Within the Department of Justice, hardworking public servants — in the Southern District of New York and elsewhere — are angry, dismayed and demoralized. I’ve spoken to many of them this weekend. They are disheartened by the bad faith of Bill Barr and his determined efforts to undermine prosecutorial independence. On Saturday, finally assured his well-regarded and principled deputy, Audrey Strauss, would take over the reins, Mr. Berman left S.D.N.Y. with his head held high.
WaPo Editorial: How can anyone trust Bill Barr’s Justice Department now? http://wapo.st/319ACiJ “What well of credibility did he expect to draw on when he moved against Mr. Berman?”
WaPo, Aaron Blake: Barr’s botched effort to remove a prosecutor who probed Trump allies http://wapo.st/37NWnWt “Barr has now made something that already looked problematic reek — yet again — of the politicization of the Justice Department”
CNN, Julian Zelizer: Trump’s chilling distortion of ‘law and order’ http://cnn.it/3hIbwgF “Barr has been the point man in this strategy. He brings a level of legal sophistication … that Trump lacks & has repeatedly placed the political interests of the President above the law”
[T]he Trump administration has repeatedly taken steps that undermine our nation’s confidence that this White House adheres to the notion that nobody is above the law. …
Barr has been the point man in this strategy. He brings a level of legal sophistication and political savvy that Trump lacks and has repeatedly placed the political interests of the President above the law. When the Mueller investigation wrapped up, the attorney general framed the findings of the report in a way that exonerated the President from wrongdoing. During the impeachment hearings and trial earlier this year, Trump reportedly leaned on Barr to limit the ability of legislators to obtain necessary information. And in Trump’s post-impeachment attacks on inspectors general and US attorneys, Barr has proven willing to take the bold and controversial steps necessary to insulate his boss.
The restraints that have checked previous administrations have deteriorated, and we are now living in a moment when President Trump — with Barr’s assistance — appears to believe that there are no law and order guardrails prohibiting what he can do.
Given the fact that Senate Republicans continue to back him, the President is not wrong in this assumption. Senate Republicans have played an essential role in allowing Trump to continue eroding our democratic institutions. As long as Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell is willing to stand firm in backing the administration, the odds of any sort of serious check on these kinds of actions diminish.
The wildcard remains the courts. … Though the Supreme Court is now under a conservative majority, it is not an institution where members can be primaried out of their posts, and federal judges have the capacity to be true institutionalists, even in an era when many elected officials refuse to accept that role. Certainly, Chief Justice Roberts is following these events with a close eye. As the President bends law and order to fit his own agenda, the biggest question remains: How much are the federal courts willing to tolerate and at what point will they finally check the President in the dangerous campaign that he has undertaken?
Until the courts step in, the nation is in a dangerous place. The stories that have converged in the past few weeks have revealed quite clearly that law and order is under threat. The threat, however, isn’t coming from the streets but from the highest office in the land.
🧵 RT @TimOBrien 1/x Barr knows Berman’s investigations all involve sensitive matters touching Trump. With the presidential election less than five months away, cynics like me can be forgiven for thinking that this looks exactly like a housecleaning. Let’s count the ways:
📌 https://twitter.com/TimOBrien/status/1274678104783372290?s=20
⭕ 20 Jun 2020
WaPo Editorial: We knew Trump didn’t care for human rights in China. But this is a new low. http://wapo.st/3emPCNQ “Trump’s message in Osaka was that he would not use the power of the presidency nor the influence of the United States to save the Uighurs from cultural extinction”
🐣 RT @SallyQYates Trump fires a US Atty investigating his inner circle, his AG misleads the public about it, and Trump’s relentless assault on the rule of law continues. Trump throws one body blow after another at DOJ, but the career men and women who fight for justice every day are stronger.
🐣 RT @kylegriffin1 Chairman Nadler: “The House Judiciary Committee will immediately open an investigation into this incident, as part of our broader investigation into Barr’s unacceptable politicization of the Department of Justice.” https://twitter.com/kylegriffin1/status/1274482286424031232?s=20
🐣 RT @AliVelshi “In light of A. G. Barr’s decision to respect the normal operation of law and have Deputy U.S. Attorney Audrey Strauss become Acting U.S. Attorney, I will be leaving the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York, effective immediately.” -Geoffrey Berman
WaPo: U.S. attorney who was investigating people close to Trump now says he will step down, ending standoff with AG Barr http://wapo.st/2Nsvezb Berman’s deputy, Audrey Strauss, who will now replace him, has made “numerous contributions to Democratic political candidates”
In his letter Saturday, Barr appeared to change course from his original plan to bring in Craig Carpenito, the U.S. attorney in New Jersey, to lead the New York office — a move that legal experts had said was on especially shaky ground. The shift allows for Berman’s deputy to take over. Strauss is well respected in the office but during a time when she was working in the private sector made numerous campaign contributions to Democratic political candidates.
WaPo, Stuart Gerson: In the crisis at Justice, impartial rule of law is on the line http://wapo.st/3hOB0sv
🐣 RT @renato_mariotti Will Barr now interpret this to be a “resignation” by Berman and use this opportunity to replace Strauss with someone of his choice in the near future?
⋙ 🐣 RT @ShimonPro Geoff Berman says he’s leaving: Text Block: https://twitter.com/ShimonPro/status/1274461707801432065?s=20/photo/1
// because Barr is putting Strauss in charge
↥ ↧
🐣 RT @PreetBharara Yes I know Audrey Strauss. She is an excellent and principled lawyer.
🐣 RT @johnkruzel New: WH now says Trump granted AG Barr permission to fire Berman. Still not entirely clear if Trump is now saying the firing was done pursuant to his presidential powers, a fact with legal significance if this goes to court. From a sr WH official: Text Block: https://twitter.com/johnkruzel/status/1274459545612488704?s=20/photo/1
💙 NYRB, Cass Sunstein: It Can Happen Here http://bit.ly/3hMNAst Review of “They Thought They Were Free: The Germans, 1933–45” by Milton Mayer and “Broken Lives: How Ordinary Germans Experienced the Twentieth Century” by Konrad Jarausch
// 6/28/2020 issue
🐣 RT @kylegriffin1 Pool report: “On the attempted firing of Manhattan US Attorney Geoffrey Berman, he [Trump] said that’s up to AG Barr, and that he is ‘not involved.'” ¤ Note: Barr’s letter to Berman said that Trump fired him.
🐣 RT @AshaRangappa_ BTW, since when does the Attorney General “choose to nominate” U.S. Attorneys? That is the President’s job, not the AG’s. Barr is on a major power trip, as we have already seen from his giving orders to non-DOJ law enforcement and the military https://twitter.com/AshaRangappa_/status/1274449226030895108?s=20
🐣 RT @MikeSacksEsq (Barr will now call Trump and say “fire Berman” and Trump will fire Berman, possibly by tweet and with some gratuitous insults or assertions of unitary executive power to clean up the mess he made of Barr’s own messy attempt to use one of Trump’s blank checks)
🐣 RT @MaxKennerly It seems Trump is so accustomed to “I don’t take any responsibility” and pretending that he isn’t a part of his administration that he is incapable of firing Berman even when he has been expressly told that he must do it himself and that it cannot be pawned off on a subordinate.
⋙ 🐣 RT @RMFifthCircuit So Barr says the President fired Berman and the President says Barr did? Lol.
🐣 RT @joshtpm Trump on Barr’s claim Trump fired Geoff Berman: “That’s really up to him. I’m not involved” 💽 https://twitter.com/chrisgeidner/status/1274451022895894529?s=20/photo/1
🔆 This❗️⋙ WaPo: Barr says at his request, Trump has removed Geoffrey Berman as U.S. attorney in Manhattan http://wapo.st/2Nsvezb [Letter:] WaPo: http://wapo.st/2V2L4EG
// The move escalates a standoff that began Friday night.
Barr informed Berman of the president’s move in a sharply worded letter, explaining that Berman’s deputy, Audrey Strauss, will serve as the acting U.S. attorney in Manhattan until the Senate can confirm a permanent replacement.
Barr wrote that he had hoped for Berman’s “cooperation to facilitate a smooth transition” in the office as Trump nominates the chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission, Jay Clayton, to fill the job.
Instead, Barr wrote that Berman had chosen “public spectacle” by resisting. “Because you have declared you have no intention of resigning, I have asked the President to remove you as of today, and he has done so,” Barr wrote.
Outside the White House on Saturday, Trump told reporters that Berman’s ouster was “all up to the attorney general” and that he hadn’t become involved in the matter.
“That’s his department, not my department,” the president said. “But we have a very capable attorney general, so that’s really up to him.”
WaPo: James Comey: Geoffrey Berman upheld the finest tradition of the SDNY office http://wapo.st/3fLiEqu
WaPo, Jennifer Rubin: A Friday night massacre that backfired http://wapo.st/2NhplVi “It is telling that we do not know which of many possible investigations may have triggered Barr’s ire. There are so many to choose from”
It is telling that we do not know which of many possible investigations may have triggered Barr’s ire. There are so many to choose from. AP reports, “The move to oust Berman also comes days after allegations surfaced from former Trump national security adviser John Bolton that the president sought to interfere in an Southern District of New York investigation into the state-owned Turkish bank in an effort to cut deals with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan.” There are also the original investigations into campaign finance violations for which Michael Cohen was prosecuted, the alleged insurance and tax irregularities that Cohen alluded to in testimony to Congress, and the investigations into Rudolph W. Giuliani’s nefarious activities in Ukraine. You need a scorecard to keep track of Trump’s legal vulnerabilities.
🐣 RT @RonWyden William Barr has repeatedly interfered with the prosecutions of Donald Trump’s associates, is purging the Justice Department of qualified prosecutors and has lied about government actions and the content of documents to protect Trump. In any just world Barr would be impeached.
🐣 RT @EvanMcMullin Some reassure themselves that Trump’s purge of law enforcement officials is troubling, but nothing that can’t be resolved with an election. But the purpose of these firings is to remove barriers to even more corruption, especially that which subverts free and fair elections.
🐣 RT @kylegriffin1 Schumer: “I am calling for the Department of Justice Inspector General and the Office of Professional Responsibility to immediately launch an investigation into the reasons behind the decision by the president and the attorney general to attempt to dismiss Mr. Berman.”
WaPo: U.S. judge declines to block release of book by former national security adviser John Bolton http://wapo.st/2NdFtH8
🧵 RT @harrylitman Thread: here’s where I think we are. It’s pretty exquisite. Berman is court appointed and under 28 USC §546 his appointment lasts until there is a presidentially appointed and confirmed US Attorney. 📌 https://twitter.com/harrylitman/status/1274341980319805440?s=20
🐣 RT @selectedwisdom I hope Berman and the SDNY are gathering up all the ammunition, loading the canons and start firing out what ever they have on Monday morning before the investigatory & evidentiary trail gets suppressed.
🐣 This is the position Barr offered to Berman:
⋙ NYT (6/16): Justice Dept. Official to Exit, Signaling Third Departure in Recent Days http://nyti.ms/2YGeAkx “The head of the department’s civil division said he would leave next month after a 20-year career. He did not say why.”
🐣 RT @jbarro This is interesting. Suggests Barr tried to “promote” Berman out of the office so his departure wouldn’t be a story, and Berman wouldn’t go along.
⋙ 🧵 RT @KFaulders US Atty for SDNY Geoffrey Berman was fired. The news came as a shock tonight. Sources close to him & DOJ official say AG Barr offered him other positions including head of Civil Division at main justice and Berman declined. News via me @alex_mallin & @AaronKatersky 📌 https://twitter.com/KFaulders/status/1274167670041186304?s=20
🐣 RT @emptywheel Among other things this is going to make it a lot easier for judges in OTHER cases–like Mike Flynn’s–to argue that Barr is undermining justice.
⋙ 🐣 RT @eorden The standoff opens up a fresh crisis at DOJ, places the leadership of the most prominent federal prosecutors office outside Washington in a precarious position & raises questions about Barr’s willingness to steer the dept to suit Trump’s political agenda:
⋙⋙ CNN, Erica Orden: Powerful US attorney who investigated Trump associates refuses to step down after Barr tries to push him out http://cnn.it/2Ygy5RG
🐣 RT @kimwehle People wonder what the *rule of law* means? US Attorney #Berman and #SCOTUS showed us this week. The rule of law keeps us all safe. Bowing to the dear leader…or face the consequences…is a march toward tyranny. #justsayno to authoritarianism #vote #voteforyourlife
🐣 RT @richsignorelli Clayton and Carpenito should announce publicly today that they are withdrawing their names from SDNY US Attorney consideration. For good of the country and Constitution.
🐣 RT @gtconway3d The House of Representatives should immediately commence an impeachment inquiry into the conduct of the Attorney General of the United States.
🐣 RT @SethAbramson (1/2) The ongoing Giuliani investigation is a money laundering, fraud, and FARA case involving foreign money pouring into Trump’s 2020 campaign. Giuliani’s activities and other evidence suggest Turkey is one of the main sources of illegal Trump election aid (pecuniary/otherwise).
⋙ 🐣 RT @SethAbramson (2/2) Barr issued an edict saying no federal prosecutor could investigate foreign donations to a presidential campaign—meaning Trump’s, as he’s taking all “evidence” Giuliani has on Biden. It seems likely Berman refused to play ball, and thereby got fired. Now he’s fighting back.
🐣 RT @PreetBharara Why does a president get rid of his own hand-picked US Attorney in SDNY on a Friday night, less than 5 months before the election?
💙 ⋙ 🐣 RT @frankrichny The abruptness suggests Trump is now panicked he will lose in 5 months and wants to shut down post-White House SDNY indictments ASAP.
🐣 RT @ScottMStedman *The way* Trump and Barr tried to get rid of Berman is the most damning thing here. The only conclusion is that SDNY is moving forward on something big involving Trump and/or his allies.
⋙ 🐣 RT @ScottMStedman Trump could’ve just tried to fire him outright. But straight up lying about Berman resigning is bizarre and reads like a huge miscalculation on what Berman would do when Barr put out the press release.
⋙ 🐣 RT @ Everyone has their guesses about what SDNY is progressing on. But the truth is it could be any number of the plethora of scandals to which Trump is tied. Giuliani, Trump finances, Jr’s Psy Group meeting (took place in Manhattan!), National Enquirer/Saudi ties, inauguration, etc.
⋙⋙ 🐣 or all of them; Bolton’s book and the SCOTUS decisions (that they’re not gonna be a rubber stamp) may have led to panic; also, DOD making clear they are not behind Trump. Polls. If he thinks he’s gonna lose, wants to kill ALL cases that implicate him, most via SDNY
🐣 RT @BenWeiserNYT Senator Chuck Schumer, Democrat of N.Y., on Barr’s firing of Berman: “This late Friday night dismissal reeks of potential corruption of the legal process. What is angering President Trump? A previous action by this U.S. Attorney or one that is ongoing?”
⋙ NYT: Barr Abruptly Seeks to Fire U.S. Attorney Who Investigated Trump Associates http://nyti.ms/2NdFz1x updated 2:03am ET
// But the United States attorney in Manhattan, Geoffrey Berman, who had been leading the inquiry into Rudolph Giuliani, is refusing to leave his position.
The clash focused new attention on the efforts by Mr. Trump and his closest aides to rid the administration of officials whom the president views as insufficiently loyal. It also touched off a crisis within the Justice Department over one of its most prestigious jobs, at a time when the agency has already been roiled by questions over whether Mr. Barr has undercut its tradition of independence from political interference.
Mr. Berman, the United States attorney for the Southern District of New York, and his team have been at the forefront of corruption inquiries in Mr. Trump’s inner circle. They successfully prosecuted the president’s former personal lawyer, Michael Cohen, who went to prison, and have been investigating Mr. Trump’s current personal lawyer, Rudolph W. Giuliani.
“I have not resigned, and have no intention of resigning, my position,” Mr. Berman said in a statement, adding that he had learned that he was “stepping down” from a Justice Department news release.
Mr. Trump’s purge of officials has intensified in the months since the Republican-led Senate acquitted him in the impeachment trial. He has fired or forced out inspectors general with independent oversight over executive branch agencies and other key figures from the trial.
Several dismissals have come late on Friday nights, a time that many White Houses have used to disclose news that they would prefer receive little attention.
🐣 RT @JoyceWhiteVance Barr lied about Berman stepping down, a lie he has to have known would surface. So Berman must be very close to doing something they view as being very dangerous for Trump.
🐣 RT @maddow “Berman’s office subpoenaed Trump’s inaugural committee for a wide range of documents as part of an investigation into various potential crimes, including possible illegal contributions from foreigners to inaugural events.”
⋙⋙ AP: DOJ tries to oust US attorney investigating Trump allies http://bit.ly/2UXsUnK
The Justice Department moved abruptly Friday night to oust Geoffrey S. Berman, the U.S. attorney in Manhattan overseeing key prosecutions of President Donald Trump’s allies and an investigation of his personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani. But Berman said he was refusing to leave his post and his ongoing investigations would continue.
“I have not resigned, and have no intention of resigning, my position,” Berman said. His statement came hours after Attorney General William Barr said Berman was stepping down from his position.
The standoff set off an extraordinary clash between the Justice Department and one of the nation’s top districts, which has tried major mob and terror cases over the years. It is also likely to deepen tensions between the Justice Department and congressional Democrats who have pointedly accused Barr of politicizing the agency and acting more like Trump’s personal lawyer than the nation’s chief law enforcement officer.
⭕ 19 Jun 2020 Barr goes after SDNY Berman
🐣 RT @lolzkatt It must be utter chaos at the DOJ. Someone over there even published #Berman’s memo of resistance 😬 on the DOJ website. ¤ Maybe the rank and file DOJ employees have had enough.
⋙ SDNY Official Website: Statement Of U.S. Attorney Geoffrey S. Berman On Announcement By Attorney General Barr http://bit.ly/2NfaIBK
“I learned in a press release from the Attorney General tonight that I was ‘stepping down’ as United States Attorney. I have not resigned, and have no intention of resigning, my position, to which I was appointed by the Judges of the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York. I will step down when a presidentially appointed nominee is confirmed by the Senate. Until then, our investigations will move forward without delay or interruption. I cherish every day that I work with the men and women of this Office to pursue justice without fear or favor – and intend to ensure that this Office’s important cases continue unimpeded.”
🐣 RT @Mimirocah1 Barr lied in writing about firing a US Attorney.
⋙ 🐣 RT @ChrisAlbertoLaw Barr’s intent to obstruct investigations into Trump-associates is criminal behavior outside the scope of the AG’s authority. ¤ A rogue Attorney General has no legitimacy in @TheJusticeDept ¤ Their oath of office should guide federal prosecutors to protect institutional integrity.
🐣 RT @clairecmc Berman may have just flipped the Senate. Will Mitch risk losing the Senate by trying to force Rep Senators to confirm someone clearly being chosen to protect Rudy andTrump?
🧵RT @chrisgeidner On the substance of tonight’s SDNY move, there seems to be as much confusion as there is potential nefariousness — as is often the case with this administration.
📌 https://twitter.com/chrisgeidner/status/1274176125476851712?s=20
🐣 RT @steve_vladeck Clear: ¤ Barr lied. ¤ Something *really* stinks. ¤ Legally, *Barr* can’t fire Berman. ¤ Berman *can* be replaced by a Senate-confirmed successor.
Not clear: ¤ Whether *Trump* can fire Berman. ¤ Whether Barr/Trump can name his replacement *without* Senate confirmation. ¤ *WHY* this happened.
🐣 RT @richsignorelli Here are the folks who will not be sleeping well tonight: Rudy, who may soon be charged; Barr, due to his stunning and unsuccessful act of corruption and obstruction; and Stone/Flynn, because receiving a pardon/commutation from Trump just became more politically unpalatable.
WaPo Editorial: Voice of America and other U.S. government media never engage in propaganda. Is that about to change? http://wapo.st/3hJj8iQ
🐣 RT @RWPUSA This is precisely the type of behavior by Attorney General Barr that @COFinkelstein and I wrote the House Judiciary Committee about last week. We also demanded that Attorney General Barr appear before the Committee to explain himself. ¤ Enough is enough.
⋙ 🐣 RT @COFinklestein Barr’s Friday night massacre of Geoff Berman at the S.D.N.Y. must not stand. Barr is the head of DOJ, true, but if his purpose in this firing is to obstruct an official investigation, he is risking charges for obstruction of justice. http://bit.ly/3dfTajG
🐣 RT @brhodes If this is somehow routine and not an assault on the independence of DoJ why is it being done late on a Friday night?
🐣 RT @RepJerryNadler America is right to expect the worst of Bill Barr, who has repeatedly interfered in criminal investigations on Trump’s behalf. We have a hearing on this topic on Wednesday. We welcome Mr. Berman’s testimony and will invite him to testify.
⋙ 🐣 RT @Tom_Winter BREAKING / NBC News: In a statement U.S. Attorney Geoffrey Berman says “I have not resigned, and have no intention of resigning.” ¤ He says he found out he was “stepping down” by reading it in a press release.
⋙⋙ 🐣 RT @Tom_Winter BREAKING / NBC News: Berman says he will step down when a presidentially appointed nominee is confirmed by the Senate. ¤ “Until then, our investigations will move forward without delay or interruption.”
🧵 RT @AshaRangappa_ Bully Barr, how do you obstruct justice? Let us count the ways:
1. LIED about the contents of the Mueller Report, claiming that it found “no evidence” of colllusion or obstruction of justice
2. Attempted the redact material in Mueller Report which reveals that Trump DID collude
📌 https://twitter.com/AshaRangappa_/status/1274195851309723648?s=20
3. Tried to interfere in sentencing of Roger Stone, who we now know was communicating with Trump about said collusion
4. Is trying to get the case against Flynn dropped, against the interests of justice as a former federal judge serving as amicus has stated
5. Is dropping the case against RUSSIA, which attacked the U.S., by classifying info necessary to prosecute Russian defendants
6. Has testified that he doesn’t believe that foreign assistance to a campaign is even a crime if it is not directly by a “foreign intelligence service”
7. Had his OLC justify blocking a whistleblower complaint required by law to reach Congress from ever reaching Congress (an opinion which was soundly rebuked in a letter from collective Inspectors General)
8. Oversaw his Criminal Division deciding — before even investigating — that secretly extorting a foreign country to investigate a political opponent would not constitute a violation of campaign finance laws
9. Has appointed, without any legal basis that I am aware of, political appointees to (repeatedly) “investigate the investigators” of Russian interference even after the DOJ IG has investigated it
*taling [sic] a break to refill wine glass*
10. Where was I? Oh yes: Got “activated” by POTUS to tear gas peaceful protesters and clergy members in violation of the Constitution of the United States AND THEN LIED ABOUT IT
11. Has YET to mention that right-wing extremists are the most dangerous domestic terror threat AS TESTIFIED TO BY THE DIRECTOR OF THE FBI
12. But meanwhile has put the Joint Terrorism Task Force on investigating Auntie Tifa who is his imaginary foe
13. Has been pimping hydroxychloroquone in his free time for no apparent reason even though by the way we know it kills people
(Not sure this is obstruction but it’s super cray cray so including it)
14. Now is trying to fire the U.S. Attorney for SDNY which, among other things, has evidence that:
~ a) Trump is an unindicted co-conspirator in criminal campaign finance violations in conjunction with the indictment against his former lawyer, Michael Cohen
~ b) was investigating to co-conspirators of Jeffrey Epstein who died under mysterious and as yet unexplained circumstances and who by the way used to work for his DAD who wrote a bizarre novel about space sex trafficking (someone else please take over this piece because I can’t)
~ c) was reportedly investigating Fruity G & Co. playing Scooby Doo in Ukraine digging up sketchy dirt on his political opponents (see #2 and 3, reprise)
~ d) is obviously investigating other things which will continue “without interference” as per SDNY U. S. Attorney who
~~ i) never was told he was “resigning” and
~~ ii) isn’t resigning
APPENDIX A: (To tweets #11 and 12) Took it upon himself to bring in unidentified, armed federal agents to DC to intimidate the population and usurp the authority of the DC mayor*
*reserve the right to add appendices and additional vidence that I forgot or which may arise
15. I am SO EFFING DONE with this dude and if Ted Cruz wants I will wrestle Barr and settle this once and for all if Congress isn’t willing to impeach him because this %#*$! has Got. To. Stop. ¤ END (but to be continued
🐣 RT @steve_vladeck To recap:
1) Berman was appointed under 28 U.S.C. § 546(d).
2) That statute contemplates that he keeps his job until a permanent successor is confirmed by the Senate.
3) 28 U.S.C. § 541(c) says U.S. Attorneys are subject to removal by the President.
So the statutes conflict.
⋙ 🐣 RT @steve_vladeck One last point:
Because Berman was appointed under 546(d), even if the President can remove him, he can only be replaced by:
1) Someone nominated by the President & confirmed by the Senate; or
2) Someone *else* appointed by judges under 546(d).
Carpenito is neither of those.
⋙⋙ 🐣 RT @renato_mariotti Barr apparently didn’t consider this when he tried to appoint Carpenito to temporarily replace Berman.
🐣 RT @BillKristol Interesting legal/constitutional question about whether Berman can be fired by Barr or Trump, absent a Senate-confirmed successor. But the other question is: Why? Why did Trump feel then need urgently to get Berman out and get a loyalist in? And why the lie about him resigning?
🐣 RT @walterdellinger Trump/Barr’s Friday night attempt to remove the US Att. for the Southen District investigating Trump associates is more profoundly serious that my earlier tweet would suggest. Are we so nummed [sic] by Trump that presidential obstruction of justice is now just another news item?
🐣 RT @renato_mariotti If Berman was offered other big positions at DOJ, he wasn’t fired for cause. ¤ Why did Barr want him out of SDNY so badly? Who or what is SDNY investigating that Trump cares so much about? Giuliani? ¤ Congress *must* get to the bottom of this.
🐣 RT @steve_vladeck A friendly reminder, courtesy of @fedjudges, that the “blue slip” policy still applies in the Senate to confirmations of U.S. Attorney nominees…
🐣 RT @BillKristol Wow. Says he’s not stepping aside until a successor confirmed. [Statement:] https://twitter.com/BillKristol/status/1274183386328903686?s=20/photo/1
↥ ↧
🐣 RT @pleasesaveour investigators are scrutinizing Giuliani’s consulting business and eyeing donations made to America First Action, the main pro-Trump super PAC set up by his advisers and allies after his election, as well as a nonprofit affiliated with the super PAC.
🔆 This❗️⋙ WaPo: Trump administration in standoff with Manhattan U.S. attorney Geoffrey Berman http://wapo.st/2BmkpM3 “Berman fired back that he hadn’t resigned and would stay on to ensure his office’s cases proceed unimpeded”
🐣 RT @pbump Michael Cohen said that he overheard Roger Stone telling Trump about upcoming WikiLeaks releases. Apparently Trump wasn’t the only one Stone told.
⋙ BuzzfeedNews: Roger Stone Told Trump In Advance Wikileaks Would Release Documents Harmful To Clinton Campaign, Aides Claimed http://bit.ly/2YhK69K
// Newly unredacted portions of the Mueller report show that Paul Manafort, Rick Gates, and Michael Cohen told investigators Stone had promised the campaign damaging revelations by Wikileaks. The information was released following a lawsuit by BuzzFeed News.
⭕ 18 Jun 2020
VanityFair, Gabriel Sherman: John Bolton’s Unredacted Book Shows Trump Was Baldly Asking for China’s Help http://bit.ly/3dgWECz “Vanity Fair has seen unredacted pages from the book and it’s clear why the White House tried to keep Trump’s words secret”
// Trump’s own words to Xi Jinping, among others, were so damning and politicized that the government insisted they be removed.
Vanity Fair has seen unredacted pages from the book and it’s clear why the White House tried to keep Trump’s words secret: they are deeply embarrassing and illustrate Trump’s naked politicization of America’s foreign policy.
According to an unredacted passage shown to Vanity Fair by a source, Trump’s ask is even more crudely shocking when you read Trump’s specific language. “Make sure I win,” Trump allegedly told Xi during a dinner at the G20 conference in Osaka, Japan last summer. “I will probably win anyway, so don’t hurt my farms.… Buy a lot of soybeans and wheat and make sure we win.”
For example, at last year’s G20 dinner, with only interpreters present, Xi explained to Trump why China was building concentration camps for the country’s minority Uighur population. Trump allegedly told Xi he approved of the brutal human rights violation. “According to our interpreter, Trump said to Xi, ‘go ahead, you’re doing exactly the right thing.’” Bolton writes. Earlier in the same passage, Bolton writes that Trump told Xi on a phone call ahead of their G20 meeting: “I miss you,” and then said, “this is totally up to you, but the most popular thing I’ve ever been involved with is making a deal with China.… Making a deal with China would be a very popular thing for me.’”
💙 🐣 RT @ForeignAffairs “Having destroyed many Americans’ trust in their country’s democratic institutions, Trump has set about destroying the institutions themselves, one oversight mechanism at a time.”
⋙ ForeignAffairs, Daron Acemoglu: America’s Democratic Unraveling http://fam.ag/30VsVwn
// 6/15/2020; Countries fail the same way businesses do, gradually and then suddenly.
[E]ven if the Democratic candidate, Joe Biden, wins the upcoming election—and even if Trump leaves office without a fight—his new administration will confront damage that it will be powerless to fix unless it addresses the deep structural problems that propelled Trump into office in the first place.
To regain … trust, the next administration must confront endemic racism as well as economic inequality. Good jobs must once again be on offer for most Americans—even those without college degrees. Redressing these wrongs will go a long way toward restoring faith in American democratic institutions. But the next administration must also redouble its commitment to bureaucratic expertise, competence, and autonomy. Institutions don’t merit public trust if they serve the interests of the president or other politicians instead of the interests of the people. Americans deserve better. One hopes they will use the ballot box, and if necessary the streets, to make sure that they get better.
🐣 RT @brianstelter Dr. Fauci diagnosing an American problem: “There is a combination of an anti-science bias that people are – for reasons that sometimes are, you know, inconceivable and not understandable – they just don’t believe science and they don’t believe authority.”
⋙ CNN: Fauci warns of ‘anti-science bias’ being a problem in US http://cnn.it/30XW8Xs
WaPo, Michael Gerson: The stage is being set for the repudiation of Donald Trump in November http://wapo.st/3efxfdF “The ideological carnage that Trump has wreaked on the American right is large and lasting”
// The president is a failure without peer.
NYT: Is Donald Trump a Danger to Democracy? http://nyti.ms/3fCFS25 Yasha Mounk reviews Masha Gessen’s “Surviving Autocracy” and Eric Posner’s “The Demagogue’s Playbook: The Battle for American Democracy From the Founders to Trump”
WaPo: Russia. Ukraine. China. Bolton account highlights pattern of Trump welcoming foreign political help. http://wapo.st/2YSMGBU “Experts fear that Trump’s behavior may embolden nations to try to sway U.S. voters in the 2020 campaign”
WaPo, Philip Rucker: Bolton book and Supreme Court ruling on ‘dreamers’ amount to twin defeats to Trump http://wapo.st/2CdN1Ye “‘This is a blow against Trump that has existential implications for his presidency … Trump is becoming what he hates most, which is being a loser.’”
// In a span of less than 24 hours this week, Trump twice had the whistle blown on his moves to bust through the boundaries of law.
🐣 RT @TheLastWord Bolton’s book reveals a long list of Trump’s misconduct, including that Trump solicited China’s help with his reelection. @brhodes tells @Lawrence it’s “absurd” that Bolton refused to testify about Trump’s corrupt conduct during impeachment. https://on.msnbc.com/30UWrT2
🐣 RT @pontifex The Lord cannot enter into hard or ideological hearts. The Lord enters into hearts that are like His: hearts that are open and compassionate.
🐣 RT @eliehonig The House can still subpoena John Bolton. It’ll be too little, too late, but let’s see if this guy finds a reason to to run and hide yet again.
💙🐣 RT @MarthaRaddatz “I don’t think he’s fit for office. I don’t think he has the competence to carry out the job,” former national security adviser John Bolton tells me of Pres. Trump. ¤ Watch more from my exclusive interview with Bolton Sunday at 9|8c.
⋙ ABCNews: Bolton: Trump’s not ‘fit for office,’ doesn’t have ‘competence to carry out the job’ http://abcn.ws/3fH80RX
// In an ABC interview, Bolton says Trump was singularly focused on reelection.
“There really isn’t any guiding principle that I was able to discern other than what’s good for Donald Trump’s reelection,” Bolton told ABC News chief global affairs correspondent Martha Raddatz. ¤ “He was so focused on the reelection that longer-term considerations fell by the wayside,” he added.
🐣 Is it too late for the House to subpoena Bolton, to get him under oath? @RepAdamSchiff @SpeakerPelosi @danielsgoldman @Morning_Joe @JoeNBC @MorningMika
🐣 RT @HoarseWhisperer I’m issuing my first Excellence in Headlining Award to Mother Jones. ¤ Congratulations on your deserved honor, @MotherJones!
⋙ MotherJones, Dan Friedman: Say It Under Oath, Asshole http://bit.ly/30SBiZr
// John Bolton wants to join the resistance. He’s too late.
🐣 RT @MSNBC “The thing that is so striking about what we are reading about this book … is how consistent it is with the case that we built.” — Daniel Goldman, fmr. House majority counsel in the Trump impeachment, on John Bolton’s new book https://twitter.com/MSNBC/status/1273541005300686848?s=20
⭕ 17 Jun 2020
WaPo (6/17): An officer was gunned down. The killer was a ‘boogaloo boy’ using nearby peaceful protests as cover, feds say. http://wapo.st/2EXVQqJ
// 6/17/2020; saboteur provocateur;
DailyBeast, Michael Tomasky: John Bolton Shows That All the President’s Men Are Cowards http://bit.ly/3ddaIg7 “Bolton had a chance to speak up before all those people died from Trump’s selfish incompetence. … [W]ith Trump, something bad was coming. It was inevitable”
// I’m glad the book is out. We all should be. Pecuniary motive aside, it takes a little bit of kishkes for Bolton to say these things.
The president of the United States has been destroying this country, eroding its decent values every single day of his presidency, until matters have finally reached the point that, through his malevolence and stupidity and lack of empathy, he is actually and literally responsible for the deaths of tens of thousands of Americans.
Bolton had a chance to speak up before all those people died from Trump’s selfish incompetence. Of course he couldn’t have known that was coming. But with Trump, something bad was coming. It was inevitable. Maybe with a different roll of the dice, war with Iran. The man is a lunatic, completely in over his head in this job, mentally unstable, and an instrument of national grief just waiting to happen every day. It’s been obvious to everyone for years.
Because cheating is his way. That man would steal a shilling from Tiny Tim and brag about it. So what happens between now and November, when Pompeo and Mark Meadows and others witness more cheating; more obviously unethical or even illegal acts? Because it’s going to happen. Are they just going to watch him rape the Constitution, murder democracy, and steal an election while staying silent, and saving it for their memoirs? ¤ I’m looking for one honest soul here. It seems to be too much to ask.
TheBulwark, William Kristol: John Bolton Tells the Truth http://bit.ly/2YJT2nf
// Even if they don’t like him, every Republican and conservative in Washington knows that Bolton doesn’t make things up. What will they do now?
USAToday, Trevor Wrobleski and Dr. Joshua Sharfstein: Another coronavirus danger: Harassment of public health leaders poses new threat http://bit.ly/3eef4VI
// Targeting of public health leaders is unprecedented and dangerous. All who care about the health of their communities should help stop this trend.
💙 🐣 RT @AngrierWHStaff Fun fact: Bush fought like hell against going to the bunker — wanted to send Cheney instead. He didn’t want to do anything but get back to DC where he could be visible for the American people. ¤ Obama and Biden had a similar agreement — if shit hit the fan, Biden would bunker.
WaPo, David Ignatius: John Bolton’s book is full of startling revelations he should have told us sooner http://wapo.st/3d6Zn1a “This account should deeply embarrass Republican senators who offered unblinking defenses of Trump’s Ukraine actions during the impeachment trial”
WaPo, Max Boot: John Bolton delivers a scathing indictment of Trump — and of himself http://wapo.st/37ICYq2 “There is no one who could have done more to aid a wider impeachment inquiry than you — but you failed us when the nation needed you most“
WaPo: Joe Biden reacts to allegations against Trump in Bolton book, calls them ‘morally repugnant’ http://wapo.st/3hGzRmK
🐣 RT @ChrisMurphyCT The Chinese leader told Trump that he was going to set up concentration camps for millions of Muslims and Trump replied, “build the camps, it’s exactly the right thing to do.” ¤ Chew on that for a minute. ¤ Our president is PRO-concentration camp.
🐣 RT @juliaioffe While you’re worrying about “TwitteЯ cancel culture,” the U.S. government is trying to ruin the career of an actual refugee from the Soviet Union for speaking out against Trump in a legal setting. Taste the difference.
🐣 RT @crampell Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman’s promotion is in jeopardy over what some officials fear could be White House retaliation for his role in last year’s impeachment inquiry
⋙ WaPo: Role in Trump’s impeachment casts shadow over Army officer’s promotion http://wapo.st/3hE59ed
🐣 RT @brianstelter BREAKING: The heads of four organizations overseen by the US Agency for Global Media were dismissed tonight. A former official called it a “Wednesday night massacre.” Full story by @jmhansler and @brianstelter
💙 ⋙ CNN: ‘Wednesday night massacre’ as Trump appointee takes over at global media agency http://cnn.it/2YcYWy9
🐣 RT @eliehonig My latest @CNN: “Bolton could have changed the course of history. Instead, he will go down in a footnote as an enabler of corruption, a model of cowardice and an opportunist who put self above country.”
⋙ CNN, Elie Honig: John Bolton betrayed his country http://cnn.it/3hDf0B0 “John Bolton has offered the nation a staggering profile in cowardice. He has left no doubt about his own monumental betrayal of his country”
According to the New York Times, Bolton now belatedly reveals in his book that Trump explicitly conditioned foreign aid to Ukraine on investigations of his political opponents. Trump’s defenders repeatedly claimed there was no “firsthand evidence” of a quid pro quo. Bolton’s testimony would have established just that.
Worse, Bolton now tells the world that he witnessed (and apparently decided to do nothing about) not just one impeachable act, but several. Showing a remarkable lack of self-awareness, he criticizes House investigators for committing “impeachment malpractice” by failing to discover these critical facts. But how, exactly, should investigators have discovered this information when the key witness — Bolton himself — played games and refused to talk?
Even more troubling, Bolton now details Trump’s active solicitation of election assistance from Chinese President Xi Jinping. Bolton proclaims that “I saw these developments as a threat to U.S. strategic interests and to our friends and allies.” ¤ Bolton now writes that Trump engaged in “a pattern of fundamentally unacceptable behavior that eroded the very legitimacy of the presidency. ”
🐣 RT @Susan_Hennessey One interesting wrinkle for the government is that in order to claim elements of Bolton’s book are classified, the government must admit the information in question is true. There’s no such thing as a classified lie.
🐣 RT @BillKristol “By reminding those in uniform that their loyalty lies with the Constitution…the military’s leadership has affirmed that it will stand with the American people through the ultimate test—the peaceful transition of power…It should not have come to this.”
⋙ TheBulwark, Ken Harbaugh: The Generals Are Fighting Back http://bit.ly/2YESUW4
// It should not have come to this.
🐣 RT @brianstelter JUST IN: Simon & Schuster’s response to the DOJ’s new filing against Bolton: “A frivolous, politically motivated exercise in futility. Hundreds of thousands of copies of the book have already been distributed around the country and the world.”
⋙ 🐣 RT @brianstelter The DOJ wants a temporary restraining order so that a court will enforce its order against John Bolton’s book. His publisher Simon & Schuster points out that “the injunction as requested by the government would accomplish nothing.” The book is effectively already out.
🐣 RT @kylegriffin1 Joe Biden: “Today, we learned from John Bolton, the President’s former national security advisor, that President Trump sold out the American people to protect his political future. He reportedly directly asked Xi Jinping, China’s leader, to help him get re-elected.”
🐣 RT @itsjefftiedrich “you should have impeached Trump for the things I refused to tell you about” is peak Bolton
🐣 RT @brhodes Our government is run by a corrupt cabal in collaboration with the world’s most odious dictators with the full support of the GOP
🐣 RT @chrislhayes Take a step back to marvel at the 11.5 years of GOP presidencies in this century: just complete unmitigated disaster through and through. As bad a governing run as any party since the civil war. Just astonishing combination of corruption, incompetence and cruelty.
NYT: Five Takeaways From John Bolton’s Memoir http://nyti.ms/2Y9QPSV
// Baker; “The Room Where It Happened” describes Mr. Bolton’s 17 turbulent months at President Trump’s side through a multitude of crises and foreign policy challenges.
💙 🔆 This❗️⋙ WaPo: Trump asked China’s Xi to help him win reelection, according to Bolton book http://wapo.st/2N9Gf8h //➔ WaPo got a copy of Bolton’s book. If you don’t want to buy it, read this article. LOTS of details!
// “The Room Where It Happened: A White House Memoir”
During a one-on-one meeting at the June 2019 Group of 20 summit in Japan, Xi complained to Trump about China critics in the United States. But Bolton writes in a book scheduled to be released next week that “ Trump immediately assumed Xi meant the Democrats. Trump said approvingly that there was great hostility among the Democrats. ¤ “He then, stunningly, turned the conversation to the coming U.S. presidential election, alluding to China’s economic capability to affect the ongoing campaigns, pleading with Xi to ensure he’d win,” Bolton writes. … The China allegation also comes amid ongoing warnings from U.S. intelligence agencies about foreign election interference in November, as Russia did to favor Trump in 2016.
The request for electoral assistance from Xi is just one of many instances described by Bolton in which Trump seeks favors or approval from authoritarian leaders. Many of those same leaders were also happy to take advantage of the U.S. president and attempt to manipulate him, Bolton writes, often through simplistic appeals to his various obsessions.
In May 2018, Bolton says, Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdogan handed Trump a memo claiming innocence for a Turkish firm under investigation by the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York for violating Iranian sanctions.
“Trump then told Erdogan he would take care of things, explaining that the Southern District prosecutors were not his people, but were Obama people, a problem that would be fixed when they were replaced by his people,” Bolton writes.
… Bolton writes that Barr agreed he also was worried about the appearances created by the president’s behavior.
Bolton broadly confirms the outline of the impeachment case laid out by Democratic lawmakers and witnesses in House proceedings earlier this year, writing that Trump was fixated on a bogus claim that Ukraine tried to hurt him and was in thrall to unfounded conspiracy theories pushed by presidential lawyer Rudolph W. Giuliani and others.
… [Bolton] found Trump’s decision to hold up military assistance to pressure newly elected Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky “deeply disturbing,” and that he tried to work internally to counter it, reporting concerns to Barr and the White House Counsel’s Office. ¤ “I thought the whole affair was bad policy, questionable legally and unacceptable as presidential behavior,” he writes.
… Chief of Staff John F. Kelly, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and Bolton himself — all considered resigning in disgust or frustration. Even some of the president’s most loyal advisers hold a grim view of him in private …
“He second-guessed people’s motives, saw conspiracies behind rocks, and remained stunningly uninformed on how to run the White House, let alone the huge federal government,” Bolton writes, always looking to “personal instinct” and opportunities for “reality TV showmanship.”
Bolton’s book is also filled with examples of Trump’s closest advisers sharply criticizing the president behind his back, including Pompeo.
Trump said invading Venezuela would be “cool” and that the South American nation was “really part of the United States.”
… Trump told Xi that Americans were clamoring for him to change the constitutional rules to serve more than two terms, according to the book.
… Trump [said] journalists should be jailed so they have to divulge their sources: “These people should be executed. They are scumbags,”
For Trump, Bolton writes, one singular goal loomed above all: securing a second term. ¤ “I am hard pressed to identify any significant Trump decision during my tenure that wasn’t driven by reelection calculations,” Bolton writes.
Though Trump approved of a proposal from Bolton to publicly declare the United States recognized Guaidó rather than Maduro, within 30 hours Trump was already worrying that Guaidó appeared weak — a “kid” compared to “tough” Maduro — and considering changing course.
[Trump] consistently opposed to U.S. policy designed to discourage Russian aggression and to sanction Putin’s malign behavior. ¤ … Helsinki summit in July 2018, when Trump sided with Putin against U.S. intelligence agencies over Moscow’s interference in the 2016 election. ¤ “This was hardly the way to do relations with Russia, and Putin had to be laughing uproariously at what he had gotten away with in Helsinki,” Bolton writes.
[Bolton] describes Trump and top advisers repeatedly slashing each other, lying to each other and outmaneuvering each other to gain advantage. ¤ … Should he replace Vice President Pence with Haley on the 2020 ticket? According to his book, the idea was floated by Kushner and his wife, Trump’s daughter Ivanka.
“I briefed Pompeo and Mnuchin on this new ‘son-in-law channel’ and they both exploded. Pompeo was furious, Bolton writes, “because this was one more example of Kushner’s doing international negotiations he shouldn’t have been doing (along with the never quite ready Middle East peace plan.)”
“Why is Jared calling Mexicans?” Kelly asked loudly, according to the book. “Because I asked him to. How else are we going to stop the caravans?” Trump responded.
In November 2018, Trump came under fire for writing an unfettered defense of Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, littered with exclamation points, over the killing of Washington Post columnist Jamaal Khashoggi. But according to Bolton’s book, the main goal of the missive was to take away attention from a story about Ivanka Trump using her personal email for government business.
He repeatedly describes Trump lashing out at military leaders, demanding to withdraw troops from the Middle East and all around the world — from Africa to Europe to the Middle East. “I want to get out of everything,”
Trump repeatedly told Mattis that he had been given a chance but had failed. ¤ “I gave you what you asked for: Unlimited authority, no holds barred. You’re losing. You’re getting your ass kicked. You failed,” Trump says.
Bolton castigates Trump’s diplomatic efforts, saying the president cared little for the details of the denuclearization effort and saw it merely as a “an exercise in publicity.” ¤ “Trump told … me he was prepared to sign a substance-free communique, have his press conference to declare victory and then get out of town,” Bolton wrote. ¤ Bolton described Trump’s inordinate interest in Pompeo delivering an autographed copy of Elton John’s “Rocket Man” CD to Kim during Pompeo’s follow on visit to North Korea. Trump originally used the term “Rocket Man” to criticize the North Korean leader but subsequently tried to convince Kim that it was a term of affection.
⭕ 16 Jun 2020
💽 MSNBC, RachelMaddow: World takes note of waning influence of U.S. mired in crises http://on.msnbc.com/2USTAGn
// Robert Gates, former defense secretary for President George W. Bush and President Barack Obama, talks with Rachel Maddow about how the world sees American economic problems and political paralysis as a sign that the U.S. is not an example to be followed.
NYT: Justice Dept. Official to Exit, Signaling Third Departure in Recent Days http://nyti.ms/2YGeAkx Besides Joseph H Hunt, who served as head of the civil division, Brian A Benczkowski, the head of the criminal division, and Noel J Francisco, the solicitor general, are leaving
// The head of the department’s civil division said he would leave next month after a 20-year career. He did not say why.
NYT: Prosecutor in Roger Stone Case Will Testify About Barr’s Intervention http://nyti.ms/3fxvcC0 Aaron S.J. Zelinsky, along with a second Justice Department official, John W. Elias, will testify June 24 about politicization under Attorney General William P. Barr
// The prosecutor is one of two Justice Department officials coming forward whom Democrats are calling whistle-blowers.
WaPo: Justice Department seeks court order to block release of book by former national security adviser John Bolton http://wapo.st/2Beuw5w The Room Where It Happened “is due to go on sale June 23 and has already been shipped to distribution centers across the country”
🐣 RT @brianklaas The best thing for America and the world isn’t just a Trump loss in November; it’s a resounding, historic defeat that tosses Trumpism into the dustbin of history and forces the Republican Party to become sane, after exorcising its authoritarian, racist, conspiracist demons.
⭕ 15 Jun 2020
🐣 RT @McFaul This. Not matter what Bannon and other “we-are-tougher-on-China” Republican screamers say, this is the reality — Xi and Putin both prefer Trump.
⋙ 🐣 RT @AlexanderAbuev In Beijing, officials have come around to support four more years of Trump. The Kremlin’s attitude towards Trump 2.0 looks similar: benefits of erosion of U.S. leadership outweigh risks, damage on issues like arms control etc.
⋙⋙ Bloomberg: China Warms to Idea of Four More Years of Trump Presidency http://bloom.bg/3e5SX3z
// Erosion of U.S. alliances outweighs trade blows, officials say. China-U.S. ties to deteriorate no matter who wins, they say
🐣 RT @jgeltzer This is not true of classification. ¤ This is not even true of executive privilege. ¤ This is not true of anything.
⋙ 🐣 RT @jeffmason1 Trump says any conversation with him is classified
JustSecurity: Statement of Homeland and National Security Leaders http://bit.ly/2C9XJPC “We oppose the use of the active duty military to patrol the streets of our cities in response to the ongoing protests” ● Text Block: https://twitter.com/Auriandra/status/1272546140773404674?s=20/photo/1
// Former Republican and Democratic cabinet members and other senior officials speak out about protests, use of the military, racial justice, and policing
Moreover, the blanket use of the label “terrorists” to justify the use of para-military and military force is both factually wrong and legally unsupportable—contradicting core constitutional principles. Simply put, this nation has been through challenging times before, and we believe our law enforcement and homeland security institutions are best situated both practically and legally to address these challenges.
⭕ 14 Jun 2020
WaPo: More than 400 arrested during protests in the District http://wapo.st/2Yz3hL9 “We have not seen any indication that any individual who was arrested … was a member of an extremist left-wing group like antifa,” said Karl A. Racine, the District’s attorney general
// rest of title: Among … most cases involve curfew violations and burglary
“We have not seen any indication that any individual who was arrested, or served with a citation, was a member of an extremist left-wing group like antifa,” Racine said. “We have no evidence to support the statements of Attorney General Barr.”
🐣 RT @waltshaub Appalling! The @CDCgov is banning @VOANews, a federal government-run news outlet, from covering its activities. The would-be authoritarians apparently feel that any news created by the government should be Trumpist propaganda, and VOA’s not having it.
⋙ VOA: Director’s Statement on CDC’s Media Interview Policy Excluding VOA Journalists http://bit.ly/30Jjos6
💙 NYRB, Walter Shaub: Ransacking the Republic http://bit.ly/2BcByYk “Trump appears to recognize no line between his political career and the government’s administration of criminal justice”
// July 2 issue
⭕ 13 Jun 2020
⭕ 12 Jun 2020
Lawfare, Benjamin Wittes: Oral Argument Summary: In re: Michael Flynn http://bit.ly/30EAibf “[T]he D.C. Circuit’s remote hearing concerned whether the appeals court should preemptively order Sullivan to dismiss the case” since the DOJ decided to drop the prosecution
// “[T]he case before the D.C. Circuit’s remote hearing concerned whether the appeals court should preemptively order Sullivan to dismiss the case on the theory that he has no authority to do anything else”
DailyBeast, David Lurie: The Mike Flynn Fix Is in, But the Court Proceedings Still Matter. Here’s Why. http://bit.ly/3hqZyYm //➔ Claiming Flynn was set up by the Obama “deep state” is key to Trump’s re-election strategy; Judge Emmett Sullivan wants us to know what they’re up to
// The DOJ’s concern here isn’t with Flynn, but with the threat to the “integrity” of the “Executive” if they have to explain to a judge why they’re letting Trump’s pal walk away.
If Bill Barr’s Justice Department can’t convince a panel of judges to force Flynn’s trial judge, Emmet Sullivan, to let Flynn withdraw the guilty plea he’d already submitted, and that Sullivan has accepted, Trump will just pardon his former National Security Adviser. One way or the other, Flynn is getting off the hook.
The question is whether or not Barr’s crew will have to explain why they’re letting an admittedly guilty man walk. ¤ Friday, Justice Department attorneys argued before a federal appellate court that they shouldn’t have to explain themselves at all, after former federal judge John Gleeson— appointed by Sullivan to argue for the position that the Justice Department abandoned when they walked away from a conviction obtained by Robery Mueller—called the Trump administration’s reversal a “gross abuse of prosecutorial power” and “an unconvincing effort to disguise as legitimate a decision to dismiss that is based solely on the fact that Flynn is a political ally of President Trump.”
Wall acknowledged what is really at stake for Barr, and, most importantly, Trump: The risk of public embarrassment. According to Wall, a hearing on the DOJ’s motion would be a “spectacle” and could threaten the “integrity” of the “Executive,” meaning Trump’s presidency. That may be true, but for reasons that should lead the appellate court to deny Flynn’s petition.
As Gleeson demonstrates in his brief, the public record raises serious questions of misconduct, not by the FBI agents and prosecutors who brought the case against Flynn, but rather by Trump’s consigliere, Barr. Gleeson dismantles the government’s motion to dismiss, demonstrating that it is based on pretextual legal and factual arguments, and is infected with open and notorious evidence of prosecutorial abuse.
[T]he extraordinary motion is about Barr’s effort to use the court system as a theater in which to advance Trump’s “deep state” conspiracy theory during the months leading up to the election – and to do so without any pesky interference by a judge seeking to cast light on the government’s motive and purpose
If the DOJ has become the house counsel for a corrupt president and is dropping the charges against a twice admitted felon, not because the case was defective, but because he’s Trump’s guy, the nation should learn that, and before the election, regardless of whether Flynn ends up walking free. The end of this movie, after all, will really be in November.
⭕ 11 Jun 2020
🐣 RT @meredithmcgraw From the press release for @AmbJohnBolton’s book: “What Bolton saw astonished him: a president for whom getting reelected was the only thing that mattered, even if it meant endangering or weakening the nation.” Text Block: https://twitter.com/meridithmcgraw/status/1271443359824072704?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @kylegriffin1 John Bolton will claim in his forthcoming book that Trump engaged in “misconduct with other countries,” beyond his contacts with Ukraine. https://twitter.com/kylegriffin1/status/1271462268786536454?s=20/photo/1
⋙ Axios: Scoop: John Bolton to argue Trump misconduct http://bit.ly/2YxwwOc
🐣 RT @peterbakerNYT Bolton in his new book, per publisher release: “I am hard-pressed to identify any significant Trump decision during my tenure that wasn’t driven by reelection calculations.” The House committed “impeachment malpractice” for charging him only with the Ukraine matter, Bolton says.
WaPo: Quarrel between Trump and military leaders intensifies as Milley apologizes for photo op http://wapo.st/2XWHNJ3 Trump’s speech on Saturday to West Point cadets has generated controversy & will be carefully watched. “50-50 he’ll disgrace himself” – Ret. Gen. Barry McCaffrey
// The perception that Pentagon leaders went along with Trump’s desire to use military force against domestic protesters has caused the biggest civil-military crisis in more than a decade
💽 WaPo: Pentagon’s top general apologizes for appearing alongside Trump in Lafayette Square http://wapo.st/37l69Pw Gen. Mark A. Milley, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff: “I should not have been there”
WaPo: Senate Judiciary approves dozens of subpoenas targeting origins of Russia probe http://wapo.st/2XU9imA
⭕ 10 Jun 2020
ProPublica: Rick Perry’s Ukrainian Dream http://bit.ly/3mWxpvg
// This story is co-published with Time and WNYC; When the then-energy secretary accidentally helped lead the president into impeachment, he was simultaneously trying to help his friends cash in on a big gas deal.
WSJ, Chuck Cooper: The White House vs. John Bolton http://on.wsj.com/37pET2D The book will be published on June 23, over White House objections. Mr. Cooper is a founding member and chairman of Cooper & Kirk LLC. He represents John Bolton.
// Officials are attempting to use national security as a pretext to prevent the publication of his memoir.
WaPo Editorial: Trump is spreading a dangerous conspiracy theory about antifa http://wapo.st/37kmzYA “The real provocateur here is the president”
PRESIDENT TRUMP spread a deranged and dangerous conspiracy theory this week when he accused a 75-year-old man pushed to the ground by police in Buffalo of faking the force of his fall — as well as attempting to “scan” the cops. The man, claimed the president, was “antifa,” a member of a militant activist network known for violent tactics.
This allegation was entirely baseless, a shameful smear of a victim of state violence. It was also part of a pattern. The White House, with the help of Attorney General William P. Barr, is inventing a domestic terror threat from whole cloth, blaming the loose, left-wing anti-fascist, or antifa, movement for the unrest roiling the country these past weeks. The only thing that’s missing is the evidence.
Yet experts point out that disrupting demonstrations in general alignment with antifa’s goal of dismantling white supremacy is hardly the group’s ideological bailiwick. They’ve also pointed out that the group isn’t much of a group at all: that antifa is too diffuse and too small to mount a coordinated co-option campaign.
The government’s own analysis agrees. The FBI’s internal situation report on the May 31 protests in Washington says the field office “has no intelligence indicating Antifa involvement/presence”; Justice Department records show no links to antifa in relevant cases. A new multiagency bulletin identifies the primary threat as “lone offenders with racially or ethnically motivated violent extremist ideologies” and domestic violent extremists “with personalized ideologies.”
Meanwhile, three men arrested for plotting violence in connection with protests in Las Vegas are indeed allegedly involved with a militant group: the right-wing “Boogaloo” movement. When asked about these arrests over the weekend, how did the administration respond? By talking about antifa again.
These words matter. They exist in an ecosystem crawling with misinformation. White nationalist networks are masquerading as antifa and vowing to “move into residential areas,” and people are believing what they hear. Citizens of rural communities believe buses and even planes stuffed with antifa activists are coming to town, so they’re gathering with baseball bats and guns to confront them. They’re finding only peaceful protesters, no different from the innocent man shoved into unconsciousness in Buffalo.
What Mr. Trump is doing today is even more appalling than an attempt to distract from deeply felt discontent. By inventing a violent, even terrorist, effort with not a scintilla of proof, he makes an excuse for military escalation — and for impunity when the state engages in the same brutality these protests are responding to. The real provocateur here is the president.
WaPo: More than 1,250 former Justice Dept. workers call for internal watchdog to probe Barr role in clearing demonstrators from Lafayette Square http://wapo.st/3cQlqcp
💙 WaPo: Flynn committed perjury and his guilty plea of lying to FBI should not be dismissed as DOJ requests, court-appointed expert finds http://wapo.st/3cSeJX4 former NY fed judge John Gleeson called DOJ’s attempt to undo Flynn’s conviction “a gross abuse of prosecutorial power”
// reported his findings to Judge Emmet Sullivan
“Flynn has indeed committed perjury in these proceedings, for which he deserves punishment, and the Court has the authority to initiate a prosecution for that crime,” Gleeson wrote in an 82-page opinion. “I respectfully recommend, however, that the Court not exercise that authority. Rather, it should take Flynn’s perjury into account in sentencing him on the offense to which he has already admitted guilt. This approach — rather than a separate prosecution for perjury or contempt — aligns with the Court’s intent to treat this case, and this Defendant, in the same way it would any other.”
In its motion, which is supported by Flynn and which prompted a career department prosecutor to quit the case, the department [DOJ] said it had concluded that Flynn’s January 2017 FBI interview was unjustified and “conducted without any legitimate investigative basis,” so any lies he told about his contacts with Russia and other foreign governments were immaterial to any crime.
In his argument, Gleeson said the government’s “ostensible grounds” for seeking dismissal were “conclusively disproven” by its own earlier briefs; contradict the court’s prior orders and Justice Department positions taken in other cases; and “are riddled with inexplicable and elementary errors of law and fact.”
A former federal prosecutor and judge for 22 years in Brooklyn — best known for putting the late mob boss John Gotti behind bars and presiding over the trial of “Wolf of Wall Street” stockbroker Jordan Belfort — Gleeson wrote that judges are empowered to protect their court’s integrity “from prosecutors who undertake corrupt, politically motivated dismissals. That is what has happened here. The Government has engaged in highly irregular conduct to benefit a political ally of the President.”
On Friday, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit is expected to hear arguments over Sullivan’s refusal to immediately dismiss Flynn’s case. Flynn’s lawyers have accused Sullivan of bias and asked the federal appeals court to intervene, asking that it order Sullivan to drop the prosecution immediately or to reassign Flynn’s case to another judge.
Sullivan’s attorney has argued that he should not be required to act as a “mere rubber stamp” for the government’s unusual request.
“What, if anything, should Judge Sullivan do about Mr. Flynn’s sworn statements to the court, where he repeatedly admitted to the crime and to the voluntariness of his guilty plea, only to now claim that he never lied to the government and was pressured and misled into pleading guilty?” Sullivan’s lawyer Beth Wilkinson argued in a filing to the appeals court last week.
ForeignAffairs, Francis Fukuyama: The Pandemic and Political Order http://fam.ag/2AkSXOF “The factors responsible for successful pandemic responses have been state capacity, social trust, and leadership. … The United States has bungled its response badly”
// Jul-Aug 2020; It Takes a State
It is already clear why some countries have done better than others in dealing with the crisis so far, and there is every reason to think those trends will continue. It is not a matter of regime type. Some democracies have performed well, but others have not, and the same is true for autocracies. The factors responsible for successful pandemic responses have been state capacity, social trust, and leadership. Countries with all three—a competent state apparatus, a government that citizens trust and listen to, and effective leaders—have performed impressively, limiting the damage they have suffered. Countries with dysfunctional states, polarized societies, or poor leadership have done badly, leaving their citizens and economies exposed and vulnerable. …
The United States, in contrast, has bungled its response badly and seen its prestige slip enormously. The country has vast potential state capacity and had built an impressive track record over previous epidemiological crises, but its current highly polarized society and incompetent leader blocked the state from functioning effectively. The president stoked division rather than promoting unity, politicized the distribution of aid, pushed responsibility onto governors for making key decisions while encouraging protests against them for protecting public health, and attacked international institutions rather than galvanizing them. The world can watch TV, too, and has stood by in amazement, with China quick to make the comparison clear.
Over the years to come, the pandemic could lead to the United States’ relative decline, the continued erosion of the liberal international order, and a resurgence of fascism around the globe. It could also lead to a rebirth of liberal democracy, a system that has confounded skeptics many times, showing remarkable powers of resilience and renewal. Elements of both visions will emerge, in different places. Unfortunately, unless current trends change dramatically, the general forecast is gloomy.
This might put to rest the extreme forms of neoliberalism, the free-market ideology pioneered by University of Chicago economists such as Gary Becker, Milton Friedman, and George Stigler. During the 1980s, the Chicago school provided intellectual justification for the policies of U.S. President Ronald Reagan and British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, who considered large, intrusive government to be an obstacle to economic growth and human progress. At the time, there were good reasons to cut back many forms of government ownership and regulation. But the arguments hardened into a libertarian religion, embedding hostility to state action in a generation of conservative intellectuals, particularly in the United States.
The biggest variable is the United States. It was the country’s singular misfortune to have the most incompetent and divisive leader in its modern history at the helm when the crisis hit, and his mode of governance did not change under pressure. Having spent his term at war with the state he heads, he was unable to deploy it effectively when the situation demanded. Having judged that his political fortunes were best served by confrontation and rancor rather than national unity, he has used the crisis to pick fights and increase social cleavages. American underperformance during the pandemic has several causes, but the most significant has been a national leader who has failed to lead.
Even should the Democrats take the White House and both houses of Congress, they would inherit a country on its knees. Demands for action will meet mountains of debt and die-hard resistance from a rump opposition. National and international institutions will be weak and reeling after years of abuse, and it will take years to rebuild them—if it is still possible at all.
With the most urgent and tragic phase of the crisis past, the world is moving into a long, depressing slog. It will come out of it eventually, some parts faster than others. Violent global convulsions are unlikely, and democracy, capitalism, and the United States have all proved capable of transformation and adaptation before. But they will need to pull a rabbit out of the hat once again.
⭕ 9 Jun 2020
WSJ: Trump Wanted to Fire Esper Over Troops Dispute http://on.wsj.com/2YppR90 Esper “was making his own preparations to resign, … over the differences regarding the role of the military … before he was persuaded not to do so by aides and other advisers …” Text Block:
● https://twitter.com/Auriandra/status/1270438978886516745?s=20/photo/1
// How defense secretary’s stand against federal troops at protests prompted president’s plan to fire him
Last Wednesday, Mr. Esper said that he didn’t think using federal troops in American streets was warranted at that time. The comments, made in an opening statement at a news conference at the Pentagon, weren’t vetted beforehand by the White House, and the statement caught officials there off guard, two officials said. …
Advisers consulted by Mr. Trump that day included White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows; Secretary of State Mike Pompeo; longtime Trump friend and outside adviser David Urban; and Sens. Tom Cotton (R., Ark.) and James Inhofe (R., Okla.), the officials said. ¤ Mr. Trump informed these people that he planned to remove Mr. Esper as soon as that day, according to several of the officials. …
The advisers argued that firing Mr. Esper would put the Trump administration in a tough spot: there were few qualified individuals who could quickly replace Mr. Esper, and that could leave the Pentagon without a confirmed leader as Mr. Trump faced voters in November. …
After the Pentagon press conference on Wednesday that angered Mr. Trump, Mr. Esper went to the White House for a previously scheduled meeting, officials said. There, he met face-to-face with Mr. Trump in what the officials said was an unpleasant encounter for Mr. Esper. The two ultimately came to terms, the officials said.
🐣 RT @TheRickWilson They’re not conservatives. They are fanboys of racially-inflected authoritarianism.
⋙ 🐣 RT @allen Opinion: conservatives literally went from “life starts at conception and should be protected at all costs” to, “kill grandma to save the economy” then “let the police kill black and brown people cause this is America” in less than six months.
WaPo, Max Boot: The GOP has gone from tea party libertarianism to Trumpian authoritarianism http://wapo.st/2MG9nnr “The rejection of libertarianism isn’t necessarily a bad thing. What’s worrying is that the Republican Party has become increasingly hostile toward liberal democracy”
The spur for this development is, of course, President Trump. He proclaims, “I have to the right to do whatever I want as president,” and acts as though he means it. He has spent money on a border wall that Congress hasn’t authorized; locked up immigrant children in cages; blocked immigration from multiple Muslim nations and now (under cover of the coronavirus pandemic) from all nations; purged government watchdogs; and issued an executive order cracking down on social media after Twitter fact-checked him.
When demonstrations swept the country following the killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis, Trump acted like a would-be authoritarian: He threatened to have looters shot, demanded that the National Guard “dominate” the streets, and wanted to deploy 10,000 troops. The Pentagon balked at his demands, but security forces did gas peaceful protesters in Lafayette Square so he could stage a photo-op.
Trump blames recent disorder on “ANTIFA & other Wacko groups of Anarchists,” even though there is no evidence that antifa — a loosely knit group of far-left activists — is behind any of it. “Is there a shorter term for anti-anti-fascism?” historian Kevin M. Kruse quips. Yes, there is, and Republicans are increasingly flirting with fascism.
⭕ 8 Jun 2020
💽 MSNBC, Steve Benen: Admiral from bin Laden raid: US ‘needs to move forward without’ Trump http://on.msnbc.com/3f2fDlt
// No American president has ever inspired the kind of criticisms and pushback from retired military leaders that Trump has.
ForeignAffairs, Max Boot: A Few Good Men http://fam.ag/2A8bcXH
// Jun/Jul issue; Trump, the Generals, and the Corrosion of Civil-Military Relations
WaPo, Philip Bump: Attorney General Barr’s dishonest defense of the clearing of Lafayette Square http://wapo.st/2Upjh0W “The goal of the outing was to send a dual message: that Trump prioritized religion and that he wasn’t cowed by the protests”
The goal of the outing was to send a dual message: that Trump prioritized religion and that he wasn’t cowed by the protests. Reporting had revealed that Trump was moved to a secure bunker a few nights earlier; this was Trump’s way of reiterating his strength. It was a demonstration that required a clear path (and a reinforced protective bubble).
To hear the White House tell it, this narrative is wrong. It’s wrong to say that the square was cleared for Trump’s benefit, it’s wrong to describe the crowd as peaceful and, the most frequent complaint, it’s wrong to say that tear gas was used. Attorney General William P. Barr made each of these points on CBS’s “Face the Nation” on Sunday, in fact.
But he did so clumsily and disingenuously, making it less likely that viewers would be convinced by his argument than motivated to be skeptical by the rhetoric.
⭕ 7 Jun 2020 🎂
🐣 RT @CNN #FareedsTake: “I have not been one to argue that the United States under President Trump is on the verge of turning into a tyranny, but it is clear that, left to his own devices, Trump would act with little regard to law, precedent or the Constitution.” 💽 https://twitter.com/CNN/status/1269666514162106368?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @DebraMessing The following have denounced Trump:
Gen. Powell
Gen. Mattis
Gen. Kelly
Gen. Milley
Gen. Allen
Gen. Myers
Gen. Dempsey
Gen. Thomas
Gen. Hayden
Adm. McRaven
Adm. Stavridis
Adm. Mullen
Sec. Perry
Sec. Cohen
Sec. Carter
Sec. Panetta
Sec. Hagel
Pres. George W. Bush
(In formation)
NYT, Jennifer Senior: Is This the Trump Tipping Point? http://nyti.ms/2AMZ3Y4 “At a time of genuine crisis, Americans aren’t pining for Darth Vader. They’re pining for a healer”
// I know. We’ve said we’ve been here a thousand times before. This time feels different.
🐣 RT @AshaRangappa_ Is there *anyone* else on these Pooty calls or just Trump??? They seem to be getting more frequent and always coincide with huge upheaval-producing actions that no one knew about beforehand
⋙ 🐣 RT @olgaNYC1211 Update on this extremely important story! ¤ Germany was blindsided by Trump’s announcement of plans to withdraw some US troops which occurred after his most recent phone call with Putin last Monday
⋙⋙ 🐣 RT @olgaNYC1211 Huh! So Russia is sending more troops to challenge NATO/US near the borders, Trump announces that he is planning the withdrawal of troops from Germany, and Putin this week signed a decree giving him more flexibility in using nuclear weapons. Nothing to see
⋙⋙⋙ MSN/Newsweek: Russia Sends More Troops West, Challenging U.S.-NATO Presence Near Borders http://bit.ly/2Y90S9O
🐣 RT @NPR Rep. Don Beyer, D-Va., says he’s drafting a bill that would ban officers from hiding their names and agencies while policing public protests. ¤ “How do you ever hold people accountable if you don’t know what their name is?” he asks.
⋙ NPR: Virginia Democrat To Propose Bill To Require Identifying Information Of Officers http://n.pr/2YalYEL Rep. Don Beyer, D-Va., says he’s drafting a bill that would ban officers from hiding their names and agencies
🔆 This❗️⋙ WaPo, Barack Obama: Class of 2020, ‘You don’t have to accept the world as it is’ http://wapo.st/3cKDEvI “You can create a new normal, one that is fairer, and gives everyone opportunity, and treats everyone equally, and builds bridges between people instead of dividing them” https://twitter.com/Auriandra/status/1269791434783305728?s=20/photo/1
// nice portrait
It’s fair to say that your generation is graduating into a world that faces more profound challenges than any generation in decades. It can feel like everything’s up for grabs right now. A lot of this uncertainty is the direct result of covid-19 — the 100,000 lives it’s taken from us, the economic disruption it’s caused. No can say for sure how much longer the crisis will last — a lot of that will depend on the choices we make as a country. But it will eventually end. Vaccines and treatments will emerge. The economy will begin to heal. Life will start returning to normal — and you’ll still have your whole life ahead of you.
The thing is, Class of 2020, what these past few weeks have shown us is that the challenges we face go well beyond a virus, and that the old normal wasn’t good enough — it wasn’t working. In a lot of ways, the pandemic just brought into focus problems that have been growing for a very long time, whether it’s widening economic inequality, the lack of basic health care for millions of people, the continuing scourge of bigotry and sexism, or the divisions and dysfunction that plague our political system. Similarly, the protests in response to the killing of George Floyd, and Breonna Taylor, and Ahmaud Arbery, and Nina Pop aren’t simply a reaction to those particular tragedies, as heartbreaking as they are. They speak to decades worth of anguish and frustration over unequal treatment and a failure to reform police practices and the broader criminal justice system.
… You can create a new normal, one that is fairer, and gives everyone opportunity, and treats everyone equally, and builds bridges between people instead of dividing them. Just as America overcame slavery and civil war, recessions and depression, Pearl Harbor and 9/11 and all kinds of social upheaval, we can emerge from our current circumstances stronger than before. Better than before.
First, do what you think is right, not just what’s convenient or what’s expected or what’s easy. While you have this time, think about the values that matter to you the most. Too many graduates who feel the pressure to immediately start running that race for success skip the step of asking themselves what’s really important.
Second, listen to each other, respect each other, and use all that critical thinking you’ve developed from your education to help promote the truth. You are the Internet generation and the social media generation … But what’s become clear is that social media can also be a tool to spread conflict, division and falsehoods — to bully people and promote hate. Too often it shut us off from each other instead of bringing us together — partly because it gives us the ability to select our own realities, independent of facts, or science, or logic, or common sense.
Finally, even if it all seems broken, have faith in our democracy. Participate — and vote. Don’t fall for the easy cynicism that says nothing can change — or that there’s only one way to bring about change. In the midst of recent protests, I’ve noticed that there have been some debates among young people about how useful voting is compared to direct action and civil disobedience in ending discrimination in our society. The fact is that we don’t have to choose; we need both.
America changed, and has always changed, because young people dared to hope. Democracy isn’t about relying on some charismatic leader to make changes from on high. It’s about finding hope in ourselves, and creating it in others. Especially in a time like this. You don’t always need hope when everything’s going fine. It’s when things seem darkest — that’s when you need it the most.
As someone once said: Hope is not a lottery ticket; it’s a hammer for us to use in a national emergency — to break the glass, sound the alarm and sprint into action.
That’s what hope is. It’s not the blind faith that things will get better. It’s the conviction that with effort, and perseverance, and courage, and a concern for others — things can get better.
That remains the truest part of our American story. ¤ And if your generation sprints into action, it will still be true of America’s future.
WaPo: New York Times editorial page editor resigns after uproar over Cotton op-ed http://wapo.st/2Ycy4Nn
WaPo, Jennifer Rubin: Do not underestimate the power of this moment http://wapo.st/2Yb2Y8X “[V]otes at the ballot box will determine whether this is a fleeting moment or the beginning of a long overdue reckoning. We must all vote like our lives depend on it. Because they do.”
⭕ 6 Jun 2020
🐣 RT @brhodes These second-rate authoritarians and racists are going to lose. The future does not belong to them.
⋙ 🐣 RT @tedlieu Third-rate would be more accurate.
WaPo: ‘Vicious dogs’ versus ‘a scared man’: Trump’s feud with DC Mayor Bowser escalates amid police brutality protests http://wapo.st/37iRSDf
NYT: Pentagon Ordered National Guard Helicopters’ Aggressive Response in D.C. http://nyti.ms/3eYmgVT The National Guard helicoptors were ordered in by the Pentagon as a last attempt to “handle the situation” before injecting a rapid-reaction unit of the 82nd Airborne
// The high-profile episode, after days of protests in Washington, was a turning point in the military’s response to unrest in the city.
Military officials said that the National Guard’s aggressive approach to crowd control was prompted by a pointed threat from the Pentagon: If the Guard was unable to handle the situation, then active-duty military units, such as of the 82nd Airborne Division, would be sent into the city.
Senior Pentagon officials, including Gen. Mark A. Milley, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, were trying to persuade President Trump that active-duty troops should not be sent into the streets to impose order, and that law enforcement and National Guard personnel could contain the level of unrest.
🐣 RT @NorahODonnell NEW: A senior Pentagon official tells @CBSNews David Martin that on Monday the president said he wanted 10k troops patrolling streets across the country. In a heated conversation in the Oval Office, Barr, Esper, & Milley advised him against it. ¤ More tonight on @CBSEveningNews
🐣 RT @SteveSchmidtSES Who are these men? What Law Enforcement agency are they with? Where are the badges, insignia, and names? Many of them are obese and unfit. The facial hair is unusual for Federal Officers. This is an urgent matter. This is not ok in America. We do not have secret police here
⋙ 🐣 RT @bdavidkc Completely unmarked officers in riot gear holding protesters blocks away from the White House. No badges. No insignias. No name tags. Nothing. Refused to tell us who they’re with. #DCprotest #DCprotests 💽 https://twitter.com/bdaviskc/status/1268401251978563585?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @aveniam Trump is finally getting the crowd sizes he’s always bragged about. 💽 https://twitter.com/avenaim/status/1269352936456376320?s=20/photo/1
NYT: U.S. Diplomats Struggle to Defend Democracy Abroad Amid Crises at Home http://nyti.ms/2XFLQsM
// Police violence and President Trump’s threats to use the military against protesters have undercut American criticism of autocrats and called into question the country’s moral authority.
⏳CNN: Flash bangs and fury: Behind the fortress walls in a defining week for Trump and the country http://cnn.it/2YmdYkb
// thorough timeline
🐣 RT @ProjectLincoln Regardless of the failure, President @realDonaldTrump tells us again and again: ¤ “No, I don’t take responsibility at all.” ¤ Special thanks to @johnorloff for the script for this new release. 💽 https://twitter.com/ProjectLincoln/status/1269224720081334272?s=20/photo/1
// ad❣Eisenhower on D-Day
🐣 RT @michaelluo Dexter Filkins: In a meeting in the Oval Office, Trump expressed a desire to quell the protests by sending forces…into American cities. Milley resisted. “They got into a shouting match,” the senior military official told me. Trump finally backed down.
⋙ NewYorker, Dexter Filkins: Trump’s Public-Relations Army http://bit.ly/3cFOq6m
// Will the Military Allow President Trump to Use It for Political Advantage?
The image of Donald Trump leading his advisers to St. John’s Church may prove to be a defining one of his Presidency: Trump, passing through streets that had been cleared of protesters by tear gas, to pose with a Bible while fires burned all over the country. For many members of the military, the image contained an especially discordant note. Amid the political aides in blue suits was a barrel-chested Army officer wearing combat fatigues: General Mark Milley, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and America’s highest-ranking soldier. A former senior defense official described to me his disgust with that moment and the de-facto endorsement that it represented. “Walking the streets of D.C. in your combat fatigues—are you kidding me?” he said.
But Trump has shown himself willing to trash any institution—the press, the F.B.I., the State Department—that he can’t bend to his will. This week, Milley and Mark Esper, the Secretary of Defense, allowed the armed forces to be drawn into Trump’s protest response—and allowed themselves to be used for Trump’s political gain.
When Milley got the job, in 2019, it was the culmination of an unusually forthright campaign. His primary backers were what a former senior military official described as the “West Point cabal”: Esper; Secretary of State Mike Pompeo; and David Urban, a businessman and a Republican fund-raiser close to Trump. All of them were classmates at West Point, graduating in 1986.
⭕ 5 Jun 2020
NYT, Timothy Egan: How to Beat the Bully in His Bunker http://nyti.ms/3faMjcJ
// Democrats can learn from the people who know Trump’s base best — the Never Trump Republicans.
Moyers&Co, Bill Moyers: We Hold This Truth to Be Self-Evident: It’s Happening Before Our Very Eyes http://bit.ly/3cKB8FV “We may be running out of luck, and no one is coming to save us. For that, we have only ourselves”
ForeignAffairs, Richard Haass: Foreign Policy By Example http://fam.ag/37aIYay
// Crisis at Home Makes the United States Vulnerable Abroad
CNN: The prominent former military leaders who have criticized Trump’s actions over protests http://cnn.it/3dGhLPn
Marine Corps Gen. James Mattis, Former Secretary of Defense under Trump
⋙ Statement released June 3
“Donald Trump is the first president in my lifetime who does not try to unite the American people — does not even pretend to try. Instead he tries to divide us. We are witnessing the consequences of three years of this deliberate effort. We are witnessing the consequences of three years without mature leadership. We can unite without him, drawing on the strengths inherent in our civil society.”Marine Corps. Gen. John Kelly, Former Chief of Staff to Trump, Former commander of US Southern Command under Obama
⋙ Interview on June 5
“I would’ve argued against it, recommended against it,” Kelly said of Trump’s photo-op. “I would argue that the end result of that was predictable.”
“I think we need to look harder at who we elect. I think we should look at people that are running for office and put them through the filter: What is their character like? What are their ethics?”Marine Corps Gen. John Allen, Former commander of US forces in Afghanistan under Obama
⋙ Commentary published June 3 by Foreign Policy
“Donald Trump isn’t religious, has no need of religion, and doesn’t care about the devout, except insofar as they serve his political needs…To even the casual observer, Monday was awful for the United States and its democracy. The president’s speech was calculated to project his abject and arbitrary power, but he failed to project any of the higher emotions or leadership desperately needed in every quarter of this nation during this dire moment.”Navy Adm. Mike Mullen, Former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff under George W. Bush and Obama
⋙ Op-ed for The Atlantic published June 2
“It sickened me yesterday to see security personnel—including members of the National Guard—forcibly and violently clear a path through Lafayette Square to accommodate the president’s visit outside St. John’s Church. I have to date been reticent to speak out on issues surrounding President Trump’s leadership, but we are at an inflection point, and the events of the past few weeks have made it impossible to remain silent. Whatever Trump’s goal in conducting his visit, he laid bare his disdain for the rights of peaceful protest in this country, gave succor to the leaders of other countries who take comfort in our domestic strife, and risked further politicizing the men and women of our armed forces. There was little good in the stunt.”Air Force Gen. Richard Myers, Former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff under George W. Bush
⋙ Interview with CNN on June 4
“The first thing was just absolute sadness that people aren’t allowed to protest and that, as I understand it, that was a peaceful protest that was disturbed by force, and that’s not right. That should not happen in America. And so I was sad. I mean, we should all shed tears over that, that particular act. …I’m glad I don’t have to advise this President. I’m sure the senior military leadership is finding it really difficult these days to provide good, sound military advice.”Army Gen. Martin Dempsey, Former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff under Obama
⋙ Interview with NPR on June 4
“The idea that the President would take charge of the situation using the military was troubling to me.”William Perry, Former Defense Secretary served under Clinton
⋙ Twitter, June 4
“I am outraged at the deplorable behavior of our President and Defense Secretary Esper, threatening to use American military forces to suppress peaceful demonstrators exercising their constitutional rights. This is a deeply shameful moment for our nation.”Navy Adm. William McRaven, Former commander of US Special Operations Command under Obama
⋙ Interview with MSNBC on June 5
“You’re not going to use, whether it’s the military, or the National Guard, or law enforcement, to clear peaceful American citizens for the President of the United States to do a photo op. There is nothing morally right about that.”Navy Adm. James Stavridis, Former Supreme Allied Commander of NATO
⋙ Commentary published by Time on June 3
“Our active duty military must remain above the fray of domestic politics, and the best way to do that is to keep that force focused on its rightful mission outside the United States. Our senior active duty military leaders must make that case forcefully and directly to national leadership, speaking truth to power in uncomfortable ways. They must do this at the risk of their career. I hope they will do so, and not allow the military to be dragged into the maelstrom that is ahead of us, and which will likely only accelerate between now and November. If they do not stand and deliver on this vital core value, I fear for the soul of our military and all of the attendant consequences.”Army Gen. Raymond A. “Tony” Thomas, Former commander of US Special Operations Command under Obama and Trump
⋙ Twitter, June 1
On Esper’s use of the term “battlespace” when discussing quelling violence on the streets amid civil unrest: “The ‘battle space’ of America??? Not what America needs to hear…ever, unless we are invaded by an adversary or experience a constitutional failure…ie a Civil War…”Air Force Gen. Mike Hayden, Former director of the CIA and NSA under Bush and Obama
⋙ Twitter, June 2
On Milley joining Trump for his walk in front of the White House after protesters were cleared: “I was appalled to see him in his battle dress. Milley (he’s a general?!?) should not have walked over to the church with Trump.”Ash Carter, Former Defense Secretary under Obama
⋙ Statement on June 5
“The Department of Defense exists to safeguard our citizens, not dominate them. I was dismayed to see DoD drawn inappropriately this week into the President’s response to protests. There is here no need, no warrant, and no excuse to bring active-duty military force into the restoration of order. I say this as a former Secretary of Defense who death with many situations where military intervention was helpful, even vital, in the homeland — past epidemics, hurricanes and floods, and so forth. Equally abhorrent to me was the inclusion of defense leaders in political theater.”Leon Panetta and Chuck Hagel, Former defense secretaries under Obama
⋙ Joined Carter and 86 other former defense officials in Washington Post open letter on June 5
“As former leaders in the Defense Department — civilian and military, Republican, Democrat and independent — we all took an oath upon assuming office ‘to support and defend the Constitution of the United States’ as did the president and all members of the military, a fact that Gen. Milley pointed out in a recent memorandum to members of the armed forces. We are alarmed at how the president is betraying this oath by threatening to order members of the U.S. military to violate the rights of their fellow Americans.”
🐣 RT @IgnatiusPost President Trump came closer to the brink of ordering active-duty military troops to intervene against protesters in Washington this week than many realize. A bad situation could have been even worse.
⋙ WaPo, David Ignatius: How Trump came to the brink of deploying active-duty troops in Washington http://wapo.st/3cD9TwZ
“It was clear to me that the president was ready to use the Insurrection Act and send in troops” on Monday, when federal police cleared the area near the White House so Trump could pose for a photo outside St. John’s Episcopal Church, said one knowledgeable senior Pentagon official. The official requested anonymity because of the sensitivity of the issues.
Trump’s push for direct military intervention came in a noisy meeting midday Monday in the Oval Office with Vice President Pence, Defense Secretary Mark T. Esper, Attorney General William P. Barr and Gen. Mark A. Milley, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Esper, Barr and Milley all opposed the active-duty troop call-up, while Pence took Trump’s side [I’m shocked, shocked!], the senior Pentagon official said.
The streets in Washington had calmed by Tuesday, in part because of mounting criticism by former military leaders of Trump’s inflammatory rhetoric and his pugnacious photo op. Esper and Milley, facing sharp criticism for having acquiesced in Trump’s show of force, both issued statements to the troops late Tuesday stressing the military’s obligation to support the Constitution — and, implicitly, stay out of politics.
As divisive as Trump’s response to the crisis that followed George Floyd’s brutal death has been, it could have been worse. If Trump had followed his instinct and sent regular army troops to quell civil protests against racial injustice, the damage to the military would have been lasting. And the scars on the American body politic would have been even deeper.
🐣 RT @LibsInAmerica Andrew Weissmann and Lisa Page are now MSNBC analysts. Trump’s head [explodes] 💽 https://twitter.com/LibsInAmerica/status/1269065427294044165?s=20/photo/1
💙 🐣 RT @JameleHill I have no idea who did this, but if you know, find them and tag them. One of the best things I’ve seen on this app this week 💽 https://twitter.com/jemelehill/status/1268999177536585728?s=20/photo/1
// superheroes ~ BLM
WaPo: 89 former Defense officials: The military must never be used to violate constitutional rights http://wapo.st/30esVHy including former defense secretaries Leon Panetta, Chuck Hagel, Ashton B Carter and William S Cohen
🐣 RT @ProjectLincoln “Donald Trump is the first president in my lifetime who does not try to unite the American people—does not even pretend to try. Instead, he tries to divide us.” —General James Mattis 💽 https://twitter.com/ProjectLincoln/status/1269013225804357634?s=20/photo/1
// ad
DailyBeast: Minneapolis Neighborhood Patrols Fear White Supremacists Are Infiltrating to Derail Protests http://bit.ly/3dEbsfg “In recent days, even the mayor of Minneapolis and governor of Minnesota publicly warned of white supremacists”
// Minneapolis residents are forming patrols to protect their city from people who would mar the protests with violence—and some report having strange run-ins with armed white men.
🐣 RT @thedailybeast A video of Buffalo police officers shoving an elderly police activist to the ground, then walking by him as a pool of blood collected around his head, shocked the nation. ¤ Their colleagues? Not so much.
⋙ DailyBeast: Every Buffalo Cop in Elite Unit Quits to Back Officers Who Shoved Elderly Man to Ground: Report http://bit.ly/2BD0OaG ⋙ your move, @NYGovCuom
// A video showed the 75-year-old man was left bleeding from his ear after being pushed to the ground.
🐣 RT @nypost Entire Buffalo Emergency Response Team resigns in solidarity with cops who pushed old man https://trib.al/hXg2mGe
CNN: Esper orders remainder of active duty troops in Washington region back to home base http://cnn.it/2XE4fqe
🐣 RT @JeremyKonyndyk The difference in how law enforcement treats these protestors vs the heavily armed and armored “reopen” protestors says it all. White guys with guns are given free run of state capitals; people of color face military-kitted riot squads.
🐣 RT @JoyceWhiteVance I didn’t have any of this on my dystopian hellscape 2020 bingo card.
WaPo: Pentagon disarms guardsmen in Washington, D.C., in signal of de-escalation http://wapo.st/2A9bJsf
Vox: US Park Police: It was a “mistake” to say no tear gas was used in Lafayette Square http://bit.ly/2XB182d “[W]e used smoke and pepper balls,” Sgt. Eduardo Delgado, a spokesperson for the Park Police, said, but not CN or CS gas, which are more irritating
// A spokesperson again said that only smoke canisters and pepper balls were used, but acknowledged that saying “tear gas” was not used was seen as misleading.
“It was kind of a fault on our part just not saying in the first place ‘we did not use CN or CS, we used smoke and pepper balls,’ and that would’ve made it a moot point,” Delgado said. Some people claim we purposefully tried to mislead by “saying we didn’t use tear gas, we used pepper balls. … That was not our intention.”
🐣 RT @CarlWoog Statement from former #SecDef Carter: “There is here no need, no warrant, and no excuse to bring active-duty military force into the restoration of order… it’s vital to remember our North Star is the Constitution.” Text Block: https://twitter.com/CarlWoog/status/1268949444017352704?s=20/photo/1
Salon: Trump sued for “criminal” assault on peaceful protesters http://bit.ly/2XBlubJ
// Black Lives Matter DC and the / ACLU sues Trump over “shameless, unconstitutional, unprovoked, and frankly criminal” assault on peaceful protesters
WaPo: How Mattis reached his breaking point — and decided to speak out against Trump http://wapo.st/2XFym0x “The nonpartisan military that Mattis had served for nearly five decades was being featured as decoration for a photo op [and] to further divide the nation“
Smoke was still rising from Lafayette Square, where authorities had just used pepper spray and smoke canisters to disperse a group of largely peaceful protesters, when Gen. Mark A. Milley, along with Defense Secretary Mark T. Esper, joined President Trump Monday evening as he strolled to a nearby church to pose for cameras with a Bible.
In Mattis’s eyes, the appearance of the two top military leaders appeared to condone an unprovoked use of force. The nonpartisan military that Mattis had served for nearly five decades was being featured as decoration for a photo op, and Mattis fumed that the president was using the leaders who replaced him at the Defense Department to further divide the nation, according to four people familiar with his thinking.
💽 MSNBC: ‘Performing fascism’: Masha Gessen on Trump’s dictatorial turn http://on.msnbc.com/2AKaCPr
Author Masha Gessen on the line between Trump’s performance and actual authoritarianism: “Does he know that that is fascism? Does he care? It doesn’t matter. That is his idea of power.”
💙≣ General Milley’s letter to the chiefs of all the Armed Services on June 2, after the unfortunate “photo op” ~ “We all committed to the idea that is America,” Milley wrote by hand on the memo. “We will stay true to that oath and the American People.” @Morning_Joe https://twitter.com/Auriandra/status/1268872369143242752?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @joshtpm Amazing. They totally greenzoned that shit.
⋙ 🐣 RT @ All said and done it looks like it’s about 1.7 miles of fencing according to Google Maps (minus a few hundred feet for places where buildings prevent fencing from being put up). https://twitter.com/JakeGodin/status/1268660364406935552?s=20/photo/1
// new fencing around White House complex
🐣 RT @NoahSchachtman Barr keeps squealing about ‘Antifa.’ But Antifa is not referenced — not once — in any of the first 22 federal criminal cases from the protests.
⋙ DailyBeast, Wm Bredderman and Spencer Ackerman: Antifa’ Is Literally Never Mentioned in the First Prosecutions of Protest Violence http://bit.ly/371eIPk
// Trump called them terrorists. Bill Barr claimed they are “instigating” violence at the protests. But antifa is not referenced in any of the 22 criminal cases from the protests.
⭕ 4 Jun 2020
NYT, Paul Krugman: Donald Trump Is No Richard Nixon http://nyti.ms/3h3OQqE “[W]e’re a better country than we used to be, but we’re in dire political straits, because one of our two major parties no longer believes in the American idea”
// He — and his party — is much, much worse.
At this point it’s alarmingly easy to see how the United States could follow the path already taken by Hungary, becoming a democracy on paper but an authoritarian one-party state in practice. And I’m not talking about the distant future: It could happen this year, if Trump wins re-election — or even, potentially, if he loses but refuses to accept the results.
And the reason democracy is threatened in a way it never was under Nixon is not simply that Trump is a worse human being than Nixon ever was; it is the fact that he has so many enablers.
The modern G.O.P., however, is nothing like that. Many of its leading figures — people like Senator Tom Cotton — are every bit as authoritarian and anti-democratic as Trump himself.
The rest, with hardly any exceptions, are loyal apparatchiks, intimidated into obedience by an angry base. This base gets its information from Fox and Facebook and basically lives in an alternate reality, in which protesters demonstrating peacefully against police brutality are actually a radical horde that will begin a violent insurrection any minute now.
The point is that today’s Republican Party wouldn’t object to a Trumpian power grab, even if it amounted to a military coup. On the contrary, the party would cheer it on.
The bottom line is that while parallels with the Nixon era are very real, there are important differences between now and then — and the differences aren’t reassuring. In many ways we’re a better country than we used to be, but we’re in dire political straits, because one of our two major parties no longer believes in the American idea.
🐣 RT @YAppelbaum “President Donald Trump is trapped inside the White House, as a tall and imposing wall is erected around him, and prison guards stand watch.” @GrahamDavidA can write a lede:
⋙ TheAtlantic, David Graham: Trump Has Imprisoned Himself in the White House http://bit.ly/3eRMn0D Unlike Reagan, “Trump is not demanding that walls be torn down; instead, he’s erecting new ones”
// The president is trying to project strength, but instead is betraying weakness.
The administration has undertaken a contradictory dual strategy. On the one hand, as my colleague Anne Applebaum writes, the president wants to gin up fear among people far from the protests. On the other hand, he wants to show that he has matters under control.
Trump is not demanding that walls be torn down; instead, he’s erecting new ones. He’s also emulating the tactics of a former KGB agent stationed in East Germany: Russian President Vladimir Putin. Where Putin dispatched “little green men” to Ukraine, devoid of any markings or insignia, Trump and Barr have flooded the streets of the city with officers who refuse to even say what agency they work for and cover up their affiliations. The White House has erected temporary fencing and pushed back the public, and as Thursday dawned, more barriers were coming.
🐣 RT @mlcalderone WSJ editorial board: “Every President has breakups with advisers, but Mr. Trump has gone through them like an assembly line. His demand for personal loyalty and his thin skin clash with people who care about larger causes and have strong views.”
⋙ WSJ Editorial: The Revenge of Jim Mattis http://on.wsj.com/3dDmDox Trump’s ill treatment of former advisers is coming back to haunt.
Former Defense Secretary Jim Mattis’s denunciation of President Trump on Wednesday isn’t surprising, but it still looks like an important political moment. Mr. Trump’s polarizing and hyper-personal governance is catching up with him, as we and so many others warned. …
[T]he general’s real motivation here is to tell the public that Mr. Trump lacks the character to be President and should be defeated in November. “Donald Trump is the first president in my lifetime who does not try to unite the American people—does not even pretend to try. Instead he tries to divide us,” Mr. Mattis said. “We are witnessing the consequences of three years of this deliberate effort. We are witnessing the consequences of three years without mature leadership.”
This will resonate with many voters because it comes from someone who is no left-winger and has worked closely with the President. …
Every President has breakups with advisers, but Mr. Trump has gone through them like an assembly line. His demand for personal loyalty and his thin skin clash with people who care about larger causes and have strong views. Mr. Trump’s habit of blaming others for policy decisions or events that go wrong also builds resentment. This was bound to boomerang as he ran for re-election, and so it is.
WaPo: As protests spread, tensions escalated over Trump’s reach for military in response http://wapo.st/2MthNOV “They are walking a high-wire act.”
President Trump’s actions in recent days have pushed the military into the most uncomfortable position in his presidency, prompting an outcry that continued to build on Thursday from retired generals, including his former defense secretary and three former chairmen of the Joint Chiefs, who have expressed grave concerns about his willingness to wield the military as a club against American citizens.
The president’s threats to employ military troops to put down protests in American cities and his steps to pull Pentagon leaders into his response to unrest in the nation’s capital have dramatically escalated the tensions that have beset the military since Trump took office, highlighting the fragility of norms surrounding the military’s role in public life.
The events have prompted unusual public rebukes from former leaders, including retired Gen. Jim Mattis, whose turn as Trump’s first defense secretary enjoyed perhaps the most bipartisan support of any Cabinet member in the Trump era.
“Never did I dream that troops taking that same oath would be ordered under any circumstance to violate the constitutional rights of their fellow citizens — much less to provide a bizarre photo op for the elected commander-in-chief, with military leadership standing alongside,” Mattis wrote, referring to Americans’ right to peaceful protest.
The cascade of military criticism of recent events, and the military’s role in them, came also from retired Gen. Tony Thomas, the former head of U.S. Special Operations Command; retired Adm. Mike Mullen, who served as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff; and retired Gen. Richard Myers, another former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff who voiced “absolute sadness” at the clearing of Lafayette Square outside the White House.
On Thursday, retired Gen. Martin Dempsey, who served as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff under President Barack Obama, told NPR that calling the military to suppress mostly peaceful protests “was very dangerous to me.”
Milley, who faced intense criticism for appearing in camouflage next to the president as Trump made his way to St. John’s Episcopal Church on Monday, issued a memo to the U.S. military’s top leaders the following day affirming the military’s commitment to the values of the Constitution. Officials said Esper and Milley had intended to inspect damage at the church and speak with National Guard troops stationed near the White House and did not know Trump intended to stage a televised event.
“We all committed to the idea that is America,” Milley wrote by hand in the memo. “We will stay true to that oath and the American people.”
The memo came as service chiefs also issued notes regarding the events following the unrest, designed to ensure people that top generals and admirals agreed with the need for a response.
“The active duty are speaking just in the way that they can,” Lee said. “They are walking a high-wire act.”
TheGuardian/Reuters: Ukrainian prosecutors find no evidence against Hunter Biden http://bit.ly/2A35JkJ
// Audit probed energy company Burisma, of which Biden was a board member from 2014-2019
An audit of thousands of old case files by Ukrainian prosecutors found no evidence of wrongdoing on the part of Hunter Biden, the former prosecutor general, who had launched the audit, told Reuters.
Ruslan Ryaboshapka was in the spotlight last year as the man who would decide whether to launch an investigation into former vice president Joe Biden and his son Hunter, in what became a key issue in the impeachment of President Donald Trump.
President Volodymyr Zelenskiy described Ryaboshapka as “100 percent my person” on a call in July 2019 in which Trump asked Zelenskiy to investigate Biden, the man who became his main rival in the 2020 presidential race.
🧵 RT @BeingHelpish In the past 48 hours, 4 four-star generals have publicly rebuked Donald Trump:
1. Jim Mattis
2. John Allen
3. Mark Milley
4. John Kelly
Ouch.
@realDonaldTrump 📌 https://twitter.com/BeingHelpish/status/1268732744214986752?s=20
// links to articles, documents
RT @RCdeWinter
i refuse to believe all those
standing on the side of insanity and injustice
actually believe the shit they say
oh sure some of them are twisted defectives
but i’d give a handsome bon mot
to know why most of them mouth
the appalling propaganda of monsters
~ RC deWinter
🐣 🌎 RT @jamiedupree The White House security zone (yellow) is being dramatically expanded in the aftermath of recent protests over the police killing of George Floyd. ¤ New fencing has walled off Lafayette Square (in red), and the Ellipse is now getting fencing (in orange). https://twitter.com/jamiedupree/status/1268701838196572161?s=20/photo/1
⋙ WSBRadio: New fencing dramatically expands White House security zone http://bit.ly/2ADhiyY
🐣 RT @rosenbergerlm “The White House is now so heavily fortified that it resembles the monarchical palaces or authoritarian compounds of regimes in faraway lands — strikingly incongruous with the historical role of the executive mansion… known as the People’s House.”
⋙ WaPo: With White House effectively a fortress, some see Trump’s strength — but others see weakness http://wapo.st/2z5yNrp
🐣 RT @SecDef19 [Wm Perry] I am outraged at the deplorable behavior of our President and Defense Secretary Esper, threatening to use American military forces to suppress peaceful demonstrators exercising their constitutional rights. This is a deeply shameful moment for our nation.
⋙ Politico: Ex-Defense Secretary William Perry joins Mattis in condemning Trump http://politi.co/2XZVpC8
// The military “was never intended to be used for partisan political purposes,” he wrote.
🐣 RT @profcarroll Bennet didn’t even read the goddamn martial law piece riddled with falsities because it was “rushed” and so it’s an even more painful negligence to fascism and it’s white privilege he still has a job.
⋙ NYT: New York Times Says Senator’s Op-Ed Did Not Meet Standards http://nyti.ms/3h1Sfqf
// After a staff uproar, The Times says the editing process was “rushed.” Senator Tom Cotton’s “Send In the Troops” essay is now under review.
🐣 RT @kylegriffin1 Pelosi: “I am writing to request a full list of the agencies involved and clarifications of the roles and responsibilities of the troops and federal law enforcement resources operating in the city. Congress and the American people need to know.”
⋙ Speaker.gov: Pelosi Sends Letter to President Trump on Deployment of Troops & Unidentified Law Enforcement Personnel in Nation’s Capital http://bit.ly/3gOjnbU
🐣 RT @JohnJHarwood new CBS News poll:
Trump job performance
40% approve, 54% disapprove
his handling of race relations
33% approve, 58% disapprove
🐣 RT @SteenBeschloss For the record, that’s our White House, not his.
WaPo, David Ignatius: Why Mattis and Mullen toppled their bridge of silence http://wapo.st/2MsBd6o “The military establishment’s anger at President Trump’s politicization of the armed forces has been building for three years. It finally ripped open”
🧵 RT @BarackObama Real change requires protest to highlight a problem, and politics to implement practical solutions and laws. As I mentioned yesterday in our @MBK_Alliance town hall, there are several steps our mayors and elected officials can take right now: 📌 https://twitter.com/BarackObama/status/1268682936221609994?s=20
🐣 RT @politico Former White House chief of staff John Kelly said Trump “has clearly forgotten” the circumstances of former Defense Secretary Jim Mattis’s departure from the administration, breaking with his former boss to side with a fellow retired Marine Corps general
⋙ Politico: The president has clearly forgotten how it actually happened’: John Kelly defends Mattis http://politi.co/370M4xX
// Kelly called Mattis “an honorable man” and described Trump’s Twitter attack on the former Defense secretary as “nasty.”
WaPo, Brian Klaas: Mattis finally spoke out. It’s time for any principled Republicans to do the same. http://wapo.st/3gVxX1q
🧵 RT @DrEricDing I still can’t get over the video. 2 US Park police officers from this clip are now on leave- one for gut+face punching the cameraman, the other for hitting the reporter with a truncheon. It was broadcast live to 🇦🇺 – and brought shame to worldwide audience.
📌 💽 https://twitter.com/DrEricDing/status/1268605729889492994?s=20/photo/1
// Australian camera crew attacked
🐣 RT @atrupar PELOSI: “Soldiers on steps of the Lincoln Memorial. Bureau of Prisons officers in Lafayette Square. The National Parks Service hassling peaceful protesters… who’s in charge? What’s chain of command & by what authority do these National Guard people come in from other states?”
🐣 RT @kylegriffin1 Grassley is placing a hold on Trump nominees. He wants answers on Trump’s firing of IGs without reason.
⋙ 🐣 RT @ChuckGrassley Im placing holds on 2 Trump Admin noms until I get reasons 4firing 2 agency watchdogs as required by law Not 1st time ive raised alarm when admins flout IG protection law Obama did same& got same earfull from me All I want is a reason 4 firing these ppl CHECKS&BALANCES
WaPo, by Joshua Geltzer, Neal Katyal, Jennifer Taub and Lawrence Tribe: Trump’s authoritarianism in the streets is being matched in the courts http://wapo.st/3dBQZYs //➔ Dismissing the Flynn case is key to Trump/Barr/LGraham’s case that the entire Mueller probe was a “hoax”
Courts — real courts, where every legitimate party gets to make every legitimate argument — are the last bastion against authoritarianism. ¤¤ This case long ago ceased being about a single judge. It’s about the right of all of us to learn what happened at the Justice Department and avoid a coverup.
🐣 RT @glennkirschner Thank you @PierreTABC for calling out Barr on only mentioning (deamonizing) one group by name – Antifa – and not naming a single alt-right hate group, when DOJ had ARRESTED 3 members of the far-right extremist Boogaloo Boys group. #BillBarrBias
🧵 RT @kasie Sen. John Kennedy, R-La., on Mattis letter: “Gen Mattis served his country well and honorably and he’s entitled to his opinion…” (1/2) 📌 https://twitter.com/kasie/status/1268558485761019905?s=20
⋙ 🐣 RT @kasie Sen. Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska: “I thought General Mattis’ words were true, and honest, and necessary and overdue. And I have been struggling for the right words and I was encouraged a couple of nights ago when I was able to read what President Bush had written.”
⋙ 🐣 RT @kasie Sen. Mitt Romney, R-Utah: “General Mattis’ letter was stunning and powerful. General Mattis is a man of extraordinary sacrifice. He’s an American patriot.”
🐣 RT @mmpedellan Bill Barr makes a statement about violent extremists and only name-checks Antifa, but NOT the Right-wing Boogaloo Boys or other White Supremacist groups? ¤ Sounds about White.
🐣 RT @Max_Fisher What “sending in the troops” sounds like to scholars of democratic decline: ¤ Trump’s actions and threats, including those echoing Tom Cotton, bring him closer than at any point in his presidency to the playbook of the strongman leaders he’s long praised.
⋙ NYT: Trump Tests a Role He’s Long Admired: A Strongman Imposing Order http://nyti.ms/36XsZN8
// The president’s unapologetic calls for force, and his efforts to bring the military into his political line, follow a strongman’s playbook. It’s a risky move for him, and for democracy.
NBCNews: Three men connected to ‘boogaloo’ movement tried to provoke violence at protests, feds say http://nbcnews.to/306n6eX //➔ “boogaloo” means civil war ~ Steve Bannon must be so proud
// NBC News reported last weekend that members of the “Boogaloo” movement were seen at protests in states including Minnesota and Texas, as well as in Philadelphia.
Email to Family: Two documents:
1) From General Milley, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
2) Document posted at Army.mil: A message to the Army community about civil unrest http://bit.ly/2XtqOOb
⋙ See under Communications 📂
Duty2Warn: Many feel that Mattis should have issued a statement earlier. But it may prove as that this was perfect timing. He may not have been speaking to you or me – but to the US military. They take oaths to the constitution and Mattis is the perfect guy to remind them of that.
⋙ 🐣 This was provided to the press yesterday, dated 6/2. The military is coordinating, making sure everyone knows where their loyalties must lie (to their oaths & the Constitution). Mattis provides the ultimate imprimatur. These people do war games. There are no accidents. Text Block: ● https://twitter.com/Auriandra/status/1268447363779244033?s=20/photo/1
Newsday: Loyalty to Trump erodes over his truculence on use of military http://bit.ly/305UUcf
🧵 RT @anders_aslund Was June 3, 2020, the day when Donald Trump lost command over the federal troops? Defense Secretary Esper’s press conference at the Pentagon’s makes it look like that. 📌 https://twitter.com/anders_aslund/status/1268427462008090624?s=20
⋙ 🐣 RT @anders_aslund Clearly Trump is now scrambling for loyal troops as is usually the case in a pre-coup situation. …
⋙ 🐣 RT @anders_aslund My greatest fear is that Trump will call on his militias with their AK15s to come to Washington to liberate him in the White House. That should make the GOP grandees wake up and realize what is going on. The US has the 25th Amendment that could be used.
⋙ 🐣 RT @anders_aslund This looks like a pre-coup situation. It is by no means a prerevolutionary situation because democratic institutions exist and enjoy legitimacy. The danger comes from a president who is afraid to lose power democratically.
CNN: Military leaders condemn Trump over protest response http://cnn.it/3eOOsua “[T]he most significant statement of the day came from a former general who may have the most capacity of any Washington elite to undermine Trump with the military that is at his command”
🐣 RT @JoyceWhiteVance Police responding to protests against police brutality with police brutality. Who thinks this is a good idea?
⭕ 3 Jun 2020
WaPo, Patrick Skinner: I’m a cop. I won’t fight a ‘war’ on crime the way I fought the war on terror. http://wapo.st/3h3eBrf
// The failed strategy I participated in for years as a CIA officer is not how to police people I consider my neighbors. It’s not how to police at all.
💙 NewYorker, Masha Gessen: Donald Trump’s Fascist Performance http://bit.ly/2A2QLLy “In his intuition, power is autocratic; it affirms the superiority of one nation and one race; it asserts total domination; and it mercilessly suppresses all opposition”
Donald Trump thinks power looks like masked men in combat uniforms lined up in front of the marble columns of the Lincoln Memorial. He thinks it looks like Black Hawk helicopters hovering so low over protesters that they chop off the tops of trees. He thinks it looks like troops using tear gas to clear a plaza for a photo op. He thinks it looks like him hoisting a Bible in his raised right hand.
🧵 RT @anders_aslund Was June 3, 2020, the day when Donald Trump lost command over the federal troops? Defense Secretary Esper’s press conference at the Pentagon’s makes it look like that. 📌 https://twitter.com/anders_aslund/status/1268427462008090624?s=20
🐣 RT @JenniferJJacobs [Bloomberg] NEWS: Trump had strong words for Esper in Oval today after Esper said at his news conference he opposes deploying active duty troops to contain protests, I’m told. Trump later privately asked advisers if they think Esper can still be an effective defense secretary.
⋙ 🐣 RT @JenniferJJacobs Esper this a.m. said active duty troops should be only a last resort, angering WH officials and Trump personally with what they viewed as a matter of breaking rank. Trump isn’t planning to use active duty troops right now, but didn’t want Esper publicly ruling it out, I’m told.
WaPo, Philip Bump: A dangerous new factor in an uneasy moment: Unidentified law enforcement officers http://wapo.st/304tLpY “Such anonymity echoes the way in which enforcers in autocratic regimes have worked to avoid accountability”
DailyBeast: Bill Barr Takes Charge of Trump’s Crackdown as the Military Tries to Back Away http://bit.ly/2MrSYTp
// It’s a controversial move, even within Barr’s own department. A senior law enforcement official called it “a political ploy to make being anti-Trump look like terrorism.”
(By Erin Banco, Spencer Ackerman, Michael Daly and William Bredderman)
WENYNews: Retired Marine General John Allen: Trump’s threats of military force may be ‘the beginning of the end of the American experiment’ http://bit.ly/3eSlVnL Re: Gen. Allen’s June 3 oped in ForeignPolicy($): “A Moment of National Shame and Peril—and Hope” Text Block: https://twitter.com/Auriandra/status/1268414914227515392?s=20/photo/1
// 6/4/2020
Gen. John Allen, the former commander of American forces in Afghanistan and former special presidential envoy for the Global Coalition to Counter ISIS under the Obama administration, wrote in an op-ed for Foreign Policy that “to even the casual observer, Monday was awful for the United States and its democracy.”
His comments come after the President declared himself “your president of law and order” as peaceful protesters just outside the White House gates were dispersed with gas, flash bangs and rubber bullets, apparently so Trump could visit a nearby church. He remained at the boarded-up building for a matter of minutes before returning to the White House.
“So, while June 1 could easily be confused with a day of shame and peril if we listen to Donald Trump, if instead we listen to Terrence Floyd [brother of George], it is a day of hope. So mark your calendars—this could be the beginning of the change of American democracy not to illiberalism, but to enlightenment,” Allen wrote. ¤ “But it will have to come from the bottom up. For at the White House, there is no one home.”
⋙ General Allen is the former commander of American forces in Afghanistan and former special presidential envoy for the Global Coalition to Counter ISIS
↥ ↧
ForeignPolicy, John Allen: A Moment of National Shame and Peril—and Hope http://bit.ly/3dxtEan
// $$; We may be witnessing the beginning of the end of American democracy, but there is still a way to stop the descent.
🐣 RT @SteveSchmidtSES Actually, all of those things are happening under Trump. Additionally he is responsible for a calamitous response to COVID-19 that has killed over 100000 and shattered the economy. He has vandalized the constitution, disgraced his office, committed sacrilege and loosed violence
⋙ 🐣 RT @presssec Under President @realDonaldTrump’s leadership, there will be NO burning of churches, looting of businesses, destruction of property, and assaults on civilians and police. ¤ America will unite in LAW AND ORDER!
⋙⋙ 🐣 Here’s a “LAW”: Amendment I: “Congress shall make no law prohibiting … the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.” ~ Constitution of the United States of America
🐣♫ RT @mikefarb1 He was a Two Bit TV Star from out Manhattan Way
He had a Racist Heart that Everyone Would Say
He was a Man Devoid of Class
But then his Number Came Up and he Ran from the Draft
He’s in The White House Now, A-Tweetin Recklessly
He’s the Racist Tweeting Bunker Boy of Washington DC
Army.mil: A message to the Army community about civil unrest http://bit.ly/2XtqOOb Signed:
Michael A. Grinston (Sergeant Major of the Army)
James C. McConville (General, United States Army)
Ryan D. McCarthy (Secretary of the Army)
https://t.co/jhwtLWDTSr: A message to the Army community about civil unrest https://t.co/SetuHB8Alv
Signed:
Michael A. Grinston (Sergeant Major of the Army)
James C. McConville (General, United States Army)
Ryan D. McCarthy (Secretary of the Army) pic.twitter.com/MouS0u9QuC— 🇺🇸 Auriandra 🇺🇦 (@Auriandra) June 4, 2020
“Every Soldier and Department of the Army Civilian swears an oath to support and defend the Constitution. That includes the right of the people peaceably to assemble and to petition the government for a redress of grievances. We will continue to support and defend those rights, and we will continue to protect Americans, whether from enemies of the United States overseas, from COVID-19 at home, or from violence in our communities that threatens to drown out the voices begging us to listen.”
💙 🐣 RT @RexChapman Damn cool scene in Lincoln, Nebraska this afternoon. LPD & community leaders sat down and drafted an agreement to “Hold Cops Accountable.”
Once signed – Cupid Shuffle.
This the American content I’m here for. 🌎❤️♫❤️🌎
( vid @EllisWiltsey ) 💽 https://twitter.com/RexChapman/status/1268379338019418113?s=20/photo/1
NYT, Nicholas Kristof: Trump Uses the Military to Prove His Manhood http://nyti.ms/3gKt4YS “Trump’s call to dispatch armed forces to crush protests so that he can look tough betrays the military’s nonpartisan tradition and should trigger all our alarm bells”
// The president’s response to the coronavirus that killed more than 100,000 people was lethargic and ineffective. But when it came to anti-racism protesters, it was time to call in the troops.
🐣 RT @orensegal
Murder hornets, “boogaloo,”
Facebook is exploiting you.
Unemployment, quarantine,
bleach, hydroxyxholroquine.
Protests, looting, photo ops,
(a)nother black man killed by cops.
Qanon, mass shooting[s] grow,
how will it end, we just don’t know.
We ● didn’t ● start ● the 🔥 Fire
@billyjoel https://twitter.com/orensegal/status/1268378859617103872?s=20/photo/1
WaPo, Max Boot: The entire Republican Party is complicit in the assault on Lafayette Square http://wapo.st/2Xv0IKJ
🔄 🧵 💽 RT @boomerhunter55 A thread currently 163 videos deep of absolute police brutality and power abuse 📌 https://twitter.com/boomerhunter55/status/1268004647882686469?s=20
🐣 RT @mehdirhassan “Trump has few ideological convictions as consistent as his belief in the redemptive power of state violence against religious and ethnic minorities” – the brilliant @AdamSerwer with another #mustread essay
⋙ TheAtlantic, Adam Serwer: Trump Gave Police Permission to Be Brutal http://bit.ly/
// The president didn’t cause America’s policing crisis, but he deliberately made it worse.
💙 🐣 RT @marty_lederman This extraordinary memo might be more significant than the Mattis statement. Together, the message they send to the forces is unlike anything I can recall. Military resistance to the civilian CINC is *not* a welcome precedent–but Trump has left them with little choice.
⋙⋙ 🐣 RT @BillKristol This memo from Gen. Milley is pretty interesting–I’d even say startling. https://twitter.com/BillKristol/status/1268324463550107651?s=20/photo/1
⋙ 🐣 RT @marty_lederman To be clear, the military hasn’t (yet) refused an order. The point of this memo is to send up a flare in order to try to deter Trump from issuing any unlawful orders. Remains to be seen what the response would be if and when he does so.
🐣 RT @davidplouffe The House Dems need to be all over this. Now. Hearings tomorrow, inquiries, local members get out to the streets yourselves to get answers.
⋙ 🐣 RT @kurteichenwald Who the hell ARE these guys? There is no way this rag-tag group of thugs are either US military or FBI. Most likely not DEA either. And DC cops say it’s not them. ¤ Is this like Altamont and the Rolling Stones? Did Trump hire the Hell’s Angels for security? This is obscene. https://twitter.com/kurteichenwald/status/1268326720471314432?s=20/photo/1
WaPo: Pentagon chief balks at Trump’s call for active-duty military force on U.S. citizens, and Mattis rips president http://wapo.st/2U76HmR
🐣 RT @DrEricDing 🚨BREAKING: Official autopsy report finds #GeorgeFloyd had #coronavirus. Hennepin County Medical Examiner’s full report says he tested positive April 3. Wow. Every crisis in America is intersecting! #covid19
🐣 RT @MarquardtA Law enforcement deployed in/to DC we’ve seen/reported:
US Secret Service
US Park Police
Arlington PD (gone)
DC Nat’l Guard + other states
Bureau of Prisons
FBI
DEA
DHS
ICE
CBP
TSA
US Marshals
Pentagon Force Protection
Ft Bragg/Fort Drum active duty troops
MPD
Miss anyone?
🐣 RT @JoeNBC Angry Republicans declare “This is a time for choosing. America or Trump.” The Lincoln Project ads keep getting tougher by the day. 💽 https://twitter.com/JoeNBC/status/1268334228778909697?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @GoAngelo What the fuck? ¤ Hannity: “We will show you a breaking report that shows how the group Black Lives Matter is planning to train armed militia for war on police” https://twitter.com/GoAngelo/status/1268353174357803008?s=20/photo/1
🐣 Trump was challenged three times today: by Esper, Mattis and (subtly) by Obama. Trump cannot bear humiliation. Expect him to strike out. ¤ 🙏 Be careful out there.
🐣 RT @ChrisMurphyCT We cannot tolerate an American secret police. ¤ I will be introducing legislation to require uniformed federal officers performing any domestic security duties to clearly identify what military branch or agency they represent.
⋙ 🐣 Gestapo. Gestapo means “GEheimnische STAatsPOLizei” or “secret state police”
🐣 RT @hannah_natanson Surreal, beautiful, peaceful scene outside the White House as a man sings “Lean On Me” and thousands and thousands of protesters raise lighted cellphones and join their voices with his. 📌 https://twitter.com/hannah_natanson/status/1268341706098958336?s=20/photo/1
NewYorker, Susan Glasser: #Bunkerboy’s Photo-Op War http://bit.ly/2AAVofS “This is, in fact, a farce with consequences”
// Is this an authoritarian crackdown by Donald Trump or just another politicized spectacle?
TheLincolnProject: Call For General Milley And Secretary Of Defense Esper To Resign Immediately http://bit.ly/3dvrUOR
🐣 RT @BhadeliaMD The chief of National Guard joins other military service chiefs in speaking up on commitment of troops to the US Constitution https://twitter.com/BhadeliaMD/status/1268341844217401346?s=20/photo/1
WaPo, George Will: The military officers aiding Trump’s stunt have been promoted to the level of their incompetence http://wapo.st/3cqCNjK
🐣 RT @matthewamiller Did not expect to be as moved by Mattis’s statement as I am. Let’s hope Lafayette Square becomes a breaking point for the entire country, as it clearly was for Mattis. We can do so much better than this.
↥ ↧
💙 🔆 This❗️⋙ TheAtlantic: James Mattis Denounces President Trump, Describes Him as a Threat to the Constitution [w complete statement] http://bit.ly/2U7bswJ “We must reject and hold accountable those in office who would make a mockery of our Constitution.” Text Block: ● https://twitter.com/Auriandra/status/1268338381366444032?s=20/photo/1
// In an extraordinary condemnation, the former defense secretary backs protesters and says the president is trying to turn Americans against one another.
“Donald Trump is the first president in my lifetime who does not try to unite the American people—does not even pretend to try. Instead, he tries to divide us,” Mattis writes. “We are witnessing the consequences of three years of this deliberate effort. We are witnessing the consequences of three years without mature leadership. We can unite without him, drawing on the strengths inherent in our civil society. This will not be easy, as the past few days have shown, but we owe it to our fellow citizens; to past generations that bled to defend our promise; and to our children.”
WaPo: Rosenstein says, in hindsight, he would not have signed application to surveil former Trump campaign adviser Carter Page http://wapo.st/2XrUL14
🐣 RT @peterbakernyt I’m [sic] declining to come to Trump’s G7, Merkel cited the coronavirus but privately she did not want to come if he invited Putin, did not want to be part of an anti-China display and did not want to be used for US politics. @StevenErlanger reports.
⋙ NYT: Embattled at Home, Trump Finds Himself Isolated Abroad, Too http://nyti.ms/
// After years of snubs and American unilateralism, European allies have stopped looking to the president for leadership, and are turning their backs on him.
[Caption: President Trump has become a figure some of America’s closest allies prefer to keep at arms’ length.]
🐣 RT @tedlieu Statement by @EsperDoD was not an off the cuff response to a question. It was a deliberate act by Sec Esper to oppose the desire of @realDonaldTrump to send in active duty military. Good that Esper understands rolling in tanks & bayonets against Americans is not the solution.
💙 ⋙ NBCPolitics NEW: Defense Sec. Esper: “I do not support invoking the Insurrection Act.” ¤ “The option to use active-duty forces in a law enforcement role should only be used as a matter of last resort and only in the most … dire of situations. We are not in one of those situations now.”
NYT: Snap Says It Will No Longer Promote Trump’s Account http://nyti.ms/2XWccG6
// The social media company’s decision follows Twitter’s moves to label Mr. Trump’s posts inaccurate or as inciting violence.
🐣 RT @brhodes 100,000 dead from a pandemic. Tens of millions unemployed. Protests across country. Authoritarianism on the streets of DC. And Lindsey Graham is holding hearings on OBAMAGATE. The Republican Party is totally broken.
🐣 RT @mitchellreports On Trump/Insurrection Act, @kwelkernbc: “A remarkable reversal here. Sources telling us President Trump is now backing away from the threat to invoke the Insurrection Act, which would allow him, arguably in some cases, to deploy the military to various US cities.” #AMRstaff
🧵 RT @blakesmustache Rosenstein just threw McCabe under the bus and called him a liar. 📌 https://twitter.com/blakesmustache/status/1268189241785430016?s=20
// testimony to Senate Judiciary; read entire thread: excerpts ⇊
⋙ 🐣 RT @blakesmustache My god. Rosenstein just agreed with Graham that there was no reason to investigate the Trump campaign.
⋙ 🐣 RT @blakesmustache Rosenstein has made several statements already confirming what I’ve suspected all along: Rosenstein had Mueller on a short leash and limited his ability to conduct his investigation. Mueller was not independent of DOJ in any meaningful way.
⋙ 🐣 RT @blakesmustache Rosenstein says “there was NO evidence of a conspiracy between the Trump campaign and Russia” ¤ “NO EVIDENCE” ¤ This is absolute bullshit and Rosenstein belongs in prison.
⋙ 🐣 RT @blakesmustache Rosenstein continues to dissemble. He refuses to agree with any of Mueller’s conclusions other than that Russia interfered in the election. And on that point he repeatedly says Russia did not want Trump to win.
⋙ 🐣 RT @blakesmustache Here we go: Rosenstein says Russia was not trying to help Trump and was also attacking HRC. Anyone who still believes Rosenstein is anything other than a rat is an idiot. [……]
⭕ 2 Jun 2020
🐣 RT @kylegriffin1 The FBI’s Washington Field Office “has no intelligence indicating Antifa involvement/presence” in the violence that occurred on May 31 during the DC-area protests over the murder of George Floyd, according to an internal FBI report obtained by The Nation. https://twitter.com/kylegriffin1/status/1267989415420297216?s=20
🐣 RT @maggieNYT Two officials said Meadows said at senior staff meeting this AM that the church photo op was Ivanka Trump’s idea @anniekarni
// [caption: Police advance on protesters outside the White House to clear a path for President Trump to walk to St. Johns church in Washington on Monday]
💙 ⋙⋙ NYT: How Trump’s Idea for a Photo Op Led to Havoc in a Park http://nyti.ms/2z1qsoA
// When the history of the Trump presidency is written, the clash with protesters that preceded President Trump’s walk across Lafayette Square may be remembered as one of its defining moments.
⋙ 🐣 RT @maggieNYT Meadows said that while others were getting credit for the church appearance, it was Ivanka Trump who deserved the credit, per two officials. She thanked him and thanked the team for carrying it out, the officials said. @anniekarni
What ensued was a burst of violence unlike any seen in the shadow of the White House in generations. As he prepared for his surprise march to the church, Mr. Trump first went before cameras in the Rose Garden to declare himself “your president of law and order” but also “an ally of all peaceful protesters,” even as peaceful protesters just a block away and clergy members on the church patio were routed by smoke and flash grenades and some form of chemical spray deployed by shield-bearing riot officers and mounted police.
But critics, including some fellow Republicans, were aghast at the use of force against Americans who posed no visible threat at the time, all to facilitate what they deemed a ham-handed photo opportunity featuring all white faces. Some Democratic senators used words like “fascist” and “dictator” to describe the president’s words and actions.
Bishop Mariann Edgar Budde of the Episcopal Diocese of Washington, who was not consulted beforehand, said she was “outraged” over the use of one of her churches as a political backdrop to boast of squelching protests against racism. Even some White House officials privately expressed dismay that the president’s entourage had not thought to include a single person of color.
Mayor Muriel E. Bowser of Washington sharply objected on Tuesday and said the federal government had even privately broached the idea of taking over the city’s police force, which she pledged to resist. “I don’t think the military should be used in the streets of American cities against Americans,” she said, “and I definitely don’t think it should be done for a show.”
Arlington County in suburban Virginia withdrew its police from those assembled to guard the White House and other federal sites after the Lafayette Square clash. Even beforehand, Democratic governors in Virginia, New York and Delaware refused to send National Guard troops requested by the Trump administration.
Defense Secretary Mark T. Esper and Gen. Mark A. Milley, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, put out word through military officials that they did not know in advance about the dispersal of the protesters or about the president’s planned photo op, insisting that they thought they were accompanying him to review the troops.
In Washington, Mr. Barr was in charge of the federal response and an alphabet soup of agencies had contributed officers, agents and troops to defend the White House and other federal installations, including the Secret Service, the United States Park Police, National Guard, Capitol Police, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, the Marshal’s Service, the Bureau of Prisons, Customs and Border Protection and Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
🐣 RT @Amy_Siskind Trump literally spoke to Putin before gassing the American people. Who do you think is advising him now? Leaders of democracies – even Boris Johnson – are turning their back on him.
NYT Editorial: In America, Protest Is Patriotic http://nyti.ms/2XtS7rD “The police used tear gas, rubber bullets and riot shields … all so Mr. Trump could pose for photos. The photo op managed to take aim at the freedom of assembly, speech and religion all at the same time”
// The police are supposed to protect free speech, not suppress it.
The police used tear gas, rubber bullets and riot shields to drive away protesters, journalists and priests standing on the private porch of St. John’s Church, all so Mr. Trump could pose for photos. The photo op managed to take aim at the freedom of assembly, speech and religion all at the same time.
💙 WaPo: Thousands descend on D.C. protests to push back against Trump’s show of federal force http://wapo.st/3cuH99o
🧵 RT @SenWarren Last night’s attacks on peaceful protesters near the White House demanding justice for George Floyd were appalling. Trump acted more like a wannabe authoritarian than Commander in Chief. Here’s some of the things I’ve been working on today to hold this administration accountable: 📌 https://twitter.com/SenWarren/status/1267976298271592448?s=20
⋙ 🐣 RT @SenWarren I’ve asked the @DoD_IG to conduct an immediate investigation into the role of @DeptofDefense civilian and military officials at protests in Washington DC and other cities throughout the country. https://twitter.com/SenWarren/status/1267976300024774657?s=20/photo/1-3
⋙ 🐣 RT @SenWarren AG William Barr reportedly ordered law enforcement to clear Lafayette Square for Trump’s photo-op himself. He should resign. And @JusticeOIG should investigate the role that AG Barr & @TheJusticeDept personnel played in this ugly propaganda event. https://twitter.com/SenWarren/status/1267976301501128705?s=20/photo/1-2
🐣 RT @brhodes This photo represents the opposite of what the Lincoln Memorial stands for, and will be a permanent stain on the American story at home and around the world
⋙ 🐣 🖼 RT @VeraMBergen Remarkable photo via @MarthaRaddatz, where protestors are being blocked from the steps of the Lincoln Memorial
🐣 🖼 RT @CT_Bergstrom As protesters are being beaten and gassed in the streets, just a reminder that a couple of weeks ago this was tolerated INSIDE A STATE CAPITOL without a blast of pepper spray, a raised baton, the use of tear gas, or any damn thing. ¤ Oh, and these guys had semiautomatic weapons. https://twitter.com/CT_Bergstrom/status/1267965962885558272?s=20/photo/1
// great photo
NBCNews: Defense Secretary Esper on Trump church photo op: ‘I didn’t know where I was going’ http://nbcnews.to/2U1K7w0
// In an exclusive interview, Esper also said he had “no idea” about the plan to use force to disperse protesters ahead of Trump’s staged visit to St. John’s Episcopal Church. http://nbcnews.to/
🐣 RT @RBReich I have held off using the f word for three and a half years, but there is no longer any honest alternative. Trump is a fascist, and he is promoting fascism in America.
🐣 RT @JohnBrennan There should be no place in American society, much less in our government, for the depravity being demonstrated daily by @realDonaldTrump. Members of his Cabinet who enable such behavior are betraying their oath of office by supporting an increasingly desperate despot.
🐣 RT @jonmladd Thread. The Dept of Justice is using security in military gear who refuse to identify their affiliation. As others have noted, something that only would happen in an authoritarian state. ¤ Where is Congress? This is the point in the frog boiling when you’re really getting cooked.
⋙ 🐣 RT @dfriedman33 Asked who they’re with, these guys say only that they’re with “The Department of Justice.” https://twitter.com/dfriedman33/status/1267936203522932738?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @ErinBanco NEW: Pentagon officials say it was the White House, not the Defense Department, pushing for military might in the streets—with Trump seeking details on “tanks” that could be used.
💙 ⋙ DailyBeast: Uncomfortable Mission’: Pentagon Tries to Retreat From Trump’s Call to ‘Dominate’ Protests http://bit.ly/2z1S4tM by Erin Banco, Spencer Ackerman and Asawin Suebsaeng
// Pentagon officials say it was the White House, not the Defense Department, pushing for military might in the streets—with Trump seeking details on “tanks” that could be used.
🐣 RT @AshaRangappa_ Just to recap:
*AG Barr, who is not a real “general” of any force, is giving orders for the use of force
*His personal “army” does not belong to any federally-authorized force and won’t identify itself *He’s obscuring legal accountability by moving fed law enforcement to DEA
🐣 RT @GovCTW [Christine Todd Whitman] .@realDonaldTrump, Please stop injecting yourself into crises. Don’t try to tell governors what to do. Instead of calling for calm & for the nation to unite, you were sequestered in the White House basement & silent. Governors and mayors, on the other hand, were actively (1/5) https://twitter.com/GovCTW/status/1267504841103990784?s=20
🐣 RT @glennkirschner2 It’s time for the good, honorable people of the DOJ, FBI, ATF, DEA, USCP, USPP, USSS, USMS & other agencies to say – we will not work to end our republic. We will not abuse the American people we’re here to serve. The president is abusing his power & violating the Constitution.
🐣 RT @dburbach Leaked memo shows AG has granted DEA extraordinary powers to investigate and act against any federal crime “related” to protests, nexus to drugs or not, including covert surveillance. Seems likely similar grants to ATF and other DOJ agencies
🐣 RT @FrankFigiuzzi We are in trouble: The DEA Has Been Given Permission To Investigate People Protesting George Floyd’s Death #protesters
⋙ BuzzFeedNews: We are in trouble: The DEA Has Been Given Permission To Investigate People Protesting George Floyd’s Death #protesters http://bit.ly/36UjfTL
CNN: George W. Bush on George Floyd protests: ‘It is time for America to examine our tragic failures’ http://cnn.it/2XYLPiE
WaPo: George W. Bush calls out racial injustices and celebrates protesters who ‘march for a better future’ http://wapo.st/2AAl5Nk
🐣 RT @tedlieu Dear @realDonaldTrump: Are you going to have soldiers stab Americans with bayonets? This is frickin’ insane. There is no military solution here. ¤ The solution is to listen to the people, and commit to real reforms so that our government no longer murders black Americans.
WaPo: Resignation letter to Defense Secretary Mark Esper: ‘I believe that you violated your oath’ http://wapo.st/3dusXP0 by James N. Miller, Defense Science Board; Miller served as under secretary of defense for policy from 2012 to 2014
🔆 This❗️⋙ TheAtlantic, Mike Mullen: I Cannot Remain Silent http://bit.ly/2Xqiv5x Seventeenth chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Text Block: ● https://twitter.com/Auriandra/status/1267948315158683652?s=20/photo/1
// Our fellow citizens are not the enemy, and must never become so.
I remain confident in the professionalism of our men and women in uniform. They will serve with skill and with compassion. They will obey lawful orders. But I am less confident in the soundness of the orders they will be given by this commander in chief, and I am not convinced that the conditions on our streets, as bad as they are, have risen to the level that justifies a heavy reliance on military troops. Certainly, we have not crossed the threshold that would make it appropriate to invoke the provisions of the Insurrection Act.
Furthermore, I am deeply worried that as they execute their orders, the members of our military will be co-opted for political purposes.
Even in the midst of the carnage we are witnessing, we must endeavor to see American cities and towns as our homes and our neighborhoods. They are not “battle spaces” to be dominated, and must never become so.
💙 BusinessInsider: Trump’s tear gas photo-op was ‘frightening’ to authoritarianism experts, who warn that his behavior will only get worse without ‘fierce opposition’ http://bit.ly/3eH95bN
● President Donald Trump on Monday threatened to deploy the military to quell nationwide unrest over the death of George Floyd, a black man who died after a Minnesota police officer knelt on his neck.
● As Trump made these threats, a crowd of peaceful protesters were tear-gassed outside of the White House to clear the way for the president to walk to a nearby church for a photo-op.
● Videos showed demonstrators being pushed, struck with batons, and tear-gassed. Democrats and critics of the president accuse him of employing authoritarian tactics.
● Top experts on authoritarianism and fascism said this confrontation on live TV was “frightening,” and warned that the president could continue to escalate the situation if left unchallenged.
● Some experts say that it’s too generous to label Trump an authoritarian or fascist, in the sense he doesn’t have a coherent political philosophy, but they also say this doesn’t make him “any less dangerous.”— Rep. Abigail Spanberger of Virginia, a former CIA officer
— Former Vice President Joe Biden
— Ben Rhodes, who served as deputy national security adviser under former President ObamaAcademics:
— Sheri Berman, a professor of political science at Barnard College with expertise in democracy, populism, and fascism
— Robert Paxton, Columbia University historian and author of “The Anatomy of Fascism,”
— Cas Mudde, a political scientist at the University of Georgia who’s an expert on populism, extremism, and democracy
— Jason Stanley, a Yale philosophy professor who wrote “How Fascism Works,”
— Roger Griffin, author of “The Nature of Fascism” and emeritus professor in modern history at Oxford Brookes UniversityHis interpretation of becoming president is that of a narcissist, egomaniac who thinks that because he’s been voted in he doesn’t need to devolve power or consult in any meaningful sense with anybody else,” Griffin said, going on to say that when the history of this era is written, Monday’s teargas photo-op might turn out to have been “one symbolic gesture too far.”
🐣 RT @maddow We’ve now entered the “bayonets” phase of the Trump Presidency?
⋙ 🐣 RT @JamesLaPorta Also: 700 members of the 82nd are at Joint Base Andrews and Fort Belvoir. 1,400 more soldiers are ready to be mobilized within an hour. Soldiers are armed and have riot gear. They also were issued bayonets—standard issue but some feel could be inflammatory
⋙⋙ 🐣 RT @ (AP) Aircraft flying over DCA last night in a show of force against #GeorgeFloyd protesters were ordered by President @realDonaldTrump – US forces in DC are operating under an official mission: Operation Themis—Greek mythology, Themis = divine law & order. http://bit.ly/2ZZIOBq
WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump ordered military aircraft to fly above the nation’s capital Monday night as a “show of force” against demonstrators protesting the death of George Floyd, according to two Department of Defense officials.
Show-of-force missions are designed to intimidate and, in combat zones, warn opposing forces of potential military action if provoked. The officials, who insisted on anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss ongoing operations publicly, did not say how many or what type of aircraft had been mobilized.
Videos and photographs posted on social media showed helicopters flying low over buildings and hovering just above groups who were on the street despite a district-wide curfew.
On Tuesday, roughly 700 members of the Army’s 82nd Airborne Division had arrived at two military bases near Washington. Another 1,400 soldiers are ready to be mobilized within an hour, the two Pentagon officials said. The soldiers are armed and have riot gear as well as bayonets.
The officials said the mission has been named “Operation Themis.” In Greek mythology, Themis was a titaness of divine law and order, whose symbols are the scales of justice
— Reporting by James LaPort
🐣 RT @moscow_project The House Judiciary Committee is reportedly planning a hearing in which whistleblowers will testify about Trump and Barr’s political interference in the Department of Justice. A date for the hearing has not yet been scheduled.
⋙ Politico: House Judiciary panel to hear from DOJ ‘whistleblowers’ amid efforts to reschedule Barr testimony http://politi.co/3dr07iA
// The hearing is part of a series of steps the panel intends to take in the coming weeks to push back against Barr.
💙 🐣 RT @ABC ‘I CAN’T BREATHE’: Philadelphia police toss canisters toward crowd trying to flee up highway embankment. https://abcn.ws/2zKGzY8 💽 https://twitter.com/ABC/status/1267871756573913090?s=20/photo/1
// from yesterday
🐣 RT @UROCKlive1 Yeah that’ll fix the problem … well no, actually they don’t want to fix the problem. Trump just wants to look strong and powerful. He’s perfectly fine with white cops continuing to kill black people.
⋙ 🐣 RT @JohnFitzgerald Trump’s cabinet is preparing a “central command center” for coordinating federal responses to rioting across many states in the country.
🔆 This❗️⋙ AmericanMilitaryTimes: US military establishing ‘central command center’ to oversee riot responses http://bit.ly/2zUZTBS AG Bill Barr and Defense Secretary Mark Esper to be involved in sending federal assets re: Trump’s call “to respond to rioting and dominate”
WaPo: Barr personally ordered removal of protesters near White House, leading to use of force against largely peaceful crowd http://wapo.st/2Xq9yZZ
⭕ 1 Jun 2020
💙 TheAtlantic, Anne Applebaum: History Will Judge the Complicit http://bit.ly/2U0x91A
// Jul-Aug 2020 issue; Why have Republican leaders abandoned their principles in support of an immoral and dangerous president?
The disappearance of the federal government was not a carefully planned transfer of power to the states, as some tried to claim, or a thoughtful decision to use the talents of private companies. This was the inevitable result of a three-year assault on professionalism, loyalty, competence, and patriotism. Tens of thousands of people have died, and the economy has been ruined.
This utter disaster was avoidable. If the Senate had removed the president by impeachment a month earlier; if the Cabinet had invoked the Twenty-Fifth Amendment as soon as Trump’s unfitness became clear; if the anonymous and off-the-record officials who knew of Trump’s incompetence had jointly warned the public; if they had not, instead, been so concerned about maintaining their proximity to power; if senators had not been scared of their donors; if Pence, Pompeo, and Barr had not believed that God had chosen them to play special roles in this “biblical moment”—if any of these things had gone differently, then thousands of deaths and a historic economic collapse might have been avoided.
🐣 RT @JuliaDavisNews America’s heartbreak brought considerable joy to Putin’s Russia, but the gloating also exposes the deep ugliness of his regime. Russian state media focused on the benefits Trump may be able to reap once he is able to crush the uprising.
⋙ DailyBeast, Julia David: Russian Gloating About U.S. Unrest Is Racist as Hell http://bit.ly/
// While the English-speaking offshoots of state media feign sympathy, in Russian for domestic audiences grotesque propaganda serves only the interests of the Putin regime.
Politico: Judge questions ‘unusual’ Justice Department filing in Flynn case http://politi.co/3doJjc7 Judge Emmet Sullivan argued in a 46-page filing submitted by his counsel
// The Justice Department moved to drop the case against the former Trump aide last month.
“For now, it suffices to say that the unusual developments in this case provide at least a plausible ‘reason to question’ the ‘bona fides’ of the government’s motion,” Sullivan argued in the 46-page filing, submitted by his counsel.
DOJ, Sullivan noted, repeatedly affirmed for years that the evidence Flynn lied to the FBI was ironclad and crucial to the FBI’s investigation of Russian interference in the 2016 election.
“It was signed by the Acting U.S. Attorney alone, with no line prosecutors joining; it featured no affidavits or declarations supporting its many new factual allegations; it was not accompanied by a motion to vacate the government’s prior, contrary filings and representations; it cited minimal legal authority in support of its view on materiality,” Sullivan’s brief noted, adding that it also omitted any mention of other potentially criminal conduct Flynn had admitted to in his plea: working on behalf of the Turkish government without registering as a foreign agent.
“It is unprecedented for an Acting U.S. Attorney to contradict the solemn representations that career prosecutors made time and again, and undermine the district court’s legal and factual findings, in moving on his own to dismiss the charge years after two different federal judges accepted the defendant’s plea,” Sullivan’s legal team wrote, adding, “As this Court’s precedents envision, Judge Sullivan can—and arguably must—consider those issues before granting a motion to dismiss.” … …
Flynn pleaded guilty in December 2017 to lying about his contacts with Kislyak. He also admitted to doing paid lobbying for Turkey’s government without registering and to lying about efforts to delay a U.N. vote on Israeli settlements in the weeks before Trump took office.
⭕ 24 May 2020
🐣 RT @NoahSchachtman Andrey Bezrukov, retired Russian intelligence colonel: “I am often asked: ‘Why is Trump better than, for example, Biden or Clinton?’ Because Biden or Clinton would act in support of [international] coalitions. When Trump came, he destroyed that team.”
⋙ DailyBeast, Julia Davis: Can Trump’s Art of the Arms Deal Get More Stupid? The Russians Are Loving It. http://bit.ly/36pnZk7
// Now that Trump reportedly is toying with a resumption of nuclear testing, the Kremlin intends to take full advantage.
⭕ 23 May 2020
🐣 RT @nedprice This Acting DNI has absolutely no understanding of the line between intelligence and policy. The fact is, he’s not performing the role of DNI — Acting or otherwise. He’s faithfully doing the job Trump set our for him: leveraging the IC to protect and promote Trump’s interests.
⋙ 🐣 RT @ODNIgov Acting DNI Grenell statement on U.S. Intent to Withdraw from Open Skies Treaty Text Block: https://twitter.com/ODNIgov/status/1263542910689193988?s=20/photo/1
⭕ 22 May 2020
🐣 RT @OrinKerr Interesting amicus brief filed in the Flynn case by @tribelaw, @gtconway3d, and many others. Not entirely sure where I come out on this. My initial view was that Sullivan had to grant the motion, but now I’m not sure. Will be interesting to watch.
⋙ Amicus Brief filed in Flynn Case Supporting Denial of the Government’s Motion to Dismiss [pdf] http://bit.ly/2WUyAAb 28p; by @tribelaw @gtconway3d @RWPUSA, others
// BRIEF AMICI CURIAE OF SEPARATION OF POWERS SCHOLARS LAURENCE H. TRIBE, PHILIP BOBBITT, LEE C. BOLLINGER, LEA BRILMAYER, ERWIN CHEMERINSKY, GEORGE T. CONWAY III, MICHAEL C. DORF, BRUCE FEIN, JOSHUA A. GELTZER, JEANNIE SUK GERSEN, DAVID M. GOLOVE, OONA A. HATHAWAY, HAROLD HONGJU KOH, MARTHA MINOW, RICHARD W. PAINTER, ROBERT POST, TREVOR POTTER, JUDITH RESNIK, GEOFFREY R. STONE, and DAVID A. STRAUSS, SUPPORTING DENIAL OF THE GOVERNMENT’S MOTION TO DISMISS
WaPo: FBI director orders internal review of Michael Flynn case http://wapo.st/2LSEHii
⭕ 20 May 2020
NYT, Volodymyr Zelensky: I Expected War. I Didn’t Expect Trump’s Impeachment or a Pandemic. http://nyti.ms/2ZjQqhH Mr Zelensky is the president of Ukraine
// Ukraine’s president looks back at what got him through his first year in office.
⭕ 18 May 2020
DailyBeast: Trump’s Been Playing a Ventilator Shell Game With Russia http://bit.ly/2LGMnnx (Julia Davis watches Russian TV so we don’t have to): latest: opting not to go forward with cases against Flynn and the Internet Research Agency paves way for lifting sanctions
// The Trump administration bought ventilators from Russia that can’t be used (wrong voltage, and they catch fire). Then it gave good ventilators, still needed in the U.S., to Moscow.
⭕ 16 May 2020
WaPo: Trump ramps up retaliatory purge with firing of State Department inspector general http://wapo.st/2WCdeY9
WaPo: State Department inspector general fired as Democrats decry ‘dangerous pattern of retaliation’ http://wapo.st/2Tdfrr1
⭕ 15 May 2020
🔆‼️⋙ Politico: Trump ousts State Department watchdog http://politi.co/361RN68
// Democrats blasted the Friday-night dismissal as an assault on the rule of law
🐣 RT @RodneyCasten Burr gives middle finger to Trump and fellow @GOP conspirators on his way out.
⋙ 🐣 RT @KenDilanianNBC In his last act as intel chairman, Richard Burr has submitted for declassification the final volume of the intel committee’s Russia report – 1,000 pages on the committee’s “counterintelligence findings.”
📊 Rasmussen Poll: 23% of Republicans Think GOP Should Nominate Someone Other Than Trump http://bit.ly/2Ww4HpU //➔ Never thought I’d tweet a Razz poll – which skew notoriously pro-Trump/GOP – but here we are; disinfo? Whatever: RT @BarackObama Vote.
💙💙 🐣 RT @BarackObama Vote.
⋙ 🐣 powerful ~ perfect Obama response to all the crazy
🐣 RT @MSNBC “Our country is in very serious trouble when you have such blatant political corruption at the highest levels of U.S. government.”— Fmr. CIA Director Brennan
⋙ 💽 MSNBC: John Brennan calls Trump targeting Obama era officials an ‘abominable abuse of authority’ http://on.msnbc.com/2Ww11EA
// The president’s acting Director of National Intelligence declassified a list of Obama era officials who pointed out that Michael Flynn was having conversations with Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak. National Security experts say it’s an effort on the Trump Administration’s part to shift the narrative on the Russia investigation. Former CIA Director John Brennan says the United States is in ‘very serious trouble when you have such blatant political corruption at the highest levels of government.’ Brennan went on to say, “I’m just hoping that individuals like Chris Wray, who is a remarkable public servant, will stay strong in the face of abominable abuse of authority.”
🐣 RT @brhodes The United States is in the middle of a pandemic and depression and this is what Trump is focused on. He doesn’t care about your health or your job. He doesn’t have anything to offer you but an endless series of cartoon enemies. Just look at what that is doing to our country.
⋙ 🧵 RT @NatashaBertrand New: One year after the Russia investigation ended and 6 months before he faces re-election, Trump is getting his revenge—and his most trusted advisers, some newly installed throughout DOJ and the IC since his impeachment acquittal, are helping him do it
💙 ⋙⋙ Politico, Natasha Bertrand: Trump exults in his Mueller revenge play http://politi.co/
// The president’s appointees have done more to unwind the Russia probe in a few months than years of complaints from the Oval Office ever achieved.
⋙ 🐣 RT @NatashaBertrand This is only the beginning of the revenge tour, Trump’s allies say, pointing to the ongoing Durham probe. And they are increasing pressure on the IC to declassify a memo written by HPSCI Rs in 2018 outlining supposed evidence that Russia wanted Clinton, not Trump, to win in 2016.
⭕ 14 May 2020
🐣 RT @ “One of the arguments that Barr has made and I find frankly absurd is that there was no predication… Nobody is saying that Flynn didn’t lie, they’re simply saying now that his lies didn’t matter… that is belied by everything we know” – Chuck Rosenberg w/ @NicolleDWallace 💽 https://twitter.com/DeadlineWH/status/1261047391777587207?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @DeadlineWH “I think [Judge] Sullivan’s gonna handle this thing by the law. This is a decision by the law. But it can’t be lost on him that in many ways this will become a referendum on everything that has gone on in the past 4 years” – @nytmike w/ @NicolleDWallace 💽 https://twitter.com/DeadlineWH/status/1261048388809875462?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @kylegriffin1 When Judge Sullivan opened the door to third party arguments in the Flynn case, he was apparently reacting to legal arguments sent to court by 16 Watergate prosecutors, who reasoned he could still sentence Flynn. And they warned of corruption within DOJ.
⋙ CNN, Katelyn Polantz: Judge in Flynn case has mastered the art of surprise http://cnn.it/3bE9BWh
🐣 RT @KenDilanianNBC Sure. Burr has stepped aside as intel chairman after this dramatic escalation of the FBI probe into his February stock sales. The use of a search warrant means the FBI convinced a judge there was probable cause to believe a crime has been committed.
⋙⋙ 🐣 RT @MeetThePress We will get to the coronavirus, but first want to ask you about today’s breaking news. The FBI seized Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Richard Burr’s cell phone in their investigation into possible insider trading. Fill us in on the latest. #TweetThePress
⭕ 13 May 2020
NYMag, Ed Kilgore: Why Trump’s Obamagate Ploy Is Doomed to Fail http://bit.ly/3dRciVT “In one fell swoop, ‘Obamagate’ turns Trump from a sleazy practitioner of corrupt and arguably unpatriotic campaign tactics into a victim of those same tactics”
NYT: Ex-FBI Official Is Said to Undercut Justice Dept. Effort to Drop Flynn Case http://nyti.ms/3cwawJv //➔ There was no attempt to set Flynn up, according to Bill Priestap, the former head of FBI counterintelligence
// Prosecutors questioned a former F.B.I. official whose notes were used to buttress their motion to dismiss the charge against the president’s first national security adviser.
His lawyers said Mr. [Bill] Priestap’s notes — recently uncovered during a review of the case — suggested that the F.B.I. was trying to entrap Mr. Flynn, and Attorney General William P. Barr said investigators were trying to “lay a perjury trap.”
That interpretation was wrong, Mr. Priestap told the prosecutors reviewing the case. He said that F.B.I. officials were trying to do the right thing in questioning Mr. Flynn and that he knew of no effort to set him up. Media reports about his notes misconstrued them, he said, according to the people familiar with the investigation.
The department’s decision to exclude mention of Mr. Priestap’s interview in the motion could trouble Judge Sullivan, who signaled late on Tuesday that he was skeptical of the department’s arguments.
The department’s decision to drop the Flynn case was a stunning reversal, widely regarded as part of an effort by Mr. Barr to undermine the Russia investigation. The prosecutor who led the case, Brandon L. Van Grack, withdrew from it, and only the interim U.S. attorney in Washington, Timothy Shea, a longtime adviser to Mr. Barr, signed the motion.
🐣 RT @tribelaw Translation: “Not so fast, Barr. I’m still the judge here, not you.” Good news for those of us who still care about how the Constitution protects the independent judiciary. Judge Sullivan wants to hear from genuine friends of the court. Excellent!
⋙ Politico: Judge slows down effort to drop Flynn case http://politi.co/2yGXcU1
// Judge Emmet Sullivan said he’ll receive written arguments that are likely to oppose Justice’s bid to abandon the high-profile prosecution.
🐣 RT @BarbMcQuade As a national security prosecutor, I learned the standard for predication to open an investigation. The Flynn case was more than adequately predicated, and DOJ’s motion to dismiss is utter nonsense. My thoughts in @Lawfare.
⋙ Lawfare, Barbara McQuade: Why the Flynn Interview Was Predicated http://bit.ly/3dIhnQ3
🧵 RT @renato_mariotti THREAD: What should we make of the news that Judge Sullivan has appointed retired Judge John Gleeson to present arguments in opposition to the DOJ’s motion to dismiss the case against Michael Flynn? https://twitter.com/renato_mariotti/status/1260713633081851904?s=20
🐣 RT @DrDenaGrayson 🚨 Judge Sullivan appoints retired judge John Gleeson—asks him to recommend whether Flynn should face CRIMINAL contempt charge for #perjury for declaring under oath TWICE that he was GUILTY of lying to the FBI before claiming he didn’t lie. 😎
⋙ Politico: Federal judge mulls contempt charge against Michael Flynn http://politi.co/2Ww3NcV
// Judge Emmet Sullivan named af former judge to weigh the issue after the Justice Department filed a motion to dismiss the case against the former Trump national security adviser.
WaPo, Jennifer Rubin: Will the courts thwart Trump’s overreach? http://wapo.st/2LoZKsx //➔ a look at the Flynn case and the SCOTUS oral arguments on whether Trump can shoot someone on Fifth Avenue
AP: Flynn case boosts Trump’s bid to undo Russia probe narrative http://bit.ly/2YZrSuh
DailyBeast, Julia Davis: Trump’s Confident He’s Wrapping Up the ‘Russia Hoax,’ and Russia’s Confident He’s in Their Pocket http://bit.ly/2LC0LxH
// “The Russia hoax made it very hard for Russia and the United States to deal with each other,” said Trump. But he figures that’s going to change. And so does Vladimir Putin.
⭕ 12 May 2020
TheBulwark, Tim Miller: Taking #Obamagate Seriously http://bit.ly/2Luj9bB “[U]nderneath the palpable jealousy & the desperate attempt to change the subject … is a very real effort by President Trump … to undermine the rule of law [&] rewrite the history of the 2016 election”
// President Trump’s bonkers theory, explained.
… [U]nderneath the palpable jealousy and the desperate attempt to change the subject to something, anything besides the slow-motion pandemic-management disaster that he is overseeing, is a very real effort by President Trump and his enablers to undermine the rule of law, rewrite the history of the 2016 election, and give a hall pass to a hostile foreign power for its interference in our election.
Last year I went deep into the heart of the MAGA web to understand the web of conspiracies that President Trump has since dubbed #Obamagate. Go ahead and read that piece—a rollicking 3,000 words of crazy that I highly recommend you ingest with a stiff cocktail. But the tl;dr of what MAGAworld saw as the state of play when it was written was this:
‘Four years ago, there was a global conspiracy — comprised of President Obama, Vice-President Biden, Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, FBI Director Jim Comey, much of the FBI, the DNC, a company called CrowdStrike, multiple foreign-intelligence services, and Ukrainian oligarchs — to undermine Donald Trump by planting a phony conspiracy theory that he was colluding with the Russians to win the 2016 election. These deep-state operators framed several top Trump officials, fabricated evidence, and spied on the campaign with the end goal of committing the biggest fraud in American history in order to derail Trump.’
💙 Politico: Judge slows down effort to drop Flynn case http://politi.co/2yGXcU1 //➔ Good Judge Emmet Sullivan may have just saved the republic ~ in rebuke of Barr, this hold to review amicus briefs also throws cold water on the entire Q-inspired frenzy about an #Obamagate
// Judge Emmet Sullivan said he’ll receive written arguments that are likely to oppose Justice’s bid to abandon the high-profile prosecution.
↥ ↧
🐣 RT @kyledcheney JUST IN: Judge in FLYNN Case indicates he’s going to set a schedule to receive briefs from interested parties regarding the effort by DOJ to drop the case.
⋙⋙ ≣ [Minute Order:] Text Block: https://twitter.com/kyledcheney/status/1260329456398487552?s=20/photo/1
↥ ↧
🐣 RT @kyledcheney UPDATE: We have the filing that appears to have prompted Judge Sullivan to pursue a schedule for receiving briefs — it’s from 16 former Watergate prosecutors.
⋙ 🐣 RT @kyledcheney The Watergate prosecutors argue that once a guilty plea is accepted, as it was for Flynn, it’s final and becomes the juridiction of the courts. They intend to file an amicus brief presenting this argument more fully by May 21.
⋙⋙ ≣ [Court filing:] http://politi.co/3brfcin
// The Watergate Prosecutors are: Nick Akerman, Richard Ben-Veniste, Richard J. Davis, Carl B. Feldbaum, George T. Frampton, Jr., Kenneth S. Geller, Gerald Goldman, Stephen E. Haberfeld, Henry L. Hecht, Paul R. Hoeber, Philip Allen Lacovara, Paul R. Michel, Robert L. Palmer, Frank Tuerkheimer, Jill Wine-Banks, and Roger Witten.
🐣 RT @JoyceWhiteVance 1/ This means folks like the 2000 former DOJ employees, including appointees of both political parties, who demanded Barr’s resignation over his unwarranted dismissal of the Flynn case can make arguments to the court. This is a fascinating judge for this situation because
⋙⋙ 🐣 RT @TomWinter NBC News: The federal judge overseeing the case of Ret. Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn says he’ll set a schedule to receive ‘amicus curiae briefs’ which will allow interested 3rd parties — outside of Flynn’s attorneys and the Justice Department — to file briefings with the court.
⋙⋙⋙ 🐣 RT @TomWinter This is an unusual step for a judge to allow amicus curiae briefs (in a criminal case) and indicates that he is far from ready to make an immediate decision on whether the Flynn case will be dismissed or whether he will be allowed to withdraw his plea.
⋙ 🐣 RT @JoyceWhiteVance 2/ his history with DOJ includes public release of misconduct findings against prosecutors in the case of Alaska Senator Ted Stevens. Among other things, this prompted a nationwide reform of discovery practices in US Attys offices & Main Justice components.
⋙ 🐣 RT @JoyceWhiteVance 3/ Given Judge Sullivan’s history of taking institutional integrity seriously & believing the courts have a role to play in insuring proper conduct at DOJ, this is starting to look like game-on. (& before people ask, he has been appointed to judgeships by Reagan, Bush & Clinton)
🧵 RT @SteveSchmidtSES It is Tuesday evening and America is being smothered under a toxic fog of lies, conspiracy theories, false accusations, demagoguery and crackpottery. These things are true. USA is the epicenter of Covid 19 and has the most deaths and among the worst per capita testing rates. 📌 https://twitter.com/SteveSchmidtSES/status/1260337967228432385?s=20
Ethics, honor, decency, goodness and selflessness are alien concepts to Trump. He brims with the worst human qualities. He is everything a parent hopes their child will never be. Barack Obama’s Presidency did not result in a single criminal indictment over eight years. (4)
He served with honor, decency integrity and competence. He left his successor with a pandemic plan. He made America stronger over his tenure. Trump’s numbers are tanking. Here comes the Lugenkrieg (lying war) Trump will wage an all out war on reality and truth in the (5)
Months ahead. He will attack the press in fits of distemper and illiberalism. He will make up smears against Joe Biden and his family. He will enlist the aid of hostile foreign powers and echo their propaganda and disinformation campaigns which are designed to divide (6)
The American people, weaken our standing in the world and erode faith in democracy because he thinks it will benefit him. He will attack Secretary Clinton and President Obama with lies, slander and smears. He will be supported in all of this by an echo chamber of dishonest (7)
Propagandists who have become a network of Baghdad Bob’s for whom no lie, no absurdity no anything is too much in service of their leader. Trump will do these things because he knows the walls are closing in. He is beginning to panic. He is America’s greatest failure.
WaPo: Acting intelligence chief Grenell gave DOJ list of Obama officials who ‘unmasked’ Michael Flynn http://wapo.st/2yQvXGx
🔆 This❗️⋙ WaPo: U.S. judge puts on hold Justice Dept. move to dismiss Michael Flynn’s guilty plea to hear outside groups’ challenges http://wapo.st/2YVMsM8
WaPo: The Flynn case isn’t over until the judge says it’s over http://wapo.st/2WqyekN “The independence of the court protects us all when executive-branch decisions smack of impropriety; it also protects the judiciary itself from becoming a party to corruption”
// By John Gleeson, David O’Neil and Marshall Miller
NBCNews, Frank Figliuzzi: Trump’s ‘Obamagate’ comments and Barr’s Flynn meddling suggest troubling new pivot http://nbcnews.to/2Lka596 “As this staged farce unfolds, the truth will be trampled, reputations ruined and a foreign adversary empowered”
// Trump can’t pull off this ruse by himself, of course, but he has a partner. Barr is riding shotgun during this scorched-earth joyride against justice.
As other commentators have pointed out, attempting this bait and switch would likely involve efforts to censure, discipline or even criminally charge current and former government officials, such as former CIA Director John Brennan, fired FBI Director James Comey, former national security adviser Susan Rice, former National Intelligence Director James Clapper and perhaps even Obama and Biden. During his Monday news conference in the Rose Garden, a reporter asked Trump what crime he might accuse Obama of committing. Trump responded: “Obamagate, it’s been going on for a long time. It’s been going on from before I got elected, and it’s a disgrace that it happened. You look at, now, all of this information that’s being released, and from what I understand, that’s only the beginning.”
Trump can’t pull off this ruse by himself, of course, but he has a partner. Barr is riding shotgun on Trump’s scorched-earth joyride against justice. Barr already said he believes the Russia inquiry was designed to “sabotage” Trump’s campaign. He’s ignored the findings of his own inspector general and appointed a hand-picked U.S. attorney to try to put flesh on the bones of a convoluted conspiracy theory.
As this staged farce unfolds, the truth will be trampled, reputations ruined and a foreign adversary empowered. We don’t need a crystal ball to see the harmful trap ahead. Don’t fall for it.
⭕ 11 May 2020
🐣 RT @CREWcrew One of the former Roger Stone prosecutors, who resigned in protest, has spoken out about the decision to dismiss charges against Michael Flynn, and the dangerous pattern of political interference in cases dealing with the president’s allies.
💙 ⋙ WaPo, Jonathan Kravis: I left the Justice Department after it made a disastrous mistake. It just happened again. http://wapo.st/2zxx1PG
⭕ 10 May 2020
🐣 RT @kylegriffin1 Chuck Rosenberg on Flynn: “Were his lies material, as required by the statute to which he pleaded guilty? Absolutely. For those of us who spent a professional lifetime as prosecutors and in the Justice Department, this is not a close call.”
⋙ WaPo, Chuck Rosenberg: The long list of people who thought Flynn’s lies were material http://wapo.st/2YNRhal
NYT, Mary B. McCord: Bill Barr Twisted My Words in Dropping the Flynn Case. Here’s the Truth. http://nyti.ms/3dEuUZb Ms. McCord was an acting assistant attorney general for national security at the Justice Department from 2016 to 2017.
// The F.B.I.’s interview of Mr. Flynn was constitutional, lawful and for a legitimate counterintelligence purpose.
⭕ 9 May 2020
🐣 RT @Mimirocah1 This is a terrifying & necessary chronicle of Barr’s abuse of the power of the DOJ. We cannot stop calling this out. It is one of the most dangerous parts of the Trump Administration.
⋙ NYT Editorial: William Barr’s Perversion of Justice http://nyti.ms/2AhIR0N
// The attorney general is turning the Justice Department into a political weapon for the president.
⭕ 8 May 2020
NYT, Neal Katyal and Joshua Geltzer: The Appalling Damage of Dropping the Michael Flynn Case http://nyti.ms/3dv5nBt
// It embeds into official U.S. policy a shockingly extremist view of law enforcement as the enemy of the American people.
⭕ 7 May 2020
🐣 RT @DeadlineWH “The Justice Department had nothing to do with this, this was the White House 100%, President Trump dropped charges against Mike Flynn. Mike Flynn was lying to Mike Pence, he was lying to the FBI to cover up for Trump” – Jeremy Bash w/ @NicolleDWallace 💽 https://twitter.com/DeadlineWH/status/1258504067862736897?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @neal_katyal Seems to me that the judge should investigate why this very well-regarded prosecutor withdrew from the Flynn case. If what DOJ did here is so up&up, they should have nothing to fear. Let them explain it to the Judge and hear this prosecutor’s side, too.
⋙ ⋙ 🐣 RT @kyledcheney JUST IN: Prosecutor Brandon VAN GRACK has moved to withdraw from the Flynn case. Text Block: https://twitter.com/kyledcheney/status/1258447664213045249?s=20/photo/1
⋙ 🐣 RT @JoyceVanceWhite Since the motion to dismiss the case was signed by the new US Atty in DC, who came there straight from a job as an advisor to AG Barr, with no signatures from career prosecutors as would be usual, I look forward to his explanation to the court.
NYT: ‘Never Seen Anything Like This’: Experts Question Dropping of Flynn Prosecution http://nyti.ms/3drVtk1 “‘eating the Justice Department from the inside out’”
// Abandoning the case is the latest step in a pattern of dismantling the work of the Russia investigators. A former prosecutor likened it to eating the department from the inside out.
💽 MSNBC: Chuck Rosenberg on DOJ asking judge to drop Michael Flynn case: ‘Not good for the rule of law’ http://on.msnbc.com/2xI4p5A
// On the Justice Department asking a judge to drop the Michael Flynn case, Chuck Rosenberg says, “It’s not good for the rule of law, it’s not good for morale, and it’s not a fair outcome in this case.”
⭕ 5 May 2020
WaPo: Obama’s office condemns Senate investigation into Ukraine, Biden in letter http://wapo.st/2SDN7h6 The letter, sent March 13, “dismiss[es] the probe as ‘without precedent’ and a way to ‘give credence to a Russian disinformation campaign.’”
⭕ 22 Apr 2020
WaPo Editorial: The Russia hoax was never a hoax. An encouraging bipartisan report confirms it. http://wapo.st/2VuytdZ
// Brenner, Steele dossier addressed
The Senate Intelligence Committee deserves accolades for its clear-eyed examination of a subject that shouldn’t be political but has become polarizing thanks to the president’s provocations. Yet lawmakers wouldn’t have had a report to analyze at all if it weren’t for an intelligence community willing to dig up inconvenient truths. This is the community Mr. Trump is slowly destroying, most recently by firing his director of national intelligence and nominating an unqualified loyalist to fill the slot, as well as by dismissing Inspector General Michael Atkinson for lawfully alerting Congress about a whistleblower complaint.
The most recent Russia report is a reminder of the need to protect our elections against a repeat performance, whether by disrupting online influence campaigns, securing critical infrastructure or requiring paper trails and risk-limiting audits at the ballot box. But it’s also a reminder of the need to protect the intelligence community from co-option by a leader hostile to any truths that threaten his power.
⭕ 21 Apr 2020
🐣 RT @Comey First Mueller Report, then the IG, and now Senate Republicans. There really was a Russian attack in 2016 and those who investigated it were professionals. Facts remain stubborn things.
⋙ NYT: Republican-Led Review Backs Intelligence Findings on Russian Interference http://nyti.ms/2RYaemh
// A new Senate report undercuts claims by President Trump and his allies that Obama-era officials sought to undermine him while investigating Russia’s 2016 election meddling.
A three-year review by the Republican-led Senate Intelligence Committee unanimously found that the intelligence community assessment, pinning blame on Russia and outlining its goals to undercut American democracy, was fundamentally sound and untainted by politics.
“The I.C.A. reflects strong tradecraft, sound analytical reasoning and proper justification of disagreement in the one analytical line where it occurred,” said Senator Richard M. Burr, Republican of North Carolina and the panel’s chairman. “The committee found no reason to dispute the intelligence community’s conclusions.”
⭕ 16 Apr 2020
RT @glennkirschner2 So Roger Stone will be reporting to prison in the coming weeks. Let’s be clear: a pardon would be an act of clear presidential corruption. Bannon testified that Stone was the Trump campaign’s “access point” to Assange/Wikileaks. A Stone pardon should = “Impeachment: The Sequel.”
⋙ 🐣 RT @ajdukakis #BREAKING: Longtime Trump friend Roger Stone denied new trial – @ABC News https://abcn.ws/2ylyism
JustSecurity, Alex Joel: Seek and Speak the Truth http://bit.ly/3covrO3 “Having the fortitude to speak unpopular truths is part of what it means to be an intelligence professional”
// on the dismissal of CI IG Atkinson
⭕ 13 Apr 2020
NYT: Putin’s Long War Against American Science http://nyti.ms/3egXDEr
// A decade of health disinformation promoted by President Vladimir Putin of Russia has sown wide confusion, hurt major institutions and encouraged the spread of deadly illnesses.
⭕ 7 Apr 2020
🐣 RT @sfpelosi Just this week Trump fired 2 inspector generals, retained an incompetent Acting Navy Secretary #FireModly, had his Supreme Court majority toss #WisconsinPrimary votes and installed a #COVID19 denier as press secretary. This is what dictatorship looks like!
🐣 RT @gregpmiller Officials ousted so far during the Corona crisis:
1) Navy captain of covid-infected ship.
2) Inspector General of the intelligence community
3) DOD Inspector General in charge of tracking $ billions in pandemic relief
🐣 RT @PattyMurray This is a huge red flag. President Trump’s repeated attacks on those who hold him accountable make clear Congress cannot leave him unchecked. With so much at stake, Republicans should join our call for the serious oversight this President clearly needs.
⋙ Politico: Trump removes independent watchdog for coronavirus funds, upending oversight panel http://politi.co/
// The move comes as Trump makes a broad push against inspectors general scrutinizing his actions.
⭕ 5 Apr 2020
🐣 RT @Yamiche NEW: Statement from Michael Atkinson, Intel Community IG who Pres Trump fired after he told Congress about whistleblower Ukraine complaint. ¤ Atkinson says he was “legally obligated to ensure that whistleblowers had an effective and authorized means to disclose urgent matters.” [Letter] https://twitter.com/Yamiche/status/1246970011496955905?s=20/photo/1-2
📌 https://twitter.com/Yamiche/status/1246970011496955905?s=20/
⭕ 3 Apr 2020
🔆 This❗️⋙ 🐣 RT @kylegriffin1 Breaking: Trump has fired the intelligence community’s chief watchdog, Michael Atkinson, who was the first to sound the alarm to Congress about an “urgent” complaint he’d received from an intelligence official involving Trump’s communications with Ukraine.
⋙ Politico: Trump fires intelligence community inspector general http://politi.co/
// The president has formally notified the Senate Intelligence Committee of the move.
⭕ 30 Mar 2020
🐣 RT @glennkirschner2 The unredacted Mueller report finally lands in the hands of Judge Reggie Walton after he concluded Bill Barr lacks candor. The unredacted report can serve as a blueprint for the prosecution of Donald Trump, come Jan. 2021. #TCC #TrumpCrimesCommission 💽 https://twitter.com/glennkirschner2/status/1244770039930200065?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @RNicholasBurns Where to start? We’ve been allies with Germany in #NATO for decades. Russia is an adversary. Trump regularly praises adversaries like Putin and criticizes true allies like Angela Merkel. He is doing great harm to our country.
⋙ 🐣 RT @atrupar Trump on Russia: “They also fought World War 2. They lost 50 million people. They were on partner, in World War 2. Germany was the enemy. And Germany’s like this wonderful thing…now we don’t talk to Russia, we talk to Germany. I mean, look, it’s fine. I want to talk to Germany” 💽 https://twitter.com/atrupar/status/1244611853990404100?s=20/photo/1
// Fox and Friends
⭕ 25 Mar 2020
History.com (2019): The Spy Who Kept the Cold War From Boiling Over http://bit.ly/33KWCzy
// 7/15/2019; Dmitri Polyakov
⭕ 21 Mar 2020
🐣 RT @Billbrowder Russia doctors say government is covering up Corona virus deaths classifying them as simple pneumonia in order to keep the numbers down. Of course the Russian government is
⋙ BusinessInsider: Doctors in Russia are accusing the government of covering up its coronavirus outbreak and denying them protective equipment http://bit.ly/33IS4tt
🐣 RT @GeorgeTakai The last time I remember them suspending constitutional rights in this country during a national emergency, I was 5 years old. I was sent to an interment camp with my family, without trial or due process, for four years. #NeverAgain
⋙ RollingStone, Peter Wade: DOJ Wants to Suspend Certain Constitutional Rights During Coronavirus Emergency http://bit.ly/2UvsdkJ
// The Department of Justice has secretly asked Congress for the ability to detain arrested people “indefinitely” in addition to other powers that one expert called “terrifying”
🐣 RT @olgaNYC1211 Russian doctors say Putin’s regime is covering up cases. They are absolutely correct. From people I have spoken to the virus is far worse than being reported and the numbers are suppressed. Its horrific! Also Putins cronies are profiting off this crisis
⋙ BusinessInsider: Doctors in Russia are accusing the government of covering up its coronavirus outbreak and denying them protective equipment http://bit.ly/2Um7b7W
DefenseOne, Patrick Tucker: Russia Has New Tool For Massive Internet Shutdown Attack, Leaked Documents Claim http://bit.ly/2U9ayQN
// Moscow’s latest cyber weapon would target a wider array of devices than previous denial-of-service tools: the growing internet of things
⭕ 20 Mar 2020
NYT, Jennifer Senior: Call Trump’s News Conferences What They Are: Propaganda http://nyti.ms/2wfR0RH
// Then contrast them with the leadership shown by Andrew Cuomo, Justin Trudeau and Angela Merkel.
⭕ 19 Mar 2020
🐣 RT @NormOrnstein Putin wins again.
⋙ 🐣 RT @KenDilanianNBC The top two officials at the National Counter Terrorism Center have been ousted amid a debate over downsizing the agency, NBC news has confirmed. First reported by @nakashimae
⭕ 18 Mar 2020
WaPo Editorial: Americans should not have to choose between their health and democracy http://wapo.st/393Komu
// elections
⭕ 17 Mar 2020
NYT, Jennifer Szalai: A Sobering Look at How Quickly Hitler Transformed Germany http://nyti.ms/399mVR4 Review of “Hitler’s First Hundred Days” by Peter Fritsche
WaPo, David Ignatius: Trump loyalists take command of the intelligence community http://wapo.st/2x7Ia8o
WaPo: Federal personnel chief quits abruptly amid coronavirus planning for the workforce of 2.1 million http://wapo.st/3d9Snli
⭕ 16 Mar 2020
‼️ 🐣 RT @peterbakernyt Dow closes 3,000 points down, wiping out 96% of the gains of Trump’s presidency.
🐣 RT @selectedwisdom An incredible defeat for USA, America was attacked by Russia in the lead up to the election, we did little to deal with it, and what we did in response is being undone.
⋙ 🧵 RT @Tom_Winter BREAKING: Federal prosecutors are seeking to dismiss their indictment against Concord Management the company owned by Yevgeny Prigozhin aka ‘Putin’s Chef’ in a case brought by Special Counsel Robert Mueller. 2 other entities and 13 Russian nationals remain under indictment. 📌 https://twitter.com/Tom_Winter/status/1239692810401525761?s=20
⭕ 15 Mar 2020
⭕ 14 Mar 2020
🧵 RT @McFaul THREAD on the stubborn persistence (tragic, good, or otherwise) of #Interdependence. 1/ 📌 https://twitter.com/McFaul/status/1239047223289114625?s=20
⋙ 🐣 RT @McFaul [ … ] First, the United States may be a superpower when it comes to nukes or boats, but our state is not all powerful when it comes to fighting pandemics. South Korea, Taiwan, Singapore and maybe even China have more state capacity to defend against the threat of SARS-CoV-2. 6/
⋙ 🐣 RT @McFaul Second, SARS-CoV-2 underscores the fallacy of go-it-alone, isolationist, build-the-wall strategies. Like climate change, we cannot increase the security of Americans without cooperating with other countries. It’s not a normative choice; it’s a fact. 7/
⋙ 🐣 RT @McFaul During the global financial crisis of the fall of 2008, the G-20 came alive. What is striking today, however, is how little international coordination/cooperation is occuring to address this global pandemic. 8/
⋙ 🐣 RT @McFaul [ … ] Our world is connected. In the 21st century, dreaming about going it alone, decoupling, or isolation is dangerous — extremely dangerous. 14/ END THREAD.
🧵 RT @JeremyKonyndyk Look who finally decided to address this! ¤ Let’s dissect everything that’s wrong with this tweet. 📌 https://twitter.com/JeremyKonyndyk/status/1238880465496440838?s=20
⋙⋙ 🐣 RT @JohnBolton Claims that streamlining NSC structures impaired our nation’s bio defense are false. Global health remained a top NSC priority, and its expert team was critical to effectively handling the 2018-19 Africa Ebola crisis. The angry Left just can’t stop attacking, even in a crisis.
⋙ RT @JeremyKonyndyk Bolton’s chosen approach to NSC “streamlining” involved decapitating and diluting the unit dedicated to pandemic prep and biosecurity. ¤ He eliminated the Sr Director position entirely, closed the directorate, and sprinkled the remaining staff across other parts of the NSC.
⋙ RT @JeremyKonyndyk That’s the opposite of streamlining. Instead of giving an issue (biosecurity) a distinct institutional presence, expertise, and voice in the policy process, Bolton’s re-org left this issue fragmented across other directorates that were focused on other higher priorities.
⋙ RT @JeremyKonyndyk That choice means that you don’t have a cohesive team able to elevate pandemic and biosecurity perspectives to senior leaders, you just have a few director-level subject-matter experts scattered around with limited influence and little ability to reach decision-makers. [ … ]
🐣 RT @VladDavidzon Mr. Telizhenko, who was #Gulliani main fixer in Kyiv, offered me bribe to illegally lobby US senate on behalf of proRussian television stations owned by Ukrainian oligarch Medvechuk. Telizhenko is unreliable narrator at the best. I was witness in US law enforcement investigation.
⋙ 🐣 RT @jeremyherb New from @NdosSantosCNN: Andrii Telizhenko, who was the target of the Senate Homeland Security Committee subpoena that was scrapped this week, offered a Ukrainian editor money to lobby US senators on behalf of pro-Russian media outlets
⋙⋙ CNN, Nina dos Santos: A Giuliani ally offered cash to lobby US senators on behalf of pro-Russian TV stations http://cnn.it/2TU8D2x
⭕ 13 Mar 2020
🐣 RT @glennkirschner2 Yes, this is good news. But it’s becoming apparent that it will be too little, too late. Trump’s weaponizing of the court system has been successful. In court, Trump loses and loses and loses. But it’s the DELAY he’s after. So he wins by losing.
⋙ Politico: Full appeals court to hear McGahn, border wall cases http://politi.co/2U0ECg6
// D.C. Circuit voids ruling in Trump’s favor on House Russia probe subpoena, sets April arguments
🐣 RT @JoshGerstein BREAKING: DC Circuit voids ruling in McGahn case, will rehear en banc April 28. Also to hear House challenge to border wall en banc same date. Order: https://politi.co/2IQrHbf
⭕ 12 Mar 2020
🐣 RT @WajahatAli Source at State Department says “we are forced to run around like headless chickens because there is 0 leadership by Trump and Pompeo. Each agency is now stepping up to protect their own staff from #coronavirus. Thankfully there are still some leaders here.” 1/
⋙ 🐣 RT @WajahatAli Source at HHS says “Trump political appointees are directly interfering with CDC recommendations for the White House that could better prevent the spread of #coronavirus and protect Americans.” They can directly connect people affected with the virus to the poor decisions made.
‼️ 🐣 RT @SethAbramson MAJOR BREAKING NEWS: NPR Source Says Trump Blocked Coronavirus Testing in January to Aid His Reelection Chances By Keeping US Infection Figures Low ¤ NOTE: Please RETWEET this—America needs to know what this monster did. Thousands of future deaths will rightly be laid at his feet.
⋙ 🐣 RT @nprfreshair A previous tweet of this quote did not make it adequately clear that it is Trump who did not push for adequate testing, not Secretary of Health and Human Services Azar. Here is the whole quote for context. @ddiamond Text Block: https://twitter.com/nprfreshair/status/1238186469690429440?s=20/photo/1
⭕ 11 Mar 2020 COVID-19 is Pandemic; Bear Market
WaPo, Greg Sargent: Trump will corrupt everything in sight to beat Biden. Here’s what’s next. http://wapo.st/2Q4hlZu
// Hunter Biden Burisma Inspector General IG Ukraine
🐣 RT @kylegriffin1 Politico reports that Trump’s coronavirus task force has discussed an emergency declaration, but will not give Trump its final verdict on one until Jared Kushner “finishes his research and comes to a conclusion himself.”
⋙ Politico: Trump fears emergency declaration would contradict coronavirus message http://politi.co/2Wglyxl
// Trump is concerned that declaring an emergency would hamper his narrative that the coronavirus is similar to the seasonal flu.
⋙⋙ 🐣 Doesn’t this mean that no matter what Congress passes regarding allocation of funds that Trump can override it and allocation it any way he wants? Like he did with the wall?
DailyBeast, Anna Nemtsova: Putin’s Now Positioned to Be President for Life http://bit.ly/2wLdEkG
// Putin’s blowing up global markets with his oil price war, and chafing at a serious slight by Trump. But, good news for him, he’s now set to be president for at least 16 more years.
NYT: Stocks Plunge,With Dow in Bear Market http://nyti.ms/2vMYDih Ends 11-year streak
💙 🐣 RT @brianklaas 4 days ago, a White House official insisted that the coronavirus outbreak was “contained.” These people are lying to you and it’s dangerous. Take precautions, especially if you’re in a high risk category, wash your hands a lot, and engage in some sensible social distancing.
⋙ 🐣 RT @ByMikeBaker Total number of confirmed U.S. coronavirus cases at each Tuesday:
Jan. 14 — 0
Jan. 21 — 1
Jan. 28 — 5
Feb. 4 — 11
Feb. 11 — 14
Feb. 18 — 25
Feb. 25 — 59
Mar. 3 — 125
Mar. 10 — 1,004
⭕ 10 Mar 2020
🐣 RT @URockLive1 Putin has taken a page from the Trump playbook of trade wars: be prepared to take short-term damage if you think your opponents will be forced to concede. Perhaps these will assumptions hold up in the weeks and months to come.
⋙ TheNationalInterest, Nikolas Gvosdev: The Great Oil War of 2020 Has Begun. Can Russia Win? http://bit.ly/2TYWtUR
// Russia enters this oil price war with two overarching objectives: drive U.S. producers out of business, and expose Riyadh to the limits of American support. Will Putin prevail?
WaPo Editorial: The oil price war’s ultimate loser is America http://wapo.st/38FxlaL
// Putin and the Saudi crown prince are destabilizing the U.S. economy for their own selfish ends.
🐣 RT @moscow_project Acting DNI Richard Grenell was supposed to brief Congress today about election threats. ¤ He declined, saying he isn’t prepared to “address sensitive subjects that tend to upset the president.” ¤ In other words, he’s putting the president above the country.
⋙ WaPo: Trump’s acting intelligence chief declines to meet with Congress for election threats briefing http://wapo.st/3aITAht
⭕ 9 Mar 2020
‼️ 🐣 RT @JuliaDavisNews “Implementation of the arrangements reached by Russian President Vladimir Putin and U.S. President Donald Trump during the summit in Helsinki in 2018 and Osaka in 2019.”
⋙ 🐣 RT @RusEmbUSA On March 9, 2020, Russian Ambassador to the U.S. Anatoly Antonov met the U.S. Secretary of the Treasury Steven Mnuchin http://bit.ly/2PY7Dry https://twitter.com/RusEmbUSA/status/1237048071223160833?s=20/photo/1
Press release
On March 9, 2020, Russian Ambassador to the U.S. Anatoly Antonov met the U.S. Secretary of the Treasury Steven Mnuchin.The two sides discussed the current state and future prospects of Russia-U.S. relations, implementation of the arrangements reached by Russian President Vladimir Putin and U.S. President Donald Trump during the summits in Helsinki in 2018 and Osaka in 2019.
The Russian side reconfirmed its intention to continue joint work on stabilization of bilateral relations, expressed interest in maintaining a regular and direct dialogue between the Embassy and the U.S. Administration.
🐣 RT @JuliaDavisNews (2018) Close-up of Putin’s notes shows the following list of topics, from what I can decipher:
1. “Interference” (in quotes) – proposal
2. #Ukraine – new ideas, transit of gas
3. Syria – joint humanitarian efforts
// 7/21/2020
CNBC: Russia, Saudi Arabia squabble over oil strategy, but the real battle is with the US http://cnb.cx/3aEYSKN
CNBC: Putin just sparked an oil price war with Saudi Arabia — and US energy companies may be the victims http://cnb.cx/2TAbf5t Brian Sullivan says oil play is Putin’s payback for Trump/Pompeo imposing sanctions on Igor Sechin’s Rosneft for transporting Venezuelan oil
⭕ 8 Mar 2020
CNBC, Brian Sullivan: Putin just sparked an oil price war with Saudi Arabia — and US energy companies may be the victims http://cnb.cx/2TAbf5t
⭕ 7 Mar 2020
CNN: 2017 ‘hit lists’ show that team Trump has long eyed political opponents http://cnn.it/2IthBwT
🐣 RT @WordsmithSteph Warning from former Bloomberg adviser: “If Republicans really want to make an issue out of Hunter Biden … there is going to be a scorched earth response aimed at all of the Trump children that is going to be unlike anything they’ve experienced thus far.”
⋙ 💽 MSNBC, AMJoy: Do Trump kids financially benefit from Trump in White House? http://on.msnbc.com/2TwKRcn
// Do Donald Trump’s children and in-laws benefit financially from his presidency? Experts explain the many allegations of Trump family favoritism in the Trump White House in conversation with Joy Reid.
CBS, 60MinutesOvertime: Former Trump adviser Fiona Hill says Vladimir Putin has U.S. “exactly where he wants us” http://cbsn.ws/2wEWXqS
// In her first interview since the impeachment inquiry, President Trump’s former top adviser on Russia tells 60 Minutes the Russians didn’t invent partisan divides in America, but “they understand how to exploit them.” See the full interview, Sunday.
🐣 RT @JuliaDavisNews Erik Prince has in recent years helped recruit former US & UK spies for secretive intelligence-gathering operations that included infiltrating Democratic congressional campaigns, labor organizations and other groups considered hostile to the Trump agenda.
🐣 RT @JillFilipovic Erik Prince and Betsy DeVos are siblings. Their dad co-founded the uber-conservative anti-feminist Family Research Council. Betsy’s father-in-law brought MLM scams to America & helped fuel the AIDS crisis. It’s possible this family has done more damage to America than any other.
⋙ 🐣 RT @amyfiscus NEW: Erik Prince, the security contractor, recruited former U.S. and British spies to help Project Veritas infiltrate groups viewed as hostile to the Trump agenda @MarkMazzettiNYT @adamgoldmanNYT
🐣 RT @JoeNBC The Education Secretary’s brother has hired FOREIGN SPIES to target political rivals of Donald Trump. Disgusting.
🔆 This❗️⋙ NYT: Erik Prince Recruits Ex-Spies to Help Infiltrate Liberal Groups http://nyti.ms/2TQ1MWk
// Mr. Prince, a contractor close to the Trump administration, contacted veteran spies for operations by Project Veritas, the conservative group known for conducting stings on news organizations and other groups.
One of the former spies, an ex-MI6 officer named Richard Seddon, helped run a 2017 operation to copy files and record conversations in a Michigan office of the American Federation of Teachers, one of the largest teachers’ unions in the nation.
💙 🐣 RT @60Minutes “Putin, sadly, has got all of our political class, every single one of us, including the media, exactly where he wants us.” Fiona Hill speaks to Lesley Stahl in her first interview since the impeachment inquiry. Watch tomorrow on 60 Minutes. https://cbsn.ws/336l668 💽 https://twitter.com/60Minutes/status/1236353416491925504?s=20/photo/1
⭕ 6 Mar 2020
DailyBeast, Nick Mutch: Christopher Steele Whacks Mueller Report and ‘Bad Faith’ Team Trump http://bit.ly/2THUi7X
// The former head of MI6’s Russia desk was speaking publicly for the first time since his dossier on Trump’s relationship with Russia was published in 2017.
CAC*: Brief filed by a bipartisan group of former legislators of the need for Congressional oversight in the case of Trump v Mazars and Trump v Deutsche Bank (pdf) http://bit.ly/32Y3itM *CAC is the Constitutional Accountability Center, a think tank ● [Signatories] https://twitter.com/Auriandra/status/1236014147894226947?s=20/photo/1
↥ ↧
🧵 CAC: Bipartisan former Members of Congress discuss importance of congressional oversight of executive branch, how oversight often leads to legislation, and how important information is to legislation – info that may not be knowable in advance
📌 https://twitter.com/MyConstitution/status/1235988177942388736?s=20
🐣 RT @kyledcheney JUST IN: The Judiciary Committee is seeking a rehearing of the McGahn case, saying an earlier Appeals Court ruling left the House with only extreme options to get info from the WH — such as arresting high-level officials. https://twitter.com/kyledcheney/status/1235975065071693826?s=20/photo/1
// i.e. “inherent contempt”
⋙ 🐣 RT @kyledcheney The House also reiterated (for the first time post-impeachment) that it could consider new articles, perhaps for criminal obstruction of justice, if McGahn’s testimony supports it.
⋙ 🐣 RT @ NEW: The House Judiciary Committee says the ruling denying its effort to obtain MCGAHN’s tesitmony would eviscerate congressional oversight of the president. ¤ The details:
⋙⋙ 🔆 This❗️⋙ Politico: Judiciary Committee says McGahn ruling leaves only extreme options — such as arrests — to get White House info http://politi.co/38uLCqX ● Text Block: https://twitter.com/Auriandra/status/1236005377092841472?s=20/photo/1
// House lawyers say the alternatives to judicial review of congressional subpoenas would be a menu of unpalatable options.
The filing comes a week after an appeals court panel ruled 2-1 that the House may not ask judges to force the White House to make former counsel Don McGahn available for testimony. The panel determined that courts have no place intervening in disputes between Congress and the executive branch, a ruling that would remake the balance of power between the two branches of government if it stands.
The judges in that ruling worried that allowing the House to turn to the courts to resolve a subpoena dispute with the White House would lead to a flood of litigation. Though two of the three judges doubted the White House’s argument that McGahn is “absolutely immune” from testifying to Congress, the opinion said the House lawsuit failed altogether because the courts don’t have a say.
WaPo, Greg Sargent: A judge just brutally rebuked William Barr. Democrats must act. http://wapo.st/2TK5UHy
Judge Reggie Walton: “The inconsistencies between Attorney General Barr’s statements, made at a time when the public did not have access to the redacted version of the Mueller Report to assess the veracity of his statements, and portions of the redacted version of the Mueller Report that conflict with those statements cause the Court to seriously question whether Attorney General Barr made a calculated attempt to influence public discourse about the Mueller Report in favor of President Trump despite certain findings in the redacted version of the Mueller Report to the contrary.”
⭕ 5 Mar 2020
Politico (Mar 3): 55 Things You Need to Know About Joe Biden http://bit.ly/3akEmAb
// A career politician who has lived his life in the public eye is getting a closer look from voters. ↥ ↧
Politico (Aug 3): 55 Things You Need to Know About Kamala Harris http://politi.co/2Csbyti
// 8/12/2020; A trailblazing prosecutor-turned-politician sits on the cusp of history.
BrennanCenter: New Evidence Shows How Russia’s Election Interference Has Gotten More Brazen http://bit.ly/3cJkE2a
// The Kremlin-linked operation behind 2016 election meddling is using similar tactics for 2020, plus some new ones.
💙 ForeignAffairs, Michael Carpenter: Tribalism Is Killing Liberalism http://fam.ag/3axmUaF
// Why We Are Succumbing to the Politics of Division
🐣 RT @ddiamond Scathing report from HHS inspector general today finds that leaders ignored warnings about Trump’s family separation policy, failed to plan for the consequences and even discouraged staff from writing down concerns. https://twitter.com/ddiamond/status/1235724118806409216?s=20/photo/1
⋙ HHS/OIG: Communication and Management Challenges Impeded HHS’s Response to the Zerox-Tolerance Policy (pdf) http://bit.ly/2Q6AQAT 75p
// March 2020
WaPo: Romney may vote against Trump again — this time with some bite http://wapo.st/3avsk5X His vote on subpoening Hunter Biden documents could deadlock the Senate Homeland Security Committee
WaPo: Judge cites Barr’s ‘misleading’ statements in ordering review of Mueller report redactions http://wapo.st/2PQ5MVK
⭕ 4 Mar 2020
WaPo, Ishaan Tharoor: Democracy is in decline around the world — and Trump is part of the problem http://wapo.st/2wyaaBL
🐣 RT @TheAtlantic “Expertise matters. Institutions matter. There is such a thing as a global community. An enlightened response, even if it’s unpopular, matters. The system must be made to work again,” writes @thomaswright08 and Kurt Campbell:
⋙ TheAtlantic: The Coronavirus Is Exposing the Limits of Populism http://bit.ly/39qawsY
// Expertise matters. Institutions matter. There is such a thing as the global community. The system must be made to work again.
CBSNews: New White House questionnaire serves as litmus test for potential appointees http://cbsn.ws/3armItn
JustSecurity, Ryan Goodman: The Gravity of Michael Ellis’ Promotion to Senior Director for Intelligence at the White House http://bit.ly/2wqgPhE
Michael Ellis, a White House lawyer accused of serious ethical misconduct in the Ukraine scandal, has been picked by President Donald Trump to be senior director for intelligence on the National Security Council (NSC). He reportedly started the job this week, replacing a career official who served in that role. What makes the elevation of Ellis to this new post especially surprising is that the most specific charges against Ellis in the Ukraine matter involve his allegedly abusing the government’s national security classification system in a manner that not even Republicans in Congress were willing to defend.
The role of senior director for intelligence can be a pivotal one within the Intelligence Community. Brett Holmgren, who held the position under President Barack Obama, told Just Security, “The position serves as the focal point for coordination between the White House and the [Director of National Intelligence (DNI)] on a range of issues — from setting the president’s intelligence priorities and providing guidance to the DNI on policy matters, to determining who in the U.S. government is granted access to covert action programs and other sensitive operations.” Ellis will now be working hand-in-hand with acting Director of National Intelligence Richard Grenell, as well asKash Patel, who recently moved from the NSC to the DNI’s office.
Both Patel and Ellis previously worked for Rep. Devin Nunes (R-Calif.), as staffers on the House Intelligence Committee. In March 2017, Ellis became caught up in the White House scandal of sharing intelligence information with Nunes in an apparent effort to discredit the Russia investigation. …
🐣 RT @stevenportnoy Bloomberg, in statement, endorses Biden: ¤ “I’ve always believed that defeating Donald Trump starts with uniting behind the candidate with the best shot to do it. After yesterday’s vote, it is clear that candidate is my friend and a great American, Joe Biden.
🐣 RT @GarrettHaake In a statement, @MikeBloomberg drops out of the presidential race & endorses @JoeBiden
🔆 This❗️⋙ 🐣 RT @abbydphillip NEWS: Bloomberg OUT “Three months ago, I entered the race for President to defeat Donald Trump. Today, I am leaving the race for the same reason: to defeat Donald Trump – because it is clear to me that staying in would make achieving that goal more difficult.”
🐣 RT @glennkirshner2 We The People rose up yesterday & message is unmistakable – Donald Trump WILL be a one-term president. And you know what? His attorney Bill Barr can protect him now, but once he leaves office Trump CAN AND MUST be prosecuted for his crimes against America. #TrumpCrimesCommission
⭕ 3 Mar 2020 Super-Tuesday
⭕ 2 Mar 2020
WaPo, David Von Drehle: Vladimir Putin’s virus http://wapo.st/38zRX4a
// How the Russian president has infected our national trust
⭕ 1 Mar 2020
🧵 RT @EricGarland
📌 https://twitter.com/ericgarland/status/1234688762690592768?s=20
⭕ 29 Feb 2020
🐣 RT @AmbassadorRice [Susan] Except we never agreed to a deal that excluded the Afghan Govt, subcontracted our counter-terrorism efforts to the Taliban, released 5k Taliban prisoners in exchange for 7 days of reduced violence, and sold out Afghan women. A Republican named Trump did.
⋙ 🐣 RT @AmbJohnBolton Signing this agreement with Taliban is an unacceptable risk to America’s civilian population. This is an Obama-style deal. Legitimizing Taliban sends the wrong signal to ISIS and al Qaeda terrorists, and to America’s enemies generally.
⭕ 28 Feb 2020
🐣 RT @EurasiaGroup #Coronavirus is the most significant geopolitical event since the Great Recession, threatening the reputation and perhaps survival of some regimes. What can an 18th century scholar teach us about it? ¤ Robert D. Kaplan finds lessons in @TheNatlInterest.
⋙ TheNationalInterest, Robert Kaplan: The Neo-Malthusian World of the Coronavirus http://bit.ly/2PQCMx7
// 2/28/2020; How the natural environment is a force for instability.
◕ WaPo: How the coronavirus tanked the markets http://wapo.st/2VI5ggr
// stock market fall tall chart
🐣 RT @SpeakerPelosi Intelligence should never be guided by partisanship or politics. Rep. John Ratcliffe’s embrace of conspiracy theories and distrust of law enforcement & intelligence patriots disqualify him from leading America’s intel community. [ … ]
WaPo: Dow dives 350 points as U.S. markets wrap up worst week since the financial crisis http://wapo.st/2wbvUDE
// Coronavirus panic sparked a brutal five-day run that saw the Dow, S&P 500 and Nasdaq fall 10 percent or more
🐣 RT @tedlieu 3rd new case in Santa Clara County of #coronavirus. Patient was not tested for days because of the prior restrictive testing criteria of the @realDonaldTrump Administration. ¤ “It is important to recognize that we have moved from containment to mitigation”
⋙ 🐣 RT @latimes Authorities on Friday were dealing with a new coronavirus case in Santa Clara County, heightening concerns that the disease is spreading in the United States
⋙⋙ LATimes: New coronavirus case in Santa Clara County heightens fears of spread in U.S. http://lat.ms/3aiaKT5
// Officials are searching for people who might have come in contact with a woman thought to be the country’s first ‘community spread’ COVID-19 patient.
🔆 This❗️⋙ NYT: Congress Cannot Sue to Enforce Subpoenas Defied by Executive Branch, Appeals Court Rules http://nyti.ms/3abYCTt
// An appeals court dismissed a lawsuit brought by the House Judiciary Committee against President Trump’s former White House counsel, Donald F. McGahn II.
🐣 RT @MissFuhrerious “Only a single pill at a time and then a moment of waiting to observe the effect of its strength, to see whether the world conscience would still digest the dose, the doses became progressively stronger until all Europe finally perished from them.”
⋙ NewYorker, George Prochnik (2017): When It’s Too Late to Stop Fascism, According to Stefan Zweig http://bit.ly/3ag1qPE
// 2/6/2017
🐣 I’m afraid what we’re seeing in the markets is the collapse of globalism.
⭕ 27 Feb 2020 Stock Market Plunge
💙 🐣 RT @IAmSophiaNelson “The GOP now exists to further the personal desires and wealth of one man. It is no longer a party of ideas, but a party of idolaters. It is a dark mirror of the authoritarian regimes we once fought.” @ProjectLincoln #MightMakesRight
⋙ TheAtlantic, Reed Galen, John Weaver and Rick Wilson: The Party of Idolaters http://bit.ly/2vo9vTs
// The Republican Party, which some of us still hope to reform and which others have left, no longer deals in principle, morality, or the pursuit of the common welfare.
Politico Mag, Corey Brettschneider: Why President Trump Can’t Pardon Roger Stone http://politi.co/3abmvuh
// The Constitution and the Framers sought to protect the republic from a scenario like this.
🐣 RT @kylegriffin1 Senate Intelligence Chair Richard Burr told Ron Johnson and Chuck Grassley that their probe targeting Biden could aid Russian efforts to sow chaos and distrust in the U.S. political system, according to two congressional sources familiar with the meeting.
⋙ Politico: Senate Intel chair privately warned that GOP’s Biden probe could help Russia http://politi.co/2TmcL9P
// Richard Burr’s discussion with Ron Johnson and Chuck Grassley highlights the divide among Republicans over the Biden investigation.
🐣 RT @JuddLegum 1. With the coronavirus killing thousands and threatening to tank the global economy, I feel like more people should be talking about the fact that Trump fired the entire pandemic response team two years ago and then didn’t replace them [ … ]
⋙ 🐣 RT @JuddLegum 2. Trump also cut funding for the CDC, forcing the CDC to cancel its efforts to help countries prevent infectious-disease threats from becoming epidemics in 39 of 49 countries in 2018. ¤ Among the countries abandoned? China.
⋙ 🐣 RT @JuddLegum 3. This isn’t just about accountability. It’s about drawing attention to the structural problems in the US response effort before things get worse. ¤ Why isn’t the House holding hearings right now? [ … ]
NYT, Paul Krugman: When a Pandemic Meets a Personality Cult http://nyti.ms/32JjRK1
// The Trump team confirms all of our worst fears.
🐣 RT @MaxBoot Like I said: The coronavirus outbreak is laying bare the pathologies of Trump admin — which include compulsive lying, pandering to dictators, ideological aversion to “globalism,” inveterate hostility toward experts and expertise, and sheer incompetence.
⋙ WaPo: Coronavirus lays bare all the pathologies of the Trump administration http://wapo.st/3cj2gNp
💙💙 Insider: We hired 2 comic creators from the world of DC and Marvel to tell the full story of why Trump was impeached, and what he got away with http://bit.ly/2T65yMo
🐣 RT @CasterNoel Trump has a MAGA rally scheduled for Friday night in SC to mess with Dems logistics. Should unnecessary public gatherings really be held when you’re facing a Coronavirus Pandemic? @realDonaldTrump
🐣 RT @LibsInAmerica As the first case of coronavirus not tied to foreign travel was announced in California Wednesday, Trump finds himself grappling with a crisis for which his record suggests he is particularly ill-suited to respond.
⋙ WaPo: Coronavirus pushes Trump to rely on experts he has long maligned http://wapo.st/3cfqHuY
// Ashley Parker and Philip Rucker
🐣 RT @RBReich I don’t know who needs to hear this, but forbidding health officials and expert scientists from reporting on a global pandemic without clearance is not how a government in a democratic society is supposed to operate.
🐣 RT @RonKlain I was the WH Ebola Response Coordinator in 2014-15. We never told @CDCgov or @NIH what they could say, or ever censored their medical statements. If the WH is doing that now, it is a danger to public health.
🐣 RT @RonKlain The public health officials telling the truth is not the coronavirus communications problem; it’s the President lying about it every day. I’d love to see Pence manage that!
⋙ 🐣 RT @maggieNYT White House is clamping down on interviews related to Coro🐣 RT @SenSchumer President Trump should have learned the lesson that China did: Hiding the truth makes things more dangerous. ¤ The American people need to hear the unfiltered truth from health experts.
🐣 RT @ChrisMurphyCT So let me get this right – the medical expert in pandemic response needs to clear what he tells the public through the guy who wrote “smoking doesn’t kill”?
⋙ 🐣 RT @AaronBlake “Dr. Anthony S. Fauci, one of the country’s leading experts on viruses and the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infections Diseases, told associates that the White House had instructed him not to say anything else without clearance.”
🔆 This ‼️ ⋙ NYT: Pence Will Control All Coronavirus Messaging From Health Officials http://nyti.ms/32z3PlI we’re screwed
// Government health officials and scientists will have to coordinate statements with the vice president’s office, one of three people designated as the administration’s primary coronavirus official.
🐣 RT @NATOmoscow This is quite astonishing – former high-ranking #Russia official, directly involved in preparing #MinskAgreements questioning the very existence of a neighbouring country #Ukraine …really worth reflecting on this
⋙ 🐣 RT @RFERL In comments likely to infuriate Ukraine, Vladislav Surkov echoes longstanding Russian imperial ideas about its neighbor — and questions the existence of Ukraine as a country.
⋙⋙ RFE/RL: In First Interview Since Departure, Russia’s Former ‘Gray Cardinal’ Questions Existence Of Ukraine http://bit.ly/2Pw3PNZ
⭕ 26 Feb 2020 COVID19
🐣 RT @JRubinBlogger Remaining in the race only to give more embarrassing debate performances and divide up non-Sanders vote would tarnish Bloomberg’s legacy and make him Mr. Money Bags villain Bloomberg is savvy enough to know how to attain his goal by means other means
⋙ WaPo, Jennifer Rubin: Bloomberg is not doing what he promised http://wapo.st/2HYrdzv
🐣 RT @RFERL Ukraine will mark February 26th as the Day Of Resistance To The Occupation Of Crimea.
⋙ RFE/RL: Zelenskiy Declares February 26 Memorial Day To Mark Annexation Of Crimea http://bit.ly/2SZEQEU
// Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy has issued a decree designating February 26 a memorial day to mark the annexation of Ukraine’s Crimea region by Russia in 2014.
🐣 RT @ChrisMurphyCT This is extraordinary, and underscores why so many of us believe that democracy is at risk. ¤ Trump is saying he is going to fire federal employees (not just political appointees) who oppose him politically. ¤ Dictatorships, not democracies, require loyalty tests.
⋙ 🐣 RT @JoyceWhiteVance Trump spokesman threatens fed’l employees: “the federal government is massive, with millions of people—and there are a lot people out there taking action against this president and when we find them we will take appropriate action.”
⋙⋙ GovExec: White House Confirms It’s Purging Disloyal Employees ‘From the Bowels of the Federal Government’ http://bit.ly/2T1ZtAA
// mAdministration will “take appropriate action” when officials find workers not sufficiently loyal to Trump, spokesman says.
🐣 RT @MotherJones The QAnon conspiracy has been laughed at and kicked offline. But there’s one place it won’t die. @alibreland and @MarkHelenowski take you inside the bizarre right-wing delusion and how it became the ultimate Trumper pledge of allegiance. http://bit.ly/2wa3ZnC 💽 https://twitter.com/MotherJones/status/1232652312260349952?s=20/photo/1
⋙ MotherJones, Ali Breland: QAnon May Be Resting, But It Will Never Die http://bit.ly/2Ti7IXV
// How a bizarre conspiracy became the ultimate Trumper pledge of allegiance.
🐣 RT @BillKristol Trump and his aides were obsessed with destroying one, and only one, of the Democratic candidates: Joe Biden. If they feared him so much, maybe we should, after acknowledging his flaws, go back to the big picture: At the end of the day, he’ll beat Trump and govern responsibly.
⭕ 25 Feb 2020
TheAtlantic, Quinta Jurecic and Benjamin Wittes: Trump’s Most Dangerous Destruction Yet http://bit.ly/32uAfgZ
// What the president is doing to America’s intelligence community could have enormous repercussions for the 2020 election and the country’s preparedness for threats from around the world.
LATimes: Germans demand U.S. ambassador, a ‘biased propaganda machine,’ be replaced http://lat.ms/32vUOd1
// Germany reacts after Trump names Richard Grenell, the U.S. ambassador to Germany, as acting director of national intelligence.
💙🧵 RT @noUpside In light of reports on Russia “boosting” Trump & Bernie, there have been lots of references to the IRA’s activities in 2016. Not many explain the specifics, particularly on how Bernie fits in, so here’s a thread ab how the IRA operated in the 2016 primaries 1/
📌 https://twitter.com/noUpside/status/1231725268059869185?s=20
🐣 RT @digiphile Public: Don’t amplify disinformation. Media: Don’t put lies in headlines.
Tech: Don’t take $ for lies.
US Govt: If @POTUS lies & muzzles @odnigov, Congress should hold open hearings on election interference to inform Americans of threats facing our union.
💙 🔆 This❗️⋙ NYT, Charlie Warzel: Russia Wants to Meddle in Our Election. We’re Helping. http://nyti.ms/3ci9xwS calls out @HillaryClinton, @TeamBloomberg, @WalterIsaacson, @JamesCarville, the media in general and the intelligence community for obliqueness
// Last week is proof
🐣 RT @JoyceWhiteVance If Trump wants to remove “disloyal” executive branch appointees, those who support the rule of law, imagine how he must feel at the prospect a GOP SCOTUS Justice might not rule for him. He’s signaling them. Thank goodness he has Justice Thomas’ wife working on the loyalty lists.
⋙ 🐣 RT @kylegriffin1 Important cases related to Trump will soon come before the Supreme Court, including litigation regarding his secret tax returns. ¤ The fact that Trump wants Sotomayor and Ginsburg’s recusal on Trump matters “suggests he may be concerned about the cases.”
⋙⋙ MSNBC, Steve Benen: Trump takes aim at two progressive Supreme Court justices http://on.msnbc.com/2PnJ6f4
// What’s the next step in Donald Trump’s offensive against the justice system? Lashing out at two Supreme Court justices, of course.
🐣 RT @rgoodlaw A must, must read. ¤ Former Acting Attorney General—who earlier worked with #BillBarr in the HW Bush administration—raises deep concerns about Barr’s actions within the Justice Department. ¤ Gerson is a founding member of @chkbal
⋙ JustSecurity, Stuart Gerson: Let the Rule of Law Rule Law Enforcement: Reflections on the Current Attorney General’s Tenure http://bit.ly/2TegSET
WaPo: 70 former U.S. senators: The Senate is failing to perform its constitutional duties http://wapo.st/2TgkWUZ (including 17 Republicans and 4 Independents) ● Text Block: https://twitter.com/Auriandra/status/1232384655627837447?s=20/photo/1
Examples of Congress ceding its powers to the executive through the years include the power to regulate international trade, the power to authorize the use of military force in foreign conflicts and, when the president declares national emergencies, the power of the purse. In addition, the partisan gridlock that is all too routine in recent decades has led the executive branch to effectively “legislate” on its own terms through executive order and administrative regulation. The Senate’s abdication of its legislative and oversight responsibilities erodes the checks and balances of the separate powers that are designed to protect the liberties on which our democracy depends.
⭕ 24 Feb 2020
WaPo, Michael Gerson: A Trump-Sanders election would destroy our politics http://wapo.st/3a6O1sK “Maybe there is no longer a democratic constituency for the talents and virtues that make democracy work.”
💽 MSNBC, TheLastWord: Jill Wine-Banks: ‘Trump is more dangerous than Nixon’ http://on.msnbc.com/2T8DrLa
// Jill Wine-Banks joins Lawrence O’Donnell to discuss her new book recounting her experience as the only woman prosecutor during Watergate. She says Trump is the “more existential threat to democracy than Nixon” because Trump is installing allies after purging those he sees as disloyal to him and Republicans are standing by him even though many found his actions wrong.
NYT, Michelle Goldberg: Putin Would Hate President Bernie Sanders http://nyti.ms/2wLqTBW Sanders “believes that American foreign policy should be oriented around expanding democracy in the face of what he called ‘a new authoritarian axis’.”
// The Russian autocrat may support Sanders, but Sanders doesn’t support him.
WaPo, John Negroponte and Edward Wittenstein: Trump plays a dangerous game in weakening the top intelligence job http://wapo.st/3a3F0AR “Unvarnished, nonpartisan intelligence is essential to making sound national-security decisions.”
🧵 RT @McFaul We have reached a dangerous moment in American democracy when senior Trump administration officials are politicizing and selectively declassifying intelligence to help Trump win reelection. That’s wrong. It needs to stop now. THREAD /1 📌 https://twitter.com/McFaul/status/1232022445365678080?s=20
⋙ 🐣 RT @ By the way, based on my reading of non-classified sources, I personally don’t believe that Putin wants Sanders to be elected president. Putin prefers Trump. But that’s just the assessment of a private citizen. I’m not the National Security Advisor. 9/
🐣 RT @PaulaChertok I agree w/ @Kasparov63. It’s absurd to deny Putin supports Trump. He said it himself in Helsinki! So why does @CNN keep reporting that the intel briefing was “nuanced & misread”? TBH that sounds like WH propaganda to justify purging those focused on Russia’s crimes to help Trump.
🐣 RT @MaddowBlog “At a time when Americans are increasingly distrustful of their institutions, I am thankful that our legal system affords a fair and open process by which one’s peers critically examine the facts. To denigrate that process is undemocratic and dangerous.”
⋙ WaPo, Seth Cousins: I was a juror in Roger Stone’s trial. I am proud of how we came to our decision. http://wapo.st/2VqkKoO
🧵 RT @benjaminwittes It is possible to hold several ideas in one’s head at the same time:
(1) I think Bernie Sanders is a terrible nominee who would be a bad president, represents a lot of things I don’t believe, and has a substantial chance of getting crushed by Donald Trump. 📌 https://twitter.com/benjaminwittes/status/1232088260597501953?s=20
⋙ 🐣 RT @benjaminwittes (4) He is in all respects not my choice. I will argue against him as long as there is a chance of defeating him. But in the fight against authoritarianism it would a historic error—one centrists have made before—to decline to make common cause with socialists.
⋙ 🐣 He is a social democrat (not a democratic socialist). I lived in Germany for two years. It is much fairer and humanistic than the American system.
🧵 RT @Cirincione One of the less reported aspects of Grenell’s placement as acting DNI is his demand to see all the “raw intelligence” behind the assessment that Russia is working to sabotage US elections. This has serious national security implications. 1/3 📌 https://twitter.com/Cirincione/status/1231945339189501953?s=20
⋙ 🐣 RT @Cirincione This is the tactic Steve Cambone used in the run up to the Iraq War when Cheney and Rumsfeld installed him in DOD to set up their own intel operation. He then cherry-picked raw, unvetted data to “prove” Saddam had WMD. He bypassed the usual intel community joint assessments. 2/3
⋙ 🐣 RT @Cirincione Worse, raw intel will include sources and methods. Grenell will pass that to Trump who could share it with the Russians. Cambone never would have shared intel with our enemies, but Trump and Grenell don’t see Russia as an adversary, but an ally. 3/3
WaPo, Greg Sargent: Awful new details about Trump’s purge should alarm us all http://wapo.st/2T8BWws “The purges are not just revenge. They are designed to remove people who defend the rule of law against Trump’s very deliberate corruption and degradation of it.”
🐣 RT @schwellenbach “I had the privilege of serving in the Justice Dept’s [OLC] from 1993-1997, when the Office was headed by the legendary Walter Dellinger…I … never felt any political pressure… b/c Walter Dellinger absorbed the political pressure”
⋙ JustSecurity, Neil Kinkopf: Dis-Barr the Justice Department http://bit.ly/3a2ySsq
🐣 RT @ForeignPolicy Trump wants loyalists in power, even when they are inconsistent with America’s national security interests, @nedprice writes.
⋙ ForeignPolicy, Ned Price (2/21): The Death of Truth to Power http://bit.ly/38XrMp9
// Intelligence services do their job by staying out of politics. Donald Trump’s new intelligence chief could end all that.
🧵 RT @NATSEC09 INTEL ALERT! For almost a week now, there has been a quiet scramble in certain sectors of the Intelligence community. It centers around figuring out what the boundaries will be with its new leadership. I’ve spoken to numerous current and… 📌 https://twitter.com/NATSEC09/status/1231947091972427778?s=20
⭕ 23 Feb 2020
🐣 RT @ianbassin Reminder: the last time US Attorneys were fired for failing to bring politically-motivated prosecutions the scandal consumed the country for months and the Attorney General was forced to resign. And this instance is far worse.
⋙🐣 RT @ssamcham This is absolutely insane. Jessie Liu got fired in large part because she didn’t bring baseless criminal prosecutions against Trump’s political enemies and go easy on his friends. You can’t politicize the DOJ much more than this. https://twitter.com/ianbassin/status/1231757681699901440?s=20/photo/1
⋙⋙ Axios, Jonathan Swan: Exclusive: Trump’s “Deep State” hit list http://bit.ly/2ulUjFM
NYT, Paul Krugman: Bernie Sanders Isn’t the Left’s Trump http://nyti.ms/39WAunJ ‘America under Sanders would still be America, both because Sanders is an infinitely better human being than Trump and because the Dem Party wouldn’t enable abuse of power the way the GOP has’
// And this is no time for ego or self-indulgence.
WaPo: Judge swats down Roger Stone’s effort to disqualify her as publicity stunt http://wapo.st/3bYXvbD
GQ, Julia Ioffe: Why Exactly Does Putin Love Bernie? http://bit.ly/2SSm5n2
// “Our candidate is chaos,” says a former Putin former advisor. Julia Ioffe on what Moscow sees in Sanders
DailyBeast, David Rothkopf: Trump Is Lobotomizing Our Government http://bit.ly/2HU4RPv
// Trump’s national security adviser has made clear that he sees his job as serving as a kind of human cocktail of drugs for the erratic president—part palliative, part sedative.
⭕ 22 Feb 2020
DailyBeast, Michael Tomasky: This Is the Only Move That Will Stop Sanders Now http://bit.ly/2SU65Rj. “If the others can’t stop him, they’d better get behind him. I certainly will. With zero hesitation. … The re-election of the incumbent is unthinkable.”
// Attacks on Bernie work better in a general election than a primary. So what are Democrats convinced he’ll lose to Trump to do?
DailyBeast, David Rothkopf: Trump Is Lobotomizing Our Government http://bit.ly/2HU4RPv
// Trump’s national security adviser has made clear that he sees his job as serving as a kind of human cocktail of drugs for the erratic president—part palliative, part sedative.
🐣 RT @steven_pifer No one has done more in past 6 years to push #Ukraine away from #Russia than Vladimir Putin, whose policy has led, among other things, to 14,000 dead in Donbas. ¤ Large majority of Ukrainians want to be part of Europe, not integrated with Russia.
⋙ 🐣 RT @RussianEmbassy [UK] President Putin: Any integration of Russia and Ukraine, along with their capacities and competitive advantages, would lead to the emergence of a rival, a global rival for Europe and the world. No one wants it. That’s why they’ll do anything to pull us apart.
WaPo Editorial: Trump doesn’t want to hear about Russian election interference. So Congress must step up. http://wapo.st/2T5c84t
🚫🐣 RT @juliaioffe Have spent the afternoon on the phone with Russians, asking them what they think of our elections so far. One of them summarized it thus: “Your country is hurtling toward the abyss. It’s a real pity!”
🐣 RT @AmyKlobuchar Thank you to the San Francisco Chronicle and Seattle Times for your endorsements. Newspapers across the country are endorsing our campaign because they know we will win big and defeat Donald Trump in November.
⋙ TheHill: Seattle Times, San Francisco Chronicle endorse Klobuchar http://bit.ly/37TrwpM
🐣 RT @jdawsey1 “He is on his third chief of staff, his fourth national security adviser, his fourth defense secretary, his fifth secretary of homeland security, his sixth deputy national security adviser and his seventh communications director.”
🐣 RT @waltshaub I’m not sure if people fully appreciate how dangerous this is. If you replace all the career public servants who are loyal to the constitution with career public servants who are loyal to a politician, there will be no one left to uphold the rule of law.
⋙ 🐣 RT @MichaelKrause “Trump appears to be launching the biggest assault on the nation’s civil service system since the 1883 Pendleton Act ended the spoils system.”
⋙⋙ NYT: Trump’s Efforts to Remove the Disloyal Heightens Unease Across His Administration http://nyti.ms/2Vg7YcO
// As senior officials are shown the door, a new personnel chief orders a search for political appointees as well as career officials deemed insufficiently supportive of the president.
PoliticusUSA: Trump Could Face Criminal Charges If He Pardons Roger Stone http://bit.ly/2TaoWXn “[A]ccording to former federal prosecutor Glenn Kirschner, a pardon of Roger Stone could be used in a potential conspiracy charge against Trump once he leaves office”
🐣 RT @MSNBC Fmr. national security adviser Susan Rice says Richard Grenell, President Trump’s pick for acting DNI, is “one of the most nasty, dishonest people I’ve ever encountered” in addition to calling him a “hack and shill, and that’s all he’s ever been.”
⋙ 💽 MSNBC, DeadlineWH: Susan Rice: Grenell is a ‘hack,’ who turned intel community into Trump re-election tool http://on.msnbc.com/3a0fyfp
// Former National Security Adviser and U.N. ambassador Susan Rice slammed President Trump’s pick as acting DNI Richard Grenell, calling him a “hack and a shill,” and says he is “one of the most nasty, dishonest people I’ve ever encountered.”
CNN: Intelligence community feels immediate impact of Trump’s diplomatic ‘disruptor’ http://cnn.it/2VjNyQ9
🐣 RT @ForeignAffairs “The U.S. intelligence community can develop the best strategy for intelligence in a new technological era, but if it ever loses its reputation for objectivity, nonpartisanship, and professionalism, it will lose its value to the nation.”
⋙ ForeignAffairs, Amy Zegart and Michael Morell (2019): Spies, Lies, and Algorithms http://fam.ag/2T7b3sF
// May-Jun 2019; Why U.S. Intelligence Agencies Must Adapt or Fail
⭕ 21 Feb 2020
ForeignPolicy, Ned Price: The Death of Truth to Power http://bit.ly/38XrMp9
// Intelligence services do their job by staying out of politics. Donald Trump’s new intelligence chief could end all that.
🐣 RT @RepAdamSchiff After Watergate, Congress passed reforms to safeguard the rule of law and root out corruption. ¤ We are working on new reforms now, because the threat Trump and his enablers pose to our democracy is more grave than anything Nixon did:
⋙ LATimes: Schiff: How to protect democracy from lawless presidents like Trump http://lat.ms/2HP1fOP
// We need a firewall between the White House and the Department of Justice.
💙💙 💽 ABCNews: Judge’s impassioned remarks in Roger Stone case: ‘The truth still matters’ http://abcn.ws/2vV7IFj
// Judge Amy Berman Jackson responded to President Trump and his allies.
“This case did not arise because Roger Stone was being pursued by his political enemies. It arose because Roger Stone, characteristically, injected himself smack into the center of one of the most significant issues of the day.”
“And as you’ve just heard when I went through the elements of the offense, he was not convicted and is not being sentenced for exercising his First Amendment rights, his support of the president’s campaign or his policies. He was not prosecuted, as some have complained, for standing up for the President. He was prosecuted for covering up for the president.”
“This effort to obstruct the investigation was deliberate, planned, not one isolated incident, and conducted over a considerable period of time. And Stone lied and sought to impede production of information to whom? Not to some secret anti-Trump cabal, but to Congress. To the elected representatives of both parties who were confronted with a matter of grave national importance.”
“…. it was largely Stone’s own emails and his own texts that proved the allegations beyond a reasonable doubt. So what did the defense say to the jury on his behalf? ‘So what?’ So what?
Of all the circumstances in this case, that may be the most pernicious. The truth still exists. The truth still matters. Roger Stone’s insistence that it doesn’t, his belligerence, his pride in his own lies are a threat to our most fundamental institutions, to the very foundation of our democracy.
And if it goes unpunished, it will not be a victory for one party or another. Everyone loses because everyone depends on the representatives they elect to make the right decisions on a myriad of issues — many of which are politically charged but many of which aren’t — based on the facts.
Everyone depends on our elected representatives to protect our elections from foreign interference based on the facts. No one knows where the threat is going to come from next time or whose side they’re going to be on, and for that reason the dismay and disgust at the defendant’s belligerence should transcend party.
The dismay and the disgust at the attempts by others to defend his actions as just business as usual in our polarized climate should transcend party. The dismay and the disgust with any attempts to interfere with the efforts of prosecutors and members of the judiciary to fulfill their duty should transcend party.
Sure, the defense is free to say: So what? Who cares? But, I’ll say this: Congress cared. The United States Department of Justice and the United States Attorney’s Office for the District of Columbia that prosecuted the case and is still prosecuting the case cared. The jurors who served with integrity under difficult circumstances cared. The American people cared. And I care.”
“The problem is that nothing about this case was a joke; it wasn’t funny, it wasn’t a stunt, and it wasn’t a prank. Stone’s conduct displayed flagrant disrespect for the institution of government established by the Constitution, including Congress and this Court. And I’ll venture to say that even many adolescents know the difference.”
RawStory: Former CIA director John Brennan sounds alarm: ‘Trump is abetting a Russian covert operation to keep him in office’ http://bit.ly/2Vfo5qH
🧵 RT @brett_mcgurk Some points made on @Morning_Joe this morning regarding ODNI situation:
– ODNI was established after the 9/11 attacks to ensure national security decisions are guided by unvarnished facts
– The intelligence community is our nation’s first line of defense against foreign threats
📌 https://twitter.com/brett_mcgurk/status/1230847679652974592?s=20
🐣 RT @JoyceWhiteVance This is a great idea. Every American needs to know what attacks against our elections may look like & what to be on guard against. No reason not to do a declassified briefing for the country. Remember, elections are largely run at the local, country level, not out of Washington.
⋙ 🐣 RT @JoeTrippi Here’s an idea. Why not hold House hearings on what every American should watch for and be on guard against in terms of how Russia or any other foreign actor tries to influence our election? Or maybe a network do a one hour special? No one knows what meddling means.
🐣 RT @MSNBC .@maddow notes it’s no longer accurate to frame Pres. Trump’s corruption as potential as he is openly abusing his power to make it clear that the U.S. government will be used to punish people who oppose him and help those who demonstrate fealty.
⋙ 💽 MSNBC, RachelMaddow: Maddow: Time for warnings is past as Trump openly abuses power http://on.msnbc.com/3bYf0su
// Rachel Maddow points out that it is no longer accurate to frame Donald Trump’s corruption as imminent or potential as he is openly abusing his power to make it clear that the power of the U.S. government will be used to punish people who oppose him and help people who demonstrate fealty.
🐣 RT @JRubinBlogger Corruption, cruelty and incompetence define authoritarian states precisely because everything revolves around elevation of the leader. Democrats must recognize and be able to explain that. The task is not revolution, but fumigation and toxic cleanup.
⋙ WaPo, Jennifer Rubin: When competence is not the goal http://wapo.st/32fvmIG
💽 MSNBC, TheLastWord: Former federal prosecutor: Trump ‘trying to destroy many of the institutions’ responsible for U.S. national security http://on.msnbc.com/38NMOq8
// Joyce Vance tells Lawrence O’Donnell that as Trump continues to deny Russian interference in U.S. elections, he is weakening the Intelligence Community and weakening the DOJ to find a narrative that is more favorable to him. Lawrence also discusses with Rick Stengel and Mieke Eoyang.
WIRED, Garrett Graff: How Trump Hollowed Out US National Security http://bit.ly/38R6fOL The purge goes well beyond the Office of National Intelligence
// Acting director of national intelligence Richard Grenell is just the latest in a cascade of temporary or vacant personnel in critical government positions.
DailyBeast, Julia Davis: Trump’s Fury at Intel Briefing Shows Putin’s Bet Keeps Paying Off http://bit.ly/2SPD5Kq
// The GOP wants you to believe Trump is tough on Russia. So why does Moscow love him so much? The Kremlin’s state media make that clear almost every day.
NYT: Richard Grenell Begins Overhauling Intelligence Office, Prompting Fears of Partisanship http://nyti.ms/39RAnd9 In addition to Acting DNI Joseph Maguire, his deputy Andrew P. Hallman resigned. Kash Patel, an aide to Devin Nunes, has been brought in.
// The new acting director of national intelligence also asked to see the facts underlying the finding that Russia is interfering in the 2020 election and favors President Trump’s re-election.
🐣 RT @MaddowBlog They are proclaiming openly that the rules are gone, they will do what they want, the government will be turned against you if you stand against this president.
That is not a warning.
That is where we are.
💽 https://twitter.com/MaddowBlog/status/1231054357690560518?s=20/photo/1
WaPo: Trump embarks on expansive search for disloyalty as administration-wide purge escalates http://wapo.st/2SMbXMq
NYT Editorial: Cripple the Intelligence Agencies? Not Smart http://nyti.ms/37Na4Dp
// What happens when intelligence officials warn that Russia is meddling in American politics again? Donald Trump gets mad — at the intelligence officials.
WaPo, William McRaven: If good men like Joe Maguire can’t speak the truth, we should be deeply afraid http://wapo.st/38Q6FVM ● Text Block: https://twitter.com/Auriandra/status/1231065849781465088?s=20/photo/1
As Americans, we should be frightened — deeply afraid for the future of the nation. When good men and women can’t speak the truth, when facts are inconvenient, when integrity and character no longer matter, when presidential ego and self-preservation are more important than national security — then there is nothing left to stop the triumph of evil.
🐣 RT @FrankFigliuzzi GOP, it’s time to play for Team America:
⋙ 💽 MSNBC, 11thHour: Frank Figliuzzi on reports Russia is meddling in the 2020 race to help re-elect Trump: “If lawmakers and the president do nothing about it… they are essentially aiding and abetting Russia.” http://on.msnbc.com/2VbkCtx
🐣 RT @RepSteier Make no mistake, if Russian interference is allowed in our election, it will be transformative. We will be walking into a dictatorship with our eyes wide open. If our intelligence officials fear telling us the truth for fear of losing their jobs, we are exceedingly vulnerable.
⭕ 20 Feb 2020
🐣 RT @MaxBoot Think about that: Trump regards efforts to protect the integrity of our elections as a firing offense. So now Maguire is out as DNI, and Grenell is in. That is a terrifying prospect for the future of our democracy.
⋙ WaPo, Max Boot: Trump appoints a partisan propagandist to run the intelligence community http://wapo.st/39PyYnp
AtlanticCouncil: Russia loses leverage as Ukrainian exports go global http://bit.ly/37NEJ3w
WaPo, Max Boot: Trump appoints a partisan propagandist to run the intelligence community http://wapo.st/39PyYnp
🐣 RT @glennkirschner2 Yes. We have scandal overload and outrage fatigue. We seem to be waiting for one galvanizing event to motivate us into acting, organizing, marching. The time . . . is now.
⋙ 🐣 RT @JaneVoter2019 @glennkirschner2 ¤ This is not a legal question really but more of a how can we save our Justice system and restore the Rule of Law? Should people be occupying DC at this point? I feel like the people need to take a stand. We can’t just keep letting them destroy our Republic.
🐣 RT @SallyYates This is a screaming red siren, but in the daily barrage of crazy, can we hear it?Trump is not only trying to rewrite history of Russia’s intervention in 2016, he is now using the power of the presidency to conceal their 2020 scheme to re-elect him.Dangerous!
⋙ 🐣 RT @KenDilanianNBC “ODNI is nearing a meltdown.” Trump angry after House briefed on Russia meddling in 2020 election on his behalf
⋙⋙ NBCNews: Trump angry after House briefed on 2020 Russia election meddling on his behalf http://nbcnews.to/39RVxYv
// The briefing cost the acting director of national intelligence, Joseph Maguire, his job, a former intelligence official said.
🐣 RT @Politico Pelosi expressed dismay that Republican lawmakers would leap to defend the president after a briefing on Russian interference in the 2020 elections
⋙ Politico: Pelosi: Trump politicized intel community after Russia election briefing http://politi.co/2V5VrbL
// Her remarks came after the New York Times reported that the House Intelligence Committee received a briefing that Russia planned to interfere in the 2020 elections.
NYT, Noah Bookbinder: What Barr Did for Roger Stone Is Like Nothing I’ve Seen Before http://nyti.ms/2T0QEpq Noah Bookbinder is the executive director of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW)
// Has the Trump Department of Justice ever asked for a lower sentence for someone who wasn’t a presidential ally?
🐣 RT @julianbarnes Grenell must leave by March 11 unless there is a formal nominee to the Senate, officials confirm. @EricColumbus and @steve_vladeck explain how the Vacancies act will work for the DNI post.
⋙ NYT: Trump’s New Intelligence Director Faces a Legal Countdown Clock on His Tenure http://nyti.ms/38PtwRs
// Under federal law, Richard Grenell, the new acting director of national intelligence, may be able to serve only a few weeks unless the president nominates someone to take on the job permanently.
🐣 RT @eliehonig The Stone case has been a massive embarrassment – and worse- for William Barr. He publicly undercut his own prosecutors; Trump laughed at his claim of independence; now his prosecutors revolt in court and the judge calls him out. ¤ Barr earned all of this. He’s unfit.
WaPo Editorial: Trump puts an unqualified loyalist in charge of national intelligence http://wapo.st/2SJOUls
🐣 RT @TiaBarracini This is the woman who actually briefed the HPSCI last week. Imagine Trump will get rid of her too.
⋙ NPR (1/22): Election Security Boss: Threats To 2020 Are Now Broader, More Diverse http://n.pr/32ceFha Shelby Pierson
// 1/22/2020
🐣 RT @XSovietNews Putin on Ukrainian nationalists: Caring about the interests of the Ukrainian people isn’t the main thing for them. How can it be if thanks to breaking with Russia they’ve lost missile building, shipbuilding, aviation, machine building, the country is de-industrialising?
💽 MSNBC, 11thHour: Trump is mad Dems know Russia is meddling to get him re-elected http://on.msnbc.com/39QybCE
// Trump is reportedly angry that Congress was briefed on Russia’s new efforts to meddle in the 2020 election to help Trump get re-elected, worried Democrats will use it against him. The New York Times was first to report this news later confirmed by NBC News.
🐣 RT @SpeakerPelosi American voters should decide American elections — not Vladimir Putin. All Members of Congress should condemn the President’s reported efforts to dismiss threats to the integrity of our democracy & to politicize our intel community.
🐣 RT @waltshaub Excellent question. First, come to believe democracy can be saved. Two, take a small constructive action toward defending democracy. Every one of us. No matter how small. Then, do another. Then, do another. Then, do another. Then, do another. Then, do another. And never stop.
⋙ 🐣 RT @RobertMaguire What should a country do when the President and his political allies are potentially the biggest impediments to protecting democracy against repeated election interference by a hostile foreign power? ¤ Asking for 331 million friends.
🐣 RT @NatashaBertrand Breaking now: Kash Patel, a former NSC official who also played a key role as a Hill staffer in helping GOP discredit the Russia probe, is now a senior adviser for new acting DNI Richard Grenell, according to 4 people familiar with the matter. @dlippman
⋙ Politico: NSC aide who worked to discredit Russia probe moves to senior ODNI post http://politi.co/32eBbGh
// Kash Patel, a former acolyte of Rep. Devin Nunes, is now a top adviser in the Office of National Intelligence.
🐣 RT @hardball NBC News reports that Trump is not only weighing more pardons for associates like Roger Stone, but that he’s also cutting the Justice Department out of the loop.
⋙ 💽 MSNBC, Hardball: Trump cutting out DOJ in weighing pardons http://on.msnbc.com/2SLGgTj
// NBC News reports today that Trump is not only weighing more pardons for associates like Roger Stone, but that he’s also cutting the Justice Department out of the loop.
🐣 RT @CBSHerridge #BREAKING Source close to matter tells @CBSNews NSC staffer Kash Patel tapped to serve as senior adviser to Amb. Rick Grenell, acting Intel chief (DNI.) Source said mandate is to “#cleanhouse including “top to bottom” review DNI operations that expanded dramatically since 2005.
DailyBeast, Betsy Swan: Trump Ally Roger Stone Gets 40 Months for Lying, Witness-Tampering http://bit.ly/38OMhV8
// “He was not prosecuted, as some have complained, for standing up for the president. He was prosecuted for covering up for the president,” Judge Amy Berman Jackson declared.
DailyBeast, Molly Jong-Fast: Roger Stone Judge Amy Berman Jackson: Look Out, America, ABJ Is the New RBG http://bit.ly/2uRBc6Z
// “The truth still matters.” With those words, a brave judge sent away a man who’s deserved it for years—and reminded us of what this country can be again.
DailyBeast: Russia Is Helping Elect Trump Again, Intel Official Says http://bit.ly/2v1qSJq by Spencer Ackerman, Betsy Swan, Erin Banco and Sam Stein
// “Republicans went nuts” when an intelligence official told Congress that Russia was siding with Trump in the election—again. Then Trump tapped a political ally as his top spy.
DailyBeast, Josephine Huetlin: Racist German Shooter Exposes the Global Network of Hate http://bit.ly/38XLdOs
// Tobias Rathjen killed nine people of migrant backgrounds in Hanau’s laid-back shisha bars, then shot his mother and himself.
🐣 RT @rgoodlaw James Madison on the pardon power, 1788: ¤ “If the President be connected, in any suspicious manner, with any person, and there be grounds to believe he will shelter him, the House of Representatives can impeach him; they can remove him if found guilty.” ¤ (h/t: Stephen Holmes)
⋙ 🐣 RT @RepAdamSchiff Roger Stone was found guilty of lying to Congress and threatening a witness. ¤ He did it to cover up for Trump. His sentence is justified. ¤ It should go without saying, but to pardon Stone when his crimes were committed to protect Trump would be a breathtaking act of corruption.
🐣 RT @tribelaw This truly looks like TREASON in all but the narrowest possible sense. If confirmed, it’s utterly devastating. It points to an enemy of the nation sitting in the White House. This cannot stand if we are to survive as a sovereign constitutional republic.
🐣 RT @jdawsey1 UPDATED: Trump told Maguire and aides in Oval Friday that he did not believe Russia was interfering to help him & that intel community was getting played. Maguire struck a conciliatory tone when Trump said briefing shouldn’t have happened. Our latest:
💙 ⋙ WaPo: Senior intelligence official told lawmakers that Russia wants to see Trump reelected http://wapo.st/2HJGsMJ
A senior U.S. intelligence official told lawmakers last week that Russia wants to see President Trump reelected, viewing his administration as more favorable to the Kremlin’s interests, according to people who were briefed on the comments.
After learning of that analysis, which was provided to House lawmakers in a classified hearing, Trump erupted at his acting director of national intelligence, Joseph Maguire, in the Oval Office, perceiving him and his staff as disloyal for speaking to Congress about Russia’s perceived preference. The intelligence official’s analysis and Trump’s furious response ruined Maguire’s chances of becoming the permanent intelligence chief, according to people familiar with the matter, who, like others, spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss a sensitive matter.
Trump announced on Wednesday that he was replacing Maguire with a vocal loyalist, Richard Grenell, who is the U.S. ambassador to Germany. The shake-up at the top of the intelligence community is the latest in a post-impeachment purge. Trump has instructed aides to identify and remove officials across the government who aren’t defending his interests, and he wants them replaced with loyalists.
🐣 RT @JohnBrennan We are now in a full-blown national security crisis. By trying to prevent the flow of intelligence to Congress, Trump is abetting a Russian covert operation to keep him in office for Moscow’s interests, not America’s.
🐣 RT @juliaioffe From Russia’s point of view, this makes a lot of sense: Trump has been good to them—”our wrecking ball,” as one Russian political insider told me. And interference in the Democratic primaries worked last time, too. If it ain’t broke…
🐣 RT @maddow “Last week’s briefing did contain what appeared to be new information, including that Russia intends to interfere with the ongoing Democratic primaries as well as the general election.”
⋙ 🐣 RT @maddow “Some intelligence officials voiced concerns that the White House will dismantle a key election security effort by Dan Coats, the former DNI: the establishment of an election interference czar. Shelby Pierson has held the post since last summer.”
⋙ 🐣 RT @maddow “Some current and former intelligence officials expressed fears that Mr. Grenell may have been put in place explicitly to slow the pace of information on election interference to Congress.”
💙 ⋙⋙ 🔆 This❗️⋙ NYT: Russia Backs Trump’s Re-election, and He Fears Democrats Will Exploit Its Support http://nyti.ms/37LzzVI
A classified briefing to lawmakers angered the president, who complained that Democrats would “weaponize” the disclosure.
🐣📊 RT @QuinnipiacPoll Swing State Poll: #PresidentTrump up in Wisconsin while Dems have the edge in Pennsylvania; in Michigan it’s close https://bit.ly/325WREs #2020Election https://twitter.com/QuinnipiacPoll/status/1230538856489013249?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @NatashaBertrand New: Trump’s allies are urging him to push for a purge at DOJ of anyone involved with the Russia probe. The MAGA punditry’s outsized influence over the president means their campaign against the so-called Mueller “holdovers” is not falling on deaf ears
⋙ Politico: Trump allies target Mueller team, one by one http://politi.co/2SHItPH
// The president’s defenders are using him to remove anyone and everyone involved in the Russia probe.
WaPo, Aaron Blake: Strange scenes at Roger Stone’s sentencing raise even more questions about William Barr http://wapo.st/2Pc5LLl Crabb, a prosecutor who replaced those who resigned in protest, argued as if the first DOJ recommendation was still in effect
🐣 RT @moscow_project Reminder: Barr said in his confirmation hearings that it would be a crime for a president to pardon somebody in exchange for them lying to protect him. ¤ Will he still believe it if Trump pardons Roger Stone?
⋙ CNN (2019): Barr: “It would be a crime” for a President to pardon someone who promises not to incriminate him http://cnn.it/2PcU1IB under oath in confirmation hearings
// 1/16/2019
WaPo: How conservatives learned to wield power inside Facebook http://wapo.st/37Men1P
🔆 This❗️⋙ WaPo: Roger Stone sentenced to 40 months for lying to Congress, witness tampering http://wapo.st/38MVQDI
━━━━━━━▼ Roger Stone Sentencing
🧵 RT @awprokop I’m at the courthouse for Roger Stone’s sentencing hearing, which is scheduled to start at 10 AM, before Judge Amy Berman Jackson. Should be an interesting one… 📌 https://twitter.com/awprokop/status/1230503378058346498?s=20
🧵 RT @dsamuelsohn Good morning from the federal courthouse in DC and our continuing coverage of the 2016 presidential election. Roger Stone’s sentencing hearing begins at 10 am.
📌 https://twitter.com/dsamuelsohn/status/1230492187965755392?s=20
🧵 RT @Tierney_Megan After quickly going over some objections to the presentencing reports, Judge Jackson rattles off all the materials that have been filed for her to review for Stone’s sentencing, including the 2 DOJ memos. ¤ “I note that the initial memorandum has not been withdrawn,” she says. 📌 https://twitter.com/Tierney_Megan/status/1230510728970481665?s=20
🧵 RT @dfriedman33 Roger Stone’s much-watched sentencing hearing is underway, with a Judge Jackson starting with minor objections by the defense to language in a pre-sentence report. 📌 https://twitter.com/dfriedman33/status/1230509111508422656?s=20
🧵 RT @MManiero_CNS Roger Stone will be sentenced today at 10AM in D.C. federal court, with all eyes on Judge Amy Berman Jackson. @CourthouseNews 📌 https://twitter.com/MMineiro_CNS/status/1230486806782775301?s=20
🧵 RT @joshgerstein Morning from US District Court in DC where where @dsamuelsohn and I are standing by for sentencing of longtime Trump adviser Roger Stone, whose case unleashed a furor at the Justice Department last week following an unusual intervention by Attorney General Bill Barr…. 📌 https://twitter.com/joshgerstein/status/1230505242132963329?s=20
~~~~~~~~~
reverse chron ⇊
🔆 This❗️⋙ 🐣 RT @MManiero_CNSe3 BREAKING: Judge Jackson sentences Roger Stone to 40 months incarceration.
🐣 RT @kyledcheney This really frames a potential pardon: The judge, who GOP lawmakers have defrred to, says Stone’s crimes were about “covering up for” Trump. ¤ Any pardon will be viewed in that light.
⋙ 🐣 RT @JoshGerstein SNAP: ‘He was not prosecuted for standing up for the president. He was prosecuted for covering up for the president.’
🐣 RT @awprokop [Judge] ABJ: “The truth still exists. The truth still matters. Roger Stone’s insistence that it doesn’t” poses “a threat to our most fundamental institutions, to the very foundation of our democracy.” ¤ “The dismay and disgust at the defendant’s belligerence should transcend party.”
🐣 RT @harrylitman Judge skewerIng Stone not just for repeated lies but repeated lies that kept Mueller from discovering the truth about Trump. Critical to remember that context with every Trump tweet.
🐣 RT @KenDilanianNBC After AG Barr told the world the first sentencing recommendation for Stone was grossly out of whack, his prosecutor—the guy who replaced the guys who quit in protest—argued today for all the enhancements that bump the sentence as high as 9 years. That looks like a revolt.
🐣 RT @B52Malmet Judge Amy Berman Jackson says Roger Stone engaged in “threatening and intimidating conduct” toward her. She said Stone “knew exactly what he was doing” posting an image that pointed a gun’s cross-hairs above her face. “This is an intolerable rule of justice” she said. #RogerStone
🐣 RT @matthewamiller So DOJ’s position on Stone is that the enhancements should be applied but then ignored based on a sentencing memo the prosecutor appearing in court won’t say who wrote. What an absolute embarrassment.
🐣 RT @JoyceWhiteVance The Judge wants to know who wrote the 2nd sentencing memo DOJ submitted in the Stone case, the one the reflected Trump’s views not the law & the facts. Can’t think of a legit reason for a prosecutor to decline to answer the court’s question.
🐣 RT @MMiniero_CNS Judge says that she is under a duty to stick to sentencing guidelines and tell the court that for those “new to this” or who “woke up last week” and thought the guidelines are too high, that “many defense attorneys and judges have been making that point for a very long time.”
🐣 RT @kylegriffin1 Judge Jackson in the Stone case: “For those of you who are new to this … & became persuaded that the guidelines were harsh, I can assure you that defense attorneys & many judges have been making that point … But we don’t usually succeed in getting the gov’t to agree.” @MSNBC
🐣 RT @kylegriffin1 NBC’s Ken Dilanian: On two separate enhancements, one for threatening a witness and one for obstructing the investigation, Judge Jackson has said that they do apply to Roger Stone and that suggests that the sentence will be in the upper range of the guidelines. @MSNBC
🐣 RT @C_Sommerfeldt This is stunning. ¤ The new DOJ attorneys are arguing in favor of most aspects of the initial Stone sentencing recommendation, even though Barr stepped in and rescinded it. ¤ Are they revolting against Barr’s interference?
🐣 RT @lauferlaw Wrong. A pardon can be issued any time after the commission of a crime. Why wait until after a jury found him guilty? Looks horrible. Further, pardoning Stone waives his right to assert the 5th amendment. He can be compelled to implicate everyone he conspired with.
🐣 RT @barbmcquade Stone is one reason Mueller was unable to complete his work. Without obstruction, he may have found conspiracy.
⋙ 🐣 RT @JustSecurity With Judge Jackson saying House Intel Committee’s Russia probe was stymied because of Stone’s obstruction. It “led to an inaccurate, incomplete and incorrect report.” ¤ We are re-upping this relevant analysis by @BarbMcQuade
⋙⋙ JustSecurity, Barbara McQuade: Did Trump and His Team Successfully Obstruct Mueller’s Investigation? http://bit.ly/2FK8NC7
// 6/25/2019
🐣 RT @harrylitman still awaiting bottom line but in brief, Jackson more adopting government’s (initial) position, but also giving throwing Stone a few bones, pointing towards a sentence somewhat under the 7 to 9 initially requested. And pretty well ignoring the whole second memorandum from DOJ.
🐣 RT @kyledcheney This whole sequence is mindblowing. Four prosecutors quit the Stone case because DOJ didn’t back their sentencing recommendation. ¤ The newly installed prosecutors … are now arguing in favor of the original recommendation.
━━━━━━━▲
DailyBeast: Trump’s Choice for Intel Chief Leaves Officials ‘Blindsided’ http://bit.ly/2uj7asu
// Richard Grenell, a Trump loyalist, does not have any direct experience in the intelligence field—a fact that triggered alarm bells for some.
⭕ 19 Feb 2020
🐣 RT @kylegriffin1 George Conway: Trump’s “invocations of the pardon power … appear unwedded to any notion of mercy or public good; they are not guided by the ordinary process of careful review. Rather, they are impulsive expressions of Trumpian spite and self-interest.”
⋙ WaPo, George Conway III: Trump’s ‘King Kong’ nickname has come into full fruition http://wapo.st/3bVuFZl
WaPo, Greg Sargent: Trump’s corruption will get worse. His own advisers just showed how. http://wapo.st/2uf24NL
🐣 RT @JillWineBanks All Trump’s pardons and commutations since Sheriff Joe Arpaio are to send a message that corruption is okay, that obstruction of justice and ignoring court orders is fine and that he is a king and above the law.
🐣 RT @kylegriffin1 The prosecutors who helped convict Blagojevich issued a stern statement in response to the commutation, noting that Blagojevich extorted the CEO of a children’s hospital, withholding funds for sick children until he issued campaign contributions.
⋙ CBSNews: Trump commutes Rod Blagojevich’s sentence and pardons Bernard Kerik http://cbsn.ws/37Lx7ym
// Blagojevich was convicted of trying to sell former President Barack Obama’s Senate seat, and Kerik served time for tax fraud.
🐣 RT @CaslerNoel If Bloomberg has hired a team for opposition research into Trump I highly suggest they look into the ‘Miss Universe’ Pageant in Trinidad ‘99. He definitely does not want the democrats to know what went on down there that had him hurriedly flown-off the island. @realDonaldTrump
🐣 RT @RoguePOTUSStaff Follow up: Barr’s contemplations of resignation appear to be genuine. But only because he’s starting to worry he might be in too deep in terms of legal jeopardy, and that POTUS poses a real risk of blowing it all wide open. Just looking for a lifeboat.
⋙ 🐣 RT @RoguePOTUSStaff [2/13] “I told you if we do this you have to stay quiet about it. Now we have a mess on our hands,” AG Barr recently told POTUS. Barr Promises he’ll clean it up, but advises him to be careful. Then, when off the phone, Barr complains that Tillerson was right.
🐣 RT @JonathanLanday Dana Rohrbacher response to Assange lawyer’s allegation: ¤ “At no time did I talk 2 President Trump about Julian Assange. Likewise, I was not directed by Trump or anyone else connected with him to meet with Julian Assange. I was on my own fact finding mission at personal expense.”
🐣 RT @DavidCayJ If the ex-Congressman was acting at Trump’s behest he may, depending on the facts, be subject to felony indictment as a principal in a criminal scheme.
⋙ 🐣 RT @NatashaBertrand As Post notes, the statement Assange’s lawyer was asking to submit was written by a WikiLeaks lawyer present for the Rohrabacher-Assange meeting where the pardon was allegedly floated—statement was not written by Rohrabacher himself. This has been source of some confusion today.
🔆 This❗️⋙ WaPo: Assange lawyer claims congressman offered pardon on behalf of Trump in exchange for absolving Russia in WikiLeaks DNC case http://wapo.st/3bTgHqY
BBC: Julian Assange: Trump ‘offered pardon for Russia denial’ http://bbc.in/2SZMsWF
🐣 RT @Wikileaks The meeting and the offer were made prior to Assange’s indictment. ¤ If you really want to know what this is about — tune in to Court on Tuesday 25th
Politico (4/4/2017): Republican known for defending Putin meets Trump at White House http://politi.co/3c1dfLc via @KevinMKruse
// The president’s decision to host Dana Rohrabacher drew raised eyebrows in D.C.
🐣 RT @Wikileaks The meeting and the offer were made prior to Assange’s indictment. ¤ If you really want to know what this is about — tune in to Court on Tuesday 25th
🐣 RT @ZcohenCNN .@PressSec disputing claim that Trump offered Wikileaks founder Julian Assange a pardon via former GOP Rep. Dana Rohrabacher, saying: “It is a complete fabrication & a total lie.” @mkraju & I wrote this in 2018 about Rohrabacher’s meeting w/ Assange.
⋙ CNN, Manu Raju and Zachary Cohen (5/23/2018): A GOP congressman’s lonely quest defending Julian Assange http://cnn.it/32788EE
// 5/23/2018
🐣 RT @JonFlan Not so bright Rep. Rohrabacher bragged publicly about deal with Assange on Russian interference in our election –
⋙ 💽 KCAL (2017): Rohrabacher: Make Deal With Assange To Disprove Russia Claims http://cbsloc.al/32aPxrp
// 2017
DailyBeast, Niko Hines: Trump Offered Assange Pardon if He Covered Up Russian Hack, WikiLeaks Founder’s Lawyer Claims http://bit.ly/2SGz9vp
// Lawyers acting for the WikiLeaks founder said Dana Rohrabacher, a former Republican congressman, had brought the message to London from Trump.
WaPo: John Solomon columns on Ukraine ripped in newspaper’s internal investigation for conflicts and distortions http://wapo.st/2vMSOkm
🐣 RT @JoyceWhiteVance A friend who is also a barrister tells me Assange’s barrister is a QC (Queen’s Counsel), or silk, which means he’s senior and well respected. See: https://www.qcappointments.org
Bloomberg: Trump Ousts Pentagon Policy Chief Linked to Ukraine-Aid Saga http://bloom.bg/2V70adg
● Rood’s letter says Trump asked Esper for his resignation
● Some officials said Rood was slowing Trump’s policy plans
A top Defense Department official who advised against cutting off U.S. military aid to Ukraine has resigned after President Donald Trump asked for his departure.
John Rood, the under secretary of defense for policy, said in a letter to the president dated Wednesday that he’ll step down Feb. 28 “as you requested.” Rood, who had been in his post since January 2018, didn’t say why the president sought his ouster.
Rood drew attention because he was the official who certified in May to Congress that Ukraine was eligible to receive $250 million in security assistance. That aid was later temporarily blocked by the White House, a decision at the center of Trump’s impeachment.
CNN reported earlier this month that Rood warned Defense Secretary Mark Esper against withholding military aid to Ukraine in an email on July 25, the same day Trump asked the country’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, in a phone call to investigate former Vice President Joe Biden and his son, Hunter.
The post is one of the most important at the Pentagon, managing the office that translates and implements policy set by senior defense civilian leaders. The office uses as its benchmark National Security Strategies published by incoming administrations and companion National Defense Strategies issued by the Pentagon.
🧵 RT @benlewismedia Julian Assange court appearance today- His lawyer mentioned a statement, that alleges former US Congressman Dana Rohrabacher visited Assange, saying he was there on behalf of the President, offering a pardon if JA would say Russia had nothing to do with DNC leaks. @SBSNews [Australia] 📌 https://twitter.com/benlewismedia/status/1230172453185429505?s=20
Law&Crime: Trump Has Now Granted Clemency to Three People Prosecuted by James Comey’s Colleague Patrick Fitzgerald http://bit.ly/2SGASRt Rod Blagojevich, Scooter Libby and Conrad Black
Mediaite, Ken Meyer: The Hill Rebukes John Solomon’s Ukraine Work and Admits Mistakes in Oversight of His Columns http://bit.ly/2V7rxnk Solomon’s writings “blurred the lines of a columnist and news writer”; editorial comments are being added to some columns
Politico: Trump campaign hires alum of controversial data company http://politi.co/2ub3ed6
// Cambridge Analytica was called out by Facebook for misuse of user data and shuttered in 2018.
💙💙 TheAtlantic, Adam Serwer: The First Days of the Trump Regime http://bit.ly/2P919Wx
// The Senate acquittal marked the beginning of a fundamental transition in the United States.
⋙ See under Entire Articles: Atl Serwer First Days 2/19/2020
DailyBeast, Michael Daly: Bernie Kerik Was as Corrupt as They Come—Just Like Trump http://bit.ly/2T131Sp
// Is it any wonder the president doesn’t care about Kerik’s history of lying, evading taxes, and ginning up charitable contributions?
WaPo: Justice Dept., in wrestling with how to handle Giuliani, tightens rules for Ukraine-related probes http://wapo.st/325dSPg
💙 🐣 RT @ForeignAffairs “After a long series of dashed expectations, many still believe that one day the rogue will vanish and the ‘real’ Russia will finally emerge. This is a fantasy.”
⋙ ForeignAffairs, Michael Kimmage: The Wily Country http://fam.ag/2P7Lnel
// Understanding Putin’s Russia
⭕ 18 Feb 2020
DailyBeast, Rick Wilson: Trump Pardons Crooks to Feel Like a King http://bit.ly/326uOok
// Of course he pardoned Blago. Aside from loving epic crooks, Trump is sending a message to aides: Keep your mouth shut, and I’ll protect you.
🐣 RT @MaddowBlog July 12, 2019 – “In January, one month after Cohen was sentenced to three years in prison, prosecutors requested interviews with executives at the company, CNN reported. But prosecutors never followed up on their initial request…”
⋙ CNN (7/12/2019): Prosecutors unlikely to charge Trump Org executives, sources say http://cnn.it/37IGVsW
// 7/12/2019)
🐣 RT @TheLastWord .@JoyceWhiteVance tells @Lawrence that Trump uses pardons and commutations like the ones he just granted as a means of signaling to his criminal friends that he will take care of them if they don’t testify against him. https://on.msnbc.com/328chYR
Newsweek: Robert Reich: All the Progress We Made Since Watergate Has Been Bulldozed By a Shameless GOP and a Shameful Attorney General http://bit.ly/2HFDM2o
AtlanticCouncil: Russian escalation dampens hopes for peace in Ukraine http://bit.ly/38JLHrq
🐣 RT @RepSwalwell It’s no coincidence Donald Trump uses his power to pardon those accused of the same crimes he and his cronies are accused of. ¤ Don’t let him normalize abuse and fraud.
BusinessInsider: Trump declares himself the ‘chief law-enforcement officer of the United States’ and admits he makes Attorney General Barr’s job harder http://bit.ly/2P7SAet
🐣 RT @Yamiche Official William Barr watch begins. ¤ Attorney General William P. Barr has told people close to President Trump — both inside and outside the White House — that he is considering quitting over Trump’s tweets about Justice Department investigations.
⋙ 🔆 This❗️⋙ WaPo: Barr has told those close to Trump he is considering quitting over the president’s tweets about Justice Dept. investigations http://wapo.st/38JXBSg
🐣 RT @NatashaBertrand Just in: DOJ says in letter to Nadler that US attorney for EDNY has been assigned to coordinate “several open matters” related to Ukraine, and the US attorney in Pittsburgh will be receiving new Ukraine info from the public (i.e. Giuliani). Here’s the memo DOJ sent out on Jan 17: https://twitter.com/NatashaBertrand/status/1229820889669259267?s=20/photo/1
⋙ 🐣 RT @NatashaBertrand And here’s the letter to Nadler from Stephen Boyd: https://twitter.com/NatashaBertrand/status/1229821169127317514?s=20/photo/1-2
🔆 This❗️⋙ Politico: DOJ taps U.S. attorney to ‘coordinate’ Ukraine inquiries http://politi.co/39KFWtH
// But the department’s notification to Congress is vague about which current investigations are now subject to special supervision by Brooklyn-based prosecutor
The top federal prosecutor in Brooklyn [EDNY], Richard Donoghue, is now vetting and managing all Ukraine-related efforts by the Justice Department in the wake of President Donald Trump’s impeachment over his actions toward the former Soviet republic..
The letter departs from the Justice Department’s typical stance of not commenting on ongoing investigations or their management. Boyd said confirming the roles of Donghue and Brady publicly was appropriate because press accounts and comments by lawmakers “significantly distorted the public’s understanding of the Department’s handling of such cases.”
Rosen’s January memo to department leaders is branded as “law enforcement sensitive” and “for official use only,” but also stresses that a series of Ukraine-related matters being probed by Justice have “been publicly reported.”
🐣 RT @gtconway3d “But more than that, what Trump is really after is the normalization of corruption. The fact that Blagojevich was a Democrat makes it all the better. Trump would never argue that Republicans are clean and Democrats are dirty; he wants to convince you that everyone is dirty.”
⋙ 🐣 RT @paulwaldman Because the @washingtonpost is a family paper, I couldn’t title this post on Blagojevich “I’ve got this pardon power and it’s f-ing golden.”
⋙⋙ WaPo, Paul Waldman: Why Trump is letting a corrupt Democrat out of prison http://wapo.st/3bMYawx
// If he can convince you that everyone is corrupt and the system is beyond help, he wins.
NewYorker, Jeffrey Toobin: The Trouble with Donald Trump’s Pardons http://bit.ly/3bO2JXx
🧵 RT @sarahturbo79 While the president is on a pro-corruption pardon spree, let’s examine just how far out of the mainstream his abuse of the pardon power has become. Snippy THREAD: ¤ 1/ The presidential pardon power is nearly absolute, thus it corrupts absolutely. 📌 https://twitter.com/sarahturbo79/status/1229863148758478850?s=20
🐣 RT @duty2warn He issued pardons or commuted sentences for 11 people today, including Blagojevich, Milken, DeBartolo, Kerik. Because he can, because he decides these things, because fraud is not a big deal, and because it distracts from Stone, Barr, Deutsche Bank, etc.
⋙ RawStory, Travis Gettys: ‘He’s going to pardon everyone Mueller indicted’: Trump sets off alarms with out-of-the-blue ‘pardon spree’ http://bit.ly/2P79SbL
JustSecurity: Three Dozen Questions for Congress (and News Media) to Ask Attorney General Barr http://bit.ly/326y96P by Joshua Geltzer, Ryan Goodman and Asha Rangappa
DerSpiegel, Von Ian Kershaw (2008): How Hitler Won Over the German People http://bit.ly/3bKOBOG
// 1/3/2008; There were still many Germans who were skeptical of Hitler when he became chancellor in 1933. But Führer propaganda and military success soon turned him into an idol. The adulation helped make the Third Reich catastrophe possible.
WaPo, James Comey: Justice is supposed to be blind. Bill Barr can’t see that. http://wapo.st/2uKORwB
🐣 RT @stengel Presidents can use the pardon power in different ways—to alleviate the suffering of poor defendants who could not afford counsel & were unfairly convicted—or free rich people with the best lawyers who were corrupt but have friends in high places. What kind of America do you want?
🐣 RT @danpfeiffer Just in case you had any doubts – they are all in on it. Every single one of them
🐣 RT @lrozen Wonder if the outside groups just a pretext, they are really defending him from Trump.
⋙ 🐣 RT @ @kyledcheney Unusual joint statement from McConnell, McCarthy and Graham defending Barr from “outside groups” (i.e. the 2,000 former DOJ employees who called on him to step down): https://twitter.com/kyledcheney/status/1229855627691819008?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @AriMelber As we reported back in Nov. — the extortion evidence against Blagojevich echoed *evidence against Trump* in the Ukraine plot, which made his 2019 defense of Blagojevich and his “phone call” so striking:
⋙ 🐣 RT @TheBeatWithAri [9/26] Just weeks after his phone call with the Ukrainian President discussing the alleged bribery plot, Trump floated the idea of a pardon for Blagojevich, claiming he was “treated unbelievably unfairly” by having to go to jail “over a phone call where nothing happens.” 💽 https://twitter.com/AriMelber/status/1229842082476560385?s=20/photo/1
// 11/26/2019
🐣 RT @PaulaChertok #BREAKING Softening the ground to pardon convicted felon Roger Stone? >> Trump to commute sentence of disgraced Ill Gov Rod Blagojevich—convicted for a bribery extortion shakedown not unlike Trump’s Ukraine scheme. Trump even called it just “a phonecall.” SunTimes http://bit.ly/37FfMr1 https://twitter.com/PaulaChertok/status/1229832726229860352?s=20/photo/1
⋙ 🐣 RT @PaulaChertok Trump—the #FreeFelon POTUS: Blagojevich was impeached; SCOTUS upheld felony corruption convictions. But Trump likes that Blago wife linked Mueller & Comey to Blago prosecutor: “This same cast of characters that did this to my family are out there trying to do it to the president” https://twitter.com/PaulaChertok/status/1229842090814656512?s=20/photo/1
RT @JoyceWhiteVance Trump uses pardons to message to others-stay on my side & I’ll take care of you. We know this from the Mueller Report. I’d speculate Trump won’t pardon until after the election but hard to imagine Flynn & Stone aren’t in line & maybe Manafort too.
⋙ NBCNews: Trump expected to grant clemency to former Ill. Gov Blagojevich, ex-NYPD commissioner Kerik http://nbcnews.to/3bPRn5a
// Blagojevich was sentenced in 2011 to 14 years in federal prison on corruption charges related to his solicitation of bribes in an attempt to “sell” Barack Obama’s open Senate seat.
⋙ 🐣 RT @JoyceWhiteVance The Constitution gives Presidents an unfettered right to issue pardons. But if those pardons are used to reward people for refusing to testify against a president, that’s an abuse of power. This is one reason we should all register to vote & stay engaged.
🐣 RT @jimsciutto Is Russia testing US support for Ukraine?
⋙ 🐣 RT @ @AndersFoghR Disturbing escalation by Russia-backed rebels in Donbas. ¤ Attacking multiple positions and using weapons banned by the Minsk agreement ¤ This aggression must be condemned by US and EU, and Putin must understand that only path to better West/Russia relations runs through #Ukraine
🐣 RT @MarquardtA The top lawyer for the intel community is stepping down next month, @ZcohenCNN confirms. @ODNIgov General Counsel Jason Klitenic blocked the whistleblower’s complaint from going to Congress, before the ICIG reported it to them.
↥ ↧ ?
Politico: Top intel office lawyer who handled Ukraine whistleblower complaint resigning http://politi.co/2wlu6b0 so many lives disrupted ~ remember their names
// Jason Klitenic, the general counsel for the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, will depart early next month.
WaPo: Roger Stone will be sentenced Thursday despite his ongoing bid to overturn conviction http://wapo.st/3286PVK
🚫🐣 Will no one rid us of this meddlesome president? (Asking for a country)
🐣 RT @SimonWDC All these people unfairly treated by the criminal justice system – just like Trump and all his friends. ¤ It’s total lawlessness. To repeat – Trump is not right of mind. This is not strategic. He has gone crazy, become a Mad King, pushed off the cliff by Barr and McConnell.
🐣 RT @Santucci BREAKING – @ABC News has learned President Trump expected to commute the sentenced of former Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich via multiple senior level sources – more to come @KFaulders @vlasto & me
🧵 RT @rachelwienerwp Now representing DOJ in Roger Stone case as conference call starts: John Crabb (criminal chief) and J.P. Cooney (fraud unit chief) 📌 https://twitter.com/rachelweinerwp/status/1229797118472314881?s=20
🐣 […] RT @ Judge Berman Jackson rules – Roger Stone’s sentencing will go forward Thursday as planned, while motions for a new trial are being argued. The execution of the sentence will be deferred until she decides on those motions.
🐣 RT @ “Barr is the enabler who is making acceptable presidential and Justice Department behavior that virtually nobody accepted only a few years ago,” @qjurecic and @benjaminwittes write:
⋙ TheAtlantic, Quinta Jurecic and Benjamin Wittes: Imagine If a Democrat Behaved Like Bill Barr http://bit.ly/2V3E1wq
// What would the attorney general say were a future administration to follow his lead?
CNN, Stephen Collinson: Justice Department storm intensifies with new attacks on Barr’s credibility http://cnn.it/323O5qu
TheAtlantic, Sarada Peri: Trump Is Going to Cheat http://bit.ly/2V1PqMZ Sarada Peri is a former senior speechwriter for President Barack Obama
// How should Democrats fight against a president who has no moral or legal compass?
FastCompany: How a Wall Street exec’s suicide led his son to share files on Trump’s favorite bank with the FBI http://bit.ly/37ylz1q an excerpt from David Enrich’s new book
// In ‘Dark Towers,’ the New York Times’s finance editor David Enrich tells the story of the most scandalous bank in the world—and its shadowy ties to Donald Trump’s business empire.
EmptyWheel, Marcy Wheeler: The President’s Conspiracy Theories Get More Whacko than George Papadopoulos’ http://bit.ly/323GKHs Trump’s morning tweet barrage is disconnected from reality
🐣 RT @AndrewFeinberg Here’s the reason why this is some crackpot lying hot mess: ¤ Stone lied to Congress & threatened a witness (and the witnesses’ 🐶). ¤ You won’t find a single prosecutor at @TheJusticeDept who would not have brought that case to a grand jury. Mueller’s involvement is irrelevant.
⋙ 🐣 RT @real These were Mueller prosecutors, and the whole Mueller investigation was illegally set up based on a phony and now fully discredited Fake Dossier, lying and forging documents to the FISA Court, and many other things. Everything having to do with this fraudulent investigation is…
⋙ 🐣 RT @ ….badly tainted and, in my opinion, should be thrown out. Even Mueller’s statement to Congress that he did not see me to become the FBI Director (again), has been proven false. The whole deal was a total SCAM. If I wasn’t President, I’d be suing everyone all over the place…
⋙ 🐣 RT @ ….BUT MAYBE I STILL WILL. WITCH HUNT!
🐣 RT @glennkirschner2 Hey All. Because today ends in “y” (Tuesday), it’s a good day to fight for justice. As the Federal Judges Association meets to discuss Trump/Barr’s attack on the rule of law, I’ll be heading to Judge Jackson’s courtroom to see why she set an on-the-record call in the Stone case.
⭕ 17 Feb 2020
💙🔆 This❗️⋙ NYMag, By The Editors: 11 Months From Today A second term for Trump seems more possible than ever. But what would it look like? http://nym.ag/32foD1y With interviews by Brian Feldman, Ben Jacobs, Sarah Jones, Anna Silman, and Matt Stieb ● https://twitter.com/Auriandra/status/1230079811554566144?s=20/photo/1
● Impeachment Redux ~ Anonymous GOP House Staffer
● A Politics of Pure Revenge ~ Frank Rich
● The DOJ Brought to Heel ~ Former US Attorney Barbara McQuade
● A Big Tech Détente ~ Kara Swisher
● The Death of Global Climate Efforts ~ David Wallace-Wells
● More Hunger ~ Sarah Jones
● MAGA Budgets ~ Rep Barbara Lee
● Silly Television ~ Kathryn VanArendonk
● A Democratic Party in Revolt ~ Ezra Klein
● A More Vulnerable Electoral College ~ Ed Kilgore
● Nuclear Brinkmanship ~ Heather Hurlburt
● Extraordinary Stress ~ Dr. Jennifer Panning
● Red-State Entertainment ~ Alison Willmore
● Escalating Trade Wars ~ Josh Barro
● And Escalating Self-Dealings ~ Andrew Rice
● A Generation of Judges ~ Ed Kilgore
● A Crisis of Faith ~ Sarah Jones
● The Wall, Abandoned ~ Matt Stieb
● Don Jr. 2024 ~ Max Read
🐣 RT @DavidCornDC A reminder: Russia attacked the US & helped @realDonaldTrump become president. Trump encouraged that attack & assisted it by echoing Putin disinformation (the claim there was no attack). Trump & his campaign secretly interacted w/ Russia during the attack. That’s the big story.
🧵 RT @Teri_Kanefield When we say that the institutions are holding out, this is what we mean. 📌 https://twitter.com/Teri_Kanefield/status/1229585227799904256?s=20
⋙ 🐣 RT @ [ … ] . . . We can compare Trump’s power grabs to Hitler’s in the 1930s and Putin’s in the 1990s. ¤ Germany in the 1930s had only been a democracy since the end of World War I. ¤ Russia had no history of democracy. This means that Germany in the 1930s and Russia in the 1990s . . .
⋙ 🐣 RT @ . . . had almost no history of democracy and no entrenched democratic institutions. ¤ In contrast, we have a few hundred years of judicial independence and prosecutorial independence. ¤ So the institutions are holding out. (Except for the Senate.) [ … ]
🐣 RT @DeadlineWH “If you look at what the catalyst is – this is great to have this being discussed on President’s Day – the rule of law involves equal justice. The Department of Justice in its own guidance says political affiliation doesn’t matter” – Andrew Weissmann w/ @NicolleDWallace 💽 https://twitter.com/DeadlineWH/status/1229533985644085248?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @DeadlineWH “The problem here…goes to a whole pattern of things that [Barr’s] done since the beginning of his term, including the whitewashing of the Mueller report, including categorically rejecting the critical finding of the inspector general’s report” – Donald Ayer w/ @NicolleDWallace 💽 https://twitter.com/DeadlineWH/status/1229532820516823040?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @DeadlineWH “Republicans and Democrats who have served in the Justice Dept for the past twelve presidents are today calling for William Barr’s resignation as our country’s attorney general, with one former Bush era Deputy Attorney General… calling Barr ‘un-American'” – @NicolleDWallace 💽 https://twitter.com/DeadlineWH/status/1229512927440490496?s=20/photo/1
TheAtlantic, David Graham: John Bolton Hints at How Much More He Still Has to Tell http://bit.ly/2SEyGK4
// In his first public appearance since the impeachment inquiry, Trump’s former national-security adviser made news by suggesting what his book may reveal.
🐣 RT @kurtbardella Everybody needs to understand that Judge Amy Berman Jackson’s record is non-partisan. When @GOPoversight took @BarackObama @EricHolder to court over Fast and Furious documents, the judge who ruled in their favor was Judge Jackson. @realDonaldTrump’s attacks on her are a disgrace. 💽 [MorningJoe] https://twitter.com/kurtbardella/status/1229607207177768962?s=20/photo/1
WaPo, Michael Gerson: Republicans owe Vindman a public apology http://wapo.st/2SzQkia
🧵 RT @ScottMStedman By 2013, Gazprombank (run by Putin’s closest allies) had funneled over 16 billion rubles into their account at Deutsche Bank Americas to swap the rubles to dollars to pay vendors. One problem: Gazprombank had a very minimal presence in the US. Who got paid? 📌 https://twitter.com/ScottMStedman/status/1229585967972937728?s=20
🐣 RT @matthewamiller I think Bolton has behaved cowardly too…BUT, the president’s former national security advisor just called major elements of his national security stewardship a failure. That is earthshaking news in any other admin, and should be here too.
🐣 RT @harrylitman This is mind-blowing. I’ve never heard of anything like it. We are in full on crisis mode.
🐣 RT @tribelaw This is rolling thunder. One stuffed goose named Barr is cooked. 2000 DOJ alumni he can ignore. 1000 federal judges? That’s an altogether different kettle of fish.
💙 ⋙ USAToday: Federal judges’ association calls emergency meeting after DOJ intervenes in case of Trump ally Roger Stone http://bit.ly/2P3Oe87
CNN: Bolton to break his silence as White House wrangles over content of his book http://cnn.it/2uRxb28
BusinessInsider (2019): RANKED: The greatest US presidents, according to 200 political scientists http://bit.ly/38EKwcM Partial List: ● https://twitter.com/Auriandra/status/1229485897848172545?s=20/photo/1
// 2/18/2019; Members of the American Political Science Association’s Presidents & Executive Politics section completed the survey online between December 2017 and January 2018.
… [E]ven among Republicans, Trump was ranked quite unfavorably. Respondents who identified as Republicans or conservatives ranked Trump 40th out of 44 presidents
1. Abraham Lincoln
2. George Washington
3. FDR
4. Teddy Roosevelt
5. Thomas Jefferson
6. Harry Truman
7. Dwight D Eisenhower
8. Barack Obama
9. Ronald Reagan
10. LBJ
11. Woodrow Wilson
12. James Madison
13. Bill Clinton
14. John Adams
15. Andrew Jackson
16. JFK
17. George HW Bush
18. James Monroe
19. William McKinley
21. Ulysses S Grant
26 Jimmy Carter
30. George W Bush
33. Richard Nixon
40. Andrew Johnson
44. Donald Trump (Last ‼️)
RawStory: Trump’s US delegation was ‘dumbfounded’ by hostile reception at Munich conference: report http://bit.ly/38Mf6l7
WaPo, Jennifer Rubin: The descent of the GOP into authoritarian know-nothingism http://wapo.st/39Ne2NX
🐣 RT @mfa_russia #Lavrov: Escalating tension, @NATO advancing its military infrastructure to the east, holding unprecedented exercises close to #Russian borders, and ramping up defence spending far beyond reasonable levels, all this leads to uncertainty.#Russia #MFA #Diplomacy #NATO #MSC2020
🐣 RT @jason_kint Yes. Please share widely. Thrilled 60 Minutes took this on. Trump, Giulliani and a number of lawmakers defending him, disgraced themselves by spreading this disinfo. They did nothing short of empower Russia, weaken Ukraine, weaken the United States and democracy itself.
⋙ 🐣 RT @60Minutes Mr. Trump’s defenders in Congress amplified the Ukraine election meddling story during the impeachment inquiry. But former Senior Director for Russia on the National Security Council, Dr. Fiona Hill, warned the committee against that “fictional narrative.” https://cbsn.ws/322KCbD
⋙⋙ 🧵RT @ “It was illogical; it could not be explained; it was crazy,” says Ambassador Bill Taylor about the Trump administration withholding military aid from Ukraine while pressing for investigations of Democrats. https://cbsn.ws/2SvwaWG 💽 https://twitter.com/60Minutes/status/1229199831664676864?s=20/photo/1
// ✛ additional clips
🐣 RT @jason_kint Here is the full, must-see @60Minutes segment. It has global implications and its twenty minutes long. Please watch and share with your family and friends.
💙 ⋙ 💽 CBSNews, 60Minutes: Why President Trump asked Ukraine to look into a DNC “server” and CrowdStrike http://cbsn.ws/39ESbb7
// The consensus view of the CIA, NSA, FBI and a Senate investigation is that Russians interfered in the 2016 election. But those findings don’t line up with the ever-evolving story President Trump has been telling about Ukraine.
💙 WaPo, Ron Wyden: Corporations are working with the Trump administration to control online speech http://wapo.st/2HyukhA ‘The Trump admin is working to give the AG power to set online speech guidelines and access everything Americans do w their digital devices’ ‼️
CNN: Federal prosecutors weigh new charges that bring Lev Parnas investigation closer to Giuliani http://cnn.it/2SUJrqP
🐣 RT @pithywidow Pretty epic takedown by Barr’s former boss
🐣 RT @EricColumbus As Deputy Attorney General, Don Ayer was Bill Barr’s boss when Barr headed OLC, and Barr succeeded him as DAG when Ayer left government. Now Ayer says it’s time for Barr to do the same.
💙 ⋙ TheAtlantic, Donald Ayer: Bill Barr Must Resign http://bit.ly/2SAoT7Y Ayer was U.S. Deputy Attorney General under George H. W. Bush
// The attorney general is working to destroy the integrity and independence of the Justice Department, in order to make Donald Trump a president who can operate above the law.
WaPo, Annie Owens: We knew what Barr would do. Now it’s too late to stop him. http://wapo.st/37BFhcu “Barr’s use of the Justice Department as a political cudgel is a stark reminder of why it must be jealously guarded and zealously effectuated”
// The attorney general’s radical view of the executive branch was apparent during his Senate confirmation
TheGuardian, John Naughton: Antisocial: How Online Extremists Broke America by Andrew Marantz – review http://bit.ly/39HJHjO
// A US journalist infiltrates the toxic world of alt-right ‘news’ peddlers in an absorbing study of online propaganda and its threat to democracy
⭕ 16 Feb 2020
🐣 RT @ShadiHamid Important read from @jacksondiehl on how there’s a lot to like in Bernie’s foreign policy for anyone who cares about supporting democracy and living up to our values abroad
⋙ WaPo, Jackson Diehl: The Sanders foreign policy you don’t know about http://wapo.st/2wkaQdZ
// Based on his speeches, Sanders would put the United States back on the side of global democracy and human rights.
TIME, Joyce White Vance: If William Barr Truly Believed in Rule of Law, He Would Resign http://bit.ly/2V2h64k
Politico: Trump camp finds no appeasement at Munich http://politi.co/39GstTH
// The security gathering shows the U.S. and Europe have very different views on health of transatlantic relations.
🧵 RT @jidk1187 THREAD. An American diplomat in Moscow wrote to the Department of State to summarize Russian capabilities and intentions toward the Western Alliance and the United States. He stated that the Russians would try to isolate the allies from each other. He predicted they would try 📌 https://twitter.com/jidk1187/status/1229039583024893953?s=20
// George Kennen 1947
💙 🧵 RT @waltshaub With the impeachment trial over, we’re in a dangerous new phase of Trump’s war on democracy. What do we do now? ¤ I want share a perspective that I hope you’ll find both optimistic and realistic. It’s long for Twitter, but I’m posting it here because you’re its target audience./1 📌 https://twitter.com/waltshaub/status/1229158648485761024?s=20
⋙ I think the greatest threat we face is despondency. The enemies of democracy, foreign and domestic, want you drowning in hopelessness. A hopeless populace is a helpless one. To that end, a hostile foreign power set up an infrastructure to weaponize social media against you./2
🐣 RT @MichaelWinship “As we sink deeper into a revenge-driven despotism that brings the unimaginable closer, standing out, speaking up and pushing back are paramount.” It’s Happening Here… – https://go.shr.lc/2OTrnMz via @commondreams @MichaelWinship
⋙ CommonDreams, Michael Winship: It’s Happening Here… http://bit.ly/38xtpcU
// Messages of resistance in two little books, one a movie script.
🧵 RT @gtconway3d According to the Justice Department’s statistics, 67,595 criminal defendants were found guilty in federal courts in 2018. (The 2019 stats aren’t out yet.)
📌 https://twitter.com/gtconway3d/status/1229074730717601793?s=20
⋙ And the one known case in which the AG intervenes to seek a lower-than-guidelines sentence just happens to be one against someone who not only is a longtime confidant of the president, but also is someone who could give testimony against the president.
⋙ You know all this, of course, but it’s just so stark to say it out loud.
🐣 RT @ForeignAffairs Is it time for the U.S. to cut back its global role? In our March/April issue, “Come Home, America?,” six new essays engage in the debate over U.S. retrenchment.
⋙ ForeignAffairs: Come Home, America? http://fam.ag/2SxWorD
// Mar-Apr 2020 issue
DailyBeast, Spencer Ackerman: Barr Just Cost the Justice Department Its Prized Public-Corruption Fighter http://bit.ly/2uPH1le
// Jonathan Kravis was one of the most experienced anti-corruption prosecutors the government had. He resigned at a time when official corruption is increasingly normalized.
🐣 RT @Mimirocah1 [2/17] Update: over 2000 (!) former DOJ officials have signed. This is an extraordinary bi-partisan show of unity about our concern for the independence of DOJ.
⋙ NYT: More than 1,100 Former Justice Dept. Lawyers Press for Barr to Step Down http://nyti.ms/37AerBE
// More than 1,100 former prosecutors and officials who served in Republican and Democratic administrations signed an open letter condemning the president and the attorney general over the Stone case.
🐣 RT @tribelaw Trying to rewrite history is a central part of what autocrats do as they wage their war on truth. Trump is following that playbook
⋙ WaPo, Philip Rucker: ‘Something has to be done’: Trump’s quest to rewrite history of the Russia probe http://wapo.st/2UXTqhQ
🧵 RT @DrGJackBrown 1/ THREAD: Body Language Analysis No. 4026-T: Bill Barr’s interview regarding changes in Roger Stone’s Sentencing Recommendations (VIDEO, PHOTOS) • https://youtu.be/87CXlYBdWoc • #BodyLanguageExpert #BodyLanguage #BillBarr #DonaldTrump #RogerStone #Nonverbal #EmotionalIntelligence 📌 https://twitter.com/DrGJackBrown/status/1228928445654028288?s=20
🐣 RT @RonWyden NEW: I’ve been investigating Trump’s interference in the investigation into Turkish-owned Halkbank, and my suspicions were just confirmed. Attorney General Barr — at Trump’s request — was trying to orchestrate a sweetheart deal to please President Erdogan. https://twitter.com/RonWyden/status/1228742878404513794?s=20
🐣 RT @WIRED Opinion: “In the era of social networks, the bubble has expanded: People can easily become enmeshed in online communities that operate with their own media, facts, and norms, in which outside voices are actively discredited.”
⋙ WIRED, Renee Diresta (2018): Online Conspiracy Groups Are a Lot Like Cults http://bit.ly/3bFR90l
// Inside these closed online communities, outside voices are discredited and dissent is often met with hostility, doxing, and harassment. Sound familiar?
// 11/13/2018
⭕ 15 Feb 2020
CNN: Attorney general’s actions spark outrage and unease among US prosecutors http://cnn.it/2SFlPr7 @maddow
🧵 RT @rgoodlaw 🧨 Barr personally tried to push SDNY away from indicting Turkish bank Halkbank but US Attorney Berman resisted, per CNN. ¤ Same bank case NYT cited—via John Bolton book—as Trump wanting to do favor for Turkey’s Erdogan cabal for Trump’s personal interest. 📌 https://twitter.com/rgoodlaw/status/1228830979885850624?s=20
DailyBeast: Mike Pompeo to Western Leaders: How Dare You Question ‘America’s Leadership’ http://bit.ly/3bJGuSj
🧵 RT @Teri_Kanefield (Thread) Things To Do ¤ Democracy is under attack. ¤ The antidote is more democracy (what Obama calls “citizenship”⤵️) ¤ Our democratic institutions are being battered and damaged. ¤ The antidote is to strengthen the institutions. ¤ Need ideas? Stand by. . . 📌 https://twitter.com/Teri_Kanefield/status/1228847863968362496?s=20
WaPo: Barr’s internal reviews and re-investigations feed resentment, suspicion inside Justice Dept. http://wapo.st/2V6zmKf
💙 🐣 RT @MuellerSheWrote A message to our listeners from Andy McCabe: “You and the MSW Nation have been a total bright spot for us in a very dark time. Stand up for what you believe in – even when it’s hard – and don’t blink. Nobody ever won a fight by giving up.”
CNN: Zelensky rejects Trump’s claim that Ukraine is corrupt in interview with CNN’s Christiane Amanpour http://cnn.it/37tHQxl //➔ acc to Transparency Intl’s Corruption Perceptions Index for 2019, the U.S. is #23, Ukraine is #126, Russia is #137 of 180 countries
🌎 ● https://twitter.com/Auriandra/status/1228769049292787712?s=20/photo/1
⋙ TransparencyIntl: Corruption Perceptions Index 2019 – Transparency International http://bit.ly/39k4Y2E
🐣 RT @glennkirschner2 Here is one of the many reasons Roger Stone richly deserves the 7-to-9 year sentence the 4 honorable career prosecutors/public servants recommended to the judge before Bill Barr corruptly intervened to help Trump’s criminal associate:
💙 ⋙ Letter: http://bit.ly/2SO718p
🐣 RT @ANFILOLI Maddow: “How do we get our legal system back when these guys are done with it? What we’re living through isn’t a threat to the rule of law…we are emerging into a reality where we recognize that we have a lack of the rule of law. It’s broken.”
⋙ 💽 MSNBC, RachelMaddow: Barr interfering in some cases that are not yet public: NYT http://on.msnbc.com/2SuLpz5
// Rachel Maddow highlights reporting from the New York Times that the list of cases where William Barr has asserted influence includes some that are not public, and wonders how the DOJ will recover from the way Donald Trump and Barr have broken it.
WaPo, Steven Pearlstein: The fall of Deutsche Bank: Lies, greed, money laundering and Donald Trump http://wapo.st/2u3yWsS
// Deutschebank; book review David Enrich Dark Towers
Politico: State Department keeps quiet as Pompeo meets Lavrov in Munich http://politi.co/39wSN2s
// Russian officials publicize meeting that US side did not mention
⭕ 14 Feb 2020 💕💗💕
RT @ForeignPolicy “Healthy democracies don’t sicken and die overnight,” @stephenWalt writes. “They collapse gradually, from a thousand tiny cuts … That is what Donald Trump is doing, aided and abetted by the once proud Republican Party.”
⋙ ForeignPolicy, Stephen Walt: Trump Is Failing His Dictatorship Test http://bit.ly/2V8yk0h
// After impeachment, the president has been passing most of the checkpoints on the way to authoritarianism.
🐣 RT @justinamash Pres. Trump and top officials lied about the existence of an imminent threat to excuse his having engaged in an act of war without congressional approval. For Americans’ safety, the Constitution forbids unauthorized offensive actions regardless of the president’s justification.
⋙ 🧵 RT @AndrewDesiderio JUST IN: House Foreign Affairs Committee releases Trump admin’s legal and policy framework for the Soleimani strike. ¤ The report does not mention an “imminent threat” against Americans, despite Trump and senior officials citing one after the strike. http://bit.ly2UZmC7V 📌 https://twitter.com/AndrewDesiderio/status/1228342740397756417?s=20
NewYorker, David Rohde: Why Is William Barr Really Criticizing Donald Trump? http://bit.ly/2SQXWf6 “I have come to feel that political supervision of the Department is very important,” [Barr] said. “Someone ultimately has to answer to the political process.”
WaPo Editorial: Tweets or no, William Barr made the wrong call on Roger Stone http://wapo.st/2wkZtmf
… [I]f Mr. Barr is a victim of presidential misbehavior, he is also too often — including in the Stone case — an accomplice. Mr. Barr misinformed the public about the contents of the Russia report of former special counsel Robert S. Mueller III, giving the impression that Mr. Trump had been cleared when he had not been. He has accused the government of “spying” on the Trump campaign. Mr. Barr’s initiation of an investigation of the Russia investigation — and his personal intervention in the probe — raise further questions about his commitment to isolating the Justice Department from political influence. So did a highly partisan speech he gave to the Federalist Society, in which he attacked “the other side” — i.e., Democrats — for their opposition to Mr. Trump.
WaPo, Steven Pearlstein: The fall of Deutsche Bank: Lies, greed, money laundering and Donald Trump http://wapo.st/2u3yWsS
// Deutschebank
🐣 RT @ByronYork It’s heartwarming that she believes so strongly in keeping political influence out of the Justice Department. Now, it would be nice to know why she used the Logan Act as a pretext to investigate entirely legal activity by Michael Flynn.
⋙ 🐣 RT @emptywheel Byron York doesn’t think Russia tampering in the election and Flynn appearing to pay off a quid pro quo merits an investigation and so clings to his Logan Act story.
⋙ 🐣 RT @emptywheel Note the 302s released so far make it fairly clear Flynn did this on Trump’s orders, meaning it may well have been a quid pro quo.
⋙⋙ 🐣 RT @jycefisher Does anyone really believe that he offered sanctions relief to the Russians on his own authority?
⋙ WaPo, Sally Yates: Trump thinks the Justice Department is his personal grudge squad http://wapo.st/2uLQjPb
🐣 RT @JoyceWhiteVance So, did Bill Barr just wake up one morning & decide to open an investigation into the statement agents took from General Flynn, or did someone *suggest* that he do so?
⋙ 🐣 RT @emptywheel I think he gave assurances to Sidney Powell she could rip up Flynn’s plea deal back in June, bc he believed the shit he saw on Fox News. It turned out Fox News doesn’t report the truth, and all that was bullshit, some invented by their propagandists.
⋙ 🐣 RT @emptywheel So now she’s got her client WAYYYYYYYYYY over his skis, having made two more statements under oath that conflict with his past statements under oath. They’re trying to withdraw from the plea deal but the record SHE HERSELF has released makes it clear Flynn lied to Covington.
⋙ 🐣 RT @emptywheel And prosecutors were JUST ABOUT to get Covington out of atty-client to explain just how much Flynn lied to them, when this all started.
🐣 RT @kylegriffin1 Andrew McCabe on CNN: “The pursuit of political enemies and the use of the criminal justice system and criminal investigations to exact some sort of revenge on those political enemies is not something that should be happening in the United States of America.”
🐣 RT @ProjectLincoln NEW VIDEO: Telling The Truth – Lt. Col. Vindman upheld his oath. @realDonaldTrump has not. #CountryOverParty 💽 https://twitter.com/ProjectLincoln/status/1228375930021826560?s=20/photo/1
@gtconway3d @reedgalen @NHJennifer @madrid_mike @TheRickWilson @jwgop @RonSteslow @SteveSchmidtSES
🐣 RT @Acosta Trump was angered by decision by federal prosecutors not to pursue charges against former FBI director Andrew McCabe, a WH official said.
⋙ 🐣 no kidding
🐣 RT @SpeakerPelosi Protecting whistleblowers is essential to shining light on misconduct in our government and the private sector. Today, I am naming Shanna Devine as the first Director of the House of Representatives’ Office of the Whistleblower Ombudsman. https://twitter.com/SpeakerPelosi/status/1228415096860422144?s=20
🐣 RT @AngrierWHStaff This is one, I’m happy to be right about. ¤ Vindman did his job. Nothing more. Nothing less. ¤ Trump might be able to corrupt just about everyone else, but I had faith DoD would do what was right.
⋙ 🐣 RT @blakehounshell The Army will not be investigating Alexander Vindman, per Army Secretary Ryan McCarthy, despite Trump’s request
⋙⋙ Politico: Army won’t investigate Vindman over impeachment testimony, top leader says http://politi.co/2Hmjuer
// Vindman was ousted from his position on the NSC last week after the Senate acquitted Trump.
DailyBeast, Betsy Swan: U.S. Readied Sanctions on Russian Oligarch’s Associates—Then Mysteriously Backed Off http://bit.ly/2tXMlT5
// Deripaska; “Somebody overruled [Treasury], essentially,” one sanctions expert said. “That’s the most likely scenario.”
🐣 RT @juliaioffe “One part of the Justice Department is scrutinizing Giuliani while another is accepting information from him allegedly concerning a political rival of the president.” 🤯
🐣 RT @PostRoz Federal investigators have asked questions about Giuliani and his business in recent weeks. They’ve also been interested in Ukraine-related topics, including the recall of Marie Yovanovitch.
⋙ WaPo: As impeachment trial ended, federal prosecutors took new steps in probe related to Giuliani, according to people familiar with case http://wapo.st/2uKR7DO
⋙⋙ 🐣 RT @PostRoz They’ve also been focused on Giuliani associate Lev Parnas’ business transactions, including interviewing an investor to his company Fraud Guarantee in recent days. The investor paid $250k in hopes that Parnas would show this painting of a temple built above Jerusalem to Trump. https://twitter.com/PostRoz/status/1228465722415775744?s=20/photo/1
DailyBeast, Betsy Swan and Adam Rawnsley: ‘Disturbing’: Federal Judge Blasted DOJ for Leaving McCabe in ‘Limbo’ http://bit.ly/2HnREP1
// “I think as a government and as a society we’re going to pay a price at some point for this,” Judge Reggie Barnett Walton told DOJ attorneys.
🐣 RT @Acosta Trump was angered by decision by federal prosecutors not to pursue charges against former FBI director Andrew McCabe, a WH official said.
🐣 RT @peterNYT On the other hand, Lisa Monaco, who worked under Mueller and Reno, argues that under Barr we have seen “a dangerous fraying of the perception of the department’s independence.”
🐣 RT @JustSecurity “The Soul of the Justice Department: Who Must Stand Up For It Now” ¤ Powerful essay by Lisa Monaco, who served in the Clinton, George W. Bush, and Obama Justice Departments before serving as Assistant to the President for Homeland Security.
⋙ JustSecurity, Lisa Monaco: The Soul of the Justice Department: Who Must Stand Up For It Now. http://bit.ly/3bDX46o
The latest controversy does not involve criminal justice priorities but rather — in its best light — the appearance of direct and self-interested intervention in a law enforcement matter. Whether or not the stunning Departmental reversal in the Roger Stone sentencing which has now resulted in the withdrawal of all four career prosecutors from the case, (and the Departmental resignation of one) was the result of specific political interference, if you understand the Justice Department, the damage has already been done. The reputation and credibility of the Justice Department has been dealt a significant blow. The job of prosecutors and DOJ attorneys is both to do fair and impartial justice and to appear to have done so. A prosecutor withdraws from a case if and only if she believes she cannot in good conscience proceed. This standard is not met by disagreement, or preference that a decision go a different way. This high threshold is met only when as an officer of the court you cannot stand up and say the words that every Assistant US Attorney beams with pride at saying, I am here on behalf of the United States Justice Department; I represent the United States in this matter. If you cannot stand up and in good conscience advance the position of the Department you have no choice but to withdraw and sometimes to resign altogether. That’s how serious this is. It is a fundamental question of who and whose interests you serve.
DailyBeast, Rick Wilson: General John Kelly, Trump Stooge, Is No Lieutenant Colonel Alexander Vindman, Patriot http://bit.ly/325kcX7
// Vindman saw something, and said something. Kelly saw plenty, and kept it to himself for more than two years.
🐣 RT @kylegriffin1 Ex-FBI official Frank Figliuzzi on the Flynn review: “This is what the inspector general is for. So the message that’s being sent is: We no longer trust the FBI or DOJ to police themselves. We are abandoning the usual course of oversight.”
🐣 RT @kylegriffin1 The inquiry into the Flynn matter began within the past month, sources tell NBC]. Around that same time, federal prosecutors on the Flynn case came under pressure from senior DOJ officials to recommend a lighter sentence for Flynn than they had proposed.
⋙ NBCNews: Justice Department opens inquiry into FBI interview at heart of Flynn’s guilty plea http://nbcnews.to/39vPHM8
// AG Barr has asked a U.S. attorney to lead the inquiry. Flynn pleaded guilty to making false statements during the interview, but wants to withdraw plea.
‼️🐣 RT @benjaminwittes The NYT actually misses the critical point about its own reporting in this story: in reviewing the Flynn case, Barr isn’t simply conducting a review of the decisions of career prosecutors in DC. He’s conducting a review of the decisions made by Robert Mueller.
⋙ 🐣 RT @benjaminwittes And let’s be clear: Mueller did not charge Flynn (and his son) with a variety of crimes on which they were extremely vulnerable because Flynn agreed to a plea deal in which he plead to a charge–a deal he now wants out of.
⋙ 🐣 RT @benjaminwittes If Mueller were still around, Flynn would face the logical consequences of seeking to void his plea deal. With Mueller no longer on the scene and Barr actively second-guessing his decisions, we will have to see what unfolds.
🐣 RT @benjaminwittes Barr continues his unrelenting campaign of politicizing cases in which the president is personally invested.
🐣 RT @matthewamiller Barr is going to burn DOJ to the ground from the inside in his crusade to advance the president’s political interests.
⋙ 🐣 RT @charlie_savage SCOOP: Barr installed a team of outside prosecutors, including from St. Louis, to go into the office of the US attorney for DC & review the work of line attorneys handling political sensitive cases — including vs Michael Flynn @adamgoldmanNYT @mattapuzzo
🔆 This❗️⋙ NYT: Barr Installs Outside Prosecutor to Review Case Against Michael Flynn, Ex-Trump Adviser http://nyti.ms/2Hl8HRJ
Amid turmoil in the U.S. attorney’s office in Washington, the attorney general has also sent outside prosecutors to review other politically sensitive cases.
🐣 RT @.JohnWDean TWO YEARS of torturing this guy by holding criminal charges over him, after Trump fired him his last day of work so he could not collect his full retirement. Sue them Andrew for this outrageous revenge for doing your job against Putin’s corrupt president!
🐣 RT @NatashaBertrand Recall also that there had been speculation that the grand jury had declined to indict McCabe. No public charges were filed after the grand jury met in September.
⋙ 🐣 RT @JakeTapper DOJ tells former Acting Director of the FBI Andrew McCabe that it will not pursue charges against him. [letter from Shae:] https://twitter.com/NatashaBertrand/status/1228378823013605376?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @ TheRickWilson It has LONG been an article of faith on the QAnon/loon conspiracy front that Andy McCabe was going down hard. ¤ Almost 900 mentions of him at Gateway Pundit lolol
⋙ 🐣 RT @dobozysaurus *Q nuts right now* uh, this looks bad but, uh, this press release has exactly 53 words in it… the same number of secret tribunals in the subterranean MAGA courts… omg it’s so obvious he’s being tried right now and this is just a ruse to throw normies off the trail
🔆 This❗️⋙ WaPo: Justice Dept. won’t charge Andrew McCabe, the former FBI official who authorized the investigation of President Trump http://wapo.st/3bCLzvR
🐣 RT @MSNBC “It’s not normal to be a democratic country,” Yale professor Timothy Snyder says. “It’s tough to be a democratic country and while we still are a democratic country, people should make explicitly how grateful they are to have these kinds of chances.”
⋙ 💽 MSNBC, RachelMaddow: 2020 campaign an opportunity to celebrate democratic freedom http://on.msnbc.com/31TbATf
// Timothy Snyder, Yale University history professor and author of “On Tyranny,” talks with Rachel Maddow about how the 2020 Democratic campaign can be a means of pushing back on the attack on democratic institutions and the rule of law.
🔄 🐣📋RT @DrTomMartinPhD SENATOR CONTACT INFO:
👉1) SENATOR’S E-MAIL ADDRESSES.
CLICK HERE: https://contactsenators.com/senator-email-addresses…
👉2) SENATOR’S TWITTER ACCOUNTS.
CLICK HERE: https://socialseer.com/resources/us-senator-twitter-accounts/…
👉3) SENATOR’S PHONE NUMBERS.
CLICK HERE: https://contactsenators.com/senator-phone-numbers…
…and provided below
SENATOR CONTACT INFO:
👉1) SENATOR'S E-MAIL ADDRESSES.
CLICK HERE: https://t.co/rvBXjONcJD
👉2) SENATOR'S TWITTER ACCOUNTS.
CLICK HERE: https://t.co/Sp8xgqPYdB
👉3) SENATOR'S PHONE NUMBERS.
CLICK HERE: https://t.co/phThbTSeKk
…and provided below pic.twitter.com/lkfaVtvCCO— Dr. Tom Martin (Ph.D.) (@DrTomMartinPhD) February 14, 2020
WaPo, Philip Bump: Why Barr’s denials of influence can’t be taken at face value http://wapo.st/2tYPuCj
// He was hired to influence the Justice Department in the way he has.
🐣 RT @waltshaub It’s 10:00 a.m. Trump tried to extort a state, solicited election interference and declared absolute power to defend friends and target perceived enemies through DOJ. The media and every other institution are two steps behind him. Time to call fascism by its name. Pay attention.
RawStory: Bill Barr is attempting to smother a Justice Dept ‘mutiny’ by pushing back on Trump’s tweets: CNN New Day http://bit.ly/2uL82pY
NYT, Michelle Goldberg: The Right’s Big Lie About Roger Stone http://nyti.ms/3bEN7ph
// Trump allies are saying Stone didn’t really threaten a witness. They’re wrong.
🐣 RT @McFaul No, Mr. President, you do not have he absolute right to tell the Department of Justice what to do. We are are country of laws.
⋙ 🐣 RT @atrupar (2/11) Asked about Roger Stone, Trump says he has an “absolute right” to tell the Justice Department what to do 💽 https://twitter.com/McFaul/status/1228247060249501701?s=20/photo/1
💽 MSNBC, Rachel Maddow: Replacing rule of law violates trust at heart of US life http://on.msnbc.com/2UO9Mtb
// Timothy Snyder, Yale University history professor and author of “On Tyranny,” talks with Rachel Maddow about how the rule of law form a basis of trust that enables freedom in a democracy and how attacks on the rule of law breach that trust.
🔄 📋 🐣 RT @@USAFact Don’t make judgements on the State of the Union until you have the numbers. Get it here: http://bit.ly/39ALU0o
Explore Unbiased US Data usafacts.org
🐣 RT @waltshaub It’s 9:30 a.m. Yesterday, the fascist attempted quid pro quo extortion on Twitter. This morning, he declared that he has the absolute power to target anyone—political rivals, their families, dissidents, you—with the criminal investigative apparatus of the state. Pay attention. https://twitter.com/waltshaub/status/1228325565041717249?s=20/photo/1-2
// two tweets
🐣 RT @brianklaas Gosh, do you mean to tell me that the guy who routinely calls to jail his political opponents might not believe in an apolitical rule of law?
🐣 RT @ Trump erupted so angrily in August when DOJ decided not to charge Comey that aides talked for days. He is upset w/FBI director Chris Wray. He wants formers in jail. And Barr wants POTUS to leave him alone publicly. w/@DevlinBarrett & @mattzap:
⋙. WaPo: Barr pushes back against Trump’s criticism of Justice Dept., says tweets ‘make it impossible for me to do my job’ http://wapo.st/2vDrXXN
🐣 RT @postpolitics Trump appears to escalate standoff with attorney general and Justice Dept., declaring on Twitter a ‘legal right’ to influence criminal cases
⋙ WaPo: Trump bucks Barr’s request to stop tweeting about Justice Dept., declaring a ‘legal right’ to seek intervention in criminal cases http://wapo.st/3bC2YF1
🐣 RT @benjaminwittes Barr: You’re making it impossible for me to do my job overturning the judgments of career prosecutors in cases you care about and making sure we go easy on your friends! You’re making me LOOK like a shill. ¤ Trump: And the problem is what, exactly?
🐣 RT @BillKristol The president’s abstract insistence that he can intervene in criminal cases should be taken seriously. He’s saying it to justify a) continuing to publicly smear individuals as criminals, and b) because he will order this AG or a new AG to act if he thinks he can get away with it.
⋙ 🐣 ‼️ RT @real “The President has never asked me to do anything in a criminal case.” A.G. Barr This doesn’t mean that I do not have, as President, the legal right to do so, I do, but I have so far chosen not to!
🐣 RT @ShimonPro When the chief judge issues a statement you know things aren’t normal: https://twitter.com/ShimonPro/status/1228124605413576704?s=20/photo/1
// Chief Judge Beryl Howell of the DC Circuit
Mediaite: Rudy Giuliani Spews Out Busted Firehose of Wild Accusations in Off-the-Wall Interview: Democrats ‘Want to Literally Kill Me’ http://bit.ly/37ljXIg
💽 MSNBC, TheBeatWithAri: ‘Not fit for office’: George H. W. Bush lawyer and Barr colleague slams Barr for ‘undermining’ DOJ http://on.msnbc.com/2uNnWjF
// Former Deputy Attorney General Donald Ayer joins MNSBC Chief Legal Correspondent Ari Melber to discuss AG Bill Barr’s intervention in DOJ cases to protect convicted Trump aide Roger Stone. Ayer, who also preceded Barr as deputy attorney general under President George H. Bush, argues Barr’s “pattern of conduct that he’s engaged in since he came in” as Attorney General involves “intervening out of usual course to protect Donald Trump.” Ayer adds Barr is not “fit for the office” as his “campaign” as AG works to “undermine the Department of Justice.”
⭕ 13 Feb 2020
AtlanticCouncil, Suleiman Mamut: World must not forget Putin’s Crimean crime http://bit.ly/2ujK30Y Six years ago this month, Russia shocked the world by launching a lightning operation to seize control of Ukraine’s Crimean peninsula.
🚫🐣 RT @IcuNotItAll Well, there is this…apparently, some one (we don’t follow 45🤮) snapped it b4 some one saw/deleted it…is this what chafed #BarrLies arse. This is what put #BarrIsACriminal on the edge😂? Fun days ahead😢 https://twitter.com/IcuNoItAll/status/1228125926371840001?s=20/photo/1
// deleted Trump tweet saying “Roger (and many others) will never ever ‘serve time’ as long as I am in office (long time?)” //➔ not Rt’d because only screenshot
WaPo, Greg Sargent: Barr’s ABC News interview is deeply damning. Here’s what must come next. http://wapo.st/321Bm7W It’s time for Congress to hear from the prosecutors
🐣 RT @glennkirschner2 Barr said, in substance, Mr. President, if you don’t shut up about the DOJ, I can’t do my job (of course, Barr sees his job as criming/covering-up for the president, but setting that aside…). Trump responds by saying he’s not bothered by what Barr said. Can someone PLEASE …
⋙ 🐣 RT @glennkirschner2 search Trump’s tweets/public statements to see if Trump EVER BEFORE responded to a direct attack/insult/criticism by saying, “all good, doesn’t bother me a bit.” I’m gonna go out on a limb and say that this kind of response is, let’s say, out of character for President Thin Skin.
🐣 RT @EricColumbus Trump pressuring DOJ to finish Durham investigation so he can “use whatever Durham finds as a cudgel in his reelection campaign.” https://twitter.com/EricColumbus/status/1228142662261387264?s=20/photo/1
💙 ⋙ WaPo: Barr pushes back against Trump’s criticism of Justice Dept., says tweets ‘make it impossible for me to do my job’ http://wapo.st/2HoCHfC
DailyBeast, Michael Tomasky: Trump’s New York Shakedown Shows He’ll Never Get Out of the Gutter http://bit.ly/39shRHY
// Trump again confessed out loud, demanding NY “stop all of its unnecessary lawsuits and harassment.” He does not, of course, mean of undocumented immigrants. He means of him.
🐣 RT @pleasesaveour I’m thinking Jarvanka are behind all these losers coming back. Dad is unhinged
NYT: Trump Places Loyalists in Key Jobs Inside the White House While Raging Against Enemies Outside http://nyti.ms/2HldHWp
// President Trump had a busy morning on Twitter and the radio, in a tirade that rivaled his most grievance-filled moments since becoming president.
NYT: Trump Places Loyalists in Key Jobs Inside the White House While Raging Against Enemies Outside http://nyti.ms/2HldHWp
// President Trump had a busy morning on Twitter and the radio, in a tirade that rivaled his most grievance-filled moments since becoming president.
RT @DeadlineWH “People are heartbroken. This is an institution, just like what you’re hearing about at the State Department, that people are just emotionally, very upset seeing the rule of law gutted.” – former FBI general counsel Andrew Weissmann w/ @NicolleDWallace 💽 https://twitter.com/DeadlineWH/status/1228084666562904064?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @BillKristol Whoa. Rep. Mac Thornberry, top House Armed Services Republican, on Trump’s plan to shift $3.8b from military to pay for the wall: The “re-programming announced today is contrary to Congress’ constitutional authority” and “requires Congress to take action.”
⋙ DallasNews: Top Texas Republican criticizes Trump’s plans to divert $3.8B from military to border wall http://bit.ly/2ORkLyg
// Rep. Mac Thornberry, the top Republican on the House Armed Services Committee, said the move ‘requires Congress to take action’
🐣 RT @AriMelber Shorter Bill Barr: ¤ I stand by intervening to help a convicted Trump adviser, but I wish Trump did not admit what we are doing on Twitter
⋙ 🐣 RT @AriMelber Also note Barr is *rushing* out an interview to defend himself against condemnation for blatantly improper interference by:
– nonpartisan legal experts
– top DOJ veterans
– some conservative legal leaders
Apparently facts still matter. ¤ What veteran peers say still matters.
⋙ 🐣 RT @AriMelber So this reaction from one of Trump’s favorite cabinet members reveals what they do can reveal more than what they say (‘I don’t care about criticism etc’)
🐣 RT @laurmasi Appreciated these “must reads“ & authors of them:
“Dark Money” @JaneMayerNYer
“Blow Out” @maddow
“American Oligarchs” @AndreaWNYC
“Running Against The Devil” @TheRickWilson
“Crime In Progress” Glenn Simpson & Peter Fritsch
“The Fifth Risk” Michael Lewis
🧵 RT @Teri_Kanefield (Thread) Expect More Crisis and Spectacle ¤ Judith, the reason you’ve lost perspective and you’re feeling at sea is because you’re in the grip of a nation being governed by crisis and spectacle. ¤ You can expect a dizzying round of crises and spectacles between now and November. 📌 https://twitter.com/Teri_Kanefield/status/1228176690938961921?s=20
// much on Timothy Snyder’s “On Tyranny”
⋙ 🐣 RT @musicmommy23 Teri, thank you again for your insight. What do you think will happen though? I’ve lost all perspective and really feel at sea.
🐣 RT @MikeBloomberg .@realDonaldTrump – we know many of the same people in NY. Behind your back they laugh at you & call you a carnival barking clown. They know you inherited a fortune & squandered it with stupid deals and incompetence. ¤ I have the record & the resources to defeat you. And I will.
🐣 RT @janinezacharia “Kelly has described Trump as amoral…saying he only obsesses about his news coverage and thinks very little about what matters to the United States…Trump is naive when it comes to foreign policy because he only cares…what makes him look strong in the moment.”
⋙ 🐣 RT @CarolLeonnig This is big. ¤ People always ask me and co-author @PhilipRucker: why don’t senior aides stand up in public and say what they really think of Trump’s governing. ¤ John Kelly just did.
⋙⋙ WaPo: Former White House chief of staff John Kelly takes issue with Trump for ousting Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman, among other things http://wapo.st/2u1BPug
WaPo: John Kelly’s deepest shiv: People who rely on Fox News ‘are not informed citizens’ http://wapo.st/2UOX0dP
RollingStone, Rick Wilson: Roger Stone Knows Trump’s Secrets. That’s Why He’ll Avoid Prison http://bit.ly/2OTGlSK
// Attorney General Bill Barr is doing his best Deputy Dog routine for the president, but the fate of Trump’s underlings is inescapable
🐣 RT @McFaul Very scary. History will not be kind to those consciously not acknowledging the increasingly ruthless, autocratic tactics of Putin.
⋙ 🐣 RT @kasparov68 18-year sentences for young Russian activists, tortured and convicted on made-up terrorism charges. You can serve less time for murder. Putin’s regime is the terrorist, using indiscriminate punishments to instill fear the way his idol Stalin did.
⋙⋙ NYT: Russia Sentences Anti-Fascists on Bogus Terror Charges, Critics Say http://nyti.ms/2HqqF52
The young men received sentences of up to 18 years on the basis of confessions obtained under torture, their lawyers and rights advocates say.
// 2/10/2020
WaPo: 39 prosecutors blast Attorney General Barr for ‘dangerous and failed’ approach to criminal justice http://wapo.st/31SVJnv
‼️ WaPo, Jennifer Rubin: The New York City bar goes after William Barr http://wapo.st/2uLWGBX
🐣 RT @PaulaChertok #Maddow [to] @TimothyDSnyder, What now, now that we’ve diagnosed tyranny?
TS: Applaud dissenters. Make them heroes. Show solidarity by dissenting too. Many make an opposition movement. Glamorize rule of law. America works b/c of trust & law. W/o it life’s unpredictable, miserable
💙 🐣 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
🧵RT @hu_spencer BREAKING Chief U.S. District Judge Beryl A. Howell of Washington also issued a rare statement responding to President Trump’s attacks on Stone’s sentencing judge, U.S. District Judge Amy Berman Jackson, and defending the integrity of the courts. https://twitter.com/hsu_spencer/status/1228082771765100551?s=20/photo/1
📌 https://twitter.com/hsu_spencer/status/1228082771765100551?s=20
🐣 RT @matthewamiller Really hard to read this story and come up with a non-nefarious reason for why this investigation even exists. Barr is using the criminal investigative process, and all the suspicions it casts in its wake, to basically explore typical bureaucratic decision making.
⋙ 🐣 RT @charlie_savage NEW: The Barr-Durham investigation of CIA-NSA-FBI officials who sought to understand Russia’s 2016 election interference appears to be hunting for a basis to accuse intel officials of hiding evidence or manipulating analysis. @adamgoldmanNYT @julianbarnes
🔆 This❗️⋙ NYT: Justice Dept. Is Investigating C.I.A. Resistance to Sharing Russia Secrets http://nyti.ms/2UOP24z
// The prosecutor was assigned by the attorney general to scrutinize the agents and analysts who sought to understand Russia’s covert operation to help Donald J. Trump win the 2016 election.
CNN, Marshall Cohen: Trump contradicts past denials, admits sending Giuliani to Ukraine http://cnn.it/3bEu3Ht
// Emboldened after his impeachment acquittal, President Donald Trump now openly admits to sending his attorney Rudy Giuliani to Ukraine to find damaging information about his political opponents, even though he strongly denied it during the impeachment inquiry.
NYT: After Stone Case, Prosecutors Say They Fear Pressure From Trump http://nyti.ms/2UOT6lf
// The episode also brought to a head tensions in the U.S. attorney’s office in Washington.
RawStory: Bill Barr’s gambit was ‘carefully staged’ to keep the Justice Department doing Trump’s bidding: Ex-RNC chairman Michael Steele http://bit.ly/2wg9dy5
💙 🧵 RT @davidcicilline It’s hard to understand what the Attorney General’s talking about today given everything he’s already done. (1/x) 📌 https://twitter.com/davidcicilline/status/1228124390413434885?s=20
🐣 RT @kasparov63 The mafia nature of Trump’s admin isn’t in firing Alexander Vindman for his testimony, but in how he also went after his brother. Go after the family, send a message.
🐣 RT @DavidTheNonBot BREAKING: Trump says his former Chief of Staff John Kelly “Can’t keep his mouth shut. The Irish like to drink, run their mouths and fight. That’s what they do. He should have stayed in the Army.” ¤ 𝐍𝐄𝐖𝐒 𝐅𝐑𝐎𝐌 𝐓𝐇𝐄 𝐒𝐂𝐀𝐋𝐋𝐈𝐎𝐍 [FoxNews:] https://twitter.com/DavidTheNonBot/status/1228104782243602432?s=20
🐣 RT @peterbakernyt McConnell on Fox sides with Barr: “I think if the attorney general says it’s getting in the way of doing his job, maybe the president should listen to the attorney general.”
🐣 RT @renato_mariotti Is Trump holding the global entry status of New Yorkers hostage unless the state drops its pursuit of his tax returns and investigation of his businesses?
⋙ 🐣 RT @real I’m seeing Governor Cuomo today at The White House. He must understand that National Security far exceeds politics. New York must stop all of its unnecessary lawsuits & harrassment, start cleaning itself up, and lowering taxes. Build relationships, but don’t bring Fredo!
🐣 RT @kylegriffin1 When Trump demanded that Gov. Cuomo drop lawsuits against him—even as the admin banned NYers from the trusted traveler program—”it was an almost uncanny parallel to one of the post-acquittal scenarios that the House impeachment managers had warned about.”
🐣 RT @AndreaWNYC Latest @sbg1 “Blowing through previously established rules and norms matters. Having suffered no consequences for such acts, leaders move on to bigger and more audacious targets. The appetite grows while eating, as the Russian saying goes.”
⋙ NewYorker, Susan Glasser: Donald Trump, a President So Unhinged That Even Bill Barr Says He’s Out of Control http://bit.ly/31R6WVK
// 2/14/2020; Welcome to the post-acquittal Trump Presidency.
Law&Crime: Chief Judge of D.C. District Court Rebukes President Trump in ‘Rare Statement’ http://bit.ly/3buwso6
WaPo: Pelosi says Barr ‘deeply damaged the rule of law’ through handling of Stone case http://wapo.st/2UQcTAE
🐣 RT @NBCnews JUST IN: Former US attorney Jessie Liu resigns from Treasury Dept. after President Trump withdrew her nomination as a top Treasury official on Tuesday. ¤ Liu was formerly the US attorney in Washington, DC, who headed the office that oversaw Roger Stone’s prosecution.
🐣 RT @gtconway3d “‘With Bill Barr, on an amazing number of occasions … you can be almost 100 percent certain that there’s something improper going on,’ said Donald Ayer, the former deputy attorney general in the George H.W. Bush administration.”
⋙ 🐣 RT @NatashaBertrand New: Bill Barr has emerged as a key ally in Trump’s post- acquittal crusade against the law enforcement and national security establishment that initiated the Russia and Ukraine probes. More here on the implications and White House reaction w/ @dlippman
⋙⋙ Politico, Natasha Bertrand and Daniel Lippman: ‘Really shocking’: Trump’s meddling in Stone case stuns Washington http://politi.co/2UO3zNH
// Alarmed veterans of the Justice Department said the legal system was entering uncharted territory.
🐣 Savings from Medicare-for-All are predicated on lower costs, but Medicare by law does not cover its full costs. It is subsidized by other payers. Medicaid pays even less. ¤ There are ways to cut costs, many latent in the ACA, but not yet enabled because of GOP opposition.
🐣 I can’t recommend this highly enough. It’s long, but very enlightening, tying biology to politics and suggesting a way forward.
⋙ 🐣 RT @aeonmag Love for your pet, the Earth, homeland, God: these are all triggered by a 500-million-year-old, nine-amino-acid molecule that evolved to help bonding between mother and baby
💙💙 ⋙⋙ Aeon, Ruth Feldman: The biology of love http://bit.ly/38nNLoR
// oxytocin; Humans teeter on a knife’s edge. The same deep chemistry that fosters bonding can, in a heartbeat, pivot to fear and hate; Ruth Feldman is the Simms-Mann Professor of Developmental Social Neuroscience at the Interdisciplinary Center (IDC) Herzlia in Israel, with a joint appointment at the Yale Child Study Center in the United States. 5,300 words
TheAtlantic, Peter Nicholas: John Kelly Finally Lets Loose on Trump http://bit.ly/2OOCRRx
// The former chief of staff explained, in the clearest terms yet, his misgivings with Trump’s behavior regarding North Korea, immigration, and Ukraine.
⭕ 12 Feb 2020
BusinessInsider, John Haltiwanger: ‘There need to be mass protests’: Authoritarianism experts say time is running out for Americans to stop Trump http://bit.ly/2HO8FSG “The system is enabling Trump,” Jason Stanley, a Yale philosophy professor who wrote “How Fascism Works,” told Insider.
● Americans are running out of time to stop President Donald Trump’s authoritarian slide, experts warned.
● “There need to be mass protests,” a Yale philosophy professor and expert on fascism told Insider. “The Republican Party is betraying democracy, and these are historical times. Someone has got to push back.”
● Since he was acquitted in the GOP-controlled Senate earlier this month, the president has overseen a White House purge of impeachment witnesses, and the attorney general has intervened in the trial of a Trump associate.
● Republicans have mostly sat back, with at least one senator conceding that Trump’s behavior did not seem to have changed because of impeachment.
● “There is absolutely no reason for him to stop pushing. It goes against both his personality and his experience,” Cas Mudde, a political scientist at the University of Georgia, told Insider.
🐣 RT @kylegriffin1 The American Bar Association: “Public officials who personally attack judges or prosecutors can create a perception that the system is serving a political or other purpose rather than the fair administration of justice.”
⋙ HuffPo: American Bar Association Goes After Trump For Blasting Roger Stone Sentencing On Twitter http://bit.ly/2HkUu7l
// The organization put out a pointed statement about “public officials who personally attack judges or prosecutors” after the president did just that.
🐣 RT @Peter_Wehner “Asking Trump to understand morality is like asking a person born blind to understand color.” From my conversation with @JohnJHarwood of @CNN.
⋙ CNN, John Harwood: Trump’s historical place defined by his amorality http://cnn.it/2SGotf7
// Scandals, large or small, mark most American presidencies. What makes Donald Trump historically unique is something different.
WaPo, Philip Bump: We know what Roger Stone did, Mr. President. He lied in your defense. http://wapo.st/39uHat2
🐣 RT @JillWineBanks 45 just said he didn’t know what Roger Stone did to deserve 9 years. Here’s answer: Stone was convicted of 7 felonies w maximum sentence of 20 years. He lied, obstructed Congress and threatened witness against him. 9 years is fair, w/in the sentencing guidelines & deserved.
🐣 RT @harrylitman I know prosecutors’ reactions sound cataclysmic, but that’s because they are –and they’re not given to overstatement. Here @JoyceWhiteVance explains the existential threat to the system of the Stone debacle.
⋙ TIME, Joyce White Vance: If Trump Is Allowed to Turn the Justice Department Into a Political Weapon, No One Is Safe http://bit.ly/2w9igAI
🐣 RT @File411 This juror speaking up, AFTER the fact is incredibly heartening… ¤ “It pains me to see the DOJ now interfere with the hard work of the prosecutors. They acted with the utmost intelligence, integrity, and respect for our system of justice.”
⋙ 🐣 RT @CNN A juror on the Roger Stone trial said she wants to “stand up” for the four prosecutors who withdrew from the case in response to their sentencing recommendation being changed by DOJ leadership. She wrote on Facebook that she “can’t keep quiet any longer.”
⋙⋙ CNN: Stone juror says she ‘stands with’ the prosecutors http://cnn.it/2vxgE3G
NBCNews, Courtney Kube: Russia will try to meddle in 2020 U.S. election, intelligence report says http://nbcnews.to/37px4s2
// Russia wants to help pro-Russia candidates, the report says, but it also meddles because it wants to show that Western nations can’t hold fair elections.
💙 🐣 RT @NatSecLisa To Aaron and Adam, Jonathan and Michael: I am sorry for the agony you are about to endure, and for the pain & betrayal you will feel at the hands of your beloved Dept. Know that you are on the right side of history & that we are so very proud of you for defending the rule of law.
🐣 RT @RepSeanMaloney We’ve lost @StateDept – Pompeo won’t defend his ambassadors.
We’ve lost @TheJusticeDept – Barr has thrown a prosecution for a political favor.
What’s next? If these agencies bend to Trump’s will, there’s no defense against him refusing to concede a loss or claiming a 3rd term. 💽 [on @Lawrence:] https://twitter.com/RepSeanMaloney/status/1227807636541919235?s=20/photo/1
DailyBeast, David Lurie: Trump DGAF About Roger Stone or Justice. Here’s the Proof. http://bit.ly/2uxWzdq
// Justice’s new sentencing recommendation for Stone had almost nothing to do with what Stone did. It was Trump showing that the justice system is, finally, being molded to his will.
NYT Editorial: Can Trump Tell the Justice Department To Do Whatever He Wants? http://nyti.ms/37qItHU
// Not according to the Constitution. http://nyti.ms/
WaPo Editorial: The degradation of William Barr’s Justice Department is nearly complete http://wapo.st/2UNl4hm
WaPo, Randall Eliason: The Justice Department confirms things are even worse than we feared http://wapo.st/2HiHA9Z
🐣 RT @NatashaBertrand Sens. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.), John Barrasso (R-Wyo.) and Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) will meet with Zelensky in Kyiv on Friday…“we must make sure Ukraine knows that we view them as a strategic ally,” they said in a statement.
⋙ Politico, Burgess Everett: Bipartisan group of senators to meet with Ukrainian president http://politi.co/3bz9Jav
// The trip comes soon after Trump was acquitted in an impeachment trial that centered on his pressure campaign against Ukraine.
🧵 RT @Heidi_Cuda [Jul 2019] PROTEST IS PATRIOTIC: As we witness an eruption of protests globally, it’s important to reflect on our history of civil disobedience on behalf of democratic values. We are a country founded on revolution. ¤ We knew something very wrong occurred on Nov. 8, 2016 and so we showed up. 📌 https://twitter.com/Heidi_Cuda/status/1155900057935175680?s=20
// 7/29/2019
🐣 RT @cm_merlin Trump, Roger Stone & Paul Manafort, team since 80’s. Manafort ran the Torturers’ Lobby. Worked for Deripaska/Putin 10yrs, before Trump’s campaign. Busted in Ukraine 2010 for election rigging. Stone involved Russia via WikiLeaks, etc. 💽 https://twitter.com/cm_merlin/status/1227823602365583360?s=20/photo/1
// old video of Trump and Stone
🐣 RT @Mimirocah1 When Chuck Rosenberg is this alarmed, you know it’s bad. “What the prosecutors were ordered to do was dangerous and unsettling and undermined everything they — and we — stood for as Justice Department professionals. They properly refused.”
⋙ WaPo, Chuck Rosenberg: This is a revolting assault on the fragile rule of law http://wapo.st/37iCAfP
NBCNews, Mimi Rocah: Roger Stone case reveals Barr and Trump’s gross politicization of American criminal justice http://nbcnews.to/37hVEuM
// Barr’s gross distortion of the Mueller report led to calls for him to step down. He did not, and now we are facing the same situation all over again.
WaPo: Trump seeks to bend the executive branch as part of impeachment vendetta http://wapo.st/2vsQ37E
💙 NYRB, Masha Gessen (11/10/2016): Autocracy: Rules for Survival http://bit.ly/2Smig99 re: @maddow https://twitter.com/Auriandra/status/1227821940284575744?s=20/photo/1
// 11/10/2016
🐣 RT @tribelaw Don’t say we’ve not been warned. The alarm is going off right now.
⋙ NYT, Bob Bauer: Trump and Barr Are Out of Control http://nyti.ms/2OLPzQQ Mr. Bauer was a White House counsel in the Obama administration
// The prosecutor who quit over the Roger Stone sentencing is sending a powerful message about political weaponization.
Graphika: Report: From Russia With Blogs http://bit.ly/2vsKshw by Ben Nimmo, Camille François, C. Shawn Eib, and L. Tamora
// GRU Operators Leveraged Blogs, Social Media Accounts and Private Messaging to Reach Audiences Across Europe
⋙ 📔 Report PDF http://bit.ly/2uwUBtM 26p
🐣 RT @chrislhayes I remember basically every conservative either losing their mind or pretending to lose their mind because Bill Clinton was briefly on a plane with the Attorney General.
🐣 RT @SimonWDC Yes our Mad King is working to create a narrative where he/his aides did nothing wrong. Ukraine attacked US not Russia; perfect phone call; both investigations partisan/illegitmate thus his illegal obstruction warranted. ¤ Trump working to replace real world w/his fictional one.
⋙ 🐣 RT @SimonWDC Russia/Ukraine investigations were initiated by Trump apppointees; Mueller is GOP; people who testified against Trump all worked for Trump: the prosecutors who arrested and jailed his aides worked for Trump; everyone arrested/jailed worked for Trump. ¤ Not partisan, not a hoax.
⋙⋙ 🐣 RT @SimonWDC Thought – the prosecutors acted like whistleblowers, not just by going after Stone hard but also by putting in a public filing that US govt believes the Trump campaign conspired w/Russia, and they have proof; and thus Trump is compromised, a security threat. (h/t @maxbergmann).
⋙⋙⋙ 🐣 RT @adamgoldmanNYT Some interesting tidbits from Roger Stone sentencing memo that prosecutors submitted. https://twitter.com/SimonWDC/status/1227356791941533696?s=20/photo/1
// Bannon (and, implicitly, Trump) believed they had a direct line through Stone to Wikileaks
🐣 RT @SenSchumer Dear Senate Republicans: ¤ President Trump didn’t learn any “lessons” when you excused his abuse of power. ¤ And now you are responsible for every new abuse he commits.
🐣 I lived on the South Side of Chicago working at the U of C Hospitals at the height of the crime wave. Our E.R. was full of shooting victims. Everyone knew someone who’d been killed. We left because of it since we were starting a family.
🐣 RT @emptywheel This is right: The replacement of Jessie Liu–first her demotion put in place on January 6, and then her instant removal last week–is the equivalent of firing Mueller and should be treated with the same alarm.
⋙ 🧵 RT @nycsouthpaw Had Trump and his goons forced out Mueller and scuttled his prosecutions, it would’ve been a top level crisis. The same should be true for the people finishing his work. ¤ It’s also a reminder that we never learned why Mueller closed his office so suddenly with so much left to do. 📌 https://twitter.com/nycsouthpaw/status/1227581340079599624?s=20
🐣 RT @jedshug Hi, historian of the Department of Justice here. ¤ Just a reminder that the DOJ was founded in 1870 to put professionalism, expertise, and independence above partisanship, patronage, and corruption. ¤ Some suggested reading for William Barr:
⋙ StanfordLawReview, Jed Shugerman (Jan 2014): The Creation of the Department of Justice http://stanford.io/2vvFXCT
// Jan 2014; Professionalization Without Civil Rights or Civil Service
The DOJ’s creation was linked with major professionalization efforts, such as the founding of modern bar associations, to make the practice of law more exclusive and more independent from partisan politics. In this new interpretation, the DOJ’s creation runs in the opposite direction from one historical trend, the growth of the federal government’s size. Instead, it was at the very leading edge of two other major trends: the professionalization of American lawyers and the rise of bureaucratic autonomy and expertise.
🐣 RT @MelissaRyan Just gonna say this again: Trump wants to make sure we all know, and normalize internally, that the rules no longer apply to him.
🐣 RT @ThePlumLineGS Trump has now publicly admitted that his attorney general intervened in the case of his own longtime adviser — who obstructed an investigation into an attack on our political system — for the express purpose of undermining DOJ’s own investigative conclusions about himself.
⋙ 🐣 RT @real Congratulations to Attorney General Bill Barr for taking charge of a case that was totally out of control and perhaps should not have even been brought. Evidence now clearly shows that the Mueller Scam was improperly brought & tainted. Even Bob Mueller lied to Congress!
🐣 RT @b_judah No surprise that Navalny backs Sanders. Bernie has:
— condemned Putin’s militarism
— condemned Kremlin interference
— backed Magnitsky Act
— backed sanctions on Deripaska
— rock solid anti-kleptocracy policy
— anti-oligarch economic agenda
— wants to dismantle offshore
⋙ 🐣 RT @navalny Так приятно проснуться и узнать, что Берни выиграл! Я болел за него.
🐣 RT @mbk_center Public trust in President Putin has nearly halved in 2 years, according to the independent @levada_ru’s survey.35% of Russians trust Putin, compare to 59% back in November 2017, a massive 24 points drop. Also 4% less than in September 2019. @MoscowTimes
⋙ MoscowTimes: Russians’ Trust in Putin Halves in 2 Years – Poll http://bit.ly/2OPguv7
⭕ 11 Feb 2020 Stone prosecutors quit in protest
WaPo, Greg Sargent: Time for Democrats to get much tougher with William Barr http://wapo.st/2SLecOG
🐣 RT @TheRickWilson This is a truly great idea. ¤ I mean, TRULY great. ¤. Hell, it’s only a couple billion and routing Trump from his properties when he defaulted would be a karmic pleasure.
⋙ 🐣 RT @tvsheaha I think that Bloomberg should purchase all of Trump’s debts and then call the loans. Take everything.
🐣 RT @SpeakerPelosi By tweet @realDonaldTrump engaged in political interference in the sentencing of Roger Stone. It is outrageous that DOJ has deeply damaged the rule of law by withdrawing its recommendation. Stepping down of prosecutors should be commended & actions of DOJ should be investigated.
🐣 RT @JillWineBanks Today was worse than the Saturday Night Massacre because this time the AG was part of the interference with justice. During Watergate AG Richardson and Deputy AG Ruckelshaus stood up to Nixon and refused to do his dirty work. Shame on Trump and Barr and new US Attorney. #VoteBlue
🐣 RT @mccaffreyr3 This is an extremely dangerous period for America. Sec Def Esper and CJCS Milley in Constitutional dilemma. Do the officers of the Armed Forces obey the Constitution, Federal law, snd DOD Regs OR are they subject to the unconstrained orders of Trump.
⋙ 🐣 RT @BillKristol I’ve known @EsperDoD slightly for a while. He is, I think, a decent man. If he doesn’t speak up against this–not just ignore it or mumble about process, but make clear it’s wrong for the president to suggest this and he won’t follow the suggestion–then what’s the decency worth?
⋙⋙ 🐣 RT @jeffmason1 Trump says the military should look at disciplinary action against Lt. Col. Vindman, who gave testimony in impeachment hearings about the president https://twitter.com/jeffmason1/status/1227347240269885440?s=20/photo/1
DailyBeast: ‘The Gloves Are Off’: Trump Pushes Revenge Operations http://bit.ly/38luwfO by Asawin Suebsaeng, Erin Banco and. Betsy Swan
// “I think he feels like the chains are off now,” said one senior administration official. “Everything that used to be hush hush is now just…out in the open.”
NYT: Spencer Bokat-Lindell: President Bernie Sanders? http://nyti.ms/38iWCYY He was always going to be a contender. But his strength in the primaries has some Democrats excited — and others worried: A compilation of views ● https://twitter.com/Auriandra/status/1227478994255257603?s=20/photo/1
“A Sanders presidency, Mr. Yglesias says, would simply mean ‘an emphasis on full employment, a tendency to shy away from launching wars, an executive branch that actually tries to enforce environmental protection and civil rights laws, and a situation in which bills that both progressives and moderates can agree on get to become law,’ he writes. ‘That’s a pretty good deal, and you don’t need to be a socialist to see it.’”
NYT: Trump’s War Against ‘the Deep State’ Enters a New Stage http://nyti.ms/2Shjx1f
// The suggestion that Lt. Col. Alexander S. Vindman should now face punishment by the Pentagon was one sign of how determined the president is to even the scales after his impeachment.
🐣 RT @BillKristol Disgusting. ¤ NSA O’Brien:“We’re not a country where a bunch of lieutenant colonels can get together and decide what the policy is of the United States. We are not a banana republic.” ¤ Offers NO evidence the Vindmans were doing any such thing. Simple slander.
⋙ Politico: ‘We are not a banana republic’: National security adviser defends Vindman dismissals http://politi.co/2HgLujr
// Robert O’Brien said the brothers’ removal from the NSC was because they were trying to undermine Trump.
DailyBeast, David Lurie: Groveling Barr Just Pissed Away DOJ’s Greatest Power http://bit.ly/2waxsO8
// The department’s hard-earned reputation for factual honesty and legal credibility is in tatters now.
DailyBeast, Julia Davis: Russians Think Triumphant Trump Is More Their Man Than Ever http://bit.ly/2SkwxDk
// Russian commentators note that in Trump’s “mythologized world, he is now a superhero,” and they see him as even easier prey than before.
WaPo: Trump escalates campaign of retribution as Republican senators shrug http://wapo.st/2SiLZQd
🐣 RT @JoyceWhiteVance In the most important statement of this primary race, Sanders says no matter which Democrat wins, everyone will unite behind them to “defeat the most dangerous president in the modern day history of this country.” It’s notable that he’s set this standard for his followers early.
🐣 RT @MarkWarner I can’t believe I have to say this, but the President of the United States has no business interfering in the criminal trial of his own campaign adviser. ¤ The Justice Department owes the court and the American people an explanation of exactly what is happening here.
WaPo, Jennifer Rubin: The Justice Department becomes a political hit squad for an unleashed president http://wapo.st/38qQA8Y
🐣 RT @PreetBharara The DOJ leadership seems bent on humiliating its own career prosecutors, sacrificing its independence, politicizing justice, and giving special treatment to the President’s criminal associates. The worst part is they don’t seem even to care anymore.
🐣 RT @SallyQYates To the career men and women of DOJ, you are both the backbone and the heart of the Department. Your noble dedication to the rule of law is the foundation of our republic.
🐣 RT @RBReich Barr has turned the DOJ into Trump’s stooge. ¤ McConnell has turned the Senate into Trump’s rubber stamp. ¤ Gorsuch and Kavanaugh have turned the Supreme Court into Trump’s doormat. ¤ The GOP has turned itself into a Trump cult. ¤ At what point do we call this a dictatorship?
🐣 RT @RepAdamSchiff Roger Stone lied to Congress and threatened a witness to cover up Trump campaign contacts with Wikileaks. ¤ He was found guilty on all charges. ¤ Barr overruling career prosecutors at Trump’s urging is a disgraceful attack on the rule of law. ¤. Has DOJ no independence left?
🧵 RT @marty_lederman 1/ Yes, there ought to be significant protests and resignations in DOJ, following the lead of the deeply principled Kravis & Zelinsky. Unfortunately, however, it won’t make a (practical) difference. Even if, e.g., Chris Wray & Noel Francisco & Brian Benczkowski & Jeff Wall … 📌 https://twitter.com/marty_lederman/status/1227345627178094592?s=20
🐣 RT @tribelaw The Rule of Law is gasping for breath, being suffocated by Trump and his personal henchman Bill Barr. Not even a pretense of legality. They’re doing it because they can. It’s raw, naked, unprincipled, immoral power.
⋙ PoliticusUSA: A new report confirms that William Barr is acting as Trump’s personal attorney as he has taken over all DOJ legal matters that Trump is interested in. http://bit.ly/39qCvs4
↥ ↧
🐣 RT @moscow_project Justice Department officials say that Barr was personally involved in the DOJ’s decision to reduce Roger Stone’s sentencing recommendation.s They also say it’s not the first time he’s done it—in fact, he did the same thing last month for Mike Flynn.
🐣 RT @FrankFigliuzzi1 We’ve lost the Justice Department: Three Roger Stone prosecutors resign from case after DOJ backpedals on sentencing recommendation #disbarbarr
🐣 RT @Susan_Hennessey What is being described here is systematic abuse by an Attorney General wielding DOJ to hurt the president’s enemies and help his friends. Barr must resign.
💙🧵RT @NBCnews BREAKING: AG Barr is taking control of legal matters of interest to President Trump, including the Roger Stone sentencing, according to multiple people familiar with the matter. 📌 https://twitter.com/NBCNews/status/1227400874785431557?s=20
💙 ⋙ NBCNews: Barr takes control of legal matters of interest to Trump, including Stone sentencing http://nbcnews.to/2tO4ZwE
// Barr’s intervention in Roger Stone’s case wasn’t the first time senior political appointees reached into a case involving an ex-Trump aide, officials say.
🐣 RT @DocKimResists The House of Representatives STILL has oversight responsibilities on the Executive Branch regardless of the continual Trump Administration obstruction. Call your MoC to demand they look into AG Barr and his meddling in the Stone sentence recommendation. 202-224-3121 #ImpeachBarr https://twitter.com/DocKimResists/status/1227381905252913152?s=20/photo/1
// Justice Statue of Liberty
🐣 RT @JoyceWhiteVance .@harrylitman: Resignation is the strongest possible protest.. prosecutors can employ, w/in professional bounds, against improper conduct by their leadership. [Trump’s] tweet & the dept’s reduction of Stone’s sentencing were utterly rank & improper.
⋙ WaPo, Harry Litman: The Justice Department’s reputation is on life support http://wapo.st/2SgOQt0
🐣 RT @AshaRangappa_ I have really tried to have, and encourage others to have, faith in the resiliency of our institutions. But today I just feel so much sadness — grief, really — over what is happening. There is a cancer in the White House, and it has spread to the Justice Department.
🐣 RT @maddow “It was unusual that DC US Attorney Jessie Liu departed before a Senate confirmation hearing was scheduled. Moreover, the selection of Shea to replace her was outside the norm, as it bypassed the office’s veteran principal assistant US attorney.”
⋙ WaPo: Prosecutors quit amid escalating Justice Dept. fight over Roger Stone’s prison term http://wapo.st/31LC9tm
PoliticusUSA: Trump Claims That It Is His “Right” To Interfere In Roger Stone’s Sentencing http://bit.ly/3bvjkzb
🧵 RT @MuellerSheWrote THE TUESDAY NIGHT MASSACRE. Ask yourself what’s more likely: that four career prosecutors forged Timothy Shea’s name on their Stone sentencing memo, OR, Tim signed off on it, Trump found out, called him and made him walk it back? Let’s look at recent history for the answers. 1/ 📌 https://twitter.com/MuellerSheWrote/status/1227376126814638080?s=20
🐣 RT @matthewamiller The DC US Attorney’s office, which is now being run by a clear political hack taking orders from the president, is also overseeing the Flynn case, the McCabe investigation, and the new leak probe into Comey. There is surely more to come.
🐣 RT @clairecmc You may have outrage fatigue. Get over it. What happened today needs a whole new level of outrage. Trump directly helping a political crony through his bag man Barr.
🐣 RT @jaketapper All four prosecutors of Trump friend/adviser Roger Stone — Jonathan Kravis, Michael Marando, Aaron Zelinsky and Adam C. Jed — have now resigned in the wake of President Trump criticizing their sentencing recommendation, and DOJ acquiescing.
🐣 RT @qjurecic I’d been idly wondering how long it would take after impeachment for us to find out about another egregious breach of the public trust by Trump. My guess had been a month or so. Looks like the answer may be … less than a week
🐣 RT @JoyceWhiteVance This, the 2nd withdrawal notice from a career prosecutor, speaks loudly to those of us who used to work at DOJ. There is a 4-alarm fire at Justice. https://twitter.com/JoyceWhiteVance/status/1227339683518124033?s=20
🐣 RT @davidgura “This signals to me,” Chuck Rosenberg tells @NicolleDWallace, “there has been a political infestation in the office.”
🐣 RT @EricHolder AUSA’s Kravis and Zelinsky have shown more guts-and an adherence to the rule of law-than too many now serving in Washington. What Main DOJ is trying to do-and at whose behest?-is unprecedented, wrong and ultimately dangerous. DOJ independence is critical
🐣 RT @Teri_Kanefield “Highly unusual” is entirely inadequate. ¤ The president and corrupt AG are attempting to weaponize the DOJ.
🔹The judge isn’t bound by the DOJ recommendation
🔹The House has oversight and should investigate to keep shining the light on the depths of corruption. ¤ #ImpeachBarrNow
🐣 RT @nytimes Breaking News: In a highly unusual intervention, top Justice Department officials are intervening to seek a shorter sentence for President Trump’s former adviser and longtime friend Roger Stone, after the president called prosecutors’ recommendation unfair
🔆 This❗️⋙ NYT: Justice Dept. to Seek Shorter Sentence for Roger Stone, Overruling Its Prosecutors http://nyti.ms/2SmhwRD
President Trump had complained that the recommendation of seven to nine years in prison for his former adviser and longtime friend was a “miscarriage of justice.”
🐣 RT @kylegriffin1 Breaking via Axios: Top Mueller prosecutor Aaron Zelinsky filed a notice withdrawing from the Roger Stone case on Tuesday afternoon. The filing notes that Zelinsky has resigned from the Justice Department “effective immediately.” https://twitter.com/kylegriffin1/status/1227326459598995458?s=20
WaPo: Justice Dept. to reduce sentencing recommendation for Trump associate Roger Stone, official says, after president calls it ‘unfair’ http://wapo.st/2OMLfAN
🐣 RT @waltshaub Barr
-deceived us @ Mueller report
-is investigating those who probed Trump
-asked foreign govts for intel on CIA/FBI
-set up a way to accept dirt on Biden from Giuliani
-kept the whistleblower complaint from Congress
-cast doubt on an IG report
-retracted recommendation on Stone
⋙ 🐣 RT @biancagolodryra Correct me if I’m wrong, but this reminds me of Barr taking the unusual step of saying IG Horowitz wasn’t critical enough of the FBI in his report.
⋙⋙ 🐣 RT @jakegibson The DOJ is changing its sentencing recommendation for Roger Stone, according to a Senior DOJ official. ¤ “The Department finds seven to nine years extreme, excessive and grossly disproportionate,” the source said, adding the DOJ will clarify its position on sentencing later today
🧵 RT @.CarnegieRussia 1/9 THREAD: In this new Carnegie paper, Tatiana @Stanovaya explains how the power transition will reshape the Russian establishment & impact both domestic & foreign policy. She presents a new system for classifying the Russian elite into five tiers: https://carnegie.ru/p-81037 📌 https://twitter.com/CarnegieRussia/status/1227228949580832768?s=20
🐣 RT @ForeignPolicy “We are deeply concerned by the number of removals of deputy chiefs of mission overseas, which are happening at way above the normal pace,” a senior foreign service officer told FP.
⋙ ForeignPolicy, Robbie Gramer (2/5): At Embassies Abroad, Trump Envoys Are Quietly Pushing Out Career Diplomats http://bit.ly/37hRa7s
// “There’s zero support or pushback from the department for the career people,” said one former U.S. official.
🐣 RT @AtlanticCouncil 🇺🇦Ukraine has made considerable reform progress over the past six years, but until Kyiv offers justice for the dozens of Ukrainians killed during the country’s 2014 Revolution of Dignity, many will continue to doubt whether fundamental change is possible.
⋙ AtlanticCouncil: No new Ukraine without justice for Maidan victims http://bit.ly/39qNDoG
// 2/9/2020
🐣 RT @leonidragozin Zelensky has fired his Kolomoysky-linked chief of staff Andriy Bohdan replacing him with Andriy Yermak who handled the delicate Giuliani matter for the presidency last year.
⭕ 10 Feb 2020
💙 TheAtlantic, Anne Applebaum: This Is How Reaganism and Thatcherism End http://bit.ly/2OHO8mj
// In a hotel ballroom in Rome, leaders of the nationalist right took a grim view of Western liberal democracy—which Cold War conservatives deeply believed in.
🧵RT @.Teri_Kanefield (Thread) It’s never too late ¤ Exactly right ⤵️ ¤ The question is how much pain must be suffered along the way—until people come together to do what needs to be done. ¤ What’s needs to be done, you ask? ¤ Looking at how countries fought off authoritarianism offers lessons. 📌 https://twitter.com/Teri_Kanefield/status/1226974785307127810?s=20
Reuters: Exclusive: Justice Department anti-human trafficking grants prompt whistleblower complaint http://reut.rs/2tNR5L7 //➔ “Hookers for Jesus.” Really.
🐣 RT @BillKristol An American president suggesting there’s massive election fraud. Will Trump accept his defeat on Nov. 3? Are we—from his own Cabinet to Congress to major civic institutions—ready for him if he tries not to?
⋙ 🐣 RT @rtrupar “We should have won the election, but they had buses being being shipped up from Massachusetts. Hundreds and hundreds of buses” — Trump pushes a completely unfounded conspiracy theory about massive election fraud costing him New Hampshire in 2016 📌 [full thread]. https://twitter.com/atrupar/status/1227023426558271490?s=20
⋙ 🐣 RT @AshaRangappa Bill, what we’ve learned from impeachment is that the GOP, led by Mitch McConnell, will back up every false claim he makes and support his refusal to give up power, even, I suspect, if it leads to violence. @SenatorCollins, of course, will be very DIS-appointed.
🐣 RT @fred_burton As a former agent, we call that a clue. #Russia #France
⋙ 🐣 RT @dcexaminer ‘Politically motivated’: Putin critic found in French hotel with slit throat and dozens of stab wounds
⋙⋙ WashingtonExaminer: ‘Politically motivated’: Putin critic found in French hotel with slit throat and dozens of stab wounds http://washex.am/2SikXZx
🐣 RT @matthewamiller Giuliani is getting treatment available to no other American. If you’re under investigation and you want to provide info to DOJ about issues related to the things you’re under investigation for, you deal with the office investigating you, not a special backchannel.
⋙ 🐣 RT @jdawsey1 The U.S. Attorney’s Office in Pittsburgh is now in charge of looking at all the evidence Giuliani finds in Ukraine. @devlinbarrett @mattzap
⋙⋙ WaPo: Barr acknowledges Justice Dept. has created ‘intake process’ to vet Giuliani’s information on Bidens http://wapo.st/39jYMHU
📔 Rand (book 2009): Social Science for Counterterrorism (pdf) http://bit.ly/39mFwJZ
// 2009; Putting the Pieces Together
The authors report on an aggressively interdisciplinary project to survey and integrate the scholarly social-science literature relevant to counterterrorism. They draw on literature from numerous disciplines, both qualitative and quantitative, and then use high-level conceptual models to pull the pieces together. In their monograph, they identify points of agreement and disagreement and point out instances in which disagreements merely reflect difference of research context or perspective. Priorities for further research are suggested and improved ways to frame questions for research and analysis are identified. The questions addressed relate to how terrorism arises, why some individuals become terrorists, how terrorists generate public support, how terrorist organizations make decisions, how terrorism declines, why individuals disengage, and how strategic communications can be more or less effective.
🐣 RT @HouseJudiciary NEW: @RepJerryNadler sent a letter to AG Barr to demand answers after @LindseyGrahamSC and Barr admit that Rudy Giuliani is sending information concerning Ukraine to the Department of Justice through a special intake process. https://twitter.com/HouseJudiciary/status/1226998969492033536?s=20/photo/1-2
USNews: Trump Seeks Steep Cut to Fund Designed to Deter Russia From Threats to Europe http://bit.ly/38iIDm4
💙 HuffPo, Michael Hobbes: The Golden Age of White Collar Crime http://bit.ly/3btqV1a
🐣 RT @ACEurasia 🇺🇦🇷🇺 Rival interpretations of the 2015 Minsk Protocols have brought Ukraine and Russia to deadlock in negotiations to end the undeclared six-year war between the two nations—but could international law help Ukraine to win the diplomatic argument?
⋙ AtlanticCouncil: International law may yet contain Putin in Ukraine http://bit.ly/31K1u7d
WaPo, George Conway III: Trump is right. We might have to impeach him again. http://wapo.st/2uDW3KC
🐣📊 RT @kylegriffin1 New Quinnipiac poll: Despite the acquittal, voters say 55–40% that the Senate voting to acquit Trump does not clear him of any wrongdoing in the Ukraine matter.
⋙ 🐣 No witnesses. No documents. = Sham trial.
Trump’s Crimes (below) ● https://twitter.com/Auriandra/status/1227114730483048449?s=20/photo/1
~ not counting the 6-8 cases of Obstruction of Justice Mueller found
~ not counting the FEC violations Michael Cohen is serving time for (for which Trump is “Individual 1”)
TRUMP’S FIVE CRIMES CONNECTED TO UKRAINE:
I. Bribery (18 U.S.C. § 201)
II. Soliciting Foreign Campaign Contribution (52 U.S.C. §§ 30109, 30121)
III. Coercion of Political Activity (18 U.S.C. § 610)
IV. Misappropriation of Federal Funds (18 U.S.C. § 641)
V. Obstruction of Congress (18 U.S.C. §§ 1505, 1512)
🐣 RT @JoyceWhiteVance Voter suppression comes in a lot of different packages but this one is particularly appalling & also a reminder Trump’s people don’t believe he can win without cheating.
⋙ 🐣 RT @JonLemire “Advisers hoped that Secret Service moves in Manchester to secure the area for president would make it harder for Democratic candidates and their supporters to transverse the state’s largest city in the hours before the primary’s first votes are cast” https://
⋙⋙ AP: Trump plunges into New Hampshire race, aiming to rattle Dems http://bit.ly/2OKdvnJ
⋙ 🐣 More Abuse of Power
🐣 Pro-choice should include the personal choice to oppose abortion for oneself and to share that view with others. Many, including many Catholic Democrats, have this point of view. Amy is right. https://twitter.com/Auriandra/status/1227084752290746369?s=20
WaPo: Barr acknowledges Justice Dept. has created ‘intake process’ to vet Giuliani’s information on Bidens http://wapo.st/2SvJclM
🐣 RT @JoyceWhiteVance Barr’s failure to refute Sen Graham’s claim that he is going to work directly with a person who is or should be under criminal investigation (Rudy is implicated by the allegations in the Parnas indictment & his own public conduct) is as good as a confirmation. Need hearings now.
⋙ 🐣 RT @matthewamiller Very strange Barr performance at this Chinese hacking press conference just now. After opening remarks, takes one q on Lindsey Graham’s Ukraine claim, gives very general answer, then leaves before anyone can follow up, leaving rest of press conference to others.
DailyBeast, David Lurie: How the Trump DOJ’s Own Arguments May Make a Biden Probe Impossible http://bit.ly/37awwWF
// When it comes to probes of him, Trump argues Congress can’t do anything. But if that’s so, then why should Lindsey Graham be able to investigate the Bidens?
🐣 RT @FBI A federal grand jury has indicted four members of the Chinese People’s Liberation Army for allegedly hacking into the computer systems of a credit reporting agency and stealing the personal data of 145 million Americans. http://ow.ly/YWCk50yikPk https://twitter.com/FBI/status/1226895014388813827?s=20/photo/1
// Equifax
🌎 TransparencyIntl: Corruption Perceptions Index 2019 – Transparency International http://bit.ly/39k4Y2E
// undated; corruption ranking, corruption index
⭕ 9 Feb 2020
🧵 RT @anneapplebaum thread: ¤ This week I was in Venezuela, mostly offline. I observed, from Caracas, the finale of the impeachment trial, Romney’s last stand, the firing of civil servants. All around me, people nodded wearily: Yes, they said, we’ve seen this before… 📌 https://twitter.com/anneapplebaum/status/1226534687377674244?s=20
🐣💽 RT @ProudResistor Every word of this. The injustice in this world is connected and our collective liberation is too. #Oscarshttps://twitter.com/ProudResister/status/1226741650707206144?s=20/photo/1
// Joaquin Phoenix Oscar acceptance speech; Academy Awards
TheWeek: Barack and Michelle Obama-backed documentary American Factory wins an Oscar http://bit.ly/38hX6hW
🐣 RT @atrupar Here’s Lindsey Graham telling CBS that Attorney General Barr has “created a process” where Rudy Giuliani can feed Biden dirt from Ukrainian sources directly to the DOJ, and the DOJ will then check it out 💽 https://twitter.com/atrupar/status/1226538711623634947?s=20/photo/1
⋙ 🐣 RT @goodbye56789 Seriously? Can we be real for a minute? What about Ivanka, Jr and Jared? Then there’s Bill Barr’s son in law advising Trump’s legal team. And what about his daughter Mary, who works for Barr at the Justice dept.? Do they really want to discuss nepotism?
⋙⋙ VanityFair (2019): William Barr’s Son-in-Law Just Landed a Job Advising Trump on “Legal Issues” http://bit.ly/39mYYGi
// 2/14/2019
💙🧵 RT @benjaminwittes First he came for @comey, and I said nothing because I was mad at @comey because of the Clinton email investigation and I blamed him for Trump’s election.
📌 https://twitter.com/benjaminwittes/status/1226511619267743747?s=20
🐣 RT @brianklaas In authoritarian regimes, the law still exists, but it is politicized — bent to the will of the ruler so that it can be used to protect political allies and go after political rivals. Rather than an equalizer, it is a weapon.
⋙ 🐣 RT @joshtpm Remarkable. Sen. Graham says he talked to AG Barr this morning and they have set up a “process” by which Rudy Giuliani will now send his Biden “dirt” directly to AG Barr.
🐣 RT @SarahLongwell25 “Our military deserves better. Our country deserves better. Lt. Col. Vindman deserves better.” ¤ Running nationally in Fox and Friends this week. ¤ @ForTheRuleOfLaw. 💽 https://twitter.com/SarahLongwell25/status/1226501840369594370?s=20/photo/1
⭕ 8 Feb 2020
🐣 RT @glennkirschner2 According to Barr and the horrific OLC memo, you can’t indict a criminal president, even for retaliating against witnesses who provided truthful testimony about your crimes and abuses. But guess what? There’s no OLC memo saying you can’t prosecute a president’s son . . . https://twitter.com/glennkirschner2/status/1226138237783232512?s=20/photo/1
// Don Jr attack on Adam Schiff etc
BusinessInsider: Trump is losing the support of the United States’ closest ally after the president slammed down the phone on them during an ‘apoplectic’ call http://bit.ly/3bnc3RZ
// Huawei, Iran, tariffs, bilateralism
● Donald Trump is close to losing the support of the United States’ closest ally after a growing series of public rows.
● The president reportedly slammed down the phone on UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson during what officials described as an “apoplectic” call.
● In recent weeks Johnson and senior members of his government have staged repeated public criticisms of Trump and his administration.
● Johnson has accused Trump of “failing to lead” and “letting the air out of the tires of the world economy.”
TheAtlantic, Benjamin Wittes: Trump Points His Finger, and a Life Is Ruined http://bit.ly/2UN83ED
// alt: “Doing the Right Thing Was Vindman’s Only Crime”; Alexander Vindman joins the club of people whom the president has targeted for telling the truth.
🐣 RT @Jackasaurus3 “Forty two years ago I left a country that built walls to come to a place without them. But today, as a citizen of the US, for the first time, I’m hearing rhetoric that reminds me of the Soviet Union of my youth.” ¤ – Mikhail Baryshnikov on Donald Trump and his cult, 2016
WaPo, David Nakamura and: ‘Not just chilling but frightening’: Inside Vindman’s ouster amid fears of further retaliation by Trump http://wapo.st/2ukcsE9
🧵RT @Teri_Kanefield (Thread) Mafia States ¤ Each of Trump’s outrageous actions push us one step closer to what Hungarian scholar Balint Magyar calls a “mafia state,” — the term he uses to describe the kind of autocracies we see springing up in the former Soviet Union. http://bit.ly/2Sb0llN
📌 https://twitter.com/Teri_Kanefield/status/1226163809783439369?s=20
⭕ 7 Feb 2020 Night of the Long Knives
WaPo, Greg Sargent: Here’s a new abuse of power by Trump that should alarm you http://wapo.st/2UNcYW7 over-classification of documents
WaPo, Vladimir Kara-Murza: Saying ‘no’ to Vladimir Putin http://wapo.st/2OyTbWn Can the Russian people halt Putin’s move to become ‘president-for-life’?
RT @JoyceWhiteVance I truly believe this. I just hope it will happen before November.
⋙ 🐣 RT @RevDrBarber Mark my word: more things are going to come out that will prove just how guilty Trump & his enablers are. It will turn the public against them. How do we know? Read history. He looks like he’s getting away, but pride & arrogance come before a fall. Always have, always will.
🐣 RT @kasparov63 I don’t really care that Sanders visited the USSR. I do care that he saw anything to like in our totalitarian regime and served as a propaganda tool. And some US voters will care and if he’s nominated it will be a catastrophe for Dems & country.
⋙ 🐣 RT @jcs2 @Kasparov63 ¤ I respect your views & insight, so would like to ask you about this.
⋙⋙ Politico, Holly Otterbein (5/27/2019): Bernie’s mystery Soviet tapes revealed http://politi.co/2H8Ly4R
// 5/27/2019; Unseen by the public for three decades, a POLITICO reporter views hours of footage from his 1988 ‘honeymoon’ to the USSR.
🐣🌎 RT @CityLab 13 million U.S. coastal residents are expected to be displaced by 2100 due to sea level rise. Researchers are starting to predict where they’ll go @linpoonsays reports: https://twitter.com/CityLab/status/1226142569643548672?s=20/photo/1
⋙ CityLab: Where America’s Climate Migrants Will Go As Sea Level Rises http://bit.ly/37fmRhT
DailyBeast, Michael Tomasky: Amy Klobuchar Seizes the Debate http://bit.ly/2H8wPqG
// We’ll see Tuesday if that impression, which she’s made on previous debate nights, impacts voters this time — and which voters if so.
DailyBeast, David Rothkopf: Friday Night Massacre’s Just the Beginning for Acquitted Trump http://bit.ly/2tBMifw
// Nine months before election day, our most corrupt, unfit, demented and malevolent president has been given more power than any other human being in our history.
DailyBeast, Jackie Kucinich: Democratic Voters Worry Biden Has ‘Too Much Baggage’ After Trump’s Ukraine Smears http://bit.ly/39mlCyS
// The conspiracy theories about Biden amplified by Trump may have been debunked, but some voters say it doesn’t matter—the former VP already has a huge weak spot.
NYT, John Gans: Col. Vindman and the Trumpification of the National Security Council http://nyti.ms/2utLOZp “[A] Trumpian National Security Council is a terrible fit for today’s world“
// His removal is petty and vindictive. It’s also part of a bigger plan.
WaPo, Nancy Pelosi: McConnell and the GOP Senate are accomplices to Trump’s wrongdoing http://wapo.st/2SrOKO5 “[T]they have joined the president in normalizing lawlessness and rejecting the checks and balances of our Constitution.“
🐣 “In the long history of the world, only a few generations have been granted the role of defending freedom in its hour of maximum danger. I do not shrink from this responsibility—I welcome it.” – JFK, 1961
🐣 RT @kylegriffin1 Sen. Bob Menendez, Foreign Relations Ranking Member: “The administration’s dismissal of Lt. Col. Vindman, his brother and US Amb. to the European Union Gordon Sondland is clear political retaliation, the likes of which is seen only in authoritarian countries around the world.”
🐣 RT @joelockhart I’ve never subscribed to the view that we should criminally charge a President after they’ve left office. It’s a slippery slope to persecuting political opponents in our system. After today, I’ve changed my view. This President deserves to be escorted out by security.
⋙ 🐣 This is a special case, in that there is no independent DOJ. There needs to be a nonpartisan blue ribbon commission to investigate Trump’s crimes, assuming a Democrat is elected and we win the Senate.
🐣 RT @JohnWDean Ben, I believe four more years of Trump/Barr will give us a dictator — and I am not employing hyperbole!
⋙ 🐣 RT @brhodes Barr is legit scary. Now consider 4 more years of DOJ as an extension of Trump-Barr worldview of an all-powerful executive
🐣 RT @McFaul I am really angry that Trump did not allow The Vindmans a dignified departure from the NSC. Such a petty, small, vindictive man.
⋙ 🐣 RT @McFaul “I served with [Vindman] in the U.S. Embassy in Moscow, where he was everything you would want in a military attaché: smart, knowledgeable about the country, fluent in Russian and absolutely dedicated to the mission of advancing U.S. national interests.”
⋙⋙ WaPo, Michael McFaul (10/30): Alexander Vindman should be celebrated, not smeared http://wapo.st/335iyUR
🐣 RT @Msnbc After the ousting of Lt. Col. Vindman, @Maddow looks at the fates of some of the other key witnesses in the Trump impeachment inquiry and finds several who are no longer in their positions. https://twitter.com/MSNBC/status/1226030917011025922?s=20/photo/1
💙 ⋙ 💽 MSNBC, Rachel Maddow: Witnesses left scattered in wake of Trump impeachment scandal http://on.msnbc.com/2ScurFH
// Rachel Maddow looks at the trail of empty positions left by people involved in the impeachment investigation of Donald Trump’s Ukraine scheme who either felt compelled to leave or were forced from their jobs.
⋙ Kurt Volker, Fiona Hill, Tim Morrison, Rick Perry, John Bolton, Marie Yovanovich, Wm Taylor, Jennifer Jones, Alexander Vindman, Yevgeny Vindman, Gordon Sondland
🐣 RT @rulajebreal
•Marie Yovanovitch testified & retired.
•Kurt Volker turned over texts & quit
•Sondland testified now fired
•Taylor testified removed Jan 2
•Morrison left week after testified
•Vindman testified, escorted out yesterday along with twin brother
•Pence aide Williams left OVP
⋙ 🐣 I think Fiona Hill went back to Brookings
Politico: Intel hearing on global threats delayed amid fears of provoking Trump’s ire http://politi.co/379m0iH
// Intelligence leaders initially wanted to abandon the public portion of the congressional hearing to avoid upsetting Trump.
🐣 RT @SpeakerPelosi Lieutenant Colonel Vindman has proven to be an American patriot. His firing was a clear and brazen act of retaliation that showcases the President’s fear of the truth — and the vindictiveness which led Republican Senators to be accomplices to President Trump’s cover-up.
🐣 RT @glennkirschner2 Here at #TeamJustice we’re a big tent w/room for all. We’ll have honest & even heated disagreements, we’ll argue our points & listen to the points of others. Then we’ll come together & work like h&ll to defeat, dislodge & dethrone the dictator determined to destroy our democracy.
🐣 RT @RepAdamSchiff President Trump is exacting his retribution, removing those who complied with subpoenas, came forward, and testified about his misconduct. ¤ These are the actions of a man who believes he is above the law — ¤ Precisely the kind of conduct Congressional Republicans enabled.
🐣 RT @gtconway3d What normally happens when a public official retaliates against a witness who testified about the public official’s criminal conduct is that the public official goes to prison.
🐣 RT @NedPrice They claim this is about downsizing. The previous admin downsized the NSC staff; precisely ZERO staffers were escorted out. It was done through attrition, just as this process was billed. This is about chilling whistleblowers & eliminating potential witnesses, not streamlining.
🐣 RT @AndrewFeinberg NEW: “The Art of the Deal” co-author @TonySchwartz says Americans “vastly underestimate the level of danger that we’re facing” from @realDonaldTrump, who he calls “every bit as capable” of using law enforcement against his enemies as Putin or Kim Jong Un.
🐣 RT @AndrewFeinberg MORE: @RepRaskin adds that @HouseDemocrats “undoubtedly will get serious about our use of the appropriations power” post-impeachment, including voting to zero out salaries for administration officials and kill funding for agencies that defy/ignore Congress
🐣 RT @ SCOOPLET: @RepRaskin says “there is revived interest” among @HouseDemocrats in using Congress’ “inherent powers of contempt,” which would allow the House vote on detaining or fining Trump administration officials who defy subpoenas.
⋙ TheIndependent [UK], Andrew Feinberg: Trump is now free to take revenge against those who wronged him during impeachment. Insiders told me it won’t be pretty http://bit.ly/2Sc1VEd
// ‘I think of myself along with other people who’ve spoken out consistently against him as being incredibly vulnerable’
🐣 RT @kylegriffin1 Pelosi said she was “stunned” by Colonel Vindman’s dismissal. “That’s such a shame,” she told reporters. “What a patriotic person. This goes too far.”
⋙ NYT: Trump Fires Gordon Sondland Hours After Dismissing Impeachment Witness Alexander Vindman http://nyti.ms/2H5pdoU
// mEmboldened by his victory and determined to strike back, the president fired Mr. Sondland, the ambassador to the European Union, after the White House earlier on Friday dismissed Colonel Vindman.
🐣 RT @CBS BREAKING: Gordon Sondland, EU ambassador who testified in impeachment hearing, ousted https://cbsn.ws/3bhP8Y5
🐣 RT @AP BREAKING: President Trump ousts ambassador to EU Gordon Sondland, who gave damaging testimony in impeachment inquiry.
🐣 RT @tribelaw “Colonel Vindman’s twin brother, Yevgeny Vindman, also an Army lieutenant colonel who worked at the White House, was fired as well and escorted out at the same time.” ¤ Punishing even the relatives of one’s critics is the hallmark of tyrants.
⋙ NYT: Impeachment Witness Alexander Vindman Fired From the White House http://nyti.ms/2Uyqmx5
// Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman, whose testimony in the House inquiry infuriated President Trump and his allies, will be reassigned within the military, officials said. “I’m not happy with him,” Trump said. Colonel Vindman’s brother was fired too.
WaPo, James Comey: As usual, Trump called me a sleaze. But the audience reaction to his rant was more upsetting. http://wapo.st/2Sn9Mxq
🐣 RT @SarahKendzior Targeting family members is a classic and effective tactic of authoritarian rule. It goes hand in hand with the installation and elevation of the autocrat’s family into political power, which happened the moment Trump took office.
🐣 RT @julieroginsky My heart breaks for their father, who brought his boys to the US from the Soviet Union because he didn’t want them to live under an authoritarian regime that punished decency in public life. As a fellow Soviet Jewish refugee, I find this particularly chilling.
⋙ 🐣 RT @JoyceWhiteVance Vindman’s brother was fired & walked out alongside him. Understand, Trump can now come for anyone who gets in his way, he can retaliate against family. The people who wouldn’t do the right thing for its own sake should know that day can come for them too.
🧵 RT @emptywheel As Vindman is removed from the White House for telling the truth remember that Kash Patel is running around the White House pretending he’s an expert on Ukraine. 📌 https://twitter.com/emptywheel/status/1225906343774740480?s=20
⋙ 🐣 RT @emptywheel [ … ] By all means, celebrate Vindman. ¤ But remember that this is also a choice to make the US less safe, out of Trump’s fear of the truth.
🐣 RT @NatashaBertrand Vindman’s lawyer tells me his twin brother Yevgeny has been fired from NSC, too, and was also escorted from the White House.
⋙ Politico: Vindman, a star Trump impeachment witness, escorted out of the White House http://politi.co/2ujAAXx
// “The truth has cost LTC Alexander Vindman his job, his career, and his privacy,” said one of his lawyers.
🐣 RT @kylegriffin1 “His twin brother Yevgeny Vindman, a National Security Council attorney, was also fired and walked off the White House grounds alongside him.”
⋙ CNN: Key impeachment witness Vindman fired from White House job http://cnn.it/3bmKjg8
⋙⋙ 🐣 RT @JoyceWhiteVance It seems trivial to mention it at this point, but retaliation against a witness is a federal crime.
🐣 RT @peteralexander LTC Vindman escorted from WH, per his lawyer David Pressman: “He followed orders, he obeyed his oath, and he served his country… And for that, the most powerful man in the world – buoyed by the silent, the pliable, and the complicit – has decided to exact revenge.” https://twitter.com/PeterAlexander/status/1225883984007221248?s=20/photo/1-2
// letter from lawyer
🐣 RT @FrankFugliuzzi We were all kicked out of the WH today. It’s no longer the people’s house: Vindman, who provided key impeachment testimony, ‘escorted’ from White House, attorney says
⋙ NBCNews: Vindman, who provided key impeachment testimony, ‘escorted’ from White House, attorney says http://nbcnews.to/3bqhlwb
// The truth has cost LTC Alexander Vindman his job, his career, and his privacy,” Vindman’s attorney told NBC News.
– – – – – – – – – – –
WaPo, Jennifer Rubin: Buttigieg thrives in town-hall settings http://wapo.st/373Inpv “Frankly, we could do a lot worse at this point than a prepared and intellectually sophisticated president”
🐣 RT @atrupar “I probably have a legal obligation to report corruption” – here’s Trump accusing the Bidens of corruption on Thursday, saying, “my kids could make a fortune” if they did the same ¤ New reporting indicates Trump’s business bilked nearly $500k from taxpayers
WaPo: Secret Service has paid rates as high as $650 a night for rooms at Trump’s properties http://wapo.st/2OApIeq “The records show more than $471,000 in payments from taxpayers to Trump’s companies. But … the actual total is likely to be higher.”
🐣 RT @ A third of Republicans have confidence in Vladimir Putin—a man who poisons dissidents, murders journalists, facilitates horrific war crimes, illegally annexes territory, rigs his elections, and attacks our elections—to “do the right thing concerning world affairs.”
⋙ 🐣 📊 RT @PewPoll: Americans consistently have expressed little confidence in Russian President Vladimir Putin. But Republicans are now 21 points more likely than Democrats to express confidence him (31% vs. 10%), the widest partisan gap in our polling. https://pewrsr.ch/375lQsC https://twitter.com/brianklaas/status/1225784492188717057?s=20/photo/1
TheBulwark, Charles Sykes: The Gospel According to Mad King Donald http://bit.ly/39c7VCc “a raw, bitter, unhinged rant of crazy”
// Wednesday’s outbursts didn’t teach us much about Donald Trump. But they taught us a lot about the Republican party.
🐣 RT @BarbMcQuade All public servants of integrity at are risk with a vindictive president, enabling cabinet, and complicit Senate. I hope they will do their duty anyway. Thanks for doing yours, Lt. Col. Vindman.
⋙ 🐣 RT @benjaminwittes Thinking of Lt Col Alexander Vindman today. You should be too.
🐣 RT @gregpmiller There is no graceful exit from Trump’s orbit.
Vindman had already informed WH officials he would take early departure from NSC and leave by end of February.
But WH appears to be accelerating that plan in part to make it look punitive.
🐣 [To @BillKristol] I wrote this before I ever heard @SpeakerPelosi invoke it: ● https://twitter.com/Auriandra/status/1225768077406736384?s=20/photo/1
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 @BillKristol I emailed @WalshFreedom this poem, a favorite of mine. But it’s not quite right; one doesn’t know the effect of a losing, even doomed, effort, on others who, sooner or later, may pick up the torch for a decent conservatism or a GOP worth defending.
⋙⋙ PoetryFoundation, WB Yeats: To a Friend Whose Work Has Come to Nothing http://bit.ly/2S4asZz
⋙ 🐣 RT @BillKristol These lines seemed especially resonant:
“Now all the truth is out,
Be secret and take defeat
From any brazen throat,
For how can you compete,
Being honor bred, with one
Who were it proved he lies
Were neither shamed in his own
Nor in his neighbors’ eyes…”
🐣 RT @maddow
3-part mini thread:
it’s an iowa thing, not just an iowa dems thing.
the 2012 gop iowa caucuses were “won” by romney.
& then a few days later they were “won” by santorum.
& then a few months later they were “won” by ron paul
@Morning_Joe
three-part mini thread:
it’s an iowa thing, not just an iowa dems thing.
the 2012 gop iowa caucuses were “won” by romney.
and then a few days later they were “won” by santorum.
and then a few months later they were “won” by ron paul….https://t.co/0UpN0I97AD
— Rachel Maddow MSNBC (@maddow) February 4, 2020
// 1/4/2020
💙 🐣 RT @glennkirshner2 The House has to stay high but go hard. They must move to impeach Barr. He lie to Congress, he lied about the Mueller report, he refuses to investigate obvious crimes by the administration, he is conflicted out of many matters but refuses to recuse. Oh, and then there’s Epstein.
🐣 RT @Morning_Joe “Donald Trump mocked the words of Jesus Christ and he got applause for it.” — @JoeNBC 💽 https://twitter.com/Morning_Joe/status/1225748402757083138?s=20/photo/1
// Trump at national prayer breakfast
↥ ↧
🐣 RT @Morning_Joe “Let me read you the words that the President of the United States at a National Prayer Breakfast was mocking yesterday.” — @JoeNBC 💽 https://twitter.com/Morning_Joe/status/1225748206568558593?s=20/photo/1
↥ ↧
💙 🐣 RT @Morning_Joe “It was a master class yesterday in the difference between humility and hubris, between class and someone who is classless.” –@JoeNBC on the difference between Clinton and Trump post-acquittal speeches. 💽 https://twitter.com/Morning_Joe/status/1225740839130927106?s=20/photo/1
🐣 Iowa also screwed up the Iowa caucuses for the GOP in 2016. They had three different winners called, weeks apart. Dems were also hit with a Denial-of-Service attack (not “prank calls”) by the GOP. @Morning_Joe @JoeNBC @MorningMika
⋙ 🐣 Sorry, this was 2012, not 2016. per @maddow:
it’s an iowa thing, not just an iowa dems thing.
the 2012 gop iowa caucuses were “won” by romney.
and then a few days later they were “won” by santorum.
and then a few months later they were “won” by ron paul….
🐣 RT @davidenrich This is a very dangerous precedent. ¤ I am familiar with this situation because @BikiniRobotArmy has shared these Deutsche documents with me too. My best guess: someone complained to @Twitter that the documents are the property of the Broeksmit estate. (1/2)
⋙⋙ ForensicNews (2/4): Twitter has temporarily banned our founder @ScottMStedman for allegedly violating rules. It is forcing him to delete a crucial tweet about Deutsche Bank, which will not happen. https://twitter.com/davidenrich/status/1225617609930027013?s=20/photo/1-2
// [screenshots of docs (copied) ~ Scott is contesting with Twitter]
⋙ 🐣 RT @ That does not affect the right of a journalist in the US to publicly disclose the documents. ¤ @Twitter should not be doing the bidding of whoever is trying to keep this stuff secret, whether it’s the Broeksmit family or @DeutscheBank.
⋙ 🐣 RT @ And yes, I have a stake in this, because the @BikiniRobotArmy documents are an important part of my book and have already featured in the NYT. I don’t always agree with @ScottMStedman’s reporting, but I 100% endorse his right to put stuff like this in the public domain.
⋙⋙ 🐣 RT @mikemcgannpa You may not be aware the Val Broeksmit posted on here that he gave express permission to Forensic News to publish them. So, it seems like the pressure must be coming from Deutsche Bank.
↥ ↧
🐣 RT @ NatashaBertrand This is ridiculous, @TwitterSupport
⋙⋙ 🧵 RT @ForensicNews Twitter has informed @ScottMStedman that he will be permanently locked from his account unless he removes content. 📌 https://twitter.com/forensicnewsnet/status/1225502501929127937?s=20
⋙ 🐣 Please write about this and about what’s in the article they banned screenshots of. It’s dynamite. (link in my last tweet)
💙 ⋙⋙ ForensicNews (1/3/2010): Trump Deutsche Bank Loans Underwritten By Russian State-Owned VTB Bank, Whistleblower Told FBI http://bit.ly/37B3WP4 by @ScottMStedman, Eric Levai and Bobby DeNault
DailyBeast, Scott Bixby: Mike Bloomberg Is Paying ‘Influencers’ to Make Him Seem Cool http://bit.ly/2SDFwyD
// The Bloomberg campaign is trying an ad❣strategy familiar to every other startup with a ton of cash and a questionable business model: paying influencers to make it seem cool.
DailyBeast, Rick Wilson: King Donald to GOP: And Now—and Forever—You Shall Be My Servants http://bit.ly/2vcp4gu
// Trump’s performances Thursday told the world that corruption had triumphed. He learned exactly the opposite lesson of the one Republicans imagined.
NYT, Michael Bloomberg: Fixing Inequality Is My Priority http://nyti.ms/2vbQaV0
// Right now, the rewards of the economy are far too concentrated at the top.
⭕ 6 Feb 2020
MSNBC, Steve Benen: Trump’s impeachment tested our political system, and it failed http://on.msnbc.com/38cXj6c
// After Watergate, Americans were told “the system worked.” In the wake of Trump’s acquittal, let no one use the same phrase now.
TheAmericanInterest, Neal Barnett and Andrew Foxall: Collapsing the Russian Tripod http://bit.ly/2vfWpHp
// Successfully fighting disinformation and influence operations of authoritarian adversaries requires understanding how these efforts have been developed by—and are run out of—the intelligence services.
🐣 RT @duty2warn Trump calls his political opponents “bad,” “dirty,” “horrible,” “evil,” “sick,” “corrupt,” “scum,” “leakers,” “liars,” “vicious,” “mean,” “lowlifes,” “non-people,” “stone-cold crazy” and “the crookedest, most dishonest, dirtiest people I’ve ever seen.”
⋙ WaPo, Dana Milbank: Trump learned his lesson. He’s going to be even more vulgar. http://wapo.st/38bYsL9
Marketwatch, Timothy Joseph: Trump’s impeachment acquittal echoes the collapse of ancient Rome’s republican ideals http://on.mktw.net/3bpbasf
// A classics professor sees troubling political parallels between ancient Rome and America today
🔆 This❗️⋙ 🔊 ApplePodcasts, Talking Feds: 57. Partial Acquittal http://apple.co/2S5TmKP with Harry Litman, Frank Figliuzzi, Glenn Kirschner and Barb McQuade
In this special Talking Feds Now! episode, taped hours after the Senate voted to acquit President Trump, Frank Figliuzzi, Glenn Kirshner, and Barb McQuade join Harry with initial reactions and analysis. Is the verdict an unalloyed triumph, as Trump’s ardent defenders proclaim, or inconclusive given the failure to even present evidence?
To what extent did the defection of Senator Romney take the luster off the verdict? And what should we now expect by way of continuing oversight in the House?
🐣 RT @McFaul As I’ve said before, and he just demonstrated again today, Trump does not understand right from wrong. And that fact is the scariest of all.
TheWeek, David Faris: Trump’s acquittal means there is no bottom http://bit.ly/2Uy6wSH ‘Only the November general election stands between us and slow-motion authoritarianism’
WaPo: Trump lambastes his critics as he moves to target perceived enemies over impeachment http://wapo.st/31DiD27
🐣 RT @ThePlumLineGS This is bad. The Treasury Department, which broke the law to avoid giving Congress Trump’s tax returns, is turning over records related to Hunter Biden in response to requests from GOP Senators. The sharp contrast demands answers, one exert tells me:
⋙ WaPo, Greg Sargent: Emboldened, Trump allies may already be targeting his enemies in new ways http://wapo.st/38j1uNC
🚫 ≣ Vox: Read Trump’s bananas, post-impeachment victory lap speech http://bit.ly/372fYQR
WaPo, Joe Walsh: Challenging Trump for the GOP nomination taught me my party is a cult http://wapo.st/2Ox07U0
// Real conservatives think for themselves. Trump Republicans have been brainwashed.
🐣 RT @BillKristol This ad❣thanking Mitt Romney for his principled and courageous stand will run next week on Fox News in Utah. And you can thank Mitt here at http://bit.ly/2SpmHil 💽 https://twitter.com/BillKristol/status/1225473327164280838?s=20/photo/1
HuffPo, Arthur Delaney: Treasury Department Hands Over Hunter Biden Info After Withholding Trump’s Tax Records http://bit.ly/3bl2vGT
// The impeachment trial is over, but Senate Republicans are pressing forward with an investigation into the Bidens.
🐣 RT @NormOrnstein The attacks on the whistleblower by Trump toadies in the Senate and House are undoubtedly aimed at intimidating whistle blowers in the Justice Department from pointing out Barr’s misconduct.
🐣 RT @SethAbramson Increasingly I get the sneaking suspicion that Attorney General William Barr should probably either be in jail or on bail awaiting trial right now
⋙ 🐣 RT @SethAbramson PS/ I want to be clear: this isn’t some sort of “lock him up” chant. I’m saying that we have a growing stock of evidence that he committed perjury before Congress, that he is seeking to conspire to obstruct justice with President Trump, and that he has already done so many times.
⋙ 🐣 RT @SethAbramson PS2/ His knowledge of the Parnas case means he knows what Trump did and still plans to do; but then he issued an edict yesterday that *no one can investigate the president without his permission*. That seems to place him at the center of a conspiracy to defraud the United States.
🐣 RT @11thHour Tonight’s #LastThingBeforeWeGo? How did Trump’s comments at the National Prayer Breakfast compare to Obama and Bush? ¤ https://on.msnbc.com/3bloDkq 💽 https://twitter.com/11thHour/status/1225646945311449088?s=20/photo/1
🧵 RT @AshaRangappa_ There is an inherent conflict of interest in an Attorney General, a political appointee, making the decision on whether a predicated case on the person who appointed him should be opened. This is EXACTLY why we have Special Counsel regulations 1/ 📌 https://twitter.com/AshaRangappa_/status/1225581662534238208?s=20
🐣 RT @donwinslow I have multiple sources inside the Justice Department that tell me when Barr became Attorney General he shut down *six* separate investigations into Trump and Trump related companies and surrogates. ¤ I’m told Barr has also prevented *two new* investigations from moving forward.
TheDesk, Matthew Keyes: Twitter suspends Forensic News investigative reporter for posting journalism http://bit.ly/2StW6AC
⋙ ForensicNews (1/3/2010): Trump Deutsche Bank Loans Underwritten By Russian State-Owned VTB Bank, Whistleblower Told FBI http://bit.ly/37B3WP4 by Scott Stedman, Eric Levai and Bobby DeNault
🐣 RT @OlgaNYC1211 Welcome to a mafia state. ¤ Criminal mafia regime is going after US citizen @AlexandraChalup for trying to warn about the attacks on America by Russia by highlighting Putin’s decade long agent Manafort who happens to be a 40 yr associate of Trump. Via our tax funded agencies
⋙ 🐣 RT @JasonLeopold NEW: Sens. Grassley and Johnson have targeted @AlexandraChalup as part of their probe into debunked claims re: Ukraine/2016 election & Biden. Here’s her statement to @BuzzFeedNews. Additionally, DOJ sent Chalupa a letter in 2017 saying she did not have to register under FARA https://twitter.com/JasonLeopold/status/1225496596302921728?s=20/photo/1-2
🐣 RT @mccaffreyr3 The President of the United States. He now feels more empowered. More seeking vengeance. More unchecked. Some dangerous months ahead.
⋙ WaPo, Michael Gerson: Trump’s politicization of the National Prayer Breakfast is unholy and immoral http://wapo.st/31EWoJm
🐣 RT @dcpoll The insane criminal president* on Thursday gloated about his newly confirmed immunity from both legal and constitutional accountability to room full of federal lawmakers who responded to his paranoid ravings with a mixture of feigned and genuine delight.
⋙ NYMag, Eric Levitz: The Insane Criminal President Held a Party Today http://nym.ag/2v7AfHt
WaPo, Michael Gerson: Thank you, Mitt Romney http://wapo.st/2OOFtPp
WaPo, David Nakamura: Trump celebrates end of impeachment with angry, raw and vindictive 62-minute White House rant http://wapo.st/3703CIQ
DailyBeast, Jay Michaelson: Trump Drags Prayer Breakfast Into Gutter With Attack on Romney and Pelosi’s Faith http://bit.ly/2H3vtgA
// It’s supposed to one of Washington’s few totally nonpartisan events where people are on their best behavior. Then Donald showed up.
DailyBeast, Asawin Suebsaeng: Trump Celebrates Impeachment Acquittal With Bizarre ‘Blood’ and ‘Bullshit’ Filled White House Speech http://bit.ly/2H1pjxF
// “It’s a celebration,” Trump said about the day’s event. “I’ve done things wrong in my life, I will admit…but this is what the end result is.”
🐣 RT @NoahSchachtman Just so we are clear here: FOX NEWS is calling out FOX NEWS pundits for spreading propaganda on FOX NEWS. I’ve never seen anything like it.
⋙ 🐣 RT @AndrewKirell Exclusive: In leaked documents, Fox News’ in-house research team warns colleagues of “disinformation” from several Fox News regulars like Giuliani and John Solomon.
💙 ⋙⋙ DailyBeast: Fox News Internal Document Bashes Pro-Trump Fox Regulars for Spreading ‘Disinformation’ http://bit.ly/2GXLHIa
// In a briefing obtained by The Daily Beast, Fox’s research unit advises colleagues to be wary of “disinformation” from several Trump-boosting on-air regulars, including Giuliani.
🐣 RT @JuliaDavisNews European intel & law-enforcement officials remain extremely concerned about assassinations of anti-Putin & Kadyrov dissidents throughout the EU & the UK. At least 15 people have been killed by Russian hit squads in the UK, including innocent bystanders. https://twitter.com/JuliaDavisNews/status/1225497611509129224?s=20
🔆 This❗️⋙ NYT: Senate Report Criticizes Response to Russian Meddling and Partly Blames McConnell http://nyti.ms/2S4SpTi
// A new report from a Republican-led committee included accusations that the Senate leader stopped a more forceful American response to Russian interference in the 2016 elections.
━━━━━━━▼ Crazytime
🐣 RT @JustSchmeltzer And I’ll add one more point — if a reporter refuses to report on the objective truth, and uses more positive spin out of fear of being called anti-Trump, then they ARE reporting with bias, and doing harm to their profession and their responsibility.
🐣 RT @matthewamiller Congratulations to Bill Barr for sitting there yukking it up while the president spreads smears and lies about career FBI officials and attacks one of the most decorated prosecutors in DOJ history. Coward.
🐣 RT @JoeLockhart People really should find the answer of why Trump had an unscheduled emergency trip to Walter Reed a few months ago. My guess is it had something to do with today’s performance.
🐣 RT @Stonekettle He’s insane. ¤ But then, we already knew that.
⋙ 🐣 RT @jonavlon “I wish he were here, I’d give him one hell of an introduction.” ¤ That was President Trump on Abraham Lincoln. ¤ Just now. ¤ In the White House. ¤ Says people don’t know he was a Republican. ¤ Then goes on to say that Jim Jordan is “very proud of his body.” Totally normal.
🐣 RT @ECMcLaughlin I wonder what it feels like to abdicate your dignity intentionally for a man like this.
⋙ 🐣 RT @joelockhart How humiliating it must be to be a Senator to be sitting through this horror show. What ever was left of their self respect is dying on national TV.
🐣 RT @Acosta This is like a press conference except Trump is answering the questions he wishes reporters would ask.
🐣 RT @MikhailaRFogel Well, I think I speak for all of us when I say this is the moment of grace our great nation was looking for.
// pretty sure this is sarcastic🥴
🐣 RT @JRubinBlogger media: you have an obligation to explain how unhinged and insane this is: Trump Loses It in Rant Against Enemies
🐣 RT @CasterNoel This is the most insane I have ever seen Trump and I have seen him sh*t himself on a soundstage on ‘Celebrity Apprentice’ and make a teenage Ivanka give him a lapdance on ‘Miss Teen USA’ @realDonaldTrump
━━━━━━━▲
DailyBeast, Betsy Swan: Zelensky Adviser on Trump Impeachment: ‘It Definitely Was Stressful’ http://bit.ly/2S17Ont
// “If we could choose, this thing wouldn’t have happened. It would have been building the relationship rather than trying to save it from something very political, very loud.”
🐣 RT @BarackObama Even if the methods are new, sowing the seeds of doubt, division, and discord to turn Americans against each other is an old trick. The antidote is citizenship: to get engaged, organized, mobilized, and to vote – on every level, in every election.
🐣 RT @JeffreyGoldberg “These pro-Trump forces are poised to wage what could be the most extensive disinformation campaign in U.S. history. Whether or not it succeeds in reelecting the president, the wreckage it leaves behind could be irreparable.” — @mckaycoppins:
⋙ TheAtlantic, McKay Coppins: The Billion-Dollar Disinformation Campaign to Reelect the President http://bit.ly/2S1hTki
// How new technologies and techniques pioneered by dictators will shape the 2020 election
🔆 This❗️⋙ WaPo, Marie Yovanovitch: These are turbulent times. But we will persist and prevail. http://wapo.st/2StWwHw
🐣 RT @ProudResister
75% of America wanted witnesses
— GOP voted against witnesses
73% of America want stricter gun reform
— GOP refuse to vote for any gun reform
70% of America want climate action
— GOP refuse to vote for climate action
GOP does not vote for America.
America, stop voting for GOP.
🐣 RT @TheRickWilson I have some thoughts on Mitt Romney’s stand against Donald Trump: ¤ “Mitt Romney Is the Only Republican in Congress With Any Guts Left”
⋙ Medium, Rick Wilson: Mitt Romney Is the Only Republican in Congress With Any Guts Left http://bit.ly/2uojxDA
// The Utah senator enraged Republicans and showed you can take a stand against a lawless president
DailyBeast, Asawin Suebsaeng and Erin Banco: Giuliani & Co. Plot New Biden Probes and Overseas Trip as Trump’s Ukraine Team Lies in Ruin http://bit.ly/2txIqw3
// Members of Trump’s Ukraine team ensnared in the scandal appear to have been the biggest casualties in the Giuliani-led crusade.
💙 🐣 RT @Zigmanfreud This interview between Mitt Romney and Chris Wallace is the greatest 15 minutes of TV Fox News has done since at least the start of the 2016 election. ¤ Romney is tremendous & heads must have EXPLODED all over #Cult45 America, especially the White House!
⋙ 💽 FoxNews: Sen. Mitt Romney tells Chris Wallace that President Trump should be removed from office http://bit.ly/2UvoKE8
// Feb. 05, 2020 – 15:00 – Exclusive: ‘Fox News Sunday’ anchor Chris Wallace interviews Republican Senator Mitt Romney about his decision to vote to convict President Trump on abuse of power article of impeachment.
🐣 RT @olgaNYC1211 According to @maddow Barr sent out a memo today stating that only he can approve or disapprove an investigation into the President and VP. Looks like the Trump regime has been given green light by his corrupt AG to commit whatever crimes he wants and our agencies cant do a thing
⭕ 5 Feb 2020 Trump Acquitted, but Romney!
USAToday, Reed Galen and John Weaver: Impeachment trial verdict reminds us why we fight to defeat Donald Trump and his enablers http://bit.ly/3bgPwWQ
// Trump has hijacked the GOP and remade it in his value-less image. We can’t end the cowardice of cultish Republicans, but we can end their careers.
WaPo Editorial: History will remember Mitt Romney http://wapo.st/2H1jTTu
TheWeek, Windsor Mann: Mitt Romney tells it like it is http://bit.ly/39eTtcW
🐣 RT @duty2warn “Slurred speech, slouching, hanging on to the podium, obsessive sniffing and sweating, twitches and jerks and seeming paralysis in his left arm were all evident as the president spoke State of the Union Address Raises Eyebrows Over Health, Mental Capacity
⋙ NYIndependent, Keith Girard: Trump State of the Union Address Raises Eyebrows Over Health, Mental Capacity http://bit.ly/2Sob3Er
🐣 RT @kasparov63 “Do what you must and so be it,” in the words of the Soviet dissidents. Romney’s vote and his words should shame McConnell and his colleagues, but you cannot shame the shameless.
⋙ 🐣 RT @sykescharlie “‘Do what is right; let the consequence follow.’ Mitt Romney has lived those words, and history will honor him for having done so.” Romney’s decision to vote to convict the president, writes @Peter_Wehner, presents a profile in courage:
⋙⋙ TheAtlantic, Peter Wehner: A Profile in Courage http://bit.ly/2GWg0PA
// Senator Mitt Romney’s decision to vote to convict President Donald Trump is an extraordinary act.
🐣 RT @NatashaBertrand DoD officials were trying to expedite delivery of Javelins to Ukraine 10 days before Trump’s call w/Zelensky, emails show, but then Trump ordered hold on aid. ¤ Adds new context to Trump’s “I’d like you to do us a favor, though,” when Z asked about Javelins.
⋙ CNN: Pentagon officials stunned by White House decision to block Ukraine aid, new emails show http://cnn.it/2SlzrGU
TPM, Josh Kovensky: President Petro Poroshenko, Zelensky’s predecessor, nearly announced Biden investigations in March ’19 http://bit.ly/2Sn6SbR
Newsweek, Doug Gordon: Republicans Have Just Green-Lit Open Season on Our Elections http://bit.ly/2UserRc
DailyBeast, Michael Tomasky: Today, Trump Is Acquitted. Tomorrow, He Starts Cheating on the 2020 Election. http://bit.ly/3bevQTu
// The precedent being established here beyond Trump. It’s harrowing. Absofuckinglutely harrowing.
DailyBeast, Erin Banco: Senate Republicans Admit Trump Did It but Vote to Acquit Him Anyway http://bit.ly/2SndqY7
// The outcome seemed pre-ordained. And yet, a late speech by Mitt Romney added an immense amount of drama and bipartisan support for conviction.
WaPo, Dana Milbank: Mitt Romney’s act of bravery changed nothing and changed everything http://wapo.st/2GYpMk7
WaPo, Philip Bump: 69 million Americans voted for senators who supported impeachment http://wapo.st/31tkpTo
● https://twitter.com/Auriandra/status/1225366729557188609?s=20/photo/1
● https://twitter.com/Auriandra/status/1225366653711548416?s=20/photo/1
// Or about 55 percent of the votes received by sitting senators
WaPo Editorial: It’s not over. Congress must continue to hold Trump accountable. http://wapo.st/31sHmpZ
💙💙 Vox, Matthew Yglesias and Andrew Prokop: The ultimate guide to the Donald Trump impeachment saga http://bit.ly/2SoXpkm
// Updated: Feb 5, 2020, 8:06pm EST,
Published: Nov 5, 2019, 8:06am EST
💙 NYT, Neal Katyal and Joshua Geltzer: This Will Come Back to Haunt Trump and His Enablers http://nyti.ms/2v7BLcA
// The president was acquitted by the Senate, but the American people are smarter.
🐣 RT @ABC Speaker Nancy Pelosi on Pres. Trump’s acquittal: “Because of the Republican Senate’s betrayal of the Constitution, the President remains an ongoing threat to American democracy.” http://abcn.ws/2SjDG5z https://twitter.com/ABC/status/1225321088873324545?s=20/photo/1
Politico: DOJ reviews allegation that Erik Prince misled Congress in Russia probe http://politi.co/2UtQlFH
// Rep. Adam Schiff says Prince impaired the House Intelligence Committee investigation of Russian links to the 2016 Trump campaign.
🐣 RT @TheLastWord .@Lawrence argues that Doug Jones took the hardest and most politically courageous vote in voting to convict Trump on both articles of impeachment because Jones jeopardized his own re-election to stand up for what he believed in. https://on.msnbc.com/2SmgSlL
💙 🐣 RT @PaulBegala I will never, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever “get over” Bush v. Gore. Ever. #WeWuzRobbed
⋙ 🐣 RT @RonaldKlain The Supreme Court should NEVER have decided the 2000 election on a 5-4 vote; far from settling ANYTHING, Bush v. Gore played a large part in launching our dysfunctional current politics.
⋙⋙ 🐣 I think of how differently history would have turned, from 9/11 to Iraq to climate change, tax cuts and the market collapse. Painful to think about.
RT @kylegriffin1 After Romney finished, Sen. Chris Murphy remained at his desk for minutes, composing himself. ¤ “Glad I was in the chamber to hear that,” he said, choking up. ¤ “It’s the hardest thing to do in the world — to stand up to your party, your donors, your friends — to do what is right.”
⋙ 🐣 RT @kylegriffin1 One of just four senators on hand for Romney’s speech, Sen. Brian Schatz walked off the Senate floor in tears. He remained speechless for several seconds, fighting back tears. ¤ “He literally restored my faith in the institution,” Schatz said.
🐣 RT @ATRupar ROMNEY: “It’s hard for me to imagine a more serious attack on the constitution & on a republic like ours than saying that a president would be able to enlist a foreign government to corrupt our elections to keep in power. That’s what happens in tinhorn autocracies.” 💽 [Fox] https://twitter.com/atrupar/status/1225138200185839617?s=20/photo/1
WaPo, Philip Bump: No senator ever voted to remove a president of his party from office. Until Mitt Romney. http://wapo.st/2SiDZxA
// In doing so, Romney torpedoed Trump’s assertion that his impeachment was wholly partisan
🐣 RT @colberrtthelateshow Thank you for taking your oath seriously Mitt Romney. #LSSC 💽 https://twitter.com/ShimonPro/status/1225281315882381312?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @kylegriffin1 Romney on the criticism he’ll receive for his vote: “Does anyone seriously believe that I would consent to these consequences, other than from an inescapable conviction that my oath before God demanded it of me?”
🐣 RT @ForTheRuleOfLaw This is what courage and integrity look like. 💽 https://twitter.com/ForTheRuleOfLaw/status/1225159507220860928?s=20/photo/1
// Romney speech
🐣 RT @Amy_Siskind 24 hours later the story headline stories are Pelosi ripping up papers and Romney voting to convict. You gotta love Trump is the subtext. #resist
🐣 RT @brianaklaas On the one hand, Trump called Mexicans rapists, pledged to ban Muslims from entering the country because of their religion, allegedly committed multiple felonies, praised people marching with Neo-Nazis & KKK members. But on the other hand, did you see Pelosi tear up some paper?
🐣 RT @jmclaughlinSAIS Mitt Romney’s most powerful phrase was “my own reasoned judgment”. I suspect that is what the Founders, many of them children of the Age of Reason, hoped for in placing power in senatorial hands. It is the foundation of political courage. Turns out brains and guts go together.
🐣 RT @SenDougJones In To Kill a Mockingbird, Atticus Finch said, “The one thing that doesn’t abide by majority rule is a person’s conscience.” ¤ All along, my conscience has been my guide. But voting my conscience does not require courage — it simply requires doing what I know is right. 💽 https://twitter.com/SenDougJones/status/1225182984149573633?s=20/photo/1
💽 Politico: Read the full text: Mitt Romney’s remarks on impeachment vote http://politi.co/2S5GlBf
// Plus video; Read Mitt Romney’s statement on how he’ll vote on the president’s impeachment.
🐣 RT @ktumulty He once recited for me, from memory, a letter from the man he admired most. It was about standing on principle, even if the political winds are against you. Please read:
⋙ WaPo, Karen Tumulty: What Mitt Romney learned from his father http://wapo.st/2Uv3kXY
🐣 RT @sykescharlie “One and God make a majority.” — Frederick Douglass
🐣🌎 RT @j2dumfounded Here’s why Russia annexed Crimea, stealing its military bases, ships, and most importantly, its extractive resources. https://twitter.com/j2dumfounded/status/1213307552621944832?s=20/photo/1
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 @SpeakerPelosi Our Founders put safeguards in the Constitution to protect against a rogue president. They never imagined that they would at the same time have a rogue leader in the Senate who would cowardly abandon his duty to uphold the Constitution. https://twitter.com/SpeakerPelosi/status/1225197369244909568?s=20/photo/1
NewYorker, Susan Glasser: The Wrenching Truth About Mitt Romney’s Impeachment-Trial Vote Is That It Doesn’t Matter http://bit.ly/31w1zLx
// 2/6/2020; Donald Trump’s impeachment-trial acquittal makes him the President he always wanted to be: inescapable and utterly unaccountable.
🐣 RT @jdawsey1 Romney didn’t tell the president or the White House or his niece, the RNC chair, that he was going to vote to convict. He knew storm would come and felt it was worth it. Some advisers are trying to convince POTUS to let it blow over. Will he? My latest:
⋙ WaPo: Mitt Romney knew the storm was coming over his impeachment vote. How long it lasts will be up to Trump. http://wapo.st/2GYrIJt
🐣📊RT @Politidope NEW @Reuters Poll: Trump now only has a 29% approval rating among Independents vs. 66% who disapprove. ¤ 49% of Independents now strongly disapprove http://bit.ly/2SksPZm https://twitter.com/Politidope/status/1225182279040995330?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @Lawrence The 48 Senators who found Trump GUILTY represent 18 million MORE people than the 52 who voted not guilty.
🐣 RT @NewYorker John F. Kennedy’s preface to “Profiles in Courage” provides some measure of the bravery of the speech that Mitt Romney delivered on the Senate floor on Wednesday.
⋙ NewYorker, Michael Luo: Mitt Romney’s Act of Political Courage in the Senate Impeachment Trial of Donald Trump http://bit.ly/2vWKe2N
🐣 RT @gtconway3d Next season should be cancelled, then.
⋙ 🐣 RT @jdawsey1 Nielsen says Trump’s ratings for the State of the Union were down 20% from last year and well below the numbers in 2017 and 2018.
⋙⋙ NYT: TV Ratings Declined for Trump’s State of the Union Speech http://nyti.ms/2OxLxvc
// About 37 million Americans tuned in on Tuesday, the smallest audience of President Trump’s tenure.
🐣 RT @allinwithchris Sen. Romney’s vote marked the first time in American history that a senator voted to convict a president of his own party in an impeachment trial. http://nbcnews.to/2GYP8ON #inners
⋙ NBCNews: Senate acquits Trump on both impeachment charges http://nbcnews.to/398fIBd
// Mitt Romney of Utah was the lone Republican to cross party lines to convict Trump on abuse of power.
WaPo: House managers: Trump won’t be vindicated. The Senate won’t be, either. http://wapo.st/2S43Ev3 By Adam Schiff, Jerrold Nadler, Zoe Lofgren, Hakeem Jeffries, Val Demings, Sylvia Garcia and Jason Crow
🐣 Yesterday was Nancy Pelosi’s day.
Today is Mitt Romney’s day.
NYT, Sherrod Brown: In Private, Republicans Admit They Acquitted Trump Out of Fear http://nyti.ms/2GYDLqa
// One journalist remarked to me, “How in the world can these senators walk around here upright when they have no backbone?”
🐣 RT @marty_lederman His vote is the least of it. WATCH THE STATEMENT. A model for the ages. (And, I might add, an exemplary demonstration of what it means to take one’s religious *and* civic obligations seriously.)
⋙ 🐣 RT @NewsHour WATCH: Sen. Mitt Romney announces that he will vote to convict President Trump. ¤ “The president is guilty of an appalling abuse of public trust,” the Utah Republican said in his floor speech. ¤ https://to.pbs.org/36WNisd #ImpeachmentPBS
💽 https://twitter.com/NewsHour/status/1225145066219503622?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @AriBerman This can’t be repeated enough. As Romney told @mckaycoppins: “Corrupting an election process in a democratic republic is about as abusive and egregious an act against the Constitution—and one’s oath—that I can imagine. It’s what autocrats do.” http://bit.ly/2Ovn5uA
💙 ⋙ TheAtlantic, McKay Coppins: How Mitt Romney Decided Trump Is Guilty http://bit.ly/2Ovn5uA
// Comparing the president’s behavior to that of an autocrat, the Republican senator explains to The Atlantic why he’s voting to convict him.
🐣 RT @NBCNews FULL SPEECH: Sen. Romney says he will vote in favor of the article of impeachment on abuse of power against President Trump. ¤ “With my vote, I will tell my children and their children that I did my duty to the best of my ability, believing that my country expected it of me.” 💽 https://twitter.com/NBCNews/status/1225140338467201025?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @samstein Romney not just voting to convict, he’s ripping Trump anew:
“An appalling abuse of public trust”
“A flagrant assault” on our elections
“Perhaps the most abusive and destructive violation of ones oath of office that I can imagine.”
⭕ Senate Impeachment Trial (Cspan)
January 20 – February 5, 2020
http://cs.pn/2sQ6sSP
Day I
Senate Impeachment Trial, Day 1 (1/20/2020) http://cs.pn/38uImMw
// The Senate impeachment trial of President Trump began with the swearing-in of Chief Justice John Roberts and Senators.
Day II
Senate Impeachment Trial, Day 2, Part 1 (1/21/2020) http://cs.pn/30M78Fp
// During this portion of day 2 of the Senate impeachment trial of President Trump, House impeachment managers and the president’s defense attorneys debated the proposed rules for the trial. Impeachment manager Representative Adam Schiff (D-CA) during his argument used digital slides, graphics, and video.
Senate Impeachment Trial, Day 2, Part 2 (1/21/2020) http://cs.pn/3azMhJP
// During this portion of day 2 of the Senate impeachment trial of President Trump, House impeachment managers and the president’s defense attorneys debated a proposed amendment from Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) that would subpoena State Department documents for the trial. House impeachment manager Representative Zoe Lofgren (D-CA) during her argument used digital slides and graphics as well as videos, including footage from the House impeachment inquiry hearings and of remarks made by the president during a speech that Article II of the Constitution means, “I have the right to do whatever I want as president.”
Senate Impeachment Trial, Day 2, Part 3 (1/21/2020) http://cs.pn/2NQ7Rju
// During this portion of day 2 of the Senate impeachment trial of President Trump, House impeachment managers and the president’s defense attorneys debated a proposed amendment from Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) that would subpoena White House documents for the trial. Impeachment managers Representative Val Demings (D-FL) and Jason Crow (D-CO) during their arguments used digital slides, graphics, and videos, including footage from House impeachment inquiry hearings.
Senate Impeachment Trial, Day 2, Part 4 (1/21/2020) http://cs.pn/2RGwtfD
// During this portion of day 2 of the impeachment trial of President Trump, House impeachment managers and the president’s defense attorneys debated a proposed amendment from Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) that would subpoena testimony from Acting White House Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney, White House aide Robert Blair, Office of Management and Budget official Michael Duffey, and Department of Defense documents and records for the trial. The impeachment managers during their arguments used digital slides, graphics, and videos, including footage from House impeachment inquiry hearings, remarks made by President Trump to reporters in London during a NATO Summit, and by Mr. Mulvaney during a news conference in the White House Briefing Room.
Senate Impeachment Trial, Day 2, Part 5 (1/21/2020) http://cs.pn/2RjapJe
// In this portion of day 2 of the Senate impeachment trial of President Trump, House impeachment managers and the president’s defense attorneys debated a proposed amendment from Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY that would subpoena testimony of former National Security Adviser John Bolton. Impeachment manager Representative Jerrold Nadler (D-NY) during his argument used digital slides, graphics, and videos, including footage from House impeachment inquiry hearings.
Day III
Senate Impeachment Trial, Day 3, Opening Arguments from Rep Adam Schiff (1/22/2020) http://cs.pn/2TS0Cvo
// In this portion of day 3 of the Senate impeachment trial of President Trump, Representative Adam Schiff (D-CA), the lead House impeachment manager, began opening arguments by explaining the history of why the framers included impeachment in the Constitution. He then laid out the specifics of the charges against President Trump. Throughout his presentation, Representative Schiff used digital slides, graphics, and videos, including footage from House impeachment inquiry hearings as well as clips of remarks by the president and from White House Acting Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney during a news conference.
Senate Impeachment Trial, Day 3, Opening Arguments from House Managers (1/22/2020) http://cs.pn/2sWbJZ6
// In this portion of day 3 of the Senate impeachment trial of President Trump, House impeachment managers Representatives Jerrold Nadler (D-NY), Sylvia Garcia (D-TX), Jason Crow (D-CO), Val Demings (D-FL), and Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) made opening arguments. Throughout their presentations, speakers used digital slides, graphics, and videos, including footage from House impeachment inquiry hearings and tweets and oral remarks made by President Trump. ¤ Representative Jeffries’ argument was briefly interrupted by a protester’s shouts from the upper gallery.
Senate Impeachment Trial, Day 3, Part 3 (1/22/2020) http://cs.pn/2RjhlWE
// The Senate impeachment trial of President Trump continued on abuse of power and obstruction of Congress
Day IV
Senate Impeachment Trial, Day 4, Part 1 (1/23/2020) http://cs.pn/2RlnAt0
// The Senate impeachment trial of President Trump continued on abuse of power and obstruction of Congress. Senators heard opening arguments from House impeachment managers the President’s defense attorneys.
Senate Impeachment Trial, Day 4, Part 2 (1/23/2020) http://cs.pn/36tPrM4
// The Senate impeachment trial of President Trump continued on abuse of power and obstruction of Congress. Senators heard opening arguments from House impeachment managers the President’s defense attorneys.
Senate Impeachment Trial, Day 4, Part 3 (1/23/2020) http://cs.pn/30UpKDc
// The Senate impeachment trial of President Trump continued on abuse of power and obstruction of Congress. Senators heard opening arguments from House impeachment managers the President’s defense attorneys.
⋙ ● Including Schiff’s closing
Senate Impeachment Trial, Day 4, Part 4 (1/23/2020) http://cs.pn/2tDw9qb
// The Senate impeachment trial of President Trump continued on abuse of power and obstruction of Congress. Senators heard opening arguments from House impeachment managers the President’s defense attorneys.
Day V
Senate Impeachment Trial, Day 5 (1/24/2020) http://cs.pn/2GotHX6
// The Senate impeachment trial of President Trump continued with opening arguments from House managers.
Day VI
Senate Impeachment Trial, Day 6, Part 1 (1/25/2020) http://cs.pn/37AjOBA
// The Senate impeachment trial of President Trump continued with opening arguments by the President’s defense team.
Day VII
Senate Impeachment Trial, Day 7 (1/27/2020) http://cs.pn/2t9lZNK
// The Senate impeachment trial of President Trump continues with opening arguments from the President’s defense team. Other legislative work is possible.
Day VIII
Senate Impeachment Trial, Day 8, Part 1 (1/28/2020) http://cs.pn/2u2d4hg
// The Senate impeachment trial of President Trump concluded with arguments from the president’s defense team
Senate Impeachment Trial, Day 8, Part 2 (1/28/2020) http://cs.pn/37C47dk
// White House Counsel Pat Cippillone gave the summation of President Trump’s defense in the Senate Impeachment Trial.
Day IX
Senate Impeachment Trial, Day 9, (1/29/2020) http://cs.pn/2RBsty9
// The Senate impeachment trial of President Trump continues as Senators ask House impeachment managers and the President’s defense team questions.
Day X
Senate Impeachment Trial, Day 10, Part 1 (1/30/2020) http://cs.pn/2UeNzUN
// The Senate impeachment trial of President Trump continued as Senators asked House impeachment managers and the President’s defense team questions.
Senate Impeachment Trial, Day 10, Part 2 (1/30/2020) http://cs.pn/2SbQafL
// The Senate impeachment trial of President Trump continued as Senators asked House impeachment managers and the President’s defense team questions.
Senate Impeachment Trial, Day 10, Part 3 (1/30/2020) http://cs.pn/2GFgzx5
// The Senate impeachment trial of President Trump continued as Senators asked House impeachment managers and the President’s defense team questions.
Senate Impeachment Trial, Day 10, Part 4 (1/30/2020) http://cs.pn/2GJfZhM
// The Senate impeachment trial of President Trump continued as Senators asked House impeachment managers and the President’s defense team questions.
Day XI
Senate Impeachment Trial, Day 11 (1/31/2020) http://cs.pn/2RK21T3
// The Senate votes 49-51 to reject any subpoenas for witnesses & documents. Sens. Collins & Romney voted “Yes” with all Democrats. The Senate resumes debate on Feb. 3 at 11am ET. Final votes on the articles of impeachment happen Feb. 5.
Day XII
Senate Impeachment Trial, Day 12 (2/3/2020) http://cs.pn/2SeKwJz
// The Senate impeachment trial of President Trump continues with closing arguments.
Senate Impeachment Trial, Adam Schiff Closing (2/3/2020) http://cs.pn/37Y6x5Z
// Lead House Manager Adam Schiff Wraps Up Closing Arguments; 26min
Lead House manager Adam Schiff wraps up closing arguments in the impeachment trial of President Donald Trump and urges the Senate to convict and remove him from office. Representative Schiff asks senators if the president can be trusted to do the right thing and he warns that those who vote to acquit the president will stand on the wrong side of history
Day XIII
Senator Romney Says President Trump is “Guilty of Appalling Abuse of Public Trust” (2/3/2020) http://cs.pn/395B1TQ
// 8.36mins; Utah Republican Senator Mitt Romney announces that he will break with his party and vote to convict President Trump on the first article of impeachment–abuse of power. He says “the president is guilty of an appalling abuse of public trust” and calls his action a “flagrant assault on.our…fundamental values.” Senator Romney also casts doubt on the White House counsel’s defense that the president was concerned with corruption in Ukraine. “There’s no question in my mind, that were their names not Biden, the president would never have done what he did,” Romney says of the effort to get Ukraine to investigate his political rival.
Senate Impeachment Trial Vote (2/5/2020) http://cs.pn/2UvRBbs
// The Senate voted to acquit President Trump on both articles of impeachment against him: abuse of power and obstruction of Congress. All 53 Republicans voted to acquit him on obstruction of Congress, and all 47 Democrats voted “guilty.” For obstruction of justice the vote was 48-52, with Senator Mitt Romney (R-UT) the lone Republican to vote “guilty” with all Democrats.
DailyBeast, Rick Wilson: Trump’s Speech Was a Bataan Death March of Bullsh*t http://bit.ly/31xFBYk
// And it was a wakeup call for Democrats, who have acted as if 2016 was a fluke and Trump’s personal sh*tshow, corruption, and idiocy all but ensure an easy win in November.
DailyBeast, Rick Wilson: Trump’s Speech Was a Bataan Death March of Bullsh*t http://bit.ly/31xFBYk ● Text Block: https://twitter.com/Auriandra/status/1225740822294999041?s=20/photo/1
// And it was a wakeup call for Democrats, who have acted as if 2016 was a fluke and Trump’s personal sh*tshow, corruption, and idiocy all but ensure an easy win in November.
Trump knew this speech had a utility for his campaign, and that it is framed against the impeachment acquittal vote on Wednesday. He knows that soon—very soon—he’ll enjoy the fruits of Mitch McConnell’s labor. He knows that after he is acquitted in the Senate there is no power in American government that will constrain him again. He knows he is about to hold executive power at a level no president before him could have imagined. That knowledge was enough to have him read off the teleprompter for one night.
It wasn’t the speech that Trump wanted to give, which we’ll hear soon enough.
“The state of the union is pure, weapons-grade, uncut fucking chaos, and I am both unhinged and unbound from any consequence, ever. All the pretty words my speechwriters worked so hard on are a thin veneer over the seething mass of coming horrors. I have gambled our economy, compromised our security, and shredded our dignity, and I’ll do it again. My message to the American people: bend the knee. To my enemies: vengeance is coming.”
⭕ 4 Feb 2020
🐣 RT @BillKristol I emailed @WalshFreedom this poem, a favorite of mine. But it’s not quite right; one doesn’t know the effect of a losing, even doomed, effort, on others who, sooner or later, may pick up the torch for a decent conservatism or a GOP worth defending.
⋙⋙ PoetryFoundation: http://bit.ly/2S4asZz
To a Friend Whose Work Has Come to Nothing
BY WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS
Now all the truth is out,
Be secret and take defeat
From any brazen throat,
For how can you compete,
Being honor bred, with one
Who were it proved he lies
Were neither shamed in his own
Nor in his neighbors’ eyes;
Bred to a harder thing
Than Triumph, turn away
And like a laughing string
Whereon mad fingers play
Amid a place of stone,
Be secret and exult,
Because of all things known
That is most difficult.
⋙ 🐣 RT @BillKristol These lines seemed especially resonant:
“Now all the truth is out,
Be secret and take defeat
From any brazen throat,
For how can you compete,
Being honor bred, with one
Who were it proved he lies
Were neither shamed in his own
Nor in his neighbors’ eyes…”
🐣 RT @maddow
3-part mini thread:
it’s an iowa thing, not just an iowa dems thing.
the 2012 gop iowa caucuses were “won” by romney.
& then a few days later they were “won” by santorum.
& then a few months later they were “won” by ron paul
@Morning_Joe
three-part mini thread:
it’s an iowa thing, not just an iowa dems thing.
the 2012 gop iowa caucuses were “won” by romney.
and then a few days later they were “won” by santorum.
and then a few months later they were “won” by ron paul….https://t.co/0UpN0I97AD
— Rachel Maddow MSNBC (@maddow) February 4, 2020
// 1/4/2020
✅ NBCNews: State of the Union fact check: What’s true and what’s false in Trump’s address http://nbcnews.to/2v7l292
// Here’s what the president got right, wrong and in between in his third such address to Congress.
✅ HuffPo: FactCheck: Here Are The Biggest Whoppers From Trump’s 2020 State Of The Union http://bit.ly/2tuVK4l
// The president inflated details and straight-up misled Americans about his policies during his address to Congress.
💙 ✅ PolitiFact: Scorecard: Donald Trump (All Fact-checks) http://bit.ly/2GU1Cai 4% True, 10% Partly True, 14% Mostly True; Mostly False 20%, False 34%, Pants-on-Fire 🔥 14% ● https://twitter.com/Auriandra/status/1224942144810627073?s=20/photo/1
✅ NYT: Fact-Checking Trump’s 2020 State of the Union Address http://nyti.ms/36ZuGru
// Trump brings a record of erroneous statements into his address; [I omitted two claims by respondent Gov Whitmer, rated “exaggerated” and “lacks context”]
Trump’s Claims:
5 True
4 Mostly true
2 Partly true
– – – – – – – – – – –
3 Exaggerated
6 Lacks context
8 Misleading
7 False
✅ WaPo FactChecker: Fact-checking President Trump’s 2020 State of the Union address http://wapo.st/399Z18y Thirty-one dubious claims 🍄🍄🍄
WaPo, Ashley Parker: With chants, walkouts and a ripped-up speech, bitter partisanship dominates Trump’s State of the Union http://wapo.st/3bhz0pN //➔ does standing up for the truth vs lies constitute partisanship?
🐣 RT @ SpeakerPelosi The manifesto of mistruths presented in page after page of the address tonight should be a call to action for everyone who expects truth from the President and policies worthy of his office and the American people. #SOTU
⋙ SpeakerOfTheHouse: Pelosi Statement on State of the Union Address http://bit.ly/3802lCZ ● https://twitter.com/Auriandra/status/1224924812109328385?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @mkraju Leaving the Capitol shortly before midnight, Pelosi tells us why she tore up Trump’s speech: “Because it was a manifesto of mistruths.” 💽 https://twitter.com/mkraju/status/1224921291901296641?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @RepAdamSchiff Trump claims he will protect those with preexisting conditions, while trying to take away their coverage. ¤ He says he is taking on the drug companies, but does nothing to lower Rx costs. ¤ There is a word for those who say one thing and do another. ¤ Today, that word is President.
🐣 RT @Eleven_Films BREAKING: Midnight In Washington #ImpeachmentTrial Also view here: YouTube : https://youtu.be/I5D3iT4BhbQ
Facebook: https://facebook.com/elevenfilms/
⇈ ⇊
💙💙 🐣 RT @Eleven_Films BREAKING: Remember America? We do. #ImpeachmentDay 💽 https://twitter.com/Eleven_Films/status/1224906560616316930?s=20/photo/1
WaPo, Aaron Blake: Takeaways from Trump’s State of the Union http://wapo.st/2ShSIsG
1) Bad blood spills over — repeatedly
2) Trump inflates his economic record — repeatedly
3) Trump runs against … Obama?
4) The Rush Limbaugh moment
[5) Pelosi rips up Trump’s speech]
🔄✅ TPM: We’re Tracking The Acquittal Excuses GOP Senators Toss At The Wall Ahead Of Vote http://bit.ly/38155zQ
NYT, Diana Preston: We’re Still Living in Stalin’s World http://nyti.ms/2v17r3k Ms. Preston is the author of “Eight Days at Yalta: How Churchill, Roosevelt, and Stalin Shaped the Post-War World.”
// At the Yalta Conference 75 years ago, the Soviet leader got everything he wanted — and shaped global politics for decades.
🐣 RT @Leshenkos This whole story with Parnas proves once again: If the authorities have the political will to fight corruption, it can be done quickly and efficiently. This American principle should be an example for Ukraine to follow.
⋙ KyivPost, Sergeii Leshenko (1/31): Ukraine should import US corruption-fighting methods http://bit.ly/381UaGm
// 1/31/2019
🐣 RT @just_security With @KenDilanianNBC reporting: “There is still no agreement about whether intelligence officials will testify in public for worldwide threats hearings, officials tell me.” ¤ @jgeltzer and @rgoodlaw wrote why the assessment is so important to the public:
⋙ JustSecurity: Three Things to Look For in the 2020 “Worldwide Threat Assessment” from the U.S. Intelligence Community http://bit.ly/2OseFE5
NYT, K Biswas: How the Far Right Became Europe’s New Normal http://nyti.ms/2S01KeI
// It was a scandal when a far-right party entered government two decades ago. Now it’s just routine. What happened?
WaPo: ‘The guardrails are gone’: Democrats brace for emboldened Trump at State of the Union http://wapo.st/2GSjGSb
WaPo, Robert Samuelson: The strong case for censuring Trump http://wapo.st/2vLq0ss
WaPo, Greg Sargent: Trump is about to get a lot more dangerous. Here’s what’s coming. http://wapo.st/2GT2j3J
🐣 RT @matthewamiller So what should Democrats do now that impeachment is over? I argue in @PostOpinions today that they should step on the gas and keep investigating the Trump admin as aggressively as they did in the Ukraine scandal. On every front.
⋙ WaPo: Trump may be acquitted, but House Democrats proved their power to check him http://wapo.st/2v6M1Bz
// They went from toothless to aggressive on oversight. The next step is to bombard the administration with subpoenas.
NYT Mag, David Enrich: The Money Behind Trump’s Money http://nyti.ms/2Sm2CJE
// The inside story of the president and Deutsche Bank, his lender of last resort.
⋙ NYT, David Enrich (May): Deutsche Bank Staff Saw Suspicious Activity in Trump and Kushner Accounts http://nyti.ms/2w9Kx71
// 5/19/2019
DailyBeast, Matt Lewis: Republicans Have One Last Chance to Avoid Looking Like Total Patsies http://bit.ly/2u8hfsg
// It’s obvious. If there are no consequences to what President Trump did, he’s going to turn right around and start doing it again.
⭕ 3 Feb 2020 Closing Arguments
WaPo: Finland’s Prime Minister Sanna Marin says the American Dream is best achieved in Nordic countries http://wapo.st/2Otd2Gd
// Here’s a look at how the United States compares to Finland on several economic and well-being indicators.
DailyBeast, Sam Brodey: Senate Republicans Salivating Over Chance to Investigate Joe Biden http://bit.ly/39aa01N
// With impeachment all but defeated, the president’s base is now eager to turn the tables on Democrats and investigate Joe and Hunter Biden’s conduct on Ukraine.
JustSecurity, Ryan Goodman: The Most Serious Obstruction of All: The Vote to Block Witnesses and the Public’s Right to Know http://bit.ly/2vNtR8p
WaPo, Editorial: How the Senate can still hold Trump accountable http://wapo.st/2tw5HyC Republicans “ought to be tested on whether they will stand behind their conclusion that the president’s behavior was wrong. Democrats should put forward a censure resolution … “
WaPo, Gerson: To cheer Trump is to submit to him http://wapo.st/2RW0YiT “Trump uses language as an instrument of power. To him, epistemology is ideology. A willingness to accept his claims — and to view all competing information as fake & false — is what defines his movement.”
NYT: Pelosi Says Democrats Have ‘Pulled Back a Veil’ on Trump’s ‘Unacceptable’ Behavior http://nyti.ms/2vOyZcx
// With the president on the verge of acquittal in the Senate, Speaker Nancy Pelosi made the case that Democrats had won by losing. “He has been impeached forever,” she said in an interview.
WaPo, Max Boot: Jared Kushner’s incompetence is surpassed only by his arrogance http://wapo.st/31pBOMS
⋙ 🐣 As F Scott Fitzgerald wrote: “They were careless people, Tom and Daisy – they smashed up things and creatures and then retreated back into their money or their vast carelessness or whatever it was that kept them together, and let other people clean up the mess they had made.”
He is the living embodiment of football coach Barry Switzer’s scathing quip: “Some people are born on third base and go through life thinking they hit a triple.”
His “portfolio … , as Time notes in a recent profile, includes ‘brokering peace in the Middle East, building a border wall, reforming the criminal-justice system, pursuing diplomacy with China and Mexico, and creating an ‘Office of American Innovation’ dedicated to revamping how the government works.’ Oh, and he’s also ‘in charge of the President’s 2020 re-election campaign, overseeing fundraising, strategy and advertising’.” …
So now Kushner can move on to his next excellent adventure while dodging responsibility for his reckless actions and leaving others to deal with the wreckage he leaves behind.
🐣 RT @Lawrence The best political orators of the 21st century are @BarackObama & @RepAdamSchiff
⋙ 🐣 RT @RepAdamSchiff History will not be kind to Donald Trump. ¤ Because truth matters. Right matters. And decency matters. ¤ It may be midnight in Washington, but the sun will rise again. ¤ I put my faith in the optimism of our Founders. ¤ You should too. 💽 https://twitter.com/Lawrence/status/1224454982759374854?s=20/photo/1
// 6 mins
Cspan: Senate Impeachment Trial, Adam Schiff Closing (2/3/2020) http://cs.pn/37Y6x5Z
// Lead House Manager Adam Schiff Wraps Up Closing Arguments; 26min
Lead House manager Adam Schiff wraps up closing arguments in the impeachment trial of President Donald Trump and urges the Senate to convict and remove him from office. Representative Schiff asks senators if the president can be trusted to do the right thing and he warns that those who vote to acquit the president will stand on the wrong side of history
🐣 RT @SkinnerPm Three pics to sum up the Impeachment Trial of MeanCat, in which his lap dogs—SweetDog, the Baked Potato, & Sweet Potato Pie Pup—acquitted him in a sham without witnesses. MeanCat is now massively empowered by precedent & lack of oversight to act much much much worse. He rules us. https://twitter.com/SkinnerPm/status/1224504735987912704?s=20/photo/1-3
NYT, Paul Krugman: How Zombies Ate the G.O.P.’s Soul http://nyti.ms/31kGTGi
// Everyone with principles has left the party.
🐣 RT @justinamash Although I had hoped a few more Republicans in Congress would stand on principle, I had always expected most would ignore impeachable conduct even if it stared them in the face. Most members of Congress are quick to abandon their stated principles when power is at stake.
🐣 RT @RCdeWinter
the chaos of everything
is erasing me
small details fall away daily
in a shower of monochrome particulate
soon i’ll be nothing but a vaguely rendered outline
a ghost
walking through the skeleton of what was once familiar
now seeded with landmines and salt
~ RC deWinter
🧵 RT @jennycohn1 The GOP criticizes Joe Biden for opposing corrupt former Ukrainian prosecutor Viktor Shokin, who refused to prosecute allies of former president Viktor Yanukovych. Yanukovych was installed by Manafort & Deripaska & then convicted of treason for abetting Russia’s war on Ukraine 1/ 📌 https://twitter.com/jennycohn1/status/1224501761362104320?s=20
🐣 RT @michaelschweitz One man. Begging for someone to care enough. To stand up against what is wrong. To wake up. To search their souls and find one shred of decency to do the right thing. Begging! And they will not hear. 💽 https://twitter.com/michaelschweitz/status/1224500401879293953?s=20/photo/1
// Adam Schiff
🐣 RT @tribelaw So it begins. What else did you expect? And an acquitted Trump will be an even more vindictive Trump. Here it comes!
🐣 RT @glennkirschner2 Congratulations, Republicans. By refusing to hold Trump accountable for his crimes you’re enabling a lawless, out-of-control, petty, vindictive man who intends to use DOJ to conduct politically motivated prosecutions of his enemies. You’re doing nothing but feeding the monster.
⋙ 🐣 RT @gabrielsherman Trump is compiling a post-impeachment enemies list and Bolton is at the top of it. Trump had told people he wants Bolton criminally prosecuted. My latest:
⋙⋙ VanityFair, Gabriel Sherman: “It’s Payback Time”: With Acquittal Certain, Trump Plots Revenge on Bolton, Impeachment Enemies http://bit.ly/2vOVEWb
// Trump, says a source, wants Bolton to be criminally investigated for possibly mishandling classified information. Romney, Schiff, and Nadler are also in West Wing crosshairs.
🐣 RT @JoyceWhiteVance We all know how history works. GOP Senators who give this president a pass will have earned the disdain their grandchildren will treat them with. They will not be respected. History will teach they sacrificed the country’s interests for a party & POTUS that didn’t deserve them.
💙 Lawfare, Benjamin Wittes: The Incomprehensibly Weak Case for Acquittal Without Witnesses http://bit.ly/37Xc78H
💙 🐣 RT @K_JeanPierre Another brilliant moment from @RepAdamSchiff — WATCH. 💽 https://twitter.com/K_JeanPierre/status/1224432106605924352?s=20/photo/1
// 6 mins
WaPo, Brian Klaas: Senate Republicans just paved the road to American authoritarianism http://wapo.st/2Sg5Lec
🐣 RT @HouseIntel “What has changed? The short answer is: we have changed… For reasons as varied as the stars, the members of this body and ours are now far more accepting of the most serious misconduct of a president as long as it is a president of ones own party.” – @RepAdamSchiff 💽 https://twitter.com/HouseIntel/status/1224426959565922312?s=20/photo/1
WaPo, Jennifer Rubin: In case you had any doubt, impeachment will plague Senate Republicans http://wapo.st/2RRtlyS
🧵 RT @SethAbramson So @RepAdamSchiff now knows he’s giving a closing argument in a fake trial. The jurors and defense attorneys are both fake (as many are defense witnesses) and the judge is an unstuffed scarecrow. I’d give a closing today that brings in *all* the evidence and allegations. Why not? 📌 https://twitter.com/SethAbramson/status/1224356259366887425?s=20
CNN, Charlie Dent and Joe Lockhart: The penalty Donald Trump should get for Ukraine scandal if the Senate acquits http://cnn.it/3ba5cLk
// Censure
TheAtlantic, David Frum: The Next Trump Crisis Is Already Here http://bit.ly/36QaecF
// Ukraine is by no means the only dirty secret being covered up.
DailyBeast, Nico Hines: Leak: Man Who Bankrolled Brexit Boasted of WikiLeaks Backchannel http://bit.ly/3b3PlxX
// Hacked Twitter messages raise legal questions over Cambridge Analytica, undeclared foreign lobbying, and links between Julian Assange and the Brexit and Trump campaign teams.
🐣 RT @BillKristol A fine piece by @Peter_Wehner. Because he’s a nicer person than I, Pete finds the spectacle of Republican politicians “beaten down and broken by Trump” “a poignant thing.” I too once found it somewhat poignant. I now find it simply contemptible.
⋙ TheAtlantic, Peter Wehner: The Downfall of the Republican Party http://bit.ly/2RUjecH
// To see men and women who had a positive vision beaten down and broken by Trump is a poignant thing.
CNN: A week like no other looms in American politics http://cnn.it/37SWe3p
⭕ 2 Feb 2020
NYT, David Leonhardt: The Simple Reason Trump Does What He Does http://nyti.ms/2UiZkth
// Because he can.
WaPo, EJ Dionne: The Trump 51 and their challenge to Democrats — and democracy http://wapo.st/2OmGY6R
🐣 RT @kathrynw5
Sunday night: Super Bowl
Monday: Senate trial
Monday night: Iowa caucuses
Tuesday: Senate trial
Tuesday night: State of the Union
Wednesday afternoon: Senate conviction/acquittal vote
Friday night: Another Democratic debate
🐣 RT @RepAdamSchiff We proved our case. Republican Senators now admit Trump is guilty as charged. ¤ Still, they blocked witnesses from testifying, and deprived the American people of a full accounting of Trump’s misconduct. ¤ Senators will now render judgement – and be held accountable for it. 💽 [FaceTheNation] https://twitter.com/RepAdamSchiff/status/1224071900000915459?s=20/photo/1
🧵 RT @ZevShalev I know it’s can be depressing but sometimes at moments like this, when the chips are down, you can hear yourself with the greatest clarity. @NarativLive 📌 https://twitter.com/ZevShalev/status/1224155265118998528?s=20
⋙ 🐣 RT @ZevShalev 2. We are all tired. Maybe too tired to realize we have prevailed. It’s not the outcome we wanted but we all sat in a chamber and stared down our problem. We did it calmly and with a grudging understanding of the challenge before us. @NarativLive [ … ]
DailyBeast, Justin Baragona: Adam Schiff Blasts Republican Senators for Scolding Trump’s Ukraine Scheme While Letting Him Slide http://bit.ly/37O48ea
// “To call solicitation, coercion, blackmail of a foreign power…merely inappropriate, doesn’t begin to do justice to the gravity of this president’s misconduct,” Schiff said.
WaPo Editorial: Ukraine wouldn’t do Trump’s dirty work. So GOP senators are doing it instead. http://wapo.st/2UfuL81
WaPo: Senate Republicans defend decision to bar new evidence as Trump acquittal vote nears http://wapo.st/2GMpa0K
🐣 RT @CREWcrew After days of arguments and questioning in President Donald Trump’s impeachment trial, many Republican senators have come to the same conclusion: The president did it, and they don’t care.
⋙ BuzzfeedNews (1/31): Republicans Now Say Trump Did What He Was Accused Of — They Just Don’t Care http://bit.ly/38YxM0v
// “Just because actions meet a standard of impeachment does not mean it is in the best interest of the country to remove a President from office.”
🐣 RT @BillKristol “Laws are only as strong as the character of the people charged with enforcing them. They cannot be applied selectively, or you find yourself in the cynical world encapsulated in the words of Benavides, ‘For my friends everything, for my enemies the law.’”
🐣 RT @JuliaDavisNews “Every time I hear someone say, “But Trump would never…” I recall all the times we were told by tut-tutting Western pundits that Putin would never jail his opposition, would never return to the presidency, would never invade Ukraine…He would & he did.“
⋙ 🐣 RT @JuliaDavisNews “The party of Lincoln, Eisenhower, and Reagan is now slavishly loyal to a corrupt reality-TV host whose only demonstrable allegiances are to his own image and Vladimir Putin.” By @Kasparov63 ⇊
⋙⋙ 💙 NYRB (1/28), Gary Kasparov: A Popular Front to Stop Trump http://bit.ly/2GSwfNj
🐣 RT @glennkirschner2 Many have asked if the House managers can move for a mistrial. Here are my quick thoughts: I wish Schiff WOULD make a motion for a mistrial based on, among other things, the revelation of Cipollone’s grossly unethical conduct/conflicts of interest. I wouldn’t be deterred that…
⋙ 🐣 RT @glennkirschner2 disclosed by John Bolton). Cipollone perpetrated a unimaginable fraud on the Senate and the American people and the Dems should not go quietly into that dark acquittal. Move for a mistrial and see what the Chief Justice says.
🐣 RT @MSNBC If White House counsel Pat Cipollone, who acted on Pres. Trump’s impeachment defense team, was in fact involved in the Ukraine pressure scheme, “this is big-ticket unethical conduct, at a minimum,” says fmr. federal prosecutor Glenn Kirschner. http://on.msnbc.com/31d97ma
⋙ 💽 MSNBC, LastWord: Fmr. federal prosecutor: W.H. counsel participated in ‘big ticket unethical conduct’ http://on.msnbc.com/31d97ma
// Revelations from the NYT show that White House counsel Pat Cipollone was a fact witness in the activity that is at the center of Trump’s impeachment trial. Since Cipollone is defending Trump in the trial, Glenn Kirschner says the state bar could open an investigation, decide if there was wrongdoing and if so, sanction or disbar Cipollone. Lawrence also discusses with Ron Klain, Maya Wiley, Rick Stengel, and Chuck Rosenberg.
WaPo, Philip Rucker: ‘A massive historical story’: Trump’s impending acquittal could have profound ramifications for future presidents http://wapo.st/2OmLdPV
DailyBeast, Clive Irving: The Man Who Enabled the Holocaust http://bit.ly/2OiZJIq “80 million people were not persuaded to follow Hitler because … he seemed evil, but because he seemed extraordinarily good.” – Albert Speer
⭕ 1 Feb 2020
NYDailyNews, Gersh Kuntzman: Basic ‘lizard brain’ psychology can explain the rise of Donald Trump http://bit.ly/2SwPzFy Trump knows how to appeal to the primitive fear center (the amygdala) in our brains
WaPo, Paul Kane: Senate to emerge from impeachment trial guilty of extreme partisanship http://wapo.st/2UhChzd
🐣 RT @csdickey This is the same epiphany slaveowners of the South had in the 1850s. Demography had turned against them. Their power and wealth were on the line. They started a war to preserve their “rights” and damn near destroyed the United States. The Trumpsters are their spiritual heirs.
⋙ 🐣 RT @davidrothkopf America is changing. The GOP’s desperation and willingness to use any tactics at all to survive are based on their recognition that demography and an urbanizing, better educated America absolutely dooms them as a party. It may take a while. But there is some comfort in that.
DailyBeast, Michael Tomasky: Senators Vote Away Their Power to Save Trump From Himself http://bit.ly/2SaqSOP
// Here’s what I saw from the press gallery, on a day that will live in infamy.
DailyBeast, Sophia Nelson: Here’s Why I Left the GOP http://bit.ly/37PJnir
// The Republican party that drew me in as a young black woman is gone. This new Republican Party is beholden to a lawless, immoral, godless man.
🧵 RT @SethAbramson Trump committed Bribery—the facts confirm it, and many of us told Democrats to write the articles of impeachment that way. They didn’t—which, ironically, means they still can. Democrats should continue their investigation for another two months and then impeach Trump for Bribery. 📌 https://twitter.com/SethAbramson/status/1223645926671167488?s=20
🐣 RT @waltshaub Law & Crime has a link to the motion DOJ filed last night AFTER Senate Republicans sealed the cover- up by voting not to subpoena witnesses and documents. In the filing, DOJ admits OMB has records directly bearing on Trump’s rationale for holding up aid.
⋙⋙ Law&Crime: OMB Withholding 24 Emails Directly Related to ‘Presidential Decision-Making’ on Ukraine Military Aid http://bit.ly/2Ommmvw
⋙ 🐣 RT @waltshaub “the documents in this category are emails that reflect communications by either the President, the Vice President, or the President’s immediate advisors regarding Presidential decision-making about the scope, duration, and purpose of the hold on military assistance to Ukraine”
WaPo, Max Boot: The GOP doesn’t deserve to survive this debacle http://wapo.st/37QW78o
🐣 RT @BillKristol “When history gets around to rendering the ultimate verdict on the Trump impeachment, Trump’s defense will be remembered as…a curiosity, entirely lacking in any precedential value. Or perhaps even as a negative precedent. Otherwise we’re in big trouble.”
⋙ TheBulwark, Philip Rotner: The GOP’s Sham “No Witnesses” Arguments—Explained http://bit.ly/3aZwOmF
// Or rather, debunked.
💙 DailyBeast, David Rothkopf: The Worst Day for Democracy Since the Civil War http://bit.ly/2UjHfeW
// The Republican party is escalating its war on democracy as it aims to rule America, or ruin it.
🧵 RT @carolecadwalla Brexit was a battle of stories. The story of who we are as a country & who we want to be. And if we want to live in a country where truth & justice matter, we have to not just say why truth & justice matter but make people feel it. We have to tell this story better 4/ 📌 https://twitter.com/carolecadwalla/status/1223757467177377792?s=20
🐣 RT @duty2warn When the Trump era comes to a close and people finish licking their wounds and reflect back at the impeachment trial specifically, they’ll talk of complicity, violation of oaths, and even treason. But the overriding disaster will have resulted from the normalization of a madman.
🧵 RT @arapaho145 1/ #Cult45 vs. #Corruption
⋙ 🐣 RT @ 2/ ~33:00 minute mark: @ProfGaryDarden:”There was an article once written saying that many Trump supporters have a different definition of corruption. Corruption to them is not classic wheeling & dealing, withholding money, promising money… ¤ Jan 28 2020: [ … ]
🐣 RT @IgnatusPost The senators who see Trump’s offenses but decide to take a pass—like Rubio and Alexander—must imagine Trump world will write the history books and spare them future shame. I wish they had read JFK’s “Profiles In Courage” about brave senators who took risks to do the right thing.
🐣 RT @RCdeWinter
dazed and crazed
as the social compact crumbles
i begin to think i’ve lived too long
all i thought incorruptible
tarnished
no
smashed
by villainy
leaves me standing
unafraid but alone
without a hand to hold
boxed in by unbridgeable walls
in an unrecognizable world
~RC deWinter
🐣 RT @MSNBC “He’s functionally a monarch. He’s functionally the most politically powerful president in American history.” ¤ — Historian Jon Meacham on President Trump following the Senate’s vote to not have witnesses in the impeachment trial.
⋙ 💽 MSNBC: Jon Meacham: Trump’s the most politically powerful president in history http://on.msnbc.com/3b1HLUt
// Presidential historian and biographer Jon Meacham explains why he thinks Trump is the most politically powerful president in American history.
CNN: Trump administration reveals it’s blocking dozens of emails about Ukraine aid freeze, including President’s role http://cnn.it/2uWfOgg
🐣 RT @tribelaw “Rarely, if ever, has a political blood oath—in this case, a pledge to acquit a crooked President regardless of the evidence against him, and without even bothering to call any witnesses—rebounded so horribly, publicly, and spectacularly.”
⋙ NewYorker, John Cassidy (1/29): John Bolton’s Book Is Making Fools of Trump’s Republican Enablers http://bit.ly/36OgWQg
🐣 RT @MSNBC If White House counsel Pat Cipollone, who acted on Pres. Trump’s impeachment defense team, was in fact involved in the Ukraine pressure scheme, “this is big-ticket unethical conduct, at a minimum,” says fmr. federal prosecutor Glenn Kirschner.
⋙ 💽 MSNBC: Fmr. federal prosecutor: W.H. counsel participated in ‘big ticket unethical conduct’ http://on.msnbc.com/31d97ma
// Revelations from the NYT show that White House counsel Pat Cipollone was a fact witness in the activity that is at the center of Trump’s impeachment trial. Since Cipollone is defending Trump in the trial, Glenn Kirschner says the state bar could open an investigation, decide if there was wrongdoing and if so, sanction or disbar Cipollone. Lawrence also discusses with Ron Klain, Maya Wiley, Rick Stengel, and Chuck Rosenberg.
⭕ 31 Jan 2020
🐣 My heart is moved by all I cannot save:
so much has been destroyed… ¤
…I have to cast my lot w those /
who, age after age, perversely /
w no extraordinary power /
reconstitute the world ¤
— Adrienne Rich
CommonDreams, Eoin Higgins: ‘A Crisis for Democracy’: Senate Votes Against Hearing From Witnesses http://bit.ly/37PFTMT
// “Trump’s defenders are saying that our Constitution does not apply to the powerful few.”
Slate, Jeremy Stahl: Which Republicans Had the Worst Excuses for Ending the Impeachment Trial With No Witnesses? http://bit.ly/3b64yhV
WaPo, Josh Dawsey: Republicans agree it was no ‘perfect call’ — but will vote to acquit Trump anyway http://wapo.st/2RSaQdL
TheGuardian, Richard Wolffe: Republicans march over the impeachment cliff – taking their self-respect with them http://bit.ly/2OkrsbF
// How can Republicans pretend to the world that their vision of America – where a president can happily use military aid to coerce a foreign government to smear his political rival in an election – is the model for democracy?
🐣 RT @SpeakerPelosi President Trump was impeached for abuse of power and obstruction of Congress. By refusing to call witnesses and compel documents, Senate Republicans have chosen to become accomplices in his cover-up. #DefendOurDemocracy
⋙ Speaker.gov: Press Release: Pelosi Statement on Senate Vote to Block Witnesses and Documents http://bit.ly/2OhuEEU
WaPo, Greg Sargent: Lamar Alexander’s craven surrender to Trump leaves our country exposed http://wapo.st/2GFedye
RT @tburages This entire piece is terrifying. ¤ There is no more “establishment” Republican Party. It’s the party of Trumpism and members are expected to demonstrate true allegiance to its centerpiece. The more devout the devotion, the more donations in the coffers.
⋙ WaPo: ‘The center of the orbit’: Endangered Republicans go all-in on Trump http://wapo.st/37RhshW
🐣 RT @chrislhayes The Murkowski vote is largely, I think, about maintaining the myth of Roberts’ neutrality. Him casting a deciding vote would have been an optics disaster, and they want to keep him clean so he can continue to deliver for them.
🐣 RT @fordm In a 51-49 vote, the Senate decides that nothing matters.
⋙ NewRepublic, Matt Ford: The Senate Embraces Nihilism http://bit.ly/2UeVh1d
// Republican lawmakers, blanching at the prospect of removing Trump from power, remove themselves instead.
🐣 RT @pbump The Bolton revelation today was a reminder that the vote to reject new testimony in the impeachment trial will be viewed in the context of all of the information that is certain to emerge in the upcoming days, months and years.
⋙ WaPo: In voting against impeachment testimony, Senate Republicans light a political fuse http://wapo.st/38V17sE
// The question is: How big will the explosion be?
🐣 RT @RepTomColeman Agree with John, it’s extra difficult to watch this happen when you personally know the senators who just undermined our democracy and shredded the Constitutional powers of congress. Something doesn’t smell right about the Senate proceeding. House must continue its investigation.
⋙ 🐣 RT @gwgop We knew it would be a sham show trial, of course. But to see Senators you’ve known for decades, helped and guided, actually turn their backs on the Constitution, against the wishes of the vast majority of Americans, for an ignorant Queens crime boss, was shocking. 1/2
⋙ 🐣 RT @gwgop Now we know what the Bernie Madoff salesmen felt like when learning of the collapse. It was all a lie. Rule of law? Character? National security? Constitution? None of it matters to them. Only power driven by cowardice, careerism and the cult. Burn it down.
🧵 RT @ChrisMurphyCT 1/ For tonight’s impeachment behind-the-scenes, something different: ¤ I want to tell you my theory about why Democrats and Republicans are on different planets during this trial. I want to tell you why we could only get 2 R votes today against a rigged trial. This is important. 📌 https://twitter.com/ChrisMurphyCT/status/1223427383388098560?s=20
🐣 RT @MysterySolvent Bill Maher made a political ad❣for the Democrats! Honestly it’s the best one I’ve seen so far. ¤ Democrats need to do more of this!! It will drive Trump bonkers! 💽 https://twitter.com/MysterySolvent/status/1223465552007651328?s=20/photo/1
💙 WaPo, James Comey: Trump won’t be removed. But we’ll be fine. http://wapo.st/3b5alVk “When I was a kid, the United States didn’t come apart. It won’t now.”
🐣 RT @SamanthaJPower 33 years of service to our country brought to an end by the Putin-enabling bully, @realDonaldTrump. Ambassador Yovanovitch will be missed, but by standing her ground, she helped bring Trump’s corruption to light. A final act of patriotism.
⋙ NYT: Diplomat at Center of Trump Impeachment Retires From State Department http://nyti.ms/37NGazQ
// On a July 25 telephone call with the president of Ukraine, President Trump described Ambassador Yovanovitch as “bad news” and said, ominously, “She’s going to go through some things.”
🧵 Teri_Kanefield (Thread) This isn’t the time to panic. It’s time to get busy. ¤ What happens in Nov. depends on what people do today. ¤ Nobody expected the GOP to convict and remove Trump. The goal was for the truth to come out. ¤ McConnell is a shrewd political operator, but Pelosi is shrewder. 📌 https://twitter.com/Teri_Kanefield/status/1223256857101258757?s=20
🐣 RT @rgoodlaw It was a mistrial
“McConnell, aided by White House liaisons, exercised a behind-the-scenes campaign in the chamber to keep his members from panicking and breaking en masse from Mr Trump. Mr McConnell’s office even advised the president’s legal team throughout the process” – WSJ
🧵 🐣 RT @DrGJackBrown 1/ THREAD: Body Language Analysis No. 4024-T: Chief Justice Roberts reacts to his reading of Senator Warren’s question (VIDEO, PHOTOS) • https://youtu.be/2uyY7i1WsWc #BodyLanguageExpert #BodyLanguage #ElizabethWarren #JohnRoberts #Nonverbal 📌 https://twitter.com/DrGJackBrown/status/1223439843084001280?s=20
WaPo, Ruth Marcus: When the impeachment trial ends, the Senate’s reputation will be hopelessly in tatters http://wapo.st/2thx67c
NYT, Carl Hulse: Once Skeptical, Senate Republicans Are All In on Trump http://nyti.ms/2S7PBn1
// In pressing toward their preordained vote of acquittal, Senate Republicans made it clear they see their fortunes and futures intertwined with the president’s.
DailyBeast, David Lurie: Republicans Bless Trump’s Crimes: He Did It, Get Over It http://bit.ly/37NPnYU
// The senator says there’s no need for witnesses since voters, not senators, should judge Trump—but the overwhelming majority of voters wanted senators to call witnesses.
DailyBeast, Sam Brodey and Erin Banco: U.S. Officials Warn of ‘Real Security Consequences’ if Trump’s Acquitted http://bit.ly/38RkO4y
// Crimes, conspiracies, and off-the-book ops—that’s just a taste of what an impeachment acquittal could usher in, U.S. officials and Senate Democrats fear.
🐣 RT @EvanMcMullin One can only deduce by Senate Republicans’ decision tonight to join Trump’s cover-up that they’re willing to enable his corruption if it helps them maintain power. They’ve abandoned the public interest, weakened our system of checks and balances, and should be held accountable.
🐣 RT @EJDionne Listened to that Senate roll call voting down witnesses & documents, and even though I knew how it would end, my heart sank for our country. Republicans enabled a lawless president, rejected their obligation to accountable government & told #Trump: You can get away with anything
WaPo Editorial: The cringing abdication of Senate Republicans http://wapo.st/2S56ZJ2
🐣 RT @TheRickWilson There is always more Trump filth.
There is always another shoe to drop.
And Mitch McConnell is going to rush the GOP into the coverup.
⋙ 🐣 RT @HoarseWhisperer Lev Parnas’ attorney sends letter to McConnell saying Parnas would name Trump, Pence, Pompeo, Rick Perry, Bill Barr, Lindsey Graham, Devin Nunes, Giuliani and others as co-conspirators in the plot to shakedown Ukraine.
🐣 RT @ColinHanks The GOP just took the Constitution, shot it in the middle of 5th avenue, grabbed it by the pussy, and threw it in the trash can.
🐣 Amazing how many GOP Senators Trump can have by the balls with his tiny hands.
🐣 RT @mkraju #BREAKING: A divided Senate rejected a motion for witnesses and documents in President Trump’s impeachment trial, voting 49-51 largely along party lines to kill the motion and taking a major step towards Trump’s acquittal on charges of high crimes and misdemeanors.
🐣 RT @jenmercieca It was a republic. We couldn’t keep it. ¤ I can’t wait to find out what it’s like to live under neo-liberal authoritarianism.
🐣 RT @LACaldwellDC 49-51 the motion for witnesses and documents is not agreed to.
🐣 RT @ashkenaz89 What does being informed look like in echo chambers where people have been persuaded to believe drinking bleach is an effective cure for the #coronavirus?
⋙ CNN: So the GOP believes that it’s up to the voters to decide. OK, well then it makes sense for the House to continue its investigation, so that voters can make an informed vote in November. I explained this morning to @CNNnewsroom 💽 https://twitter.com/AshaRangappa_/status/1223310081393078273?s=20/photo/1
🐣 “Civilization is hideously fragile…there’s not much between us & the Horrors underneath, just about a coat of varnish” – CP Snow
🐣 “It’s a lot easier to fool someone than to convince them they’ve been fooled” ~ Mark Twain
🐣 RT @MeredithGould So, @senatemajldr is awaiting permission from impeached POTUS about when impeached POTUS wants to be acquitted? If so, then we’re well into dictatorship.
🐣 RT @BretBruen This is a significant loss for our diplomatic service. ¤ Her departure will also lead others to leave.
⋙ 🐣 RT @npratc JUST IN: Marie Yovanovitch, the former U.S. ambassador to Ukraine, has retired from the State Department. ¤ She was abruptly removed from her post in May 2019 and was a key witness in the impeachment inquiry into President Trump.
MotherJones: With Trump’s Impeachment Trial, Republicans Have Convicted Themselves http://bit.ly/2SbqCz6
// The president’s defenders waged a war on reality.
NBCNews: Parnas names top Trump officials in letter to McConnell on potential testimony http://nbcnews.to/2RJ9jXh
// The letter represents a last-ditch attempt by Parnas to make known the value of the information he says he could provide as a witness.
🐣 RT @BillKristol “Giuliani represented Trump for no pay, and was compensated by one of his partners, Lev Parnas, who was in turn paid by a Russian oligarch who works closely with Vladimir Putin.”
⋙ NYMag, Jonathan Chait: Trump Is Terrified Giuliani’s Ukraine Work Will Be Exposed http://nym.ag/2GJRmkW
🐣 RT @kylegriffin1 Schiff: “Senators, there’s a storm blowing through this Capitol. It’s winds are strong and they move us in uncertain and dangerous directions … If we hold true, if we have faith that the ship of state can survive the truth, this storm shall pass.”
🐣 RT @MichaelArt123 Adam Schiff: I don’t remember any of you Senators attending our Intel House hearings. You were not there. Yes this is a reflection of the Senate, and yes if you rule against witnesses and evidence, you bring shame on this Senate. History will remember. Americans will not forget.
🐣 RT @neal_katyal Sekulow giving the weirdest argument against witnesses ever. He’s saying he didn’t get to cross examine Sondland&other witnesses in House, and if they are called in the Senate, he’d cross-x them ¤ That’s the whole point! If you had an innocent client, that’s what you’d want to do.
⋙ 🐣 RT @ But of course, he isn’t seeking that kind of exoneration, because he knows he wouldn’t ever get it. The moment the witnesses testify, it’s game over for Trump. #ChamberofSecrets
🐣 RT @McFaul From the former President of Estonia:
⋙ 🐣 RT @IlvesToomas “Great! No more tedious US lectures on rule of law, fair trials, evidence, equality before the law, transparency, corruption, free and fair elections” — some 130 governments around the world right now.
🐣 RT @McFaul A shockingly sad day for the American rule of law. We know there are key eyewitnesses who have not testified in this impeachment trial. Yet Republicans refuse to allow the American people to hear from them. I’m depressed about the status and future or our republic.
WaPo, Barbara McQuade: Book Review: How Trump may change the presidency forever http://wapo.st/2u9y7P1 //➔ Unmaking The Presidency by Susan Hennessey and Benjamin Wittes
💙 🐣 RT @josephabondy Below is the letter Stephanie Schuman @LeafLegal and I sent to Senator McConnell earlier today, (202) 224-2541, summarizing the testimony Lev Parnas would be able to provide, were he called as a witness. #LetLevSpeak #AmericansDemandWitnesses #CallTheWitnesses #LetBoltonTestify https://twitter.com/josephabondy/status/1223331368618418176?s=20/photo/1-3
🔆 This❗️⋙ 🐣 RT @jamiedupree Lawyer for Lev Parnas sends 3 page letter to McConnell laying out what Parnas would testify to on Ukraine https://twitter.com/jamiedupree/status/1223336975874260992?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @jamiedupree More from letter to McConnell https://twitter.com/jamiedupree/status/1223337658597937152?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @EricColumbus JOHN KELLY: “If I was advising the United States Senate, I would say, ‘If you don’t respond to 75 percent of the American voters and have witnesses, it’s a job only half done.’ You open yourself up forever as a Senate that shirks its responsibilities.”
🐣 RT @RepAdamSchiff The decisions made today will reverberate throughout history.
No matter the vote on witnesses, the facts will come out in the end.
We will be asked: Why didn’t we consider the evidence when we had the chance?
What answer shall we give, if we decide not to pursue the truth?
WaPo: Senate investigators interview IRS whistleblower about alleged interference with Trump or Pence audit http://wapo.st/2tl48n4
🐣 RT @clairecmc 1) Bolton is telling the truth
2) Cipollone was in the meeting
3) Cipollone is a fact witness and has misled the tribunal
4) Cipollone has violated the ABA Rules of Professionall Conduct
5) Cipollone should be disciplined by the Bar and potentially lose his bar license.
DailyBeast, Matt Lewis: Impeachment Proves There’s No Republican Left to Believe In http://bit.ly/37MDoea
// Pathetic, the whole lot of them. South Carolina’s Tim Scott once gave me particular hope. Now, he’s a goner, too.
WaPo: A new Bolton revelation ties Trump to Giuliani’s early efforts in Ukraine — and loops in other Trump allies http://wapo.st/31e8Nn7
// The Senate’s vote on witnesses just got more complicated
🔆 This❗️⋙ NYT: Trump Told Bolton to Help His Ukraine Pressure Campaign, Book Says http://nyti.ms/38UKJbv
// The president asked his national security adviser last spring in front of other senior advisers to pave the way for a meeting between Rudolph Giuliani and Ukraine’s new leader.
🐣 RT @NewYorker Lamar Alexander “will go down in history as the Republican senator whose choice at a pivotal moment confirmed the complete and final capitulation of the G.O.P.,” @sbg1 writes.
⋙ NewYorker, Susan Glasser: Trump Impeachment Trial: The Senate Can Stop Pretending Now http://bit.ly/3b0pKWM
// Lamar Alexander and the end of Donald Trump’s impeachment trial.
🐣 RT @MSNBC “For the majority of Americans … what we’re witnessing tonight is really a capstone in a total collapse of faith in American institutions,” NY Times editorial board member Mara Gay says. “It’s actually quite scary. I think we’re at a very scary moment.”
⋙ 💽 MSNBC, 11th Hour: Mara Gay: America is at ‘a very scary moment’ in its history http://on.msnbc.com/3aWcT7X
// New York Times Editorial Board member Mara Gay reacts to the latest developments in the Trump impeachment trial ahead of a critical vote on witnesses.
⭕ 30 Jan 2020
🐣 RT @disorderedworld We underestimate scale of damage Trump has done to the fabric of US society with connivance of the Republican Party. Together they’ve undermined civility, normalized hatred & fury, & made Americans enemies to one another & to foreigners. The idea of America is ready to collapse.
💙 NYRB, Fintan O’Toole: Whatever He Wants http://bit.ly/2Of05Qi “Trump is denying the existence of any constitutional limits on his pursuit of his private goals”
TheAmericanInterest, Gabriel Schoenfeld: The New, Rotten Normal http://bit.ly/38TfCNJ Book: Unmaking The Presidency by Susan Hennessey and Benjamin Wittes
// A new book convincingly argues that Trump has altered the institution of the presidency in irreversible ways.
DailyBeast: Dems Fed Up With GOP’s Refusal to Budge on Impeachment: ‘It’s More Than Frustrating—It’s Pathetic’ http://bit.ly/2S9AedE “[W]hat we’re seeing is there is no amount of evidence that will move the … Republicans in this political environment” – Mary Gay Scanlon (D-PA)
// To a person, they feel like the case they made was overwhelming. So what does it say if Republicans don’t move?
WaPo, Amber Philips: 4 takeaways from the final day of questions in Trump’s impeachment trial http://wapo.st/38Sex8O
1. Democrats almost certainly aren’t getting the four Republicans they need to call witnesses
2. All eyes are on John Roberts
3. Trump’s defense still hasn’t answered key questions about his intent
4. Rand Paul’s attempt to publicly out the whistleblower
🐣 RT @AdamParkmenhenko The United States Senate is officially compromised. It has joined a criminal president in opening up our democracy to attacks from every monster on the planet. They didn’t defend their country. They put a bullseye on it.
🐣 RT @grconway3d This thread describes what absolutely will come to pass after a sham acquittal with no witnesses.
⋙🧵 RT @TheRickWilson 1/ Every Republican senator needs to know some key, invariable facts: 📌 https://twitter.com/TheRickWilson/status/1223049812632686592?s=20
The moment they vote to deny witnesses, they seal their own political fate.
The blow won’t just come from the Democrats or from outside groups.
It will come from Trump himself.
‼️💙💙 WaPo: Dana Milbank: The impeachment trial hurtles toward its worst-case conclusion http://wapo.st/3aX3RHR ⋙ IMPORTANT
⋙ See under Entire Articles: WP Worst Case 1-30-2020
🧵 RT @mikefarb1 [Thread] We are in the fight of our lives now. We have chosen to be above it. Be the better people. Our politicians have done an amazing job. But we are not playing under normal rules. I believe it is time to take the gloves off and get a little angrier. 📌 https://twitter.com/mikefarb1/status/1223123055959896067?s=20
🧵 RT @Teri_Kanefield (Thread) Why Trump Supporters Willingly Embrace his Lies ¤ Spoiler: They embrace the lies because the lies destroy, and they want to destroy. ¤ It explains why @SenateGOP are shamelessly lying to the public and know their supporters don’t care. ¤ Scholars have done work on this. 📌 https://twitter.com/Teri_Kanefield/status/1222908932680638465?s=20
🐣 RT @harryliman Hadn’t realized that the day after the US attorney’s office’s reversal of position on Mike Flynn’s sentencing, Bill Barr named a new US attorney there. Also has possible implications for Andy McCabe. One more very tangled web.
🐣 RT @NumberMuncher Support for witnesses in the Senate impeachment trial:
Quinnipiac 75
Monmouth 80
Reuters 72
CNN 69
AP/NORC 68
WaPo 71
That’s an average of 73%!
Republicans are blocking witnesses while admitting Trump engaged in a quid pro quo. Will voters punish them in November for it?
🐣 RT @kasparov63 Trump’s pathetic defenders deserve to be grilled every day as further evidence of his abuses comes out. They are also complicit in his every act going forward. They know what he is and what he did, and that now he will do more. The 2020 election is under assault.
🐣 RT @BillKristol Maybe it’s just as well the Senate didn’t save us, and we will have to depend on ourselves to do so in November. ¤ “What we obtain too cheap, we esteem too lightly…it would be strange indeed if so celestial an article as FREEDOM should not be highly rated.” —Thomas Paine
🐣 RT @RepJeffries Lawlessness matters. ¤ Corruption matters. ¤ Abuse of Power matters. ¤ The President committed a high crime against the Constitution. ¤ He must be held accountable.
🐣 RT @peterbakernyt Alexander says no more witnesses are needed because the House managers proved their factual case, that Trump withheld aid at least in part to pressure Ukraine to help him against Biden. But while he says that was “inappropriate,” it does not merit removal from office.
⋙ 🐣 RT @peterbakernyt Alexander As for the second article alleging obstruction of Congress, Alexander calls that “frivolous” because the president has the right to assert privileges.
🐣 RT @BradMossEsq This is going to be the standard now for presidential behavior: you can use your authority over government action to extort foreign governments to investigate your domestic political opponents, and Congress will let it slide. ¤ The president was just given the green light to cheat
🐣 RT @moscow_project Congratulations, Senator, on your cowardly abdication of your constitutional duty in favor of completing the president’s coverup.
‼️ ⋙ 🧵 RT @SenAlexander I worked with other senators to make sure that we have the right to ask for more documents and witnesses, but there is no need for more evidence to prove something that has already been proven and that does not meet the U.S. Constitution’s high bar for an impeachable offense.1/15 📌 https://twitter.com/SenAlexander/status/1223093577145864194?s=20
‼️ 🐣 RT @npfandos Alexander is a No. That may be the ballgame, folks.
🐣 RT @SenatorCollins I will vote in support of the motion to allow witnesses and documents to be subpoenaed. My full statement: http://bit.ly/2GApYpw
I will vote in support of the motion to allow witnesses and documents to be subpoenaed. My full statement: https://t.co/VuhZv6CO5e pic.twitter.com/LhQlnvPaoc
— Sen. Susan Collins (@SenatorCollins) January 31, 2020
‼️ 🐣 RT @SethAbramson BREAKING: Sen. Susan Collins Will Vote for Witnesses and Documents
🐣 RT @qjurecic frankly, I resent having to care this much about the psychodrama of these people
● ● ●
🐣 RT @RepAdamSchiff After two and half centuries of our nation’s history, it’s come to this: ¤ The President’s lawyers argue on the Senate floor that he can withhold aid, coerce an ally, and try to cheat in an election, ¤ And there’s nothing we can do about it. ¤ Our Founders would be aghast. 💽 https://twitter.com/RepAdamSchiff/status/1223092655913041920?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @frankthorp NEW stmt from @lisamurkowski: “I am going to go reflect on what I have heard, re-read my notes and decide whether I need to hear more.”
🐣 RT @nycsouthpaw Alan Dershowitz was a hero to the White House and GOP Senators Tuesday night. By Thursday afternoon, he wasn’t allowed to answer questions that mentioned him by name.
🐣 RT @nycsouthpaw Alan Dershowitz was a hero to the White House and GOP Senators Tuesday night. By Thursday afternoon, he wasn’t allowed to answer questions that mentioned him by name.
🐣 RT @qjurecic Philbin has acted with bravery and principle in the past. This is pathetic.
⋙ 🐣 RT @moscow_project Philbin now says that the *established facts* of Trump’s quid pro quo aren’t impeachable, but the *debunked conspiracy theory* of the allegations against Biden would be. ¤ The actual principle they’re asserting: Trump is unimpeachable; Democrats are illegitimate.
🐣 RT @BillKristol At the Tiger 21 conference in Phoenix today, I’m told former Trump COS John Kelly said in response to a question, “It would be a black mark in history on the GOP senators if they fail to allow witnesses.”
🐣 RT @ArmandiOnAir Waiting on @SenAlexander who will announce imminently tonight, if he’ll vote to allow witnesses. ¤ As a Republican Senator who’s about to retire, he has nothing to lose & immortality to gain by putting the Constitution & his country over his morally bankrupt, treasonous party.
🐣 RT @sbg1 Lamar Alexander has had such a long career in Washington. Amazing that it will come down to whether he wants to be remembered as the guy who did Donald Trump a big favor on his way out the door….
🐣 RT @ShimonPro Update on what Sen. Alexander has been doing from @jeremyherb inside the room: ¤ As the questions went into the final hour, the senator everyone is watching, Lamar Alexander, put a cap on his pen, sat back in his chair and folded his arms.
🐣 RT @atrupar “An impeachable offense would require a crime” — here it is: the question from Republican senators that lays the groundwork for despotism. They are making explicit that extorting foreign governments to investigate your political rival is legal and cool in their book.
🐣 RT @ECMcLaughlin “The highest of high crimes against the Constitution.”@RepJeffries isn’t lying.
🐣 RT @Teri_Kanefield We expected this question: Biden advocated against witnesses in the Clinton trial. ¤ The two cases are not similar. Starr collected literally all the evidence. ¤ Also, by the time the case came to the Senate, both parties wanted the matter to end quickly.
↥ ↧
🐣 RT @TrumpWarRoom BREAKING: In January 1999, then-Sen. Joe Biden argued strongly against the need to depose additional witnesses or seek new evidence in a memo sent to fellow Democrats ahead of President Bill Clinton’s impeachment trial.
⋙ Politico: Biden argued against witnesses in 1999 impeachment trial memo http://politi.co/2uSqXi7
// The comments from the then-senator are at odds with current Democratic arguments.
🐣 RT @qjurecic Under Philbin’s argument, this is would be just fine. So it’s notable that he dodged the question.
⋙ 🐣 RT @fordm King, to Trump’s counsel: Could a president block military aid for Israel unless the Israeli PM publicly accuses his opponent of anti-Semitism? ¤ Philbin: That’s an “irrelevant” question.
🐣 RT @atrupar TRUMP: “They want to kill our cows. That means you’re next.” 💽 https://twitter.com/atrupar/status/1223068056575971329?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @SenWhitehouse A staunch Republican lawyer friend, very able and experienced, just emailed me that Dershowitz testimony was “the most shocking thing I have seen a ‘serious’ lawyer say in my entire legal career.”
🐣 RT @burgessev Alexander joins a question about whether if Bolton’s recollection is true it still wouldn’t be impeachable and then his testimony “wouldn’t add anything to this case” (!)
🐣 RT @atrupar TRUMP: “They want to kill our cows. That means you’re next.” 💽 https://twitter.com/atrupar/status/1223068056575971329?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @SenWhitehouse A staunch Republican lawyer friend, very able and experienced, just emailed me that Dershowitz testimony was “the most shocking thing I have seen a ‘serious’ lawyer say in my entire legal career.”
🐣 RT @sbg1 Alexander spends the countdown to his key impeachment decision on witnesses reading, “Impeachment: an American History,” by @jmeacham, @TimNaftali @jeffreyaengel and household favorite @peterbakernyt
🐣 RT @kairyssdal No matter how you feel about this on the merits, it’s stunning to realize that Bolton’s sitting there watching it all, knowing that he can resolve it in minutes by stepping in front of a microphone.
🐣 RT @glennkirschner2 This Philbin character is shameless. He complains that the House didn’t present enough witnesses when the reason they didn’t was because Trump ordered the witnesses not to testify. These arguments are pure and utter nonsense!
WaPo, Aaron Blake (12/10): Christopher Wray, basically: Don’t listen to Trump’s Ukraine conspiracy theories http://wapo.st/37M9uGQ
// 12/10/2019
🐣 RT @sbg1 As we all wait for Alexander’s decision, I keep coming back to this: All 15 previous Senate impeachment trials have had witnesses. ¤ Is Trump really going to be the one guy in American history to get acquitted without even having to have witnesses testify in his Senate trial?
🧵 RT @HeidiNBC After 17 years in the Senate, a single vote may define retiring Sen.
@SenaAlexander’s legacy. ¤ W 1 more R needed to hear witnesses at Trump’s impeachment trial, his good friend, Keel Hunt (Alexander was best man at his 1981 wedding), spoke with @NBCNews ¤ Here’s what Hunt said: 📌 https://twitter.com/HeidiNBC/status/1223051633157967873?s=20
💙 🐣 RT @BillKristol “No one had more influence on my life over the last half century than Howard Baker…Throughout my entire public life and private life, no one has had more effect on me…as an example for how to do things.” — Lamar Alexander
⋙ 🐣 Howard Baker was key as an open-minded Republican in the Watergate Hearings
↥ ↧
🐣 RT @ChrisLu44 From @Maddow show: extraordinary clip of Howard Baker talking about Watergate 30 years later and the moment he decided to put party loyalty aside for the good of the nation. ¤ History remembers Baker as a statesman and patriot. How it will remember the current Senate? 💽 https://twitter.com/ChrisLu44/status/1223060923817979904?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @Acosta Biden on Trump: “he tried to get a foreign country to come after me…. they’ve slandered me and my only surviving son and they’ve done it repeatedly.”
🐣 RT @BillKristol How will you vote, Lamar Alexander?
A nation turns its lonely eyes to you,
Woo, woo, woo.
What’s that you say, Mitch McConnell?
Lamar! has left and gone away!
Hey, hey, hey,
Hey, hey, hey.
🧵 RT @JillWineBanks 1/ Yesterday’s and today’s behavior by the president’s defense team made me think of the Army-McCarthy hearings and the despicable behavior of Senator McCarthy and his chief counsel Roy Cohn (mentor to 45). 📌 https://twitter.com/JillWineBanks/status/1223057243496730624?s=20
🐣 RT @benjaminwittes Very interesting
‼️ 💙 ⋙ 🐣 RT @Zachary_Cohen Potentially pivotal moment just now on the floor: Sen. Alexander asks managers about bipartisanship of previous impeachment proceedings. As Rep. Lofgren answers, he walks to the back and talks to Majority Secretary Laura Dove, who listens with her mouth agape before responding.
⋙⋙ 🐣 RT @dogdrool23 @CNN reporting that Alexander and Murkowski are meeting now.
⋙⋙ 🐣 RT @redboybroken Read the guys whole post. Whatever it was got McConnell upset.
⋙⋙ 🐣 RT @ShimonPro Stay Tuned: Key swing vote Sen. Lamar Alexander says he’s going to announce his decision on witnesses tonight, a decision that will make clear whether the Senate trial will come to a swift conclusion or if it will lead to an unpredictable phase over witnesses and documents.
🐣 RT @BillKristol “And corruption, for all the Trump lawyers’ attempt to muddy the waters with tortured interpretations of the Constitution, is what this impeachment is all about. Trump acted with corrupt intent, to damage a political opponent.”
⋙ WaPo, George Conway: George Conway: Don’t let the defense fool you. This impeachment is all about corruption. http://wapo.st/38WL9yn
🐣 RT @neal_katyal Ask yourself 1 question: in a world where
1) 75% of Americans want to hear witnesses,
2) President’s own top guy John Bolton says he’s got impt info showing Trump lying, AND
3) Senate controlled by Rs AND
4) needs 2/3 vote to convict, why are Trump and Rs so afraid of witnesses?
WaPo, Harry Litman: Dershowitz may have argued himself out of relevance http://wapo.st/2Od2rPw
🐣 RT @tribelaw .@AlanDersh just called my colleague @nikobowie a “coward” and has denigrated my motives — and those of hundreds of other law professors — just because we all think his pro-Trump arguments are ludicrous and aren’t afraid to say so.
🐣 RT @Susan_Hennessey If the Senate were to refuse to call Bolton, it would mean that impeachment is merely a measure of how many members of the president’s party sit in the Senate. One of the core structural checks on executive power would go up in smoke.
🐣 RT @moscow_project “The reason they’re not on the president’s witness list is because, if they were truthful under oath, they would incriminate the president. Otherwise, they would be begging to have Mick Mulvaney come testify”—and Pompeo, and Bolton, and many other administration officials. 💽 https://twitter.com/moscow_project/status/1223028126931922957?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @AndrewDesiderio We’ve got a running list of the most notable questions, the answers, and why they matter. ¤ Catch up during the Senate’s dinner break >> w/ @kyledcheney
Politico: Warren calls out John Roberts and the other key questions asked at today’s trial http://politi.co/2vtTdYK
// Senators are holding their second question-and-answer session in Trump’s impeachment trial.
🐣 RT @CraigRozniecki Dear #TrumpDefenseTeam:
Stop lying about the origins of the Steele Dossier.
“Conservative Free Beacon originally funded firm that created Trump-Russia dossier” –
http://politi.co/2iDXLp9
#ImpeachmentHearing #TrumpIsGuilty
⋙ 🐣 FusionGPS is a US company and the DNC didn’t know the footwork was farmed out to Christopher Steele. The campaign never used the findings. Steele, who had worked Russian counter-intel for MI6, became alarmed at what he found and went to the FBI, then to the press.
🐣 RT @petersagal In German: “ein Reich, ein Volk.”
⋙ 🐣 RT @MaggieNYT “Maybe if the House members stop opposing him and harassing him…maybe we could even get more done,” Herschmann says. “Join us. One nation. One people.”
⋙⋙ One of the Nazis’ most-repeated political slogans was Ein Volk, ein Reich, ein Führer – “One People, One Empire, One Leader”.
🐣 Lear:
No, I will weep no more. In such a night
To shut me out? Pour on; I will endure.
In such a night as this? O Regan, Goneril!
Your old kind father, whose frank heart gave all—
O, THAT WAY MADNESS LIES; let me shun that;
No more of that.
(King Lear, Act-III, Scene-IV, 17-22)
🐣 RT @brhodes The absurdity of this whole trial is that everyone knows Trump is guilty but doesn’t know what to do about the fact that Republicans don’t care
⋙ 🐣 RT @RepAdamSchiff Over the past week, we’ve seen a descent into Constitutional madness. ¤ The President and his team argue that any conduct is okay, as long as a president thinks it will benefit him. ¤ That’s an argument of pure desperation — one you only make when you know your client is guilty.
🐣 RT @maddow “Schiff brought up Williams’s classified supplemental testimony on Wednesday, confirming that it contains information about Russia’s role in promoting the unsubstantiated theory that Ukraine rather than the Kremlin interfered in the 2016 election…”
⋙ Politico: Pence aide who testified in impeachment inquiry to leave VP’s office http://politi.co/2GF9Hzz
// Foreign policy adviser Jennifer Williams will be taking a new job at Central Command.
🐣 RT @JRubinBlogger Ultimately, a sham trial will do nothing to exonerate Trump in the eyes of Americans outside the cult, but a fake trial without witnesses could be quite enough to convince voters that Republicans are incapable of carrying out their oaths
⋙ WaPo, Jennifer Rubin: The reasons not to call John Bolton are ridiculous http://wapo.st/2OdUzgL
🐣 RT @EvanMcMullin We’re witnessing the raw, partisan pursuit of power by Senate Republicans, most of whom appear willing to destroy the Constitution if it serves their personal interests. I never thought I’d see such an unpatriotic display in America, let alone the Senate. Never.
🐣 RT @emptywheel Hakeem Jeffries blew that question about the Impoundment Control Act. The answer should have been, “That was a tool we passed after Nixon’s abuses to implement a reporting mechanism to make sure Congress could exercise their power of the purse.”
⋙ 🐣 RT @emptywheel Hoping the Dems hammer Philbin for ignoring that FEC also has jurisdiction here.
⋙ 🐣 RT @emptywheel And, for fuck sake, someone ask if the GOP thinks it amounts to Ukrainian interference to hold a clandestine meeting with Trump’s campaign manager to discuss how to win, how to carve up Ukraine, and how to get paid $2.4M.
WaPo, Keith Whittington: The Senate is likely to acquit Trump. It should still reject Dershowitz’s logic. http://wapo.st/2S2ZySF
// There has to be some conduct that truly is impeachable, even if Trump’s isn’t.
🐣 RT @mayawiley #Cippolone, who wrote a ltr asserting blanket privilege to all evidence, that raised the eyebrows of seasoned lawyers, now tries to compare this impeachment to a regular trial. The obstruction is why this isn’t like a regular trial. #ImpeachmentTrial
NBCNews, Maya Wiley: Trump impeachment defender Alan Dershowitz’s quid pro quo argument is absurd http://nbcnews.to/2tb6vbS
// But more than legally laughable, Dershowitz’s extreme position should scare us. It would certainly scare the founders.
🐣 RT @ianbremmer “Always remember that to argue, and win, is to break down the reality of the person you are arguing against. It is painful to lose your reality, so be kind, even if you are right.” – Haruki Murakami
🐣 RT @clairecmc They can’t. They don’t have a defense other than a phony legal argument that what he did was fine.
⋙ 🐣 RT @KevinMKruse Instead of ping-ponging back and forth between attacking Hunter Biden and demanding the whistleblower’s identity be revealed, maybe the president’s defense might want to spend a little time defending the president?
⋙ 🐣 How powerful are the precedents here? They can’t overturn laws on the books, can they?
🐣 RT @glennkirschner2 Let’s be clear, Dershowitz said the president can do anything he wants if he “believes it’s in the public interest.” Like . . . cancel elections? Summarily imprison political opponents? Shoot people on 5th Avenue and elsewhere? [ … ]
🐣 RT @MSNBC “We now have an all-powerful executive that can do whatever it wants to do – maybe not as much as Alan Dershowitz thinks it can do, but they can at least make sure that the president is not subject to any legitimate oversight.”- @JoyceWhiteVance
⋙ 💽 MSNBC: Vance: ‘There is no longer rule of law,’ Senate has handed over their oversight ability http://on.msnbc.com/2GIEv2l
// MSNBC legal analyst Joyce Vance discusses what Senate’s refusal to hear witnesses means for the rule of law.
🐣 RT @AndrewDesiderio Schiff tees off on several GOP sens who asked about one of his staffers who used to work at NSC. ¤ “I will not dignify those smears on my staff by giving them any credence whatsoever,” Schiff says. ¤ “Members of this body used to care” about whistleblower protections, Schiff adds.
🐣 RT @duty2warn Many have characterized these proceedings as a sham trial, a shredding of democratic norms, party over country, and although these are accurate, we feel they miss THE salient point. This is the normalization of a man with extreme power who is severely and dangerously mentally ill
🐣 📊 RT @JakeTapper [ … ] Gallup Jan 6-19 poll found that 51% of the public wanted the president removed from office https://twitter.com/jaketapper/status/1222992209827573767?s=20/photo/1
// Trump did something 63% Illegal (38% def, 25% prob); Unethical 70% (def 45%, prob 26%)
🐣 RT @neal_katyal If Trump is acquitted, he can call on foreign govts tomorrow to investigate every Democrat in our nation (and do so in secret). He can ask DOJ to target every Democrat as well, too. And his legal argument,voiced by his lawyer,is that there is nothing wrong with this. Buyer beware
🐣 The JFK Foundation should consider establishing “Profiles in Cowardice” Awards. I can think of a few nominees.
🐣 RT @MarkWarner The President and his lawyers are just wrong. Foreign election interference is a threat to national security like every single one of our intelligence agency heads have told us, and asking for it is against the law.
🐣 RT @BillKristol An apt quote for this moment, h/t @WindsorMann: “I should suffer the misery of devils, were I to make a whore of my soul by swearing allegiance to one whose character is that of a sottish, stupid, stubborn, worthless, brutish man.”
—Thomas Paine, “The American Crisis” (1776)
🐣 RT @MarkWarner I still can’t believe the President’s lawyer tried to convince the United States Senate that foreign election interference isn’t a crime.
🐣 RT @justinamash The president’s lawyers call our Constitution’s carefully prescribed impeachment process “massive election interference,” but they consider the president’s abuse of power to benefit his re-election just another day at the office.
NewYorker, Susan Glasser: Alan Dershowitz for the Defense: L’État, C’est Trump http://bit.ly/2GOKweh
🐣 RT @HouseIntel “Election intervention from foreign governments has been considered unacceptable since the beginning of our nation. It is wrong, it is corrupt, it is lawless, it is an abuse of power, it is impeachable and it should lead to the removal of President Donald Trump.” – @RepJeffries 💽 https://twitter.com/HouseIntel/status/1222966623767814145?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @Teri_Kanefield Val Demings quoted Sondland: “Everyone was in the loop.” ¤ This is precisely why the GOP doesn’t want witnesses. They don’t want to expose the depth of corruption in the Republican Party. ¤ They’d rather vote for a sham trial and face the political fallout from that.
CNN: In contrast with Trump legal team, Justice Department lawyer says House can impeach over defied subpoenas http://cnn.it/2S0oM44
🐣 RT @JustinAmash Under our Constitution, the Senate has “the sole Power to try all Impeachments.” Senate Republicans’ repeated assertion that the House itself should have conducted the essential functions of a trial is an effort to undo the results of the 1787 constitutional convention.
🐣 RT @ScottMStedman We are watching the complete destruction of our judiciary. The third branch.
⋙ 🐣 RT @ScottMStedman This will get overlooked but CANNOT. DC was the main jurisdiction where Mueller handed his ongoing cases. Now run by a Barr flunky. Liu was tough but fair.
🔆 This❗️⋙ AP Exclusive: Barr names new U.S. attorney in DC http://bit.ly/2uNr2nc Attorney General William Barr has named Timothy Shea, one of his closest advisers, to be the next top prosecutor in the nation’s capital.
🐣 RT @The_Unsilent_ Chris Hayes absolutely eviscerates the Hunter Biden defense in 1 minute and 46 seconds 💽 https://twitter.com/The_UnSilent_/status/1222926766370623488?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @BarbMcQuade As a friend points out, the Supreme Court takes another hit as a credible institution as Chief Justice Roberts presides over a trial in which Trump’s lawyers lie (see “secret bunker”) and make absurd arguments (see Dershowitz: anything goes if it helps the president’s reelection)
🐣 RT @NBCNews Speaker Pelosi on the Senate impeachment trial: “The fate of our nation is riding on how this is resolved.” 💽 https://twitter.com/NBCNews/status/1222920284077993986?s=20/photo/1
WaPo, Greg Sargent: GOP senators know Trump’s defense is based on lies. Here’s proof. http://wapo.st/36AqNt2
🐣 RT @EvanMcMullin No senator who votes against witnesses should keep their seat.
🐣 RT @NoahBookbinder The President has called the impeachment a scam. Majority Leader McConnell is doing everything he can to make it so – and it looks like a majority of senators may let him. The trial’s verdict will only be worthy of respect if the process is fair.
⋙ NYT, Noah Bookbinder (1/22): The American People Are Being Scammed by Mitch McConnell http://nyti.ms/2OcLC7A
// Senators have a duty to conduct a fair and full trial. The Republican leader is trying to make sure they can’t.
🐣 RT @tribelaw Not literally “anything,” @AlanDersh — just anything that’s not in the criminal code. Like promising Putin that, if Russia helps the president win re-election, he’ll veto any future sanctions against its oligarchs. The media understood you perfectly. Stop whining & get a grip.
🐣 RT @kyledcheney Dershowitz’s exact words: https://twitter.com/kyledcheney/status/1222908951186022405?s=20/photo/1
⋙ 🐣 RT @OverUnderClover Thank you. ¤ This trial has become, by virtue of the arguments laid, FAR more dangerous even before. ¤ If this becomes precedent, we really are inviting cancellation of elections, extending terms, deep fakes, complete lawless elections and therefore complete lawless leadership.
🐣 RT @AngrierWHStaff Hey @AlanDersh, you know they kinda recorded the trial, right? We all saw you say precisely that
🐣 RT @LincolnsBible We all heard what you said. You cannot erase or re-qualify it. ¤ The panic you’re feeling is knowing beyond all shadow of doubt that the world now sees you are a complete fraud. ¤ Your legacy is toast. ¤ And soon, all you’ll be remembered for is Jeffrey Epstein. ¤ #HarvardsShame
⋙ 🐣 RT @alandersh They characterized my argument as if I had said that if a president believes that his re-election was in the national interest, he can do anything. I said nothing like that, as anyone who actually heard what I said can attest.
⋙⋙⋙ 🐣 Yes, you did. Your “mixed” example says that precisely. In the case of Trump, it was exacerbated by extortion, inviting foreign meddling in our election, holding up congressionally allocated funds, and putting the national security at risk: all are crimes.
⋙⋙ 🐣 RT @alandersh What I said was that there are 3 broad categories of relevant motive:
1) pure national interest ( help the military)
2) pure corrupt motive ( get a kickback) And
3) mixed motive (help the national interest in a way that helps your reelection efforts ) ¤ (MTC)
⋙⋙ 🐣 RT @alandersh I gave as an example mixed motive President Lindon’s decision to send troops home from the battlefield to Indiana so that they would vote for his party. He genuinely believed that his party’s victory in Indiana was essential to the war effort, but it also helped him politically.
🐣 RT @NoahBookbinder The President has called the impeachment a scam. Majority Leader McConnell is doing everything he can to make it so – and it looks like a majority of senators may let him. The trial’s verdict will only be worthy of respect if the process is fair.
⋙ NYT, Noah Bookbinder (1/22): The American People Are Being Scammed by Mitch McConnell http://nyti.ms/2OcLC7A
// Senators have a duty to conduct a fair and full trial. The Republican leader is trying to make sure they can’t.
🐣 RT @alandersh They characterized my argument as if I had said that if a president believes that his re-election was in the national interest, he can do anything. I said nothing like that, as anyone who actually heard what I said can attest.
⋙ 🐣 RT @alandersh What I said was that there are 3 broad categories of relevant motive:
1) pure national interest ( help the military)
2) pure corrupt motive ( get a kickback) And
3) mixed motive (help the national interest in a way that helps your reelection efforts ) ¤ (MTC)
⋙ 🐣 RT @alandersh I gave as an example mixed motive President Lindon’s decision to send troops home from the battlefield to Indiana so that they would vote for his party. He genuinely believed that his party’s victory in Indiana was essential to the war effort, but it also helped him politically.
🐣 RT @alandersh They characterized my argument as if I had said that if a president believes that his re-election was in the national interest, he can do anything. I said nothing like that, as anyone who actually heard what I said can attest.
🐣 RT @JoeNBC The US economy limped along with 2.3% GDP growth a year after Trump’s massive tax cuts for the world’s biggest corporations. As warned, CEOs used the transfer of billions to buy back stock instead of expanding businesses and hiring new workers. ¤ The Dow is high. The GDP is low.
🐣 RT @deanobeidallah Here I thought Alan Dershowitz would be remembered for representing Jeffrey Epstein. Instead it will be for helping Trump destroy our Republic #dershowitzlogic
🐣 RT @justinamash So that everyone is clear, Trump’s team is simultaneously arguing that the House should enforce its subpoenas in court *and* that it is unconstitutional for a court to enforce the House’s subpoenas.
🐣 RT @JRubinBlogger The impeachment trial underscores the degree to which the right is in no shape or form conservative but authoritarian.
🐣 RT @kylegriffin1 Schiff: “We have witnessed over the course of the last few days and the long day today a remarkable lowering of the bar, to the point now where everything is OK as long as the president believes it’s in his re-election interest. You could conspire with another country.”
🐣 RT @JRubinBlogger Look on the bright side: By going this route the Senate R’s will discredit the entire process and themselves. A referendum on the Constitution and on toadies to a tyrant isn’t the worst thing
🐣 RT @pithywidow A vote to acquit is its defense
⋙⋙ 🐣 That’s what I’m trying to figure out. Do arguments made in an #ImpeachmentTrial have the weight of law? It seems that can’t be. The laws would need to be rescinded by Congress. Right?
⋙ 🐣 RT @FrankLuntz I have yet to see anyone sincerely defending this argument.
⋙⋙ 🐣 RT @ABC Trump attorney Alan Dershowitz: “If a president does something which he believes will help him get elected in the public interest, that cannot be the kind of quid pro quo that results in impeachment.” https://abcn.ws/2S37weJ 💽 https://twitter.com/FrankLuntz/status/1222757053602529281?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @brianklaas I was left stunned by the argument that Dershowitz and Trump’s legal team made yesterday. It’s the kind of thing I have heard in authoritarian countries — that if the leader does it, and they think it’s good for the public, then it’s legitimate. We must all reject that argument.
🐣 RT @JRubinBlogger Democrats need to make clear: It is their nominee or King Trump, who thinks he can do whatever he wants. That is what is at stake in 2020. You better pick the most electable, Dems, otherwise we are toast.
🐣 RT @glennkirschner2 Dershowitz says if Trump thinks whatever he does to get re-elected is in the “public interest” then it can’t be corrupt or impeachable. Dershowitz just confirmed that Trump can do whatever he wants. He can cancel future elections if he thinks it’s in the public interest to do so.
TheAtlantic, Peter Wehner: There Is No Christian Case for Trump http://bit.ly/2GzTXOz
// When faith is treated as an instrumentality, it’s bad for politics and worse for the Christian witness.
WaPo, Randall Eliason: The president’s bizarre ‘intent’ defense http://wapo.st/2GEZdA8
🐣 RT @UROKlive1 In a normal world this would be terrifying everyone.
⋙ 🐣 RT @TheTweetOfJohn Trump’s lawyers argued that anything a president did to win re-election was “in the public interest.”
🐣 If the law is on your side, argue the law
If the facts are on your side, argue the facts
If neither is on your side, rip up the Constitution
– @AlanDersh
🐣 RT @McFaul “Hunter Biden” is the new “Hillary’s emails” of this election cycle. Don’t get fooled again.
🐣 RT @MSNBC “What we saw today for the first time was Republican senators being co-conspirators in that cover-up,” @K_JeanPierre says. “The shredding of the Constitution that we saw… it is absurd, it’s insane and it sets a precedent that is so incredibly dangerous.”
💽 MSNBC: Karine Jean-Pierre: Today we saw Republicans start a cover-up for Trump http://on.msnbc.com/2S0rmab
// Fmr. Obama campaign staffer Karine Jean-Pierre says during the questions from senators in the Trump impeachment trial, she believes was the makings of a cover-up from Republicans for Trump.
🐣 RT @Evan_Rosenfeld “We’re all now so deep down into the trees that we’re not seeing the forest,” @JoyceWhiteVance says. “But if we take a step back and use our common sense, arguments like Dershowitz’s really fall apart.”
💽 MSNBC: Why Alan Dershowitz’s defense of Trump reminded people of Nixon http://on.msnbc.com/36Ehwju
// Nixon once argument a crime wasn’t a crime if the president does it. An argument from Trump’s attorney Alan Dershowitz during the Senate impeachment trial sounded rather similar. Our panel reacts.
⭕ 29 Jan 2020
WaPo, Jonathan Capehart: Schumer on Republicans and impeachment witnesses: ‘They realize we’re right’ http://wapo.st/315Srgo
🐣 RT @Politicusarah Dershowitz is unhinged and ranting about Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, and @tribelaw It is telling that no scholar from the last few centuries agrees with Alan Dershowitz’s position on impeachment. 💽 https://twitter.com/PoliticusSarah/status/1222664001596874762?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @McFaul We need more scrutiny of the relatives of all public officials, just not an impeachment trial. (PS Hunter never worked in WH & didnt make 100 million a year!) “Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner Report Up to $135 Million in 2018 Income” https://nyti.ms/2XNwct0
⋙ 🐣 RT @davidmweissman Another question that’s ignored, what’s the difference between Ivanka Trump, Jared Kushner and Hunter Biden? They basically are doing the same thing, so why is Trump’s family not being investigated?
WaPo: Bolton’s lawyer contends his book does not contain classified material and asks White House for expedited review so he can testify if called http://wapo.st/2GBT6wI
🐣 RT @sbg1 [Susan Glasser] John Bolton is not the only witness I’d like to hear from. How about VP Pence, Mike Pence, Mick Mulvaney, Mark Esper, Rudy Giuiliani, Alec Parma’s, Igor Fruman, Ulrich Brechbuhl, Russ Vought, and a bunch of others?
🐣 RT @AdamSerwer If the president drops nuclear bombs on New York and California to neutralize their electoral votes because he believes it is in the national interest, it is not impeachable, according to Alan Dershowitz.
⋙ 🐣 RT @ABC Trump attorney Alan Dershowitz: “If a president does something which he believes will help him get elected in the public interest, that cannot be the kind of quid pro quo that results in impeachment.” 💽 https://twitter.com/AdamSerwer/status/1222609809654108162?s=20/photo/1
Vox, Aaron Rupar: Alan Dershowitz’s latest defense of Trump would let presidents get away with almost anything http://bit.ly/38WPP7r
// Trump’s lawyer argued that anything the president does to stay in power is unimpeachable, short of actual crimes.
WaPo, Joe Scarborough: Trump’s confederacy of dunces http://wapo.st/2U7IGgf
🐣 RT @glennkirschner2 Bolton has direct, powerful, sharply incriminating evidence of Trump’s guilt of the first article of impeachment. If Republicans block Bolton from testifying it will not be a trial, it will be a coverup of Trump’s crimes. And it will signal the death of the Senate’s legitimacy.
🐣 RT @glennkirschner2 Sooner or later, one way or another, justice will come. The rampant crime, abuse and corruption of Trump & his enablers makes for an unsustainable government. Justice MAY involve rising from the ashes after the Republicans burn our republic to the ground. But #JusticeIsComing
💙 Politico: Dershowitz’s power play and a Trump team stumble: The moments that mattered in the Senate Q&A http://politi.co/2u1AEec by Kyle Cheney, Andrew Desiderio, and Darren Samuelson
// A lengthy question-and-answer session yielded a few exchanges that might make a difference in the trial.
🐣 RT @ChrisMurphyCT It’s all out in the open now. ¤ The President’s counsel just argued that there is nothing wrong with any candidate for office soliciting dirt on their opponents from foreign countries. ¤ They’re not even trying to fake it anymore.
🐣 RT @brianklaas Interesting piece by @davidlitt on how the Senate has become more and more dysfunctional over time and how its democratic deficit is only getting worse:
⋙ WaPo, David Litt: The Senate has become a threat to democracy itself http://wapo.st/3aVMPK4
// The impeachment trial proves one thing: It’s time to change the upper chamber
🐣 RT @mkraju The White House has issued a formal threat to former national security adviser John Bolton to keep him from publishing his book, “The Room Where It Happened: A White House Memoir,” sources familiar with the matter tell @jaketapper
⋙ CNN, Jake Tapper: White House has issued formal threat to Bolton to keep him from publishing book http://cnn.it/2GwzI4h
DailyBeast, Rick Wilson: John Bolton’s Calling the Shots Now, and Trump and McConnell Are Shitting Bricks http://bit.ly/2vyPgSO
// The trial may still end with the president’s acquittal, but that verdict would come back to haunt Republicans in November.
💙 DailyBeast, Betsy Swan and Erin Banco: Parnas Lawyer: Giuliani Delivered Graham Letter Calling for Sanctions on Ukrainian Officials http://bit.ly/37AfMcu
// The mysterious letter-writer listed several Ukrainian officials, including one reformer who’d gone up against an oligarch, and claimed they were part of a “crime syndicate.”
JustSecurity, Ryan Goodman: Lessons for Life: The Obituaries of Republicans Who Opposed Nixon’s Impeachment http://bit.ly/38UwOSL
DailyBeast: Stephen Colbert Hammers Alan Dershowitz’s ‘Logical Turd’ of a Trump Impeachment Defense http://bit.ly/38R9Bkq
// “Only the public gets to decide what’s in the public interest—not the politician,” the “Late Show” host declared Wednesday night.
USAToday, Tom Nichols: Trump is being impeached over a blackmail and extortion scheme, not a ‘policy dispute’ http://bit.ly/2S2UIEW
// Trump was shaking down Zelensky while trying to keep the rest of the government in the dark. That’s not a ‘policy,’ that’s a conspiracy.
💙 DailyBeast, David Lurie: Alan Dershowitz Wants to Save Donald Trump by Ending America http://bit.ly/38RAzIR
// If senate Republicans uses his logic to acquit Trump, it will mark the end of the American system of government and with it the American way of life as we have known them.
🐣 RT @BarbMcQuade Absurd legal argument by @AlanDersh’s that a president cannot be impeached for conduct that helps him politically. Is this the cold water that might finally awaken GOP from its stupor?
⋙ WaPo: Trump legal team advances blanket defense against impeachment http://wapo.st/38RyVag
💙 WaPo Editorial: Republicans’ damaging new line of defense http://wapo.st/2OcofLc “Alan Dershowitz, a criminal-defense specialist … has been offering constitutional interpretations sharply at odds with those of constitutional scholars.”
🐣 RT @PattyArquette Ass backwards. Translation- Dershowitz argues anyone in power can do anything to win. Reminder he represented Epstein.
⋙ 🐣 RT @TimJHanrahan Dershowitz says all officials believe their election is in the public interest. ¤ So “if a president does something … he believes will help him get elected in the public interest, that cannot be the kind of quid pro quo that results in impeachment.” https://wsj.com/livecoverage/trump-impeachment-trial/card/1580327345
🐣 RT @HouseIntel “Now apparently it’s ok for a president to get information from a foreign government in an election. That’s news to me… We are creating additional dangers to the nation by suggesting that things that have long been prohibited are now suddenly going to be ok.” – @RepZoeLofgren 💽 https://twitter.com/HouseIntel/status/1222723997785300992?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @StevenBeschloss I don’t know about you, but I wasn’t born in America to be ruled by a Mad King, no matter what the White House counsel thinks.
🐣 RT @TeamPelosi Trump abused his power for personal and political gain. And Republicans in Washington are covering up the truth. #GOPCoverup ¤ Pass it on.
🐣 RT @duty2warn THIS JUST IN: Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.) is planning to force a vote on Friday to require Chief Justice John Roberts to subpoena impeachment witnesses who he believes are relevant, and also rule on any claims of executive privilege. [Link to TheHill https://twitter.com/duty2warn/status/1222737287571628035?s=20%5D
🐣 RT @JoyceWhiteVance If anything the president does to get re-elected is ok, could he take steps to suppress votes from the other party? Help hackers gain access to voter rolls? Stage traffic accidents at polling places to make them inaccessible? I could go on & on but you get the point.
⋙ 🐣 RT @mnnurse10 Those things are all going to happen this year. The Republicans have layed the predicate for fascism. The 2020 campaign will be the actualization of all of the seemingly ridiculous arguments layed out tofay.
🐣 RT @Rschooley I feel like good lawyers might have come up with a better case than, “Everything every other expert says about the constitution is wrong.”
🐣 RT @AshaRangappa_ Dersh says any danger Trump poses can be eliminated in eight months…after explaining why it’s totally legal and totally cool for Trump to do anything he wants to get himself elected in said election
🐣 RT @JRubinBlogger The GOP is now the pro-totalitarian party. It is a clear and present danger
🐣 RT @BillKristol The moment the Senate votes against witnesses Friday, if it does, John Bolton should release to the public (and the Senate) what would have been his opening statement under oath.
WaPo, Greg Sargent: How the White House could keep John Bolton’s book buried — for now http://wapo.st/3aMPLZs
🧵 RT @ChrisMurphyCT Welcome to my daily behind-the-scenes thread on the impeachment trial. ¤ 1/ I have a vague recollection that my day started w a meeting w the Amtrak CEO (my work on other stuff doesn’t stop) but my memory is hazy after 8 hours and 100 questions. 📌 https://twitter.com/ChrisMurphyCT/status/1222747424650858496?s=20
🐣 RT @JRubinBlogger BTW an acquittal in a sham trial really demands a prosecution after Trump leaves office. Public’s right to know and all that.
🐣 RT @JillWineBanks This is a sad day in American history.
⋙ 🐣 RT @JohnWDean Alan Dershowitz unimpeached Richard Nixon today. All Nixon was doing was obstructing justice and abusing power because he thought he was the best person for the USA to be POTUS. When POTUS does it… etc. Seriously, that was his motive! Agree with Alan and impeachment is gone!
🐣 RT @EricBoehlert that’s the actually quote ¤ it’s an Orwellian nightmare
⋙ 🐣 RT @ABC Trump attorney Alan Dershowitz: “If a president does something which he believes will help him get elected in the public interest, that cannot be the kind of quid pro quo that results in impeachment.” https://abcn.ws/2S37weJ
🐣 RT @neal_katyal The fact a President would send his lawyer out to say such grossly unconstitutional things highlights the need for impeachment. If he believes he can do anything, so long as 1 of his motives is to win reelection, he won’t just do Ukraine leverage again, he’ll do far far worse.
⋙ 🐣 RT @neal_katyal This is inane. The president could threaten people (including with our army) unless they voted for him? Could order a breakin of DNC headquarters? I’m not sure even Kings had such powers.
🐣 RT @RepAdamSchiff The pattern of his words and conduct is clear: President Trump thinks he is above the law. He thinks he is the state. ¤ Trump said it himself: Under Article II I can do whatever I want. ¤ Precisely what our Founders feared. Precisely why they drafted the remedy of impeachment. 💽 https://twitter.com/RepAdamSchiff/status/1222624768819638284?s=20
🐣 RT @GlessKesslerWP Hmm, John Bolton, one of the most skilled lawyers in Washington, would write a book filled with TOP SECRET classified information? He’s done this rodeo before, so that would be highly surprising if true.
⋙ 🐣 RT @jaketapper WH letter to Bolton warning him against publication of his book as it is right now https://twitter.com/GlennKesslerWP/status/1222588159063666689?s=20/photo/1
⋙ 🐣 RT @SyncPol Glenn Kessler, you need to keep up with the time. There’s a new definition for Top Secret: Anything that irritates, embarrasses, contradicts, or in any way is lacking in the most lavish praise of the President is Top Secret. Take a look at the statute, and you can confirm that.
🐣 RT @duty2warn “This is a President who identifies the State as if it is himself.” – Adam Schiff, moments ago.
🐣 RT @Kasparov63 Wow, Dershowitz is actually making the King Louis XIV argument right now! Trump is good for the country, so anything he does to stay in power is the national interest, even if corrupt or illegal. That’s the language of every king & dictator: I am the end and the means justify me.
TheAtlantic, Yoni Applebaum (Dec): How America Ends http://bit.ly/2CGO3ZG
// Dec 2019; A tectonic demographic shift is under way. Can the country hold together?
WaPo, Philip Bump: Trump’s impeachment team offers the Trumpiest possible argument in his defense http://wapo.st/36Bo3vz
🐣 RT @mkraju Engel reveals a 2019 phone call in which he says Bolton suggested that the committee look into Yovanovitch ouster and “strongly implied that something improper had occurred” about her ouster https://twitter.com/mkraju/status/1222574762637103105?s=20/photo/1
// memo dated today
🔄💙 CREW: #Nepotism and Conflicts of Interest – Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump http://bit.ly/2u2fEUu
// with extensive references
🐣 RT @ScottMStedman I’m told by two sources close to the situation that Lev Parnas has documents and messages showing Giuliani’s involvement in using Parnas to pressure Poroshenko to end Ukraine’s cooperation in any Mueller related probe, especially Manafort.
⋙ 🐣 RT @ScottMStedman The sources were not clear about whether Kilimnik’s planned escape to Russia was part of the efforts. Lutsenko and Poroshenko handled that end of things. Soon after, it appears, Javelin missiles were approved.
⭕ 28 Jan 2020
💙 WaPo, Dana Milbank: Trump’s defense, lost in space http://wapo.st/36DfgZQ “Like his boss’s Twitter stream, Sekulow’s argument ricocheted from dubious complaint to extraneous grievance”
🐣 RT @pleasesaveour If they call Hunter, we want Ivanka
⋙ Fortune, Renae Reints (Jan 2019): Ivanka Trump’s Brand Received Five New Trademarks From China This Month http://bit.ly/37zgpmM ¤ #nepotism
🐣 RT @StefSimanowitz Jared Kushner was a realtor. ¤ He had NO expertise in foreign affairs, NO experience in govt or diplomacy, NO knowledge of the #MiddleEast & NO security clearance. ¤ Yet #Trump put him in charge of negotiating #MiddleEastPeace. ¤ What could possibly go wrong? ¤ #nepotism
// nepotism
GQ, Jay Willis (Oct): How Don Jr., Ivanka, and Eric Trump Have Profited Off Their Dad’s Presidency http://bit.ly/37F9lEY ¤ #nepotism
// 10/14/2019; nepotism
🐣 RT @ScottMStedman I’m told by two sources close to the situation that Lev Parnas has documents and messages showing Giuliani’s involvement in using Parnas to pressure Poroshenko to end Ukraine’s cooperation in any Mueller related probe, especially Manafort.
⋙ 🐣 RT @ScottMStedman The sources were not clear about whether Kilimnik’s planned escape to Russia was part of the efforts. Lutsenko and Poroshenko handled that end of things. Soon after, it appears, Javelin missiles were approved.
🐣 RT @FrankFigliuzzu Witnesses don’t ensure a fair trial, but the lack of witnesses guarantees an unfair trial:
⋙ 🐣 RT @DeadlineWH “We all know justice doesn’t happen in the dark… Optics and public perception are critical. The credibility of the Congress is being tested right now… They’re trying to talk everybody out of light, and sunshine, and witnesses” – @FrankFigliuzzi1 w/ @NicolleDWallace 💽 https://twitter.com/DeadlineWH/status/1222283161473880065?s=20/photo/1
💽 CNN: Alan Dershowitz called Trump corrupt in 2016 and said he could be corrupt as President http://cnn.it/37Djpyn
🐣 RT @rgoodlaw Dear media: ¤ When referring to Republican Senators who are grasping at utterly debunked Dershowitz “theory” of the Constitution. ¤ Recall over TWO THOUSAND historians: Trump’s actions “are precisely what the Framers had in mind as grounds for impeaching and removing a president.” https://twitter.com/rgoodlaw/status/1222309395620671488?s=20/photo/1
🔄 🔊 Lawfare and Goat Rodeo Podcast: The Report / Impeachment http://bit.ly/38LgF28 or http://apple.co/316M7FA with Susan Hennessey and Benjamin Wittes
WSJ: McConnell Says GOP Doesn’t Have Votes to Block Impeachment Witnesses http://on.wsj.com/2RUHUQY
// Senate majority leader makes remarks in private Republican meeting
🐣 Ivanka Trump reminds me of the German Baroness (played by Brigitte Kahn) in the film of The Remains of the Day.
🐣 RT @RepAdamSchiff Trump’s defense boils down to this:
Sure, the President did it.
We all know he did it.
We just don’t want the American people to see even more evidence that he did it.
Besides, he is allowed to do whatever he wants.
Get over it.
Well, the American people know better.
🐣 RT @RichardHaass It is true that the Palestinians rarely miss an opportunity to miss an opportunty, but Israel’s moving to annex territory discredits the notion there is opportunity in the plan. Trump admin seems to be forgetting that 2 state outcome is as much a favor to Israel as Palestinians.
🐣 RT @EvanMcMullin When a president is working to undermine an election in which he is currently standing, it’s not only appropriate to impeach and remove him in that same year, it’s necessary.
🐣 RT @neal_katyal So now the President’s Chief of Staff AND his natl security advisor (one of the more conservative people I have ever met). This isn’t a Democrat witchhunt, it is a former Trump close circle truth crusade.
🐣 RT @nycsouthpaw Alan Dershowitz is a disgraced figure in the legal community, and has been since long before Donald Trump came down the escalator. He was never a constitutional scholar and for decades has occupied the role of an outrageous, trolly contrarian.
🐣 RT @HouseIntel .@RepAdamSchiff on the need for John Bolton to testify: “Are we really going to require the country to wait until his book comes out to find out information that Senators could’ve used to make the right decision on conviction or acquittal?” 💽 https://twitter.com/HouseIntel/status/1222261578634006533?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @DavidJollyFL GOP Senators are beginning to act as though they are genuinely concerned this could spin out of control for them, and for Trump.
🐣 RT @JakeTapper New Q poll of registered voters
75% say witnesses should be allowed to testify in the impeachment trial
20% say they should not
⋙ 📊 Quinnipiac Poll: 75% Of Voters Say Allow Witnesses In Senate Impeachment Trial http://bit.ly/2RxG9du versus 20% who don’t
● A plurality of 49% of GOP want witnesses; 95% Dems, 75% Indies
● 53% say President Trump is not telling the truth about Ukraine
🐣 RT @JoyceWhiteVance Let me get this straight, if the Bolton book rumors are correct, Trump was so concerned about public corruption that he singled out the company in Ukraine with a connection to his political rival, while offering personal favors to leaders of corrupt regimes in Turkey and China?
🐣📊 RT @ryanstruyk New national Quinnipiac poll: 75% (!) of voters, including a 49% plurality of Republicans, say witnesses should be able to testify in the Senate impeachment trial of President Trump.
🐣 RT @RepAdamSchiff Here are my takeaways: ¤ Trump’s lawyers cannot, and did not, defend him on the facts. ¤ Their defense has evolved to this: he did it, so what? ¤ His lawyers strengthened our case that the Senate must hear from Bolton. ¤ A fair trial requires key witnesses. Will America have one?
🐣 RT @RepAdamSchiff The President’s lawyers say this is about a “policy debate.” ¤ It is not. ¤ Unless that policy provides that a president can be as corrupt as he chooses and there is nothing Congress can do about it. ¤ That must never be the policy of the United States.
🐣 RT @mkraju Senate Commerce Chairman Roger Wicker told me: “I don’t think the testimony of Ambassador Bolton would be helpful because I basically am in agreement with the very scholarly approach that Mr Dershowitz took that there’s no article there that’s grounds for impeachment and removal”
🐣 RT @DanRather You may try to build a dam to hold back truth. You can use sycophancy, shamelessness, and self-denial. But, I have found, reality has a way of cracking through.
🐣 John Kelly: http://bit.ly/37DycZO ● https://twitter.com/Auriandra/status/1222207631407878144?s=20/photo/1
// HeraldTribune, former chief of staff
“If John Bolton says that in the book I believe John Bolton,” said retired Gen. John Kelly, who served as Trump’s chief of staff for 18 months…
“Every single time I was with him … he always gave the president the unvarnished truth,” Kelly said of Bolton, who has become a figure of intense interest in the impeachment inquiry…
“I mean half of Americans think this process is purely political and shouldn’t be happening but since it is happening the majority of Americans would like to hear the whole story,” Kelly said.
“So I think if there are people that could contribute to this, either innocence or guilt … I think they should be heard,” Kelly said, adding: “I think some of the conversations seem to me to be very inappropriate but I wasn’t there. But there are people that were there that ought to be heard from.”
TheNation, Elie Mystal: The Trump Team’s Legal Defense Was a Tour-de-Force of Hypocrisy http://bit.ly/38Q11Tf
// From Ken Starr to Alan Dershowitz, the president’s lawyers spewed illogical arguments that contradicted their own well-known positions.
🐣 RT @kylegriffin1 “Bolton was regularly appalled by what he saw from the president, the people close to him said. He wondered at times if Trump was acting in America’s best interest or if he was inspired by nefarious reasons, according to a person familiar with the book.”
⋙ WaPo: Bolton book roils Washington as onetime allies turn on Trump’s former national security adviser http://wapo.st/2uDAauQ
🐣 RT @SenWhitehouse Yesterday was disgusting: Starr, Dershowitz, the Biden oppo dump, and the Trump campaign ad. It makes me want a shower.
⋙ Esquire, Charles Pierce: If a More Sanctimonious Toad Than Kenneth Starr Ever Has Crawled Through American Politics… http://bit.ly/37Dwvf2
// I’m hard-pressed to know who it was.
🐣 RT @GlennKesslerWP As a reporter, I appreciated Bolton’s attention to detail, his prodigious memory and his willingness to say what he knew and didn’t know, in contrast to officials who tried to BS you. It was clear he kept careful track of who said what in meetings.
🐣 RT @EricWolfson
GOP 1.0: “Trump is innocent & no quid pro quo!”
GOP 2.0: “OK, there was, but Trump wants to root out corruption!”
GOP 3.0: “OK, but Biden sucks!”
GOP 4.0: “OK, but it failed!
GOP 5.0: “OK, but do we *really* care?”
GOP 6.0: “OK, but [insert newest inane talking point here]!”
🐣 RT @joelockhart All Americans owe a debt of gratitude to Joni Ernst, Senator from Iowa. Her gleeful reaction to the Senate smear of Joe Biden laid bare what this is always been about. Using foreign policy to smear a respected former VP. It’s always been about this. Thank you Joni for honesty.
🐣 .@alandersh
Abuse of power = Betrayal of PUBLIC Trust
Public ≠ Private
Use of PUBLIC resource for PRIVATE benefit
= Abuse of Power
🐣 RT @tribelaw This is the best essay I’ve read on why Trump’s “defense” of defying all the subpoenas totally fails. It’s a must read:
💙 ⋙ TheAtlantic: Trump’s Defense Against Subpoenas Makes No Legal Sense http://bit.ly/37KYGZm
// Like so many contentions of the president’s legal team, this is malarkey thinly draped with plausible-sounding distortions of facts, rules, court opinions, and the Constitution itself.
🐣 RT @AlexandraChalup Trump’s legal team is strategically turning the impeachment hearing into a campaign commerical against his political opponent. It should be an FEC violation. These lawyers know the claims against the former VP are false; they aren’t defending Trump but campaigning for him.
🐣 RT @benjaminwittes Yeah, so @qjurecic turns to me during his presentation yesterday and asks this question. Glad people on @Morning_Joe enjoyed it.
⋙ 🐣 RT @KatiePhang .@benjaminwittes just now on @Morning_Joe: “Does Ken Starr KNOW he’s Ken Starr?!” 🤣😂
🐣 RT @prchovanec They need to read the transcript.
⋙ 🐣 RT @MarshallCohen Trump lawyer Jane Raskin argues that Rudy Giuliani was “just a minor player” in the Ukraine situation. (Context: His name was mentioned *five times* during the Trump-Zelensky call on July 25.)
🐣 huh?!
⋙ 🐣 RT @revrrlewis Brian Kilmeade: “I don’t see how you avoid bringing Bolton in now.” 💽 https://twitter.com/revrrlewis/status/1222117398230241280?s=20/photo/1
// Fox and Friends
WaPo: Bolton book roils Washington as onetime allies turn on Trump’s former national security adviser http://wapo.st/2O4tWuy
✅ WaPo, Aaron Blake: The Bidens, Burisma and impeachment, explained http://wapo.st/3aKxiwG
RawStory/Politico: GOP Sen. Ron Johnson: ‘My guess’ is John Bolton is telling truth about Trump and Ukraine http://bit.ly/2tKqajn
CREW: Criminal Abuse of Power: Trump’s Five Crimes Connected to Ukraine http://bit.ly/2U3WDfk
TRUMP’S FIVE CRIMES CONNECTED TO UKRAINE:
I. Bribery (18 U.S.C. § 201)
II. Soliciting Foreign Campaign Contribution (52 U.S.C. §§ 30109, 30121)
III. Coercion of Political Activity (18 U.S.C. § 610)
IV. Misappropriation of Federal Funds (18 U.S.C. § 641)
V. Obstruction of Congress (18 U.S.C. §§ 1505, 1512)
🐣 RT @karenamyatt Remember how this all started. President Obama roasted him. Thin skinned MNPD can’t take a joke. He’ll make these guys pay. Just wait & see. ¤ I laughed & gulped at the same time as I watched this live. He’ll never forget a slight, not ’til the dementia takes his entire memory.
⭕ 27 Jan 2020
NewYorker, Jill Lepore (1/27): The Last Time Democracy Almost Died http://bit.ly/31c1TyX
// Learning from the upheaval of the nineteen-thirties.; It’s a paradox of democracy that the best way to defend it is to argue about it.
🧵 RT @Morning_Joe Joe’s epic thread on Trump’s confederacy of dunces 💽 https://twitter.com/Morning_Joe/status/1222152608443457536?s=20/photo/1
📌 https://twitter.com/Morning_Joe/status/1222152608443457536?s=20
WSJ Editorial: The John Bolton Report http://on.wsj.com/2RPnhpa “Mr. Bolton could do it in a public statement, a TV interview, or an op-ed in this publication. Our editors are standing by.”
// The former NSC adviser should tell the public what he knows.
With the news of what’s in the book already public, Mr. Bolton can help everyone, including himself, by erasing any doubt about what he knows. He can tell the American public what he wrote—now, before the Senate votes on witnesses. Lay it all out. Put to rest the “coverup” talking point.
This doesn’t require testifying to the Senate. Mr. Bolton could do it in a public statement, a TV interview, or an op-ed in this publication. Our editors are standing by.
NYMag, Jonathan Chait: Biden Helped Reform Ukraine, and Giuliani Is Recorrupting It http://nym.ag/2U3SUyk
🐣 RT @MarshallCohen There is a strong consensus among legal scholars and impeachment experts that the arguments Dershowitz is making right now on the Senate floor… are bogus. He’s arguing that there must be a crime to impeach a president.
⋙ CNN, Marshall Cohen (1/20): Legal scholars pan Alan Dershowitz’s defense of Trump http://cnn.it/30Y0L1N
🐣 RT @jonward11 Bondi’s claim that Shokin was investigating Burisma is the key claim. She cited a Kyiv Post article. All other reporting has concluded that Shokin was not investigating Burisma and that his removal increased the chances that Burisma would be investigated.
⋙ 🐣 RT @ddale8 Trump lawyer Bondi played the vid of Joe Biden talking about trying to get Ukraine prosecutor Shokin fired. She said Shokin was “investigating Burisma.” ¤ She didn’t say: A) Shokin was widely accused of corruption; B) Former Shokin deputy has said Burisma probe was dormant; 1/2
↥ ↧
🐣 RT @ddale8 Bondi then read what Trump said on the Zelensky call – that “Biden went around bragging that he stopped the prosecution.” She accused House managers of omitting this important fact. ¤ Biden never bragged he stopped any prosecution. He bragged that he’d gotten a corrupt guy fired.
🐣 RT @kyledcheney NEW: Trump turned the Senate floor Monday into an alternate-reality impeachment of Biden and Obama. ¤ While Senate Rs discussed the real impeachment behind closed doors, Trump’s lawyers acted out a virtual prosecution of his rivals.
⋙ Politico, Kyle Cheney and Andrew Desiderio: Trump team turns Senate trial into extended Obama-Biden attack http://politi.co/2U27d6r
// The president’s lawyers mostly ignored the firestorm around former national security adviser John Bolton’s book.
🐣 RT @MaxBoot Schiff’s mild remarks had senators apoplectic, yet they had nothing to say about Trump’s tirade against “lyin’, cheatin’, liddle’ Adam ‘Shifty’ Schiff.” Trump gets to say anything he wants while his opponents must observe Victorian rules of decorum.
⋙ WaPo, Max Boot: Republicans’ lack of outrage — even after Bolton’s smoking-gun evidence — is outrageous http://wapo.st/2uEefDP
TheAtlantic, Maya Wiley: This Is a Trial of the Constitution Itself http://bit.ly/2Rwy49a
// To condone the president’s behavior is to shift power further into the executive and break the protections the Framers created.
WaPo: Bolton book roils Washington as onetime allies turn on Trump’s former national security adviser http://wapo.st/2O4tWuy
✅ WaPo, Aaron Blake: The Bidens, Burisma and impeachment, explained http://wapo.st/3aKxiwG
RawStory/Politico: GOP Sen. Ron Johnson: ‘My guess’ is John Bolton is telling truth about Trump and Ukraine http://bit.ly/2tKqajn
CREW: Criminal Abuse of Power: Trump’s Five Crimes Connected to Ukraine http://bit.ly/2U3WDfk
TRUMP’S FIVE CRIMES CONNECTED TO UKRAINE:
I. Bribery (18 U.S.C. § 201)
II. Soliciting Foreign Campaign Contribution (52 U.S.C. §§ 30109, 30121)
III. Coercion of Political Activity (18 U.S.C. § 610)
IV. Misappropriation of Federal Funds (18 U.S.C. § 641)
V. Obstruction of Congress (18 U.S.C. §§ 1505, 1512)
Bloomberg, Jonathan Bernstein: Here We Have It. The Trump Impeachment Smoking Gun. http://bloom.bg/2O5jiEd
// A report about a book by John Bolton makes the president’s Republican defenders look like liars and fools. Maybe they’ll be fine with that.
🐣 RT @tribelaw I believe @ColinKahl, having known Biden well for decades. He’s scrupulously honest and profoundly patriotic.
⋙ 🐣 RT @ColinKahl I staffed Biden on every Ukraine call, mtg & trip from fall 2014-2017. I sat in the Oval & SitRoom & coordinated w/State. Everything he did was to advance US policy alongside our allies, internat’l institutions & Ukrainian reformers. No amount of Trump spin changes those facts.
⋙⋙ 🐣 RT @ColinKahl See also AP fact check back when Trump made similar claims about Biden in his crazy letter to Pelosi http://bit.ly/2GzImPb https://twitter.com/ColinKahl/status/1221964328376471552?s=20/photo/1-2
⋙⋙ 🐣 RT @ColinKahl And another fact check http://wapo.st/2U1gImn
🐣 RT @LoopEmma .@ewarren says Alan Dershowitz’ arguments tonight were “contrary to both law and fact.” ¤ “His characterization of the law simply is unsupported. He is a criminal law professor who stood in the well of the Senate and talked about how law never inquires into intent…”
⋙ 🐣 RT @LoopEmma “…and that we should not be using the president’s intent as part of understanding impeachment. Criminal law is all about intent. Mens rea is the heart of criminal law. That’s the very basis of it. So it makes his whole presentation just nonsensical. I truly could not follow it”
DailyBeast, Sam Brodey, Jackie Kucinich and Asawin Suebsaeng: Team Trump Settles on Its Impeachment Defense: A Healthy Dose of Lib Triggering http://bit.ly/37xXaK1
// At one point, a GOP senator even seemed to concede that it was all about damaging Joe Biden.
WaPo: ‘Talk to Rudy’: Testimony from diplomats highlights Giuliani’s central role in driving Ukraine policy http://wapo.st/2Rx1jID
WaPo Editorial: If senators fail to call Bolton, their trial is a farce http://wapo.st/2RYtbVn
RawStory: CNN legal analyst Jeffrey Toobin mocks Alan Dershowitz for admitting he has a ‘minority view’: It’s ‘because he’s wrong’ http://bit.ly/3aKnraa
🐣 RT @walterdellinger My former student Judge Starr emphasizes that prior impeachments have been bipartisan. He assumes that is a criticism of Democrats who have proceeded alone rather than of the GOP members who have refused to consider joining in a serious critique of the president’s actions.
🐣 RT @JonFlan Nick Akerman and I got a chance on NBC News Now after the Senate trial to react to the day’s activities esp. the almost perfect failure of the Trump “scheme team” to mention Bolton’s accusations against Trump –
⋙ 💽 NBCNews: Trump legal team argues high crimes and misdemeanors must be criminal violations http://nbcnews.to/2O4rc0t
// The president’s legal defense team argues today that the impeachable offense of high crimes and misdemeanors but be a criminal violation. Former assistant special Watergate prosecutor Nick Akerman and former federal prosecutor John Flannery weigh in.
WaPo, Philip Bump: Trump’s team dismisses the case for impeachment as weak — and then sloppily attacks Joe Biden http://wapo.st/2UdaJLt
// Who needs Ukraine to disparage Biden when your legal team can do it on national television?
🐣 RT @RDEliason It’s not the titles of the Articles of Impeachment that matter, it’s the substance of the allegations. And these Articles do allege several criminal violations. #TheCrimesAreInThere
⋙ Sidebarsblog, RandallEliason (12/17): The Crimes in the Articles of Impeachment http://bit.ly/36wY887
🐣 RT @JoyceWhiteVance Very relieved that it wasn’t just me
⋙⋙ 🐣 RT @seungminkim Warren on Dershowitz’s presentation: “I truly could not follow it.”
⋙ 🐣 Possibly the point. But not a good look for Harvard Law
🧵 RT @jedshug [Thread] BRIBERY THREAD:
100% CLEAR. ¤ The House alleged felony bribery in Article I. ¤ The Trump lawyers are dense and/or in bad faith, so let’s do this step by explicit step.
Here’s the bribery statute 18 USC 201:
A. Corrupt
B. Demand/Seek
C. Anything of value
D. For Official Act:
📌 https://twitter.com/jedshug/status/1221998767295160322?s=20
NYT, Nicholas Bowie: Don’t Be Confused by Trump’s Defense. What He Is Accused of Are Crimes. http://nyti.ms/2uzQigW
// Abuse of power and obstruction of Congress have long been considered criminal and merit impeachment.
🐣 RT @AngrierWHStaff I’ve been telling you guys for years that the leaks are coming from inside the building AND that the NSC was trying to sound the alarm. ¤ It looks like they finally hit the right button.
⋙ 🐣 RT @meredithmcgraw New: NSC spox John Ullyot statement says no one in WH outside NSC reviewed the draft: ¤ “Amb. Bolton’s manuscript was submitted to the NSC for pre-publication review and has been under initial review by the NSC. No White House personnel outside NSC have reviewed the manuscript.”
WaPo, George Conway III: Bolton’s testimony would be devastating. Not even Republicans could look away. http://wapo.st/2O5vXa6
🐣 RT @eliotcwilliams 4 basic food groups: Triscuits, rice cakes, bananas, sparkling water
⋙ 🐣 No! Cheddar goldfish crackers, peanuts, Key Lime greek yogurt and Diet Mountain Dew
━━━━━━━▼ House Intel Fact Checks
Mega-Thread Link: https://twitter.com/i/events/1221120833764188160?s=13
🐣 RT @HouseIntel White House claim: Text.
Reality: Text 💽 https/photo/1
🐣 RT @HouseIntel White House claim: They can’t point to evidence proving Trump’s legitimate interest in corruption because it’s not in House record..
Reality: The President’s legal team would have provided witnesses and documents if such exculpatory evidence exists. We subpoenaed it #TruthMatters 💽 https://twitter.com/HouseIntel/status/1222644997809496065?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @HouseIntel White House claim: Ukraine did not know about the withheld aid until public reporting..
Reality: Ukraine’s former deputy foreign minister confirmed publicly that the Ukrainians knew. Witness testimony confirms it as well, including from State Dept official Catherine Croft: https://twitter.com/HouseIntel/status/1222640097809641472?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @HouseIntel White House claim: It is inappropriate to impeach a president in an election year..
Reality: Trump solicited foreign interference in the 2016 election, admitted he would do it again in 2020, and continues to direct a scheme to do so. Impeachment is the only remedy. #TruthMatters 💽 https://twitter.com/HouseIntel/status/1222610783139454978?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @HouseIntel White House claim: The President’s motives were mixed..
Reality: President Trump answered a direct question on what he wanted from Ukraine: “…if they were honest about it, they would start a major investigation into the Bidens. It’s a very simple answer.” #TruthMatters 💽 https://twitter.com/HouseIntel/status/1222600611025342464?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @HouseIntel White House claim: Presidents have the right to set foreign policy..
Reality: Presidents do not have the right to use official government levers to obtain personal, political gain. #TruthMatters 💽 https://twitter.com/HouseIntel/status/1222597072257474560?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @HouseIntel White House claim: Founders opposed this sort of impeachment.
Reality: Constitutional scholars testified: “If what we’re talking about is not impeachable, then nothing is.” Founders worried about a president who might “spare no efforts or means whatever to get himself reelected.” 💽 https://twitter.com/HouseIntel/status/1222226245733310464?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @HouseIntel White House claim: Impeachment is inappropriate in an election year..
Reality: Trump asked Russia to hack his 2016 rival’s emails. He stood on the White House lawn and said that China & Ukraine should investigate a 2020 opponent. This is a clear pattern. And he’ll do it again. 💽 https://twitter.com/HouseIntel/status/1222232305126772736?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @HouseIntel White House claim: President Trump had legitimate corruption concerns with Ukraine..
Reality: Ukraine is plagued by corruption, but the president undermined official anti-corruption policy by asking for political investigations of a rival. ¤ And Ukrainians saw right through it: 💽 https://twitter.com/HouseIntel/status/1222242012067508224?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @HouseIntel White House claim: Trump has been impeached over a policy disagreement..
Reality: He created an irregular back channel for Ukraine policy through his personal political lawyer. ¤ “There’s a lot of talk about Biden’s son” is not a policy. #TruthMatters 💽 https://twitter.com/HouseIntel/status/1222238759690829825?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @HouseIntel White House claim: Trump has been impeached over a policy disagreement..
Reality: He created an irregular back channel for Ukraine policy through his personal political lawyer. ¤ “There’s a lot of talk about Biden’s son” is not a policy. #TruthMatters 💽 https://twitter.com/HouseIntel/status/1222238759690829825?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @HouseIntel White House claim: Presidents frequently withhold aid..
Reality: There are legitimate ways to advance American interests with foreign aid. ¤ Trump, however, used his irregular Ukraine back channel for his personal political interest, not America’s interest. #TruthMatters 💽 https://twitter.com/HouseIntel/status/1221979497253232642?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @HouseIntel White House claim: Trump’s lawyer, Alan Dershowitz, argues that abuse of power is not impeachable.
Reality: In 1998, Mr. Dershowitz asserted: “If you have somebody who completely corrupts the office… and abuses trust… you don’t need a technical crime.” #TruthMatters 💽 https://twitter.com/HouseIntel/status/1221967205853810689?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @HouseIntel White House claim: There is no evidence of President Trump’s corrupt intent..
Reality: The fact that he only wanted investigations announced, and not completed, is evidence that he was interested in political benefit, not serious anti-corruption aims. #TruthMatters 💽 https://twitter.com/HouseIntel/status/1221973756714852352?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @HouseIntel White House claim: Presidents frequently withhold aid.
Reality: There are legitimate ways to advance American interests with foreign aid. ¤ Trump, however, used his irregular Ukraine back channel for his personal political interest, not America’s interest. #TruthMatters 💽 https://twitter.com/HouseIntel/status/1221979497253232642?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @HouseIntel White House claim: Trump’s obstruction of Congress is not impeachable.
Reality: Trump’s own lawyer Robert Ray said “Contempt of Congress is illegal.” ¤ No president in history has blocked an impeachment inquiry by ignoring every subpoena for documents & witnesses. #TruthMatters 💽 https://twitter.com/HouseIntel/status/1221871124721602566?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @HouseIntel White House claim: Abuse of power is not impeachable..
Reality: The Framers made clear that it is. ¤ Hamilton: impeachment is for “those offenses which proceed from the misconduct of public men, or in other words, from the abuse or violation of some public trust.” #TruthMatters
🐣 RT @HouseIntel White House claim: It is inappropriate to impeach a president in an election year.
Reality: Trump solicited foreign interference in the 2016 election, admitted he would do it again in 2020, and continues to direct a scheme to do so. Impeachment is the only remedy. #TruthMatters 💽 https://twitter.com/HouseIntel/status/1221873676913664000?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @HouseIntel White House claim: Rudy Giuliani is “a minor player.”.
Reality: Witnesses testified that Trump directed them to “talk to Rudy” about Ukraine. Trump himself mentioned Giuliani on the call with Zelensky. And Ukrainians viewed Rudy as “the key.” #TruthMatters https://twitter.com/HouseIntel/status/1221903718624514048?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @HouseIntel White House claim: The impeachment inquiry had no authority to begin without a full House vote. .
Reality: A House vote is not necessary. Nevertheless, the House took not one vote, but two. #TruthMatters 💽 https/photo/1
🐣 RT @HouseIntel White House claim: There was no quid pro quo.
Reality: Gordon Sondland on quid pro quo for the White House meeting: “The answer is yes.”
Mulvaney on quid pro quo for the aid: “We do that all the time.”
Ambassador Bolton is prepared to testify & should be called. #TruthMatters
💽 https://twitter.com/HouseIntel/status/1221882488139788288?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @HouseIntel White House claim: The President was really concerned about burden sharing.
Reality: The burden did not change between freezing and releasing the aid. There was no new effort to get others to contribute more, and Europe in fact contributes a great deal to Ukraine. #TruthMatters 💽 https://twitter.com/HouseIntel/status/1221880528913281024?s=20
🐣 RT @HouseIntel White House claim: Trump had valid concerns about corruption with Burisma.
Reality: Trump only wanted to ensure that Ukraine 𝙖𝙣𝙣𝙤𝙪𝙣𝙘𝙚 investigations. Announcing investigations before they begin is not the best practice for effectively fighting corruption. #TruthMatters 💽 https://twitter.com/HouseIntel/status/1221914133278396416?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @HouseIntel White House claim: We should out the whistleblower..
Reality:
• Details of the whistleblower’s report have been confirmed by other witnesses and documents
• Trump endangered the whistleblower by calling them a traitor and a spy, and suggesting harsh punishment #TruthMatters 💽 https://twitter.com/HouseIntel/status/1221122151174025216?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @HouseIntel White House claim: Trump withheld the aid to Ukraine because of concerns about corruption..
Reality: White House claim: Trump withheld the aid to Ukraine because of concerns about corruption. ¤
Reality: The Trump Administration’s own Department of Defense had already certified that Ukraine met the necessary anti-corruption benchmarks to receive the aid. #TruthMatters 💽 https://twitter.com/HouseIntel/status/1221111832720683008?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @HouseIntel White House claim: [Abuse of Power is not impeachable].
Reality: In fact, the Republican’s own witness, Professor Jonathan Turley, agreed that abuse of power is an impeachable offense: ¤ “[I]t is possible to establish a case for impeachment based on a non-criminal allegation of abuse of power.” https://twitter.com/HouseIntel/status/1221963419357712384?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @HouseIntel White House claim: President Trump was deeply concerned about corruption in Ukraine..
Reality: White House Claim: President Trump was deeply concerned about corruption in Ukraine. ¤ Reality: In two calls with President Zelensky, Trump does not mention “corruption” at all, only the two specific investigations for his personal political benefit. #TruthMatters 💽 https://twitter.com/HouseIntel/status/1221110683875659776?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @HouseIntel White House claim: Ukraine did not know about the withheld aid until public reporting.
Reality: Two witnesses testified Ukraine knew of the hold before it was public. ¤ Ukraine’s former deputy foreign minister confirmed publicly that the Ukrainians knew: https://twitter.com/HouseIntel/status/1221878543778570241?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @HouseIntel White House claim: The House never subpoenaed Rudy Giuliani, therefore he is not central to the Ukraine scheme..
Reality: Giuliani was subpoenaed for documents on September 30 and deposition notices were sent to three of his associates. Giuliani refused to comply. #TruthMatters https://twitter.com/HouseIntel/status/1221897330124886016?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @HouseIntel White House claim: This president has been the strongest support of Ukraine..
Reality: Reality: President Trump knew that US support was vital to Ukraine, but withheld the aid anyway. Trump has also defended Russia’s invasion of Crimea. #TruthMatters 💽 https://twitter.com/HouseIntel/status/1221892472785244161?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @HouseIntel White House claim: he House denied due process..
Reality: President Trump was offered the same or better procedural privileges than those given to Nixon and Clinton. He chose not to avail himself of these privileges. #TruthMatters 💽 https://twitter.com/HouseIntel/status/1221900148156047364?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @HouseIntel White House claim: “It was no secret” why the aid was withheld..
Reality: The House interviewed 17 witnesses. None were given any explanation for the hold on military aid until after controversy erupted. All documents are STILL being obstructed. #TruthMatters https://twitter.com/HouseIntel/status/1221890825849901056?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @HouseIntel White House claim: VP Biden acted inappropriately..
Reality: There is zero evidence to support this claim. Shokin was widely recognized by our allies to be a corrupt prosecutor, and removing him was in line with official U.S. policy to combat corruption in Ukraine. #TruthMatters 💽 https://twitter.com/HouseIntel/status/1221924848609439744?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @HouseIntel White House claim: The fact that Trump and Zelensky met at the UN exonerates the President..
Reality: Reality: Multiple witnesses testified to the unique significance of an Oval Office meeting. And Zelensky himself brought up the desire to meet at the White House, at the UN. #TruthMatters 💽 https://twitter.com/HouseIntel/status/1221885673474531328?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @HouseIntel White House claim: There was no quid pro quo..
Reality: Gordon Sondland on quid pro quo for the White House meeting: “The answer is yes.” ¤ Chief of Staff Mulvaney on quid pro quo for the aid: “We do that all the time” #TruthMatters 💽 https://twitter.com/HouseIntel/status/1221095396581289986?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @HouseIntel White House claim: Trump invited Zelensky to a White House meeting..
Reality: Text 💽 https/photo/1
🐣 RT @HouseIntel White House claim: Ukraine felt no pressure.
Reality: US assistance = 10% of Ukraine’s military budget.
Lt. Col. Vindman: “The power disparity between the POTUS & the President of Ukraine is vast.”
Holmes: “I think they’re being very careful. They still need us.” #TruthMatters
White House Claim: Ukraine felt no pressure.
Reality: US assistance = 10% of Ukraine’s military budget.
Lt. Col. Vindman: “The power disparity between the POTUS & the President of Ukraine is vast."
Holmes: “I think they’re being very careful. They still need us.” #TruthMatters pic.twitter.com/gEW35SqmPR
— House Intelligence Committee (@HouseIntelDems) January 27, 2020
🐣 RT @HouseIntel White House claim: The fact that Trump and Zelensky met at the UN exonerates the President.
Reality: Multiple witnesses testified to the unique significance of an Oval Office meeting. And Zelensky himself brought up the desire to meet at the White House, at the UN. #TruthMatters 💽 https://twitter.com/HouseIntel/status/1221885673474531328?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @HouseIntel White House claim: Text.
Reality: Text 💽 https/photo/1
━━━━━━━▲
🐣 RT @nytmike EXCLUSIVE: Bolton privately told Barr last year that he had concerns Trump was effectively granting personal favors to the autocrats of Turkey and China. Barr said he was concerned Trump created appearance he had undue influence on inquiries w/@maggieNYT
⋙ NYT: Bolton Was Concerned That Trump Did Favors for Autocratic Leaders, Book Says http://nyti.ms/2RvM0zW
// The former national security adviser shared his unease with the attorney general, who cited his own worries about the president’s conversations with the leaders of Turkey and China.
🐣 RT @HarryLitman 100% straw man: Dershowitz’s argument that alternative to Trump’s view is inane view that impeachable offense are whatever Congress says they are. See @tribe, @RepRaskin and #chemerinsky excellent discussion here: [Lawfare podcast] https://twitter.com/harrylitman/status/1221964324454879232?s=20
🐣 RT @McFaul Incredible. Admitting openly that Trump and team are using this impeachment trial to take down Biden in Iowa.
⋙ 🐣 RT @AlanHe ERNST: “IA caucuses are this next Monday evening. And I’m really interested to see how this discussion today informs and influences the Iowa caucus voters, those Demcaucus goers. Will they be supporting VP Biden at this point?” ¤ H/T @JaxAlemany
🐣 RT @mikercarpenter Derschowitz is claiming that abuse of office is outside the realm of impeachable offenses. But what Trump did fits the very definition of criminal bribery: soliciting an item of value as a means of influencing the actions of an individual holding a public duty.
🐣 RT @AriMelber Dershowitz is now literally contradicting the life’s work of his Trump *co-counsel* Ken Starr, who pushed abuse of power as an article of impeachment against Clinton. ¤ What does it say that Trump’s own lawyers!don’t agree with each other’s work on their defense?
🐣 RT @neal_katyal These arguments do nothing except highlight the need for witnesses. It’s nuts to think Senate can decide this w/out hearing from the key person in room who it is reported says Trump had the very motive he denies having. Every piece of evidence corroborates Bolton, nothing Trump.
🐣 RT @SethAbramson Dersh is giving this argument instead of Turley because Turley says it’s BS
🐣 RT @cbouzy Alan Dershowitz’s primetime ramblefuckery is truly a WTF moment.
🐣 RT @McFaul This is the key difference between Biden and Trump. Biden was never freelancing . He was always on the Obama team advancing Obama Administration polices. Trump undermined his own administration’s policy! Not one senior nat security official on his team supported his “drug deal”.
🐣 RT @RadioFreeTom Dershowitz is having the time of his life arguing an inane theory in the capstone lecture of his entire creepy career. He doesn’t care about the constitution, or the country. This is Alan Dershowitz in his final act of self fulfillment on the floor of the United States Senate.
🐣 RT @tedlieu Robert Ray is correct that the call by @realDonaldTrump to the Ukrainian leader was less than perfect. In fact, when you put that call in the context of the overall pressure campaign by Trump and his associates, it was perfectly ILLEGAL.
⋙ 🐣 RT @MaxBoot Trump won’t be happy with Robert Ray for conceding the Zelensky call might have been “less than perfect.” That’s not the party line.
🐣 RT @rgoodlaw Just a little something #PamBondi omits: ¤ US Ambassador 2015 speech, coordinated with VP Biden, excoriating Ukraine Prosecutor Office for having covered up Burisma corruption. ¤ That’s right: They went after Prosecutor Office for failing to confront Burisma. ¤ (Also Kent testimony) https://twitter.com/rgoodlaw/status/1221918377180123140?s=20/photo/1
// i.e. Zlochevskiy
🐣 RT @michaelbd A number of us at NR – myself, @ltthompso, and @AndrewCMcCarthy- have been saying the quid pro quo is right there in the rough transcript. Yet the WH and GOP Senate have stuck to this idiotic “no quid pro quo” defense, against common sense.
⋙ NationalReview, Andrew McCarthy: Bolton Blows Up Trump Team’s Foolhardy Quid Pro Quo Defense http://bit.ly/38JkBAj
Newsweek: #ILeftTheGOP Trends as Former Republicans Share Why They ‘Cut the Cord’ With the Party http://bit.ly/2uznJQK GOP party affiliation is now 27% compared to 39% in 2004.
🐣 RT @DavidJollyFL The odd part of the Trump team’s takedown of Hunter Biden just now is that it serves to confirm the House managers’ case that the President was indeed engaged in impeachable behavior by asking a foreign government to investigate his political opponent. A terrible legal argument.
⋙ 🐣 RT @RickPetree This is key: Trump wants to say “hell yes, I wanted Ukraine to investigate the Bidens, and I was *absolutely right* to do so.” His lawyers transmit a muted version of that ‘defence.’
WaPo, Jennifer Rubin: Trump’s defense is irrelevant. Only Bolton matters now. http://wapo.st/2TZI4Jy
🐣 RT @brianklaas Senate Republicans and Trump are pushing a fake scandal about Biden that isn’t just a lie, it’s the exact opposite of what actually happened. Voters should hold them accountable for their blatant lies. Truth matters. Learn the facts:
⋙ WaPo, Brian Klaas (Sep): Trump is pushing a fake scandal once again. Don’t buy it. http://wapo.st/2uBIPxS
🐣 RT @HotlineJosh National Review: “The president’s most ardent defenders are already out smearing him as a treacherous liar. But Bolton is an unvarnished truth-teller, to a fault.”
⋙ NationalReview, Rich Lowry: The Smear Campaign against John Bolton http://bit.ly/ “the chances of the trial extending have increased markedly over the last 24 hours”
DailyBeast, David Lurie: The GOP Isn’t Exonerating Trump—It’s Indicting Itself http://bit.ly/2O3Tt7n
// Part-and-parcel of any cultish political movement is a continuous demand for declarations of loyalty, and punishment of the disloyal.
WaPo: Trump says he was concerned about corruption in Ukraine. The evidence indicates he was focused on Biden. http://wapo.st/3aGsJ6u
DailyBeast, Sam Brodey and Jackie Kucinich: Bolton Leak Sends GOP Scrambling to Justify Quick Trial http://bit.ly/3aX7ayS
// The New York Times report about the former national security adviser’s new book renewed the debate over witness testimonies and left Republicans frantically circling the wagons
NYT Editorial: Surprise, Mr. President. John Bolton Has the Goods. http://nyti.ms/2RTlBeD
// Who’s telling the truth about Ukraine? There’s one way to find out.
WaPo: Key GOP senators say reports on Bolton book bolster case for witnesses in impeachment trial http://wapo.st/2uzgyYO
🐣 RT @atrupar Pam Bondi, who dropped an investigation into Trump University after Trump’s foundation gave her campaign $25,000, is here to lecture us about corruption 💽 https://twitter.com/atrupar/status/1221911604201246720?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @Teri_Kanefield Okay, we finally have #15: Joe Biden was corrupt. ¤ I can’t believe it took 3 hours to get here. https://twitter.com/Teri_Kanefield/status/1221911169587236865?s=20/photo/1
// Bogus arguments Bingo Card complete
🐣 RT @StevenJHarper1 The poor quality of the lawyering is matched only by the poor quality of their client and his case.
⋙🐣 RT @jgelzer Trump’s own lawyer admitted in just the past hour:
– Live testimony & cross-examination are great for finding the truth.
– The only courts to rule on Trump’s absolute immunity theory have rejected it.
– House Dems DID go to court, & indeed won.
None seems good for his client!
🐣 RT @anneapplebaum I know it’s meant to be a joke, but this is literally the logic.
⋙ 🐣 RT @petersuderman Trump didn’t do the thing he’s accused of doing, but if he did it was fine, and in fact that’s exactly what he did, get over it, because it’s not only fine, it’s precisely what we want from a president, and can you believe that Biden did the same thing, shame on him.
Mediaite: ‘ARE YOU KIDDING?!’: CNN’s Jeffrey Toobin Lights Fire to ‘Mind Boggling’ Arguments From Trump Legal Team http://bit.ly/2vrH3Qg
🐣 RT @JoyceWhiteVance This argument only gets more dangerous, as Philbin now gives every future president a pass on answering any questions as part of oversight. Does that also apply to turning over documents? Silly Bill Clinton, deciding to answer questions under oath.
🐣 RT @moscow_project Philbin continues to argue for the inviolability of executive privilege, which Trump has never actually asserted over any of the documents or testimony in the case.
⋙ WaPo, Dana Milbank: Trump’s defenders make it up as they go http://wapo.st/30Xy0lP
🐣 RT @rgoodlaw Another unforced error. ¤ What’s remarkable about this tweet thread by President Trump responding to specific allegations in #BoltonBook: ¤ These statements by Trump may constitute a WAIVER of executive privilege! ¤ Can’t publicly discuss the info, and then say @AmbJohnBolton can’t. https://twitter.com/rgoodlaw/status/1221811681254367232?s=20/photo/1
JustSecurity: Executive Privilege Cannot Block Bolton’s Testimony http://bit.ly/2O19V8w
🐣 RT @clairecmc I’m scratching my head here.They get the lawyer who thought an extramarital affair was impeachable to argue that withholding urgent military assistance to an ally in war against our enemy for a political favor is not impeachable. If it wasn’t so infuriating it would be hysterical
🔆 This❗️⋙ Reuters/CNN: Trump ally Graham says he’d back subpoena for Bolton manuscript: CNN reporter http://reut.rs/37ANfU4
🐣 RT @bradheath Starr is arguing that Congress should hold presidents accountable through “oversight,” not impeachment. But the Trump administration has repeatedly argued that Congress can’t seek all types of information about the president unless it’s conducting an impeachment inquiry.
🐣 RT @jonflan Zelensky was ready to give a CNN interview but the Senate forced the WH to release the funds, and Taylor discouraged Zelensky from announcing any investigation on CNN. Do we think the Senators have done enough homework to know the facts that contradict Purpura’s show. Not the Rs
🐣 RT @AlFranken I have Republican friends in the Senate who are morally serious people. McConnell is not one of them. Let’s see if there are four who think it’s important to hear the truth. #ImpeachmentTrial
🐣 RT @RepAdamSchiff The President blocked our request for Bolton’s testimony. ¤ Now we see why: ¤ Bolton directly contradicts the heart of the President’s defense. ¤ If the trial is to be fair, Senators must insist that Mr. Bolton be called as a witness, and provide his notes and other documents.
TheBulwark, Bill Kristol: Speak for America, John! http://bit.ly/36wWDXq
// This is John Bolton’s moment.
🐣 RT @SethAbramson I’ve listened to most of the impeachment trial—and have my TV on right now—but I actually can’t listen to Ken Starr, as there is a degree of hypocrisy and lack of principle that is so spectacularly offensive to the human spirit I refuse to subject myself to it and Starr qualifies
🐣 RT @digby I guess it’s just me. Having been re-radicalized by the inane Clinton impeachment, I guess I’m still astonished that it ever happened. To have Ken Starr up here blathering about the horrors of impeachment is just more than I can take. ¤ This is nuclear level gaslighting.
🐣 RT @JohnWDean Ken Starr’s “Rodino Rule” that you only proceed with impeachment when it is bipartisan is baloney, and a distortion of history. The Nixon process became bipartisan only as Republicans discovered his guilt. The GOP of 1970s refused to coverup for him! Not so today, it appears.
🐣 RT @MaxBoot Ken Starr would be more convincing if he were to say, “I apologize for my role in impeaching Bill Clinton. It was all a big mistake. I too fell prey to the passions of the Age of Impeachment.”
🐣 RT @bydinator Sen. Lisa Murkowski to reporters just now: “I said before I was curious about what Ambassador Bolton might have to say. I’m still curious.”
🐣 RT @santucci Senior level White House sources tell @ABC the president’s legal team is preparing for the possibility of witnesses in the impeachment trial. Sources tell @jonkarl @KFaulders & me legal team preparing aggressive, drawn out legal fight to block testimony of potential witnesses.
🐣 RT @RobGeorge Who on Trump’s team thought that THIS argument delivered by THIS person was a really good idea? #ImpeachmentTrial #KenStarr
🐣 RT @peterbakernyt Mulvaney lawyer says he never had conversation indicating aid was tied to investigating Democrats. Why would we think he had? Because Mulvaney told us the aid freeze was linked to Trump’s demand for probe of 2016 Democrats. “That’s why we held up the aid.”
⋙ NYT (Oct): Mulvaney Says, Then Denies, That Trump Held Back Ukraine Aid as Quid Pro Quo http://nyti.ms/2RRMcJ2
// 10/18/2019; Conflicting comments by the acting White House chief of staff threw Washington into turmoil.
🐣 RT @julianzelizer 1998: Starr calls for impeaching a president who lied about an affair. ¤ 2020: While nobody cares about the president’s affairs, or violating campaign finance laws to hide them, Starr defends a president impeached for using foreign aid as leverage for his reelection needs
🐣 If impeachment is to be removed from the Constitution, it requires a Constitutional Amendment, not a lecture from Ken Starr.
🐣 RT @AshaRangappa This is insane. If true, then Barr is not merely conflicted (he was directly referenced in the phone call to Zelensky), he is a coconspirator who actively tried to obstruct Congress and justice by burying the WB complaint and preventing a criminal investigation
⋙ 🐣 RT @SethAbramson NEW YORK TIMES: “Bolton said after Trump’s call with Zelensky, Bolton raised with Barr his concerns about Giuliani—who was pursuing a shadow Ukraine policy encouraged by Trump—and told Barr Trump mentioned him on the Zelensky call. Barr denies learning of the call from Bolton.”
WaPo, Greg Sargent: Four big takeaways from the explosive John Bolton revelations http://wapo.st/30WLvlE
🐣 RT @ryanstruyk SCHUMER: “It boils down to one thing: we have a witness with firsthand evidence of the president’s actions for which he is on trial. He is ready and willing to testify. How can Senate Republicans not vote to call that witness and request his documents?”
⋙ 🐣 RT @ryanstruyk SCHUMER: “If there was ever even a shred of logic left to not hear witnesses and review the documents, Mr. Bolton’s book just erased it.”
🐣 RT @justinbaragona Fox News’ Chris Wallace on the Bolton news: “If you want a sense of how big the news is that we’ve heard in the past 12-14 hours, listen to the Trump supporters…spinning like crazy that it isn’t big news and you get a sense that this is really an important development.” 💽 https://twitter.com/justinbaragona/status/1221853319993483265?s=20/photo/1
CREW: Newly Disclosed Docs Cast Further Doubt on DOJ’s Decision to Terminate McCabe http://bit.ly/2GoUsL4
🐣 RT @JRubinBlogger Either way, the incriminating evidence against Trump will come out. The only question is if they want to be seen as accomplices in a failed coverup scheme.
⋙ WaPo, Jennifer Rubin: Eight ways Bolton has changed the trial and boxed in Republicans http://wapo.st/37ytsol
🐣 RT @HouseIntel House impeachment managers statement on @nytimes reporting on John Bolton: ¤ “…no doubt now that Mr. Bolton directly contradicts the heart of the President’s defense and therefore must be called as a witness at the impeachment trial of President Trump.” http://bit.ly/37yaDBA https://twitter.com/HouseIntel/status/1221590523707826179?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @MSNBC JUST IN: House manager Rep. Schiff reacts to this new NYTimes report: ¤ “If the trial is to be fair, Senators must insist that Mr. Bolton be called as a witness, and provide his notes and other documents.”
🐣 RT @MaxBoot Pompeo has become a Trump mini-me who emulates his master in boorishness, bombast, bullying—and dishonesty. Every day that Pompeo stays in office, he makes Rex Tillerson—once seen as the worst secretary of state ever–look better by comparison.
🐣 RT @MaxBoot It’s impossible to imagine Pompeo calling out Trump as Tillerson did. He is described as “among the most sycophantic and obsequious people around Trump.” That’s saying something, b/c Trump is surrounded by more servile courtiers than a medieval monarch.
⋙ WaPo, Max Boot: Every day that Pompeo stays in office, he makes Tillerson look better by comparison http://wapo.st/2RREs9V
🐣 RT @glennkirschner2 Schiff must make a motion to CJ Roberts for witnesses. As I’ve been saying all along, if Roberts grants the motion for witnesses (he will) & the Rs vote to overrule him (they might) that will (de facto) be obstruction of justice & accessory after the fact.
🐣 RT @tribelaw Here’s a scenario:
1. House Managers invoke Rules VII & XXIV to ask the CJ to subpoena Bolton & all relevant documents
2. CJ Roberts issues subpoena
3. Trump lawyers realize Senate can’t overrule this order
4. Trump sues Roberts in DC district court
⋙ NYT, Neal K. Katyal, Joshua A. Geltzer and Mickey Edwards: John Roberts Can Call Witnesses to Trump’s Trial. Will He? http://nyti.ms/36vzwwo
// Democratic House managers should ask the chief justice to issue subpoenas for John Bolton and others.
🐣 RT @profbriankalt [1/26] I’m reading Schlesinger’s 1973 book The Imperial Presidency. He notes presidential corruption peaks in 50-year cycles (Grant, Harding, Nixon) and says, “Around the year 2023 the American people would be well advised to go on the alert and start nailing down everything in sight.”
⋙ 🐣 Maybe things have sped up because social media
⭕ 26 Jan 2020
🐣 RT @DanRather In a story where a lot of shoes have been dropping, this Bolton revelation seems to be one heckuva big one. If true it confirms a lot, but also raises a whole new set of questions.
🐣 RT @JonahDispatch The only way to tell who’s lying is to obtain sworn testimony as well as the production of any notes, memoranda, phone logs. Etc either party might have.
⋙ 🐣 RT @Axios JUST IN: President Trump has strongly denied John Bolton’s allegations tying the hold-up of Ukraine aid to his demands for investigations into his political opponent Joe Biden
⋙⋙ Axios: Trump denies Bolton book allegations that Ukraine aid was tied to Bidens http://bit.ly/36vtZWS
WaPo, Fred Hiatt: The White House offers senators a false, and poisonous, choice http://wapo.st/30VYjc0 “If they accept the White House defense, senators will accept as precedent for all time that a president may use the powers of his office for personal political gain … ”
🐣 RT @RepJeffries Note to those critics allegedly concerned with decorum. ¤ This is the President of the United States. ¤ The next time you think to criticize House Dems for using sharp language. ¤ Spare us the FAKE outrage.
⋙⋙ 🐣 RT @real Shifty Adam Schiff is a CORRUPT POLITICIAN, and probably a very sick man. He has not paid the price, yet, for what he has done to our Country!
⋙ 🐣 RT @DrGJackBrown This isn’t just ‘Sharp Language’ – it’s stochastic terrorism. Trump is deliberately trying to incite lone wolves.
🐣 RT @SethAbramson Bolton just decimated every Trump defense all at once and irreparably
NYT: 6 Revelatory Moments From the Video of Trump’s Private Donor Dinner http://nyti.ms/2uBKKlM
// The video of the 2018 event made headlines for capturing conversations now tied to the impeachment inquiry. But it also showed remarkable exchanges that weren’t about Ukraine.
🐣 RT @MuellerSheWrote The Bolton leak came from the NSC. Maybe totally off base, but wasn’t Andrew Peek-the NSC guy who took over for Tim Morrison who took over for Fiona Hill-unceremoniously escorted off White House grounds last week for a “security” issue?
⋙ Bloomberg (1/18): Trump Loses Another Russia Adviser, Adding to NSC Turnover http://bloom.bg/2O3fpPV
● Andrew Peek was top Russia hand on National Security Council
● Peek’s two predecessors testified in impeachment inquiry
🐣 RT @bryantylercohen
12/30: Bolton provides copy of manuscript to WH, including claim that Trump tied aid to Biden probe
1/3: Trump launches disproportionate strike on Iran, which Bolton had encouraged for years
[ ⋙ ] If you think there’s no connection here, wake up. EVERYTHING Trump does is self-serving
⋙ 🐣 RT @bryantylercohen The timelines *always* match up. ¤ Mueller testified on 7/24. Trump felt exonerated. He called Zelensky the next day on 7/25. ¤ The House Intel Committee received the whistleblower complaint on 9/9. The WH suddenly released the aid to Ukraine on 9/11. ¤ It’s. Always. Obvious.
🐣 RT @jdawsey1 John Bolton plans to say in memoir titled “The Room Where It Happened” that Trump linked Ukraine investigations to foreign aid in August. Book is unflattering portrait of Trump he hopes to publish March 17. Matching NYT story with a couple new details:
💙 ⋙ WaPo: Democrats call for Bolton to testify in Trump impeachment trial after new report on aid to Ukraine http://wapo.st/30V3jO9
🐣📊 RT @kylegriffin1 New Fox News poll: ¤ On impeachment, by a 50-44% margin, voters think the Senate should vote to convict Trump and remove him from office. ¤ Among independents, more say Trump should be removed by a 19-point margin (53-34%).
💙 NYT, William B. Taylor: Yes, Secretary Pompeo, Americans Should Care About Ukraine http://nyti.ms/37yGgek Mr. Taylor is a former United States ambassador to Ukraine.
// A former ambassador tells the secretary of state just why.
🐣 RT @biannagolodryga I was waiting for this. Russian Senator says “@SecPompeo let it slip ‘do you think Americans care about Ukraine?’ in a radio interview. The Sec of State admitted that for US national interests, Ukraine is of no concern. It is just a fictitious priority of the ruling caste.”
⋙ 🐣 RT @Alexey_Pushkov Помпео проговорился. «Вы что, считаете, что американцев действительно волнует Украина?»- обрушился он на радиоведущую. Так госсекретарь фактически признал: для национальных интересов США происходящее на Украине не имеет особого значения. Это выдуманный приоритет правящей касты.
🐣 RT @McFaul This should be a warning to anyone ever thinking of working for Trump. You leave/get fired and immediately become “enemy of the people” — Comey, McMaster, Tillerson, Kelly, Mattis, Hill, Taylor, Bolton, etc. Haley is the only one in my world who has come out unscathed.
⋙ 🐣 RT @seanmdav John Bolton is running the exact same revenge playbook against Trump that James Comey used. He’s even using the same agent and leaking to the same reporters. All because he’s mad Trump fired him for leaking and trying to start new wars. It’s so boring and predictable.
WaPo, Daniel Drezner: The secretary of slander http://wapo.st/2GstylG
// So much for the beacon of democracy
🐣 RT @andrewfeinberg He wants you to believe that @AmbJohnBolton, his national security adviser — who’d already directed several staffers to talk to counsel’s office about the “drug deal” — never brought said deal up with the person he was there to advise.
🐣 RT @neal_katyal Article says Bolton book submitted to WH for prepublication rev. If Trump and defense team have read it&delaying publication (as nyt suggests), may further obstruction case. This is where Trump decn to use WH lawyers may haunt him. No atty/client privilege
⋙ 🐣 RT @neal_katyal “Bolton’s submission of the book to the White House may have given the White House lawyers direct insight into what Mr. Bolton would say if he were called to testify… It also intensified concerns among some of his advisers that they needed to block Mr. Bolton from testifying”
💙 🧵 RT @jennycohn1 [Thread] Dear @SenatorCollins: threatening senators is entirely consistent with Trump’s character & conduct. Remember when he read Lindsey Graham’s cell phone number out loud (which wld enable it to be hacked)? 1/ 📌 https://twitter.com/jennycohn1/status/1221622779834847237?s=20
🐣 ◕ RT @Teri_Kanefield Moreover, in 2 of Trump’s tweets, we can check off 3 Bogus Defenses from the Bingo Card. https://twitter.com/Teri_Kanefield/status/1221675426671558656?s=20/photo/1
#1: The call was perfect
#17: Zelensky said there was nothing wrong
#21: Trump did more for Ukraine than Obama
(I need to make a card with more squares)
🐣 RT @Teri_Kanefield If John Bolton takes the stand and testifies under oath—and if you want to testify that he’s wrong—you’ll have to take the stand and swear an oath to tell the truth. ¤ Are you up to it, @realDonaldTrump? ¤ There is no such thing as testifying by tweet.
🧵 RT @TheRickWilson [Thread] 1/ Sitting down for a dinner with REDACTED and the Bolton news is lighting up my phone. ¤ Watch for Mitch and the WH team (but I repeat myself) to work overtime to end the entire proceedings as fast as possible. 📌 https://twitter.com/TheRickWilson/status/1221595929888858113?s=20
⋙ 🐣 RT @ 2/ This Bolton information is previously unheard, entirely relevant, directly makes the president’s direct command of the scheme of illegal extortion apparent. ¤ Unless you vote to demand it, you’re not Senators. ¤ You’re co-conspirators. [ … ]
🐣 #MAGA people really don’t care. Do You?
🐣 RT @IlvasToomas When all this is over, the history books will be written by smart people who will bring out all the mendacity, dissembling and sheer stupidity of what people said. Along with the facts documented and footnoted. Screaming dumb people will not publish history books anyone reads 1/2
⋙ 🐣 RT @IlvasToomas It will all be laid out, clearly, simply. This will be the legacy of of the people who acted, of who was honest, who was not. Some, history will hold up as heroes, others as villains. Children will read who was who. Some will be proud, some spit, some will change their names 2/2
🐣 RT @JoyceWhiteVance No wonder Trump wants a quick end to impeachment. He told Bolton he would hold Ukrainian aid “until officials there helped with investigations into Democrats including the Bidens.” What is left of our ideals if The Senate votes w/out hearing from Bolton?
🐣 RT @tribelaw .@Lawrence has nailed this. If executive privilege had otherwise been available — which it wasn’t— this #twaiver (my term for a “waiver by tweet”) rendered it unavailable.
⋙ 🐣 RT @Lawrence And with this late night tweet the Very Stable Genius has legally waived executive privilege on John Bolton’s testimony. ¤ Trump has now made their conversations public. ¤ History might show this was Trump’s most self-damaging tweet.
🐣 RT @JoyceWhiteVance No wonder Trump wants a quick end to impeachment. He told Bolton he would hold Ukrainian aid “until officials there helped with investigations into Democrats including the Bidens.” What is left of our ideals if The Senate votes w/out hearing from Bolton?
🐣 RT @McFaul So, why don’t you both come testify to the Senate, under oath, and settle this matter? #FactsMatter.
🐣 RT @kyledcheney This is why Democrats’ demand for Bolton’s contemporaneous notes — even more than his live testimony — means everything here. ¤ For now, it’s Trump’s word vs. Bolton’s.
🐣 RT @ianbremmer Trump says Bolton is lying. ¤ Despite corroboration from Bolton advisor Fiona Hill and other Trump Admin officials.
🐣 RT @sfpelosi Say it under oath at the Senate
🐣 RT @PreetBharara Nervous
🐣 RT @AndrewDesiderio Trump denies Bolton’s reported account that Trump told him military aid was tied to investigations: “If John Bolton said this, it was only to sell a book.”
🐣 RT @RepSwalwell Save it for the judge
🐣 RT @ScottMStedman It’s almost as if there should be some sort of…. trial.
💙💙 ⋙ 🧵 RT @real [12:20amET] [Thread] I NEVER told John Bolton that the aid to Ukraine was tied to investigations into Democrats, including the Bidens. In fact, he never complained about this at the time of his very public termination. If John Bolton said this, it was only to sell a book. With that being said, the… 📌 https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1221663763138588672?s=20
⋙⋙ 🐣 RT @ScottMStedman with…. ¤ witnesses!
🐣 RT @normornstein Cipollone had to know. This manuscript was vetted by the counsel’s office. He has been lying through his teeth.
⋙ 🐣 RT @RyanLizza What exactly did Trump’s Senate trial lawyers know about what Bolton wrote in his manuscript and did they say anything to the Senate that contradicted what they knew?
🐣 RT @SSNBubblehead … If you haven’t read @SethAbramson’s timeline over the past 12 hours, you are’t getting the full scope of the video & #BoltonBombshell. Both are devastating to 🍊🤡, who should not be allowed to continue his mob boss rule of the USA for another single minute. #ImpeachmentTrial
🧵 RT @SethAbramson [Thread] I have to put my live-thread on hold. Bolton just confirmed the damn quid pro quo—and says it came directly from a conversation with Trump. This (if America were a real country, if this were a real investigation, if we were in the middle of a real trial) would be THE smoking gun. 📌 https://twitter.com/SethAbramson/status/1221581875292098564?s=20
// quotes from article
🐣 RT @neal_katyal Tomorrow we outline a simple way for Americans to hear from witnesses, even if the Republican Senate wants to block them. Given Bolton’s news tonight, it would profoundly betray our Constitution to try to prevent these witnesses from telling the truth. If Rs try,there is a remedy
⋙ 🐣 RT @jgeltzer If you’re reading what Bolton would say if he testifies & thinking it’ll take 4 Republican Senators to get a subpoena issued, stay tuned. ¤ Because that’s not actually what the Senate rules require. ¤ @neal_katyal, @mickeyedwardsok & I will explain why tomorrow in @nytopinion…
🐣 RT @klasfeldreports INBOX: House impeachment managers release a statement on the NYT report on Bolton. ¤ “There can be no doubt now that Mr. Bolton directly contradicts the heart of the President’s defense and therefore must be called as a witness at the impeachment trial of President Trump.” https://twitter.com/KlasfeldReports/status/1221599522108907522?s=20/photo/1-2
🐣 RT @NicolleDWallace This is interesting-clearly it’s already written and wh has had ample time for classification review. Rest assured that if it exonerated Trump on Ukraine in any way, shape or form,Trump would print it himself, staple the pages together and stand on the street handing out copies
⋙ 🐣 RT @frankrichny For both commercial & patriotic reasons, Simon & Schuster should get Bolton’s book out now & dare Trump to kill it. S&S publishes Bob Woodward; they know this drill.
WaPo: Democrats call for Bolton to testify in Trump impeachment trial after new report on aid to Ukraine http://wapo.st/30V3jO9
🐣 RT @AmandiOnAir The man who writes here that his guess is that, “Trump is a Russian agent,” is not just some layman, but a former CIA Station Chief in Moscow, who also helped nab treasonous CIA officer/KGB double agent, Aldrich Ames. ¤ Take what Rolf Mowatt-Larssen says VERY, VERY SERIOUSLY
💙💙 ⋙ 🐣 RT @AmericanMystic [Rolf Mowatt-Larssen] What is maddening about impeachment proceedings is there is no doubt about Trump’s guilt; the facts are undisputed. And there’s a pattern here: Trump engaged in an even deeper conspiracy with Russian intelligence in 2016 and covered it up. My guess is Trump is a Russian agent.
🐣 RT @SpeakerPelosi Amb. Bolton reportedly heard directly from Trump that aid for Ukraine was tied to political investigations. ¤ The refusal of the Senate to call for him, other relevant witnesses, and documents is now even more indefensible. ¤ The choice is clear: our Constitution, or a cover-up.
🐣 RT @glennkirschner2 Bolton must testify. Executive privilege can’t be invoked to cover-up Trump’s crimes. How might Trump try to stop Bolton from testifying & further exposing his crimes? We probably need only ask the following question to find an answer: how would a dictator handle this situation?
🐣 RT @Isikoff Among many questions this raises – did president’s lawyers do basic due diligence – and make any effort to find out – what Bolton would say when they told senators on Saturday there was no direct testimony that Trump linked withheld aid to investigations
🐣 RT @Susan_Hennessey This is the single most significant revelation since the release of the call memorandum itself. That isn’t to minimize the mountains of other incredibly important corroborating evidence that has been gathered, but this is game-changing to the political calculations.
🐣 RT @ShimonPro This is also significant: “Secretary of State Mike Pompeo acknowledged privately that there was no basis to claims by the Rudolph W. Giuliani that the ambassador to Ukraine was corrupt and believed Mr. Giuliani may have been acting on behalf of other clients, Mr. Bolton wrote.”
⋙ 🐣 RT @ShimonPro NY Times: President Trump told Bolton in August that he wanted to continue freezing $391 million in security assistance to Ukraine until officials there helped with investigations into Democrats including the Bidens, according to an unpublished manuscript.
🐣 RT @maggieNYT SCOOP: Bolton book draft, circulated to associates and sent to WH for review process, describes a convo w POTUS where he says he doesn’t want to release withheld aid till Ukraine turned over material related to investigations @nytmike and me
💙💙 🔆 This❗️⋙ NYT: Trump Tied Ukraine Aid to Inquiries He Sought, Bolton Book Says http://nyti.ms/3aKE4CF
// Maggie Haberman and Michael Schmidt; Drafts of the book outline the potential testimony of the former national security adviser if he were called as a witness in the president’s impeachment trial.
⭕ 25 Jan 2020
✅ CNN: Fact-checking opening statements from President Trump’s legal team http://cnn.it/2tRVvAC
━━━━━━━▼ House Intel Fact Checks
🐣 RT @HouseIntel #TruthMatters | Fact Checking President Trump’s Defense ¤ U.S. Senate Impeachment Trial of Donald J. Trump https://twitter.com/HouseIntel/status/1221159434707185665?s=20
⋙ 🐣 RT @HouseIntel White House claim: We should out the whistleblower.
Reality:
● Details of the whistleblower’s report have been confirmed by other witnesses and documents
● Trump endangered the whistleblower by calling them a traitor and a spy, and suggesting harsh punishment
#TruthMatters 💽 https://twitter.com/HouseIntel/status/1221122151174025216?s=20/photo/1
⋙ 🐣 RT @HouseIntel White House claim: Fighting corruption was a priority of US policy in Ukraine
Reality:
● Trump undermined that policy.
● Fiona Hill: “[Sondland] was being involved in domestic political errand. And we were being involved in national security… those two things had just diverged.”
#TruthMatters 💽 https://twitter.com/HouseIntel/status/1221112846349750274?s=20/photo/1
⋙ 🐣 RT @HouseIntel White House claim: Trump withheld the aid to Ukraine because of concerns about corruption.
Reality:
● The Trump Administration’s own Department of Defense had already certified that Ukraine met the necessary anti-corruption benchmarks to receive the aid. #TruthMatters
● Ukraine does have a history of corruption. That’s why, when Congress provided them military aid, the Dept of Defense was required to certify Ukraine met anti-corruption benchmarks. ¤ DOD did so in May 2019. But in July, Trump put a hold on the aid anyway, to use it as leverage.
#TruthMatters 💽 https://twitter.com/HouseIntel/status/1221111832720683008?s=20/photo/1
⋙ 🐣 RT @HouseIntel White House claim: President Trump was deeply concerned about corruption in Ukraine.
Reality:
● In two calls with President Zelensky, Trump does not mention “corruption” at all, only the two specific investigations for his personal political benefit. #TruthMatters
● George Kent Testimony on Government Anti-Corruption Efforts
Q: “In your opinion, was this a comprehensive and whole of government effort to end corruption?”
Kent: “I would not say so, no sir.”
#TruthMatters 💽 https://twitter.com/HouseIntel/status/1221110683875659776?s=20/photo/1
⋙ 🐣 RT @HouseIntel White House claim: Presidents withhold foreign aid all the time.
Reality: Trump withheld Ukraine’s aid for his own personal political interest.
● Amb. Taylor: “To withhold that assistance for no good reason other than help with a political campaign…was crazy.” #TruthMatters
● ⋙CNN: “To withhold that assistance for no good reason other than help with a political campaign made no sense,” Bill Taylor says on what he meant when he texted US officials that withholding Ukraine aid was “crazy” https://cnn.it/373vw8b
#TruthMatters 💽 https://twitter.com/HouseIntel/status/1221109026697728000?s=20/photo/1
⋙ 🐣 RT @HouseIntel White House claim: Using the WH meeting as leverage doesn’t matter, because Trump met Zelensky at the UN.
Reality:
● Witnesses testified to the significance of an Oval Office meeting, especially for a new leader of a vulnerable nation.
● It still hasn’t happened. #TruthMatters
💽 https://twitter.com/HouseIntel/status/1221105708516675585?s=20/photo/1
⋙ 🐣 RT @HouseIntel White House claim: Europe did not support Ukraine
Reality: The European Union is a huge contributor of foreign assistance to Ukraine. #TruthMatters https://twitter.com/HouseIntel/status/1221103513788350471?s=20/photo/1
⋙ 🐣 RT @HouseIntel White House claim: Ukraine did not know about the withheld aid until public reporting.
Fact Check: Two witnesses testified Ukraine knew of the hold before it was public. Ukraine’s former deputy foreign minister confirmed to the press that the Ukrainians knew. #TruthMatters 💽 https://twitter.com/HouseIntel/status/1221101165917691904?s=20/photo/1
⋙ 🐣 RT @HouseIntel White House claim: Tim Morrison exonerates the President.
Reality:
● Morrison repeatedly reported the pressure campaign to lawyers, and Sondland told Morrison of a conversation where Sondland told Ukraine directly there was a quid pro quo for the military aid. #TruthMatters
● ⋙ CNN: Morrison on conditioning aid to Ukraine:
Q: And what did Ambassador Sondland tell you that he told Mr. Yermak?
Morrison: That the Ukrainians would have to have the prosecutor general make a statement with respect to the investigations as a condition of having the aid lifted.
#TruthMatters 💽 https://twitter.com/HouseIntel/status/1221099539064664064?s=20/photo/1
⋙ 🐣 RT @HouseIntel White House claim: There was no quid pro quo.
Reality:
● Gordon Sondland on quid pro quo for the White House meeting: “The answer is yes.”
● Chief of Staff Mulvaney on quid pro quo for the aid: “We do that all the time”
#TruthMatters 💽 https://twitter.com/HouseIntel/status/1221095396581289986?s=20/photo/1
⋙ 🐣 RT @HouseIntel White House claim: The impeachment inquiry process has been unfair.
Reality: The process gave equal time to Republicans & Democrats, was consistent with prior House precedent, and afforded the same rights to President Trump that Nixon and Clinton were granted.
#TruthMatters 💽 https://twitter.com/HouseIntel/status/1221093324901224450?s=20/photo/1
━━━━━━━▲
WaPo, Dana Milbank: Trump’s lawyers are absolutely entitled to their own facts http://wapo.st/2RtIPbW ● Text Block: https://twitter.com/Auriandra/status/1221324423329914880?s=20/photo/1
As outlined in two hours on the Senate floor, theirs is a world in which Ukraine interfered in the U.S. election in 2016; where the FBI and intelligence community are disreputable; where the United States, not Europe, gives Ukraine the bulk of its foreign aid; where there was no quid pro quo with Ukraine and where a “transcript” of President Trump’s call conclusively proves it; where the halt of military aid to Ukraine was routine, and where Ukrainian officials didn’t even know about it; where the president was barred from impeachment proceedings; and where Robert Mueller totally vindicated Trump.
🐣 RT @mccaffrey3r Trump an increasingly lawless and dangerous man. This Trump tweet clearly suggests violence and physical intimidation against a Member of Congress.
🐣 RT @BillKristol This is the man to whom the Republican Party bends the knee and bows the head.
⋙ 🐣 RT @real Our case against lyin’, cheatin’, liddle’ Adam “Shifty” Schiff, Cryin’ Chuck Schumer, Nervous Nancy Pelosi, their leader, dumb as a rock AOC, & the entire Radical Left, Do Nothing Democrat Party, starts today at 10:00 A.M. on @FoxNews, @OANN or Fake News @CNN or Fake News MSDNC!
NBCNews: Who is Dmytro Firtash? The man linked to $1 million loan to Giuliani ally has a shadowy past http://nbcnews.to/38GapJ2 by By Tom Winter, Ken Dilanian and Dan De Luce
// The billionaire oligarch is “at the dead center of the greatest corruption operation in Ukraine’s history,” said a former senior U.S. diplomat.
NYT: Emotional Schiff Speech Goes Viral, Delighting the Left and Enraging the Right http://nyti.ms/2NYI34M
DailyBeast, Erin Ryan: All The President’s Men Are Whiny Little Boys http://bit.ly/2GpK4CK
// So many men in the Trump camp are utterly losing their minds at any given time that it’s congealing into a collective conservative male freakout of Brobdingnagian proportions.
🐣 RT @Kasparov63 If Republicans refuse to allow evidence and witnesses, they will have done Stalin’s show trials one better! It was all pre-arranged, of course, but America deserves more than the mere appearance of justice.
NBCNews: Obama called Trump a ‘fascist’ during phone call, Sen. Kaine says in new Clinton film http://nbcnews.to/2RSQv6P
// The Va. lawmaker is heard discussing the conversation in 2016 in “Hillary,” an upcoming documentary.
🐣 RT @GlennKirshner2 If Republicans vote to acquit Trump it will signal the END of their oversight powers (Trump can ignore ALL congressional subpoenas) & the END of their power of the purse (Trump can put every congressional appropriation in his back pocket and use it as a personal bargaining chit).
DailyBeast, Matt Lewis: The GOP’s Terminal Infection of Advanced Trumpism Has No Known Cure http://bit.ly/2O0TQzo
// They wave away every revelation as Trump being Trump. Senators send out tweets impugning the patriotism of war heroes. The medical profession is at a loss.
🔊 DailyBeast, Betsy Swan: Rudy Pal Lev Parnas Releases Audio of Trump Calling for Ukraine Ambassador’s Firing http://bit.ly/2TWzNG5
// Listen to the recording, released by Parnas, of an April fundraising dinner with President Trump.
🐣 RT @RobertMaguire_ The full recording, more than an hour long, of Trump’s intimate dinner with super PAC donors in April 2018 has been released by Lev Parnas’ lawyer
⋙ [DailyBeast audio] 🔊 https://twitter.com/RobertMaguire_/status/1221163266854002689?s=20
⋙ 🐣 RT @ Nothing says “drain the swamp” like a 1.5hr-long recording of the president of the United States at an intimate dinner with wealthy super PAC donors hosted at the luxury hotel he still owns and profits from, during which the donors talk about their business and policy priorities.
🐣 RT @SenSchumer President Trump’s lawyers did something they didn’t intend: ¤ They made a really compelling case for why the Senate should call witnesses and documents.
CNN: Schiff: Trump’s team is trying to ‘deflect’ and ‘distort’ truth in opening arguments http://cnn.it/3aLgNjR
USAToday (Nov): Factcheck: Trump wrong on European aid to Ukraine http://bit.ly/33Gj5fi
// 11/13/2019
🐣 RT @CBSEveningNews In opening statements, House managers examined the debunked conspiracy theories invoked by Pres. Trump. ¤ A @POTUS confidant tells CBS News that GOP senators were warned: “vote against the president & your head will be on a pike.” ¤ Here’s @nancycordes https://cbsn.ws/2GhfYkX 💽 https://twitter.com/CBSEveningNews/status/1220491412854185984?s=20/photo/1
// 1/21/2020
🐣 RT @SamBergerDC Looking for a list of witnesses who made statements to the effect that they understood the delay in funding to be tied to Trump’s demand for investigations? Here you go.
⋙ JustSecurity, Sam Berger (Nov): Trump’s Hold on Ukrainian Military Aid was Illegal http://bit.ly/34AgZ1O
// 11/26/2019
🐣 RT @HouseIntel White House claim: There was no quid pro quo. ¤ Reality: ¤ Gordon Sondland on quid pro quo for the White House meeting: “The answer is yes.” ¤ Chief of Staff Mulvaney on quid pro quo for the aid: “We do that all the time” #TruthMatters
🐣 RT @GlastnostGone To boldly plagiarize, where no plagiarism has been before. #SpaceForce https://twitter.com/GlasnostGone/status/1221097284370423809?s=20/photo/1
💽✅ MSNBC, MorningJoe (Sep): Numbers contradict President Trump’s reason for withholding aid from Ukraine http://on.msnbc.com/2sqBjEI European institutions have funded $425.2M in gross overseas development assistance for Ukraine, while the U.S. has contributed $204.4M
// 9/25/3019; 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.
✅ CNN, Daniel Dale (Sep): Fact check: Breaking down Adam Schiff’s account of Trump’s Ukraine call http://cnn.it/2RoZKww
// 9/27/2019
✅ PolitiFact (Sep): Donald Trump said European nations have not put money into Ukraine. They have put in a lot http://bit.ly/36t1jxy MOSTLY FALSE
// 9/25/2019
✅ FactCheck.org (Sep): Trump Wrong on European Aid to Ukraine http://bit.ly/2rrtNsR
// 9/26/2029
🐣 RT @mmpadellan Preview of GOP defense of trump:
Joe Biden
Hunter Biden
President Obama
It was a perfect call
DEMs just hate trump
Ukraine got their money
They have no evidence
There was no pressure
They want to overturn 2016 election
We don’t need no stinkin’ witnesses
What’d I miss?
⭕ 24 Jan 2020
🐣 RT @JohnRMoffitt #AdamSchiff … one of the greatest attorneys of this era. His arguments this week have been among the most inspirational & admirable orations seen in decades. He shows acres of ethics & integrity and will look great in the history books. https://twitter.com/JohnRMoffitt/status/1220877084001783811?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @CharlesPPierce What Adam Schiff presented was the closing argument in a vast and virtual RICO prosecution—a moral RICO case, a political RICO case, a constitutional RICO case, and a historical RICO case.
⋙ Esquire, Charles Pierce (1/24): Republican Senators Are Co-Defendants in a Moral RICO Case http://bit.ly/30WSlHL
// Adam Schiff made sure the president*’s enablers in Congress felt the heat of history in his closing remarks.
WaPo Editorial: The impeachment evidence will catch up to Republicans and Trump — whether they ignore it or not http://wapo.st/36uAF7A
🐣 RT @DrGJackBrown A strong sign that #Pompeo is at his emotional edge. He has almost no emotional reserve. He’s ready to crack. He’s stressed because he’s perpetrated his own malfeasances — and he’s covering for Trump’s. And, just like Trump, Pompeo has profound difficulty with impulse control.
⋙ 🐣 RT @kylegriffin1 .@NPRKelly: “[Pompeo] was not happy to have been questioned about Ukraine. He asked, ‘Do you think Americans care about Ukraine?’. He used the F word … He asked if I could find Ukraine on a map. I said yes. He called out for his aids to bring him a map …I pointed to Ukraine.”
🐣 RT @matthewamiller My dad was a Baptist preacher, and he always said that after every service you could tell who was most embarrassed by the sermon by how mad they were on their way out.
⋙ 🐣 RT @lindsaywise “He did a lot of damage to his credibility in insulting the senators,” said Republican Sen. John Cornyn of Texas. “We’re complicit unless we vote for impeachment.”
🐣 Republicans are such delicate souls. A harsh word from Jerry Nadler or a lurid metaphor from Adam Schiff and they’ll simply have no choice but to rip up our Constitution. God knows what will happen if Nancy Pelosi starts wielding ~ gasp! ~ pens!
NYT: Pompeo Lashes Out at Reporter and Challenges Her to Find Ukraine on a Map http://nyti.ms/36orxRS
// “He shouted at me for about the same amount of time as the interview itself had lasted,” said Mary Louise Kelly of NPR.
🐣 RT @kylegriffin1 Joseph Bondy, an attorney for Lev Parnas, tells @maddow that the recording is one hour and 24 minutes long. It is of a dinner in the Trump Hotel. Trump is there. Parnas is there. Fruman is there. And about 40 minutes into the recording, the subject of the Yovanovitch comes up.
🧵 RT @ChrisMurphyCT [Thread] House managers’ case is closed. My nightly behind-the-scenes account follows: ¤ 1/ A half an hour into testimony, I start feeling regret for working out this morning. For some reason, morning workouts make me more tired during the day. Today isn’t a good day to be tired. 📌 https://twitter.com/ChrisMurphyCT/status/1220902471133990922?s=20
WaPo: House impeachment managers declare ‘facts have been proved’ as they wrap up their opening arguments against Trump http://wapo.st/37lyLYd
🐣 RT @chicagotribune Thomas Railsback, an Illinois Republican congressman who helped draw up articles of impeachment against President Richard Nixon in 1974, has died. He was 87.
⋙ ChicagoTribune: Thomas Railsback, Illinois GOP congressman who backed Nixon impeachment, dies at 87 http://bit.ly/2ROxSRl
// 1/21/2020
DailyBeast, Rick Wilson: King Trump Wants Heads on Pikes. The GOP Can’t Wait to Oblige. http://bit.ly/30W5r8b
// The creation of a new form of American government, where the executive branch is permanently and utterly above the law, oversight, and accountability is upon us.
🐣 RT @McFaul Ukrainians worry a lot that team Trump doesn’t care about Ukraine. This wont help. Not a very diplomatic statement from our chief diplomat.
⋙ 🐣 RT @davidgura After the interview, @NPRKelly tells @arishapiro, @SecPompeo “shouted at [her] for about the same amount of time as the interview itself had lasted.” ¤ “He asked, ‘Do you think Americans care about Ukraine?’ He used the F-word in that sentence, and many others.” [ … ]
MMFA, Eric Kleefeld: Smear merchant John Solomon accidentally reveals role of his lawyers diGenova and Toensing http://bit.ly/2tFsHvf
// Perhaps his attorneys should have advised him to not say this
💙 🧵 RT @moscow_project .@RepAdamSchiff begins with a summary of article one: Trump’s abuse of power by pressuring Ukraine to help him cheat the 2020 election. ¤ “That has been proved.” 📌 https://twitter.com/moscow_project/status/1220872469097205764?s=20
🐣 RT @EricColumbus When the facts are on your side, pound the facts.
When the law is on your side, pound the law.
When neither is on your side, pound the Bidens.
⋙ 🐣 RT @Acosta Source on Trump’s legal team, on conference call with reporters, said they will be going after the Bidens during the Trump defense presentation.
🐣 RT @EliStokols Starting Saturday, Trump’s lawyers will get their say — and they appear ready to deliver the public tarring of Biden that Trump had sought from Ukraine.
⋙ LATimes, Eli Stokols: Trump’s lawyers prepare a blistering defense http://lat.ms/2vgfzNf
🐣 RT @davidgura After the interview, @NPRKelly tells @arishapiro, @SecPompeo “shouted at [her] for about the same amount of time as the interview itself had lasted.” ¤ “He asked, ‘Do you think Americans care about Ukraine?’ He used the F-word in that sentence, and many others.” https://twitter.com/davidgura/status/1220838347767238657?s=20/photo/1
⋙ 🐣 RT @davidgura At the end of this remarkable exchange, during which @NPRKelly asks @SecPompeo why he hasn’t defended Amb. Marie Yovanovitch, the Secretary of State ends the interview: 🔊 https://twitter.com/davidgura/status/1220756761289904128?s=20/photo/1
WaPo, George Conway III: There’s a critical witness impeachment is missing http://wapo.st/2NYGJPh Trump himself
🧵 RT @moscow_project [Thread] .@RepJeffries: “President Trump can’s address the substance of our case. He therefore complains about process. But these procedural complaints are baseless excuses.” ¤ They have no basis in law, no basis in history, and no basis in truth. 📌 https://twitter.com/moscow_project/status/1220851452282839041?s=20
🐣 RT @lourdesgnavarro Wow. @NPR’s @NPRKelly just now on @npratc says @SecPompeo was furious about being questioned about Ukraine in her interview. Took her into his office, cursed at her, dropping f-bombs, made her point to Ukraine on an unmarked map (she did). It’s just…shocking.
↥ ↧
🐣 RT @lourdesgnavarro The full interview will be up soon. But here is the part that got him angry. She did her job for the American people. We ask questions because of the PUBLIC RIGHT TO KNOW. We represent you when we speak to officials who make decisions in our name.
⋙ 🔊 NPR: Secretary Of State Mike Pompeo: ‘I Have Defended Every State Department Official’ http://n.pr/3aFwWYb
↥ ↧
🐣 RT @mrbromwich Pompeo is a bully and a coward. He was irritated because @NPRKelly called him out for his failure to defend Amb. Yovanovitch. Good for her.
⋙ 🐣 RT @arishapiro The coda to @NPRKelly’s interview with @SecPompeo is shocking. As described on @npratc: He screamed, swore at her, and said she couldn’t find Ukraine on a map. He ordered staffers to bring a blank map. She pointed to Ukraine and thanked him for his time.
💙 ≣ NPR: Transcript: NPR’s Full Interview With Secretary Of State Mike Pompeo http://n.pr/2RKNllz Asked several times if he owes Marie Yovanovitch an apology, he refuses ● Text Block [] : https://twitter.com/Auriandra/status/1220841297386397705?s=20/photo/1
Change of subject. Ukraine. Do you owe Ambassador Marie Yovanovitch an apology?
You know, I agreed to come on your show today to talk about Iran. That’s what I intend to do. I know what our Ukraine policy has been now for the three years of this administration. I’m proud of the work we’ve done. This administration delivered the capability for the Ukrainians to defend themselves. President Obama showed up with MREs (meals ready to eat.) We showed up with Javelin missiles. The previous administration did nothing to take down corruption in Ukraine. We’re working hard on that. We’re going to continue to do it.I confirmed with your staff [crosstalk] last night that I would talk about Iran and Ukraine.
I just don’t have anything else to say about that this morning.I just want to give you another opportunity to answer this, because as you know, people who work for you in your department, people who have resigned from this department under your leadership, saying you should stand up for the diplomats who work here. [crosstalk]
I don’t know who these unnamed sources are you’re referring to. I can tell you this, when I talked to my team here —These are not unnamed sources. [crosstalk] This is your senior adviser Michael McKinley, a career foreign service officer with four decades experience, who testified under oath that he resigned in part due to the failure of the State Department to offer support to Foreign Service employees caught up in the impeachment inquiry on Ukraine.
[I’m not going to comment on things that Mr. McKinley may have said. I’ll say only this. I have defended every State Department official. We’ve built a great team. The team that works here is doing amazing work around the world.Sir, respectfully [crosstalk] where have you defended Marie Yovanovitch?
I’ve defended every single person on this team. I’ve done what’s right for every single person on this team. [crosstalk]Can you point me toward your remarks where you have defended Marie Yovanovitch?
I’ve said all I’m going to say today. Thank you. Thanks for the repeated opportunity to do so. I appreciate that.One further question on this.
I’m not going to — I appreciate that. I appreciate that you want to continue to talk about this. I agreed to come on your show today to talk about Iran. ]And you appreciate [crosstalk] that the American public wants to know as a shadow foreign policy, as a back channel policy on Ukraine was being developed, did you try to block it?
The Ukraine policy has been run from the Department of State for the entire time that I have been here, and our policy was very clear.Marie Yovanovitch [crosstalk] testified under oath that Ukraine policy was hijacked.
I’ve been clear about that. I know exactly what we were doing. I know precisely what the direction that the State Department gave to our officials around the world about how to manage our Ukraine policy.
🧵 RT @moscow_project [Thread] .@RepJerryNadler lays out how Trump’s obstruction harms the Senate and the American people by trying to place the president above the law: 📌 https://twitter.com/moscow_project/status/1220834583387787265?s=20
🐣 RT @emmaloop Sekulow gave a bit of a preview of Trump’s defense, which will start tomorrow and continue next week. Here’s my quick transcription from the scrum earlier: Text Block: https://twitter.com/LoopEmma/status/1220850324786831360?s=20/photo/1
✅ WaPo FactChecker, Glenn Kessler (2018): Did Hillary Clinton collude with the Russians to get ‘dirt’ on Trump to feed it to the FBI? http://wapo.st/36prANx No. FOUR PINOCCHIOS 🍄🍄🍄🍄 @JaySekulow ● Text Block: https://twitter.com/Auriandra/status/1220837790037966851?s=20/photo/1
// 2/8/2018
“The truth is that they [Democrats] are covering up that Hillary Clinton colluded with the Russians to get dirt on Trump to feed it to the FBI to open up an investigation into the other campaign.” —Rep. Devin Nunes (R-Calif.), chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, in an interview on the Hugh Hewitt Show, Feb. 7, 2018 …
[T]here is no evidence that Clinton was involved in Steele’s reports or worked with Russian entities to feed information to Steele. That’s where Nunes’s claim goes off the rails — and why he earns Four Pinocchios.
🐣 RT @MollyMcKew Sekulow’s little outburst during the break should terrify all republicans. ¤ Their only presentation plan is conspiracies. They will skripal the hell out of everything with wackobird conspiracies. ¤ And POTUS expects Repubs to just suck it up and raise their little hands. Pathetic.
🐣 RT @McFaul Trump also agreed to help Putin investigate Americans regarding completely invented claims, not unlike what Trump asked Zelensky to do regarding another American. Not the way it’s supposed to work!
⋙ 🐣 You’re too modest. You were on Putin’s list
⋙ 🐣 RT @mitchellreports On Trump/Putin Helsinki summit, @RepAdamSchiff: “There he is, the President of Russia, standing next to President of the U.S., & hearing his own Kremlin propaganda talking points coming from the President of the U.S. Now, if that’s not a propaganda coup, I don’t know what is.”
🧵 💽 RT @moscow_project [Thread] .@RepAdamSchiff: “If someone sacrifices the national interests in favor of his own and is not removed from office, our democracy is in jeopardy. It’s just that simple.” 📌 https://twitter.com/moscow_project/status/1220789448285327362?s=20
🧵 RT @emptywheel [Thread] Schiff plays Trump parroting the “where is the server” line he used in the July 25 phone call standing next to Putin. 📌 https://twitter.com/emptywheel/status/1220800640215126017?s=20
⋙ 🐣 RT @emptywheel Schiff: The President of the US standing next to the President of Russia saying he doesn’t believe his own intelligence agencies. He’s promoting this kooky crazy server story cooked up by the Kremlin, standing next to the guy who cooked it up.
⋙ 🐣 RT @emptywheel Schiff: What profile they have of our president, boy do they have him spot on. Flattery and propaganda. This is the most incredible propaganda coup!
⋙ 🐣 RT @emptywheel Schiff: He won’t read his own NatSec talking points. But he will read the Kremlin ones.
⋙ 🐣 RT @emptywheel Schiff: how do you make this argument, when you say the IC cannot be believed. You undermine your own intel agencies, you weaken the country for when you need to persuade allies, you can trust us. How do you make that arg when you trust Russia more than own people?
⋙ 🐣 RT @emptywheel Schiff: That’s one hell of a Russian intelligence coup. They got the President of the Untied States to cover for their own interference in our election.
🐣 RT @MaxBoot How do we know Trump had corrupt motive? 1. Ukraine inquiry was by his personal lawyer. 2. He held up military aid after DOD certified that Ukraine was fighting corruption. 3. He wanted Biden investigation announced—he didn’t care whether it was completed.
🐣 RT @MaxBoot Trump defenders claim he was promoting U.S. interests by demanding an investigation of corruption. But we know this is false. The word “corruption” was not mentioned in either of Trump’s 2 calls with Zelensky. But Biden was mentioned 3x on July 25 call.
🐣 RT @MaxBoot Strip away the name-calling, lies, procedural complaints, & conspiracy theories, and you are left with the core of Trump’s defense: “Everyone does it.” This is alluring but false. There is no evidence any president has done what Trump is accused of doing.
⋙ WaPo: Trump wants you to think ‘everyone does it.’ No, they don’t. http://wapo.st/2TTad51
🐣 RT @ThePlumLineGS The latest GOP excuse for carrying out Trump’s coverup is that if he invokes executive privilege to block witnesses, it would mean a long court fight. This is nonsense on every level. I talked to experts and found a good CRS report. Here are the facts:
⋙ WaPo, Greg Sargent: The latest GOP excuse for helping Trump’s coverup is a scam http://wapo.st/2Rou6z9
💙 🧵 RT @moscow_project [Thread] Trump only lifted his hold on aid because he got caught. ¤ There is no other explanation. 📌 https://twitter.com/moscow_project/status/1220772032197033984?s=20
🐣 It’s not that Trump ordered a hit. “He speaks in a code,” as Michael Cohen said. He wanted her out; it was up to others to decode his words. “Plausible deniability.”
🐣 RT @Scout_Finch Founders: It’s complete BS that we are founded by a ruler who can do whatever he wants. Let’s have a war and create a government where all men are created equal and nobody is above law.
Everyone: Hear hear!
Republicans 2020: It’s not illegal if the president does it.
💙💙 🧵 RT @jentaub [Thread] 🍑We have commenced the final day of the House Managers’ presenting their case for the impeachment of Donald John Trump ¤ 1/ 📌 https://twitter.com/jentaub/status/1220770187563225089?s=20
🐣 RT @eliehonig Schiff just said they’d bring executive privilege arguments direct to Chief Justice. They absolutely should, if necessary, and he should rule. ¤ The Constitution says the Chief Justice “shall preside.” That doesn’t mean “sit there silently and hope to get it over with.”
DailyBeast, Betsy Swan: Rudy Pal Igor Fruman Taped Trump Trying to Fire Ukraine Ambassador: Lawyer http://bit.ly/30QCv1g
// The tape may contradict Trump’s claim that he does not know the two Giuliani associates who worked to have the U.S. ambassador to Ukraine be removed.
🐣 RT @brianklaas Republican Senators: these damning breaking stories aren’t going to stop. You’re debasing yourself for a crook who would happily shred the Constitution if it provided him a slight bump in TV ratings or polls. If you don’t care about your country, at least think about your legacy.
🐣 RT @NatashaBertrand Trump has claimed he doesn’t know Parnas, but here he is apparently giving him a direct order to “get rid of” a U.S. ambassador.
⋙ 🐣 RT @maggieNYT “Get rid of her!” is what the voice that appears to be President Trump’s is heard saying. “Get her out tomorrow. I don’t care. Get her out tomorrow. Take her out. Okay? Do it.”
🐣 RT @RadioFreeTom Don’t get distracted by Trump’s mob-speak about Yovanovich. He’s not trying to murder her. Don’t miss the actual point: that Parnas has tapes and Trump is caught in the headlights of a *massive* lie on which the pretense of his defense rests. Hammer the GOP Senators with it.
🐣 RT @kylegriffin1 A recording reviewed by ABC News appears to capture Trump telling associates he wanted Marie Yovanovitch fired while speaking at a small gathering that included Lev Parnas and Igor Fruman. The recording appears to contradict statements by Trump.
🐣 RT @JoyceWhiteVance The story says this recording of Trump & Lev Parnas (who he’s repeatedly said he doesn’t know) talking about taking out Yovanovitch was made by Igor Fruman. Unless it was somehow in Parnas’ cache of materials, this could imply Fruman is also cooperating.
🐣 RT @kyledcheney HUGE: ABC gets a recording that backs up Parnas’ claim that Trump ordered Yovanovitch at a small gathering in April.
⋙ ABCNews: ‘Take her out’: recording appears to capture Trump at private dinner saying he wants Ukraine ambassador fired http://abcn.ws/2U4GsOT
// Trump apparently heard discussing firing Ukraine ambassador Marie Yovanovitch.
WaPo, Jennifer Rubin: ‘If the truth doesn’t matter, we’re lost’ — and we are http://wapo.st/36ozKFV
CNN: Hundreds of thousands protest US troop presence in Iraq http://cnn.it/2TQ1PmN
NYT, Michelle Goldberg: The Darkness Where the Future Should Be http://nyti.ms/2GggAr5
// What happens to a society that loses its capacity for awe and wonder at things to come?
⭕ 23 Jan 2020
💙 NBCNews: Trump’s Senate impeachment trial: What happened on Day Three http://nbcnews.to/2NWbuUS
// Schiff, the lead House manager, closed Democrats’ second day of arguments with a passionate appeal to senators to remove the president from office.
NYT, Peter Baker: Now Testifying for the Prosecution: President Trump http://nyti.ms/3aEOlQL
// Barred so far from presenting witnesses, the House managers prosecuting the president have focused on turning his own words against him
DailyBeast: Dems Aim to Put ‘Knife in the Heart’ of Trump’s Defense http://bit.ly/2RplEQ0
// by Sam Brodey, Erin Banco and Jackie Kucinich; Mixing video, some levity, and senators’ words from the Clinton impeachment era, Democrats’ overstuffed pre-buttal sought to discredit the Trump defenders’ case before it starts.
WaPo, Catherine Rampell: Trump’s Treasury secretary just admitted the tariff rationale is hogwash http://wapo.st/2GheFT2 //➔ Using tariffs as a cudgel, Trump takes his bullying to international commerce
WaPo, Dana Milbank: John Roberts comes face to face with the mess he made http://wapo.st/2RMEGPp
🧵 RT @atrupar [Thread] SCHIFF: “Whether we can say it publicly, we all know what we’re dealing with here with this president. Donald Trump chose Rudy Giuliani over his own intelligence agencies… that makes him dangerous… why would anyone in their right mind believe Giuliani over Christopher Wray?” 📌 https://twitter.com/atrupar/status/1220550812742684673?s=20
⋙ 🐣 RT @atrupar SCHIFF: “Let’s say [Russia] starts blatantly interfering in our election again to help Trump. Can you have the least bit of confidence he’ll stand up & protect our national interest over his own? You know you can’t, which makes him dangerous to this country. You know you can’t.”
⋙ 🐣 RT @atrupar SCHIFF: “If right doesn’t matter, we’re lost …here, right is supposed to matter. It’s what’s made us the greatest nation on earth. No constitution can protect us if right doesn’t matter anymore …this is why if you find him guilty, you must remove him. Because right matters.”
// plus 💽s
HuffPo: Lindsey Graham Bizarrely Defends Trump: ‘He Did Nothing Wrong In His Mind’ http://bit.ly/37q4pnp //➔ Trump really believes Ukraine hacked the DNC. Will he now demand GOP Senators and lawyers go along with him on this, too?
// Twitter users were quick to rip apart the South Carolina senator.
🐣 RT @PatrickNova6 A nation can survive its fools, even the ambitious. But it cannot survive treason from within….for the traitor appears not to be a traitor…he rots the soul of a nation…he infects the body politic so that it can no longer resist. — Cicero
🐣 RT @secupp Elected Republicans, whatever instant gratification you’re getting for defending Trump’s corruption and abuse of power, History’s attention span and memory are a lot longer than Trump’s. Rest assured, it will remember you correctly.
💙 🧵 RT @ChrisMurphyCT 1/ [THREAD]: My wife picked a hell of a week to travel for work. It’s 11pm and we just finished today’s trial. Our babysitter needs to get some sleep, so tonight’s behind-the-scenes account of the trial will be quick! 📌 https://twitter.com/ChrisMurphyCT/status/1220557542738341889?s=20
🐣 RT @MSNBC “The volume is going to much higher — there will be yelling, there will be passionate gesticulation on the floor … but the substance will be next to zero,” @Lawrence says of Pres. Trump’s upcoming legal defense. “They simply do not have facts to argue.” https://twitter.com/MSNBC/status/1220580265879318530?s=20
🐣 RT @duty2warn Malignant narcissists rule by fear. Pure gangster.
🐣 RT @kasparov63 A perfect recording.
⋙ 🐣 RT @FrankFigliuzzi1 ‘Take her out’: Recording appears to capture Trump at private dinner saying he wants Ukraine ambassador fired –
🐣 RT @StevenBeschloss It’s not acceptable. It’s a felony. Are we living in a country with the rule of law or aren’t we? Are Republican senators prepared to prop up a president & his henchman who believe it’s acceptable to intimidate jurors?
🐣 RT @AviWolf Aside from being disgusting and unacceptable, this strikes me as dumb and self-destructive. They’re all aware of primary day, anyway. Something like this might force some to say “F–k it.”
🐣 RT @LizMair I mean, if you are a self-important dude who has a 6 year term and you don’t enjoy the executive branch trampling on your constitutional duties in the first place, statements like this are going to piss you off. And some people like that aren’t big wusses.
🐣 RT @tedlieu I don’t know if @realDonaldTrump is a thug. But his team sure act like thugs. ¤ Also, threatening senators is a very condescending move. As if #GOP Senators will simply kneel before Trump. Oh wait, they repeatedly have. ¤ That’s why they are being threatened. ¤ #ImpeachmentTrials
🐣 RT @SpiroAgnewGhost How is THIS not extortion and abuse of power?
🐣 RT @AuthorKimberley It’s beginning to look a lot like fascism.
⋙ 🐣 RT @mattmfm CBS News reports that GOP Senators have been warned by Trump team: “Vote against the president, and your head will be on a pike.” How is this acceptable? https://twitter.com/mattmfm/status/1220555307916677120?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @AshaRangappa_ Thank you @RepAdamSchiff for reminding the Senate and public that the Attorney General tried to COVER UP the whistleblower complaint under legal mumbo jumbo and if the ICIG (Trump’s own appointee) hadn’t notified Congress of its existence directly, they would’ve never known
🐣 RT @AshaRangappa_ “You know you can’t count on him.” ¤ It was dead silent because at that moment every single member of that chamber knew that this is the absolute, crystal clear, truth.
⋙ 🐣 RT @igorbobic Schiff’s closing, where he asked if senators had confidence that Trump would pick national interest over himself, was probably the most interesting moment so far of Dem arguments. ¤ Chamber was dead silent and focused on him – didn’t see a single conversation on GOP side.
🐣 2017 GDP $1.58Tr; Pop 144.5M Russia
2017 GDP $1.50Tr; Pop 19.59M NY State
2017 GDP $19.39Tr; Pop 325.7M United States
So, why is Trump so impressed w Putin?
↥ ↧
🐣 .@clairecmc thinks Trump got his Ukraine conspiracy theories directly from Putin
🐣 RT @Zigmanfreud Wow. As good as Adam Schiff was yesterday, what he just did about why Trump must be removed to protect the nation and the Constitution may have even been better. ¤ “If right doesn’t matter, the Constitution can’t protect us.”
🐣 RT @DavidShuster The final 8 and a half minutes of @RepAdamSchiff close from tonight. Gripping. Dramatic. Historic. #rightmatters
🐣 RT @Lawrence Best lawyer I’ve ever seen in Congress.
💙💙 ⋙ 🐣 RT @RepAdamSchiff Donald Trump must be convicted and removed from office.
Because he will always choose his own personal interest over our national interest.
Because in America, right matters. Truth matters.
If not, no Constitution can protect us.
If not, we are lost.
💽 https://twitter.com/RepAdamSchiff/status/1220559375938609152?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @justinamash The president has abused power for personal gain, precisely as the Framers of the Constitution feared. To not remove him for such misconduct will embolden future executives to act in their own interests to the detriment of our republic. The impeachment power will be dead law.
NYT: Schiff ends the day with a fiery push for Trump’s removal. http://nyti.ms/2TND0YJ
🐣 RT @matthewamiller Masterful close from Schiff, summing up not just this case but the entirety of the Trump presidency. “You can’t trust this president to do what’s right for this country. He’ll do what’s right for Donald Trump.”
🐣 RT @emptywheel Jury tampering.
⋙ 🐣 RT @mattmfm CBS News reports that GOP Senators have been warned by Trump team: “Vote against the president, and your head will be on a pike.” How is this acceptable?
NBCNews, Jonathan Allen: Trump schools the Senate on the exercise of power http://nbcnews.to/37od61C
// Analysis: If the Senate calls no witnesses, the lesson of Trump’s stonewalling strategy will be that the president can easily seize power from Congress.
🐣 RT @PeterAlexander Schiff emotionally punctuates tonight’s argument: “You know you can’t trust this president to do what’s right for this country. You can trust he will do what’s right for Donald Trump. He’ll do it now. He’s done it before… He’ll do it in the election if he’s allowed to.” 1/2
⋙ 🐣 RT @PeterAlexander “This is why, if you find him guilty, you must find that he should be removed,” Schiff concludes. “Because right matters. Because right matters. And the truth matters. Otherwise we are lost.” 2/2
↥ ↧
🐣 RT @DrDenaGrayson 🔥 “If right doesn’t matter, we’re lost…here, right is supposed to matter. It’s what’s made us the greatest nation on earth. No constitution can protect us if right doesn’t matter anymore…this is why if you find him GUILTY…Because right matters.” 💽 https://twitter.com/DrDenaGrayson/status/1220555578541596672?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @jmonkatthestate Trump is “dangerous to this country,” Rep Schiff tells senators Thursday night. “The American people deserve a president they can count on to put their interests first…If truth doesn’t matter, we’re lost” 💽 https://twitter.com/jmonkatthestate/status/1220549710957686784?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @neal_katyal New @Reuters poll. Wow. “About 72% agreed that the trial ‘should allow witnesses with firsthand knowledge of the impeachment charges to testify,’ including 84% of Democrats & 69% of Republicans” ¤ Good luck President Trump w/ your attempted coverup.
⋙ Reuters: Let them speak: Most Americans want witnesses in Trump impeachment trial – Reuters/Ipsos poll http://reut.rs/2uqpX4I
// 1/22/2020
🐣 RT @matthewamiller Masterful close from Schiff, summing up not just this case but the entirety of the Trump presidency. “You can’t trust this president to do what’s right for this country. He’ll do what’s right for Donald Trump.”
🌎 Transparency[.]org: Corruption Perceprions Index http://bit.ly/2TOVW9r https://twitter.com/anticorruption/status/1220214448440344580?s=20/photo/1
// US 7.1/10; “Flawed Democracy”; Rank 23, 69 points, down from 75 in 2017
🐣 RT @waltshaub One can see Marie Antoinette on a summer evening in 1784 at Hameau de la Reine—the pretend farmhouse beside Château de Versailles where she would don costumes and play milkmaid. She turns sweetly to look upon Cow, leans in and whispers “I gave up a life in Paris for you, cherie.” https://twitter.com/waltshaub/status/1220544765239922689?s=20/photo/1
// about Ivanka
🐣 RT @Yamiche Lt Col Vindman’s lawyers say Sen Blackburn’s tweets are a “a testament to cowardice” & show she has “failed to follow her oath of impartiality”¤ Rep Liz Cheney’s office confirmed wks ago that Cheney talked to Vindman’s wife & told her attacks on his patriotism weren’t acceptable
⋙ 🐣 RT @MarshaBlackburn Adam Schiff is hailing Alexander Vindman as an American patriot. ¤ How patriotic is it to badmouth and ridicule our great nation in front of Russia, America’s greatest enemy?
🐣 RT @KaivanShroff I don’t wanna hear another word about Yale-educated lawyer Hunter Biden taking a job he wasn’t overqualified for when out-of-business-Made-In-China-flammable-scarf-retailer Princess Ivanka is literally at Davos in meetings with world leaders who definitely don’t want her there.
⋙ 🐣 Barbara Bush was on the Board of Mayo Clinic. As far as I know she did not have any background in healthcare.
🐣 I will miss the House Managers. Living in their reality where facts and laws matter has been so uplifting. I wish we could stay in it. But soon … ‘The darkness will drop again.’
🐣 Here’s the thing: Even as we prepare to vote in the Dem primaries, we don’t know if Trump has damaged (or, in fact, enhanced) Biden’s chances.
🐣 Here’s the thing: Even as we prepare to vote in the Dem primaries, we don’t know if Trump has damaged (or, in fact, enhanced) Biden’s chances.
🐣 RT @HouseIntel “‘Read the Transcript!’ President Trump says. ¤ We have read the transcript, and it is damning evidence of a corrupt quid pro quo… this for that.” – @RepJeffries 💽 https://twitter.com/HouseIntel/status/1220511862783139841?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @TomJChicago While she doesn’t say the word, Trump’s dementia is what Claire McCaskill is describing. She emphasizes how the entire Senate knows he’s impaired. Enabling him to stay in the WH while deteriorating from dementia will become one of the biggest scandals in US history.
⋙ 🐣 RT @politicusarah Claire McCaskill says on MSNBC that Republican Senators have told her that Trump doesn’t know what he is talking about. 💽 https://twitter.com/PoliticusSarah/status/1220520803084750848?s=20/photo/1
😅🐣 RT @TheTweetOfGod Whether or not Trump is found guilty, he’s guilty.
TheWeek, Ryan Cooper: Trump is a clear and present danger to constitutional government http://bit.ly/37nY3oE ‘Would Republican senators complain if a Trump militia took control of polling stations…? Or would they lie & dissemble & call it ‘fake news?’ We may live to find out’
🐣 RT @HouseIntel President Trump requested the two sham investigations into the 2016 election and the Bidens for his own personal, political gain. ¤ This was never about corruption. ¤ Here’s how we know: https://twitter.com/HouseIntel/status/1220454563062472716?s=20/photo/1
// List of 10 proofs investigation were for personal gain
🐣 RT @CAPAction “It’s about a stunning abuse of power. It’s about obstruction of Congress. It’s about the need for us…to have a fair trial with witnesses and evidence… ¤ What keeps us free from tyranny is the sacred principle that in this great country, no one is above the law.” —@RepJeffries 💽 https://twitter.com/CAPAction/status/1220510587198869504?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @DrDenaGrayson 🚨BREAKING: virologist who helped identify SARS says a bigger #CoronavirusOutbreak is “certain,” “conservatively” estimating it could be 10x bigger than SARS because SARS was transmitted by only a few “super spreaders” in a more defined part of #China.😳
⋙ WaPo: Chinese cities cancel New Year celebrations, travel ban widens in effort to stop coronavirus outbreak http://wapo.st/2NU0wiJ
🐣 RT @HelenArmstrong5 Dear @senrobportman you left Senate chambers in violation of p@senatemajldr 1st rule of conduct – ALL Senators will be in attendance at all times during the impeachment proceedings. We’re watching and don’t approve. If you can’t obey the rules, don’t vote. ¤ PHONE: 202-224-3353
🐣 RT @SenJeffMerkley Once both sides present their case, Senators will be submitting questions through the Chief Justice to be answered by the two teams. Based on what you’ve heard so far, what would you ask if you had the chance? I’ll be taking your questions into account as I formulate my own.
⋙ 🐣 RT Please ask someone (Roberts himself?) what can be done about outright lies or (if it happens) GOP spouting conspiracy theories? I’m concerned this trial will allow the perpetuation of our two “alternative realities”
WaPo: Democrats use Trump’s allies in their case against the president http://wapo.st/37lIbTr
🐣 RT @SenBlumenthal Persuasive & personable, the younger Senator Graham, then a House manager in the Clinton case, was right: even if it’s not a statutory violation, “when you start using your office & you’re acting in a way that hurts people, you’ve committed a high crime.”
⋙ 💽 TheHill: Nadler plays 1999 clip of Graham defining high crimes: ‘It doesn’t even have to be a crime’ http://bit.ly/2uoHB98
🐣 RT @JRubinBlogger “The Constitution is not a suicide pact. It does not leave us stuck with presidents who abuse their power in unforeseen ways that threaten our security and democracy” – quote of the day [Jerrold Nadler]
🐣 RT @K_JeanPierre Thank you to the 7 House impeachment trial managers:
— @RepAdamSchiff (D-CA)
— @RepJerryNadler (D-NY)
— @RepJeffries (D-NY)
— @RepValDemings (D-FL)
— @RepZoeLofgren (D-CA)
— @RepSylviaGarcia (D-TX)
— @RepJasonCrow (D-CO)
#TrumpImpeachmentTrial
🐣 RT @lrozen He did not badmouth the nation, he was wounded fighting for it. He spoke with tremendous praise and pride for the nation in the hearings, telling his father not to be afraid for him because this is America.
⋙ 🐣 RT @MarshaBlackburn Adam Schiff is hailing Alexander Vindman as an American patriot. ¤ How patriotic is it to badmouth and ridicule our great nation in front of Russia, America’s greatest enemy?
🐣 RT @glennkirschner2 Rep. Jerry Nadler is CRUSHING the President’s position that his abuse of power is not an impeachable offense by using the very words of the president’s own supporters and enablers: Barr, Dershowitz and Turley.
🐣 RT @mayawiley Law need pt: #Trump defense brief tries to pull back from #Dershowitz extreme that #impeachment requires a crime. Maybe cuz he said it didn’t when Clinton impeached& House GOP expert said #abuseofpower was impeachable. Brief softens to “law violation.” GAO found that.
⋙ 🐣 RT @thehill Rep. Jerry Nadler: “The president’s lawyers argue that impeachment and removal are subject to statutory crimes or to offenses against established law, that the president cannot be impeached because he has not committed a crime. This view is completely wrong.” 💽 https://twitter.com/thehill/status/1220463718284218368?s=20/photo/1
🧵 RT @moscow_project [Thread] Trump and his hand-picked deputies, led by Rudy Giuliani, began their efforts to solicit foreign interference from Ukraine all the way back in 2018. It wasn’t until Zelensky came into office promising reform that the corrupt extortion scheme truly began. 📌 https://twitter.com/moscow_project/status/1220468829081546755?s=20
💙 🐣 RT @SpeakerPelosi Abuse of power. ¤ Fox News’ top legal analyst Judge Napolitano: “What is required for removal of the president? A demonstration of presidential commission of high crimes and misdemeanors, of which in Trump’s case the evidence is ample and uncontradicted.”
⋙ FoxNews, Judge Andrew Napolitano: Trump’s Senate impeachment trial — What does it take to remove a president? http://bit.ly/2RlTlCb
🐣 RT @CNNBusiness Fox News executives shielded the channel’s audience from the impeachment trial proceedings playing out in the Senate, instead choosing to air its regular bloc of opinion programming which is strongly supportive of President Trump | Analysis by @oliverdarcy
⋙ CNN: Instead of airing the impeachment trial, Fox News fed viewers pro-Trump opinion in prime time http://cnn.it/2RMaAvo
🐣 RT @TheRickyDavila The moment Jerry Nadler played old clips of @LindseyGrahamSC’s hypocrisy, he got up and walked out. A true coward and traitor. ¤ What do they have on you Lindsey? What’s in your closet?
🐣 RT @SimonWDC Underappeciated moment in the Ukraine timeline – Sept 26th. ¤ Just days after the scandal became public, Trump launches $10m ad❣campaign hitting Biden w/the false Ukraine conspiracy. ¤ It’s a smoking gun confirmation Ukraine project’s intent was electoral. [+link to article in TheHill] https://twitter.com/SimonWDC/status/1220355044530380800?s=20
// plus two other under appreciated moments
TPM (9/25;2019): Barr Denies Involvement In Trump’s Ukraine Smear Campaign Against Biden http://bit.ly/2uo3MMH
// 9/25/2019
🐣 RT @DruckerPhilip If you can’t at least be dis-barred for lying to the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court in front of the entire Senate I don’t know what acts would qualify. There has to be some penalty for repeating Fox “News” talking points as if they were facts in a supposed tribunal of truth.
⋙ 🐣 RT @tribelaw The House Managers are doing a great job blowing up Trump’s phony defenses in advance. I’d feel sorry for Team Trump — if I didn’t remind myself that nobody is forcing them to represent a dictator wannabe, a demagogue who threatens all we stand for as a representative democracy.
🐣 RT @tribelaw .@RepAdamSchiff is rescuing a lackluster account by restating in his inimitably powerful way what an earlier manager didn’t fully explain. This is a teaching moment for students learning the difference between an earnest performance that misses the mark and a delivery that kills.
ThreadReader: 🐣 RT @JoeLockhart 1. On day two of the Senate trial to remove President Donald J Trump, welcome to the Daily White House Shadow Briefing. For newcomers, since the White House stopped doing briefings some 330 days ago, we’ve been doing our shadow briefing to make sure the important questions http://bit.ly/2NQJaDl 📌 https://twitter.com/joelockhart/status/1220436475545821187?s=20
🐣 RT @grantstern If the Republican Senators cannot stay awake during a trial over which they’re presiding as judges, then you must do your duty and #VoteThemAllOut2020 if this turns into an unfair trial without documents and witnesses.
⋙ TheAtlantic, Paul Savoy: An Impeachment Trial Without Witnesses Would Be Unconstitutional http://bit.ly/38D8HYX Paul Savoy is a former prosecutor in the office of the Manhattan District Attorney.
// And a resulting acquittal verdict would present Americans with something far worse than a constitutional crisis.
🐣 RT @SenBlumenthal Just reviewed the Williams classified document—which should be made public immediately. There is absolutely no reason to keep it classified regardless of which side it helps. Americans should judge for themselves.
🧵 RT @moscow_project [Thread] NEW: Under #MoscowMitch’s watchful eye, Republicans have become the party of Putin. It’s not just Trump—the whole party has gone all-in on the debunked Russian conspiracy theory that Ukraine, not Russia, interfered in the 2016 election. 📌 https://twitter.com/moscow_project/status/1220437964154601473?s=20
⇈ ⇊
MoscowProject: Moscow Mitch and the Party of Putin http://bit.ly/36oW4z0 Now the whole GOP is mouthing Russian talking points
💙 🧵 RT @jentaub [Thread] Here we go again. Adam Schiff is thanking Senators for working so late and sitting silently for hours 1/ 📌 https://twitter.com/jentaub/status/1220407789006225408?s=20
Bloomberg, Noah Feldman: Maybe the Senate Isn’t Up to the Job of Trump’s Impeachment Trial http://bloom.bg/2viTcXJ Noah Feldman is a professor of law at Harvard University
// James Madison wanted the Supreme Court to try impeachments. Maybe he was right.
ForeignAffairs, Joe Biden: Why America Must Lead Again http://fam.ag/2sPGheQ “The triumph of democracy and liberalism over fascism and autocracy created the free world. But this contest does not just define our past. It will define our future, as well.” ● Text Block: https://twitter.com/Auriandra/status/1220389148382638081?s=20/photo/1
// Rescuing U.S. Foreign Policy After Trump
The Biden foreign policy agenda will place the United States back at the head of the table, in a position to work with its allies and partners to mobilize collective action on global threats. The world does not organize itself. For 70 years, the United States, under Democratic and Republican presidents, played a leading role in writing the rules, forging the agreements, and animating the institutions that guide relations among nations and advance collective security and prosperity—until Trump. If we continue his abdication of that responsibility, then one of two things will happen: either someone else will take the United States’ place, but not in a way that advances our interests and values, or no one will, and chaos will ensue. Either way, that’s not good for America.
WaPo, Jennifer Rubin: Republicans, think carefully about the choice you have to make http://wapo.st/2uqRyTv “This trial could end up as long ad❣for throwing the GOP out of power”
WaPo, Amber Philips: What happened in Wednesday’s Senate trial, in 5 minutes http://wapo.st/37nvkA7
DailyBeast, Eleanor Clift: GOP’s ‘Drug Deal’ for Trump Keeps Bolton From Testifying About Him http://bit.ly/30Li4CW
// Adam Schiff is in his element—and may be baiting Donald Trump into an executive-privilege trap.
NewYorker, Susan Glasser: Adam Schiff’s Moment http://bit.ly/38vaUpd
// On Day 2 of the Senate impeachment trial, the House presents its case—and a senator has a cold glass of milk.
DailyBeast, Margaret Carlson: Trump’s ‘Ridiculous’ Impeachment Defense Could Crumble http://bit.ly/38vurWs
// Republicans are insisting that there’s no case without witnesses and that it’s too late to call them.
⭕ 22 Jan 2020
💙 NationalReview Editorial: Impeachment Doesn’t Require a Crime http://bit.ly/2RpwFkG
Politico Mag, James Robenalt: Why Is John Roberts Even in the Impeachment Trial? http://politi.co/38zkPtN
// Last night, the chief justice showed he wasn’t just a potted plant. But the founders would have wanted him to play an even stronger role in impeachment.
NYT: McConnell Prefers to Hold ’Em, but Also Knows When to Fold ’Em http://nyti.ms/37miW3p
// The majority leader, facing defections in his own ranks, made a strategic retreat this week in an effort to retain his grip on the trial
WaPo, Amber Philips: What happens next in the impeachment of President Trump? http://wapo.st/2tAYX2z
WaPo, Joe Scarborough: Mitch McConnell has failed the Republican Party http://wapo.st/30OnSf4
NewYorker, Susan Glasser: “Ass-Backwards” and (So Far) Witness-Free, Trump’s Senate Impeachment Trial Begins http://bit.ly/30NiYyK
// A report from Day 1 of the case against the President.
💙≣ Politico: Read Adam Schiff’s opening argument at Senate impeachment trial http://politi.co/36lbg06
// Schiff Opening Statement
WaPo: Biden says he refuses to be part of impeachment witness deal http://wapo.st/2TN0ZXX “Think about everything that President Trump does, from the time he got into real estate,” Biden said. “Whenever he has a problem, he blames somebody else.”
WaPo: Biden says he refuses to be part of impeachment witness deal http://wapo.st/2TN0ZXX
NYT: In Impeachment Case, Schiff Accuses Trump of Trying ‘to Cheat’ in Election http://nyti.ms/2GddeoK
// The House impeachment managers began presenting their oral arguments against President Trump in the Senate trial, arguing that his conduct warranted his removal.
DailyBeast, Matt Wilstein: George Conway Unloads on Senate Republicans: ‘They Know He’s Guilty’ http://bit.ly/2GfMYtN
// “Are they going to stand for lies instead of truth?” Kellyanne Conway’s husband asked. “Are they going to stand for gaslighting instead of reality?”
DailyBeast, Sam Brodey: McConnell’s Brushback Is a Preview of the Impeachment Battle to Come http://bit.ly/2TVyNCp
// The most unexpected thing to come out of the first day of Senate impeachment proceedings was the appearance of boundaries for the majority leader—which could shape the coming days.
DailyBeast, Jay Michaelson: Trump’s Lawyers are Lying About the Meaning of Impeachment http://bit.ly/2RjgNA5
// Impeachment is an indictment, not a trial.
🐣 RT @JillWineBanks A profound question. Could Chief Justice be moved to action by the reality that the fundamental balance of powers created in our Constitution are being obliterated by Trump and his theories that he can do anything he wants and not be investigated or held accountable.
⋙ 🐣 RT @JRubinBlogger We hope that Roberts viscerally understands Trump will obliterate the separation of powers, wield his powers for personal gain, seek to destroy the legislative and executive branches and lie to courts, Congress and the American people
⋙⋙ WaPo, Jennifer Rubin: The education of Chief Justice John Roberts http://wapo.st/2Ggs4e1
🐣 RT @BradMossEsq
👀
⋙ 🐣 RT @ryanjreilly “Good job,” @LindseyGrahamSC tells @RepAdamSchiff as the impeachment trial wraps for the day. “Very well spoken.” https://twitter.com/BradMossEsq/status/1220196660208381953?s=20/photo/1-2
🐣🌎 RT @AndreaCalupa “More than a third of the world’s population still live under authoritarian rule.” https://twitter.com/AndreaChalupa/status/1220191157054996480?s=20/photo/1
// US flawed democracy rated 7 of 10
🐣 RT @RepAdamSchiff Americans know about Trump’s Ukraine scheme because people with a sense of duty were willing to step forward and speak out. ¤ People like Ambassadors Yovanovitch and Taylor, Lt. Col. Vindman, Dr. Hill. ¤ They were willing to risk their careers. Can Members of Congress do the same?
Law&Crime: Calls for Pat Cipollone’s Disbarment Swell After ‘Brazen Lack of Candor’ During Impeachment Trial http://bit.ly/3aBZ8v9
🐣 RT @matthewamiller No idea how many Americans are watching Schiff in prime time tonight, but those who are are seeing a devastating argument against the Republican Senate not demanding documents and witnesses (among other things).
🐣 RT @justinamash Based on my experience with Republican colleagues in the House, I suspect that many Senate Republicans are hearing the facts of this case for the first time.
DailyBeast: Dems: Convict Trump or ‘Write the History of Our Decline with Our Own Hand’ http://bit.ly/2NT0acp by Spencer Ackerman, Sam Brodey and Erin Banco
// Rep. Schiff portrayed Trump’s impeachment as a make-or-break moment for democracy in the U.S. and worldwide, hoping that history will compel 20 Republican senators to join him.
🐣 RT @AndrewDesiderio NEW: House Dems hammered senators with everything they had: an all-day deluge of dense info, peppered with screenshots of deposition transcripts, emails, text messages and 50 video clips — 3 times more than House GOP used in 1999 for Clinton.
⋙ Politico: Dems unload ‘overwhelming’ impeachment case on the Senate — even as they press for more http://politi.co/3auTRFD
// House managers work to balance their case with urgent pleas for new witnesses and documents.
🐣 @tedcruz Fact Checks: Biden Burisma 1/4 https://twitter.com/Auriandra/status/1220166314003771392?s=20/photo/1-2
🐣 @tedcruz Fact Checks: Biden Burisma 2/4 https://twitter.com/Auriandra/status/1220166611577069570?s=20/photo/1-2
🐣 @tedcruz Fact Checks: Biden Burisma 3/4 https://twitter.com/Auriandra/status/1220166859716210688?s=20/photo/1-2
🐣 @tedcruz Fact Checks: Biden Burisma 4/4 https://twitter.com/Auriandra/status/1220167322498891776?s=20/photo/1-2
🐣 RT @poniewozik This Schiff refrain of “Would you like to see it? I’d like to show it to you” (asking the Senate to request withheld documents) is really rhetorically effective, and I wonder if they saved it for prime time for that reason
🐣 RT @NatashaBertrand NEW: Russia’s attempts to tie Clinton to Ukraine appear to have begun as early as 2015, w/a disinfo campaign stemming from donations she received from an oligarch (who also gave to Trump). Trump began asking DOJ to investigate Ukraine as early as 2017.
⋙ Politico, Natasha Bertrand: How a Russian disinfo op got Trump impeached http://politi.co/2TQR0Rk
// The Kremlin may have been laying the groundwork for blaming Ukraine for 2016 as early as 2015.
🐣 RT @rgoodlaw
🐣 RT @froomkin I’m learning stuff I didn’t know, listening to Schiff. Technically it’s not new. But is it news that we’re hearing a unprecedentedly complete and evidence-laden explanation? I would say so.
💙💙 🧵 RT @moscow_project [Thread] .@RepAdamSchiff picks up where @RepJeffries left off: the aftermath of the July 25 phone call. The very next day saw more escalation as Volker coordinated with Giuliani to continue putting pressure on Ukraine. 📌 https://twitter.com/moscow_project/status/1220145284484947970?s=20
🐣 RT @JoyceWhiteVance Ted Cruz has just said Hunter Biden’s testimony is essential. I’d like to hear his explanation for how it’s any more relevant to impeachment that testimony from Trump’s tax accountant or the women he paid to keep their relationships quiet. Interesting maybe, relevant no.
⋙ 🐣 RT @JoyceWhiteVance Democrats shouldn’t agree to Trump’s distraction witnesses as a trade to get relevant witnesses with 1st hand knowledge, like Bolton & Mulvaney. It may seem tempting but it gives legitimacy to fake defenses & gives the proceedings a patina of legitimacy they don’t deserve.
🐣 RT @cassandra17lina A key difference between today’s #ImpeachmentTrial versus #Watergate (other than the magnitude #Trump’s high crimes) is that most #Republicans back then believed in the rule of law, even against one of their own. Oh, and #Nixon, realizing that he’d be #impeached, resigned.
🐣 RT @CREWcrew The American people want their senators to engage in a serious quest for the truth. A recent CNN poll of voters showed that 69 percent of Americans want the Senate to hear evidence and witnesses in the coming days.
⋙ NYT, Noah Bookbinder: McConnell’s Impeachment Scam http://nyti.ms/2NLRNzh
// Senators have a duty to conduct a fair and full trial. The Republican leader is trying to make sure they can’t.
WaPo, Max Boot: Trump’s lawyers are playing a bad hand badly http://wapo.st/37fBGl8
💙💙 🧵 RT @Teri_Kanefield [Thread] Hakeem Jeffries is talking about how Trump is embracing Russian propaganda that it was Ukraine, not Russia, that interfered in the 2016 election. ¤ In their brief, the Trump defense said this ¤ Their rebuttal: One doesn’t exclude the other. Both could have interfered. ¤ 1/ 📌 https://twitter.com/Teri_Kanefield/status/1220121161595404288?s=20
⋙ 🐣 RT @Teri_Kanefield The problem is a subtle one. ¤ From @TimothyDSnyder: Russian propaganda works this way. The Russian government doesn’t deny that it is corrupt. They say all governments are corrupt. ¤ If everyone is corrupt—if everyone is guilty— nobody is any worse than anyone else. ¤ 2/
🐣 RT @JoyceWhiteVance I’d go so far as to call this a confession, but when you’re above the law, they don’t matter. Dark times ahead.
⋙ 🐣 RT @waltshaub Trump, who obstructed Congress by withholding documents and witnesses, just told reporters in Davos that the House doesn’t have the evidence, “we” have all the evidence. Given that one of the charges is obstruction, that’s as brazenly corrupt and cynical as it gets.
🐣 RT @MollyMcKew How can any senator not think the same? How can Inhofe — who *knew* how bad it was, hence he wrote to OMB? How could Thornberry — such a practical leader on these issues and partnerships in the past, who also wrote to OMB — still turn a blind eye to what POTUS was risking?
💙💙 🧵 RT @SethAbramson [Thread] I said weeks ago Trump wanted a short trial; media bought his claim he wanted a long one. I said McConnell was lying about his resolution/trial plans; Democrats thought otherwise and handed him the articles, resolution unseen. Then I said there’d be no witnesses. And here we are. 📌 https://twitter.com/SethAbramson/status/1219984258816671744?s=20
⋙⋙ 🐣 RT @mkraju McConnell is hardening his argument against witnesses, a sign he plans to rally fellow GOP senators to block testimony and bring a swift end to proceedings. He is warning of exec privilege issues and long court fight. w/ @Phil_Mattingly @jeremyherb
⋙⋙⋙ CNN: McConnell warns against witnesses in pitch for quick impeachment trial resolution http://cnn.it/2veNtCc
ForeignPolicy: Republican Lawmakers Questioned Trump’s Withholding of Ukraine Aid, Documents Show http://bit.ly/30LzcZj
// Newly released emails and other documents show that some of those now sitting as jurors in Trump’s impeachment trial were also unhappy about his move to freeze aid last year.
🐣 RT @ burgessev Trump’s ‘I think I’d take it’ remark on accepting foreign information on political opponent was just played during his impeachment trial 💽 https://twitter.com/burgessev/status/1220098926881144838?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @ABC Rep. Adam Schiff quotes from Alexander Hamilton at the start of House impeachment managers’ opening arguments in the trial of Pres. Donald Trump. https://abcn.ws/36mf3dn https://twitter.com/ABC/status/1220046595993022464?s=20/photo/1
// Hamilton Quote (Letter to George Washington): “When a man unprincipled in private life desperate in his fortune, bold in his temper, possessed of considerable talents, having the advantage of military habits—despotic in his ordinary demeanour—known to have scoffed in private at the principles of liberty—when such a man is seen to mount the hobby horse of popularity—to join in the cry of danger to liberty—to take every opportunity of embarrassing the General Government & bringing it under suspicion—to flatter and fall in with all the non sense of the zealots of the day—It may justly be suspected that his object is to throw things into confusion that he may ‘ride the storm and direct the whirlwind.”— Alexander Hamilton
🧵 RT @moscow_project [Thread] .@RepJerryNadler outlines Rudy Giuliani’s efforts pursuing Trump’s corrupt goals in Ukraine, going back to before Zelensky took office last spring: 📌 https://twitter.com/moscow_project/status/1220091428476461058?s=20
🐣 RT @ddale8 Trump lawyer Sekulow just told reporters, “Notice what’s not in the articles of impeachment: allegations or accusations of quid pro quo.” ¤ The *words* quid pro quo aren’t in the articles, but the Abuse of Power article is all *about* Trump’s alleged quid pro quo effort.
⋙ 🐣 RT @ddale8 The Abuse of Power article alleges that Trump conditioned “official United States Government acts of significant value to Ukraine” on Ukraine announcing investigations that would give him “personal political benefit.” That is, plainly, an accusation of a quid pro quo.
🐣 RT @dfriedman33 Schumer: “Adam Schiff’s speech was one of the most compelling I have ever heard. It was a tour de force… I thought it was an amazing two and a half hours.”
🐣 RT @Delavegalaw Agree — a huge result of the wrongfulness of the president’s misconduct. Bringing shame to the U.S. is bad enough, but he has also jeopardized our national security. Starting day one, he failed to defend us against a RU attack; he exacerbates that jeopardy thru corrupt acts.
⋙ 🐣 RT @JoyceVanceWhite This also compromises our reputation. Who will trust us after the Senate says POTUS can barter US support for foreign leader help in a re-election campaign? We can no longer work to deter corruption abroad if the “greatest deliberative body in the world” countenances it at home.
🐣 RT @DavidCayJ Clearly and calmly, Schiff just presented a perfect argument, connecting dots, cutting through Trump’s fog of lies and articulating telling detail by fact by document how Trump betrayed his oath, lied, covered up and acts like a king, all in utter contempt for our Constitution.
🐣 RT @justingamash “I would like you to do us a favor though.”
⋙ 🐣 RT @real “NO PRESSURE”
🐣 RT @atrupar The ugly truth staring people in the face is that Republicans aren’t as invested in this “democracy” and “free and fair elections” stuff as Democrats would like to believe
🐣 RT @NotmOrnstein He should be disbarred for appearing as a lawyer in a case where he is embroiled and complicit.
🐣 RT @MiekeEoyang Also, he could face potential criminal sanction under 18 USC 1001, for making false statements to Congress.
⋙ 🐣 RT @tribelaw No question @RepRaskin is right. Cipollone must correct his lie or face disbarment.
⋙⋙ 🐣 RT @RepRaskin Cipollone must be forced by CJ Roberts to correct the record and apologize or face disbarment for brazen lack of candor to the tribunal in a legal proceeding. I was in nearly every deposition and the GOP Members were always present.
⋙⋙⋙ 🐣 RT @atrupar “Not even Mr. Schiff’s Republican colleagues were allowed into the SCIF” — this is a blatant lie from Cipollone 💽 https://twitter.com/atrupar/status/1219705851239419904?s=20/photo/1
💙 🐣 RT @JRubinBlogger This is the most brilliant legal presentation I have heard. None comes close. The tone, the facts, the anticipated defenses. I am in awe.
⋙ 🐣 Pelosi was wise to entrust this to Adam Schiff #TrumpImpeachmentTrial
🐣📊 RT @rgoodlaw New CNN poll consistent with Quinnipiac Poll, WaPo-ABC poll on #ImpeachmentTrial
1. Large majority of Americans want to see witnesses testify
CNN: 69%
QP: 66%
WaPo-ABC: 71%
2. Plurality of GOP want to see witnesses testify
CNN: 48% to 44%
QP: 39% to 35%
🧵 RT @blakesmustache [Thread]: Trump is losing, we are winning. ¤ Let’s count the ways!
1. Trump has been impeached, and it was a “self-impeachment” as Pelosi predicted. As a malignant narcissist, this causes him narcissistic injury and rage, making him even more likely to self-impeach again. 📌 https://twitter.com/blakesmustache/status/1220034720429416449?s=20
🐣 RT @Brasilmagic Adam Schiff is SO presidential. #AdamSchiffROCKS
🐣 RT @Andrew_Roth Absolutely bizarre choices here by the Trump administration to even consider ban on visas to citizens of Belarus and Kyrgyzstan. Doesn’t make sense from a security perspective and will serve to isolate these countries from west.
⋙ 🐣 Belarus has recently resisted Putin’s attempts to draw it closer. Being cut off from the West would certainly help Putin. My son was on a US Army team training firefighters in Kyrgyzstan. Joint efforts like that may not be acceptable to Russia. “All roads … “
💙 🐣 RT @MollyMcKew Dark note from Dad: ¤ “In my life I’ve seen a president gunned down, a war lost in crushing defeat–but now this, ‘the city on a hill’ trashed for absolutely nothing, nothing but a few bucks. ¤ Maybe in a few hundred years someone will take a chance on this great experiment again.”
🐣 RT @JRubinBlogger The notion he was concerned about corruption in Ukraine is belied by bringing up China. He cares about whatever he can use to smear Biden
💙💙 🐣 RT @moscow_project [Thread] .@RepAdamSchiff summarizes the charges against Trump. ¤ “His scheme was undertaken for a simple but corrupt reason: to help him win reelection in 2020.” 💽 https://twitter.com/moscow_project/status/1220047794641297413?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @HouseIntel “When the President’s scheme was exposed and the House properly performed its constitutional responsibility to investigate the matter… [Trump] ordered the entire Executive Branch…to categorically refuse and completely obstruct the House’s impeachment inquiry.” – @RepAdamSchiff 💽 https://twitter.com/HouseIntel/status/1220058793326915586?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @klasfeldreport Rep. Schiff: ¤ “This is why you will hear the president’s lawyers make the astounding claim that you can’t impeach the president for abusing the powers of his office.” ¤ “That’s exactly, exactly what he did,” he said, his voice rising. “So, they needed to find a lawyer somewhere.”
🐣 RT @chkbal Trump is “perhaps the most dishonest person to ever sit in the White House” & “he is capable of doing serious damage” – via @Newsweek interview with Charles Fried, Reagan’s Solicitor General and Member of @chkbal
⋙ Newsweek: Reagan’s Solicitor General Says ‘All Honorable People’ Have Left Trump’s Cabinet: ‘He is Capable of Doing Serious Damage’ http://bit.ly/2TP8BcC
💽 MSNBC: Chris Matthews calls Adam Schiff’s speech ‘most compelling case for removal of office’ http://on.msnbc.com/3aDn8hw
// On House Manager Adam Schiff’s speech on Tuesday night in Congress, Chris calls Schiff’s remarks “the most compelling case for removal from office of this president I had heard in all these months.”
NatGeo (2015): The Invisible War on the Brain http://on.natgeo.com/2GcXFNA “Brain trauma from blast force … strikes deeply into a soldier’s mind and psyche” ● https://twitter.com/Auriandra/status/1220054107345629184?s=20/photo/1
// 1/15/2015; Brain trauma from blast force is the signature injury of the Iraq and Afghanistan campaigns, afflicting hundreds of thousands of U.S. combat personnel. Although unseen, the damage strikes deeply into a soldier’s mind and psyche.
🐣 RT @CSIS By enabling Russia’s malign economic activities, some European countries are feeding the Kremlin’s cycle of influence, weakening democratic structures, and threatening transatlantic security: http://cs.is/2I0G9OI
🐣 RT @weareoversight [ … ] New from @EricLiptonNYT on the OMB documents we uncovered last night through our FOIA lawsuit.
⋙ NYT: New Emails Show Budget Office Working to Carry Out Ukraine Aid Freeze http://nyti.ms/2RfG3qN
// The communications about President Trump’s order to hold up military assistance to Ukraine were released under a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit.
🧵 RT @TheRickWilson [Thread] 1/ Today’s list of insanely dumb Senate GOP conceits
– “Motions to table” votes for the Trump coverup can be waved off as mere procedural votes is laughable. Trust me, when the ads come – and they are coming – voters *will* believe you were voting on the substance. 📌 https://twitter.com/TheRickWilson/status/1220026192411025409?s=20
🐣 RT @BillKristol The Democrats need to play this clip over and over on the floor of the Senate today and on various forms of media throughout the country: Trump boasts about his coverup, enabled so far by Senate Republicans.
↥ ↧
💙 🐣 RT @RepValDemings The second article of impeachment was for obstruction of Congress: covering up witnesses and documents from the American people. ¤ This morning the President not only confessed to it, he bragged about it: ¤ “Honestly, we have all the material. They don’t have the material.” 💽 https://twitter.com/RepValDemings/status/1220017702011535364?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @ECMcLaughlin Gratitude is a good practice to keep going in devastating times. ¤ Today’s a good day to call the impeachment managers and thank them for all their hard work.
🐣 RT @MichaelArt123 Sen Patty Murray: R’s were unprepared, confused & did not offer sober minded arguments. The Pres is only concerned about inflammatory comments. So too are his lawyers, who said No to each & every attempt to insure a fair & honest trial. This is about our Democracy & our future.
Politico: Schiff may have mischaracterized Parnas evidence, documents show http://politi.co/2NPim6E Zelensky (Ukraine president) or Zlochevsky (Burisma exec)?
// Unredacted material shows he may have referred to the wrong “Mr. Z.”
🐣 RT @jimsciutto “They don’t want to hear the evidence because they know the truth. They know he’s guilty.” – @gtconway3d live on @cnn right now.
⋙ 🐣 RT @jimsciutto “I’m deeply saddened….it’s a day of reckoning for Republican senators. Are they going to stand for lies instead of truth? Are they going to stand for this one man over the interests of this country?” – @gtconway3d
🐣 RT @AndrewDesiderio Schumer on possible deal with Republicans involving one-for-one witness deal: ¤ “The witnesses should have something to do with or direct knowledge of the charges against the president.”
🐣 RT @AngrierWHStaff Trump, at Davos said:
– The possibility of our troops suffering traumatic brain injury in the Iran strike wasn’t a big deal because they just “had some headaches”
– He would look at cutting social security if re-elected
– He would love to testify at the Senate trial.
🐣 RT @CAPAction “The people who say [Trump] wants to be as powerful as a king are understating it…He wants to be a dictator. When we get one of these votes after another in lockstep, 53 to 47, it just shows real cowardice on the part of [Senate Republicans].” —@TribeLaw 💽 https://twitter.com/CAPAction/status/1220012149730430979?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @justinhendrix In an incredible exchange at Davos, @realdonaldtrump admits he is comfortable with the status of the impeachment trial because the White House is withholding evidence. “Honestly, we have all the material. They don’t have the material.” As always, he says the quiet part out loud.
⭕ 21 Jan 2020 🔥 Trump on Trial 🔥
NYMag, Jonathan Chait: Trump and Russia Are Colluding in Ukraine for Profit and Political Gain http://nym.ag/2Rkjdyv
🐣 RT @gtconway3d .@realDonaldTrump’s lawyers have been complaining all day about being shut out of the House impeachment process, but here was Cipollone’s response to the House Judiciary Committee’s invitation to participate: https://twitter.com/gtconway3d/status/1219811465504395269?s=20/photo/1
💙 🧵 RT @ChrisMurphyCT [Thread] 1/ It’s 2am, but it’s never too late for transparency. So, as promised, here are my behind the scenes impressions from the Tue/Wed impeachment proceedings. 📌 https://twitter.com/ChrisMurphyCT/status/1219876860764610560?s=20
🐣 RT @ForeignPolicy “Putin the amateur historian would not get a passing grade at any reputable university. Nor would he be able to get his views published in any peer-reviewed journal,” @DrRadchenko writes.
⋙ ForeignPolicy, Sergey Radchenko: Vladimir Putin Wants to Rewrite the History of World War II http://bit.ly/3aANkJy
// The Russian president’s amateur history lessons are outraging neighboring countries. While he is right to criticize a recent EU Parliament resolution, his historical revisionism doesn’t stand up to scrutiny.
🐣 RT @walterdellinger Schiff is not just good. Today is one of the most impressive performances by a lawyer I have ever seen.
💙 WaPo, Dana Milbank: And the White House defense is … well, there isn’t one http://wapo.st/37ukqIQ
WaPo: Trump threatens Europe with fresh tariffs in Davos, deepening a rift with longtime U.S. allies http://wapo.st/37fVjcJ
// After 70 years of being largely hand in hand in promoting democracy and capitalism around the world, the United States and Europe are now at odds over trade, climate change, taxation, privacy, Iran and defense funding. And Trump continues to try to use tariffs to pressure European leaders to meet his demands.
💙 ForensicNews: Russian Government Bank Deposited $500 Million into Deutsche Bank Subsidiary as it Lent to Trump http://bit.ly/2NMJinF
// By Scott Stedman, Bobby DeNault, Adrienne Cobb and Jess Coleman;
🐣 This could all boil down to Hunter Biden getting paid too much. Never mind Trump inheriting half a billion dollars.
🐣 One side told the truth, earnestly and thoroughly. The other lied a lot, flung sound bites around, dissembled and practiced whataboutism. House members won on the law and told a compelling story. I was gratified to see the Truth lifted up. #ImpeachmentTrial
🐣 My favorite part of the day was watching Adam Schiff’s rebuttals. #ImpeachmentTrial
🐣 The Great Oz speaks.
↥ ↧ // Roberts
🐣 RT @NormOrnstein Pat Cipollone is a lying weasel.
↥ ↧
🐣 RT @ AndrewDesiderio The rhetoric has indeed become heated between the House managers and Trump’s lawyers who, at this late hour, are haranguing each other by name and accusing each other of lying.
🐣 RT @renatomariotti Then why not subpoena him and find out what he has to say?
⋙ 🐣 Exactly. I am ready to be enlightened, even if he doesn’t say what I expect
🐣 RT @donnabrazille The fake outrage hour has started. #JaySekulow and #PatCipollone are acting like Chairman Nadler stole their lunch. ¤ #SenateTrial ¤ #SenateCoverup
🐣 RT @MollyMcKew Cipollone is really bad at this, & can only read outrage from a card. He is fluffing his bejeweled tutu while preening that his counterparts who actually did their homework are outrageous. ¤ These people are paid by us to be embarrassing while not understanding the constitution.
⋙ 🐣 RT @MollyMcKew Oh wait, Sekulow is more embarrassing, because clearly POTUS is awake in Europe so everyone put on their outrage shoes and got out their Khrushchev fingers. ¤ How can R senators watch this and think the president is being well-defended?
🐣 Cipillone is projecting. Trump stole one election with the help of a foreign country and was caught red-handed attempting to do it again.
NYT, Tom Friedman: How to Defeat Trump and Catch a Frisbee http://nyti.ms/2RD4YDQ
// There is a winnable approach for Democrats in the impeachment trial.
🐣 RT @DanRather We have a cover up. The senators who are voting against documents, those who wish to hide witnesses, those who are content whistling past the truth they surely know, have made their bargain with their conscience. The question is where the conscience of the nation will fall.
NBCNews, Jonathan Allen: Trump’s defense looks shaky on first day of impeachment trial http://nbcnews.to/37eFuTS
// Analysis: Using the president’s convoluted logic with none of his outsized passion, his defense team wasn’t very persuasive.
🐣 RT @AndrewDesiderio Nadler says “every Republican senator has shown they want to be part of the cover-up” by voting against subpoenas tonight for documents and witnesses.
🚫 🧵 RT @mikefarb1 Everything we are seeing right now. A President destroying everything he touches while under an Impeachment. A GOP Senate ignoring every law of our land. They don’t fear our voices. They don’t fear the polls? Why? What do they know? Are we going to even have Elections? Thread 📌 https://twitter.com/mikefarb1/status/1219836071242076160?s=20
// conspiratorial?
🐣 RT @ChrisAlbertoLaw Based upon Trump’s: ¤ selection of inept & unethical lawyers,
their sophomoric misrepresentations in the trial brief & arguments today, ¤ Trump/McConnell definitely engineered the GOP Senate to violate their oath to impartial justice, oath of office & place Trump above the law.
🐣 RT @MSNBC .@NicolleDWallace: “Mitch McConnell has already lost his grip on his caucus. The rules that he made clear last night … those have changed already.”
⋙ 💽 MSNBC: McConnell already loses grip on GOP, softens rules after caucus ‘ate his lunch’ http://on.msnbc.com/38xZQYt
// Nicolle Wallace, Claire McCaskill and Michael Steele discuss the last-minute, handwritten changes made to the Trump impeachment trial rules he released Monday night, and what those changes could mean for the future of the trial.
🐣 RT @Teri_Kanefield Bondi accused the House of denying due process and trampling Constitutional rights. ¤ Schiff reminds everyone that the House followed the rules put in place by Republicans, the same rules in place in the Clinton impeachment.
🐣 RT @NormOrnstein Never forget: Pam Bondi as Florida AG took a $25,000 illegal contribution from Trump to quash the prosecution of his corrupt Trump University, overruling her professional staff. She is totally corrupt.
🐣 RT @Acyn It’s 11pm and I’m totally here for watching Adam Schiff shutdown Pam Bondi 💽 https://twitter.com/Acyn/status/1219836288141950976?s=20/photo/1
Politico: Trump impeachment team undercuts DOJ position in McGahn case http://politi.co/2GcOwoA
// The issue could affect ongoing court cases revolving around impeachment.
🐣 RT @chriscoons I’m a lawyer, and here’s what I know: Trials have witnesses, and the witnesses have to be relevant to the case. It isn’t complicated. ¤ The President is on trial here, not anyone with the last name Biden. VP Biden and Hunter Biden are not relevant witnesses.
🐣 RT @brianefallon McConnell tried to ambush everybody by springing the text of his organizing resolution on the eve of the trial, but Senate Dems were armed with their amendments & are insisting on making GOP vote for them all and House managers came fully prepared with their arguments. Well done.
🐣 RT @leahmcelrath I’m impressed by @SenSchumer and @RepAdamSchiff’s strategy. ¤ They anticipated obstruction and came prepared to present their case via the very evidence we are being denied access to within the context of these procedural votes. ¤ We’re learning much of what they’re trying to hide.
💽 MSNBC: Wiley: Dems ‘brought the receipts, threw them on the table, and asked them to be paid’ http://on.msnbc.com/37iCRAh
// Legal analyst Maya Wiley says the Democrats’ impeachment managers are trying to use the Senate trial’s rules process to deliver evidence, but Mitch McConnell is trying to use the rules to advantage the White House’s defense.
🐣 RT @StevenBeschloss These partisan votes by the GOP to deny evidence make me sad. They make me angry. They make me doubt they care one iota about the rule of law, a fair trial or fair elections. But they also fuel my belief it will motivate a tidal wave of voters determined to drive them from power.
🐣 RT @JoyceWhiteVance Doing show & tell with emails between DOD & OMB, @RepJasonCrow is doing a masterful job of showing how redactions, instead of being legitimate, are likely concealing damaging information. And, he’s doing it right at the time most likely to have coast-to-coast audiences watching.
🐣 RT @duty2warn “Devin Nunes has betrayed the truth, betrayed the trust of voters and, quite possibly, betrayed our country. We don’t know exactly where this new (Parnas) evidence will lead, but we do know this: The people of California’s 22nd District deserve better.” – The Fresno Bee
🐣 RT @GeigerNews Rep. Jason Crow, a former U.S. Army Ranger and officer with three tours of duty in Iraq and Afghanistan, takes the wood to Republicans whining about how long they’re having to work on the impeachment trial today.
⋙ 🐣 RT @PoliticusSarah As Republicans whine about how late it is, House Impeachment Manager Rep. Jason Crow (D-CO) tells them that troops around the world don’t want to hear their complaints. #ImpeachmentTrial #SenateImpeachmentTrial 💽 https://twitter.com/PoliticusSarah/status/1219815404081766400?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @publicintegrity Shoutout for public service journalism from @RepJasonCrow for the #UkraineDocs we sued to get which showed— despite many redactions— serious concerns among WH staff re: legality of military holdup. “Let’s see the documents and let’s see them now”
⋙ 🐣 RT @CBSNews Rep. Jason Crow, an impeachment manager and veteran, comments on the freeze of Ukraine military aid: “I remember what it feels like to not have the equipment you need when you need it. Real people’s lives are at stake. That’s why this matters.” http://cbsn.ws/38t6Wx9 💽 https://twitter.com/CBSNews/status/1219774570133118978?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @MSNBC .@neal_katyal: “The president has a very weak case… the president is trying to use executive privilege just to hide stuff from the American people, and it’s a sure loser.”
⋙ 💽 MSNBC, : Neal Katyal: Trump trying to use executive privilege to hide stuff from American people http://on.msnbc.com/30K3qw0
// The White House is mulling whether to use executive privilege on John Bolton’s testimony. Neal Katyal says that, “The president is trying to use executive privilege just to hide stuff from the American people and it’s a sure loser.”
🐣 RT @Will_Bunch “Mitch McConnell is trying to Merrick Garland the rules” — Ari Melber on MSNBC just now
WaPo, David Ignatius: What does impeachment show the world? America’s stability. http://wapo.st/2RgGTn7
🚫 🐣 RT @TiaBarracini Trump cuts his Davos trip short to host all 53 Republican Senators at a bull & oyster roast tomorrow night in DC. 💽 https://twitter.com/TiaBarracini/status/1219787603337207809?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @harrylitman There is no presumption of innocence. This is not like a criminal trial where better 10 guilty go free than one innocent convicted. There is a huge public interest here in not getting it wrong, though they are determined to do just that.
⋙ 🐣 RT @CevallosLaw .@senatemajldr mentioned the “presumption of innocence” of the President. I’m not sure there’s any such presumption in an Senate trial. That would imply a criminal burden of beyond a reasonable doubt on the House Managers. This was requested and rejected at Clinton trial.
🐣 RT @gtconway3d There must be some logical explanation as to why they sound like they are representing a mentally unbalanced, megalomaniacal, criminal deviant. What could it possibly be?
⋙ 🐣 RT @WordswithSteph Trump’s lawyers sound like paranoid conspiracy theorists. Like they’re representing a mentally unbalanced, megalomaniacal, criminal deviant. Like they’re performing for an aspiring monarch, and auditioning for Fox News prime time. ¤ #TrumpsRemovalTrial
🐣 RT @CharlesPPierce McConnell just gave out with a tell. Wanted one vote on all Schumer amendments. Apparently doesn’t want an endless recitation of the facts. Schumer blew him up. ¤ Good job, Chuck.
WaPo Editorial: Trump’s impeachment defense is designed to destroy guardrails on presidential power http://wapo.st/2G8HwsL
🐣 RT @Lawrence Amazing that the House managers haven’t hit redundancy yet. Each presentation adds important information & evidence.
🐣 RT @MollyMcKew The @RepJasonCrow Schiff tagteam tonight made the strongest arguments I’ve heard from Dems: the national security case for impeachment, & the issue of moral leadership. ¤ Incredibly effective & clear. Crushed the attempted reply. ¤ This is, after all, why this matters so damn much
🔆 This❗️⋙ 📊 Newsweek: 71% of Republicans Want Mitch McConnell to Call Witnesses at Trump Impeachment Trial, New Poll Shows http://bit.ly/38pTKJB SurveyUSA Poll: 93% of Democrats, and 81% of Independents also say witnesses should be allowed to testify
🐣 RT @wendtrsherman Who isn’t impressed by this extraordinary and diverse group of House mangers- prepared, articulate, profound, thorough, patriotic, committed to truth, to our democracy and to America. Honored to know them and to listen to them. Thank you.
WaPo: Senate Democrats privately mull Biden-for-Bolton trade in impeachment trial http://wapo.st/38u6xdX
🐣 RT @BarbMcQuade A trial without witnesses is not a trial. It is a farce. Let’s go, Senate. Defend your institution and uphold your responsibility.
CNN: Inside the Republican lunch that slowed McConnell’s plan to rush the impeachment trial http://cnn.it/36eEVYI
🐣 RT @MollyMcKew The national security and moral leadership cases for impeaching the president — who has weakened our alliances, left us more isolated and forced to rely on illiberal friends of POTUS — is THE MOST IMPORTANT ONE. Because it leaves us less safe, makes our power matter far less.
NYT (12/29): Behind the Ukraine Aid Freeze: 84 Days of Conflict and Confusion http://nyti.ms/2RDMrXV 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 ● https://twitter.com/Auriandra/status/1219775550073511937?s=20/photo/1
🐣📊 RT @ Swing state support for Trump’s impeachment
AZ: 51%
CO: 56%
FL: 49%
GA: 48%
IA: 49%
ME: 60%
MI: 51%
MN: 55%
NH: 55%
NV: 54%
NM: 55%
NC: 50%
OH: 50%
PA: 52%
SC: 45%
TX: 45%
VA: 53%
WI: 51%
🐣 RT @EvanMcMullin The president’s defense hardly even bothers to dispute the mountain of damning evidence presented by the House, yet most Senate Republicans are as eager as could be to acquit him. It’s a disgrace, a betrayal of the nation.
NYT, Charlie Savage: Barr Once Contradicted Trump’s Claim That Abuse of Power Is Not Impeachable http://nyti.ms/3apYgtg
// In a memo for the Trump team during the Russia investigation, the attorney general wrote that presidents who misuse their authority are subject to impeachment.
🐣 RT @moscow_project Sekulow just cited in defense of Trump the “no quid pro quo” call from September 9.
Except …
-evidence suggests that call didn’t happen.
-even if it did, Trump lies ALL. THE. TIME. Why would this—when Trump’s confronted with his crimes—be the exception?
⋙ JustSecurity, Susan Simpson: Here’s the Proof that Trump’s “No Quid Pro Quo” Call Never Happened http://bit.ly/2q2tUdZ
🐣 RT @TeamPelosi Trump abused his power for personal and political gain. And Republicans in Washington are covering up the truth. #GOPCoverup ¤ Pass it on.
🧵 RT @kurteichenwald [Thread] 1. Well, by lying to the Senate and the Chief Justice, Pat Cippolone has raised a question about the integrity of @Kirkland_Ellis: Did he learn his dishonesty when he was a partner there? Or did it come from his firm Stein, Mitchell, Cipollone, Beato & Missner? Given that…. 📌 https://twitter.com/kurteichenwald/status/1219734430551592960?s=20
🐣 RT @JRubinBlogger Collins says she will be independent on witnesses… but later. And have I got a bridge for you!
🐣 RT @HouseIntel “As a career law enforcement officer, I have never seen anyone take such extreme steps to hide evidence allegedly providing his innocence. And I do not find that here today. The President is engaged in this cover up because he is guilty, and he knows it.” – @RepValDemings 💽 https://twitter.com/HouseIntel/status/1219747720392560645?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @amandacarpenter Jonathan Turley, who served as a House GOP impeachment witness, writes in WaPo: “The White House is arguing that you cannot impeach a president without a crime. It is a view that is at odds with history and the purpose of the Constitution.”
⋙ WaPo, Jonathan Turley: Where the Trump defense goes too far http://wapo.st/2TGa6JY “There is a vast array of harmful and corrupt acts that a president can commit outside of the criminal code.”
🐣 RT @NumbersMuncher Support for witnesses in the Senate #ImpeachmentTrial in recent polls: CNN 69-26; Quinnipiac 66-17; WaPo/ABC 71-22; Morning Consult 57-24;
Republicans are absolutely going against the will of the people here, and voters will now get to decide if they’ll make them pay for it in Nov.
🐣 RT @tribelaw Retweet if the lockstep 53-47 vote to conduct a coverup instead of a trial made you gag as it did me.
🐣 RT @JoeLockhart Serious question for the lawyers in the House. Is lying on the floor of the Senate the same as lying to Congress which I know is a criminal offense? Are the President’s lawyers liable for the statements they make on the Senate floor. Can someone refer this to DOJ?
🐣 RT @MSNBC .@NicolleDWallace: “Mitch McConnell is playing with lit matches when he plays these process games today.”
🐣 RT @mayawiley #Philbin also ignores the months long efforts by House Judiciary Committee to come to an agreement with Don McGhan. It was clear that White House wasn’t negotiating in good faith. A Judge has NOT supported that position. #ImpeachmentTrial
⋙ 🐣 RT @mayawiley #Philbin has to admit “its technically true” that White House didn’t formally assert executive privilege. He falls back on DOJ memos on “absolute immunity” of Congressional testimony. BUT that wasn’t in the context of #Impeachment
🐣 RT @glennkirschner We are now listening to a third defense attorney for the president who can not bring himself to say a single solitary thing suggesting Trump’s behavior was an appropriate exercise of presidential power. This is powerful evidence that the emperor has no . . . defense.
🐣 RT @tribelaw As I listen to the arguments of the Trump team of lawyers in the Senate, I can’t decide whether to be disgusted at their duplicity and ineptitude or to be outraged that we have elected a president who would choose this bunch of idiots to represent him in so solemn a proceeding
🐣 RT @neal_katyal There is a mismatch,but I don’t think that’s all. Dems are arguing for transparency+truth, and the trajectory of the investigation is at their back-every week new evidence comes out&its always bad news for,and never exonerates,Trump.The R’s, in contrast, are arguing for a coverup
⋙ 🐣 RT @gtconway3d If there’s any unfairness in these proceedings, it’s the astounding mismatch between the high skill and preparation of the House managers and the rambling, dissembling, and gaslighting of @realDonaldTrump’s counsel. It’s like the New York Yankees versus the Bad News Bears.
💙 🧵 RT @moscow_project [Thread] .@RepAdamSchiff debunks Trump’s defenses so far, starting with the fact that there hasn’t been any defense—or, for that matter, any actual invocation of executive privilege. 📌 https://twitter.com/moscow_project/status/1219716830002106370?s=20
💙 🧵 RT @jentaub [Thread] 🍑 Here we go! CJ Roberts gaveled in. Swore in sole Senator who was not present on Thursday. 📌 https://twitter.com/jentaub/status/1219686198257573888?s=20
🐣 RT @JoeLockhart @RepAdamSchiff is proving that facts, evidence and conviction will beat false anger and personal attacks every time.
🐣 RT @tribelaw Pat Cipollone thinks he made a point by reminding @RepAdamSchiff that “Laurence Tribe” says punishing people for invoking their constitutional rights is dangerous. Of course it is! But Article 2 does nothing of the sort. Cipollone’s argument was pathetic.
🐣 RT @DeanObeidallah What we just saw with Adam Schiff and Trump’s lawyers is rare-you had Trump’s lawyers not prepared. It’s really that simple. They expected to give a short argument on a rigged motion. But Schiff wasn’t playing along-He crushed Trump. Thats why they were panicked #ImpeachmentTrial
💙 🧵 RT @atrupar C-SPAN: “We have requested from the majority leader, Mitch McConnell, that our cameras be allowed inside the chamber for the impeachment trial, and no word on that from the majority leader.” #ImpeachmentTrial 📌 https://twitter.com/atrupar/status/1219685025626624002?s=20
🐣 RT @rgoodlaw Another new low. ¤ White House Counsel for President of United States on the floor of Senate engaging in disinformation. ¤ Repeating false claim that Schiff “manufactured a false version of that call.” The call transcript was ALREADY PUBLIC, Schiff was obviously paraphrasing it.
⋙ 🐣 RT @atrupar Pat Cipollone is falsifying the timeline of the Ukraine scandal. (The first Trump-Zelensky call was never a major subject of controversy and Cipollone is pretending to be made about Schiff paraphrasing.)
🐣 RT @CAPAction “If a president can obstruct his own investigation, if he can effectively nullify a power the Constitution gives solely to Congress…then the president places himself beyond accountability, above the law…It makes him a monarch.” —@RepAdamSchiff #TrumpsRemovalTrial
🐣 RT @leahmcelrath “They’re not here to steal one election. They’re here to steal two elections.” ¤ The projection by Cipollone is astonishing and undiluted.
🐣 RT @AaronBlake Must have been a reference to the Gaetz et. al. stunt. But totally incorrect.
⋙ 🐣 RT @GarrettHaake Cipollone says “Not even Mr. Schiff’s Republican colleagues were allowed into the SCIF” during impeachment investigation. ¤ That’s 100% false. Any member of the three investigating committees could attend, and many Republicans did!
🐣 RT @AndrewDesiderio Quick point on Sekulow: he says the House should have waited for the courts to render judgments on their challenges to subpoenas etc. — but the Trump admin has argued in federal court for several months now that the courts have no role in resolving these types of disputes.
🧵 RT @seungminkim NEW – Changes to the McConnell resolution: 24 hours over each side will be spread out over *three* days, not *two*, and evidence will be *automatically* admitted unless someone objects. 📌 https://twitter.com/seungminkim/status/1219689291296780289?s=20
🐣 RT @ProudResistor BREAKING: Elizabeth Warren just announced as president that she will establish a Task Force to “investigate the corruption during the Trump administration and hold officials accountable for illegal activity.” We cannot let the corruption of the Trump administration go unpunished.
🐣 RT @pbump Imagine a criminal trial in which half the jury was friends with the accused, the accused could ignore subpoenas and if evidence emerged after the indictment it wasn’t admissible.
⋙ WaPo, Philip Bump: Obstruction still isn’t exoneration, no matter what Trump may argue http://wapo.st/2TKC9YP
// How would we look at a criminal proceeding conducted with the constraints of Trump’s impeachment trial?
JustSecurity, Michael Gerhardt: Four Fundamental Flaws in President Trump’s Impeachment Trial Memo http://bit.ly/3ayj2H5
🐣 RT @neal_katyal He [McConnell] says that would lead to a lengthy court fight and generate destructive precedent. This is precisely what he said should have happened in the House! Makes zero sense. ¤ And he’s wrong about that too. Chief Justice can rule on exec priv claims quickly. No ct fight. Unlike House
🐣 RT @kylegriffin1 Schumer: “I will vociferously oppose any attempt to begin the trial unless the reporters trying to enter the gallery are seated. The press is here to inform the American public about these pivotal events in our nation’s history. We must make sure they are able to.” Via CSPAN
🐣 RT @SpeakerPelosi Leader McConnell’s plan for a dark of night impeachment trial confirms what the American people have seen since Day One: the Senate GOP Leader has chosen a cover-up for the President, rather than honor his oath to the Constitution.
⋙ PressRelease: Pelosi Statement on McConnell Cover-Up Resolution http://bit.ly/3avQE8Q
NBCNews: Appalling,’ ‘national disgrace’: Democrats slam McConnell’s impeachment proposal http://nbcnews.to/38sVJg2
// Schumer accused McConnell of “totally, totally, totally going along with Trump’s cover-up, hook, line and sinker.”
🐣 RT @DiLamucaTodd Judge: Does the defence have their opening statement ready?
Defence lawyer: Yes your Honour. We’d prefer it if you deemed all evidence inadmissible, disallow all prosecution witnesses, strike the jury, recuse yourself & appoint a fine chap we have in mind as new judge.
Judge: FO
🐣 RT @joshtpm Further destruction of the reputation of the fame-whoring toady Dershowitz is among the more righteous collateral damage of impeachment.
🧵 RT @TheRickWilson 1/ I’ll summarize this for the slow learners in the Senate one last time. ¤ Your protestations of independence, integrity, and honor will mean nothing to the voters this Fall. Nothing. ¤ You’re going to moo and walk into the chute like cattle, terrified of Trump and Mitch. 📌 https://twitter.com/TheRickWilson/status/1219660314267897856?s=20
⋙ 🐣 RT @TheRickWilson 2/ So when you’re underwater in the polls, drowning in public anger at becoming accessories to Trump’s coverup, here’s a handy list of what went wrong. Clip-and-save, because you’ll need it later.
🐣 RT @BillKristol “If GOP senators vote as McConnell hopes, they’ll actually be voting to never hear from the people with the most direct knowledge of the very conduct Trump says was entirely above reproach. After all, Trump blocked them from speaking to the House as well.”
⋙ WaPo, Greg Sargent: A big tell in Trump’s own legal brief exposes McConnell’s coverup http://wapo.st/
🐣 RT @DavidJollyFL Senate Dems should offer a motion calling Trump to testify. Make Republicans vote against it.
🐣 RT @tedlieu The President’s legal position disrespects the American people and is also just stupid. For example, @POTUS has the power to order an air strike. But can he abuse that power & order an air strike on 5th Avenue in New York? No. Because abuse of power is one of the highest crimes.
⋙ 🐣 RT @SpeakerPelosi The President’s legal position is that he has a right to abuse his power as much as he wants, and there is nothing Congress can do about it. ¤ The Founders disagreed on both, and there is something Congress can do: hold a fair trial. #DefendOurDemocracy https://twitter.com/SpeakerPelosi/status/1219639237483671557?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @harrylitman “Why isn’t “let presiding officer decide” the guiding principle here? Because the Senate, without a shred of constitutional authority, has adopted a set of rules that would effectively strip the presiding officer of much of his power to “preside” over the trial.”
⋙ 🐣 RT @tribelaw The Senate Parliamentarian will need to give serious thought to this alternative to the conventional view of what it means for the Chief Justice to “preside” over the president’s impeachment trial: [TIME http://yhoo.it/2G9qtXt%5D
🐣 RT @MJGerson “Will Republican senators allow partisanship to override their institutional obligations? Probably. Would this make them complicit, not only in an unethical presidential act, but also in the further decay of the constitutional order? Definitely.”
⋙ WaPo, Michael Gerson: Trump pushes his party to normalize corruption http://wapo.st/36k9lcl
🐣 RT @glennkirschner2 A trial without witnesses is a whitewash. A trial without witnesses is a coverup. A trial without witnesses . . . is d@mn-near a conspiracy.
🐣 RT @mayawiley #RepAdSchiff – Article II of Impeachment is #obstruction. If Senate doesn’t allow evidence (including witnesses), #Trump won’t be acquitted. He will be protected by his party. #ImpeachmentTrialRules
🐣 RT @JoyceWhiteVance Just now, @RepJerryNadler speaks the plain truth, talking about Mitch McConnell’s impeachment trial rules: They won’t call the witnesses because they’re afraid of what they’ll say. A vote against witnesses is a vote for a cover up.
🐣 RT @DavidCornDC McConnell is trying to Merrick Garland the Trump impeachment trial & make it part of the Trump cover-up. The founders worried about a corrupt POTUS, but they didn’t count on one whole entire party not giving a damn about corruption in the White House.
⋙ MotherJones: With Trump’s Impeachment, American Democracy Is on Trial http://bit.ly/2RBG2wv
// This is a momentous test for the US political system.
🐣 RT @JRubinBlogger Democrats can read the polls. They know 70 percent of Americans want witnesses and that McConnell’s tortuous arguments and Kafkaesque rules are designed to hide facts, not reveal the truth.
⋙ WaPo, Jennifer Rubin: Democrats: Republican rules for the impeachment trial are a crock http://wapo.st/37gUf8r
TheAtlantic, Susan Hennessy and Benjamin Wittes: The Disintegration of the American Presidency http://bit.ly/30GfiPm
// The president’s job is to oversee the whole of the executive branch, but under Trump the inverse is happening.
🐣 RT @JoyceWhiteVance In Alice in Wonderland the queen wanted “sentence first-verdict afterwords.” Mitch McConnell insists the Senate give its verdict first, acquitting Trump before hearing, & perhaps not even bothering to hear, the evidence against him. An acquittal like this does not exonerate.
🐣 RT @matthewamiller The thing about show trials is they can render a verdict, but not legitimacy. Nothing that is happening in the Capitol can exonerate the president.
⋙ 🐣 RT @BillKristol I grew up reading about show trials in authoritarian nations abroad. I didn’t expect to see one of our two major parties endorse a show trial here in the U.S. Capitol.
DailyBeast, Rick Wilson: Republican Senators May Save Trump, but Trump has Already F*cked Them http://bit.ly/37fTgWg
// They may let Trump skate, but they’ll take the hit for covering up his guilt. He won’t give half a damn about any of them.
🐣 RT @glennkirshner2 Every Senator knows in his or her heart that the president is guilty of both articles of impeachment, is entirely unfit to serve and should be removed from office. Let’s hope that enough senators can muster the courage, decency and patriotism to do right by the American people.
⭕ 20 Jan 2020
DailyBeast, Asawin Suebsaeng and Erin Banco: How Trump Twisted Iran Intel to Manufacture the ‘Four Embassies’ Threat http://bit.ly/38plI8e
// “There were definitely questions [at the time, internally] about whether he had just made it up on the spot,” recalled one White House official.
TheBulwark, Bill Kristol and Jeffries Tulis: Is the Oath a Joke? http://bit.ly/2NNVoN4
// Republican senators are about to answer that question.
WaPo, Jennifer Rubin: The media must expose bad-faith arguments on impeachment http://wapo.st/2NKxuCb
NBCNews, George Conway and Reed Galen: Trump’s Senate impeachment hearings will be driven by the GOP’s fear http://nbcnews.to/36c1MnK “Republican senators’ fears actually boil down to a fear of the Constitution”
// Republicans have toadied to Trump since the day he took office, and in doing so, have left themselves with no room to maneuver politically.
YahooNews/TIME, Martin London: John Roberts Has More Power Than Mitch McConnell Would Like You to Think. But Will He Use It? http://yhoo.it/2G9qtXt
NYT, Charlie Savage: ‘Constitutional Nonsense’: Trump’s Impeachment Defense Defies Legal Consensus http://nyti.ms/2sFgYvU Even Dershowitz acknowledges his opinion is an outlier
// The president’s legal case would negate any need for witnesses. But constitutional scholars say that it’s wrong.
🐣 RT @RadioFreeTom Laughed so hard the cat jumped off my lap at @TheRickWilson on @11thHour describing Trump’s claque of “skells, roadside hobos, incipient serial killers, D and E level operatives …imbued with this post-Soviet corruption vibe”
💙 CRIMES:
18 U.S. Code §1505 Obstruction of Congress
18 U.S. Code § 201 Bribery
18 U.S. Code § 872 Extortion by officers or employees of the United States
Congressional Budget and Impoundment Control Act of 1974, Title X
🐣 RT @SethAbramson FUN FACT: 18 U.S. Code § 1505 makes punishable by 5 years in federal prison a person “corruptly impeding any investigation by any House committee”—*just* what the second article of impeachment against Trump alleges. So much for the “no crime” mantra! Link: http://bit.ly/2GbFx6N
// Obstruction of Congress
⋙ 🐣 RT @ FUN FACT #2: 18 U.S. Code § 201 makes punishable by 15 years in prison “a public official corruptly seeking anything of value personally in return for being influenced in the performance of any official act”—*exactly* what the first article alleges! Link: http://bit.ly/38uBheH
// Bribery
⋙⋙ 🐣 Plus: The Congressional Budget and Impoundment Control Act of 1974 (ICA) reasserted Congress’ power of the purse. Title X established procedures to prevent the President and other govt officials from unilaterally substituting their own funding decisions for those of the Congress. http://bit.ly/2RdpZpK
🐣 .@TheRickWilson on The @11thHour: @AlanDersh is engaging in “performative b.s.”
🐣 RT @HeidiNBC Since Trump was impeached:
1. OMB email: “Clear direction from POTUS to continue to hold.”
2. Bolton volunteers to testify if subpoenaed. (Lawyer has said he has new info.)
3. Parnas agrees to empty his phone/hand over docus/grants interviews.
4. GAO says Trump broke the law.
🐣 RT @LincolnsBible I shall translate his unstoppable fury over @RepAdamSchiff mob-splaining his letter: Both mobsters & propaganda assets (he is both) use language to deceive. They can swipe your money & murder your freedom, & you’d think it was a kiss. Because of their use of language. /1 https://twitter.com/LincolnsBible/status/1219472288346603520?s=20/photo/1
⋙ 🐣 RT @LincolnsBible 2/ donald can no longer do this. He can no longer hide who he really is. The only skill he had got pierced. He got exposed. It’s a major threat that people (like Schiff) can put his idiocy in terms that voters can grasp. He can be mob-splained, & it’s eating him alive.
⋙ 🐣 RT @LincolnsBible 3/ Now, imagine what happens inside that tiny man when his financials get exposed.
✅ CNN, Daniel Dale: Fact check: 65 ways Trump has been dishonest about Ukraine and impeachment http://cnn.it/37hGxCo
Washington (CNN) President Donald Trump is dishonest about a whole lot of things. But he is rarely as comprehensively dishonest as he has been about his dealings with Ukraine and the impeachment process.
From the eruption of the Ukraine controversy in September to the Senate trial that officially began on Thursday, relentless deceit has seemed to be Trump’s primary defense strategy in the court of public opinion. He has made false claims about almost every separate component of the story, from his July phone call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, to the whistleblower who complained about the call, to Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden’s own relations with Ukraine.
The President has been dissembling about so many different things at once that it can be difficult to keep track of what is true and what isn’t. To help you fight Trump-induced dizziness as the trial gets underway, we’ve tallied his dishonesty on the subject of Ukraine and impeachment. Our original list from mid-November included 45 false claims he has made and a brief fact check of each one. ¤ We have since added 20 more for a total of 65.
The phone call with Zelensky
1. Trump released an “exact transcript” of his July call with Zelensky. (The document says on its first page that it is “not a verbatim transcript.”)
2. When Army Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman wanted to add in a word that was missing from the rough transcript, “they added the word.” (Vindman testified that two “substantive” changes he suggested were not made, though he also testified that the document remained “substantively correct.”)
3. Trump did not ask Zelensky for anything on the call. (Trump asked Zelensky to look into former Vice President Joe Biden, look into a debunked conspiracy theory about Democratic computer servers, and speak with his personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani and Attorney General William Barr.)
4. Zelensky criticized former US ambassador to Ukraine Marie Yovanovitch “out of the blue” on the call. (Trump brought up Yovanovitch first.)
5. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi was “angry” when she saw the rough transcript of the call, and she said, “This is not what the whistleblower said.” (Pelosi has said no such thing in public, and there is no evidence she has said anything like that in private. Her public statement on the call was scathing.)
6. “Everybody” that looked at the text of the call agreed that it was “perfect.” (Some of Trump’s staunch defenders agreed with this characterization, but clearly not “everybody” did.)
7. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell spoke to Trump about the call and said, “That was the most innocent phone call that I’ve read.” (McConnell said he doesn’t recall speaking to Trump about the call. His public statement on the call was far less effusive than Trump’s description.)
8. People were not talking about the call anymore in late October. (People continued to talk about the call, a central focus of the impeachment inquiry.)
9. The Washington Post made up fictional sources for its article on how Trump had allegedly tried to get Barr to hold a news conference saying Trump had broken no laws in the call. (There is no evidence that the Post invented sources. Other major news outlets, including CNN, quickly reported the same thing the Post did.)
10. Zelensky affirmed in December that “President Trump did nothing wrong.” (Zelensky has said Trump applied “no pressure,” but he did not say Trump did nothing wrong. Zelensky did say, “Look, I never talked to the President from the position of a quid pro quo. That’s not my thing.” But he continued: “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.”)The whistleblower
11. The whistleblower was “sooo wrong.” (The rough transcript and witness testimony have proven the whistleblower to have been highly accurate.)
12. The whistleblower should be investigated for “fraud.” (Nothing the whistleblower is known to have done remotely resembles fraud.)
13. The whistleblower, a second whistleblower and the first whistleblower’s source have all “disappeared.” (There is no evidence for this. Whistleblowers do not have an obligation to speak publicly after filing their complaints.)
14. The whistleblower had “all second hand” information. (While the whistleblower did get information about the call from other people, the whistleblower also had “direct knowledge of certain alleged conduct,” noted Michael Atkinson, the Trump-appointed inspector general for the intelligence community.)
15. The whistleblower “said ‘quid pro quo’ eight times.” (The whistleblower did not even use the words “quid pro quo” in the complaint, much less specify a number of times Trump allegedly said those words. Trump may have been referring to a Wall Street Journal article that had asserted that Trump urged Zelensky “about eight times to work with Rudy Giuliani” on a probe that could hurt Biden; the article did not say this claim came from the whistleblower.)
16. The whistleblower “works now for Biden.” (There is no evidence for this. The whistleblower’s lawyers said their client has never worked for or advised a candidate, campaign or party; the lawyers said the whistleblower has come into contact with presidential candidates for both parties while working as a civil servant in the executive branch.)
17. Someone “changed the long standing whistleblower rules” just before this whistleblower submitted their complaint. (Contrary to a report on a right-wing website, the whistleblower rules were not changed.)House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff
18. Schiff committed “a criminal act” by delivering an exaggerated interpretation of Trump’s July 25 call at a committee hearing. (The Constitution gives members of Congress immunity for comments they make at committee.)
19. Schiff did have immunity for his comments at the committee, but not when he tweeted a video of those comments. (Experts say members of Congress also have immunity for videos of their comments at committee.)
20. Schiff might have committed “treason.” (Treason has a specific constitutional definition that Schiff’s actions do not come close to meeting.)
21. Schiff made his comments before Trump released the rough transcript of the call, not expecting Trump to release it. (Schiff spoke the day after Trump released the document.)
22. Schiff “didn’t use one word that I said” in his rendition of the call. (Schiff did add words Trump had never said, but he didn’t make up the whole thing; some of his remarks hewed closely to what Trump said.)
23. Schiff might have been the whistleblower’s source. (This is nonsense. The whistleblower said in the complaint that information about the call came from “multiple White House officials with direct knowledge of the call.”)
24. “A lot of people think that Schiff basically is, essentially, the whistleblower. He already told the whistleblower what to do.” (Schiff is not the whistleblower, “essentially” or otherwise. The whistleblower sought guidance from Schiff’s committee before filing their complaint, but there is no evidence Schiff dictated the content of the complaint.)
25. Schiff might have picked the whistleblower. (There is no evidence for this, either.)
26. Schiff “will only release doctored transcripts.” (Schiff has already released multiple transcripts of testimony from closed-door impeachment inquiry hearings, and there was no sign that any of them had been “doctored.” Witnesses and their lawyers were given the opportunity to verify the accuracy of the transcripts prior to release, and Republicans who attended the testimony did not allege that any transcripts had been improperly altered.)The impeachment process
27. Republicans were not allowed into the closed-door impeachment inquiry hearings. (Republican members of the three committees holding the hearings were allowed into the room and to ask questions of witnesses. Only Republicans who were not on the committees were barred from the room.)
28. Republicans were not allowed to ask questions in the closed-door hearings. (Republicans were allowed to ask questions. Democrats and Republicans alternated questioning.)
29. Republicans were not allowed to ask questions in the public hearing held by the House Intelligence Committee on November 15. (Republicans were allowed to ask questions. Schiff would not grant a request from the committee’s top Republican, Rep. Devin Nunes, to hand some of Nunes’ questioning time to Rep. Elise Stefanik, because only Nunes was allowed to speak at that point in the hearing, but Stefanik got to ask questions later in the day.)
30. Republicans were not allowed to have lawyers participate in the public hearings chaired by Schiff. (They were. Lawyer Steve Castor questioned witnesses on behalf of the Republicans on the committee. It was Trump himself who was not allowed to have a lawyer participate.)
31. Nobody else has ever faced closed-door impeachment hearings. (Both the Richard Nixon and Bill Clinton impeachment processes involved some closed-door hearings.)
32. Trump’s opponents have committed “illegal acts” related to impeachment. (Trump wasn’t clear about who he was talking about, but there is no evidence of illegality by either the whistleblower or Democrats.)
33. The people who have testified in the impeachment inquiry have had “no firsthand knowledge.” (Various witnesses have had firsthand knowledge of various components of the story.)
34. Gordon Sondland, ambassador to the European Union, maintained there was “no quid pro quo.” (Sondland revised his original testimony. While he continued to say that Trump told him there was no quid pro quo, he said his own belief was that there was a quid pro quo.)
35. Unlike Democrats, former House Speaker Paul Ryan “would never issue a subpoena.” (Numerous Republican subpoenas were issued to the Obama administration during Ryan’s tenure as speaker.)
36. “Many” of the people who had testified as of October 21 “were put there during Obama, during Clinton, during the Never Trump or Bush era.” (FactCheck.org noted that just two of the nine people who had testified at that point had been appointed under Obama. The other seven were appointed by Trump or his appointees.)
37. Pelosi gave Trump “the most unfair trial in the history of the U.S. Congress.” (The House did not hold a trial at all. Under the Constitution, it is the Senate that has the sole power to try impeachments.)
38. Trump was “deprived of basic Constitutional Due Process” during the House impeachment process, “including the right to present evidence, to have my own counsel present, to confront accusers, and to call and cross-examine witnesses.” (The rights of criminal defendants do not apply to public officials in a House of Representatives impeachment process.)
39. “More due process was afforded to those accused in the Salem Witch Trials.” (This is absurd. Nineteen innocent people were hanged after they were accused of witchcraft in the trials of the late 1600s. The courts accepted “spectral evidence” from dreams. Some of the accused were tortured into confessions.)
40. Trump “won 196 to nothing” in the House. (Trump did not win any vote related to impeachment. He lost an October vote to set the rules of the impeachment inquiry, 232-196, then the December votes on the two articles of impeachment, 230-197 and 229-198. He appeared to mean that there were no Republican defections from his side, but he didn’t explain here.)
41. Democrats are “not doing anything” on gun violence because “all they do is the impeachment nonsense.” (The Democratic-controlled House passed a bill in February to require background checks on all gun sales. The Republican-controlled Senate has refused to hold a vote on the bill.)The Bidens
42. Joe Biden, along with his son Hunter Biden, has “ripped off at least two countries for millions of dollars.” (There is no evidence Joe Biden has profited from his son’s business dealings abroad.)
43. Joe Biden was “possibly” paid millions of dollars by foreign countries “for doing NOTHING.” (Again, there is no evidence of this.)
44. A video of Joe Biden speaking in 2018 about his past dealings with Ukraine is evidence of “corruption.” (The tape does not show corruption. It shows Biden talking about his effort, in accordance with the policy of the US and its allies, to pressure Ukraine into firing a prosecutor, Viktor Shokin, who was widely considered unwilling to fight corruption.)
45. There is a photo of Joe Biden playing golf with “the company boss” of Burisma, the Ukrainian company for which Hunter Biden sat on the board. (Neither Burisma’s owner nor chief executive is in the photo. The person Trump had identified as a “Ukraine gas exec” was Devon Archer, another American board member at Burisma and a longtime business associate of Hunter Biden.)
46. That golf photo contradicts Joe Biden’s claim to have “never met the gentleman.” (Joe Biden had not claimed to have never met Devon Archer.)
47. Hunter Biden was under investigation by Shokin. (There is no public evidence that Hunter Biden was ever himself under investigation. The prosecutor’s former deputy, Vitaliy Kasko, has said that the actual investigation, into the owner of Burisma, was dormant at the time of Joe Biden’s pressure.)
48. Shokin was “prosecuting” Burisma. (There was no prosecution, only the investigation that Kasko has said was dormant.)
49. Joe Biden pressured Ukraine to take Shokin “off the case.” (There is no evidence that Biden ever tried to get Shokin taken off the Burisma case. Rather, Biden, like the US government more broadly, tried to get Shokin fired.)
50. Biden admitted in an NPR interview that this effort to get Shokin fired “looked bad.” (Biden’s “looked bad” comment was not about Shokin. Rather, Biden said “the appearance” of Hunter Biden’s presence on the board “looked bad and it gave folks like Rudy Giuliani an excuse to come up with a Trumpian kind of defense.”)
51. Before Joe Biden denied that he had spoken to Hunter Biden about Hunter’s overseas business activities, Joe Biden had said he did speak to Hunter about those business activities. (Joe Biden had not said he did speak to Hunter Biden about those business activities. Hunter Biden said they had one brief conversation in which Joe Biden asked him if he knew what he was doing.)
52. Hunter Biden’s acts were “illegal.” (Hunter Biden has acknowledged using “poor judgment” in accepting the seat on the Burisma board, but there is no evidence of illegality.)
53. Before Hunter Biden got business opportunities during Joe Biden’s vice-presidency, he had “never made 10 cents in his life.” (Hunter Biden, a lawyer, had worked prior to Joe Biden’s vice-presidency as a bank executive, at the Department of Commerce and as a lobbyist. He had also served on the board of Amtrak.)Dealings with Ukraine
54. Trump “didn’t delay” the military aid to Ukraine. (His administration did delay the aid.)
55. The aid “got there two or three weeks ahead of schedule — long before it was supposed to be there.” (Because of Trump’s freeze, $35 million of the aid could not get out the door before the legal deadline of the end of September, forcing Congress to pass a deadline extension.)
56. Democratic senators sent a letter to Ukraine that threatened to deny US aid if the Ukrainians did not comply with their demands. (The letter did not make any threat to Ukraine. The senators expressed concern about a New York Times report that Ukraine had, to avoid Trump’s wrath, stopped cooperating with the Mueller investigation and frozen investigations into former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort. The letter urged Ukraine to reverse course if the report was true.)
57. President Barack Obama sent mere “pillows and sheets” in aid to Ukraine. (Trump was correct that Obama refused to provide lethal military assistance, but Obama sent other military assistance: drones, armored Humvees, counter-mortar radars, night vision devices and medical supplies.)
58. The US is the “only” country providing assistance to Ukraine, and “nobody else is there.” (European countries have provided billions in grants and loans to Ukraine since Russia’s 2014 invasion.)
59. Cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike is primarily owned by someone from Ukraine. (CrowdStrike is a publicly traded, US-based company co-founded by Dmitri Alperovitch, an American citizen who was born in Russia.)Polls
60. Impeachment has caused Trump’s poll numbers to go “way up” to “higher than they’ve ever been, ever.” (There has been no sign of a significant increase in Trump’s poll numbers. His approval rating has fallen slightly since the Ukraine scandal began, according to FiveThirtyEight’s poll aggregate.)
61. It was “announced” that a Fox News poll showing majority support for impeaching and removing Trump from office was “incorrect.” (Fox News says it stands by the poll.)
62. Support for impeachment dropped “down into the 20’s in some polls” in November. (CNN could find no scientific public polls at the time with support for impeachment as low as the 20s.)
63. November polling on impeachment showed that, “Everybody said, ‘That’s really bullshit.’…Everybody.” (Not even close to “everybody.” Polls had consistently shown support for impeachment at or above 40%.)
Ambassador Marie Yovanovitch
64. “Everywhere Marie Yovanovitch went turned bad. She started off in Somalia, how did that go?” (There is no basis for Trump’s suggestion that Somalia “turned bad” because Yovanovitch served there as a new foreign service officer in the mid-to-late 1980s; Somalia had severe economic and social problems before she arrived. And since Trump said “everywhere,” it’s worth noting she also served at the US embassy in Canada.)
65. Yovanovitch refused to hang Trump’s picture at the US embassy in Ukraine for “like a year and a half, or two years.” (There is no evidence for this claim. The Trump administration itself caused a delay: it took the administration more than nine months after Trump’s inauguration to distribute his official photo to government buildings, CNBC reported in 2017.)CNN’s Tara Subramaniam, Holmes Lybrand and Ryan Browne contributed to this article.
🐣 RT @ECMcLaughlin
Parnas: in bed with EVERYBODY in senior GOP leadership
Also Parnas: funded by Firtash
Giuliani: funded by Parnas, with money from Firtash
Implicated in Ukraine: Trump, Pence, Mulvaney, Barr, Perry, Pompeo, Giuliani
Point of Ukraine: to interfere in 2020 presidential election
🐣 RT @MaxBoot The number of people abroad who express confidence in US president fell from 70% in 2013 to 28% in 2018 while the number who see U.S. as a threat climbed from 25% to 45%. More Germans now view Trump as a danger than Kim, Putin, Xi, and Khamenei combined.
⋙ WaPo: Trump is destroying America’s soft power http://wapo.st/2Rb46as “Every time Trump meets with foreign leaders, the yawning gap between his inflated self-image as a “very stable genius” and the disturbing reality becomes starkly apparent”
Much of the world rejects Trump’s policies. A new Pew Research Center survey of people in 32 countries found that 68 percent oppose his tariffs, 66 percent his withdrawal from climate change agreements, 60 percent his border wall, 55 percent allowing fewer immigrants into the United States and 52 percent his withdrawal from the Iran nuclear agreement. What makes Trump’s decisions worse is that so many of them were taken either without consulting U.S. allies — as when he pulled out of the Trans-Pacific Partnership three days after taking office — or without seriously listening to their concerns.
But it’s not just his policies that make Trump — and by extension the whole country — so much less popular worldwide. All of the appalling behavior that causes him to lose standing at home — his incessant lies, his bombastic threats, his playground name-calling and abusive tweets, his racism, his erratic zigzags — also undermines him abroad. When Trump pardons war criminals, tries to legalize bribery by U.S. companies, insists that he did “NOTHING WRONG” in pressuring Ukraine to investigate his political opponent, calls the media “the enemy of the people,” tries to discredit the intelligence community (“go back to school!”) and the FBI (“badly broken”), and orders investigations of the investigators — in other words, when he acts like a typical dictator — that’s when American soft power melts as fast as the polar ice caps.
🐣 RT @DanRather McConnell’s rules for whatever you want to call what will take place in the Senate is not a process for determining the merits of the accusations. It’s a process for saying, “we don’t care.”
DailyBeast, Michael Tomasky: Ken Starr Is America’s Most Poisonous Creep http://bit.ly/2Rza5ol
// His Clinton probe was one of the sleaziest episodes in recent American political history, at least until Trump came along.
🐣 RT @tribelaw These aren’t rules for a real trial at all, much less a fair one. They’re rules for a rigged outcome, with #MidnightMitch making sure that as much of the so-called trial as possible takes place in the dark of night.
⋙ NYT: Trump Legal Team Asks Senate for Speedy Acquittal in Impeachment Trial http://nyti.ms/38tg5pM
// The day before the trial starts, the president’s lawyers asserted he did nothing wrong and urged the Senate to “swiftly reject” the charges against him.
🐣 RT @JRubinBlogger Trump and McConnell can rig an acquittal but it will deny him exoneration in the eyes of those 69% who expect witnesses. And Sens who vote for hiding witnesses will be laughingstocks
🐣 RT @ChrisAlbertoLaw Tribe is right. ¤ Dersh has made willful misrepresentations of facts & law on TV. His arguments are replete with intentional accuracies. ¤ Filing & making bogus claims before a tribunal is a more serious matter. They should be stricken from the record & he should be sanctioned.
WaPo: White House calls for Trump acquittal as Senate prepares for a swift trial http://wapo.st/36cyTb9
🐣 RT @Amy_Siskind It’s called a cover-up Republicans.
We see you.
There will be consequences.
🐣 RT @RCdeWinter
my wings are
heavy with the soot
of disappointment
around every corner
waits disillusion
the leering smile of loss
when i turn my gaze
to the landscape
i see nothing but betrayal and
the treachery of fools
the endless wait of purgatory
would be less painful
WaPo: Trump’s lawyers, Senate GOP allies work privately to ensure Bolton does not testify publicly http://wapo.st/37f0nht
🐣 RT @SenSchumer As soon as Senator McConnell offers this resolution, I will be offering amendments to address the many flaws in this deeply unfair proposal and to subpoena the witnesses and documents we have requested. https://twitter.com/SenSchumer/status/1219428402693922816?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @vermontgmg I expect very little of Mitch McConnell—who has made clear that there is no democratic norm he won’t trade for greed and power—but even I am shocked by his proposed kangaroo one-week impeachment trial.
⋙ 🐣 RT @mkraju Trump could be acquitted by mid week next week. The exact schedule is fluid and subject to change based on how the trial goes and how votes go, but it could look like this.
🐣 RT @Amy_Siskind #MoscowMitch planning to conduct the trial while no one is watching. The American people are not going to stand for this!
⋙ CNN: Impeachment resolution shortens trial’s opening arguments to two days per side http://cnn.it/38op9ff
WaPo, Catherine Rampell: Trump says he hates corruption. But he wants to make bribery easier worldwide. http://wapo.st/3asQPBF
🐣 RT @SethAbramson I find it hard to expend any energy responding to the Trump defense team’s impeachment memo because it’s legally and factually empty—it’s political rhetoric based on a pathological denial of testimonial and documentary evidence. It’s a joke—it’s beneath attorneys to “analyze” it.
🐣 RT @DeadlineWH “The charges are so grave… And the charges and the facts are not in dispute, that the only basis upon which to defend the president… is a narrow legal basis that says ‘actually Trump was acting in furtherance of the national interest'” – Jeremy Bash w/ @NicolleDWallace 💽 https://twitter.com/DeadlineWH/status/1219385411027509250?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @TheRickWilson OMG I have never loved @NicolleDWallace more than after she described Rudy and Barr as “Two tarantulas in a bowl.”
WaPo, Paul Waldman: The White House doubles down on its dumbest impeachment defense http://wapo.st/2NIwj6r
🐣 RT @McFaul The House has passed 2 articles of impeachment against Trump. Hunter Biden has never been indicted of any crime related to Ukraine; not even any serious evidence produced. These 2 things are NOT equivalent. Stop comparing them please. #StopWhataboutism.
💙 🧵 RT @Teri_Kanefield (Thread) Trump’s Trial Brief [Link to Brief]
From the brief: ¤ “Trump acted properly” when he rejected all subpoenas and requests for information. (p. 37) ¤ “No witness with direct knowledge testified that Trump conditioned a presidential meeting on investigations (p. 97) 📌 https://twitter.com/Teri_Kanefield/status/1219316183045820416?s=20
🐣 RT @JesseLehrich new CNN poll is brutal for Trump/Rs on impeachment… http://bit.ly/38tPoAX
should Trump be removed from office?
51% yes, 45% no
—
should Senate call witnesses?
69% yes, 26% no
—
Trump abused power
58% true, 41% not true
—
Trump obstructed Congress
57% true, 39% not true
🐣 RT @OrinKerr President’s lawyers: Impeachment was a rigged process all about a perfect phone call. It’s like Presidential tweets reformatted to look like a legal document. https://twitter.com/OrinKerr/status/1219321490438381569?s=20/photo/1
⋙ 🐣 RT @TheRickWilson Oh God he wrote it
🐣 RT @RepAdamSchiff No, Mr. President, we did ask John Bolton to testify. You ordered him not to, and blocked others, like Mick Mulvaney. ¤ All Americans know what a fair trial includes documents and witnesses. ¤ What are you hiding?
⋙ 🐣 RT @real They didn’t want John Bolton and others in the House. They were in too much of a rush. Now they want them all in the Senate. Not supposed to be that way!
🐣 RT @jpitney Anyone who has a passing familiarity with the Constitution knows that Trump’s defense is ridiculous. But here’s the problem: most Americans don’t have even a passing familiarity with the Constitution.
⋙ AnnenbergCenter (2017): Americans Are Poorly Informed About Basic Constitutional Provisions http://bit.ly/2ujnwAK
// 9/12/2017
🐣 RT @JillWineBanks Abuse of power is exactly what our Founders intended as a grounds for impeachment and the facts prove that Trump abused his and endangered our national security for his own personal benefit.
🧵 RT @KlasfeldReports Lev Parnas’ attorney Joseph Bondy filed a motion calling for Attorney General Bill Barr’s recusal and the appointment of a special prosecutor outside @TheJusticeDept for his client’s case. 📌 https://twitter.com/KlasfeldReports/status/1219359491151552523?s=20
💽 CNN: See Dershowitz’s big flip on impeachment http://cnn.it/36azhae
// In an interview from 1998 about the Clinton impeachment, Alan Dershowitz says it “certainly doesn’t have to be a crime” to be impeachable. This is opposite of his defense of President Trump over the weekend.
Politico, Anita Kumar: How Trump fused his business empire to the presidency http://politi.co/2GchOmU
// As Trump kicks off his fourth year as president with an impeachment trial tied to his actions involving Ukraine, critics say the president has yet to face accountability for blatant conflicts of interest tied to his private businesses.
NYT: Trump Legal Team Asks Senate for Speedy Acquittal in Impeachment Trial http://nyti.ms/38tg5pM
// The day before the trial starts, the president’s lawyers asserted he did nothing wrong and urged the Senate to “swiftly reject” the charges against him.
⋙ 📔 Document: Trial Memorandum of President Donald J Trump http://bit.ly/2NGi2XK 171p
🐣 RT @JoyceWhiteVance I have a new piece exploring & rejecting the notion that witnesses should be divvied out one to the Democrats & one to the GOP in pairs. Testimony should be relevant to the issues.
⋙ WaPo: Witness ‘reciprocity’ isn’t a thing. So no, there can’t be a Biden for every Bolton. http://wapo.st/36aEMWf
// Only testimony that bolsters or casts doubt on facts necessary to deciding on the articles of impeachment is relevant at trial
🧵 RT @jedshug Thanks for the question, @gtconway3d.
Trump’s brief accurately cited Blackstone (see screenshot), but left out crucial context:
1) England had common law criminal offenses – which don’t need statutes.
“Known and established law” in US precedent may include “abuse of power.”
📌 https://twitter.com/jedshug/status/1219334703850848259?s=20
⋙ 🐣 RT @gtconway3d @jedshug—Trump’s brief crops some quote from Blackstone supposedly saying that impeachment requires an established violation of law. What did he really say?
TheAtlantic, Quinta Jurecic and Benjamin Wittes: Trump’s Impeachment Brief Is a Howl of Rage http://bit.ly/2TJF6bY
// The document released by the president’s lawyers reads more like the scream of a wounded animal than a traditional legal filing.
🐣 RT @SallyQYates There comes a time when one must take a position that is neither safe nor politic not popular, but he must take it because his conscience tells him it is right.” MLK’s words are the final instruction to Senators who have sworn “to do impartial justice.”
🐣 RT @tribelaw The U.S. House just filed this devastating reply to the long but empty brief filed this morning by the president’s made-for-tv legal team. It took just 7 pages to shred the 110-page bag of . . . ok, bag of air filed on Trump’s behalf.
[Document:] http://bit.ly/2RbtUTT
WaPo, George Conway: The worst thing about Trump’s answer to the impeachment articles http://wapo.st/3atwJas “At its core, his submission represents an attack on the impeachment process — and on the Constitution itself.”
WaPo, George Conway: The worst thing about Trump’s answer to the impeachment articles http://wapo.st/3atwJas
🐣 RT @joelockhart Point of contrast in impeachments. Trump White House seems to be constructing a legal defense to defend the President’s rhetoric, not what the best defense is. In 1999, the President didn’t even see the WH counsel’s opening statement before he gave it. Legal theory ruled.
🐣 RT @HeidiNBC Dershowitz in 98/99:
“You don’t need a technical crime. … if you have somebody who completely corrupts the office … and who abuses trust.”
Dershowitz today:
“Abuse of power is not a criteria for impeachment.”
“You need ‘criminal type behavior’ akin to treason and bribery.”
🧵 RT @joelockhart 1. Welcome to a special holiday edition to the Daily White House Shadow Briefing thread. We are at work today and briefing to honor the legacy of the great Dr. Martin Luther King. The White House and @PressSec will treat this like every other day, with contempt, contempt for 📌 https://twitter.com/joelockhart/status/1219276649516191745?s=20
⋙ 🐣 RT @joelockhart 2. the media by refusing to hold briefings, contempt for the truth by lying as easily as they breath and contempt for al Americans betting we’re all dumb enough or “low information” enough to fall for this routine that involves self dealing, self pity and a frightening contempt
⋙ 🐣 RT @joelockhart 3. for the constitution and the rule of law. [ … ]
💙 🐣 RT @rickwtyler If the Senate acquits @realDonaldTrump, it won’t be an exoneration, but a coronation.
WaPo, Jennifer Rubin: The media must expose bad-faith arguments on impeachment http://wapo.st/2NKxuCb
✅ Sixty-three FACT CHECKS on The BIDENS, BURISMA and UKRAINE (Reverse Chronological): There’s no “there there” 1/2
✅ Sixty-three FACT CHECKS on The BIDENS, BURISMA and UKRAINE (Reverse Chronological): There’s no “there there” 1/2 pic.twitter.com/g9fi7auevJ
— 🇺🇸 Auriandra 🇺🇦 (@Auriandra) January 20, 2020
✅ Sixty-three FACT CHECKS on The BIDENS, BURISMA and UKRAINE (Reverse Chronological): There’s no “there there” 2/2
✅ Sixty-three FACT CHECKS on The BIDENS, BURISMA and UKRAINE (Reverse Chronological): There’s no “there there” 2/2 pic.twitter.com/eSfqZJQEKw
— 🇺🇸 Auriandra 🇺🇦 (@Auriandra) January 20, 2020
🐣 RT @JoyceWhiteVance Whether Biden is your guy or not, we should all fight the spread of “misinformation” in the 2020 campaign: Trump has been “spreading a malicious & conclusively debunked conspiracy theory” that “Biden engaged in wrongdoing” in executing US policy in Ukraine
⋙ NBCNews: Biden campaign warns against media use of Trump disinformation during impeachment trial http://nbcnews.to/2G6r9wH
// A campaign memo warns against the spread of “malicious and conclusively debunked” theories about the Bidens by Trump allies.
⭕ 19 Jan 2020
🚫 NewYorker, Marin Sardy: My Brother Tom’s Schizophrenia http://bit.ly/2tntkJH
// 5/20/2019
🐣 RT @glennkirschner2 Trump won’t be the only one on trial this week. McConnell also will be on trial. Indeed, the entire Senate will be on trial. Will Mitch be convicted of gross unfairness? Will he steal America’s future? And will the Senate be found guilty of murdering our democracy? #Fairness
🐣 RT @kylegriffin1 Robert De Niro: “There’s right and there’s wrong. And there’s common sense and there’s abuse of power. And as a citizen, I have as much right as anybody … to voice my opinion. And if I have a bigger voice … I’m going to use it whenever I see a blatant abuse of power.”
🐣 RT @propublica Lev Parnas says conservative journalist John Solomon was in on the Ukraine scheme. ¤ And indeed, we reported how Parnas was *literally in the control room* as Solomon “interviewed” a dodgy Ukrainian prosecutor.
⋙ ProPublica (Oct 2019): How a Veteran Reporter Worked with Giuliani’s Associates to Launch the Ukraine Conspiracy http://bit.ly/2Jq3R72 by Jake Pearson, Mike Spies and J. David McSwane
// 10/25/2019; 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.
🐣 RT @jacobkornbluh Zelensky in interview with Times of Israel: “I didn’t do anything illegal. I had phone calls with the pres. of the U.S. As the pres. of Ukraine, I did what I could do.. to have a good, reliable and strong relationship with one of our strategic partners.”
⋙ TimesOfIsrael, David Horowitz: A serious man: Zelensky bids to address Ukraine’s dark past, brighten its future http://bit.ly/2uciA0O
// Ahead of this week’s visit to Israel, comedian who became a corruption-battling president discusses everything from Babi Yar, the Holocaust and the Holodomor, to Putin… and Trump
NYT: In a break with convention, the editorial board has chosen to endorse two separate Democratic candidates for president: Amy Klobuchar and Elizabeth Warren http://nyti.ms/2ujmp41
🐣 RT @peterbakernyt “You’re a damn, damn, damn fool”: When Clinton was impeached, Democrats did not hold back how angry they were with him. A look back at the last time a president went on trial in the Senate.
⋙ NYT, Peter Baker: The Trial That Would Be a Template http://nyti.ms/2G7Zbk4
🐣 RT @pollreport icymi
Is it acceptable for the president of the U.S. to ask a foreign leader to investigate a political rival?
ALL
Yes 23%
No 64%
REP.
Yes 48%
No 29%
DEM.
Yes 4%
No 95%
IND.
Yes 22%
No 64%
(Quinnipiac U. Poll, RV, 12/11-15/19)
trend: http://pollingreport.com/trump_ad.htm
WSJ: Lev Parnas Paid His Way Into Donald Trump’s Orbit http://on.wsj.com/365FELX
// Ukrainian-American with reputation for quick access to financing made inroads at White House, won GOP allies while his business ventures soured
🐣 RT @tribelaw .@AlanDersh is grossly misstating law, history, and even the arguments in the Johnson Senate impeachment trial. He’s not to be trusted. Trump’s mendacity has sadly rubbed off on my former colleague. Read my @washingtonpost op-ed laying it all out:
⋙ WaPo, Lawrence Tribe: Trump’s lawyers shouldn’t be allowed to use bogus legal arguments on impeachment http://wapo.st/2G4zfGj
🐣 RT @MaxBoot When a defendant is caught red-handed, with both the law & facts against him, he has only two choices: a plea bargain or jury nullification. Given that Trump is incapable of admitting error, the first option has been foreclosed. He is left with option B.
⋙ WaPo, Max Boot: Trump would never go for a plea bargain, so it looks like jury nullification is his only option http://wapo.st/2uX631o
💙 🧵 RT @Teri_Kanefield Hi, @MarshaBlackburn ¤ That’s not how the Constitution defines the “Senate’s job.” ¤ It’s also not how the Senate rules define the Senate’s job. ¤ You do intend to follow the Constitution and Senate rules, right? ¤ Questions? Let’s have a look at the Constitution and the rules. ¤ 1/ 📌 https://twitter.com/Teri_Kanefield/status/1218961569981222912?s=20
⋙ 🐣 RT @MarshaBlackburn Democrats want the Senate to do their work for them. ¤ But the Senate’s job is to review what the House sent over, not hold an impeachment* do over.
🐣 RT @AndrewDesiderio Schiff: “The NSA, in particular, is withholding what are potentially relevant documents to our oversight responsibilities on Ukraine, but also withholding documents potentially relevant that the senators might want to see during the trial.”
⋙ Politico, John Bresnahan: Schiff says NSA, CIA withholding Ukraine info due to White House pressure http://politi.co/2tpaqlI
// “The intelligence community is beginning to withhold documents from Congress on the issue of Ukraine,” he said.
🐣 RT @dlippman Jared Kushner has a file called “Hoax II” in his West Wing office
Other file names: FIFA, AEI, To Do’s, Lebanon, Border Infrastructure, Central America Econ Plan, Encryption, POTUS Environment, Mexico Crisis, DJT
From @Time video w/ him: https://bit.ly/38hLZFj https://twitter.com/Pinche_Pi/status/1218629130066911233?s=20/photo/1
WaPo, George Conway: Why Trump had to hire this legal odd couple http://wapo.st/2tA3bXX
WaPo, Jennifer Rubin: Distinguished person of the week: Lev Parnas http://wapo.st/2Rb4wh8
NYT: Ukraine’s President Said He’d Fight Corruption. Resistance Is Fierce. http://nyti.ms/367f0SI
// For Volodymyr Zelensky, taking on the oligarchs and organized crime is a domestic test with geopolitical consequences.
⭕ 18 Jan 2020
🧵 RT @SethAbramson (LEV PARNAS PICTURE PARTY THREAD) Ain’t no party like a Lev Parnas picture party! Use this thread to post all your pictures of Lev Parnas—who the GOP is terrified of having testify in Trump’s Senate trial—with GOP figures from Trump to Trump Jr., Jared Kushner to GOP leadership. 📌 https://twitter.com/SethAbramson/status/1218722810283069441?s=20
// Lev photos Levlies
🐣 RT @JohnWDean Trump’s responses to the articles of impeachment is outrageous. He claims they violate the Constitution. He states “they are defective in their entirety.“ Clearly he’s going to move to dismiss hoping 51 Senators will end his agony. If he gets away with it, we’ve got a dictator!
NYT: Trump’s Defense Team Calls Impeachment Charges ‘Brazen’ as Democrats Make Legal Case http://nyti.ms/2TDLgKO
// In a six-page filing formally responding to the impeachment charges, President Trump’s lawyers rejected the case against him as illegitimate and described the effort to remove him as dangerous.
🐣 RT @HuffPoPol George Conway’s Lincoln Project released a new ad❣that demands impartiality during Trump’s Senate impeachment trial.
⋙ 💽 HuffPo: Republican Group Issues GOP Senators Blunt Reminder About Their Oaths http://bit.ly/3aqcdHO
💙💙 🧵 RT @Heidi_Cuda (Apr-May 2019) A LAYPERSON’S GUIDE TO TRUMP-RUSSIA: It’s komprocated.
So many distractions and too many syllables. I get it. ¤ But if you’re curious whether or not Putin is trying to run America via Russian proxies, I put together this evidentiary thread. Start here: 1/ 📌📌 https://twitter.com/Heidi_Cuda/status/1128011323416014848?s=20
// 4/26/2019 and 5/9/2019; Thread of threads; Mueller Report
🐣 RT @AdamSchiff It appears if Congress wants to get a full answer on the justification for the Soleimani strike, or other decisions by the President that bring our nation to the brink of war, we need to pay to attend a Mar-a-Lago fundraiser ¤ Or we can insist by passing the War Powers Resolution.
⋙ WaPo: Trump privately told donors new details about Soleimani airstrike at Mar-a-Lago fundraiser http://wapo.st/377lYbV
🐣 RT @elle_desilva
McConnell knew
Mulvaney knew
Pompeo knew
Kushner knew
Jordan knew
Nunes knew
Trump knew
Barr knew
Gaetz knew
Pence knew
Cohen knew
Giuliani knew
Graham knew
Mnuchin knew
Manafort knewIt all makes sense now.
NYT, Frank Bruni: Senate Republicans Are Bathed in Shame http://nyti.ms/2R4C7cr
// There’s no “impartial justice,” just protection of Trump at all costs.
🐣 RT @JRubinBlogger 111 pages of facts and legal arguments vs. 7 pages of ad❣hominem attacks and insults. They have never made a factual defense because their [sic] is none
⋙ WaPo: House Democrats say Senate ‘must eliminate the threat’ that the president poses to national security http://wapo.st/
💙 🧵 RT @McFaul THREAD ON QUID PRO QUOS IN TRUMP-UKRAINE SCANDAL. Parnas interviews have now expanded the number of “drug deals” (Bolton’s metaphor, not mine) — illicit quid pro quos– that team Trump attempted to play to compel Ukraine to open an investigation into the Bidens. 1/ 📌 https://twitter.com/McFaul/status/1218581562284920832?s=20
⋙ 🐣 RT @McFaul QUID PRO QUO 1. Corrupt Ukrainian Prosecutor General Yuri Lutsenko promised to open an investigation of the Bidens if Trump fired Yovanovitch. Trump did fire Yovanovitch. Lutsenko didn’t deliver on his side of the deal. (Zelensky was elected president & then removed Lutsenko) 2/
⋙ 🐣 RT @McFaul QUID PRO QUO 2. Pence would attend Zelensky’s inauguration if the new Ukrainian government opened an investigation of the Bidens. Ukrainians didn’t deliver; Pence canceled his trip. 3/
⋙ 🐣 RT @McFaul QUID PRO QUO 3. Trump would give Zelensky an Oval office meeting– an extremely valuable chit in diplomacy sought by all heads of state — if new Ukrainian government opened an investigation of the Bidens. Zelensky didn’t deliver; Zelensky has never visited the White House. 4/
⋙ 🐣 RT @McFaul QUID PRO QUO 4. Trump froze military assistance until Zelensky opened an investigation of the Bidens. Zelensky was feeling the pressure and seemed ready to do this deal. But the the whistleblower acted first, forcing Trump to resume military assistance. 5/
⋙ 🐣 RT @McFaul That’s four different plays made by team Trump, attempted over several months, to try to get the Ukrainian government to open an investigation of the Bidens. In all 4 cases, Trump was using his public office to pursue private gains, the definition of corruption. 6/ END THREAD.
🐣 RT @JenniferJJacobs NEW: The top Russia expert on Trump’s National Security Council, Andrew Peek, has left his post, just a couple months in, sources tell me, @nwadhams and @justinsink. ¤ That’s the Fiona Hill, Tim Morrison, Russia/Ukraine job. ¤ Peek was escorted from WH on Friday. Story out soon.
🐣 RT @davidfrum This bears repeating after WH impeachment reply. The impeachment process exists for the exact same reason as the Trump presidency exists: The complex compromises of the 1787 Constitution. If impeachment is illegitimate, then the Electoral College is also illegitimate
⋙ 🐣 RT @ [Nov] Trump was not “democratically elected” – he lost by 2.9 million votes. He was “constitutionally elected,” by an 18th century constitutional design that includes a ban on foreign bribes to the president and that offers impeachment and removal as a remedy for bribe-seeking
// 11/13/2019
💙 WaPo: ‘Once this is over, we’ll be kings’: How Lev Parnas worked his way into Trump’s world — and now is rattling it http://wapo.st/2NDNq9q
🐣 RT @renatto_mariotti Trump’s team is focused on making legal arguments because the facts aren’t on his side. This way Republican Senators can vote for acquittal without getting into the facts.
⋙ 🐣 RT @dsamuelsohn Cipollone plans to open Trump’s defense on core constitutional issues. Then Sekulow for an overview. Starr, Ray, Dershowitz & others will tackle “discrete functions” during the trial, a source close to the president’s legal team said Saturday. https://politi.co/30zWZeT @politico
🐣 RT @SimonWDC Clear now that the Senate is about to get bombarded by Trumpian craziness. ¤ This isn’t the House, and these folks – including the 5 vulnerable Senators – just aren’t going to be happy w/defending this stuff. Watch for grumbling from unnamed Senate sources in coming days.
⋙ 🐣 RT @ Reminder that more than four months into this fiasco the White House has yet to provide a rebuttal witness or exculpatory evidence. ¤ Why? Because the President is guilty. ¤ We will find out soon if they have an argument beyond whining about process.
⋙⋙ 🧵 RT @kyledcheney NEW: The White House previewed its response to the articles of impeachment — it’s an attack on Democrats’ process and a claim that the articles were “constitutionally invalid” from the start. ¤ w/ @dsamuelsohn @anitakumar01 📌 https://twitter.com/kyledcheney/status/1218657701674332161?s=20
⋙⋙⋙ Politico: ‘Brazen and unlawful’: Trump team attacks House impeachment effort in first formal response http://politi.co/2u9UEuS
// The president’s initial reply comes on the same day House managers previewed their own opening arguments.
🐣 RT @JRubinBlogger Can’t wait to see Collins, Gardner, etc. vote to acquit when all the facts are as House says. They would be the pro-bribery, pro-extortion, pro-abuse of power, pro-obstruction power. They would reveal they are anti-Constitution, anti-democracy, pro-monarchy
💙 🧵 RT @Teri_Kanefield (Thread) ¤ Trump responds to the Articles of Impeachment (this is the first official statement of Trump’s defense team.) ¤ It’s the same exact nonsense the House Republicans spouted all through the inquiry. Almost like they all used the same talking points. http://bit.ly/2RtzLTs 📌 https://twitter.com/Teri_Kanefield/status/1218689073239314432?s=20
💙 🧵 RT @File411 Guys the @HouseJudiciary @HouseIntel and House Managers
@RepAdamSchiff
@RepJerryNadler
@RepJeffries
@RepZoeLofgren
@RepValDemings
@RepJasonCrow
@RepSylviaGarcia
Have FILED their Impeachment Brief… http://bit.ly/2uePNsc
📌 Analysis https://twitter.com/File411/status/1218674816435343367?s=20
RawStory, Matt Chapman: MSNBC panel bursts out laughing after watching clip of Alan Dershowitz explaining his Trump defense strategy http://bit.ly/37bExvq @JillWineBanks @mayawiley @JoyAnnReid
💙 🧵 RT @Teri_Kanefield (Thread) Senate Trial ¤ Let’s talk about the difference between issues of fact and issues of law. ¤ Bonus: This thread will help you prepare for the Twitter Bar Exam🤓 ¤ Or ⤵️Trump just admits to the facts alleged. ¤ That avoids the need for fact witnesses. 📌 https://twitter.com/Teri_Kanefield/status/1218569314858491904?s=20
🐣 RT @ThePlumLineGS The WH response to House managers’ report is utter nonsense in every conceivable way. The House report is well argued and fact based. Press accounts will present these as two equivalent sides of a good faith argument. Until this stops, the bad faith will continue to be rewarded.
🐣 RT @MaggieNYT Trump team response to House brief https://twitter.com/maggieNYT/status/1218665945595613189?s=20/photo/1-4 and https://twitter.com/maggieNYT/status/1218666005561475072?s=20/photo/1-2
≣ White House Response http://bit.ly/2RtzLTs 6p
↥ ↧
Lawfare: House Releases Impeachment Trial Brief http://bit.ly/2ucCo3Y document 111p
// The House of Representatives has released its trial brief in the impeachment trial of President Trump, available here and below. The president’s defense team is set to file their response on Monday, Jan. 20.
📔 Document: Trial Memorandum of the US House of Representatives in the Impeachment Trial of President Donald J Trump http://bit.ly/2uePNsc
🔆 This❗️⋙ WaPo: House Democrats say Senate must ‘eliminate the threat that the President poses to America’s national security’ http://wapo.st/36cTrjW
// House brief
🐣 RT @RadioFreeTom You can tell on Twitter an election is coming.
– Lots of new accounts
– Old accounts that were dormant suddenly tweeting
– Accounts with massive tweet-to-follower ratios
– Lots of accounts with the same header photos
Twitter can’t get those new filters in place soon enough.
🐣 RT @tribelaw Btw, Trump’s use of WH Counsel to defend him could be illegal & is clearly improper: Trump is on trial as an individual who happens to be POTUS. Pat Cipollone is paid by all of us as WH Counsel to defend THE OFFICE OF THE PRESIDENT, not the dude We the People are seeking to fire.
⋙ 🐣 RT @tribelaw People ask me why I’m not arguing in the Senate opposite @AlanDersh to defend the House view of the Constitution. Here’s why:
1. No need. My views are known & the Dersh view refutes itself.
2. Trump can name anyone to defend him, but the House rules say it must use its managers.
WaPo Editorial: The Senate must not ignore the new evidence on Ukraine http://wapo.st/38hKnLU
🐣 RT @djrothkopf
Rosenstein is a good guy.
Mueller is a hero who will save us.
Barr is an institutionalist.
Pompeo is one of the grown-ups.
Tillerson is a weakling.
Ivanka and Jared are moderating influences.
Mattis will stand up and save us.
Perhaps we need a mass resignation of pundits.
TheAtlantic, Franklin Foer: The Kremlin Inches Closer to the Biden Plot http://bit.ly/2NDYRhg
// Lev Parnas pointed his finger at Dmytro Firtash.
🐣 RT @AlexandraChalup Barr targets Trump’s enemies while covering up Trump’s crimes. ¤ That’s how Russia’s judicial system operates & what Trump referred to as “strong leadership” when praising Putin in 2016. ¤ Trump, Barr, & others are making the U.S. mirror the Russian mafia state while helping Putin.
⋙ 🐣 RT @NavyVetResister Bill Barr singling out Trump’s enemies for ‘selective’ scrutiny: ‘The pattern is unmistakable’
⋙⋙ RawStory: Bill Barr singling out Trump’s enemies for ‘selective’ scrutiny: ‘The pattern is unmistakable’ http://bit.ly/2NFmNkh
NBCNews: Trump backer from Europe says supposed surveillance of Marie Yovanovitch was a joke http://nbcnews.to/37bjvwY
// An ardent European supporter of Trump’s admitted to having sent supposed details about Yovanovitch’s whereabouts that made their way to Lev Parnas, but said it was “ridiculous banter.”
🐣 RT @chrislhayes really no idea what to believe. On the one hand, none of these people seem minimally competent enough to actually have been surveilling Yovanovitch, on the other hand, the “just kidding” shtick keeps getting harder and harder to swallow.
⋙ 🧵 RT @kenvogel ANTHONY De CALUWE RESPONDS: The Dutch citizen who texted with ROBERT F. HYDE about MARIE YOVANOVITCH’s movements says through a spokeswoman that he “was not involved in any surveillance,” & that suggestions in his texts to @RFHyde1 to the contrary “was just … ridiculous banter.” 📌 https://twitter.com/kenvogel/status/1218578011722862592?s=20
🐣 RT @AshaRangappa [9/3/2019] 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/
⋙ RT @AshaRangappa In this regard, Comey assessed him exactly right: RR appointed a Special Counsel only because once the behind-the-scenes notes of POTUS came out, he knew he was going to be accused of obstruction/cover up. He did the right thing in appointing SC, but he did it to save himself 2/
⋙ RT @AshaRangappa When Rod is around stronger people with a clear moral compass, like Mueller, he’ll defer…and this ends up being a good thing. But when he ends up around people who are deceptive and corrupt, like Barr, he’ll defer to them too. Basically, he’s a walking piece of Jell-o. END
🐣 RT @JoyceWhiteVance Sometimes it’s obvious. If Trump was running a legitimate foreign policy, the Senate-confirmed Secy of State, Pompeo, would have been in charge, not Rudy & Lev. There’d be no need for secrecy, changing stories, withholding witnesses & documents. You don’t cover up if it’s lawful.
🐣 RT @joshgerstein NEW OVERNIGHT: In late-night court filing from DOJ, @RodRosenstein acknowledges he made decision to release Strzok-Page texts that have fueled many a POTUS attack on the former FBI employees. Both are suing over release, saying it invaded their privacy
⋙ Politico, Josh Gerstein: Rod Rosenstein says he made call to release Strzok-Page texts http://politi.co/2NEwAax
🐣 RT @Hardball “I think Trump and Trumpism is the greatest threat this country has faced since the fall of communism.”
⋙ 💽 MSNBC, Hardball: James Carville: Trumpism greatest threat ‘since fall of communism’ http://on.msnbc.com/2NFvP0R
// James Carville recently endorsed Michael Bennet for president. Carville says, “I think Trump and Trumpism is the greatest threat this country has faced since the fall of communism.”
✅ AP FACT CHECK: Trump’s compulsive claims of ‘biggest’ ever http://bit.ly/2NDn1Zi “Size matters to President Donald Trump. So much that he exaggerates continually, sometimes spectacularly, the size of what he does” 🍄
🐣 RT @pleasesaveour [Facebook:] “When we find networks of Pages misleading people by concealing who controls them, we require those owners to show additional information. In this case, the necessary disclosure was not made, so per our policy, the Pages have been removed,”
⋙ DailyBeast: Facebook Removes ‘Misleading’ Pages Defending Trump Donor Accused of Tracking Former Ambassador http://bit.ly/376JXrB
🐣 RT @tribelaw There’s no basis at all for the claim that the Framers “rejected” making “abuse of power” impeachable. What they rejected was making mere policy disagreements impeachable. They sharply distinguished doing that from removing those who use their public power for private gain.
⋙ 🐣 RT @TheBeatWithAri Alan Dershowitz, a member of Trump’s impeachment team, on ‘abuse of power’: ¤ “Abuse of power, even if proved, is not an impeachable offense. That’s what the framers rejected. They didn’t want to give Congress the authority to remove a president because he abused his power.”
🐣 RT @newtgingrich Lets see: Speaker Pelosi sends in Schiff and Nadler and President Trump sends in Alan Dershowitz and Ken Starr. That should tell you everything you need to know about the quality of the two cases.
⋙ 🐣 Yeah, the two lawyers (@AlanDersh and Starr) who got Epstein off so he could continue criming now represent Trump.
🐣 RT @woodruffbets Parnas said he attended a small dinner w Jared, Ivanka, and cannabis industry pros that the America First Action super PAC hosted (where he his pic w them)
⋙ DailyBeast, Betsy Swan: Lev Parnas Dishes On Kushner, Maduro, and Soros http://bit.ly/30zhEj4
// In an interview from his lawyer’s office, the ex-Giuliani ally talked cannabis, conspiracies, and one very weird meeting with the lawyers of an indicted Ukrainian oligarch.
⋙ 🐣 RT @woodruffbets You can’t buy tickets to these dinners, per source w/ knowledge; rather, you make a generous donation to the super PAC and then become eligible for an invite
WaPo, Aaron Blake: New text messages put Devin Nunes on the hot seat http://wapo.st/2G2QUhn
🐣 RT @duty2warn Nunes was a participant in the scheme he was investigating. Another dark irony as the Republicans gangsters make a perverse mockery of our government
⋙ 🐣 RT @PoliticusUSA [1/15] Parnas nails Devin Nunes as being involved in the Ukraine effort to dig up a scandal on Joe Biden. Parnas met with Nunes at Trump’s hotel. #Nunes #LevSpeaks #Maddow 💽 https://twitter.com/duty2warn/status/1218539713319051264?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @lrozen Trump told donors at Mar a Lago tonight that Soleimani was “saying bad things about our country” before the strike, which led to his decision to authorize his killing. ¤ So much for claim of imminent threat or threat to US embassies.
⋙ 🐣 RT @mkraju Trump recounted minute-by-minute details of strike that killed Soleimani during remarks to big donors in FL, according to audio obtained by @Kevinliptakcnn. Trump’s detailed recounting of the strike goes further than what he or other officials have said.
⋙⋙ CNN: Trump recounts minute-by-minute details of Soleimani strike to donors at Mar-a-Lago http://cnn.it/363qpTK
⋙ 🐣 In fact, @khamenei_ir had jeered him on Twitter
RT @khamenei_ir [Jan 1] …
1st: You can’t do anything.
2nd: If you were logical —which you’re not— you’d see that your crimes in Iraq, Afghanistan… have made nations hate you.
🐣 RT @RepValDemings The president confessed to trying to cheat in the election, and said he would do it again. ¤ I was a law enforcement officer for 27 years. This is what we would call an open and shut case.
⭕ 17 Jan 2020
WaPo, Sam Berger: Holding up Ukraine aid was illegal. Trump’s White House knew before GAO said so. http://wapo.st/2NH5BuI Sam Berger served as a senior attorney in the Office of Management and Budget during the Obama administration
// The agency’s decision undercuts two pillars of the president’s impeachment defense;
Sam Berger is vice president for democracy and government reform at the Center for American Progress. He served as a senior attorney in the Office of Management and Budget during the Obama administration.
Politico, Kyle Cheney and Andrew Desiderio: House releases new impeachment evidence linking Nunes aide to Parnas http://politi.co/2G1Qisp
🐣 RT @richsignorelli Nunes must be removed from intelligence committee & investigated. His chilling lawsuits should be dismissed and sanctions should be imposed on Nunes and his attorney ¤ New Lev Parnas records detail Ukraine surveillance efforts, contact with Devin Nunes aide
⋙ Axios: New Lev Parnas records detail Ukraine surveillance efforts, contact with Devin Nunes aide http://bit.ly/2tn0Kbr
// Parnas did the following, according to documents he provided to the House committee:
● Kept hand-written notes outlining the alleged pre-condition of a now-infamous July 25 phone call between President Trump and Zelensky: that Zelensky publicly announce an investigation into Joe Biden, Trump’s political rival in the 2020 election.
● Arranged interviews with Nunes aide Derek Harvey and Ukrainian officials, including Yuri Lutsenko, the country’s prosecutor general.
● Shared pictures and articles of Yovanovitch with GOP congressional candidate and Trump donor Robert Hyde, who texted back: “Can’t believe Trum[p] hasn’t fired this [b**ch]. I’ll get right on that.”
● Received text messages from Hyde suggesting that the congressional candidate had Yovanovitch under physical surveillance in Kyiv. “They are willing to help if we/you would like a price,” Hyde texted.
● Appeared to receive screenshots of Hyde’s conversation with a Belgian country-code number. “Nothing has changed she is still not moving they check today again. It’s confirmed we have a person inside,” the contact texted Hyde in a string, after sharing a picture of Yovanovitch and a tweet referencing her.
NYT, Michelle Goldberg: When Trump’s Thugs Turn on Him http://nyti.ms/3aquHaU
// Lev Parnas has shown us Trumpism from the inside.
💙 🧵 RT @SethAbramson (THREAD) I knew this day would come eventually—but I had to wait over two years for it. Now that it’s come, I’d like to briefly say something about it. The upshot: I’ve just been vindicated on the most abiding, popular, and wholly untrue attack ever made against me and this feed. 📌 https://twitter.com/SethAbramson/status/1218352196863037440?s=20
// “I told you so” thread
BuzzfeedNews, Emma Loop: New Impeachment Evidence Shows How Political Operatives Tried To Get A Respected US Ambassador Fired http://bit.ly/30x5uqM
// “The bomb is dropping tomorrow,” Lev Parnas wrote the day before Ambassador Marie Yovanovitch was abruptly recalled from her post in Ukraine.
CNN: Barr dropped into Giuliani meeting at Justice Department in previously undisclosed encounter http://cnn.it/2TCd5TN
NYT, Timothy Egan: Trump’s Evil Is Contagious http://nyti.ms/3640R92
// The president has shown us exactly what happens when good people do nothing.
CNN, Asha Rangappa: Trump gets a Ukraine probe, just not the one he asked for http://cnn.it/2RrLOk4 “Ukraine’s decision to investigate the circumstances surrounding Yovanovitch’s security exposes, by comparison, Attorney General William Barr’s willingness to turn a blind eye”
WSJ: Facebook Removes Pages That Coordinated Posts Defending Man Embroiled in Impeachment Probe http://on.wsj.com/2G45ntC
// Some of the pages had described themselves as representing groups of supporters of President Trump from different states
🐣 RT @CNNOpinion “Rather than mount a defense of his conduct with the best legal team, he’s choosing a group mired in controversies including scandal, alleged corruption and misogyny. The majority of America, in my view, will be repulsed,” writes @joelockhart
⋙ CNN, Joe Lockhart: Trump’s circus of defense lawyers http://cnn.it/2FZNWu5
🐣 RT @TeamPelosi The facts were overwhelming. He gave us no choice. That is why the current occupant of the White House is impeached forever. ¤ And with each passing day, we learn of his corrupt mission to cheat in the 2020 election. -NP
💙 🧵 RT @ScottMStedman I found the social media accounts for the guy who was allegedly surveilling Ambassador Yovanovitch, Anthony de Caluwé. This was posted 3 weeks ago. 📌 https://twitter.com/ScottMStedman/status/1218369912495837185?s=20
// aka Anthony Calloway; at Trump NY Party, photo’d w Trump and De Santis; visited Russian Orthodox Church (wut?)
💙 🧵 RT @JoshNBCNews THREAD: ¤ Robert Hyde today pointed the finger at a guy named Anthony de Caluwe, saying he merely copy-pasted Yovanovitch info from him & sent to Parnas. Hyde told me he met de Caluwe at a Trump fundraiser & at Trump hotel in DC (1/7) 📌 https://twitter.com/JoshNBCNews/status/1218363761188274182?s=20
🐣 RT @mkraju New texts show more efforts to track Marie Yovanovitch. “She been there since Thursday – never left the embassy,” said an unknown Belgium number in text exchange with Trump ally Robert Hyde. Also texts show more extensive talks bw Nunes aide and Parnas.
⋙ CNN: New documents from Lev Parnas show more texts about possible surveillance of former US ambassador to Ukraine http://cnn.it/2sCam1x
🐣 RT @MSNBC “I knew that the Trump defense was going to rely in large part on alternative facts, but i didn’t know they were also going to use alternative law,” Laurence Tribe says of Alan Dershowitz’s legal argument for President Trump’s impeachment trial.
⋙ 💽 MSNBC, AllInWithChris: ‘Alternative law:’ Constitutional scholar on the Dershowitz defense of Trump http://on.msnbc.com/2FYxpGM
// Harvard Law professor Laurence Tribe looks at Alan Dershowitz’s likely defense of Trump ahead of the Senate impeachment trial: “Alan is completely wacko on this.”
🐣 RT @EmilyGorcenski Half a dozen neo-Nazis with explicit and concrete plans to commit murder and acts of terrorism were arrested in the past few days. Hundreds more are calling for civil war. ¤ This isn’t Leaderless Resistance. ¤ It has a leader, and he’s calling for action.
⋙ 🐣 RT @real Your 2nd Amendment is under very serious attack in the Great Commonwealth of Virginia. That’s what happens when you vote for Democrats, they will take your guns away. Republicans will win Virginia in 2020. Thank you Dems!
🐣 RT @neal_katyal I wrote this piece with Ken Starr. It concludes:”If President Trump cannot agree to an investigation modeled on what Richard Nixon agreed to,the question will linger:Just what is he afraid of?” ¤ Remember,Nixon allowed witnesses&documents.He didn’t gag them
⋙ 🐣 RT @neal_katyal To be clear, I have no issue whatsoever w Starr defending Trump. President should have any lawyer he wants who is willing to represent him. My point is just that it’s a very tough defense given Trump’s anticonstitutional behavior. That’s why they are trying to gag docs&witnesses
⋙ NYT, Neal Katyal and Kenneth Starr: A Better Way to Protect Mueller http://nyti.ms/2tkLDiJ
// 2/19/2018
🐣 RT @McFaul Trump told Pence to cancel his planned trip to attend Zelensky inauguration after Zelensky refused to open an investigation of the Bidens. Another quid pro quo. @maddow spelled it all out very clearly tonight. Watch the show when you can.
WaPo, Eric Columbus and Andrew Kent: Trump can’t stop John Bolton from testifying http://wapo.st/375NwOD
// Once they’re out of office, officials who want to talk are shielded by the First Amendment.
🐣 RT @lrozen What was the arrangement between Rudy Giuliani, Victoria Toensing & Joe diGenovo? and a dozen other questions @violagienger and I would like to ask Lev Parnas
⋙ JustSecurity, Viola Gienger and Laura Rozen: 15 Questions the Media Should Be Asking Lev Parnas http://bit.ly/30u4GDe
1. List all the individuals who can corroborate your specific claims. What other specific documents and records that have not been released to the public would corroborate your claims?
2. Exactly when and how did you first meet Rudy Giuliani?
3. Exactly when and how did this idea of pressuring Ukraine to investigate Joe and/or Hunter Biden first arise, to your knowledge?
Background: The New York Times has referred to Parnas’s “first trip to Ukraine in February 2019,” but it’s unclear whether that was his first time in Ukraine on this mission or just his first time there that year. Parnas was born in Ukraine, though he has long lived in the United States and is a U.S. citizen.
4. Was Rudy Giuliani involved in other work in Ukraine that you had any connection with or knowledge of, other than this mission to persuade the Ukrainian government to announce investigations of Biden?
5. Can you speak to whether Trump thought that the efforts with the Ukraine authorities could benefit your or Giuliani’s or others’ business dealings?
6. Similarly, do you know whether Trump thought that the efforts with Ukraine could benefit Giuliani, Joe Toensing, or Joseph diGenova in their being hired by the former and incumbent Ukraine officials (per the NYT and Post’s reporting a few months ago), and what stage those contracts with the Ukrainians reached.
Background for Questions 5 & 6: If Trump knew an effect would be to direct business toward Giuliani or Parnas, it may trigger liability for the President under the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA). See Susan Simpson’s important analysis of Giuliani and Parnas’s activities in relation to the Ukraine effort and the FCPA.
7. You have talked almost exclusively about your and your associates’ roles in relation to the effort to persuade the Ukrainian government to announce investigations into Joe and/or Hunter Biden. What discussions did you have with anyone about Giuliani’s and Trump’s belief that the Ukrainian government tried to interfere in the 2016 election in opposition to Trump and in favor of Hillary Clinton?
8. Who all was part of the “team” that you have mentioned that was involved in carrying out this mission? Name all the members and their roles.
9. You have been described at times by pro-Trump Washington lawyers Victoria Toensing and Joe DiGenova, as well as Giuliani or others as a “translator,” but your role extended at least to that of a fixer, right? How would you describe your role in this effort?
10. Where exactly did you travel in the course of this mission, and who paid for the travel in each instance? Who paid for Giuliani’s travel and other expenses?
11. The WhatsApp messages that the House committees released on Jan. 14 show that Rudy Giuliani messaged you on July 3, 2019, asking, “Where are you guys?” And you responded, “Going to Vienna.” And he replied, “Wow!” Who were “you guys,” and why did Giuliani respond with that kind of excitement?
Background: This was around the time that Kremlin-linked Ukrainian oligarch Dmitry Firtash, a fugitive fighting U.S. extradition who is living in Vienna, hired Toensing and diGenova in the scheme to get dirt on the Bidens. Firtash later says he had paid the couple $1.2 million as of November 2019, including a referral fee for Parnas.
12. What is your understanding of the arrangement between Giuliani, Toensing, DiGenovo? Was the arrangement deliberately structured so that the team would have the “cover” of attorney-client privilege to not disclose their foreign clients and their being directed by the Trump legal team?
Background: Before taking the February 2019 trip to Ukraine, Parnas met with Giuliani in Manhattan to discuss details. Parnas told Giuliani that he and Fruman were concerned about not having diplomatic credentials for their mission, according to the Times:
Mr. Parnas said he proposed that the president designate them “special envoys” to ensure their safety and access. Then, Mr. Parnas said, Mr. Giuliani walked away to call Mr. Trump, and returned with a new plan: He would represent Mr. Parnas and Mr. Fruman, as well as the president, a move that might afford their shared mission the confidentiality of attorney-client privilege. Mr. Giuliani has denied Mr. Parnas’s account.
13. Why was Toensing, as indicated in several of the texts you provided to the House committees, so desperate for Yovanovitch to be removed? Did Toensing’s retention of Ukrainian or other clients require Yovanovitch’s removal? Which clients? Why?
14. What was/is Toensing-DiGenovo’s connection to Trump’s legal team?
15. You have said you were lobbying Trump in April 2018 to have Marie Yovanovitch removed as the U.S. ambassador to Ukraine. That was almost a year before your efforts with Giuliani to have the Ukrainian government announce a Biden investigation. Why, and on whose behalf, were you seeking Yovanovitch’s removal in the spring of 2018?
WaPo, Melinda Haring: I spotted a scandal in Ukraine last year, but I should have been looking closer to home http://wapo.st/38c6aVc
🐣 RT @JRubinBlogger Many real lawyers are mocking @AlanDersh for baseless definition of high crimes but defense has a fundamental problem: no facts. How do they even fill the time?? Cc @tribelaw @neal_katyal @ianbassin
🐣 RT @CREWcrew BREAKING: Chris Collins, the first Member of Congress to endorse Trump, was just sentenced to more than two years in jail. Duncan Hunter, the second endorser, just pleaded guilty and awaits sentencing. https://twitter.com/CREWcrew/status/1218311029920292865?s=20
🐣 RT @MollyMcKew This is the conspiracy that Nunes, his staff, R colleagues were pursuing — which is even on paper too complex to be rational. It’s pretty hard not to see that where were part of the plot against Yovanovich even while they were questioning her to dismiss it & exonerate POTUS team https://twitter.com/MollyMcKew/status/1218349680054153216?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @matthewamiller My conclusion from reading the latest Parnas texts is that the FBI should open a field office in the Trump Hotel lobby.
🐣 The Founders rejected “maladministration” not abuse of power, @alandersh. You may need to brush up on the Federalist Papers before Tuesday.
🧵 RT @File411 I see that FINALLY BRIAN BALLARD has made an appearance FWIW this is a small tranche of documents mainly pictures in this tranche ¤ Waves hiya @DevinNunes and Derick Harvey http://bit.ly/377wX4X 📌 https://twitter.com/File411/status/1218318756675452934?s=20
🧵 RT @dfriedman33 Here is top Nunes aide Derek Harvey asking Parnas to help him gather info. https://twitter.com/dfriedman33/status/1218315597286641665?s=20/photo/1
📌 https://twitter.com/dfriedman33/status/1218315597286641665?s=20
🐣 RT @harrylitman Scoundrel of the first order. ¤ “The new materials draw Nunes, the top Republican on the House Intelligence Committee, even further into the efforts undertaken by Giuliani and his associates to push out Yovanovitch in Ukraine and digging up dirt on the President’s political rivals.”
🐣 RT @jbkjournalist Keep In mind that #JeffreyEpstein continued to abuse girls after Mr. Dershowitz & Kenneth Starr got him a sweetheart deal.
🐣 RT @davidfrum At the time the constitution was ratified, impeachment clause included, nobody knew whether there would ever be such a thing as a “federal crime” – and if there ever were such a thing, what that crime or crimes would be
🐣 RT @AshaRangappa_ This is one of the dumbest talking points and it needs to be retired. We didn’t have a robust fed criminal code until the early 20th century (the FBI wasn’t even created until 1908 because of state resistance to a national police force)…but the Founders had a time machine?
🐣 RT @tribelaw .@GeorgeWill was just flat wrong on @HardballChris that something must be a federal crime in order to be an impeachable offense. No real constitutional scholar makes that mistake, although the criminal defense expert @AlanDersh does intend to make it in his Senate presentation.
🐣 RT @sfpelosi The same Ken Starr who impeached a president for lying about an affair and then got fired as Baylor’s president after a “fundamental failure” in the way his school responded to sexual assault allegations? THAT Ken Starr? Oh.
⋙ 🐣 RT @eliehonig Trump has added Ken Starr to his defense team. ¤ Now House Managers can point across the well and say: “There’s the same guy who interviewed @MonicaLewinsky’s ex-boyfriends, WH window washers and Kathleen Willey’s dentist. Now he doesn’t want us to hear from Bolton and Mulvaney.”
WaPo: Trump expands legal team to include Alan Dershowitz, Kenneth Starr and others http://wapo.st/3akSx8a
🐣 RT @rgoodlaw For integrity of Congress, looks like #Nunes must resign. ¤ Nunes’ close aide Harvey clandestinely worked with Parnas/Giuliani to get (read: create) Ukrainian dirt on Biden. ¤ Nunes was Ranking Member presiding over impeachment hearings, never disclosed and then lied about ALL this
⋙ 🐣 RT @rgoodlaw The encrypted Harvey-Parnas messages corroborate reporting (by CNN’s @VickyPJWard Daily Beast’s @woodruffbets Washington Post’s @PostRoz @ColbyItkowitz CNBC’s @christinawilkie NBC’s @kwelkernbc) assembled in this Timeline.
⋙⋙ JustSecurity, Ryand Goodman and Viola Geinger: Timeline: Rep. Devin Nunes and Ukraine Disinformation Efforts http://bit.ly/37FcJjz
// 11/26/2019
⋙ 🐣 RT @rgoodlaw Rep. Devin Nunes question to Fiona Hill and David Holmes in impeachment hearings: ¤ “Do you think it’s appropriate for political parties to run operatives in foreign countries to dig up dirt on their opponents?” ¤ Encrypted texts are evidence that’s basically what Nunes was doing.
TheGuardian (2017): Trump lawyer’s firm steered millions in donations to family members, files show http://bit.ly/38f3J4g
// 6/27/2017; Documents obtained by the Guardian reveal Jay Sekulow approved plans to push people to give to his Christian nonprofit, which then paid big sums to his family
WaPo: In rare Friday sermon, Iran’s Khamenei says U.S. suffered blow to ‘superpower image’ http://wapo.st/2R7uulD
BusinessInsider, Sonam Sheth: Trump previously said Ken Starr, who will represent him in the impeachment trial, was a ‘freak,’ a ‘lunatic,’ and a ‘disaster’ who might have ‘something in his closet’ http://bit.ly/2NBfOZK
🐣 RT @BradMossEsq Make America Bribe Again
⋙ 🐣 RT @GeoffEarle Larry Kudlow says White House ‘looking at’ changing federal anti-bribery statute https://mol.im/a/7900019 via @MailOnline
🐣 RT @MuellerSheWrote Whichever dem wins in November, please let’s not do the “it’s time to look forward, let bygones be bygones and not prosecute this administration for the sake of unity” bullshit, kthanksbye.
⋙ 🐣 It would be different if we had a real AG who would pursue corruption in the Admin now, but we don’t. To object to the current situation, House Dems should act on the NY Bar Assn recommendation and begin impeachment hearings on Barr.
🐣 RT @paulwaldman1 And don’t forget that the Trump Foundation then tried to cover it up by filing a false tax return claiming the illegal donation actually went to a nonprofit in Kansas with a similar name as Bondi’s PAC. ¤ They claimed it was just an honest mistake.
⋙ 🐣 RT @Farenthold Pam Bondi, one of @realdonaldtrump’s impeachment lawyers, once accepted a $25K donation from Trump’s charity (while another AG was investigating Trump University). ¤ Trump paid a $2.5K fine for violating charity law.
⋙⋙ WaPo, David Farenthold: Trump pays IRS a penalty for his foundation violating rules with gift to aid Florida attorney general http://wapo.st/37f44Ed
// 9/1/2016
NYT, Margaret Taylor: The Real Risks of Republicans’ Burying Their Heads in the Sand http://nyti.ms/2szQYlL
// G.O.P. senators will harm Congress if they turn away from new testimony and information relevant to impeachment.
🐣 RT @tribelaw The Royal third person? Or just a Trumpian trope?
⋙ 🐣 RT @AlanDersh STATEMENT REGARDING PROFESSOR DERSHOWITZ’S ROLE IN THE SENATE TRIAL – Professor Dershowitz will present oral arguments at the Senate trial to address the constitutional arguments against impeachment and removal. (1of 2)
⋙ 🐣 RT @AlanDersh (2 of 3) While Professor Dershowitz is non partisan when it comes to the constitution—he opposed the impeachment of President Bill Clinton and voted for Hillary Clinton— he believes the issues at stake go to the heart of our enduring Constitution.
⋙ 🐣 RT @AlanDersh (3of 3) He is participating in this impeachment trial to defend the integrity of the Constitution and to prevent the creation of a dangerous constitutional precedent.
JustSecurity, Sam Berger: GAO Decided Trump’s Hold on Ukraine Funding Was Illegal and It Wasn’t a Tough Call http://bit.ly/2TylqYv
🐣 RT @rfaraon Wait, Dershowitz of the Epstein and OJ Simpson crowd? Oh I get it – he’s gonna be on Celebrity Apprentice soon. POTUS, if you’re listening, please make Alan go on your show. Also Rudy. Ratings: at least 5.0 Nielsen, guaranteed. I’d watch!!
🐣 RT @danpfeiffer Ken Starr defending one of the most impeachable offenses in history after prosecuting one of the least with zero self-reflection and no sense of irony really encapsulates the GOP’s part over country ethos.
NBCNews (10/16): Ukrainian oligarch Firtash linked to Giuliani pals’ gas deals and Biden dirt digging http://nbcnews.to/2ue9cth
// 10/16/2019; A Ukrainian oligarch [Firtash] who is fighting extradition to the U.S. may figure in both the dirt digging and the gas deals pursued by Lev Parnas and Igor Fruman.
NewYorker, Connie Bruck: Alan Dershowitz, Devil’s Advocate http://bit.ly/2tjwWwl https://twitter.com/Susan_Hennessey/status/1218198692961947649?s=20/photo/1
// 7/29/2019; great drawing
🐣 RT @NormOrnstein So Trump’s legal headliners include 2 discredited lawyers who were integral to the Jeffrey Epstein moral/legal meltdown of despicability + a former Florida AG who took a $25,000 illegal contribution from Trump and overruled her staff to quash the action against Trump U. Perfect!
🐣 RT @ericgarland Hey, does everyone know Toensing worked with Linda Tripp to get Ken Starr the Lewinsky tapes?
DailyBeast, Asawin Suebsaeng and Justin Baragona: Trump Taps Fox News Legal Panel to Defend Him in Impeachment Trial http://bit.ly/2NEzLPs
// “He knew my positions and he asked me to present those arguments [on the Senate floor],” Alan Dershowitz told The Daily Beast.
🐣 RT @mitchellreports On Ken Starr, @peterbakernyt: “He’ll bring a lot of the baggage of the last impeachment to this debate & people will start making comparisons & saying if then this, then that. And it’s interesting choice to want to import the 21-year old fight into his fight today.” #AMRstaff
🐣 RT @sykescharlie “This was the gravest insult he could have delivered to these people, in this sacred space. The flag officers in the room were shocked.”
🐣 RT @Evan!cMullin Even after all we know about this rotten human being we call president, this is shocking. Trump berated Jim Mattis and our senior military generals in 2017 saying “You’re a bunch of dopes and babies.“ Trump’s utterly disgraceful behavior risks our security.
⋙ WaPo, Carol D. Leonnig and Philip Rucker : ‘You’re a bunch of dopes and babies’: Inside Trump’s stunning tirade against generals http://wapo.st/38h3R3f
🐣 RT @JRubinBlogger The necessity of ignoring probative evidence and relying on partisan rhetoric and distraction raises an interesting question for Trump, his lawyers and Republicans: What exactly is the case the lawyers will put on?
⋙ WaPo, Jennifer Rubin: Catching senators who swear a false oath red-handed http://wapo.st/2TyjgrH
🐣 RT @real “The GOA got it exactly backwards. Here’s what they said. The law does not permit the President to substitute his own policy priorities to those Congress has enacted into law. It’s exactly the opposite. The Constitution does not allow Congress to substitute its own priorities….
⋙ 🐣 RT @real ….for the foreign policies of the President.” @AlanDersh Alan Dershowitz @seanhannity @FoxNews They do what the House asks. The Swamp!
💙 ⋙⋙ 🐣 The impeachment trial will be about more than Trump’s malfeasance. The Separation of Powers, the Power of the Purse ~ the very meaning of the Constitution ~ will be litigated. I hope Roberts and the Senate up for this. The “Constitutional Crisis” we have feared is upon us.
WashingtonMonthly, Nancy LeTourneau: It Is Beginning to Look Like the U.S. Has a Corruption Problem, Not Ukraine http://bit.ly/362delN
DailyBeast, Betsy Swan: Lev Parnas Reveals Why He Turned on Trumpworld http://bit.ly/2Ny7kTi
// The Soviet-born businessman at the center of Rudy Giuliani’s dirt-digging crusade in Ukraine tells The Daily Beast he’s determined to speak out despite backlash.
DailyBeast, Tim Teeman: Ron Reagan: My Father, Ronald Reagan, Would Not Want Republicans to Vote for ‘Traitor’ Trump in 2020 http://bit.ly/30rWraO
// Ron Reagan discusses why his father would have never voted Trump, Ronald Reagan’s gay rights and AIDS record, fighting “religious freedom,” and his “burning in hell” atheism TV ad.
🐣 RT @glennkirshner2 We now know from the GAO that Trump committed a crime (wrongfully w/holding Congressionally appropriate funds/Ukrainian aid) to commit a crime (bribing Zelensky) to commit a crime (campaign finance crime/foreign interference in US election). That’s quite a criminal hat trick.
🐣 RT @tribelaw Time was the friend of truth. Tradition will be the friend of transparency. As reality sinks in, the weight of history will make itself felt.
⭕ 16 Jan 2020 📜 Impeachment Trial Begins 📜
🐣 RT @DrDenaGrayson “Trump…demonstrated that he will remain a threat to the Constitution if allowed to remain in office…warrants #impeachment & trial, removal from office & disqualification to hold & enjoy any office of honor, trust, or profit under the US”—@RepAdamSchiff 💽 https://twitter.com/DrDenaGrayson/status/1217861394760110081?s=20/photo/1
WaPo, Robert S. Litt and John E. McLaughlin: Prosecutors investigating intelligence analysts is a dangerous idea http://wapo.st/38thUD9
// Robert S. Litt served in the Justice Department from 1978 to 1984 and 1994 to 1999 and as general counsel of the Office of the Director of National Intelligence from 2009 to 2016. John E. McLaughlin served as deputy director of the CIA from 2000 to 2004 and acting director in 2004 and teaches at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies.
WaPo, Patrick Leahy: Trump broke the law. Congress must now defend the separation of powers. http://wapo.st/2NBBbdp
WaPo, Paul Kane: Senate GOP hopes for a drama-free impeachment trial while bracing for Trump and his legal team http://wapo.st/2R0K2HC
NYT Editorial: What America Learned in 28 Days http://nyti.ms/2NA7t8C
// Nancy Pelosi’s decision to delay transmitting the impeachment articles allowed significant new information to come to light.
DailyBeast, Michael Tomasky: The Trump Presidency Delivers Its Craziest 24 Hours Yet as America Heads Down the Tubes http://bit.ly/2szTuIL
// This nation is being cheapened, weakened, destroyed. They don’t know, or don’t care.
🐣 RT @Rschooley Republicans casually dismissing an office called “Government Accountability” should be a clue as to where their heads are at.
🐣 RT @MaxBoot Trump is drawn to unethical hustlers because he’s one himself. That may be barely tolerable for the head of a small real-estate firm. It’s intolerable for US president. Senators or voters must act before the govt becomes as disreputable as the Trump Org.
⋙ WaPo, Max Boot: The company Trump keeps tells you everything you need to know http://wapo.st/2R1BvEj
🐣 RT @PostRoz Documents corroborate Parnas’ timeline: texts show he met with Zelensky aide the day before Pence aide was unexpectedly informed that President had ordered VP to skip Zelensky inauguration.
⋙ WaPo: Giuliani associate points to Pence snub as Ukraine pressure point http://wapo.st/38fsU6G
🐣 RT @RepAdamShiff Mr. Parnas’ public interviews and documents shed light on the origins and key players in Trump’s scheme. ¤ His information, Bolton’s offer to testify, and the GAO’s finding of Trump’s illegality all underscore the need for a fair trial. ¤ The American people deserve all the facts.
💙 🐣 RT @jonflan I am frustrated that some ask for a fair impeachment trial and expect there to be one, but McConnell has no intention of providing one; it strikes me more efficient not to play the fool, but to try Trump and the Senate before the nation.
🐣 RT @MaddowBlog “After analyzing all the evidence and sitting back and really understanding what’s going on, I don’t think Vice President Biden did anything wrong. I think he was protecting our country and getting rid of, probably, a crooked attorney general.” -Lev Parnas 💽 https://twitter.com/MaddowBlog/status/1217995798748782597?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @CNN “The GAO ruling, coming after two weeks of impeachment hearings and 30 hours of testimony from 12 witnesses before the Democratic-led House, stands as a powerful indictment against the Trump White House,” writes Michael Bociurkiw for @CNNOpinion
⋙ CNN, Michael Bociurkiw: Trump can’t dodge the GAO report bombshell http://cnn.it/2FZ0QbO
🐣 ◕ RT @pbump With the various new Parnas revelations, it’s worth revisiting the odd web of legal relationships that surrounds him and Giuliani. https://twitter.com/pbump/status/1218022952224153600?s=20/photo/1
⋙ WaPo: The complex network pushing for Ukraine dirt — with Rudy Giuliani at its center http://wapo.st/38dbUhy
// And Lev Parnas close by
NYT: Justice Dept. Investigating Years-Old Leaks and Appears Focused on Comey http://nyti.ms/2uX8P70 //➔ are we a banana republic yet?
// An inquiry into years-old disclosures of classified information is highly unusual and leaves law enforcement officials open to accusations of politicizing their work.
🐣 RT @MSNBCPR RATINGS: “The Rachel @Maddow Show” scores historic rating of 4.5M total viewers in explosive interview with Lev Parnas. http://bit.ly/2NymHLb
🐣 RT @MollyJongFast Oh look, it took 24 hours to get to Criming is fine.
⋙ 🐣 RT @ndrew_lawrence Reince Priebus: “Sometimes the best defense is the ‘so-what’ defense which is, if everything the Democrats said is true it’s still not impeachable. If everything Lev Parnas said is true, it’s still not impeachable” 💽 https://twitter.com/MollyJongFast/status/1218019699407118337?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @dfriedman33 Some people who gave Parnas $:
Harry Sargeant: https://motherjones.com/politics/2020/01/billionaire-oil-magnate-funded-travel-by-lev-parnas/…
Firtash: https://bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-12-17/firtash-lawyer-was-source-of-1-million-to-parnas-giuliani-ally…
Toensing & diGenova: https://reuters.com/article/us-usa-trump-whistleblower-firtash/indicted-giuliani-associate-worked-on-behalf-of-ukrainian-oligarch-firtash-idUSKBN1WQ2H5…
Brian Ballard: https://nytimes.com/2019/11/20/us/politics/trump-fund-raisers-subpoenaed.html…
Charles Gucciardo, sort of: https://emptywheel.net/2019/11/08/why-did-gucciardo-pay-giuliani-partners-for-his-loan-to-fraud-guarantee/
Some people who gave Parnas $:
Harry Sargeant: https://t.co/d6hJhgHmeI
Firtash: https://t.co/qvZwwwJq5w
Toensing & diGenova: https://t.co/lfjXyKVc4M
Brian Ballard: https://t.co/vGHDd9ZNZc
Charles Gucciardo, sort of: https://t.co/71rpjO2E26 pic.twitter.com/srmLAgJh9V— Dan Friedman (@dfriedman33) January 16, 2020
🐣 RT @DeadlineWH “Mr. Barr does not need any help in undermining his own reputation, he’s done a fine job of that by himself, but there are institutions outside of the executive branch that can hold an attorney general accountable: the Congress and the media” – Chuck Rosenberg w/ @NicolleDWallace 💽 https://twitter.com/DeadlineWH/status/1217938010316136448?s=20
🐣 RT @joelockhart The only oath that matters for Republicans is the oath to their dear leader @realDonaldTrump It’s not a political party any longer, it’s a cult. Welcome to America’s version of North Korea.
⋙ 🐣 RT @Acyn The Senator [Lindsey Graham] took an oath hours ago and he still has the audacity to appear on Fox News to announce his bias 💽 https://twitter.com/Acyn/status/1217966764551634944?s=20/photo/1
MotherJones, Dan Friedman: Billionaire Oil Magnate Funded Travel by Lev Parnas http://bit.ly/38pBCQb
// A lawyer for GOP donor Harry Sargeant says the money was a loan.
🐣 Two topics not delved into by @maddow:
1) Payments from Firtash ➔ Parnas ➔ Giuliani
2) Perry et al involvement in gas/oil board deal
May have been off the table for these interviews
🐣 RT @BlogsOfWar “…liberal democracy cannot function without a shared understanding of reality. As long as the zone is flooded with shit, that shared understanding is impossible.”
⋙ 🐣 RT @seanilling “If everybody always lies to you, the consequence is not that you believe the lies, but rather that nobody believes anything any longer… And with such a people you can then do what you please.” – Arendt
⋙⋙ 🚫 Vox, Sean Illing: “Flood the zone with shit”: How misinformation overwhelmed our democracy http://bit.ly/2tq6L74
// too depressing; The impeachment trial probably won’t change any minds. Here’s why.
🐣 RT @MarshallCohen Lev Parnas says he watched Trump fire Yovanovitch. At a private dinner for donors at the Trump hotel last spring, Parnas told Trump that Yovanovitch was badmouthing him. Parnas says Trump then turned to a WH aide and said, “Fire her. Get rid of her.”
⋙ CNN, Marshall Cohen: Lev Parnas says he watched Trump fire the US ambassador to Ukraine http://cnn.it/38dPm03
🐣 RT @McFaul To those doubting the validity of Parnas claims, there is a REALLY easy way to confirm or deny his claims — call witnesses to the Senate trial under oath ! How can any American, let alone Senators, be against the truth, evidence, facts?
🧵 RT @joshtpm Obviously Trump’s denials of knowing Lev Parnas are absurd. But we can actually get to pretty concrete refutation. John Dowd had to get Trump’s permission to represent Parnas because of a potential conflict since Dowd had earlier been Trump’s lawyer. Jay Sekulow extended that … 📌 https://twitter.com/joshtpm/status/1218007876196802561?s=20
🐣 RT @CNN “Wherever we went, he said, ‘I don’t represent the government, I represent the President of the United States.'” ¤ Lev Parnas on the role of Rudy Giuliani in Ukraine, adding, “It was all about 2020 to make sure [Trump] had another four years.” http://cnn.it/2tgTe1L
🐣 RT @MuellerSheWrote Parnas says he has a significant fear of Barr and the DoJ, and that’s why he’s telling his story. He believes he’s safer telling his story than leaving it in the hands of Barr. “I’m more scared of our own justice department than I am of these criminals”. #ParnasInterview
🐣 RT @matthewamiller So add Jay Sekulow to the list of people who didn’t want anything to do with this drug deal, according to Parnas on @maddow. Smart guy!
🐣 RT @matthewamiller So the guy Trump says he never had a conversation with just said he personally got Trump to order that Yovanovitch be fired at a small dinner at the Trump Hotel.
🐣 RT @MuellerSheWrote Parnas said trump tried multiple times to fire Yovanovitch going back to spring 2018, but not Tillerson, Bolton, nor Pompeo would do it. That is what started the smear campaign. #ParnasInterview
🧵 RT @awprokop Parnas tells Maddow again (citing Sondland) that “everybody was in the loop,” but also points out: “Everybody didn’t *agree* with the loop.” ¤ Example is, Jay Sekulow. Parnas says he knew all about it, but didn’t want to be involved, “wanted to stay away from it.” 📌 https://twitter.com/awprokop/status/1217997160148586496?s=20
🧵 RT @lrozen Parnas has significant fear of @TheJusticeDept and AG Barr, Maddow says, thinks safer to get out what he knows than have Barr et al know what he knows. 📌 https://twitter.com/lrozen/status/1217991513025720322?s=20
🐣 RT @dcpoll Parnas to #Maddow on Bill Barr: If you look at Trump in 2017, he wasn’t that powerful. He got more powerful when he got Barr. I’m more afraid of DOJ/Barr than these criminals –– they can lock you in a room and treat you like some animal…
🐣 RT @kelly2277 😮 WHOA! Once Parnas and Fruman got arrested Trump abandoned him‼️In jail, John Dowd and Downing starting acting like drill sergeants and telling Parnas to keep quiet and not implicate the President! THIS IS CRAZY‼️🔥🔥🔥
🐣 RT @lrozen Parnas says the Ukrainians multiple times said they would announce corruption investigations, then walk it back. Giuliani would fume they don’t want corruption investigations, it had to be of Biden.
// Part 2 Maddow Interview of Lev Parnas ⇈ ⇈ ⇈
🐣 RT @tribelaw The solemnity of what we witnessed today after the Chief Justice administered the oath to do impartial justice marked a new phase in a process that up to now has been mostly noise. The sounds of silence will permit Senators to LISTEN. And that means they just might hear.
🐣 RT @FrankFigliuzzi1 They’re afraid Trump may not like the truth? That’s their job. Intel agencies push to close threats hearing after Trump outburst
⋙ Politico: Intel agencies push to close threats hearing after Trump outburst http://politi.co/30rsWFS
WaPo: ‘It was like a breeding ground’: Trump hotel’s mix of GOP insiders and hangers-on helped give rise to impeachment episodes http://wapo.st/2TxunkI
🐣 RT @kylegriffin1 Schiff: “In the history of the Republic, no president has ever ordered the complete defiance of an impeachment inquiry, or sought to obstruct and impede so comprehensively the ability of the House of Representatives to investigate high crimes and misdemeanors.” Via ABC 💽 https://twitter.com/kylegriffin1/status/1217861596409712646?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @kylegriffin1 New from Sen. Susan Collins: “While I need to hear the case argued and the questions answered, I tend to believe having additional information would be helpful. It is likely that I would support a motion to call witnesses at that point in the trial just as I did in 1999.”
NYT: Robert Hyde, Erratic Ex-Landscaper, Is Unlikely New Impeachment Figure http://nyti.ms/3afakgU
// F.B.I. agents visited Mr. Hyde’s home and business in Connecticut after electronic messages suggested he had been illegally tracking the American ambassador to Ukraine.
🐣 RT @HelenKennedy Here is Mitch McConnell affirming the oath he just took: “I solemnly swear that in all things appertaining to the trial of Donald John Trump now pending, I will do impartial justice according to the Constitution and laws, so help me God.” https://twitter.com/HelenKennedy/status/1217891912008466439?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @neal_katyal Want to highlight something @kateashaw1 noticed in GAO opinion. It doesn’t just conclude White House broke law w Ukraine aid (mirroring Article 1). Also says was obstruction of the investigation (Article 2) &raises profound constitutional worries. That obstruction still continuing https://twitter.com/neal_katyal/status/1217878163931516928?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @cspan Chief Justice: “Do you solemnly swear that in all things appertaining to the trial of the impeachment of Donald John Trump, president of the United States, now pending, you will do impartial justice according to the Constitution and laws, so help you God?”
Senators: “I do.”
🐣 RT @brianstelter “A Very Stable Genius: Donald J. Trump’s Testing of America” has hit No. 1 on Amazon’s best sellers list, owing to yesterday’s leaks. And NYT’s @DwightGarner just came out with this rave review, calling it a “taut and terrifying book”
⋙ NYT, Dwight Garner: A Meticulous Account of Trump’s Tenure Reads Like a Comic Horror Story http://nyti.ms/2NypvYT
🐣 RT @eliehonig Question for Parnas: the $500,00 that you paid @RudyGiuliani through your company “Fraud Guarantee” – Where did that money come from? What was that money for? And what work did Giuliani do to earn that half million?
🐣 Perhaps it’s possible to oppose Article I Abuse of Power. But HOW can anyone oppose Article II Obstruction of Congress without at the same time holding that the House has no right of impeachment? Iow, ruling against the Constitution itself? This is a Constitutional Crisis.
🐣 RT @duty2warn As a narcissist, he craves adulation. But at his core, he craves legitimacy. He’s tried to force it with a falsified narrative on inheritance, grades, skill, wealth, achievement, acuity. Too many are on to him. He’ll never gain legitimacy. But he MUST protect the lies and secrets
🐣 RT @AshaRangappa_ Well, using interstate commerce (including wires) to communicate threats against foreign officials is a federal crime. So.
⋙ 🐣 RT @ShimonPro FBI investigators went to the home and the business of Robert Hyde on Thursday. The agents were seen by CNN and confirmed by a law enforcement official. They were at the home early Thursday morning in Weatogue, CT before going to Hyde’s business in Avon, CT.
🐣 RT @sfpelosi So Ukraine is doing a better job of looking out for the safety of a United States ambassador than her own government. ¤ Shame on #ImpeachedForLife @potus and @SecPompeo! #AllRoadsLeadToPutin
⋙ 🐣 RT @jimsciutto Breaking: Ukraine announces it is probing possible surveillance of US Ambassador Marie Yovanovitch, expects US cooperation in the investigation.
⋙⋙ 🐣 RT @jimsciutto And note this: CNN has reached out to the State Dept about Ukraine’s investigation. It has not replied to multiple inquiries about the matter and whether it will open its own investigation. @kylieatwood reports
🐣 RT @tribelaw Mark Short, the chief of staff to VP Pence, said Lev Parnas’ interview on @maddow contradicted much of the sworn testimony of the witnesses heard by @RepAdamSchiff’s Committee. That is a flat-out lie. There was full corroboration, no contradiction.
🐣 RT @BillKristol If Mitch McConnell had the courage of his convictions, he would politely decline to take the oath today “to do impartial justice according to the Constitution and laws.”
🐣 RT @AshaRangappa_ Bill Barr is super concerned about “illegal spying”…so he’s going to have DOJ all over this too, right?
⋙ 🐣 RT @mayawiley So not quite the investigation #Trump & #Giuliani wanted: Ukraine launches probe into alleged surveillance of former U.S. envoy
⋙⋙ NBCNews: Ukraine launches probe into alleged surveillance of former U.S. envoy http://nbcnews.to/2FRTHKe
🐣 RT @jmclaughlinSAIS Toughness is too admired and too little understood in Washington. Listen to FDR in 1940: “Human kindness has never weakened the stamina or softened the fiber of a free people. A nation does not have to be cruel in order to be tough.”
Politico: White House violated the law by freezing Ukraine aid, GAO says http://politi.co/2QWuMvn
// “Faithful execution of the law does not permit the president to substitute his own policy priorities for those that Congress has enacted into law,” the GAO wrote.
🐣 RT @EJDionne Hillary Clinton’s use of a private email server was front-page news for years. Trump’s extravagant abuses of power just roll by as if we were watching a movie about another country with a dysfunctional political system & a corrupt, madcap leader. My column
⋙ WaPo, EJDionne: Debating in the shadow of impeachment http://wapo.st/38dQWiI
💙 🐣 RT @JDiamond1 GAO has concluded in a legal decision that the Office of Management and Budget broke the law in withholding security aid to Ukraine: ¤ “Faithful execution of the law does not permit the President to substitute his own policy priorities for those that Congress has enacted into law.”
⋙ 🐣 RT @JDiamond1 “OMB withheld funds for a policy reason, which is not permitted under the Impoundment Control Act (ICA). The withholding was not a programmatic delay. Therefore, we conclude that OMB violated the ICA,” the GAO said in its decision
🐣 RT @JoyceWhiteVance This is where the rubber meets the road. Will Trump try to distance himself from Rudy or not? Hard to do because of all the times he insisted people deal with him but he’s done it to Cohen and others. And then there’s the matter of Rudy’s insurance policy.
⋙ 🐣 RT @Susan_Hennessey Are reporters asking @PressSec about the letter Giuliani wrote to Zelensky and whether the position of the White House is that the letter is not real or otherwise inaccurately represents the involvement of the president?
⋙⋙ 🐣 RT @rebeccaballhouse On Fox & Friends, @PressSec says of Lev Parnas: “This is a man who is under indictment and who’s actually out on bail. This is a man who owns a company called Fraud Inc. … So we’re not too concerned about it. We know that everything in the Senate is going to be fair.”
⋙⋙⋙ 🐣 RT @Susan_Hennessey And if the White House is saying the Rudy inaccurately held himself out to a foreign government as representing the president in seeking a meeting, will Trump be retaining his future services? Does Trump agree Rudy should be questioned under oath?
🐣 RT @Morning_Joe “So now [AG] Bill Barr is investigating himself and clearing himself? That’s not how our justice system works.” — @Mimirocah1 💽 https://twitter.com/Morning_Joe/status/1217788247461580800?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @NoahBookbinder Lev Parnas’s documents are devastating for the President, adding strongly in black and white to the existing evidence of the President’s own involvement and the clear purpose of targeting the President’s political opponents. 1/2
⋙⋙ WaPo, Aaron Blake: 4 takeaways from the Lev Parnas interview and revelations http://wapo.st/2Nz0jS1
1. Ukraine knew this was about hitting Biden, not ‘corruption’
2. Parnas implicates pretty much everybody
3. Doubting the surveillance of Yovanovitch
4. Nunes admits contact with Parnas — suddenly
⋙ 🐣 RT @NoahBookbinder Parnas’s interviews go further, strongly implicating AG Barr and John Bolton among others. There are obviously credibility questions, but at the least these interviews make painfully clear the need for witnesses at the Senate trial who can elucidate just how far this goes. 2/2
WaPo: Ukraine opens probe into possible surveillance of U.S. Ambassador Yovanovitch http://wapo.st/2FU5NCD
⭕ 15 Jan 2020
Politico: Intel agencies push to close threats hearing after Trump outburst http://politi.co/30rsWFS
🐣 RT @DavidCornDC SCOOP: Robert F. Hyde, the new guy in the Ukraine scandal, worked with a mysterious Chinese donor who gave $237,000 to Trump and the GOP. Please read, RT, like, and share.
⋙ MotherJones, David Corn: A New Figure in the Ukraine Scandal Worked for a Mysterious Chinese Trump Donor http://bit.ly/2uRPN1D
// Robert Hyde introduced this donor to Trump at Mar-a-Lago
🐣 RT @CheriJacobus The person who told me I was in danger and a Trump had “guys in Queens” maybe on their way over to harm me was Arthur Schwartz, who was very close to Michael Cohen & Roger Stone, so he would know. Arthur currently is adviser/spokesman for Don Jr. He was trying to help me.
⋙ 🐣 RT @CheriJacobus Parnes stuff is triggering, I admit. Reminding me how f-ing scared I was when Trump and his thugs were targeting me, getting me blacklisted, and I was told he had “guys in Queens” he might be sending over to harm me. Catfished, defamed, blacklisted, hacked, spied on. My reality.
🧵 RT @lrozen Parnas said he was tasked by Giuliani to tell Ukraine presidential aide sergey shaffer, in harsh message, Pence would not come to zelensky inauguration if they don’t announce investigation of Biden. Shaffer blocked him. Told Rudy answer no. Pence attendance canceled next day 📌 https://twitter.com/lrozen/status/1217632160842207235?s=20
⋙ 🐣 RT @ maddow: did pence know why his attendance canceled. ¤ Parnas: gonna quote (sondland): everyone was in the loop. ¤ references Pence meeting with Zelensky in Poland on Sept. 1.
🐣 RT @acslaw “It’s up to John Roberts to make sure senators stay true to their oath” former ACS President @crfredrickson #impeachmenttrial
⋙ WaPo, Caroline Frederickson: It’s up to John Roberts to make sure senators stay true to their oath http://wapo.st/2FVQIAy
WaPo: Parnas used access to Trump’s world to help push shadow Ukraine effort, new documents show http://wapo.st/3ahi9CX
🐣 RT @McFaul Pence involvement in using his public office for private gain — aka corruption — was a big new bombshell tonight. Eager to hear Pence response.
⋙ 🐣 RT @McFaul As I read/see people questioning whether Parnas is credible, my response is compared to whom? Trump? Giuliani? Everything he said tonight was consistent with earlier testimonies. (The one exception might be his speculation about Barr being on the team.) Correct me if Im wrong.
WaPo: How Giuliani’s outreach to Ukrainian gas tycoon wanted in U.S. shows lengths he took in his hunt for material to bolster Trump http://wapo.st/2RrYF62
🐣 RT @JohnWDean Parnas, Rudy, Nunes, Barr, Pompeo, Pence — there is a desperate need for a special prosecutor, immediately! Congress does not have prosecutors or a grand jury to deal with this conspicuous corruption, and these indictable characters. SDNY appears uninterested.
🐣 RT @McFaul I now understand better why Yovanovitch had to be fired — gift to Lutsenko in return for him investigating Bidens. (That was never quite clear to me before). Lutsenko hated Yovanovitch. That I know from many in Ukraine very close to this story.
💙 🐣 RT @mikefarb1 Great point. It was abundantly clear that by not agreeing to just announce an investigation the cost to Ukraine was enormous. They never blinked. They stayed on the right side of this at great peril to themselves. I hope someday we can actually properly thank them.
⋙ 🐣 RT @PamKeithFL What shouldn’t be lost in all of this is that Ukraine didn’t WANT to do the announcement of an investigation because THERE WAS NOTHING TO INVESTIGATE. ¤ They wanted nothing to do with framing Joe Biden to help Trump.
🐣 RT @mikefarb1 Great point. It was abundantly clear that by not agreeing to just announce an investigation the cost to Ukraine was enormous. They never blinked. They stayed on the right side of this at great peril to themselves. I hope someday we can actually properly thank them.
⋙ 🐣 RT @PamKeithFL What shouldn’t be lost in all of this is that Ukraine didn’t WANT to do the announcement of an investigation because THERE WAS NOTHING TO INVESTIGATE. ¤ They wanted nothing to do with framing Joe Biden to help Trump.
🐣 RT @matthewamiller The Barr stuff was pretty unclear and secondhand, but a few things are certain: he needs to recuse himself from handling the Giuliani and Fartas cases, and he needs to testify before Congress about what he knew and what he did.
🧵 RT @LuLuLemew Rudy told Parnas to deliver message harshly that Pence wouldn’t come to Z inaug. ¤ All aid, relationships would be soured, unless they made announcement of Biden investigation. And biggest thing was no support from US “that was the key.” 📌 https://twitter.com/LuluLemew/status/1217631911977345024?s=20
🐣 RT @brhodes Whenever there are disturbing new revelations about the conduct of Trump and his cronies, the scariest thing is to think of everything we don’t know.
DailyBeast, Christopher Dickey: This Is Trump’s Benghazi Moment: ‘It Doesn’t Really Matter’ http://bit.ly/3aeUz9J
// He railed at Hillary over her “What difference does it make?” snap. But the president’s impatience on Iran and Soleimani led to his own insouciance about some serious matters.
🐣 RT @zigmanfreud It has never been more clear that the president of the United States thinks of himself, and acts, just like a mob boss. #DonnySoprano #Maddow #LevSpeaks
🐣 RT @AndreaChalupa Firtash, Ukrainian gas oligarch, wanted by USG, is linked to Russian mafia. ¤ Firtash funded Lev Parnas. ¤ Lev Parnas worked with @realDonaldTrump, Giuliani, & Attorney General Barr [?] to extort Ukraine to invent a scandal to hurt Biden in 2020 election. ¤ This is how the mafia works.
🐣 RT @lrozen why is Toensing so desperate for Yovanovitch’s removal? required for her contracts with Firtash and who else? Lutsenko?
⋙ 🐣 RT @awprokop 3/23/19: Toensing: “Is the Wicket Witch gone?” ¤ Parnas sends over some images. Adds: “Also the wire and Breitbart are doing story’s” ¤ Toensing: “And still no movement?” https://twitter.com/lrozen/status/1217589782630584322?s=20/photo/1-2
🐣 RT @ Isakoff A little context before folks get too excited: DiGenova and Toensing did meet with Barr to try to get the charges against Firtash dropped– and Barr didn’t do what they wanted.
NYT: Lev Parnas, Key Player in Ukraine Affair, Completes Break With Trump and Giuliani http://nyti.ms/2TrWn9q
// In an interview, he said the president knew everything about the effort to push Ukraine to investigate the Bidens and the 2016 election.
🐣 RT @jdawsey “I certainly am not going to disavow them. I have no reason to doubt them. Everything I’ve known about them says they would not commit a crime,” GIULIANI told me of Parnas and Fruman on the day they were arrested.
⋙ 🐣 RT @jdawsey When Lev Parnas was arrested, Giuliani defended him & said he was sticking by him. Tonight he has a different message. “Who cares?” he says in text. “Believe him at your peril.” Adds that he feels sorry for “him and his family.” Does not specify what he sees at falsehoods.
🐣 .@JoyceWhiteVance calls for a special prosecutor on the @11thHour
🐣 RT @Avi_Bueno Derek Harvey, the aide that Lev Parnas said he engaged with in his dealings with Devin Nunes, is at the bottom of this list – he went to Europe with Nunes at the end of November 2018, allegedly trying to dig up dirt on the Bidens.
🧵 RT @SethAbramson Parnas *does* lie to MSNBC. He says the “only” reason to get Yovanovitch out of her post was her blocking the initiation of a Burisma (Biden) investigation. That’s not true. In fact, Parnas also felt she was blocking the removal of the CEO of Naftogaz—a much more important issue. 📌 https://twitter.com/SethAbramson/status/1217645256293920768?s=20
🧵 RT @emptywheel This dude is lying, in a very dangerous way. ¤ But hey, lying in a useful way too. ¤ That’s the point! 📌 https://twitter.com/emptywheel/status/1217636479930982400?s=20
🧵 RT @AndreaNYC [+ProPublica, this a.m.] I re-read the documents Lev Parnas sent to the House. ¤ Some thoughts 1/ 📌 https://twitter.com/AndreaWNYC/status/1217480080714276869?s=20
🐣 RT @Weinsteinlaw The Parnas interview puts Senate Republicans in a real bind. If they think he’s lying, then they should want Bolton and other witnesses to testify to clear things up. A sham trial is an admission that it’s all true.
WaPo, Philip Bump: How Ukraine’s top prosecutor went after Marie Yovanovitch, step by step http://wapo.st/38bqk1D
🐣 Don’t forget Pence’s office has classified info his asst Jennifer Williams wanted to share and that Adam Schiff said should not be classified.
🐣 [My:] Takeaways:
1. Hyde may be just a drunk hanger-on
2. Barr discussed Firtash extradition with Toensing and diGenova, but extradition was not lifted (cold feet?)
3. Bolton must testify!
4. Pence is protecting himself
🧵 RT @jedshug Thread following @maddow interview with Parnas. I am particularly interested in his Barr allegations. Remember Trump implicates Barr in the July Ukraine call & Barr is in whistleblower report, so reason to suspect. ¤ But I’m skeptical if no details or documentation to verify… 📌 https://twitter.com/jedshug/status/1217630045969289217?s=20
🐣 RT @grantstern Lev Parnas says he met with @DevinNunes “several times.” ¤ Also with his aide Derek Harvey. ¤ “They were involved in getting all this stuff on Biden.” ¤ #Maddow
🐣 RT @ECMcLaughlin He witnessed conversations between Giuliani and Barr and di Genova and Barr about setting up meetings with Firtash’s team, in the context of stopping extradition proceedings for dirt on Weissman and for the opening of an investigation in Ukraine into the Bidens. It’s all there.
🐣 RT @KlasfeldReports Stunner from the latest doc release: ¤ This appears to be Lev Parnas transmitting The Hill’s John Solomon’s pitch and questions to Yuriy Lutsenko, dated shortly before the editorials smearing Ambassador Yovanovich. https://twitter.com/KlasfeldReports/status/1217619391484919809?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @KFaulders Asked Giuliani if he had any comment on the ongoing Parnas interview and he texted me “None he’s a very sad situation.”
🐣 RT @davidgura Lev Parnas tells @maddow he met Robert Hyde at the bar at the Trump Hotel, which was, he says, “like a breeding ground.”
🐣 RT @NatashaBertrand Parnas says Robert Hyde “is a weird character” who he met at the Trump Hotel where “he was a regular at the bar.”
🐣 RT @lrozen Parnas says Bolton and Giuliani were “butting heads.” “from venezuela to ukraine, bolton did not agree” with giuliani, parnas says. adding Bolton knew what was going on
🐣 RT @kelly2277 @VP cancelled his trip to Zelensky’s Inauguration after Parnas’ phone call because they wouldn’t announce the investigation into the Bidens. It gave Parnas klout when Pence cancelled his trip. @VP knew everything…. He MUST resign
🐣 RT @BradMossEsq Any time people want to start apologizing to the Ukraine whistleblower for all the smears, and in light of now being vindicated over and over by defecting members of Trump’s inner circle, they can form a line.
🐣 RT @EliSkokols Wow. Parnas says Giuliani told him to deliver a tough message to Zelensky aide that “it wasn’t just military aid, it was all aid” from US that depended on Ukraine announcing the Biden investigation Trump wanted.
🐣 RT @NatSecMulligan “It was never about corruption, it was strictly about Burisma and Hunter Biden and Joe Biden.” —witness Lev Parnas.
🐣 RT @RadioFreeTom Watching this Parma’s interview on @maddow, I’m going to be fascinated to see how the Senate Republicans will now argue that they don’t need to hear witnesses.
🐣 RT @justinamash Most members of Congress don’t think anymore. They just follow whatever they’re told by their leadership. A lot of members of Congress are used to that lifestyle and they like it. They don’t want responsibility. They want the job, not the responsibility.
⋙ RollingStone, Andy Kroll: The House’s lone independent talks congressional cowardice, how Pentagon spending became untouchable, and Trump’s impeachment http://bit.ly/2u2M0OR
🐣 RT @chrislhayes As you read through the documents and notice how *intensely focused* they are on firing Yovanovitch, keep in mind it now appears that itself is a quid pro quo. Lutsenko will only play ball and give them Biden dirt if they get rid of Yovanovitch.
🧵 RT @SethAbramson Parnas is a low-level swindler. Kilimnik is a high-level Kremlin agent. Sater is a high-level swindler. Akhmetshin is an international operator. All do—as a matter of fact, not opinion—hold critical evidence. At least 3 face criminal liability. This “lumping” produces a bad take. 📌 https://twitter.com/SethAbramson/status/1217621403681415168?s=20
⋙ 🐣 RT @MollyMcKew What guys like Sater, Akhmetshin, Kilimnik, Parnas know best is how to play people by claiming they have information that is unique & critical. They use it to buy access, stir crisis, layer narrative. ¤ When they get unfettered access to our media, they know how to use subversion.
🐣 RT @TheRynheart “Trump knew exactly what was going on,” Parnas told Maddow when asked to correct the biggest inaccuracy about his dealings with (Trump.) “He was aware of all of my movements. I wouldn’t do anything without the consent of Rudy Giuliani or the president”
⋙ Politico: Lev Parnas: Trump knew everything http://politi.co/2Nvpvch
// The associate of Rudy Giuliani said the president was fully aware of his actions in Ukraine.
🐣 RT @BradMossEsq This is who @realDonaldTrump and @GOPLeader were hanging with at the World Series …..
⋙ 🐣 RT @JoshNBCnews “We were playing. I thought we were playing,” Hyde tells @ericbolling. ¤ He dismisses the Parnas texts as “colorful texts” from when they’d “had a few pops way back when I used to drink”
🐣 RT @thedailybeast Devin Nunes told Fox News on Wednesday night that he now remembers speaking on the phone with Lev Parnas, an associate of Trump attorney Rudy Giuliani actively involved in the Ukraine scheme at the heart of the president’s impeachment
⋙ DailyBeast, Justin Baragona: Devin Nunes Now Remembers Call With Lev Parnas http://bit.ly/2TuyEVZ
🐣 RT @JoyceWhiteVance Just now, @chrislhayes says he’s read the transcript of @maddow’s interview with Lev Parnas & he also implicated AG William Barr.
🐣 RT @jedshug Here’s the context everyone is ignoring: ¤ The DOJ has had Parnas’s phone & all these damning texts for 3 months. ¤ But we learn of them only bc a court order allowed Parnas to give them to the House a few days ago. ¤ Seems like Barr is covering up these crimes. ¤ And he’s implicated.
🐣 RT @MSNBC “When the Speaker walks out of the room, that will be the end of her formal role in this process. What’s left now is entirely to the 7 impeachment managers.” – Garrett Haake on House’s role after delivery of impeachment articles.
⋙ 💽 MSNBC, MeetThePress: House sends impeachment articles to Senate http://on.msnbc.com/3abVesx
// “When the speaker walks out of the room, that’ll be the end of her formal role in this process,” News Correspondent Garrett Haake explains.
🐣 RT @Hardball “Well the book provides rich detail of what we have seen everyday for the last 3 years: That Donald Trump is the most ignorant as well as incompetent individual who has ever held the office of the presidency. I worked for 6 presidents.”@JohnBrennan on Trump. #Hardball
// on Phil Rucker and Carole Leonnig’s book “A Very Stable Genius”
🐣 RT @MaxBoot While Trump’s instincts are incoherent and illogical, they are not entirely random. Highly trained Trumpologists are able to spot patterns just as zoologists do when they study primate behavior.
⋙ WaPo, Max Boot: These 7 impulses explain Trump’s inexplicable foreign policy http://wapo.st/2tltEbJ
🧵 RT @awprokop Welp, here’s another 390 pages of Lev Parnas messages, posted by the House: http://bit.ly/30wBony
Starts off with a fun one to Parnas from a Trump PAC official: “What should I send Don to tweet?” A tweet from Jr. soon materialized.
Welp, here's another 390 pages of Lev Parnas messages, posted by the House: https://t.co/0x2GU1xaHe
Starts off with a fun one to Parnas from a Trump PAC official: "What should I send Don to tweet?"
A tweet from Jr. soon materialized. pic.twitter.com/DN5WEfR5Kg
— Andrew Prokop (@awprokop) January 15, 2020
📌 https://twitter.com/awprokop/status/1217570455973957639?s=20
🐣 RT @awprokop Welp, here’s another 390 pages of Lev Parnas messages, posted by the House: http://bit.ly/30wBony
Starts off with a fun one to Parnas from a Trump PAC official: “What should I send Don to tweet?” A tweet from Jr. soon materialized.
Welp, here's another 390 pages of Lev Parnas messages, posted by the House: https://t.co/0x2GU1xaHe
Starts off with a fun one to Parnas from a Trump PAC official: "What should I send Don to tweet?"
A tweet from Jr. soon materialized. pic.twitter.com/DN5WEfR5Kg
— Andrew Prokop (@awprokop) January 15, 2020
🐣 RT @Hardball Lev Parnas is breaking his silence in an exclusive interview with MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow. ¤ When asked what he thinks when Trump said “I don’t know those gentlemen” in regards to him and Igor Fruman, Parnas says the president lied. https://twitter.com/hardball/status/1217606354212478976?s=20
🧵 RT @abigailtracy After document dump last night, one animating question among diplomats is: What did Mike Pompeo know about the effort to oust Masha Yovanovitch and when did he know it? 📌 https://twitter.com/abigailtracy/status/1217595267148591104?s=20
⋙ VanityFair: “He Is on Fox News. He Is in California. He Is Everywhere but Doing His Job”: As the Ukraine Plot Thickens, Mike Pompeo Is Missing in Action http://bit.ly/2Rg8Dao
🧵 RT @emptywheel Again, DOJ has admitted that 3 Ukrainians “volunteered” evidence to John Durham’s inquiry. It seems inconceivable that Lutsenko was not one of them. 📌 https://twitter.com/emptywheel/status/1217591647741120513?s=20
🐣 RT @TheBeatWithAri .@mayawiley: “The critical thing about this trial is that the American people… will get to see how or whether we’ll get all the facts. So the Constitution works to this point. The question of witnesses will be central to whether or not the Constitution continues to work.”
Politico: Democrats release more Parnas evidence, including voicemails with Trump associates http://politi.co/36VOTiQ
// The previously undisclosed documents underscore the evolving nature of the investigation.
BuzzfeedNews: Key Witnesses In The Mueller Probe Told Investigators How Sean Hannity Advised Trump’s Closest Aides http://bit.ly/3aeclKf
// Hannity, the popular Fox News personality, is mentioned more than a dozen times in documents BuzzFeed News has obtained from the Mueller investigation so far.
🔊 Apple Podcasts: DeadlineWH: “What kind of low have we sunk to today?” http://apple.co/2G5iAT3 //➔ this was especially good
Nicolle Wallace discusses incriminating new evidence around the president’s involvement in the pressure campaign against Ukraine. Plus, Speaker Pelosi’s impeachment strategy as she announces the impeachment mangers, and a new book paints a picture of Trump as uninformed and unstable.
Joined by: New York Times political reporter Nick Confessore, former U.S. attorney Joyce Vance, Republican strategist Rick Wilson, former assistant director for counterintelligence at the FBI Frank Figliuzzi, MSNBC Correspondent Garrett Haake, Politico senior Washington correspondent Anna Palmer, Washington Post White House reporter Ashley Parker, and New York Times Magazine chief national correspondent Mark Leibovich
💙❤️ 💽 Frontline: America’s Great Divide: From Obama to Trump http://to.pbs.org/2TrbZdf
💙❤️ NYT Mag, Jonathan Mahler: The Fog of Rudy http://nyti.ms/36ZfgV7
// Did he change — or did America?
🧵 RT @Kasparov63 Stop asking about the new dance Putin’s Kremlin puppet show is performing. His intent to be dictator for life was clear over a decade ago and the only way he’ll leave power is in a box, just like his idol Stalin. 📌 https://twitter.com/Kasparov63/status/1217538768657362944?s=20
🐣 RT @RCdeWinter what can one say
when one’s country is not one’s country anymore
but a criminal empire with no morality
and a vested interest in removing by any means possible
those doing honorable work under oath?
america i do not know you
dressed as you are in a whore’s costume of shame
~ RCdW
🐣 RT @SpeakerPelosi Today, I have the privilege of naming the Managers of the impeachment trial of the President. #DefendOurDemocracy https://twitter.com/SpeakerPelosi/status/1217464494668091394?s=20/photo/1
// list of House Impeachment Managers
Vox, Ian Millhiser: A Trump tweet revealed the absurdity of the legal case against Obamacare http://bit.ly/2Ns37Ai
// Even Trump’s having trouble getting his head around the Trump administration’s legal arguments.
🐣 RT @MSNBC Tonight on @MSNBC: ¤ Lev Parnas speaks out to @maddow.
🐣 RT @JoeNBC “The question Americans need to ask is do we have the right to accurate information from our White House, or not? Would we permit an elected small town mayor to lie this frequently about town business? How about a school board chair?” ~@svdate
⋙ HuffPo, SV Date: The Ministry Of Untruth http://bit.ly/2QWCcyM
// What Donald Trump’s unending stream of lies has done to our White House, our country and us.
🐣 RT @NatashaBertrand “The Intercept obtained police records showing that Hyde violated a restraining order issued by a Washington, DC superior court judge at the request of a Republican consultant who says that Hyde stalked her and intimidated her family over the last year.”
⋙ TheIntercept, Lee Fang: Trump Supporter Who Discussed Surveillance of Ambassador Marie Yovanovitch Has History of Stalking, Mental Health Issues http://bit.ly/2FTbNeR
🐣 RT @McFaul Given the shocking revelations about the stalking of Yovanovitch by Trump’s associates, imagine all that we still do NOT know. Now more than ever, the Senate needs to see State Department & NSC emails & documents as well as hear testimony from Bolton, Pompeo, and Mulvaney, etc
🐣 RT @tribelaw It’s telling that not one of the Republicans who spoke in the House as it approved the transfer of the impeachment articles to the Senate said a single word contesting any of the facts found by the House in the articles or a word defending Trump’s conduct. Not one word.
🐣 RT @CAPAction This exchange is even more chilling now:
Q: “What did you think when [Trump] told [Zelensky]…that you were going to ‘go through some things’?”
YOVANOVITCH: “I was very concerned…It didn’t sound good. It sounded like a threat.”
🧵 RT @weareoversight We lined up the newly released Parnas messages with the records we obtained from the State Department through FOIA litigation, as well as other records and reports. ¤ The timeline is troubling. (Thread) 📌 https://twitter.com/weareoversight/status/1217495167328038913?s=20
DailyBeast, Anna Nemtsova: Putin’s Power Play: Shuffle the Cabinet But Keep Command http://bit.ly/3a69Rxs
// As the Kremlin continues dramatically expanding its military power and influence, Putin makes a feint at liberalization while keeping a firm grip.
💙 WaPo, Aaron Blake: Lev Parnas reveals a new Ukraine quid pro quo http://wapo.st/38aEEHO “It all suggests the Ukrainians [in particular, Lutsenko] were perhaps more interested in ousting Yovanovitch than were even Giuliani and company.”
// refs to Adam Entous interview w Lutsenko in TheNewYorker
🐣 RT @adegrandpre On Marie Yovanovitch & the revelation she was possibly under some sort of surveillance while in Ukraine, it appears the matter has been referred to the State Dept’s Bureau of Diplomatic Security. https://twitter.com/adegrandpre/status/1217477166105010178?s=20/photo/1
// letter from Engel
🐣 RT @nahaltoosi Mini-SCOOP: The Hill wanted to know what was up with embassy security. The @StateDept promised to tell them today, then cancelled without explanation.
⋙ Politico: State Department abruptly cancels briefing on embassy security http://politi.co/389PNbG
// Congressional staffers had asked for an update following the administration’s claims that Iran threatened U.S. embassies.
💙 BuzzFeedNews, Emma Loop: Congress Released Messages From Rudy Giuliani’s Associate As New Impeachment Evidence http://bit.ly/2TqyZJr
// documents; The evidence includes text messages, handwritten notes, and other correspondence from Lev Parnas, one of the men who worked with Rudy Giuliani to dig up dirt in Ukraine.
🐣 RT @sarahnferris Pelosi’s big secret is finally out. Updated story w/ @heatherscope Dem managers today are a far cry from the 13 white men who prosecuted Clinton in ’99. The team is 3 women and 4 men, with 2 members of Black Caucus and a member of the Hispanic Caucus.
⋙ Politico: Pelosi appoints impeachment managers for Trump’s Senate trial http://politi.co/2Ron10a
// The House will vote on a resolution later Wednesday sending the articles of impeachment to the Senate.
🐣 RT @C_Summerfeldt Chilling. @rfhyde1, a pro-Trump congressional candidate in Connecticut, texted Lev Parnas in March that he had Marie Yovanovitch under surveillance in Kiev and that the people there “are willing to help if we/you would like a price.” He also called Yovanovitch a “bitch.” https://twitter.com/C_Sommerfeldt/status/1217220525757534214?s=20/photo/1
⋙ 🐣 RT @C_Summerfeldt Here’s the exact text exchange. @rfhyde1 also texted, “Guess you can do anything in the Ukraine with money,” after telling Parnas that he had Yovanovitch under surveillance. https://twitter.com/C_Sommerfeldt/status/1217222764702195713?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @MSNBC Fmr. Trump national security adviser Michael Flynn is asking a court to withdraw his guilty plea. @BarbMcQuade says the judge must find “a fair and just reason before he allows Michael Flynn out of his guilty plea.”
⋙ 💽 MSNBC, RachelMaddow: Despite past admissions, Flynn looks to withdraw guilty plea http://on.msnbc.com/30o5CJ4
// Barbara McQuade, former U.S. attorney, talks with Rachel Maddow about what it means that disgraced former Donald Trump national security advisor Michael Flynn wants to withdraw his guilty plea and change it to not guilty despite what he has already signed and admitted to in open court.
🐣 RT @pbump There are a lot of fascinating details in the handwritten notes Lev Parnas provided to House investigators. I walked through their apparent significance.
⋙ 🐣 RT @pbump This page, in particular, is telling, apparently outlining the effort to separate the oligarch Firtash from his counsel and move him to Giuliani allies — with notes at bottom right (10) related to the desired investigations. https://twitter.com/pbump/status/1217473291507716101?s=20/photo/1 https://wapo.st/2Rjb4sD
💙 ⋙⋙ WaPo, Philip Bump: Lev Parnas’s handwritten notes about Giuliani’s Ukraine push, annotated http://wapo.st/2TutIAz
🐣 RT @evanmcmurray Rep. Jerry Nadler: “Some people said, well, let the election take care of it. [Pres. Trump] is trying to cheat in that election.” ¤ “So it is essential that we bring this impeachment to stop the president…from rigging the next election.” https://abcn.ws/3agvKdN 💽 https://twitter.com/evanmcmurry/status/1217472651041628161?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @RichardEngel Iranian officals and pro-govt media now expressing sympathy for protesters and Iranians who felt lied to, expressing outrage and anger that human error led to shoot-down. Promising justice.
💙 🐣 RT @kylegriffin1 It’s official. Speaker Pelosi announces the impeachment managers:
• Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA)
• Rep. Jerry Nadler (D-NY)
• Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D-CA)
• Rep. Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY)
• Rep. Val Demings (D-FL)
• Rep. Jason Crow (D-CO)
• Rep. Sylvia Garcia (D-TX)
🐣 RT @SpeakerPelosi The President has fought tooth-and-nail to keep thousands of documents away from the public. ¤ And no wonder – each time new pieces come out, they show President Trump right at the center of the effort to pressure Ukraine to investigate his political rivals.
🐣 RT @SpeakerPelosi There can be no full & fair trial in the Senate if Leader McConnell blocks the Senate from hearing witnesses and obtaining documents President Trump is covering up. #DefendOurDemocracy
🐣 RT @SpeakerPelosi The President has fought tooth-and-nail to keep thousands of documents away from the public. ¤ And no wonder – each time new pieces come out, they show President Trump right at the center of the effort to pressure Ukraine to investigate his political rivals.
WaPo, Jennifer Rubin: New evidence of impeachable conduct: Could it get worse for Trump? http://wapo.st/38cPMEa
🐣 RT @AnaCabrera MORE: Russian president Vladimir Putin thanked members of the government for their work but added that “not everything worked out.” ¤ Putin added that in the near future he will meet with each member of the cabinet.
⋙ 🐣 RT @AnaCabrera #Breaking: Russian prime minister Dmitry Medvedev announced that he and the entire Russian government is to resign in a televised statement on the Russian state TV.
🐣 RT @jimsciutto What’s happening here? Putin appears to be changing the constitution, including shifting powers to PM, to allow him to continue to rule Russia after term limit as president is up.
⋙ 🐣 RT @jimsciutto Breaking: Russian PM Dmitry Medvedev announced that he and the entire Russian government is to resign in a televised statement on the Russian state TV. President Vladimir Putin thanked members but added that “not everything worked out.”
WaPo, Neal Katyal and Joshua Geltzer: Lev Parnas and Rudy Giuliani have demolished Trump’s claims of innocence http://wapo.st/36ZJC9Y
// New documents show why the president has been trying to hide evidence from Congress.
⭕ 14 Jan 2020
NYT Editorial: Take Impeachment Seriously, Senators http://nyti.ms/2FR6jkR
// Can they handle the truth?
MotherJones, Dan Friedman: New Documents Appear to Link Ukrainian Oligarch With Trump’s Push for Biden Probe http://bit.ly/2FSYpaJ
… The documents also suggest ties between Trump’s effort to push Ukraine to launch investigations and efforts by indicted Ukrainian magnate Dmitry Firtash, who is under house arrest in Vienna, to convince the Trump administration to drop the case against him.
Parnas’ scribblings indicate that Davis’ replacement may have been engineered by Parnas and Giuliani as part of a broader effort to advance Trump’s political interests in Ukraine. And it supports a claim by Parnas’ lawyer, Joseph Bondy, that Toensing and diGenova, through Parnas, suggested to Firtash that they could leverage their ties to Trump and Giuliani to help resolve the oligarch’s “extradition problems” if Firtash hired them and helped them find dirt on the Bidens. Firtash told the New York Times that he hired Toensing and diGenova to obtain a meeting with Attorney General William Barr. They achieved that in August, though they have not succeeded in getting the extradition effort dropped.
Davis on Tuesday told Mother Jones that while representing Firtash, “I drew a red line over anything approaching politics.” He added that he is “sad for Mr. Firtash about this situation.”
🐣 RT @donwinslow If the Parnas document dump today does not move the needle – and I mean really move it – I’m truly afraid nothing will. That letter from Giuliani. Holy shit. That is the textbook definition of a smoking gun.
🐣 RT @BradMossEsq A few months later, he was in the luxury suites with Trump at the World Series.
⋙ 🐣 RT @DavidCornDC SCOOP: Robert F. Hyde, the new mystery player in the Ukraine scandal, was taken into police custody at a Trump resort last year, claiming the Secret Service & a hit man were after him. He was then involuntarily confined in a medical facility.
⋙⋙ MotherJones, David Corn: New Figure in Ukraine Scandal Was Taken Into Police Custody at Trump Resort Last Year http://bit.ly/2FPVY8D
// This landscaper-turned-lobbyist claimed the Secret Service and a hit man were after him.
🐣 RT @ RepAdamSchiff McConnell says the Senate shouldn’t hear witnesses or see documents, as if it’s not a trial, only an appeal. ¤ But the trial has yet to begin:
These new materials show exactly why we need a fair trial — with documents and witnesses. ¤ Not a coverup by the President and his men.
⋙ 🧵 RT @nycsouthpaw The House investigating committees have just sent out some additional ‘evidence’ apparently from Parnas’s devices that they’re transmitting to the Judiciary Committee. https://twitter.com/nycsouthpaw/status/1217210186408087553?s=20/photo/1-4
📌 https://twitter.com/nycsouthpaw/status/1217210186408087553?s=20
WaPo, Philip Bump: With an impeachment trial looming, new evidence that Trump sought personal benefit in Ukraine http://wapo.st/389xi7s
🐣 RT @josephabondy Call the witnesses. Hear the sworn testimony. @realDonaldTrump @RudyGiuliani @senatemajldr @SenSchumer #LetLevSpeak #LevRemembers 💽 https://twitter.com/josephabondy/status/1217124092626771968?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @davidwbrown The documents from Parnas are STUNNING.
However bad we imagine it could be, it was way worse.
They were stalking and implying bringing harm to a US Ambassador.
Giuliani spelled out he was meeting on Trump’s personal behalf.
No sitting Senator can possibly claim this was OK.
🐣 RT @ECMcLaughlin Parnas needs to testify as does the person who notified Yovanovitch to get on the next plane home. ¤ We’re not even close to the end of this story.
🐣 RT @RadioFreeTom Exactly this. Pelosi was never going to get McConnell to agree to a real trial, but she could wait until every GOP vote to engage in this coverup was more costly.
⋙ 🐣 RT @julianzelizer Agreed on the impact. This is the strategy behind Pelosi’s delay. Make the vote that Senate Republicans will inevitably take more costly and more transparent.
⋙ 🐣 RT @DebandKhola She was right all along. He was self impeaching and the GOP were self damning.
🐣 RT @RadioFreeTom Exactly this. Pelosi was never going to get McConnell to agree to a real trial, but she could wait until every GOP vote to engage in this coverup was more costly.
⋙ 🐣 RT @julianzelizer Agreed on the impact. This is the strategy behind Pelosi’s delay. Make the vote that Senate Republicans will inevitably take more costly and more transparent.
🐣 RT @biancagolodryga Let’s revisit the unconscionable treatment of Marie Yovanovitch. Her reputation was smeared by lies, she was attacked by the President, followed, threatened & professionally sidelined. Yet not a peep from Pompeo in defense of the country’s highest ranking female diplomat.
🐣 RT @kylegriffin1 “On October 2, 2019, Jay Sekulow … informed … John Dowd that he had discussed with President Trump ‘the issue of representation’ and that President Trump ‘consents to allowing your representation of Mr. Parnas and Mr. Fruman.'” ¤ On October 10, Trump denied knowing Parnas.
⋙ 🐣 RT @kylegriffin1 NEW: The House Intelligence, Oversight and Foreign Affairs Committees have transmitted additional evidence to be used as part of the Senate impeachment trial. The evidence provided includes phone records, as well as new docs and materials from Lev Parnas. https://bit.ly/2FNeI8U
🐣 RT @BillKristol Hyde and Parnas, and for that matter Rudy and Sondland, are in a way comical (if also thuggish) figures. But it’s worth remembering that from start to finish they’re executing a genuinely sinister plot. And it was Trump’s plot. It was, at the end of the day, Trump’s drug deal.
🐣 RT @TheLastWord .@RepMikeQuigley calls the new revelations in the Parnas-Giuliani documents “deeply disturbing” and asks, “Who gave the orders to do this, to surveil a U.S. ambassador?” and “Who was making these threats?” @JillWineBanks and @MiekeEoyang also discuss. https://on.msnbc.com/2FSD9lg
MotherJones, Dan Friedman (12/17/19): Indicted Ukrainian Oligarch (Firtash) Paid $1 Million to Giuliani Pal (Parnas), Prosecutors Say http://bit.ly/30r9adU
// 12/17/2019; Lev Parnas was on Dmitry Firtash’s payroll.
🐣 RT @AmbDana There was an American plot against the security of a US Ambassador. State must turn over what it has and what steps were taken to protect her AND end the plot. You don’t pull the Ambassador because an American is threatening her. You have the threat arrested.
// former US Ambassador to Qatar
🐣 RT @tribelaw The House should depose Lev Parnas tomorrow.
⋙ Politico: House Dems release new impeachment evidence related to indicted Giuliani associate http://politi.co/388n72R
// It also includes a previously undisclosed May 2019 letter from Giuliani to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.
🐣 RT @donwinslow This letter. My God. If @SpeakerPelosi @RepAdamSchiff and @RepJerryNadler don’t reopen EVERYTHING based on this the Democratic party is surrendering 2020.
This letter is that important.
This letter is the ballgame.
This letter. My God. If @SpeakerPelosi @RepAdamSchiff and @RepJerryNadler don't reopen EVERYTHING based on this the Democratic party is surrendering 2020.
This letter is that important.
This letter is the ballgame. pic.twitter.com/VMqW6HZNHy— Don Winslow (@donwinslow) January 15, 2020
// Rudy’s letter to Zelensky
🐣♫ RT @mikefarb1
Texting and Screenshots
And Treason by Dipshits
Nunes, Giuliani
And the Rest of these Nitwits
All of Lev’s Data all Tied Up with Strings
These are a few of my Favorite things.
MotherJones, Dan Friedman: New Documents Appear to Link Ukrainian Oligarch With Trump’s Push for Biden Probe http://bit.ly/2FSYpaJ
// Democrats released explosive new material on Trump’s Ukraine scandal.
🧵 RT @Teri_Kanefield The Parnas doc dump included this letter from Giuliani to Zelensky. ¤ Nothing new here. Just another smoking gun. ¤ First Giuliani makes noise about how it’s perfectly legal for the president’s private lawyer, on behalf of the president, to ask a foreign leader for a favor. 1/ 📌 https://twitter.com/Teri_Kanefield/status/1217319115938885632?s=20
The Parnas doc dump included this letter from Giuliani to Zelensky.
Nothing new here. Just another smoking gun.
First Giuliani makes noise about how it’s perfectly legal for the president’s private lawyer, on behalf of the president, to ask a foreign leader for a favor.
— Teri Kanefield (@Teri_Kanefield) January 15, 2020
⋙ 🐣 RT @Teri_Kanefield 1/ Hint: It isn’t ¤ Trump and Giuliani are using the levers of government for their personal benefit. ¤ This is what happens in what Hungarian scholar Balint Magyar calls mafia states—his name for the autocracies springing up in the former Soviet Union. [ … ]
🐣 RT @matthewamiller Along with the SDNY probe into Giuliani, Parnas and Fruman, there are FOIA releases teed up for the rest of the year. Senators who vote to acquit are going to own every new fact that emerges after the trial.
⋙ 🐣 RT @Susan_Hennessey Moderate Republicans in the Senate who were hoping to walk away from this with a furrowed brow and a quiet “no” vote have got to be feeling queasy tonight.
⋙⋙ 🐣 RT @neal_katyal Um, no wonder Trump has tried to block every document from being released to the American people.
🐣 RT @atrupar “They are willing to help if we/you would like a price” — what exactly did the crooks running Trump’s shadow foreign policy plan to do to Ambassador Yovanovitch?
⋙ 🐣 RT @MikhailaRFogel Extremely concerning detail from the House cover letter regarding the Parnas materials http://bit.ly/36VJEji
🐣 RT @mikefarb1 There’s no walking this back. There is no defending it. Any GOP that doesn’t denounce this and put party in the rear view mirror is part of this.
⋙ 🧵 RT @BradMossEsq The more I look over these texts, I am seriously worried they were planning to murder an American diplomat. 📌 https://twitter.com/BradMossEsq/status/1217232006309974017?s=20
⋙⋙ 🐣 RT @joshtpm I think we have the consider possibility he was bs’ing Parnas or exaggerating. But yes, also suggests possibility he was dealing with criminal types who would have done anything or even the sort who wld have been reckless etc.
⋙⋙⋙ 🐣 RT @BradMossEsq That’s my concern, namely that they didn’t realize what they were getting into and with whom they were getting it
⋙⋙⋙⋙ 🐣 RT @joshtpm Yeah, you get the sense you’ve got twitter this tough guy here in the US who’s hooked up with some UKR gangsters.
🐣 RT @kyledcheney Looks like Robert HYDE, revealed as a texting partner of Lev Parnas during Yovanovitch smear campaign, was at the World Series game with Trump and MCCARTHY: https://instagram.com/p/B4KvliLlKNk/ ¤ Instagram suggests he was a regular at Trump hotels/golf clubs w/ access to Trump and his family
🧵 RT @LouiseMensch Well now. What if as well as helping @realDonaldTrump cheat in 2020, Rob Hyde helped him cheat in 2016? ¤ Dial 1-800-CALL-FBI @RepAdamSchiff @RepJerryNadler :)
(I’ve archived everything of Hyde’s I’m tweeting tonight, as his delete finger is getting a workout) 📌 https://twitter.com/LouiseMensch/status/1217281813896409088?s=20
// Photos of Hyde with everyone
🐣 RT @AngrierWHStaff Who among us hasn’t gotten drunk and plotted assassinations in a foreign country?
⋙ 🐣 RT @JoshNBCNews NEWS – Robert Hyde reacts ¤ He tells me tonight via text message: ¤ “How low can liddle Adam Bull Schiff go. To take some texts my buddy’s and I wrote while we had a few drinks to some dweeb I met a few times…. Bull Schiff is a desperate turd.”
💙 🐣 RT @MSNBC “I think the letter… from Rudy Giuliani is a real smoking gun, because you have Rudy Giuliani saying that he’s acting in the president’s personal capacity. That shows that the president and Rudy Giuliani knew this would be improper.” – Andrew Weissmann
⋙ 💽 MSNBC, Hardball: ‘Explosive’ : House releases records from Lev Parnas http://on.msnbc.com/2NrqZUy
// Congresswoman Jackie Speier calls new evidence released by the House Judiciary Committee ‘explosive.’ House Democrats released additional evidence in impeachment case, including phone records and documents from Giuliani associate Lev Parnas. Parnas provided a letter that Giuliani wrote to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky requesting a meeting on Trump’s behalf in May.
🐣 RT @LevShalev The ledger is evidence Paul Manafort was laundering cash stolen from Ukrainians illegally funneled to him from Putin’s proxy party in Ukraine.@NarativLive
⋙ 🐣 RT @LincolnsBible Oh dear God… “get all info from case” – meaning, privileged info from Firtash’s LAWYER. And how were they planning on doing that?!
Nancy has a royal flush.
It’s all about Firtash, & the idiot spy couple is finally going down.
Glory.
I now agree with the hashtag: #LetLevSpeak
The ledger is evidence Paul Manafort was laundering cash stolen from Ukrainians illegally funneled to him from Putin's proxy party in Ukraine.@NarativLive https://t.co/Aekghf0zr3
— Zev Shalev (@ZevShalev) January 15, 2020
🐣 RT @MalcolmNance .@rfhyde1 is a former Marine but I’m willing to bet very very soon he will be an ex-Marine. Plotting to surveill & perhaps get quotes to possibly take action or assasinate a US Ambassador Diplomat using foreign mercenaries would be many many crimes. Seems this is #TrumpsBenghazi
🐣 RT @WendySiegelman In May, Hyde was removed by police from Trump National Doral Miami in FL – according to an incident report filed by the Doral police department, Hyde told the responding officer that he was in fear for his life and “a hit man was out to get him.”
⋙ HartfordCourant: Who is the Robert F. Hyde who surfaced in House Intelligence Committee documents? http://bit.ly/37ZrnBM
🐣 RT [To: @renato_mariotti] @badappl8 Rudy’s 3 minute buttdial included, ¤ “Is Robert around? We need a few hundred thousand dollars.” https://twitter.com/badappl8/status/1217286307438891008?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @renato_mariotti She’s right—Ambassador Yovanovitch and the American people deserve to know what happened and the extent of Trump’s involvement.
⋙ 🐣 RT @jimsciutto New: Amb Marie Yovanovitch calls for investigation after evidence reveals GOP congressional candidate & Giuliani associate Lev Parnas discussed surveilling her. “The notion that American citizens & others were monitoring Amb Yovanovitch’s movements..is disturbing,” says her atty.
🧵 RT @KlasfeldReports Obtained by @CourthouseNews, a never-before-published photo shows House Minority Leader McCarthy standing between two old donors – Lev Parnas and Igor Fruman – contradicting what he told me last week on Capitol Hill. ¤ Investigation by me & @MMineiro_CNS: http://bit.ly/36UKdKb 📌 https://twitter.com/KlasfeldReports/status/1217243671269183489?s=20
🐣 RT @kenvogel NEW: Despite new texts suggesting otherwise, ROBERT F. HYDE denied that he had tracked MARIE YOVANOVITCH’s movements in Kyiv, and called @RepAdamSchiff a “commie.” ¤ Asked how he knew LEV PARNAS, @rfhyde1 replied (with apparent sarcasm) “Parcheesi club.”
🐣 RT @maggieNYT Yovanovich, who Trump once told the Ukranian president would “go through some things,” appears to have been under surveillance by Giuliani associates, per evidence turned over to the House
🔆 This❗️⋙ NYT: New Details Emerge on Shadow Campaign to Oust Ambassador to Ukraine http://nyti.ms/2FQCrFq
// Records released just before President Trump’s impeachment trial included texts that suggested the ambassador, Marie Yovanovitch, was being watched in Kyiv.
🧵 RT @TheRynheart Let’s piece together what happened to Ambassador Yovanovitch. She testified that Guilliani and a ‘corrupt foreign prosecutor general’ had plans to ‘do things to her.’ She was told this by Ukraine officials. https://twitter.com/TheRynheart/status/1217272074248564737?s=20/photo/1 📌 https://twitter.com/TheRynheart/status/1217272074248564737?s=20
⋙ 🐣 [ … ] RT @TheRynheart To appreciate the actual danger to the Ambassador read this entire exchange between Parvas and Hyde. The Ambassador was actually being guarded for her protection. https://twitter.com/TheRynheart/status/1217274574439698437?s=20/photo/1-2
🔆 This❗️⋙ WaPo: Ukraine prosecutor offered information related to Biden in exchange for ambassador’s ouster, newly released materials show http://wapo.st/2FP6PQv
CNN: Trump supporter and Giuliani associate discussed surveilling Yovanovitch http://cnn.it/2RiKKPy
DailyBeast, Will Sommer and Betsy Swan: Meet the Trump Donor Who Allegedly Stalked America’s Ambassador in Ukraine http://bit.ly/2RkziTh
// Robert F Hyde; He was a longshot candidate with a penchant for the obscene. Now he’s at the center of the impeachment drama.
🐣 RT @woodruffbets New: A spokesperson for Victoria Toensing’s law firm tells me she had no knowledge of Rudy Giuliani’s outreach to Zelensky, including of the letter where he said she would come to their potential meeting.
⋙ DailyBeast, Betsy Swan: Toensing Law Firm Distances Itself From Giuliani Letter to Zelensky http://bit.ly/2uKqYEQ
🧵 💙 RT @jedshug A Lev Parnas “told ya so” thread.
I don’t want to overstate this new evidence, but there are some whoppers and new questions.
Parnas will be a witness.
Again:
“I wouldn’t want to be a Senator engineering a cover-up non-trial when a bombshell may be around the corner.”
1/ 📌 https://twitter.com/jedshug/status/1217228889480749056?s=20
🧵 ❓RT @EricGarland Almost like Trump engaged Ukrainian Mobsters to execute hostile intelligence Ops against America’s own State Department. ¤ Trump is a historic villain. 📌 https://twitter.com/ericgarland/status/1217254151396175874?s=20
// unsure about this guy
🐣 RT @emptywheel Gonna interrupt here and note that Billy Barr announced you can’t investigate members of a political campaign today without his say-so. I wonder whether he’s going to apply it retroactively…
🧵 RT @chrislhayes One part of the Ukraine story that’s never *quite* made sense to me is the air of menace direct at Amb. Yovanovitch that’s always kind of unspecified and never spelled out. Obviously getting fired because you stood in the way of a political hit job sucks, but it’s more than that. 📌 https://twitter.com/chrislhayes/status/1217235213224415233?s=20
🐣 RT @NinaHatchigan Having been an Amb, this is really hard to wrap my mind around. You are out there taking risks to advance US interests but a set of Americans is surveiling you? Did I get this right?
⋙ 🐣 RT @JoshNBCNews NEWS tonight: Records turned over by Lev Parnas to House Intel show Parnas communicated with a GOP congressional candidate who said he had former Ambassador Yovanovitch under physical and possibly electronic surveillance in Kyiv
NYMag, Matt Stieb: House Intelligence Committee Releases Lev Parnas Docs Showing His Connection to Trump http://nym.ag/2uNluJv
PoliticusUSA: The Threat To Yovanovitch’s Safety Was Coming From Trump http://bit.ly/2Nr5x1Y
PoliticusUSA: The Threat To Yovanovitch’s Safety Was Coming From Trump http://bit.ly/2Nr5x1Y
The physical threat to former Ambassador Yovanovitch’s safety was coming from Rudy Giuliani and his associates at Trump’s direction.
According to a House letter sent to the Senate with accompanying evidence, the Ukraine plotters had the former Ambassador to Ukraine under surveillance:
In March 2019, Mr. Parnas communicated by text message with Robert F. Hyde about former U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine Marie Yovanovitch. In response to some articles, tweets, and videos accusing the Ambassador of being disloyal to President Trump, Mr. Hyde wrote “Wow. Can’t believe Trumo [sic] hasn’t fired this bitch. I’ll get right in that.” Mr. Hyde then sent a series of text messages suggesting that he had Ambassador Yovanovitch under physical surveillance in Kyiv and that “They are willing to help if we/you would like a price.”
Here is the text exchange: 🐣 RT @NatashaBeetrand Um holy sh*t
🐣 RT @kenvogel RUDY GIULIANI also appears to have tried to enlist @JaySekulow to work with LEV PARNAS on the effort to obtain a visa for VIKTOR SHOKIN, the Ukrainian prosecutor general who was fired at the urging of @JoeBiden, the Obama administration & the IMF. https://twitter.com/kenvogel/status/1217250420424429569?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @StacyJannis https://twitter.com/StacyJannis/status/1217249079677411328?s=20/photo/1
// Yanukovich testimony about security threat
⋙ 🐣 maybe our good guys stepped in when they saw what was brewing – that she really was in danger
🐣💙 RT @saradannerdukic “That address I sent you checks out.”
“It’s next to the embassy.”
“They are willing to help if we/you would like a price.”
“Guess you can do anything in the Ukraine with money…what I was told.”
👆 WTF DOES THAT SOUND LIKE TO YOU?
🧵 RT @HayesBrown This message between Parnas and former Ukrainian Prosecutor General Lutsenko (who fed Giuliani most of the lies he spread) helps connect why getting rid of Amb. Marie Yovanovitch was a priority. ¤ Lutsenko says without that piece, his stories about Biden are less credible https://twitter.com/HayesBrown/status/1217231249913327622?s=20/photo/1 📌 https://twitter.com/HayesBrown/status/1217231249913327622?s=20
⋙ 🐣 RT @HayesBrown This whole string of messages is stunning actually. Here’s Lutsenko mocking Parnas for not being able to hold up his end of the job and get Yovanovitch fired ¤ “She’s not getting away,” Parnas promises http://bit.ly/36TT3YJ https://twitter.com/HayesBrown/status/1217232589104304128?s=20/photo/1
⋙ 🐣 RT @HayesBrown Then in late March, days before Ukraine’s presidential election, Parnas writes to assure Lutsenko that “America supports you and will not let you be harmed no matter how things looks now.” https://twitter.com/HayesBrown/status/1217233965989404673?s=20/photo/1
⋙ 🐣 RT @HayesBrown Lutsenko responds that he has records of payments from Burisma, the company that had Hunter Biden on its board, to a company owned by Hunter’s friend. That company came up in a story on Hunter’s work that Reuters published in October http://reut.rs/2CBcKqE https://twitter.com/HayesBrown/status/1217234455208873985?s=20/photo/1-2
⋙ 🐣 RT @HayesBrown 5/4: Lutsenko notes that a high-level delegation is coming to Zelensky’s inauguration ¤ Parnas responds, “Well, you understand who’s working on this” ¤ 5/13: Jennifer Williams, a Pence aide, emails to say Pence is out. She publicly testified the order to cancel came from Trump. https://twitter.com/HayesBrown/status/1217239344840396800?s=20/photo/1-2
⋙ 🐣 RT @HayesBrown And finally, this one is just SO OMINOUS https://twitter.com/HayesBrown/status/1217239459978252289?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @biancagolodryga Reminder that Yovanovitch testified that UKRAINIAN officials warned her that Guiliani and other associates “had plans, and that they were going to, you know, do things, including to me”.
🐣 RT @Mimirocah1 As a former mafia prosecutor, this sure sounds like a mob hit was being planned on a public servant in a foreign country by associates of the POTUS. A POTUS who said she was “going to go through some things.” This takes Trump’s lawlessness & misogny to new level.
🐣💙💙 RT @NatashaBertrand More on Yovanovitch in this exchange between Parnas and Lutsenko. “She’s not getting away,” Parnas texted. https://twitter.com/NatashaBertrand/status/1217237865048027136?s=20/photo/1
⋙ 🐣 RT @NatashaBertrand Um holy sh*t. This certainly makes it sound like Parnas and co. were actively tracking Yovanovitch’s movements. This could explain why Yovanovitch was moved out of Ukraine so quickly. http://bit.ly/30ma37j https://twitter.com/NatashaBertrand/status/1217215352754577409?s=20/photo/1-4
🐣 RT @sfpelosi A catchy tune with images that will send shivers down the spines of Republicans willing to stiffen theirs and support the Constitution. #LetLevSpeak #DefendOurDemocracy #EndtheCoverUp 💽 ♫ https://twitter.com/sfpelosi/status/1217136472228151296?s=20/photo/1
// Lev and Igor w Trumps etc
🐣 RT @sbg1 [Susan Glasser] NEWS tonight: Records turned over by Lev Parnas to House Intel show Parnas communicated with a GOP congressional candidate who said he had former Ambassador Yovanovitch under physical and possibly electronic surveillance in Kyiv
⋙ 🐣 RT @JoshNBCNews NEWS tonight: Records turned over by Lev Parnas to House Intel show Parnas communicated with a GOP congressional candidate who said he had former Ambassador Yovanovitch under physical and possibly electronic surveillance in Kyiv
🐣 RT @vermontGMG Has anyone ever answered what legit reason Trump could want a meeting with Ukraine in his “personal capacity”?
⋙ 🐣 RT @awprokop Some juicy stuff in Lev Parnas’s new evidence, posted by the House in these links: http://bit.ly/30ma37j http://bit.ly/36TT3YJ https://twitter.com/awprokop/status/1217211791572377600?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @TheBeatWithAri “The evidence we have corroborates that the President was focused on having President Zelensky investigate the Bidens and exonerate Russia for its role. We have not seen a single piece of evidence that shows the President was doing anything other than that.” – @RepSwalwell
🐣 RT @pleasesaveour A resolution to curb Trump’s military auth in Iran has enough votes to pass the Senate. Maine Republican Sen. Susan Collins will join three other members of the GOP who had previously announced their support for the measure to invoke Congress’ war powers.
⋙ WaPo: Senate resolution to limit Trump’s military authority on Iran has enough GOP votes to pass, key Democrats say http://wapo.st/3a8oQqJ
🐣 RT @zacharybasu The batch of records includes a hand-written note on Ritz-Carlton Vienna stationery that states: “get Zalensky [sic] to Annonce [sic] that the Biden case will Be Investigated”
⋙ Axios: Schiff sends House Judiciary Committee records from Lev Parnas http://bit.ly/2tgNTao
🧵 RT @duty2warn (1/3) Malignant Normality has become a highly relevant term. Coined by Robert Jay Lifton, it’s a degenerative societal phenomenon. Mass numbers of people begin to view reality through a skewed lens of a leader, even adopt his traits. Logic and reason get subjugated in the fervor. 📌 https://twitter.com/duty2warn/status/1217144496070094848?s=20
Politico Mag, Zach Dorfman (5/26/2019): The Spy Case That Made Adam Schiff a Russia Hawk http://politi.co/30GL6mZ //➔ been there, done that
// 5/26/2019; Three decades before he railed against the Trump campaign, the future congressman prosecuted an FBI agent who was seduced by a Soviet spy.
🐣 I think this is a “putting the house back in order” election. The way to do that is (still) to win the Midwest. From that perspective the best ticket may be #BidenKlobuchar or, if you prefer #JoeAndAmy. My thoughts today, anyway. I’ll support whoever is on the ticket. We must WIN.
WaPo: Democrats can get witnesses with 50 votes — if Roberts does his job http://wapo.st/2ToIh8Y
🐣 RT @JRubinBlogger It matters because it further erodes his near-nonexistent credibility. It matters because it is one thing to risk war to prevent imminent harm and quite another to risk war by taking the most provocative action to reestablish deterrence he frittered away.
⋙ WaPo, Jennifer Rubin: Trump says it does not matter whether he lies to us http://wapo.st/2QT50s8
🧵 RT @SethAbramson The Ukraine scandal has a background between major players (e.g., Trump, Manafort and Firtash) going back 15 years; a timeline of inculpatory events going back 2 years; and a cast of witnesses numbering over 100. ¤ And we’re going to get a trial about a dozen men and a phone call. 📌 https://twitter.com/SethAbramson/status/1217108959682797568?s=20
⋙ 🐣 RT @SethAbramson 5/ Did you know the Ukraine scandal is actually a plot by Trump and men he knows *extremely well* (including Parnas and Fruman, who are in effect two of his *advisers*) to overthrow Ukraine’s gas company in a bid to enrich Putin and help him win a war in which he invaded Europe?
🐣 RT @SpeakerPelosi This is why President Trump was impeached for obstruction of Congress, and why a Senate trial with no witnesses or documents is a cover-up. #EndTheCoverUp #DefendOurDemocracy https://twitter.com/SpeakerPelosi/status/1217033679102533633?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @duty2warn Justin Trudeau blames Trump for Iranian shoot down. When we started Duty To Warn, we argued real lives would be lost if Trump remained in office. Here we are. Can we make it to January 2021 without all out war? [DailyMail:] https://twitter.com/duty2warn/status/1217063184961503237?s=20
NYT, Ali Soufan: Suleimani Is Dead, Iraq Is in Chaos and ISIS Is Very Happy http://nyti.ms/3a6Ma8g Mr. Soufan is a former F.B.I. special agent and the author of “Anatomy of Terror.”
⭕ 13 Jan 2020
WaPo: Top Senate Republicans reject Trump’s renewed call for immediate dismissal of impeachment charges http://wapo.st/3a2XIJP
🐣 RT @McFaul “Putin is not trying to win the argument; instead, his propaganda machine aims to convince that there is no truth, no right and wrong, or no data or evidence, only relativism, point of view and biased opinion.”
⋙ WaPo, Michael McFaul: Be prepared to fight a dangerous new wave of disinformation during the Senate trial http://wapo.st/3886AMb
🐣 RT @mayawiley Not surprising to hear these names based on what we know to date. Rep. Pete Sessions lobbied for #Yovanovitch removal, John Solomon rehashed #Russian conspiracies as fact & Rudy Giuliani never even pretended to be doing anything but go after Biden dirt. #LevParnas
⋙ 🐣 RT @rebeccaballhaus Among the documents Lev Parnas has handed over to the House Intelligence Committee: text messages with Rudy Giuliani, former Texas Rep. Pete Sessions, former Hill columnist John Solomon and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, sources familiar with the matter say.
⋙⋙ WSJ: Lawmakers Tangle Over Calling Witnesses in Trump’s Senate Impeachment Trial http://on.wsj.com/3aaxyEP
// Democrats seeking to add new witnesses say that they were blocked from calling several during House probe
🐣 RT @maggieNYT Trump advisers have made clear privately they would push for Hunter Biden as a witness under this scenario. And they’re betting some Democrats will have difficulty arguing against it.
🐣 RT @orenfalkowitz Here’s a link to the @Area1Security report on #phishing of Burisma Holdings by the GRU ⋙ document: http://bit.ly/2sm3u8d
🐣 I spent a few bucks to get on Bolton’s mailing list. Caution: His views of the powers of the Presidency are expansive. He would be called as a fact witness but could testify what Trump did was within his powers. (Price paid: Now I’m on Trump’s mailing list, gack)
🐣 RT @heidiNBC NEW: from Quinnipiac:
–Two thirds of Americans want John Bolton to testify in Trump’s Senate impeachment trial, (39 % of Republicans, 71% of independents, and 91% of Democrats).
*Bolton has made clear, through his lawyer, he has new information about the Trump/Ukraine probe*
🐣 RT @matthewamiller If they found anything interesting, you can be sure it will be leaked timed for maximum political advantage for Trump.
🐣 RT @JuliaDavisNews The Russian attacks on Burisma appear to be running parallel to an effort by Russian spies in Ukraine to dig up information in the analog world that could embarrass the Bidens, according to an American security official.
🐣 RT @ScottMStedman BREAKING: Russia hacked Burisma as Trump was attacking Biden and the company
💙💙 🔆 This❗️⋙ NYT: Russians Hacked Ukrainian Gas Company at Center of Impeachment http://nyti.ms/2TrQads “The hacking attempts against Burisma, the Ukrainian gas company on whose board Hunter Biden served, began in early November”
🐣✅ RT @GlennKesslerWP Trump claimed that he’s gotten $1 billion in the bank from the Saudis to pay for US troops. But the Pentagon just confirmed to me the Saudis still have not paid their outstanding bill for refueling costs in the Yemen war. So let’s label Trump’s statement as highly doubtful.
🐣 RT @duty2warn NO EMPATHY – Trump doesn’t show empathy because he CAN’T. He is a Malignant Narcissist, first and foremost. All other monikers normalize him by comparison. ¤ This is a short clip from our upcoming feature film #UNFIT. ¤ A long-awaited UPDATE re: status of the film is coming next. 💽 https://twitter.com/duty2warn/status/1216808445384388609?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @JoyceWhiteVance Not only is 45 forever “impeached” – he cannot be exonerated (1) without witnesses and documents that he has stonewalled producing and (2) without Republicans abiding by their oath to view evidence impartially.
⋙ 🐣 Can’t jurors who state they can’t be impartial be dismissed from a jury pool?
CNN: Trump’s top general puts his reputation to the test over Iran http://cnn.it/2NnLAt5 General Mark Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff (or as I thought of him before I learned his name, “General Eyebrows”)
🐣 RT @KlansfeldReports NEW: ¤ A federal judge just GRANTED permission for Lev Parnas to share extractions from three more electronic devices with the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence. https://twitter.com/KlasfeldReports/status/1216752802745196547?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @farnazfassihi Iran State TV’s anchor resigns saying, “It was very hard for me to believe the killing of my countrymen. I apologize for lying to you on TV for 13 years.”#IranProtests2020 https://twitter.com/farnazfassihi/status/1216749134348201985?s=20
⋙ 🐣 RT @FarnazML64 [Google translate] The presenter of the network after two years of work in broadcasting #دروغگویی In the media, he withdrew from television. He said: sorry I lied to you on Iranian TV for 5 years !! ***#کناره_گیری_مجریان It’s a good thing that’s happening.
// photo shows a woman
🐣 RT @AaronBlake Before 11 am, Trump has:
-Tweeted 4 typos, including “Bernie Sander’s”, “Pocahontus,” “rafical,” “eminent”
-RTed photoshopped image of Schumer/Pelosi in Muslim garb
-RTed image of corpse
-Tweeted several false claims about GOP & health care
-Tweeted about Bloomberg’s height
🐣 RT @gtconway3d Our Fake #IMPOTUS @realDonaldTrump is subliterate.
⋙ 🐣 RT @real The Fake News Media and their Democrat Partners are working hard to determine whether or not the future attack by terrorist Soleimani was “eminent” or not, & was my team in agreement. The answer to both is a strong YES., but it doesn’t really matter because of his horrible past!
Politico: How Schumer might get the last laugh on impeachment trial http://politi.co/30f3vr0
// Democrats plan to squeeze vulnerable Republicans with a series of tough votes that could hurt them in November.
Politico: John Roberts may be leading the Senate impeachment trial, but this woman is shaping it http://politi.co/382MF1j
// The first female Senate parliamentarian will be advising the chief justice on how to address arcane procedural questions; The Senate parliamentarian, Elizabeth MacDonough, and her aides were scrambling to prepare for an event with little precedent in American history — the impeachment trial of a U.S. president.
🐣◕ RT @historylvrsclub War World II casualties https://twitter.com/historylvrsclub/status/1216716526318948352?s=20/photo/1
NYT, Susan Hennessey and Benjamin Wittes: Trump’s Frightening Vision of the Presidency Is on Trial, Too http://nyti.ms/2QMrxXo
// The president believes that what is good for him and what is good for the country are indistinguishable.
NewYorker, David Rohde: William Barr, Trump’s Sword and Shield http://bit.ly/2FMUyMa
// 1/20/2020 issue; The Attorney General’s mission to maximize executive power and protect the Presidency.
⭕ 12 Jan 2020
WaPo, Max Boot: Trump’s congenital dishonesty trips him up again http://wapo.st/35QxtTv ‘To satisfy the legal standard…, the Trump admin claimed that it was acting to disrupt an ‘imminent’ attack on US personnel but refused to release any intelligence to buttress its case’
🐣 RT @StevenLHall1 Re-upping this great video. You don’t have to have a PhD in Russian studies to understand Putin.
⋙ 💙💙 💽 Vox, Sam Ellis (2017): From spy to president: the rise of Vladimir Putin http://bit.ly/
// He’s intent on pushing back against the Western world order … and it appears to be working.
// 3/27/2017
WaPo: Killing of Soleimani reflects an aggressive national security team not inclined to curb Trump http://wapo.st/2uGlHOB
🐣 RT @CREWcrew Sen. Graham’s own words about witnesses at impeachment trials: “when you have a witness…who was in the middle of it telling you about what they were doing…it’s the difference between getting the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.”
⋙ Newsweek (1/7): Resurfaced Video Shows Lindsey Graham Arguing for Witnesses to Testify at Bill Clinton Impeachment Trial http://bit.ly/2R8jlPZ
🐣 RT @neal_katyal So come and testify and explain why 18 witnesses, many from your own Administration, have testified in Congress and thrown the book at you. So far, the count is 18-0. ¤ Your party controls the Senate. If you are innocent you should have nothing to fear. #SayItUnderOath
⋙ 🐣 RT @real Many believe that by the Senate giving credence to a trial based on the no evidence, no crime, read the transcripts, “no pressure” Impeachment Hoax, rather than an outright dismissal, it gives the partisan Democrat Witch Hunt credibility that it otherwise does not have. I agree!
TheDailyMail [UK]: Vladimir Putin jokes with Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad that he will invite Trump to Damascus to have a biblical conversion http://dailym.ai/2FL5KsU so “everything will become normal with him”
🐣 RT @Delavegalaw There’s only way to look at this: No intel indicated 4 embassies were being targeted, yet Esper is willing to imply there might have been, thereby endangering us all and making a complete fool of himself, in order to vouch for Trump. They’re all lying. That’s all you have to say.
VanityFair: Pelosi to Trump: You Are Impeached Forever (And Your Tweets Are Crazy) http://bit.ly/2taGslb
// The Speaker of the House did not hold back on This Week with George Stephanopoulos.
DailyBeast, Anna Nemtsova: Amid Iran Crisis, Russia’s Mideast Presence Just Keeps Growing http://bit.ly/37VaCaE
// One example: At the peak of the pre-war crises around Iran, German Chancellor Merkel has gone to see Putin, not Trump, looking for solutions.
🐣 RT @mtomasky New Column: Once upon a time, when a POTUS made a claim, the world generally believed him. (Read the anecdote that opens this column.) Today? Well…
⋙ DailyBeast, Michael Tomasky: How Trump’s Parade of Lies Finally Caught Up With Him http://bit.ly/2uzmnFp
// Iran blinked, but Trump got no credit for it and for good reason: He’s devalued the authority of his position speaking for America with his endless stream of lies.
🐣 RT @FaceTheNation NEWS: .@RepAdamSchiff tells @margbrennan that the House Intelligence committee is “considering” subpoenaing John Bolton, who has previously said he would testify if subpoenaed in the Senate. 💽 https://twitter.com/FaceTheNation/status/1216388411113771008?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @atrupar On CNN, Mark Esper makes it absolutely clear that the Trump administration is making it up as they go when they claim Soleimani posed an imminent threat to 4 different US embassies 💽 https://twitter.com/atrupar/status/1216364467820408834?s=20/photo/1
⋙ 🐣 RT @atrupar Defense Secretary Mark Esper’s new talking point is that while he may not have seen intelligence indicating Iran was imminently targeting American embassies, President Sharpie believed they were — and that’s good enough for him. That’s the best these guys can do. It’s farcical.
✅ AP: How a debunked Ukraine theory endures against all evidence http://bit.ly/2R768Hi by Amanda Seitz, Eric Tucker and Richard Lardner
// Unfortunately, this article doesn’t link to all the articles it cites, not even giving media outlets or authors. I have a pretty good idea of the articles they’re referencing, but I’m steeped in this stuff. I suggest: BuzzFeedNews, Ryan Broderick (11/4): http://bit.ly/2YfgVCA
DailyBeast, Rick Wilson: If Trump Wins in 2020, Get Ready for President Don Jr. http://bit.ly/2uHqj7e //➔ and then Ivanka. Eric, not so much.
// In an excerpt from his new book, “Running Against the Devil,” Daily Beast columnist Rick Wilson conjures what a Trump dynasty would look like.
🐣 RT @gtconway3d If someone else did something else thousands of times, they would be consistently flagging that something else for readers and viewers whenever it was relevant. But somehow that doesn’t happen with @realDonaldTrump’s countless absurd fabrications.
⋙ 🐣 RT @joshtpm Fascinating dimension of the Trump era: all news orgs now hitting live with Trumps claim about four embassies and considering it as claim to be litigated even while simultaneously everyone universally understands he made this up on the spur of the moment.
⋙⋙ 🐣 It’s what hard-working journalists do. Yes, everyone knows, but as it can’t be proved, it must be questioned and the fact of the changing narrative laid out. Opinion writers have more freedom, but fact reporters must report facts. Hound Pompeo til he breaks like Mulvaney did.
🐣 RT @HMATehran Thanks for the many goodwill messages. Can confirm I wasn’t taking part in any demonstrations! Went to an event advertised as a vigil for victims of #PS752 tragedy. Normal to want to pay respects- some of victims were British. I left after 5 mins, when some started chanting.
// @HMATehran is Bob Macaire, British Ambassador to Iran
🐣 RT @hardball “Assassination is not a method for ending belligerence with a foreign power; it’s a way to deepen it. By ordering the killing of this Iranian general we have unleashed something … The Iranian people are going to remember it for years.” [–Chris Matthews]
⋙ 💽 MSNBC, Hardball: Chris Matthews: Iran will remember what the United States did http://on.msnbc.com/2NkENQP
// 1/11/2020; On the assassination of Qasem Soleimani, Chris says “Assassination is not a method for ending belligerence with a foreign power; it’s a way to deepen it. By ordering the killing of this Iranian general we have unleashed something. It will not end with the Iranian firing of those ballistic missiles into the Al Assad military base. The Iranian people are going to remember it for years.”
🐣 RT @MSNBC WATCH: @Maddow dives into reporting from the Washington Post and CNN that a federal investigation into Hillary Clinton, the Clinton Foundation, Uranium One, and other right-wing narratives has found nothing worthy of criminal investigation.
⋙ 💽 MSNBC, RachelMaddow: Another vindication for Clinton as probe reportedly hits dead end http://on.msnbc.com/2RdzrYI
// Rachel Maddow relays reporting from the Washington Post and CNN that a federal investigation into Hillary Clinton, the Clinton Foundation, Uranium One, and other pet right-wing narratives has found nothing worthy of criminal investigation, and reviews the other such investigations and suggestive media reports that have previously failed to incriminate Clinton.
⭕ 11 Jan 2020
RawStory: Lev Parnas attorney tells judge there are ‘essential’ documents Congress needs for impeachment http://bit.ly/3a57hHU
⋙ ⇈ ⇊ 🐣 RT @josephabondy We’ve just asked the Court’s permission to give additional materials, extracted from three more of Lev Parnas’ electronic devices, to the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence #HPSCI for use in the impeachment inquiry. #LetLevSpeak #LevRemembers https://twitter.com/josephabondy/status/1216113437622837248?s=20/photo/1-2
🧵 RT @SethAbramson Everyone wonders where the $1 billion Trump got from MBS (he won’t say when) went. In late 2017, a Saudi whistleblower later spied on by MBS via Twitter said he had the answer. (@MiddleEastEye was founded by an @guardian editor.) ¤ The story is unconfirmed. 📌 https://twitter.com/SethAbramson/status/1216168772404490245?s=20
⋙ MiddleEastEye (Nov 2017): Crown Prince bin Salman ‘bribed’ Trump, Saudi Twitter whistleblower claims http://bit.ly/37VSxcH
// Mujtahidd alleges that boat linked to Trump’s organisation was filled with $1bn in cash as a personal gift from bin Salman
🐣 RT @SethAbramson [ … ] 7/ There’s no reason to give Trump money by boat; he’s set up more clandestine ways to pay him. But given that a second assassination attempt happened the same night as Soleimani, and it was one MBS but not America wanted/needed, it’s possible MBS is paying us to assassinate men.
🐣 RT @DrGJackBrown FACT: While ‘The Fog of War’ mostly likely led to the unintentional dowing of Ukraine International Airlines Flight 752, with no doubt, if Donald Trump had not assassinated #Soleimani, those 176 people would be alive today. ¤ #NoWarWithlran #NoWar #UkranianPlaneCrash
⋙ 🐣 Not to mention the 80 who were crushed to death when people panicked and stampeded during one of the mourning gatherings
💙 CNN, Katelyn Polantz: 2015 memo from Erik Prince to Trump campaign: ‘National disgrace’ that Soleimani ‘not already DEAD’ http://cnn.it/2FJe7Fm
🐣 RT @justinamash He sells troops. ¤ “We have a very good relationship with Saudi Arabia—I said, listen, you’re a very rich country. You want more troops? I’m going to send them to you, but you’ve got to pay us. They’re paying us. They’ve already deposited $1B in the bank.” 💽 https://twitter.com/justinamash/status/1216054398138376192?s=20/photo/1
CNN: Why Trump’s changing Iran story is costing him support in Congress http://cnn.it/2Nju7lr
🐣 RT @DrGJackBrown Why did Trump assassinate #Soleimani?
A. To distract from his Impeachment Trial.
B. To appease #JohnBolton.
C. To appease Republican Senators.
D. Putin told him to do it.
E. Trump is a Sadist.
F. Cowardly overcompensation by proxy.
G. Someone paid Trump to do it.
🐣 RT @BillKristol It’s been a rough decade for those of us who think America has a key role in advancing liberty around the world. But from Hong Kong to Tehran, the yearning for freedom is strong, and the U.S., despite its problems, remains an inspiration. This is a source of hope for the future.
💙 TheGuardian, Martin Pengelli: How to dump Trump: Rick Wilson on Running Against the Devil http://bit.ly/2TefnIv
// He was a Republican ad❣man but now he’s a bestselling author out to bring down a president. He says Democrats must listen
🐣 RT @MSNBC “This group is the most incompetent bunch of liars I’ve ever encountered. I served an administration that had skillful liars in it, like Richard Bruce Cheney and so forth. But this administration gets caught every day…” – Ret. Col. Lawrence Wilkerson
⋙ 💽 MSNBC, AMJoy: Trump admin. justification for Iran strike slammed by retired col. http://on.msnbc.com/30gShCC
// Iran has admitted to unintentionally shooting down a Ukrainian plane amid increased tensions between the U.S. and Iran. Col. Lawrence Wilkerson, retired, joins Joy Reid to discuss, saying of the ongoing conflict between America and Iran, ‘Let’s wash away all the lies and all the cheating and all the stupidity and incompetence… And let’s just look at what we did.’
🐣 RT @Delavegalaw A juror who’s shown clear bias, or has already decided the case is disqualified due to “Actual Bias.” Dems needn’t grandstand or decry the hypocrisy; They should just make the legal case to Roberts, and the public, that McConnell, Graham and others have disqualified themselves.
🐣 RT @gtconway3d “Trump is so cynical he wouldn’t even recognize that making foreign policy decisions influenced by impeachment is the kind of thing he shouldn’t say out loud.”
⋙ 🐣 RT @tribelaw Trump’s motives are always muddled, but for assassinating Soleimani it’s a good bet it was:
30% Impeachment insurance
40% Obama envy
10% Putin bragging rights
10% Revenge for past wrongs
10% Weakening Iran
0% Defense vs imminent attack
⋙ 🐣 RT @NYMag A new report indicates Trump may have committed a grave dereliction of duty by letting his ongoing impeachment influence his decision to kill Soleimani
⋙⋙💙NYMag, Jonathan Chait: Report: Trump Cited GOP Senate Impeachment Pressure As Reason to Kill Soleimani http://nym.ag/2QHPhMj
🐣 RT @tribelaw If @Lawrence really said the Chief Justice couldn’t & wouldn’t break a 50-50 Senate tie as presiding officer in the upcoming trial, I respectfully disagree. The Constitution’s text, structure & history all show the contrary. Eg: CJ Chase broke two Senate ties in Johnson’s trial.
🐣 RT @MollyJongFast I knew it was Tom Cotton.
⋙ 🐣 RT @maggieNYT He told some associates that he wanted to preserve the support of Republican hawks in the Senate in the coming impeachment trial, naming Senator Tom Cotton of Arkansas as an example, even though they had not spoken about Iran since before Christmas.
⋙ 🐣 RT @MikeLupica If Tom Cotton is now setting policy in that part of the world, we’re more screwed than I thought.
⋙⋙ 🐣 RT @MollyJongFast We’re all going to die
⋙⋙⋙ 🐣 RT @MikeLupica There was a movie once about circumstances like the ones we now face: “Dr. Strangelove.”
🐣 RT @gtconway3d “[A]ministration officials said they did not actually know when or where .. an attack might occur and one … said it was ‘a mistake’ to use the word ‘imminent.’ And some … were stunned that Mr. Trump picked what they considered a radical option with unforeseen consequences.”
🐣 RT @gtconway3d “American intelligence officials … learned that the Iranians ..had not intended to escalate the low-level conflict. The rockets landed … when … personnel normally were not there and it was only by unlucky chance that Mr. Hamid [the American contractor] was killed ….”
🐣 RT @dcpoll Milley told lawmakers that intelligence showed discussion by Suleimani of potential attacks on 3 specific dates in late Dec or early Jan –– but those were all before the strike on Suleimani and no attacks actually occurred. ¤ There was no ‘imminent threat.’
🐣 RT @UROCKlive1 It’s. What. He. Does.
⋙ 🐣 RT @gtconway3d He. Just. Made. It. Up.
⋙⋙ 🧵 RT @rgoodlaw This is important: ¤ “American intelligence officials monitoring communications between Kataib Hezbollah and General Suleimani’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps learned that the Iranians…had NOT INTENDED TO ESCALATE the low-level conflict.” 📌 https://twitter.com/rgoodlaw/status/1216092756705206272?s=20
⋙⋙⋙ 💙 NYT: Seven Days in January: How the U.S. and Iran Approached the Brink of War http://nyti.ms/30ap1gy
// The story of that week, and the secret planning in the months preceding it, ranks as the most perilous chapter so far in President Trump’s three years in office.
🐣 RT @ WSJ SCOOP: U.S. officials warned Iraq that it risks losing access to its account at the New York Fed, where international oil sale revenue is kept, if it moves to expel U.S. troops
⋙ WSJ: U.S. Warns Iraq It Risks Losing Access to Key Bank Account If Troops Told to Leave http://on.wsj.com/30hAsTN
// Loss of access to New York Fed account, where international oil sale revenue is kept, could creating cash crunch in Iraq’s financial system
🐣 RT @JoyceWhiteVance Daily reminder: Trump is an impeached President. If he’s acquitted by a Senate GOP that suppresses key evidence, it won’t exonerate him. And, the facts will come out. They always do.
🐣 RT @amandarivkin The demand that you must be seriously serious at all times is kind of mindless totalism. Be human FFS, it is actually the only way to slay totalism. In the face of horror, I have always been encouraged to be funny by my father, the refugee born stateless. Dictators hate laughter.
🐣 RT @farnazfassihi BREAKING: Public mourning gatherings turn into protests in #Iran. Angry crowds chanting, “Death to the liars.” ¤ #IranPlaneCrash #UkrainePlaneCrash
⋙ 🐣 68 trampled to death, 167 killed in a plane crash. And all because Trump was trying to gain the support of unnamed Senators in his Senate trial, per WSJ. People are dying now. We’ve turned a corner. If not for Iranian restraint, we’d be in a hot war today.
🐣 RT @USArmy You heard it from the @ArmyChiefStaff. ¤ When we go, we go to win! ¤ #WinningMatters! ¤ #USArmy Graphic https://twitter.com/USArmy/status/1215998061178167302?s=20/photo/1
⋙ 🐣 That’s why we’ve abandoned the Kurds to the Turks, have ended the war on ISIS and have retreated to protection of forces status in Iraq, where we’re now unwelcome. ~ West Point grad’s wife ¤ Trump has repeatedly betrayed the Armed Services, the country and our allies.
⋙⋙ 🐣 RT @KathyHurley My dad was a career Army intelligence officer. He served in Viet Nam – came back pretty damaged (emotionally); died at the age of 47 from cancer caused by agent orange. I loved the military life and love our military. They don’t deserve this clown & his equally incompetent admin.
🐣 RT @ConsWahoo This man is a jenius. He’s figured out that he can lie with impunity, bullshit his way through if called on it, and then have the apparati of the executive branch, the GOP, and half the Congress clean up after him.
⋙ 🐣 RT @Acyn Trump claims Saudi Arabia has already deposited one billion dollars “in the bank” in exchange for US troops being sent. He then goes on to talk about South Korea paying $500 million for US troops defending them against North Korea. 💽 https://twitter.com/ConsWahoo/status/1215997662387941377?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @cbouzy I am calling on @SpeakerPelosi @RepAdamSchiff to investigate why the Trump administration didn’t alert the four embassies of an imminent attack. Trump put the lives of Americans at risk by not alerting the embassies, we deserve to know why.
🧵 RT @rgoodlaw
1. No threat to an embassy in intelligence briefings to Congress
2. Two senior administration officials appear to be admitting to WaPo that Trump’s claim is false
🐣 RT @ForeignAffairs In its official rhetoric and strategic documents, Washington has, since 1979, consistently portrayed Iran as a purely hostile and dangerous actor. @Benjamin05055 and @sns_1239 discuss the origins of the distorted U.S. view of Iran:
⋙ ForeignAffairs, Daniel Benjamin and Steven Simon: America’s Great Satan http://fam.ag/
// 10/15/2019, Nov/Dec 2019 issue; The 40-Year Obsession With Iran
🔆 This❗️⋙ TheTelegraph [UK]: Iran plane crash: Tehran admits it ‘unintentionally’ shot down plane http://bit.ly/2TbFNdJ
⭕ 10 Jan 2020
🐣 RT @ Russian military expert Igor Korotchenko: ¤ “Today, Turkey, Russia and Iran are jointly working in Syria… from where you’ve been asked to get out. Tomorrow, you’ll get out of Iraq and then you’ll get out of everywhere else… we’re winning.”
⋙ 🐣 RT @JuliaDavisNews Russians Think Soleimani Was Great, and Trump’s a Big Loser
While lamenting Soleimani’s liquidation, Russian experts see the Kremlin as the big winner as tensions rise between the US & Iran—both geopolitically & financially. ¤ My latest for @thedailybeast
⋙⋙ 💙 DailyBeast, Julia Davis: Russians Think Soleimani Was Great, and Trump’s a Big Loser http://bit.ly/36KTC77
// While lamenting Soleimani’s liquidation, Russian experts see the Kremlin as the big winner as tensions rise between the U.S. and Iran—both geopolitically and financially.
🐣 RT @AlArabia_Eng Germany says it still wants “to save” the 2015 nuclear accord with Iran, rejecting US President Donald Trump’s call for Europeans to quit the pact.
⋙ AlArabia: Germany rejects Trump call to ditch Iran nuclear pact http://bit.ly/37QzXCG
WaPo, James Robenalt: The Supreme Court can review an unfair impeachment trial http://wapo.st/39WmM4Z In general, the courts will defer to the Senate. But there are limits, some justices have said.
// James Robenalt is an attorney in Cleveland and the author of four nonfiction books, including “January 1973: Watergate, Roe v. Wade, Vietnam, and the Month That Change America Forever.” He lectures with John Dean on Watergate and legal ethics.
DailyBeast: Trump Is Handing Iran Its Biggest Strategic Objective: Iraq http://bit.ly/2QHmE1G by Spencer Ackerman, Erin Banco and Asawin Suebsaeng
// Iran wants the U.S. out of Iraq, so the administration’s response is to say it won’t leave, regardless of what the government of Iraq—that the U.S. set up—has to say about it.
WaPo: E.U. leaders rally behind tattered Iran deal, ignoring Trump’s call to ditch it http://wapo.st/2uzAhY8
WaPo: Trump now claims four embassies were under threat from Iran, raising fresh questions about intelligence reports http://wapo.st/36Jkm83
NYT: Iran Says It Unintentionally Shot Down Ukrainian Airliner http://nyti.ms/2QKZK9U
// “The Islamic Republic of Iran deeply regrets this disastrous mistake,” President Hassan Rouhani said, as Iran reversed its claims that mechanical failure was to blame.
🐣 RT @MiaFarrow [To: @real] 176 people would be alive today if you hadn’t killed Soleimani, Iran’s second in command. On an ordinary night no one would have shot down that plane. If Iran had been less prudent in their response to the killing of Soleimani, we would surely be in a full scale war.
🐣 RT @jpduberg still thinking a resignation by March? If not, what changed your thoughts?
⋙ 🐣 RT @AngrierWHStaff March is my best guess. We’ve seen more GOP speak out against him lately. I was afraid Iran was going to push it back, but that seems stable for now. ¤ For those wondering, I say March because most states with vulnerable Republicans have a primary cutoff by March.
// re: Trump resignation
🐣✅ RT @ddale8 None of these claims of fact is correct. ¤ [On NATO:] ¤ The “it had no money,” the “nobody was paying except us,” the “roller coaster down,” the “$530 billion,” the “all because of me.” All wrong. https://twitter.com/ddale8/status/1215840546578747392?s=20/photo/1
🐣 Facebook ads don’t have account managers. It’s all done by searches and algorithms. That’s why it’s so lucrative, because it’s all automatic. To start factchecking ads would require hiring thousands of people. It would require them to change their entire business model #inners
🐣 RT @ChrisMurphyCT I have placed a request with the Director of National Intelligence for a briefing on the new intelligence surrounding the imminent attacks on U.S. embassies that the President referred to today, but somehow didn’t come up in the full Senate briefing on Wednesday.
DailyBeast, David Rothkopf: With 176 Dead in Iran on Ukraine International Airlines Flight 752, Does Trump Understand Consequences Yet? http://bit.ly/2R9jYJr
// Iran bears full responsibility for this deadly disaster. But it was America that created the conditions for it, and more disasters to come.
🐣 RT @MikeMadden “A senior White House official said it was “super uncool” and “quite unwise” for Gaetz to push for limits on the president’s authority.”
⋙ WaPo: Trump angered by House ally’s push to limit his authority on Iran http://wapo.st/2uDuctS
BaltimoreSun (8/23/19): Clinton’s airstrike motives questioned Many wonder if attack was meant to distract from Lewinsky matter http://bit.ly/30eol9Z But this involved Afghanistan, not Iraq @AllInWithChris #inners
Pretty sure Clinton’s “Wag The Dog” moment involved Afghanistan … and Osama Bin Laden: ForeignPolicy (1/7/2020): Trump’s ‘Wag the Dog’ Moment http://bit.ly/3a1iXLM @allinwithchris #inners
// We were in the White House when President Bill Clinton was wrongly accused of using military power to aid his own political fortunes. Here’s why this time is different.
DailyBeast, Justin Baragona: Hannity Appears to Threaten to Give Out GOP Senators’ Phone Numbers if They Allow Impeachment Witnesses http://bit.ly/2Tcy3IE
// “Don’t make me start giving out the phone number!”
🐣 RT @Acosta Source familiar with discussions inside Trump Senate trial team says “significant and important issues of executive privilege” are raised by prospect of Bolton potentially testifying. But source says no decision made on privilege as Bolton testimony is not yet a sure thing.
🐣 RT @NoahBookbinder Senator Lindsey Graham, before the last presidential impeachment trial, strongly embraced the long-standing precedent of hearing witness testimony. There is absolutely no reason for President Trump’s impeachment trial to be any different.
⋙ Newsweek: Resurfaced Video Shows Lindsey Graham Arguing for Witnesses to Testify at Bill Clinton Impeachment Trial http://bit.ly/2R8jlPZ
// 1/7/2019
WaPo, George Conway and Neal Katyal: How Pelosi should play her impeachment cards http://wapo.st/2sXYerU
🐣 RT @RepAdamSchiff A Senate trial should be like any other trial. ¤ Senators should hear from witnesses. Senators should see the documents. ¤ Only then can they make the best possible decision regarding the President’s misconduct. ¤ Once upon a time, Mitch McConnell felt the same. 💽 https://twitter.com/RepAdamSchiff/status/1215626187101306881?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @benjaminhaddad Elegant and interesting compared review of the memoirs of @RNicholasBurns and @SamanthaJPower by Ivan Krastev and @leonardbenardo1. Critical reviews yet makes you want to read both. via @aminterest
⋙ AmericanInterest: Ivan Krastev and Leonard Benardo: The Foreign Policy Debate We Need https://wp.me/p4ja0Z-MNt
// How to temper idealism with the demands of responsible statecraft—without abandoning our commitment to democracy and human rights? This is the question facing America’s foreign policy hands as they look beyond the Trump presidency.
🐣 RT @dcpoll “Which makes us an occupying force in violation of international law, creates tension with a key partner government, and makes Iranian and affiliated efforts to kick us out more sympathetic.” – @djrothkopf
⋙ 🐣 RT @sam_vinograd State indicates that it will not accept the caretaker Iraqi Prime Minister’s request to discuss a US troop withdrawal, indicating the US view that our force posture is right and appropriate. ¤ Our position is that our position trumps the Iraqi one.
⋙⋙ StateDept, Press Statement: The U.S. Continued Partnership with Iraq http://bit.ly/2R6htre //➔ whether they want it or not
🐣 RT @ThePlumLineGS A hair-raising quote from an interview with Tom @Malinowski, a member of Armed Services: ¤ “If the objective was to weaken the Quds Force irrespective of any intelligence about imminent attacks on Americans, then where does that end? And is it over?”
⋙ 🐣 RT @ThePlumLineGS Senior House Dems tell us the bombshell effort to kill Shahlai strongly suggests a much broader operation underway, one mostly concealed from Congress. ¤ Worse, @RepEliotEngel tells us @SecPompeo may NOT show up at hearing next week. @paulwaldman1 and me:
⋙⋙ WaPo: New Iran revelations suggest Trump’s deceptions were deeper than we thought http://wapo.st/2R0ok5q
⋙ 🐣 RT @Southeast191 I’m starting to think that bc of Trump’s dementia-related issues, Pompeo & other hawks are taking advantage to wage unnecessary war for personal gain, revenge, and religious ideology. This isn’t to say the buck doesn’t stop w Trump.
⋙ 🐣 RT @HCHyson Great! So 63 of my fellow Canadian citizens died because Trump decided to go on a Middle Eastern adventure. ¤ With this information, there is no way NATO should get involved in this despite Trump’s request, as this in no way looks like a defensive measure by the United States.
CNN, Chris Cillizza: How ‘Lock Her Up!’ just blew up http://cnn.it/39YbAVK //➔ just wait: I wouldn’t be surprised if Barr didn’t put himself in charge of a new probe @
🐣 RT @BobbyChesnick This second strike would have to rest on the same fact-dependent domestic law ground as the Soleimani strike: self-defense (whether understood as based on Art. II, as implied term of AUMF, or both). Note T10/T50 oversight issue too. Will post about this @lawfareblog shortly.
⋙ 🐣 RT @gregorydjohnsen If this is true, I’m curious as to what authority the US used to conduct the strike in Yemen. Certainly not the 2001 AUMF, not the 2002 AUMF, and article II seems weak here or am I missing something @BobbyChesney @steve_vladeck @benjaminwittes
⋙⋙ WaPo: On the day U.S. forces killed Soleimani, they launched another secret operation targeting a senior Iranian official in Yemen http://wapo.st/2t9kyP4
TheAtlantic, Jonathan Shaub (Nov): Executive Privilege Should Have No Power When It Comes to an Impeachment http://bit.ly/35EJbAE
// 11/15/2019; The same rules don’t apply now that the House has begun a formal impeachment inquiry.
MacLeans.ca, Marcus Kolga: Vladimir Putin’s war against truth, justice and Sergei Magnitsky http://bit.ly/39Zt0Bl “This requires us to consume news through a thick critical lens, and question sources and motivations behind stories that sound too strange or wild to be true”
// Canadian advocates for Magnitsky legislation have become victims of Russian government propagandists
➔ “Marcus Kolga is a strategic digital communications strategist, human rights activist and expert on foreign disinformation. He is a senior fellow at the Macdonald-Laurier Institute’s Centre of Advancing Canadian Interests Abroad.”
WaPo, Jennifer Rubin: This is how Democrats can flip the Senate http://wapo.st/2QFmd8e
🐣 RT @brianklaas Just want to put this out there: Donald Trump is a serial liar and anyone who simply takes him at his word is incredibly naive.
⋙ 🐣 RT @ddale8 Over two days, Trump has gone from 1) not mentioning embassies to 2) saying it was the embassy in Baghdad to 3) saying it was embassies plural to 4) saying it was four embassies.
⋙⋙ 🐣 RT @JProskowGlobal NEW: In a new interview with Fox News, President Trump claimed that Soleimani was planning to attack the US Embassy in Baghdad, and later said “I believe it would have been 4 embassies”
⋙⋙⋙⋙ link to: FoxNews https://twitter.com/ddale8/status/1215723018762235904?s=20
⋙⋙ 🐣 Let me guess: Pompeo will agree but say the location of the four embassies is classified – too classified to tell to Congress
🐣💙 RT @MollyMcKew Many conspiracies are connected by a set of malicious, profiteering actors, and The Hill should have to pay for independent investigation/debunking of all of Solomon’s deliberately false and manipulative lies, and everyone should STOP LINKING TO THE HILL. ¤ Carry on.
⋙ 🧵 I have. I used to link to them as a source of breaking news. Then I ran into one of the Solomon’s articles and it was kind of like that horrible @CelebrityCruises ad: Total alt-reality. Haven’t linked to them since. 📌 https://twitter.com/MattGertz/status/1215695794596188161?s=20
⋙ 🐣 RT @MattGertz 1. I surfaced an interesting fact while researching this piece. Jeff Sessions appointed John Huber after a John Solomon report in The Hill, the details of which are very familiar.
⋙⋙ 🐣 RT @MattGertz The final, inevitable collapse of the right-wing media’s Uranium One conspiracy theory is a cautionary tale for journalists who trust Peter Schweizer’s reporting.
⋙⋙⋙ MediaMatters, Matt Gertz: The final, inevitable collapse of the right-wing media’s Uranium One conspiracy theory http://bit.ly/2QIb5Yf
// Report that probe will result in no charges shows the danger of trusting Peter Schweizer’s reporting
NYT: Pelosi Alerts House to Be Ready to Send Impeachment Articles Next Week http://nyti.ms/37Sf3mL
// In a letter to lawmakers, Ms. Pelosi appeared to be moving to end an impasse, but she did not offer a more specific timeline.
🐣 RT @cstrohm A Kremlin strategy to undermine Biden would echo its work in 2016, when American intelligence agencies found that Russia carried out a sophisticated operation to damage Democrat Hillary Clinton and ultimately help Trump
⋙ Bloomberg: U.S. Probes If Russia Is Targeting Biden in 2020 Election Meddling http://bloom.bg/35FERRu
WaPo: On the day U.S. forces killed Soleimani, they launched another secret operation targeting a senior Iranian official in Yemen http://wapo.st/2t81eSl
🐣 RT @joelockhart Anyone who thinks the House managers have yet to be picked and have not been preparing for the trial doesn’t know the Speaker. There’s a difference between being picked and being announced. They’ll be ready.
⋙ 🐣 Best thing I learned recently: House managers get to both open and close. America will be watching.
🐣 There are two people I simply can’t watch on live tv, Trump and Pompeo. The factchecking part of my brain shorts out.
🐣 RT @NancyPelosi By joining a resolution to dismiss, Sen. McConnell showed his true colors. Americans have now seen what is at stake in a fair trial with witnesses & evidence, and new evidence has emerged. Every Senator will have to vote: is their loyalty is to the President or the Constitution?
🐣 RT @Amy_Siskind Lest we forget on Monday both Pompeo and Kellyanne Conway claimed Trump never said he would destroy cultural sites. This whole regime is lying to us in the light of day. This is authoritarian-like propaganda!
🐣 Yup. Trump said it so it’s true. ● https://twitter.com/Auriandra/status/1215669125038723078?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @Bill_Maxwell_ NONE OF THE SENATORS OR CONGRESSIONAL REPS WHO WERE BRIEFED ON THIS THURSDAY WERE TOLD ANYTHING LIKE THIS.
⋙ 🐣 that’s because it’s b.s. – reshaping reality to conform to whatever Trump spouts off. this is it, folks. 2+2=5. we have always been at war with Eastasia. (Orwell)
🐣 RT @SarahGould_SA Bingo. Bush Sr. Was an oil man, W & Rumsfeld too. They all got richer from Iraq & Afghanistan wars. Afgan has big poppy seeds production. W:”Let’s send CIA to collect seeds for us. We may need it.” (Insert sarcasm BIGLY here)
⋙ 🐣 The first blog post I ever wrote was at DailyKos titled “Guns and Poppies” about how the Taliban had tried to control opium trafficking. It all changed when the U.S. showed up. Corruption took over with high govt officials cashing in.
⋙⋙ 🐣 RT @janforney1 And I believe CIA with contractors too- ¤ drug trafficking to line pockets of their collaborators and stock funds for office the shelf operations
🐣‼️RT @GlennKirschner2 If military strikes were motivated by Trump’s desire to curry favor with witnesses who will sit in judgment at his impeachment trial it represents a historic, egregious, unforgivable abuse of power.
⋙ 🐣💙 RT @jaketapper WSJ: “Mr. Trump, after the strike, told associates he was under pressure to deal with Gen. Soleimani from GOP senators he views as important supporters in his coming impeachment trial in the Senate, associates said.”
⋙⋙ WSJ: Trump’s New National Security Team Made Fast Work of Iran Strike http://on.wsj.com/3a19Lr8
// White House advisers were cohesive and less inclined than their predecessors to push back against the president’s wishes
⋙⋙ caption: White House officials in the Situation Room on Tuesday night, including, from left, acting White House chief of staff Mick Mulvaney, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, Vice President Mike Pence, President Trump, Secretary of Defense Mark Esper, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Mark Milley [General Eyebrows], Secretary of the Treasury Steven Mnuchin and national security adviser Robert O’Brien. SHEALAH CRAIGHEAD/WHITE HOUSE/EPA/SHUTTERSTOCK https://twitter.com/jaketapper/status/1215644318989418496?s=20/photo/1
🧵 RT @justinamash The administration has provided no evidence to qualify its recent military action as a necessary defensive response to an imminent attack. Moreover, it absurdly relies on the 2002 Authorization for Use of Military Force and Article II of the Constitution as legal justifications. 📌 https://twitter.com/justinamash/status/1215019603979624448?s=20
🐣 RT @duty2warn Donald Trump’s huge eye bags, sniffing and slurring spark yet more health fears “He repeatedly stumbled over simple words raising concerns of dementia. During the speech, Trump also botched words like ‘tolerated,’ ‘terrorist’ and ‘accomplishments.’ […] http://bit.ly/309x6Cj
⋙ 🐣 doctored photos
⋙⋙ 🐣 I’ve edited thousands of photos. Notice how much more wrinkled his skin is in the right photo. That’s done with a function to add “structure” (overused here). He’s always spray-tanned orange, but notice the grey circles under his eyes. This is done by “desaturation.”
WaPo, Noah Bookbinder: The Senate has conducted 15 impeachment trials. It heard witnesses in every one. http://wapo.st/37UyziA
// Historical precedent is clear, and it’s not on Trump’s side.
🐣 RT @AngrierWHStaff No matter what else happens from a military perspective, Iran wins here, and Putin’s foothold in the Middle East probably gets bigger.
⋙ 🐣 RT @AP BREAKING: Iraqi prime minister asks U.S. secretary of state to decide the mechanism for American troop withdrawal from Iraq.
⋙⋙ AP: Iraqi PM tells US to decide mechanism for troop withdrawal http://bit.ly/36Hvan2
🐣 RT @CREWcrew FOIA is an important tool for transparency, but the recent misuse of redactions by the government demonstrate the need for reform to ensure the public continues to get the answers they deserve.
⋙ JustSecurity, Anne Weismann: How Should FOIA Be Reformed to Prevent Further Abuse of Redactions? http://bit.ly/2QZ1cnS
WarOnTheRocks, Aaron Stein: A Guide to Getting Real on Iran http://bit.ly/35Gtk4u “[T]here is a notion that the United States can simultaneously be risk adverse and omnipotent”
🐣 RT @brianklaas Trump has tweeted this stat — which he fabricated — 22 times. He has strong approval in the Republican party (usually between the high 70s and high 80s) but he keeps saying 95% even when the real numbers fluctuate. But we’ve just grown used to him making stuff up.
⋙ 🐣 RT @real 95% Approval Rating in the Republican Party. Thank you!
⋙ 🐣 📊 According to FiveThirtyEight, 9.8% of Republicans want to see Trump removed from office http://53eig.ht/2N5MJV2 ● https://twitter.com/Auriandra/status/1215612676983939072?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @AtlanticCouncil “This is not a call for American military recklessness rooted in a new-found sense of escalatory dominance over Iran. A rough parity between the parties where both sides recognize the dangers of armed escalation suffice to prevent war.”
⋙ AtlanticCouncil, Frederic Hof: Qasem Soleimani and escalatory parity http://bit.ly/37QoumE
🐣 RT @MSNBC .@Maddow had to rearrange her studio to accurately portray the scale of 2020 election ad❣spending by Michael Bloomberg, Tom Steyer and the other candidates. Prepare to zoom out. https://twitter.com/MSNBC/status/1215566707026288642?s=20/photo/1
⋙ Bloomberg, Steyer ad❣spending dwarfs rest of 2020 field -by a lot
// Rachel Maddow shows the sheer scale of the difference between what Michael Bloomberg and Tom Steyer have spent on TV and radio ads so far in the 2020
⭕ 9 Jan 2020
Slate, Fred Kaplan: Trump’s Contempt for Democracy Has Reached New Depths http://bit.ly/2Tj2Vaj
// The president is defying the Constitution amid the crisis with Iran.
🐣 RT @MarkTFitz “Though Mr. Trump has since walked back from the brink of war, I can’t explain the chaos of his presidency as it lurches from crisis to crisis, real or manufactured. [He] said he ‘doesn’t do exit strategies.’ Clearly he doesn’t do strategies, period.”
⋙ NYT, John Kerry: Diplomacy Was Working Until Trump Abandoned It http://nyti.ms/2Nge7AD
// The president put us on a path toward conflict and turmoil with Iran.
ForeignAffairs, Robert Zaretsky: Trump’s Napoleon Moment http://fam.ag/2R2RG32 Napoleon “surrounded himself with servants instead of collaborators.”
// When Crimes Become Blunders in an Acquiescent Court
🐣 RT @MSNBC Six senators who were jurors in the impeachment trial of Pres. Clinton refute Majority Leader McConnell’s claims that he’s following the Clinton trial precedent for PRes. Trump. Here’s what else they told @AriMelber.
⋙ 💽 MSNBC, TheBeatWithAri: On Trump trial, Sen. McConnell gets fact-checked by six of his Senate colleagues at once http://on.msnbc.com/36Go6H3
// As the Senate marches towards putting Pres. Trump on trial, six former senators who served as jurors in the Senate trial of Pres. Clinton weigh in on the process in this rare joint interview with MSNBC Chief Legal Correspondent Ari Melber. The senators fact-check McConnell’s recent claims that he is following the same precedent as the Clinton trial; share their insights on who the key witnesses would be; and reflect on how Sen. Lindsey Graham went from advocating witnesses at this kind of trial and condemning then-candidate Trump to contradicting his past positions.
TheBulwark, Shay Khatiri: Trump’s Treatment of U.S. Allies Comes Home to Roost http://bit.ly/2R7oqZb
// For three years Donald Trump abused America’s allies. Now he’s shocked that they’re not rushing to back him up on killing Soleimani.
WaPo, Fareed Zakaria: Trump does not have a foreign policy. He has a series of impulses. http://wapo.st/37Qy0Go
🐣 RT @N_Waters89 We @bellingcat have analysed a video that shows a missile hitting an object above Parand in Tehran. ¤ We believe this object was likely flight #PS572.
Read it here👇
⋙ Bellincat.com: Video Apparently Showing Flight PS752 Missile Strike Geolocated to Iranian Suburb http://bit.ly/2Nd2VEO
//➔ unverified image of possible missile fragment from article https://twitter.com/Auriandra/status/1215608820053020672?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @TIME TIME’s new cover: “We’ve upped the ante.” Why Nancy Pelosi is going all in against Trump https://ti.me/2QASs8k 💽 https://twitter.com/TIME/status/1215241863436873728?s=20/photo/1
// TIME Cover Nancy Pelosi ● https://twitter.com/Auriandra/status/1215593610936225799?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @SenKamalaHarris .@SpeakerPelosi is right. This isn’t 1999. During Clinton’s impeachment:
-that President fully cooperated with Congress
-first-hand witnesses from the administration gave sworn testimony
Trump is blocking witnesses and documents—and McConnell vows to be in ‘total coordination.’
⋙ 💙🐣 RT @CNNPolitics Speaker Pelosi: “I’m not withholding them indefinitely. I’ll send them over when I’m ready. And that will probably be soon. … documentation, witnesses, facts, truth. That’s what they’re afraid of” https://cnn.it/2tIAxUt 💽 https://twitter.com/CNNPolitics/status/1215310079899119618?s=20/photo/1
Politico: Trump claims Soleimani was planning to blow up U.S. embassy http://politi.co/2FDqD97
// Democrats have been criticizing the administration for not revealing more about Iran’s ‘imminent’ attack plans.
WaPo, David Ignatius: This is what a real Iran strategy would look like http://wapo.st/2FxCYvJ
WaPo, Jim Webb: When did it become acceptable to kill a top leader of a country we aren’t even at war with? http://wapo.st/2FxJD94 Webb is a former Democratic Senator from Virginia and was Secretary of the Navy under Reagan
WaPo: House approves measure limiting Trump’s authority to take further military action against Iran http://wapo.st/35HuJHU
🐣 🔲 RT @PodSaveAmerica NEW POD: Mitch McConnell & the Senate Republicans get ready to vote for a rigged impeachment trial, endorsements start piling up in the Democratic primary, & @ewarren talks to @jonfavs about the Iran crisis & her campaign strategy in the weeks before Iowa: http://go.crooked.com/XMf82j
🐣 🔲💙 RT @AmExperiencePBS One man’s crusade tested the limits of American decency and democracy. ¤ Watch MCCARTHY, now streaming online and on the @PBS Video app → http:// to.pbs.org/2tO05PK
🐣 RT @BillKristol In the midst of arguments over the Senate trial rules, let’s not lose sight of this: ¤ Trump hasn’t testified. ¤ He’s stopped key witnesses from testifying. ¤ His defenders want to stop witnesses from testifying. ¤ It’s almost as if…Trump’s guilty, and his defenders know he’s guilty.
🐣 Benefits of withholding Impeachment Articles (thread): ¤ (Seth is nothing if not thorough)
⋙ 🧵 RT @SethAbramson 📌 https://twitter.com/SethAbramson/status/1215392051354853378?s=20
1⃣ More time to investigate.
2⃣ More time to litigate.
3⃣ More time for media to investigate/report.
4⃣ New evidence can emerge.
5⃣ New witnesses can emerge.
6⃣ New evidence aids argument for witnesses.
7⃣ New Senate can hear trial.
8⃣ Deny Trump fake exoneration.1⃣5⃣ Time for closed depositions of reluctant witnesses.
1⃣6⃣ Time for open hearings of new witnesses.
1⃣7⃣ Time for hearings with old witnesses with new info.
1⃣8⃣ Time to educate public on contents of HPSCI report.
1⃣9⃣ Prove that the House can exert its power.9⃣ Retain ability to add articles.
1⃣0⃣ Keep Ukraine story in the news.
1⃣1⃣ Keep impeachment in the news.
1⃣2⃣ Purpose of putting Trump on legal notice: met.
1⃣3⃣ Purpose of drawing public attention to acts: met.
1⃣4⃣ Deny GOP a televised conspiracy theory-fest.1⃣5⃣ Time for closed depositions of reluctant witnesses.
1⃣6⃣ Time for open hearings of new witnesses.
1⃣7⃣ Time for hearings with old witnesses with new info.
1⃣8⃣ Time to educate public on contents of HPSCI report.
1⃣9⃣ Prove that the House can exert its power.2⃣0⃣ Option remains to just send Obstruction article.
2⃣1⃣ Option to draft [already supported] Bribery article.
2⃣2⃣ Increase morale of Democratic base.
2⃣3⃣ Provoke Trump to inculpatory words due to anger.
2⃣4⃣ Time to let related probes (e.g. Giuliani) play out.MORE BENEFITS:
2⃣5⃣ A public stand against ever trusting Mitch again.
Meanwhile, the benefits of *sending* the articles are *sad*:
🔻 Get media off your back
🔻 Let Senators set travel schedules
🔻 Participate lamely in a sham, rigged trial
🔻 Hope GOP will be less mean to youONE BENEFIT I FORGOT:
2⃣6⃣ Force GOP Senators in danger of losing their seats to go on the record moving to “dismiss” the articles—which they literally can’t do anyway—when 64% of Republicans want a full trial and 72% of all Americans do. That vote will be an election albatross.
TheAtlantic, David Frum: We’re Just Discovering the Price of Killing Soleimani http://bit.ly/2FwTaxj
// Grieving families around the world are already paying it.
WaPo, Andrew McCabe: If you think Iran is done retaliating, think again http://wapo.st/35CZfTi
🐣 RT @DavidVidecette I know, I was perhaps being a little facetious towards what I thought was a political point. ¤ We can point the finger of blame in many places, including my own country’s past leaders, but none of them actually shot down the civilian plane.
⋙ 🐣 To me, the key pivot point was Trump pulling out of Iran deal, but it could go back to Bush’s unwarranted invasion of Iraq (which was clear at the time from Colin Powell’s on-the-record statements). The rest is mostly noise.
WaPo, Jennifer Rubin: Message from Nancy Pelosi: ‘It’s not about how bad they are. It’s about how good we are’ http://wapo.st/35EgweW “The administration conducted a provocative, disproportionate airstrike against Iran, which endangered Americans” ~ Pelosi
🧵 RT @jonallendc When you hear a lawmaker arguing that a War Powers resolution does not have force if it is “concurrent” rather than “joint,” he or she is effectively saying Congress doesn’t have the power to stop a president intent on fighting a war without two-thirds votes in each chamber. 1/x 📌 https://twitter.com/jonallendc/status/1215342971387883520?s=20
🐣 RT @JohnBrennan Gang of 8 in Congress is entitled to ALL intelligence on Soleimani killing. @realDonaldTrump’s lies, reckless jingoism, and incompetence disgrace the office of the presidency. Right-wing ideologues in Administration & media steering Trump have put our Nation in grave danger.
🐣 RT @ABC BREAKING: Justin Trudeau: “We have intelligence from multiple sources, including our allies and our own intelligence. The evidence indicates that the plane was shot down by an Iranian surface-to-air missile.” ¤ “This may well have been unintentional.” https://abcn.ws/35E7WNg 💽 https://twitter.com/ABC/status/1215359833655910402?s=20/photo/1
↥ ↧
🐣‼️RT @Acosta Trudeau: Canadian intelligence shows Ukrainian jet was shot down by an Iranian surface to air missile.
🐣 RT @ThePlumlineGS Wow:
“Americans by more than 2-1 say the killing of Soleimani has made the US less safe, a nationwide USA TODAY/Ipsos Poll finds”
“A majority of those surveyed, by 52%-34%, called Trump’s behavior with Iran ‘reckless'”
But he showed “strength” apparently
⋙ 🐣 RT @ArmandoNDK Media spin for Trump will simply fail on this no matter how hard the NYT tries. No one believes them anymore// Exclusive: Americans say Soleimani’s killing made US less safe, Trump ‘reckless’ on Iran
⋙⋙ 📊USAToday/Ipsos Poll: Killing Soleimani made US less safe, Trump reckless on Iran http://bit.ly/2N9OAZM
🐣 RT @McFaul [To: @MessageFromLen] Thanks for this list. Note that most incidents on your list occurred DURING the Trump era, not Obama era. Please fill out the list with data from 2018 and 2019. & especially grateful for data going back to 2003. Most (all?) US soldiers killed by Iranians happened before JCPOA.
⋙ 🐣 RT @McFaul For what I’ve read, the 600 US soldiers killed by Iran occured before signing of JCPOA. The source in this story is your own colleague, [Newsweek] Brian Hook: http://bit.ly/2FAiJ0e How many after? By my count, only American killed by IRI after JCPOA happened last week, during Trump era.
⋙⋙ 🐣 RT @MessageFromLen Soleimani, and the regime, are responsible for the deaths of 603 US service members in Iraq 2003-2011. Cumulatively, the IC estimates around a thousand. The latest was last week, which prompted our kinetic (vs pallets of cash) response.
⋙⋙⋙ 🐣 Are generals to be targets now? Eisenhower, Marshall, Patraeus were also “responsible” for thousands of war deaths, but once the door is opened to assassinating the leaders of other countries, when does it stop?
⋙⋙⋙ 🐣 The “pallets of cash” was (as you know) money that belonged to the Iranians. But keep on lying about that. It only works on FoxNews.
⭕ 8 Jan 2020
🐣 RT @Hardball “It sounds like there’s absolutely no justification, we’ve been lied into war before … I see this all over again where the intel is so thin.”
— Valerie Plame on White House justification for Soleimani assassination.
⋙ 💽 MSNBC, Hardball: Valerie Plame: We’ve been lied into war before, intelligence ‘so thin’ http://on.msnbc.com/35OoD8B
// Members of Congress were briefed this afternoon on the intelligence that the administration says justified the assassination, as the administration faces increased pressure for details about what prompted it. Valerie Plame says, “It sounds like there’s absolutely no justification, we’ve been lied into war before … I see this all over again where the intelligence is so thin.”
NYT, Nicholas Kristof: Trump Has a Bizarre Idea of Winning http://nyti.ms/2tLkmWt
// Let’s tally up the results of his efforts with Iran.
BuzzFeedNews: The White House’s Iran Briefing Won Over Most Republicans, But Rand Paul And Mike Lee Are Calling It A Disgrace http://bit.ly/37R6Krb
// The parties are splitting apart as the House schedules a vote Thursday on whether to limit Trump’s authority to wage war.
VanityFair, TA Frank: Why Trump’s Iran Blunder Is a Turning Point http://bit.ly/39YM1nw
// Trolled by Iran’s leaders and captured by the hawks around him, the president clumsily took the U.S. to the brink of the Middle East war he’d pledged to avoid. For some supporters, it could be the last straw.
🔆 New❗️⋙ 📊 Pew Poll: How people around the world see the U.S. and Donald Trump in 10 charts http://pewrsr.ch/2QVvhok ● https://twitter.com/Auriandra/status/1215265467553677312?s=20/photo/1
// Confidence in Trump has ticked up in EU countries but remains low
⏳WaPo: A timeline of the escalation in the Middle East http://wapo.st/2QEp417
// In May 2018, the U.S. withdrew from the Iran nuclear deal. Throughout 2019, economic sanctions were imposed as part of President Trump’s “maximum pressure campaign,” further escalating tensions in the region.
🐣 RT @BillKristol Lindsey Graham’s sycophancy will be remembered long after his senatorial career. It’s on a par with that of Trollope’s Obadiah Slope, whom Eleanor Harding calls “an abominable, horrid, hypocritical man…the most fulsome, fawning, abominable man I ever saw.”
⋙ 🐣 RT @Acyn Lindsey Graham says Trump’s speech from this morning will be remembered long after his second term. He also says it’s as good as Reagan’s Tear Down This Wall speech 💽 [Fox:] https://twitter.com/Acyn/status/1215100062532956161?s=20/photo/1
⋙ 🐣 Finally, someone took the words right out of my mouth (ha! I wish!)
🐣 RT @MSNBC Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin wants to move the Secret Service back to the Treasury Department, but not if it means disclosing Trump’s travel costs before the 2020 election.
⋙ 💽 MSNBC, AllInWithChris: Trump admin. still hiding the President’s travel costs http://on.msnbc.com/2T7zY0R
// Thing 1/Thing 2: Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin wants to move the Secret Service back to the Treasury Department, but not if it means disclosing Trump’s travel costs before the 2020 election.
🐣 RT @MSNBC John Kerry says President Trump delivered “an outright lie” during White House speech on Iran missile attack, and discusses Iran Nuclear Deal. 💽 https://twitter.com/MSNBC/status/1215116080550699008?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @justinamash Congress must repeal both the 2001 and 2002 AUMFs. They primarily serve as false bases for administrations to commence military engagements that Congress never approved. The American people must be heard in matters of war.
DailyBeast: Trump: Iran Is ‘Standing Down,’ but I’m Gonna ‘Punish’ It Some More http://bit.ly/2tEf3Im by Spencer Ackerman, Asawin Suebsaeng and Justin Baragona
// “The American people should be extremely grateful and happy.”
🐣 Iran, if you’re listening, I hope you’re able to find the 10 years of tax returns that are missing.
Politico, Natasha Bertrand and Connor O’Brien: ‘Utterly unpersuaded’: Democrats blast Trump team’s Iran intel briefing http://politi.co/2T7aFfG
// Lawmakers declared themselves unimpressed with the administration’s case for killing Qassem Soleimani.
Politico: After ripping up Obama’s Iran playbook, Trump quickly pieces it back together http://politi.co/2QCDj6y
// Following years of trashing his predecessor’s engagement with Iran, Trump found himself echoing key elements of the Obama approach to avoid creating another front in America’s Middle East wars. http://politi.co/
DailyBeast, Matt Lewis: The Trump Doctrine—Hem, Haw, Overreact Wildly, Then Clean Up Your Own Mess http://bit.ly/2QCv4Yk
// Well, we’ve avoided World War III for now, and maybe Trump’s gamble paid off. But his foreign policy still depends on whatever mood he’s in that day.
WaPo: ‘Launch, launch, launch’: Inside the Trump administration as the Iranian missiles began to fall http://wapo.st/2QCqvgI
NYT: 3 Hours From Alert to Attacks: Inside the Race to Protect U.S. Forces From Iran Strikes http://nyti.ms/37ZBHd9
// Intelligence that foreshadowed the Iranian attack set off a tense, often confusing afternoon in the White House Situation Room.
🐣 RT @duty2warn He is an obese man with severe stress, near-constant rage, and acute narcissism, in his 70’s, who washes cheeseburgers down with diet soda and Aderall, and never exercises. He was recently driven to a hospital. Today may have been a turning point. He may be seen less in public.
🐣 RT @GerryConnolly I just left the administration’s briefing on the strike that killed Qasem Soleimani. They tried, unsuccessfully, to conjure up a rationale for the president’s reckless decision. ¤ It was sophomoric and utterly unconvincing. I left the room more troubled than when I went in.
🐣 I expect a revised version of Impeachment Article 1 to be passed in the House incorporating new evidence if Senate trial terms specify that they will only consider findings as submitted. This could even include a deposition from subpoenaed Bolton.
🐣 RT @danbaer “He will need more corruption, more racism & misogyny, more lies, more reckless foreign policy, & more rot of our institutions as time goes on. But none of that will truly dampen the flames of grievance on which Trump rose to power…” In @denveropinion
⋙ DenverPost, Daniel Baer: Trapped between the authoritarian spiral and the progressive paradox http://dpo.st/39W0r7U
🐣 RT @kylegriffin1 GOP Sen. Mike Lee goes off on the Trump briefing: “They had to leave after 75 minutes, while they’re in the process of telling us that we need to be good little boys and girls and run along and not debate this in public. I find that absolutely insane. I think it’s unacceptable.” 💽 https://twitter.com/kylegriffin1/status/1215031720937963521?s=20/photo/1
WaPo, EJ Dionne: Hey Republicans, demagoguery won’t hide Trump’s incoherence http://wapo.st/2N6oaZe
🐣 RT @duty2warn Last night he chose not to speak nor be seen. The All Is Well tweet – written by an aide. His speech this morning was replete with heavy breathing, sniffling, disconnected affect, aphasia, other gaffes. Other than tweeting a video of it, he did not tweet today. This man is ill.
🐣 RT @jdawsey1 Defense Sec. Esper, answering question in senators briefing today, said voting to curb authority & having public fight over Iran strike could demonstrate division to Iran and a “division of purpose” to troops. Durbin then said he disagreed. Sen. Lee says exchange infuriated him.
Alternet, Chauncey DeVega: Trump’s stark mental impairments are now unleashing global catastrophes: mental health professionals http://bit.ly/2QAAhzP
🐣 RT @MIGS_AI “Tweets from US president Donald Trump and Iranian foreign minister Javad Zarif Tuesday offered a fascinating glimpse at how world leaders can communicate more quickly and directly than ever in times of crisis.”
⋙ WIRED, Garrett Graff: Did Twitter Help Stop War With Iran? http://bit.ly/39PAeYp
// Tweets from US president Donald Trump and Iranian foreign minister Javad Zarif Tuesday offered a fascinating glimpse at how world leaders can communicate more quickly and directly than ever in times of crisis.
⋙ 🐣 .@JZarif’s calm and clarity – even as he was being illegally prevented from entering the US to attend a U.N. meeting – were noteworthy
🐣 RT @DeadlineWH “It’s just sad that we’re still sitting here with a President of the United States who – out of a weird mixture of envy and deep antipathy – has to attack his predecessor in the most political manner with the military standing behind him” – @brhodes w/ @NicolleDWallace 💽 https://twitter.com/DeadlineWH/status/1215049175894757383?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @matthewamiller I wonder which one of the briefers could be so arrogant as to say something like that to United States Senators. You get one guess.
⋙ 🐣 RT @igorbobic Mike Lee calls Iran briefing “probably the worst briefing at least on a military issue I’ve seen,” adding that it was “insulting” to be told by administration officials not to debate merits of taking military action
🐣 RT @atrupar “Blood on his hands” isn’t legal justification for killing Soleimani. Lots of officials throughout world have blood on their hands. Trump initially said there was “imminent threat.” But if that’s true we haven’t seen evidence, and it’s worth remembering that he lies constantly.
NYRB, Michael McFaul and Abbas Milani: The Minimal Value of Trump’s ‘Maximum Pressure’ on Iran http://bit.ly/304In72
✅ WaPo FactCheck, Glenn Kessler and Salvador Rizzo: Fact-checking Trump’s address on the Iran missile attacks http://wapo.st/2T4TpaJ
🐣 RT @NBCNews BREAKING: Sen. Lee, Republican from Utah, heavily criticizes Trump admin.’s briefing for senators today on Iran, saying officials expect Senate to be “good little boys and girls” and not debate in public. 💽 https://twitter.com/NBCNews/status/1215027375802605568?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @caslernoel Trump is on drugs, whether we want to face it or not, he is an Adderall addict and has been addicted to speed for decades. Benzo’s figure in as well as the UK Sudafed he takes to control those sniffles and for the buzz. This was NO secret in TV Production. @realDonaldTrump
⋙ 🐣 RT @caslernoel Former Apprentice Staffer Noel Casler Accuses Donald Trump of Drug Use and Inappropriate Behavior
⋙⋙ People (2018): Former Apprentice Staffer Noel Casler Accuses Donald Trump of Drug Use and Inappropriate Behavior http://bit.ly/2QCysCc
// 12/14/2018
🐣 RT @alfonslopeztena Reckless, illegal, unhinged — Why Europe hates Trump more than Iran. In Brussels and national capitals, officials are seething. Europeans aren’t lining up to back the US this time, even with rhetoric. The main reason is simple distrust of Trump
⋙ Politico.eu, Matthew Karnitschnig: Why Europe hates Trump more than Iran http://politi.co/37L6Z7e
// Behind the sober public pronouncements from Brussels and national capitals, officials are seething.
🐣 RT @tribelaw When @SenMikeLee says an Intell briefing was the worst he can recall and voices anger that the Trump cabinet members tried to stifle debate, you know Trump’s team is hiding the truth.
🐣 RT @grantstern Fox News just aired a major crack in Trump’s red wall in the Senate! ¤ Senator Mike Lee called it the worst briefing he’s ever seen on military matters and is very upset it’s classified so can’t be publicly debated. Fox cut away from him.
🐣 💙 RT @Acyn An angry Mike Lee criticizes the briefing as lame and not adequate 💽 https://twitter.com/Acyn/status/1215024891532988416?s=20/photo/1
NBCNews, Ned Price: The Iran attacks are the result of Trump’s foreign policy of trying to beat Obama http://nbcnews.to/35FYHfH
// The president’s strategy in Iran, as with everything else, was to show that he was greater than his predecessor. The risks in that were always obvious.
🐣 RT @AngrierWHstaff Jesus Christ. He just revealed top secret intel in the middle of his address. https://twitter.com/AngrierWHStaff/status/1214952941603446785?s=20
⋙ 🐣 RT @washingtonpost Trump: “Our missiles are big, powerful, accurate, lethal and fast. … The fact that we have this great military equipment, however, does not mean we have to use it. We do not want to use it.”
⋙⋙ [note “…”]
🐣 RT @McFaul Did Iran blow up Saudi oil fields, shoot down a US drone, kill an American working in Iraq, attack bases where American soldiers were stationed, or provoke demonstrations against our embassy in Obama era, after JCPOA was signed? I dont remember that. If Im wrong, send links.
🐣 RT @bmkoplow5 @gtconway3d Alas, there are no drugs approved for treatment of Narcissistic Personality Disorder or Antisocial Personality Disorder.
⋙ 🐣 But there are drugs for bipolar disorder and psychosis that might be worth a try. Trump seems to be self-medicating on amphetamines (Adderall etc). Too bad he doesn’t have access to top-rate MDs like from Johns Hopkins or … Walter Reed.
🐣 RT @tribelaw So it wasn’t just me? I wondered whether I was imagining things, but it truly upset me to watch the man in the White House look and sound, well . . . tranquilized. The fact that lots of others sensed the same thing is creepy at best. We need to know more.
⋙ RawStory, Travis Gettys: ‘What drugs is he on?’ Trump sparks concern by slurring and sniffling through Iran remarks http://bit.ly/36x2GMC
MSNBC, Steven Benen: Andrea Mitchell: ‘The worst national security team that I’ve ever seen’ http://on.msnbc.com/2QVpyPr
🐣 RT @duty2warn “vintage Trump: lacking in even the barest eloquence, replete with lies, delivered with garbled pronunciation and weirdly somnolent affect and unintentionally revealing.” Five takeaways from Trump’s deranged speech on Iran
⋙ WaPo, Paul Waldman: Five takeaways from Trump’s deranged speech on Iran http://wapo.st/2QzzkHM
🐣 RT @CNNnewsroom Democratic Rep. Gerry Connolly, who just emerged from a briefing on Iran from top Trump administrations officials, called it “sophomoric and utterly unconvincing” adding that he remained “utterly unpersuaded” that the strike on Qasem Soleimani was justified. 💽 https://twitter.com/CNNnewsroom/status/1214987526055837696?s=20 /photo/1
🐣 RT @bubbaprog 58 times. He sniffed 58 times during his address. Here are all of them. 💽 https://twitter.com/bubbaprog/status/1214955938119127040?s=20
🐣 RT @ChrisMurphyCT All in all, just a massive national security fumble.
Iraq turns against us, kicking out our troops.
Iran restarts their nuclear weapons program.
Operations against ISIS stop.
And for what? To get Iran to stop shooting at us – which they weren’t doing when Obama left office.
🐣 RT @CNNpolitics Iranian President Hassan Rouhani: “If America commits another crime … they will receive a stronger reaction” https://cnn.it/2R12fUn
🐣 RT @maggieNYT The president’s words so far comport with reporting from me @jonathanvswan and others last night – potus wanted an off-ramp from an escalating conflict. Iran gave him a face-saving way with missiles that caused no casualties.
🐣 RT @brhodes I’m guessing that if Iran announced it wasn’t abiding by JCPOA limits, the counter ISIS mission was suspended, the Iraqi parliament voted to expel US forces, and Iran fired off ballistic missiles at US bases, no one would say Obama had a win.
🧵 ✅ RT @ddale Trump is speaking now, flanked by Pence, Pompeo, Esper and military leaders. “As long as I am president of the United States, Iran will never be allowed to have a nuclear weapon. Good morning,” he begins. 📌 https://twitter.com/ddale8/status/1214946978406260736?s=20
🐣 RT @McFaul Trump could have made a triumphant statement today without distorting the historical record concerning the Obama era and the Iran nuclear deal. People like me could have then praised. He choose a different course, politicizing yet again national security. Disappointing.
🐣 RT @towandatowanda9 JUST look at this fucking guy. I mean seriously… who in the @GOP thinks this is a strong leader? He’s higher than a kite and WHO the fuck did his makeup??
⋙ 🐣 RT @angelamelini Are his dentures loose? What’s with the sniffing? Is he still an adderall junkie? Why can’t he pronounce words properly? What’s with his tongue thing? Is he fiending?
💽 https://twitter.com/TowandaTOWANDA9/status/1214956140456546304?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @brhodes The rest of the world doesn’t indulge Trump’s lies or ignore the damage he’s doing.
⋙ 🐣📋RT @brianklaas Worth reiterating the damage Trump is doing to our alliances at a moment when we could use steadfast allies.
Confidence in US leadership, change from Obama to Trump:
↓76% Germany
↓75% France
↓58% Canada
↓52% Australia
↓51% UK
↓48% Japan
↑8% Russia
(Pew 2018).
🐣 RT @tribelaw Trump took Iran’s “yes” for an answer: he accepted Iran’s decision to stand down after its non-lethal missile retaliation. By not raising the stakes beyond unjustifiably killing Soleimani, he’s turning down the temperature. I’m glad.
🐣 RT @joelockhart Where have we seen this pattern before. @realDonaldTrump creates a crisis, “solves” it and is heaped with praise from GOP and Fox News. Why stop if it’s still working.
🐣 RT @TomJChicago Trump is a neurological nightmare struggling at the podium. Words like “tolerated” & “accomplishment” are unpronounceable, although “a compliment” revealed his inner desire. The protruding tongue appears- completely expected now. Pack him up- head to the Mayo Clinic neurological
🐣 RT @RadioFreeTom Trump’s constant shaking of the news cycle will hurt him: He was counting on Iran to push impeachment off the agenda. But he screwed up, Iran played it smart, and now this is a two-day story. ¤ (And of course, he’ll never draw a connection between today and future Iranian attacks.)
🐣 RT @kylekulinski That speech was absolutely full of lies and insanity but no indication of further military conflict so this is best case scenario in an absolutely terrible situation this administration is responsible for getting us in.
🐣 RT @TheRickWilson I don’t mean this in a mean or sarcastic way but he does not sound well
⋙ 🐣 RT @OrenKessler He struggled mightily with “tolerated” and “accomplishments” but dementia coupled with likely dyslexia will do that
//➔ Note: I couldn’t listen live to Trump’s comments. Too much stress. So, I’m just learning … But if we dodged a bullet, that’s good.
🐣 RT @brianklaas A few thoughts:
1) Iran’s minor response gives Trump a way out. The smart de-escalation move would be to condemn the attack but no major US retaliation.
2) This isn’t the end of Iran’s “revenge.” But future attacks will probably be deniable (cyber, militias, sponsored terror).
🐣 Pompeo’s reason for caring about Persian culture is that it preserves Biblical history. Does he know that Persian culture predates Christianity by thousands of years and that its value is historical and cultural w/o regard to religion?
🐣 RT @MSNBC “There was an effort to get him to sort of take his time, to be judicious, to be measured in how he responded to this,” The Washington Post’s Philip Rucker says of aides’ counsel to Pres. Trump after Iran’s strike on Iraq bases.
⋙ 💽 MSNBC: Trump tweets ‘All is well!’ instead of addressing the nation after Iran strikes
After hours of uncharacteristic silence, Trump tweeted ‘All is well!’ and ‘So far, so good!’ after U.S. forces were targeted by Iran while serving in Iraq. http://on.msnbc.com/2uuZ9jR
🐣 RT @carlbildt If Iran says that its missile strikes tonight have killed 80 Americans, and the US says that they killed no one, then let it all be with that and try to create an opening for some diplomacy. High time.
🐣 RT @MuellerSheWrote Trump isn’t just a Russian asset. He’s indebted to the Saudis, Israel, and the UAE just as much, if not more. The Iranian threat to Dubai and Israel has dampened the escalation for now. THAT is what being compromised means-and the Iranians know it. #Impeached45
⭕ 7 Jan 2020
Newsweek: Resurfaced Video Shows Lindsey Graham Arguing for Witnesses to Testify at Bill Clinton Impeachment Trial http://bit.ly/2R8jlPZ
NYMag, Frank Rich: What Will Happen to The Trump Toadies? http://nym.ag/2T4n57X
// Look to Nixon’s defenders, and the Vichy collaborators, for clues. https://twitter.com/JoeNBC/status/1215251804096749568?s=20/photo/1
NYT, Frank Bruni: We Can’t Afford Trump as Our Commander in Chief http://nyti.ms/39L1PKp
// He lacks the counsel, character and credibility to lead us into war.
🐣 RT @MSNBC Daniel Weiss, president & CEO of the Metropolitan Museum of Art: “One of the areas where the world comes together is celebrating our shared civilization. Cultural heritage is the way we do that…So, destroy those things is to destroy people’s identity.”
⋙ 💽 MSNBC, AliVelshi: Met Museum President on Why Cultural Sites Need Protection http://on.msnbc.com/36xY5d2
// President & CEO of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Daniel Weiss, joins Ali Velshi to discuss the significance of cultural sites and symbols, after President Trump threatened to target Iranian cultural sites.
WWaPo, Leon Panetta: Trump is facing the greatest test of his presidency http://wapo.st/36zgxBX
// (written before Iranian missile attacks on US bases in Iraq)
🐣 RT @AshaRangappa_ Brilliant! 👇
⋙ 🧵 💙 RT @ Or @SpeakerPelosi could just send Article 2 (Obstruction of Cong) to Senate since Bolton doesn’t necessarily have info on that ¤ And then subpoena Bolton, who obv has info relevant to Article 1(Ukraine). He has even said he has new info. Then 1st trial could focus on obstruction 📌 https://twitter.com/AshaRangappa_/status/1214707076448043009?s=20
⋙⋙ 🧵 RT @neal_katyal I think House should subpoena Bolton b/c McConnell wont guarantee witnesses ¤ He claims that happened w/Clinton,but there SenMaj leader didnt say “there will be no difference between the president’s position and our position” nor “There’s no chance president is going to be removed” 📌 https://twitter.com/neal_katyal/status/1214672577626607619?s=20
⋙⋙⋙ 🐣 RT @nytopinion In a single stroke, John Bolton elevated truth and transparency over political gamesmanship, write @neal_katyal and @gtconway3d. The Senate must take him up on his offer to testify if subpoenaed.
⋙⋙⋙⋙ NYT, Neal Katyal and George Conway III: Why Is Mitch McConnell So Afraid of John Bolton? http://nyti.ms/2QVHnOd
// The Senate must hear his testimony in an impeachment trial.
🐣 RT @neal_katyal McConnell is angling for a sham trial. No one (besides Trump) benefits from that. The whole point of a trial is to provide the public w/reassurance that the truth has been ferreted out. That’s always impt, never more so than now, given Trump’s Iran action
⋙ WaPo, Neal Katyal and Joshua Geltzer: We can’t trust Trump on Iran without a real impeachment trial http://wapo.st/39QxHxh
// The Ukraine matter hurts the White House’s credibility — on everything.
⋙ 🐣 RT @neal_katyal @SpeakerPelosi has been absolutely right in her urgency around impeachment. But given that McConnell cant commit to even the most basic of truth-seeking (e.g., testimony from a witness whom the deft gagged, who now wants to testify), the need for truth > expediency of a sham trial
🐣 RT @realT_rumpT_rex
The Bushes had Gulf Wars, and they were a mess!
But me, I make GOLF WARS! And they are the best!
I kill who I like, without forethought or goals,
Then it all goes to shit while I play 18 holes!
#TrumpsWar @realDonaldTrump #golfwar #Golf
🐣 RT @NumbersMuncher Trump tweets an American flag after the killing of Suleimani. ¤ Adviser to Iran’s Supreme Leader tweets Iran’s flag after launching missiles at US air base. ¤ World leaders trolling each other on Twitter following military attacks is what we voted for apparently. https://twitter.com/NumbersMuncher/status/1214699915009515521?s=20/photo/1-2
🐣 RT @kyledcheney NEW: The House impeached President Donald Trump three weeks ago, but a gusher of evidence related to the case has continued to flow — threatening to intensify the Ukraine scandal, regardless of what happens in the Senate.
🐣 RT @kyledcheney John Bolton’s offer to testify was just the latest new stream of potential evidence: there’s Lev Parnas’ documents, emails related to the hold on military aid and Jennifer Williams’ classified letter about Pence’s Sept. 17 call with Ukraine.
⋙ 💙 Politico, Kyle Cheney and Andrew Desiderio: New Ukraine revelations hang over impeachment trial http://politi.co/36Fzfbu
// The case against the president continues to evolve as new evidence comes to light.
🐣 RT @lhfang Gen. Stanley McChrystal: “I don’t think we should view him as an evil person. I think we should view him just like I believe in my country. I think Qassem Suleimani believes in his country.” ¤ Worth watching this well-timed BBC doc on Suliemani’s life, which came out last year. 💽 https://twitter.com/lhfang/status/1214711719764713472?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @GEsfandiari Pretty clear from Khamenei’s speech currently aired live on state TV and FM Zarif’s tweet that Iran is not after a war. But Tehran had to respond to Soleimani’s assassination to save face.
🐣 RT @nayyeroar With both psides trying to be strong and saving face for their public, additional attacks are inevitable. When the chief diplomat, SecState, is throwing rhetorical bombs at #Iran – who is discussing an off ramp? Is there a third party who can intervene?
🐣 RT @RichardEngel Iran making threats of mass escalation. To attack more bases in Iraq. To unleash Hezbollah. To unleash shiite militias in Iraq. To attack Israel and Dubai. Making it clear it is ready for a widespead campaign if this escalates further with a US response.
🐣 RT @RVAwonk ask your dad about “grave miscalculations”
⋙ 🐣 RT @RepLizCheney I am monitoring the situation in Iraq closely and praying for our men and women in uniform. The Iranian regime has made a grave miscalculation by launching these attacks.
🐣 RT @maggieNYT Some around POTUS think he is looking for an off-ramp.
⋙ 🐣 RT @DavidLauter Trump tweets “All is well!” & Iranian foreign minister Zarif tweets that Iran does “not seek escalation or war.” Both sides seem to be signaling a possible face-saving break in the escalation. Could easily break down, tho.
🐣 RT @RichardEngel We’ll see if cool heads prevail. This doesn’t need to slide into a full blown war, which will nasty and long. Iran says it will stop if not hit. Both sides have st[r]uck. Can they now step back and assess?
🐣 RT @BazziNYU A top adviser to Iran’s supreme leader with a message for @realDonaldTrump
⋙ 🐣 RT @DrSaeedJalili 🇮🇷 https://twitter.com/BazziNYU/status/1214707751588442112?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @ThePlumLineGS Broken record on this, but we need to know to what degree Trump was warned off of this folly, and what the intelligence said about it: https://wapo.st/2sMLd4o
⋙ 🐣 RT @dandrezner “Before Iran’s apparent retaliation, Trump argued to aides that the attack on Soleimani would be politically popular and that Iran would not ‘do anything too stupid,’ in the words of one senior administration official who had spoken to the president.”
⋙⋙ WaPo: Amid confusion and contradictions, Trump White House stumbles in initial public response to Soleimani’s killing http://wapo.st/2N24qWj
🐣 RT @SpeakerPelosi Closely monitoring the situation following bombings targeting U.S. troops in Iraq. We must ensure the safety of our servicemembers, including ending needless provocations from the Administration and demanding that Iran cease its violence. America & world cannot afford war.
🐣 RT @maggieNYT “whether the strike will help the president win over more voters rests on factors largely outside Mr. Trump’s http://control.How Iran retaliates, and how voters who responded to his 2016 campaign message about ending ‘forever wars’”are 2.
⋙ 🐣 I really don’t care. Do you?
⋙ NYT: Suleimani’s Killing Creates New Uncertainty for Trump Campaign http://nyti.ms/2T1uRPZ
// The campaign by one count has run nearly 800 distinct Facebook ads highlighting the killing, but no one is sure what the political impact will ultimately be.
🐣 RT @RichardEngel Iran saying it will escalate if attacked by US, or per our @aliarouzi, will stop if no US response.
🐣 RT @rezahakbari Thread: As a member of a generation born in the midst of the Iran-Iraq War (1980-1988), I cannot help but remember the tragedy of those 8 years of bloodshed that are so ingrained in my memory and the psyche of a generation of Iranians. 1/8 #Iran #IranVsUS #Iraq #IranWar
🐣 RT @r_momani So not just Ain al-Assad base. Lots of evidence that also a US base near airport in Erbil. So 2 locations now confirmed. US doesn’t give details of where US troops positioned inside Iraq (for obvious reasons). Still no reports of deaths and that’s the key factor to watch. https://twitter.com/b_momani/status/1214705581803659265?s=20/photo/1
// 🌎 map: US military footprint in Middle East
🧵 RT @DeptofDefense The following statement is attributed to @ChiefPentSpox: At approximately 1730 EST on Jan. 7, Iran launched at least a dozen ballistic missiles against U.S. military & coalition forces in Iraq. 📌 https://twitter.com/DeptofDefense/status/1214709255070191620?s=20
🐣 RT @RichardHaass Efforts to de-escalate crisis off to a bad start with US denying Iranian FM a visa and Iran launching missiles at US base. If each side thinks it is better placed to dominate as matters escalate and that the other will back down first we are in for a dangerous confrontation.
🐣 RT @real Be prepared, there is a small chance that our horrendous leadership could unknowingly lead us into World War III.
// 8/31/2013
🐣 RT @nedprice Tonight’s news is all the more sobering because, if history is any guide, this won’t constitute the totality of the retaliation. We should be prepared for months or even years of this, across theaters and with different tactics — all for choosing a path we never had to go down.
⋙ 🧵 RT @farnazfassihi #BREAKING: Iran Revolutionary Guards begin “fierce revenge” on US. Iranian ballistic missiles hit Al Assad military base in #Iraq, largest US base. ¤ And It Begins. #Soleimani 📌 https://twitter.com/farnazfassihi/status/1214687432731430913?s=20
🐣 RT @MiddleEastMnt BREAKING: US top officials Mark Esper and Mike Pompeo have arrived at an emergency meeting regarding Iran’s retaliation on their US bases
🐣 RT @MiddleEastEye “It is significant that Iran for the first time targeted the US from its territories and using ballistic missiles instead of rockets by proxies, this breaks more redlines in US-Iranian confrontation”
⋙ MiddleEastEye: Iranian rockets target US air base in Iraq in response to Soleimani killing http://bit.ly/36zYgVc
// Iran claims responsibility attack on Ain al-Assad base, saying it was in response to ‘criminal and terrorist’ US operation
🐣 RT @nytimes What we know so far:
—Iran fired more than a dozen ballistic missiles at 2 American military bases in Iraq
—Iran said the attacks were retaliation for General Suleimani’s killing
Live updates:
⋙ NYT: Iran Fires Missiles at U.S. Troops at Two Bases in Iraq: Live Updates http://nyti.ms/2ZZH2OF
// The Asad and Erbil bases were targeted by Iran in retaliation for the killing of a top Revolutionary Guards commander in Baghdad.
🐣 RT @caitlancollins Defense Secretary Esper just arrived at the White House carrying a large bag. Secretary Pompeo, seen reading in his car before he got out, also arrived.
💥 This❗️⋙ WaPo: More than 12 Iranian missiles launched at two U.S. bases in Iraq, Pentagon confirms http://wapo.st/2sYv77z
━━━━━━━▼ Background Iran US Israel
WSJ, Felicia Schwartz (Nov): Netanyahu, a Steadfast Trump Ally, Urges U.S. to Stay Focused on Iran http://on.wsj.com/37MBTMm
// 11/3/2019; Worries grow among Israeli officials who consider U.S. responses to recent Iranian moves as muted
💙 NYT Mag, Ronen Bergman and Mark Mazzetti (Sep): The Secret History of the Push to Strike Iran http://nyti.ms/2m1BaV6 ¤ #longread
// 9/4//2019; Hawks in Israel and America have spent more than a decade agitating for war against the Islamic Republic’s nuclear program. Will Trump finally deliver?
ForeignAffairs, Ilan Goldenberg (Jun): What a War With Iran Would Look Like http://fam.ag/2tH5Oqx “Even if neither side wants to fight, miscalculation, missed signals, and the logic of escalation could conspire to turn even a minor clash into a regional conflagration”
// 6/4/2019; Neither Side Wants a Fight, but That Doesn’t Eliminate the Danger
TimesOfIsrael, Alexander Fulbright (Jul 2018): In recording, Netanyahu boasts Israel convinced Trump to quit Iran nuclear deal http://bit.ly/2QU7tB5
// 7/17/2018; Public broadcaster airs clip of PM telling Likud activists US exit came after he stood up ‘against the whole world’ by opposing accord
💙 NewYorker, Adam Entous (Jun 2018): Donald Trump’s New World Order http://bit.ly/36yKQZI ¤ #longread
// 6/11/2018; How the President, Israel, and the Gulf states plan to fight Iran—and leave the Palestinians and the Obama years behind.
NewYorker, Bernard Avishai (May 2018): Why Netanyahu Really Wanted Trump to Scuttle the Iran Deal http://bit.ly/2tCUMmt
// 5/10/2018
McClatchy, Anita Kumar (May 2018): Trump’s withdrawal from Iran deal sets up best relations with Israel in a decade http://bit.ly/2tEAtoq
// 5/8/2018; “President Donald Trump announced Tuesday that the U.S. will not be a part of the Iran nuclear deal. He said the U.S. and its allies couldn’t stop Iran from building a nuclear weapon ‘under the decaying and rotten structure of the current deal.’”
━━━━━━━▲
🐣◕ RT @CSIS As the U.S. and Russia have significantly reduced the size of their nuclear armaments, other countries like China, India, and Pakistan have expanded their nuclear forces: http://cs.is/2Q2tVHL https://twitter.com/CSIS/status/1214642863436382210?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @chrislhayes ’ll state for the record: I have no idea what Bolton would say under oath and it’s seems absolutely possible he would try to offer exculpatory evidence for Trump. But that’s beside the point. We should hear from him!
🧵 RT @MiekeEoyang McConnell’s actions to proceed without agreement on taking evidence are a precursor to a violation of the Senate’s Constitutional role. ¤ I will explain. 📌 https://twitter.com/MiekeEoyang/status/1214627881361510400?s=20
[ … ]
🐣 RT @MiekeEoyang Here, proceeding without agreement to about how or whether to take evidence means that this isn’t a real trial, as the Senate is directed by the Constitution to conduct. ¤ Voting to dismiss without allowing consideration of the facts is reducing the Constitution to naked politics.
🐣 RT @MiekeEoyang So if McConnell proceeds without allowing testimony and the introduction of evidence, having previously stated that he’s in lock step with the White House, he and every Senator that votes with him are derelict in their Constitutional duty to run a trial.
🧵 RT @MiekeEoyang McConnell’s actions to proceed without agreement on taking evidence are a precursor to a violation of the Senate’s Constitutional role. ¤ I will explain. 📌 https://twitter.com/MiekeEoyang/status/1214627881361510400?s=20
🧵 📊 RT @geoffgarin 1. We recently completed polling for @LawWorksAction on the Senate impeachment trial in six key states, including four with Republican senators in cycle (AZ, CO, ME, NC) and two with Democratic senators in cycle (MI, NH). 📌 https://twitter.com/geoffgarin/status/1214598422822559745?s=20
⋙ RT @geoffgarin 2. By 67% to 29%, voters in the six states want the Senate to conduct a full trial and carefully consider the evidence on both sides. This result is the same in the 4 GOP and the 2 Democratic states. 73% of Independents and 40% of Republicans want a full trial.
⋙ RT @geoffgarin 3. Seven-in-ten voters say the Senate should insist on seeing relevant documents and call witnesses who have so far refused to cooperate but who can provide direct, first-hand evidence about Trump’s actions.
⋙ RT @geoffgarin 4. Three quarters of independent voters and half of all rank-and-file Republicans say the Senate should insist on documents and witnesses in the Senate trial.
⋙ RT @geoffgarin 5. We asked voters in AZ, CO, ME, and NC how they would feel if @MarthaMcSally @SenCoryGardner @SenatorCollin and @ThomTillis voted against calling any witnesses or subpoenaing any documents. ¤ 63% would be unfavorable, while only 26% would be favorable.
⋙ RT @geoffgarin 6. By 54%to 43%, voters reject the argument that the House impeachment of President Trump was a partisan witch hunt and the Senate should move quickly to find Trump innocent and acquit him of the charges against him.
⋙ RT @geoffgarin 7. On the other hand, fully 91% agree (81% strongly agree) that, “Senators must put country before party, listen to all the evidence and carefully consider the facts, and then do their duty to uphold the Constitution and the rule of law.”
⋙ RT @geoffgarin 8. By opposing witnesses and documents that can provide first hand evidence about Trump’s actions, Republican senators are burnishing an already pervasive feeling that they are motivated by politics rather than principle.
⋙ RT @geoffgarin 9. If the GOP senators vote to acquit, only 32% say it will be because they believe Trump did not commit an impeachable offense, while 54% say they are just following a party line. By contrast, the plurality in MI, NH say Peters/Shaheen are doing what they believe is right.
⋙ RT @geoffgarin 10. The survey was conducted December 26-30 by phone with a total 901 likely 2020 voters, with representative cross sections of ~150 in each state. Party ID of sample is 43% Democrat, 43% Republican.
🐣 Finally, the polarization and protests have ended and the country has come together. Unfortunately the country is Iran.
🐣 RT @joncoopertweets The Trump admin. barred Iran’s top diplomat from entering the U.S. to address the UN Security Council about Soleimani’s assassination, violating terms of a 1947 HQ agreement requiring Washington to permit foreign officials into U.S. to conduct UN business.
⋙ ForeignPolicy (1/6): Trump Administration Blocks Iran’s Top Diplomat From Addressing the U.N. Security Council http://bit.ly/2tAM2x2
// Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif had sought to give a speech condemning the U.S. assassination of Qassem Suleimani.
DailyBeast, David Lurie: DOJ’s New Argument: Trump’s No King. He’s a Roman Emperor. http://bit.ly/2ZVRZ3O
// If the Supreme Court accepts Barr’s twisted logic, it will sideline itself, collapse the balance of powers, and leave Congress and the White House to literally battle things out.
WaPo, Ruth Marcus: Will he or won’t he? John Bolton is playing a very cagey game. http://wapo.st/302Yz8O
WaPo: How a ‘quantum change’ in missiles has made Iran a far more dangerous foe http://wapo.st/2NiVtZd
EurasiaGroup: Top Risks for 2020 http://bit.ly/35zq6Qa ● https://twitter.com/Auriandra/status/1214550559140851712?s=20/photo/1
Risk 1: Rigged!: Who governs the US?
Risk 2: The Great Decoupling
Risk 3: US/China
Risk 4: MNCs not to the rescue
Risk 5: India gets Modi-fied
Risk 6: Geopolitical Europe
Risk 7: Politics vs. economics of climate change
Risk 8: Shia crescendo
Risk 9: Discontent in Latin America
Risk 10: Turkey
⭕ 6 Jan 2020
Newsweek: Fox News Judge Cites ‘Newly Acquired Evidence’ In Trump-Ukraine Scandal as Reason House Democrats Should ‘Reopen the Impeachment’ Inquiry http://bit.ly/37IYjOI Judge Andrew Napolitano
WaPo, David Ignatius: The Trump administration rolls out Operation Backfire http://wapo.st/2Qu9Mfn
🐣 RT @duty2warn Trump is actually retweeting an assessment from a conservative that states he can assert executive privilege to prevent Bolton’s testimony. He didn’t have to address this, let alone address this now. He is mortally terrified. He is flailing. He is in some form of mental decline.
🐣 RT @duty2warn He is louder. More fanatical. Often tweets in ALL CAPS. His fear has turned to dread. His gut is a simmering stew of agitation, rage, and animus. Attempts to regain the narrative are increasingly far-reaching and extreme. We’ve seen only a small precursor of what’s to come.
NYT: Pentagon Rules Out Striking Iranian Cultural Sites, Contradicting Trump http://nyti.ms/2Qs2sRg
// The defense secretary acknowledged that “the laws of armed conflict” prohibited attacking antiquities and said the military had no plans to do so, even though the president declared them targets.
WaPo: Trump administration begins drafting possible sanctions against Iraq following Trump’s economic threat http://wapo.st/2uhBZ07
// No decision has been made on whether to implement the penalties, but aides scrambled following presidential warning to Baghdad
NYT, Michelle Goldberg: The Nightmare Stage of Trump’s Rule Is Here http://nyti.ms/2QMVQMo
// Unstable and impeached, the president pushes the U.S. toward war with Iran.
CNN: Top general says letter suggesting US would withdraw troops from Iraq was a ‘mistake’ http://cnn.it/36vbVwT
WaPo, Joe Scarborough: Trump’s ignorance has created an international crisis http://wapo.st/2rZk6T1 “With his audacious attack, Trump has further isolated the United States from its allies, provided a lifeline to Iran’s terrorist regime and broken yet another of his campaign promises.”
🐣 RT @daevology “…the Supreme Court held that Congress can’t use its powers to delve into someone’s private financial matters unless there is a proper legislative purpose…”
⋙ Politico (Apr): Why Congress Might Not Get Trump’s Tax Returns http://politi.co/2SYNcgA
// 4/4//2019; Unless Democrats invoke impeachment, there’s a strong chance they’ll lose this legal fight.
⋙ 🐣 The law in question was written for precisely situations like this ~ corruption at the highest levels of the government. But it runs up against protections against unwarranted search and seizure. So SCOTUS will decide (at some point).
🐣 RT @brhodes This is exactly right and these two forces are deeply interconnected by a single powerful motive: corruption.
⋙ 🐣 RT @RichardEngel At outset of 2020 we are seeing two big perils of coming decade. Climate change and its disasters, and rising authoritarian populism and its consequences.
🐣 RT @jonathanswan The incompetence of this defies description.
⋙ 🐣 RT @rabrowne75 Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Mark Milley: “That letter is a draft, it was a mistake, it was unsigned, it should not have been released…poorly worded, implies withdrawal, that is not what’s happening”
⋙⋙ 🐣 RT @rabrowne75 .@EsperDoD on Iraq: “We are re-positioning forces throughout the region number one. Beyond that with regard to the letter which I’ve read once. I can’t tell you the veracity of that letter and I can tell you what I’ve read. That letter is inconsistent of where we are right now.”
↥ ↧
🐣 RT @paulmcleary It was a strange afternoon at the Pentagon, even by 2020 standards.
⋙ 🐣 RT @BreakingDefense, Paul McLeary: The Mistaken Memo That Turned The Pentagon On Its Side http://bit.ly/2Nh1DZR
// The US withdrawal from Iraq isn’t happening today, but the existence of a leaked draft memo to Iraqi military officials shows that the writing is not only on the wall, it’s on paper.
🐣 💙 RT @McFaul There’s something strange about this explanation. Its 2020. Who today prints draft letters? Why is there no stamp or words on this letter making clear that it is a draft? When I worked in the USG, we always did that. I even do that for unprinted draft documents in my computer.
⋙ 🐣 RT @jaketapper Joint Chiefs Chair GEN Milley: “That letter is a draft it was a mistake, it was unsigned, it should not have been released…poorly worded, implies withdrawal, that is not what’s happening” https://twitter.com/jaketapper/status/1214297917114200064?s=20/photo/1
Esquire, Charles Pierce: The Executive Branch Is Staffed Entirely With People Who Tell a Half-Crazy Guy What He Wants to Hear ~ What could go wrong? http://bit.ly/2MZwuJW
DailyBeast, Candida Moss: Biblical Sites, Ancient Wonders, the Last ‘Garden of Eden’: Here’s What Trump Just Threatened to Bomb in Iran http://bit.ly/39IaJYZ
// In threatening Iran’s archaeological riches, President Trump is bent on destroying sites that are central to human history.
🐣 RT @Neal_Katyal “former White House officials and people close to Mr. Bolton have indicated that his testimony would likely be damning to Mr. Trump and put additional pressure on moderate Republicans to consider convicting him.”
⋙ NYT: Bolton Is Willing to Testify in Trump’s Impeachment Trial http://nyti.ms/36GruBK
// The former national security adviser, who has complied with a White House directive not to cooperate in the inquiry, said he was willing to testify in the Senate trial if subpoenaed.http://nyti.ms/
Medium, Geoff Golberg (Oct): State-Sponsored Twitter Accounts Pushing For War With Iran http://bit.ly/37yAuJs
// 10/22/2019; How Twitter remains complicit in allowing the U.S. Department of State to finance propaganda
DailyBeast, Michael Tomasky: Trump Took a Reckless Gamble Even Reagan Passed Up http://bit.ly/2QKmhlG
// Whatever mistakes we’ve made, whatever wrongs we’ve committed, we’ve always been smart enough not to provoke directly an actor who had the power to hurt us. Until last week.
NBCNews: Pelosi announces war powers resolution as tensions with Iran escalate http://nbcnews.to/35pXzfP
// Pelosi said “the Trump administration conducted a provocative and disproportionate military airstrike targeting high-level Iranian military officials.”
🐣 RT @EdwardGLuce Worth stating starkly: Trump is a menace to world peace. He’s made it abundantly clear he sees no legal or moral limit to what he can do, up to and including war crimes. This is a time of acute danger both to global stability and US democracy.
NYT, Azadeh Moaveni: The Day After War Begins in Iran http://nyti.ms/2QPnjwR Ms. Moaveni is a writer and an analyst with the International Crisis Group.
// The outpouring of grief for Qassim Suleimani is the country’s first act of retaliation.
DailyBeast: How Joseph McCarthy’s Witch-Hunt Echoes Republicans’ Trump Worship http://bit.ly/2Qt0uQD “The new PBS documentary ‘McCarthy,’ 🔆 ⋙ airing tonight ⋘ 🔆 draws eerie parallels between the senator’s anti-communist witch-hunt and our 45th president”
WaPo, George Will: Senators now risk indecent exposure of their minds http://wapo.st/2QunX3Y “Soon Americans will learn much, not about the president — he is an open comic book who has read himself to the country for years — but about senators”
NYT Editorial: Mr. McConnell, It’s Time to Hear From John Bolton http://nyti.ms/2SXjtVd
// The Senate impeachment trial will be a sham unless top administration officials testify.
DailyBeast, Donald Kirk and Christopher Dickey: The Nuclear Threats From Iran and North Korea, Working Together, Grow by the Day http://bit.ly/2SYJh36
// By blowing away Soleimani, Trump wanted to show he is not a paper tiger. But his “disproportionate” actions may push North Korea and Iran to step up nuclear cooperation.
WaPo, Philip Bump: Trump’s insistence on proving his toughness is in open conflict with America’s actual strength http://wapo.st/37QSor9 “Legal rules simply don’t seem to be something that Trump sees as a bound on his military decisions”
NYT, Karen Greenberg: Killing Qassim Suleimani Was Illegal. And Predictable. http://nyti.ms/2Fnh520 Ms. Greenberg is an expert on national security law
// This was the inevitable outcome of a dangerous ‘war on terror’ policy.
🔆 This❗️⋙ RT @AmbJohnBolton I have posted a brief statement regarding testimony on the Ukraine impeachment matter before the Senate at: ≣ Statement: http://bit.ly/2SUXsGq
⋙ 🐣 The fact that Fiona Hill worked for you is promising! I don’t agree w you on much, but she was the best witness we heard.
🐣◕ RT @ColinPClarke Want to learn more about Iran’s proxy groups, how they differ from one another, and what their military capabilities are? Please see our @TheSoufanCenter report [May 2019], “Iran’s Playbook: Deconstructing Tehran’s Regional Strategy” http://bit.ly/2R3zw1l https://twitter.com/ColinPClarke/status/1214221205919731712?s=20/photo/1
NYT, Sean McElwee and Brian Schaffner: How Democrats Can Win Back Obama-Trump Defectors http://nyti.ms/2QS4dWW To win back Obama/Trump voters emphasize TOP FOUR issues. (Any expansion of health coverage is popular.) De-emphasize bottom three. ● https://twitter.com/Auriandra/status/1214149608080846848?s=20/photo/1
// They don’t have to lose their souls to do it. Just the opposite.
NYT Mag (Sep): The Secret History of the Push to Strike Iran http://nyti.ms/2rXjfSP by Ronen Bergman and Mark Mazzetti
// 9/4/2019; Hawks in Israel and America have spent more than a decade agitating for war against the Islamic Republic’s nuclear program. Will Trump finally deliver?
⭕ 5 Jan 2020
🐣 RT @halajew Nasrallah: “I want to be very clear, we don’t mean the American people. All across the region there are American citizens– traders, journalists, engineers, and doctors. They cannot be touched… any harm to U.S. civilians will only serve Trump’s agenda.”
WaPo Editorial: Senate Republicans close their eyes to presidential abuse http://wapo.st/35qRzng
WaPo: The surprising news from Ukraine: Zelensky is succeeding despite Trump’s abuse http://wapo.st/35uzbto
🐣 RT @McFaul ISIS targets cultural sites. The Taliban destroys cultural sites. The United States of America should not join this list. Please @DeptofDefense. @StateDept, roll back this horrific statement by @realDonaldTrump & make clear that we will not target Iranian cultural sites.
⋙ 🐣 RT @EYEofPROVENANCE Calm down, for centuries other cultures are wiped-out, and why there’s so many ancient ruins and sites. The objective in this case Christianity vs Islam – leads to the total annihilation of one or the other – which one you want it to be?
⋙⋙ 🐣 RT @McFaul Persepolis predates both Christianity and Islam. (Know your facts before telling me to “calm down.” )
⋙⋙ 🐣 The loss of any items or remnants of antiquity is a loss for all humanity. The history of religions and cultures provides insights that can teach us all. That’s why they are protected by international law. Thank heaven for photography. Only barbarians destroy the past.
🧵 💙 RT @hahussain For non-Arabic speakers, reporting in the main news outlets NYT and Wash Post is so misinformed (either on purpose or because of incompetence) that you might think that the Iraqi State has officially voted for ejecting US forces from Iraq (because of Trump’s miscalculated move 📌 https://twitter.com/hahussain/status/1213866852314763265?s=20
⋙ 🐣 RT @hahussain [ … ]
⋙ 🐣 RT @hahussain Bottom line is, Iraqi parliament vote was an Iranian face-saving measure. Iran is in a bind: If it retaliates without claiming its attack, it does not count as revenge for Soleimani. If Iran claims the attack, regime risks further wrath, in a country whose economy is in free fall
⋙ 🐣 RT @hahussain The most probable outcome of #Soleimani’s killing is more of the same: Low-intensity Iranian warfare against America, Iran never engaging in direct war, but maintaining her proxy war, fighting America to the last Arab. But with Soleimani out, Iranian proxy war will be much weaker
📔🌎 IISS (Nov): Iran’s Networks of Influence in the Middle East http://bit.ly/36up4WP
// The latest Strategic Dossier from the Intl Inst for Strategic Studies. This 18-month long study, based on field work, interviews and open source analysis examines how Iran projects its influence in the Middle East through a variety of complex relationships with regional partners.
● Iran Influence https://twitter.com/Auriandra/status/1214114581867573248?s=20/photo/1
● Quds activity https://twitter.com/Auriandra/status/1214115027747319808?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @mccaffreyr3 Poor Mr Trump is scared. He made a bold, stupid move and thought it was heroic. Now he’s blustering illegal stupid stuff on camera. We are on the verge of a domestic Constitutional crisis. What will Congress do? This is not a partisan issue.
WaPo: Pelosi says House to vote this week on war powers resolution to limit Trump’s action on Iran http://wapo.st/2SXIzTO “Pelosi said lawmakers were concerned that the Trump administration acted without consulting Congress“
WaPo: Trump threatens to strike Iranian cultural sites and impose ‘very big’ sanctions on Iraq as tensions rise http://wapo.st/2QrB0TF
🐣 “Under a 1924 federal tax law, § 6103 of title 26 of the United States Code, Congress may request copies of anyone’s tax returns.[73][74][75][76]” Wikipedia http://bit.ly/37F7jnW
The law stipulates the returns “shall” be provided, iow, it’s mandatory.
🐣 RT @nytimes News Analysis: President Trump thought the nuclear deal was flawed because restrictions on Iran would end after 15 years. But now, Iran declared that those restrictions are over — a decade ahead of schedule. Trump’s gambit has effectively backfired.
⋙ NYT: Iran Challenges Trump, Announcing End of Nuclear Restrictions http://nyti.ms/35ryb9B
// President Trump thought the nuclear deal was flawed because restrictions on Iran would end after 15 years. Now, responding to a U.S. strike, Iran has declared the limits over after less than five.
🐣 RT @John_Hudson New *deep dive* on Soleimani killing –> Pompeo spoke to Trump about hitting the top commander months ago. Getting Trump to “yes” involved key personnel changes at the Pentagon and Trump’s aversion to being viewed as weak, giving Pompeo an opening 📌 https://twitter.com/John_Hudson/status/1213967546761785345?s=20
⋙ WaPo: Killing of Soleimani follows long push from Pompeo for aggressive action against Iran, but airstrike brings serious risks http://wapo.st/2MYXj1b //➔ different take than NYT that this was a spur-of-the-moment decision by Trump
🐣 RT @SenSchumer President Trump seems hell bent on starting another endless war in the Middle East. ¤ He does not have the authority to do so. ¤ I plan to fight him tooth and nail on this and intend to support the efforts of Senators Kaine, Sanders, and others. ¤ Congress must assert its authority.
🧵 RT @ColinKahl [Asst to Biden]
// refs to @rcallimachi thread
🐣 RT @nytimes A crowd of people stretching over 30 kilometers, or almost 20 miles, poured out onto the streets of Ahvaz, Iran on Sunday to mourn the death of General Suleimani https://nyti.ms/2uopvUN
🧵 RT @maggieNYT NEWS from AF1 – POTUS doubled down on cultural sites in Iran as appropriate sites for retaliation. 📌 https://twitter.com/maggieNYT/status/1213978687193911296?s=20
⋙ 🐣 RT @maggieNYT “They’re allowed to kill our people. They’re allowed to torture and maim our people. they’re allowed to use roadside bombs and blow up our people. And we’re not allowed to touch their cultural site? It doesn’t work that way,” POTUS SAID.
⋙ 🐣 RT @maggieNYT Regarding retaliation from Iran: ¤ “If it happens it happens. If they do anything there will be major retaliation.”
⋙ 🐣 RT @maggieNYT POTUS on possibility of US presence being forced out of Iraq: “We’re not leaving unless they pay us back for it” (referring to the air base).
🐣 RT @John_Hudson Some key factors in the Soleimani decision: Pompeo and Esper, West Point classmates, were in “lockstep” going into the Dec. 29 Mar-a-Lago meeting. Both supported the move. Pence also supported, but did not attend the meeting.
⋙ 🐣 RT @VviewSsonicMair Most people realize this was a Netanyahu and Pompeo masterminded deal… but it doesn’t matter. Trump made the call. He is responsible. We are all very vulnerable as long as him or Pence are at the helm.
🐣 RT @John_Hudson Some key factors in the Soleimani decision: Pompeo and Esper, West Point classmates, were in “lockstep” going into the Dec. 29 Mar-a-Lago meeting. Both supported the move. Pence also supported, but did not attend the meeting.
🐣 RT 💙 @davidfrum So anybody who can hack Trump’s Twitter account can start a war?
🐣 RT 💙 @HouseForeign[AffairsCommittee] This Media Post will serve as a reminder that war powers reside in the Congress under the United States Constitution. And that you should read the War Powers Act. And that you’re not a dictator.
🐣 RT @sruhle Has @Twitter management and/or board responded to this? ¤ Can the platform assume this awesome responsibility? ¤ Is it secure & impenetrable at a time when cybet attacks could be immenent? ¤ Is @jack in Africa or Twitter HQ?
⋙ 🐣💙 RT @justinamash This Constitution of the United States of America will serve as notification to the president that should he order nondefensive strikes without congressional approval, he will be in violation of the law. Such legal notice was provided in 1789 but is given here again nevertheless. https://twitter.com/justinamash/status/1214061268740558848?s=20/photo/1-4
⋙ 🐣 RT @real These Media Posts will serve as notification to the United States Congress that should Iran strike any U.S. person or target, the United States will quickly & fully strike back, & perhaps in a disproportionate manner. Such legal notice is not required, but is given nevertheless!
🐣 RT @peston This statement by @EmmanuelMacron chancellor Merkel and @BorisJohnson on US assassination of Soleimani is quite remarkable for what is missing. There is no mention at all of Trump or the USA. Not a whisper. Not even a nod. Extraordinary https://twitter.com/Peston/status/1213976013891395590?s=20/photo/1
🧵 RT @adamdavidson One of Soleiman’s chief goals was to acquire WMD missile systems that could threaten Israel and US installations. ¤ He assigned the job to his ally, Mohamed Bagher Ghalibaf. ¤ When sanctions began, the IRGC used front companies to handle WMD acquisition. 1/ 📌 https://twitter.com/adamdavidson/status/1213873920400605187?s=20
⋙ NewYorker, Adam Davidson (2017): Donald Trump’s Worst Deal http://bit.ly/2QUt5h0
// 3/7/2017; The President helped build a hotel in Azerbaijan that appears to be a corrupt operation engineered by oligarchs tied to Iran’s Revolutionary Guard.
🐣 RT @brianschatz It’s either all part of their master plan that we get kicked out of Iraq, that American service members are targeted by Iran, that we’ve stopped fighting ISIS, and Iran is full throttle towards nuclearization, or it’s a series of unintended consequences. Either way it’s terrible.
🐣 RT @IronStache This is a claim that would have it appear that the Iraqi PM was asked to mediate. ¤ He tried. ¤ The meeting that would have taken place to do so was used to set up the assassination. ¤ Who in their sane mind would trust Trump again?
⋙ 🐣 RT @janearaf This is stunning – #Iraq prime minister tells parliament US troops should leave. Says @realDonaldTrump called him to ask him to mediate with #Iran and then ordered drone strike on Soleimani. Says Soleimani carrying response to Saudi initiative to defuse tension when he was hit.
🐣 RT @RichardEngel Iraqi parliament calling for US troops to leave, exactly what Soleimani wanted. But it’s not over yet. Now a constitutional battle as current Iraqi prime minister had already submitted his resignation, heading a caretaker gov’t. So – military crisis and now political crisis too.
NewYorker, Robin Wright: Where Will U.S.-Iran Tensions Play Out? An Interview with Iraq’s President http://bit.ly/37BOa6h
WaPo, Jennifer Rubin: Pompeo’s arrogant dismissal of unintended consequences http://wapo.st/37BZUWt
🐣 RT @emptywheel On the one hand, Bill Barr’s DOJ spends a lot of time covering up for Trump’s crimes. On the other hand, don’t US citizens get first dibs at trying Trump for his crimes?
⋙ 🧵 RT @mkraju The only way Iran will negotiate with the US is if Trump is tried in Iran, the adviser tells @fpleitgenCNN. “There is only one way: first Trump must be tried in our own court, he should punished for the crime he committed. Then we could negotiate.” 📌 https://twitter.com/mkraju/status/1213797853409292288?s=20
🐣 RT @iiicorps_cg [Lt Gen Pat White] Force protection is our #1 priority. Period. I’ve ordered @CJTFOIR to focus on security for all personnel. Full @CJTFOIR statement here: https://twitter.com/iiicorps_cg/status/1213860369376169985?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @JuliaDavisNews The view from Russia: ¤ “Geopolitically, the US is weakening before our very eyes… Americans are steadily losing political positions in the Middle East. Russia, Turkey and Iran are stepping on their heels.”
⋙ 🐣 RT @ Russia Blames Trump’s Iran Strike on Impeachment: ¤ “For Trump, the annihilation of an Iranian General presents a decent opportunity for a domestic PR campaign, which is quite timely in the context of the upcoming elections.” ¤ My latest for @thedailybeast
⋙⋙ DailyBeast, Julia Davis (1/4): Russian State Media Blames Impeachment for Trump’s Iran Strike http://bit.ly/2SSGtoq
// “For Donald Trump, the annihilation of an Iranian General presents a decent opportunity for a domestic PR campaign,” one Kremlin columnist said.
🐣 RT @RichardHaass The ill-advised war of choice w Iraq undermined the 43rd Potus. Iran-exiting JCPOA even tho Iran was complying, then eco sanctions w no diplomatic off ramp, now mil strikes-could well come to define & undermine the presidency of @realDonaldTrump. A self-imposed strategic error.
🐣 RT @RichardEngel Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah expressing same message as Iraqi parliament – that the correct response to killing of Soleimani is to kick US troops out of Middle East. Nassrallah said US civilians, professionals not targets, rather US bases, troops & ships to ‘liberate’ Iraq.
🐣 RT @stengel Congratulations, Mr. President, with one reckless move, you have ceded Iraq to Iran, put our soldiers and our allies at greater risk, given ISIS a reprieve, united a divided Iran which will now revive its nuclear weapons program. Well done, Sir.
🐣 RT @ciricione This is a major setback for US national security. The Trump policy towards Iran has been a complete disaster. It has accomplished none of the goals it set. We are heading back to the dangers we faced before this historic accord was reached.
🐣 RT @brianklaas Trump sycophants will now claim this is some form of 3 dimensional chess rather than an unmitigated disaster. But there’s no sugar coating this: Iran pulling out of the deal plus Iraq voting to push the US out today is a terrible development for US interests in the region.
🐣 RT @wendyrsherman No surprise. If there is good news in this it is that Iran will return to deal if nuclear sanctions lifted and will not kick out IAEA. Again must ask @SecPompeo are we safer? Really?
🔆 This❗️⋙ NYT: Iran Ends Commitment to Landmark Nuclear Deal: Live Updates http://nyti.ms/2QQ5M7M
🐣 RT @DanRather Indications are increasing that- as many suspected – Pres. Trump’s decision to unleash a national security crisis was impulsive with little thought of what might come next. The decision-making process within the White House seems fundamentally broken with few if any guardrails.
🐣 RT @ZekeJMiller TEHRAN, Iran (AP) — Iranian state TV reports Iran will no longer abide by any limits of its 2015 nuclear deal.
🐣 RT @NickKristof On top of everything else, Iran just announced that it will no longer abide by any of the limits in the 2015 nuclear deal. So President Trump has inadvertently accelerated Iran’s push for nuclear weapons, and we now have a nuclear crisis on our hands as well.
NYT: U.S.-Led Coalition Halts ISIS Fight as It Steels for Iranian Attacks http://nyti.ms/2SUeqEV
// American forces in Iraq and Syria will now focus on protecting themselves.
🐣 RT @jeffreyprescott here were no rocket attacks against U.S. forces while the Iran deal was in effect. No attacks on Saudi oil facilities. Tensions in Gulf were down. Iran’s nuclear program was verifiably locked down. All of that has changed, even before Trump’s reckless further escalation.
↥ ↧
🐣 RT @brhodes This is a lie, offensive, obscene and an absolute disgrace. This man and his boss have destroyed America’s reputation and made a shambles of Iran policy in part because of their pathetic obsession with Barack Obama who they will never, ever measure up to.
⋙ 🧵 RT @joshrogin Pompeo: “In 2015, the Obama-Biden administration essentially handed power to the Iranian leadership, and acted as a quasi-ally of theirs, by underwriting them, underwriting the very militias that killed Americans.” Wow. @FoxNewsSunday 📌 https://twitter.com/joshrogin/status/1213833817473069056?s=20
// end of thread
⋙⋙ 🐣 RT @ poet_economist 1) It is a crime to lie about the reasons for making war. 2) Every detail of this statement is false. 3) Conspiracy theory does not justify striking civilian airports, 4) or holding public office. 5) No one has done more to empower those who threaten Americans than Trump.
⋙⋙ 🐣 RT @RichardEngel US military announced its suspending anti-ISIS operations in Iraq. Iraq parliament requests govt to kick out US forces. Massive protests in Iran. North Korea says it will show off new military technology soon. All have knock-on effects. More danger. More instability.
🐣‼️RT @mccaffreyr3 To the 5000 US ground forces and US contractors scattered around Iraq THIS IS AN IMMEDIATE THREAT OF AN ATTACK BY IRAN BACKED MILITIAS. We also have to consider the possibility the 165,000 man Iraqi Army will turn on us. Pompeo is a propagandist.
⋙ 🐣 RT @JoyceWhiteVance This morning on @MeetThePress, Trump’s Secy of State referred to the prospect of retaliation by Iran against American citizens as “noise” so sure, go play golf.
⋙ 🐣 RT @graceann319 Trump created a crisis and is too incompetent and lazy to to lead this country through this crisis.
⋙⋙ 🐣 RT @jonlemire President Trump has arrived at his golf course in West Palm Beach, Florida
🐣 RT @glennkirschner2 Trump has made us ALL less safe. This madness, this crime, corruption & abuse of the American people, could be ended by just a handful of R Senators voting to convict Trump of the impeachable offenses he inarguably committed. Or, they can allow yet another endless war to begin.
⋙ 🐣 RT @sasss31 @glennkirschner2 with the realest of real talks for you this Sunday morning.. 💽 https://twitter.com/glennkirschner2/status/1213850719809409024?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @gtconway3d This isn’t a policy platform and shouldn’t be treated as such. The essence of it is that he’s simply incoherent, ignorant, inarticulate, and impulsive, and he says and does whatever comes to mind at a given moment. The only cohering threads are his narcissism and sociopathy.
⋙ 🐣 RT @maggieNYT I noted this weekend the president ran on ending the Mideast wars. True. But it’s complicated. He also said he would “bomb the sh*t” out of ISIS and, in 2011, talked about taking Iraqi oil. He didn’t run as an isolationist or an interventionist; he ran as both, and still does.
⋙⋙ 🐣 RT @ t’s the lack of a thruline on the decisions that lets both Rand Paul and Lindsey Graham be people who can influence him.
⋙⋙⋙ 🐣 heaven help us
🐣 RT @juliaioffe To be honest, I’m not sure why we are so surprised. Trump is doing what he always said he would do: stop doing boring, complicated things like multilateral treaties and diplomacy, and just whack bad guys instead.
⋙ 🐣 RT @juliaioffe This hit first, ask questions later, action-movie approach to foreign policy can only be surprising if you were a believer in the “take Trump seriously, not literally” fairy tale.
🐣 RT @juliaioffe “The DoD was not all in agreement that killing the second most popular person in Iran at an international airport in Iraq was a good idea.”
⋙ ForeignPolicy, Lara Seligman: Pentagon Chief Kept Tight Circle on Suleimani Strike http://bit.ly/2QU39lE
// Sources say senior officials who would normally be consulted were left out of the loop.
⋙ 🐣 you don’t say
🐣 RT @GlastnostGone What’s fucking insane is supposed intelligent people in the Pentagon thought Trump wouldn’t go for killing Suleimani. I mean, even those with half a brain cell know he’d take that option. Trump graves [craves?], narcissistic praise, & yet the Pentagon haven’t worked that out yet?
Haaretz: Trump has no idea what comes next : Opinion @DanielBShapiro http://bit.ly/2MWYHRP
🐣 I just 🙏 that Trump’s bone spurs kick in.
🐣 RT @emptywheel Trump did not give advance notice of Soleimani strike to the people who could constitutionally bless it (or not). ¤ He did give advance notice to the Mar a Lago members would could game stock market responses to it.
🐣💙 RT @RexAlexander And the military advisers are all, “Yeah, sure, we gave him one really extreme option, but we had no idea he’d actually TAKE it!” Which, go to hell, every one of you. #TrumpsRazor: He will ALWAYS take the stupidest, most extreme option. ALWAYS.
⋙ 🐣 RT @McFaul As Tensions With Iran Escalated, Trump Opted for Most Extreme Measure
⋙⋙ [NYT 1/3]
🐣 RT @ChrisMurphyCT Iraq votes to expel American troops. ¤ All Americans evacuated from Iraq. ¤ U.S. and NATO suspend anti-ISIS campaign. ¤ The mounting evidence – two feet in front of your face – is that the Soleimani attack has made us less safe.
🐣 RT @sfpelosi “As Speaker of the House, I reiterate my call on the Administration for an immediate, comprehensive briefing of the full Congress on military engagement related to Iran and next steps under consideration,” @SpeakerPelosi
⋙ 🐣 RT @SpeakerPelosi President Trump’s classified War Powers Act notification raises more questions than it answers about the timing, manner and justification of the decision to engage in hostilities against Iran.
⋙⋙ Speaker.gov: Pelosi Statement on White House’s War Powers Act Notification of Hostilities Against Iran http://bit.ly/2FqqFB2
🐣 RT @JRubinBlogger Unmitigated disaster and utterly predictable
⋙ NYT: Iraqi Lawmakers Vote to Expel U.S. Troops as Iran Mourns a Slain General http://nyti.ms/37v6tu2
// The vote in Parliament, after the killing of Maj. Gen. Qassim Suleimani of Iran in a U.S. drone strike, is not final until Iraq’s prime minister signs the draft bill.
🐣 RT @carolemadge Iran is a country with a long and rich history where many civilisations thrived, stretching back thousands of years. With 24 UNESCO World Heritage Sites, each with its own story to tell, Iran offers an incredible variety of archaeological & cultural wonders. #IranianCulturalSites https://twitter.com/carolemadge/status/1213818966604431365?s=20/photo/1-4
🧵 RT @ssbeltran These are some of the #IranianCulturalSites that @realDonaldTrump threatened to destroy. ¤ Persepolis. Of of the last standing massive archaeological complexes from ancient Persia. The Iranians and their cultural institutions have done a fantastic job in protecting it. ¤ 1/12 📌 https://twitter.com/ssbeltran/status/1213804072689635329?s=20
🐣 RT @McFaul It’s the job of the National Security Advisor at the NSC to present the president with likely 2nd & 3rd order consequences of any policy decision, so they surely briefed Trump that killing Suleimani would trigger an Iraqi decision to ask US troops to leave. Trump’s real goal? /1
⋙ 🐣 RT @McFaul If so, can Secretary Pompeo please stop saying that our goal in killing Suleimani was to “restore deterrence.” You don’t “restore deterrence” by handing the mullahs ruling Tehran what they have wanted for decades — US military withdrawal from Iraq. /2
⋙ 🐣 RT @McFaul PS I remember vividly those Republicans who berated Obama for leaving Iraq. Please dust off your talking points and repeat them again – preferably on Fox where you presented them the 1st time — if we are forced out of Iraq now because of Trump actions. /3
WaPo: Iraq’s prime minister says ‘urgent measures’ should be taken to remove foreign forces http://wapo.st/2ugzRFT
🐣 RT @ForeignAffairs “Trump and Pompeo are already out crowing with patriotic tweets reminiscent of the ‘Mission Accomplished’ banners rolled out in the first weeks of the Iraq War. But what was true then in Iraq is true now: the crisis will not end here.”
⋙ ForeignAffairs, Kelly Magsamen (1/4): How to Avoid Another War in the Middle East http://fam.ag/2Qs2mJv
// De-escalating After the Soleimani Strike
🐣 RT @gtconway3d Or, as a May 1997 profile of @realDonaldTrump in @NewYorker put it, “Trump … aspired to and achieved the ultimate luxury, an existence unmolested by the rumbling of a soul.”
⋙⋙ NewYorker, Mark Singer (1997): Trump Solo http://bit.ly/36qd6hb
⋙ 🐣 RT @DMRDynamics Trump actually doesn’t understand money or economics. ¤ He only understands obtaining money for self and sycophants as a surrogate for his self-worth and inner emptiness. Money is his ersatz soul. ¤ That’s not economics. It’s narcissism. ¤ @gtconway3d
🐣 RT @MSNBC “Frankly, the rest of the world doesn’t put any trust in anything Donald Trump says, so the United States is also completely isolated as we find ourself on the brink of a much, much more serious conflict with Iran.” – Fmr. Obama adviser Ben Rhodes
⋙ 💽 MSNBC, AMJoy: Iranian general Soleimani’s assassination endangers U.S. former Obama advisor says http://on.msnbc.com/2MXU2io
// Donald Trump tweeted that Iranian military commander Qassem Soleimani was ‘plotting to kill many more’ Americans. But Former Deputy National Security Advisor to President Obama Ben Rhodes asserts to Joy Reid, ‘every analyst knows that taking this strike just raised the threat of attacks on our personnel.’
🐣 RT @peterbakernyt Pence falsely links Suleimani to 9/11. Here’s what the 9/11 commission concluded regarding Iran: “We have found no evidence that Iran or Hezbollah was aware of the planning for what later became the 9/11 attack….” (1/2)
🐣 RT @peterbakernyt “… At the time of their travel through Iran, the Al Qaeda operatives themselves were probably not aware of the specific details of their future operation.” (2/2)
⋙ ✅ NYT, Zach Montague: Factcheck: Pence Links Suleimani to 9/11. The Public Record Doesn’t Back Him. http://nyti.ms/2Qnt0mG
🐣 Before that WH Correspondence Dinner, someone should have told Obama that Trump really really REALLY can’t take a joke.
🐣 The next distraction could be nuclear
Inquisitr, Jonathan Vankin: Kremlin Bank CEO May Have Flown To Florida 6 Days After Vladimir Putin Phoned Donald Trump, Records Suggest http://bit.ly/2ZPSlZA
// A private jet reportedly used by Sberbank CEO German Gref landed in Fort Lauderdale at 2:30 in the morning Saturday, according to FlightAware.com.
⋙ discusses flight data but not possible connection to Deutschebank whistleblower story
ThreadReader: Private Russian jet going down the east coast now. Heading to…Mar-a-Lago? http://bit.ly/2ZWjfzg
🧵 💙 RT @realdivipro 📌 https://twitter.com/realdivipro/status/1213623315983667200?s=20
🐣 RT @realdivipro Russian jet from Moscow, lands in Florida, where the president is, for about 24 hours, arrives and leaves in the middle of the night, and doesn’t want to be identified on flight trackers. This is definitely something.
🐣 💙💙 RT @McFaul I have not seen any confirming reporting that Gref was in Florida. If I missed it, please post. https://twitter.com/McFaul/status/1213732517351583744?s=20
⋙⋙ 🐣 RT @McFaul Wow. Gref is very close to Putin. Hoping for more details.
🧵 RT @ScottMStedman [1/4] If Russian reports are correct and this is the personal jet of Herman Gref, the CEO of Russia’s biggest bank just flew into Ft. Lauderdale in the dead of night. 📌 https://twitter.com/ScottMStedman/status/1213378826291466240?s=20
🐣 RT @ScottMStedman It’s 100% his personal jet. It was either him or a close confidant.
⋙ 🐣 @McFaul the same tail number as the plane that landed in Fort Lauderdale last night https://twitter.com/Auriandra/status/1213744319473111041?s=20
⋙ 🐣 @McFaul ⋘⋙ 🐣 RT @travisakers This jet belongs to Herman Gref, the CEO of Russia’s biggest bank. ¤ Why did he arrive where the President is located at 2:30 in the morning? https://twitter.com/travisakers/status/1213446924298264582?s=20
⋙ 🐣 @McFaul ⋘⋙ RT @ScottMStedman “Personally, the head of the state bank, according to the Interlocutor, is assigned a Gulfstream G650 business liner with a tail number RA-10204” http://bit.ly/2FkucRo https://twitter.com/Auriandra/status/1213739408031174657?s=20
⋙ 🐣 @McFaul ⋘⋙ 🐣 RT @MrsSunshineYo So, why was the CEO of Russia’s biggest bank landing in Ft. Lauderdale last night? https://twitter.com/MrsSunshineYo/status/1213523246466904064?s=20
// 🐣 w flight documents ⇈ ;; also I posted 2 plane photos 1) https://twitter.com/realdivipro/status/1213618691516047362?s=20 2) https://twitter.com/realdivipro/status/1213618691516047362?s=20
🐣 [to @real] nervous much? as the Persian story goes, you can’t put the genie back in the bottle
⭕ 4 Jan 2020
DailyBeast, Adam Rawnsley: All the Ways Iran Could Hit Back at the U.S. for Killing Soleimani http://bit.ly/2SYrTeR
// Iran has spent decades developing plans and forces to prepare for contingencies like Qassem Soleimani’s assassination. But just how crafty might Tehran’s retaliation be?
NYT Editorial: The Evidence on Ukraine Is Only Getting Worse for Donald Trump http://nyti.ms/39HpTOj
// The Senate impeachment trial will be a sham unless top administration officials testify.
🐣 RT @mikefarb1 I honestly don’t believe that we have legitimately elected a GOP President this Century. However they keep taking office and they cost us greatly. We need to Overwhelm this Piece Of Shit Election System so we never have to find ourselves back here again.
🔆 This❗️⋙ NYT Editorial: Congress, Stop President Trump’s Rush to War With Iran http://nyti.ms/37AL5na
// Powerful Republican senators are the only people with the power to restrain the president.
🐣 RT @RadioFreeTom Someone better let the President know he’s threatening war crimes.
– 52 sites for purely symbolic reasons would be a war crime.
– Striking cultural sites without military necessity would be a war crime
– Striking in revenge is a war crime
– Targeting civilians is a war crime
🐣 RT @RWPUSA He won the presidency with help from a foreign country.
He was impeached for coercing another foreign country to help his re-election campaign.
He now starts a war with a third foreign country to distract from his impeachment.
That’s foreign policy?
⋙ CNN: Skepticism mounts over evidence of ‘imminent’ threat that Trump says justified Soleimani killing http://cnn.it/35pRd0b //➔ uh, Iran? please ignore that killing ~ our president is just, uh, crazy
🐣 RT @ActMeasuresDoc Sometimes it’s not fun being right.
⋙ 🐣 RT @AdamParkhomenko “A Deutsche Bank whistleblower has told the FBI that the Russian state-owned bank VTB underwrote Trump’s loans”
⋙⋙ 🐣 RT @ ScottMStedman Hey @MSNBC @CNN @NBCNews @nytimes @washingtonpost @MotherJones @ABC @propublica @politico, now that members of Congress are commenting on this report, will you pick it up?
⋙⋙ ⋙ ForensicNews [1/3] Trump Deutsche Bank Loans Underwritten … http://bit.ly/2T4ypRF
⋙⋙⋙ 🐣 RT @JaredHuffman This is why Trump is fighting so desperately in court to keep his tax returns and other financial records secret. Time to come clean Mr President.
🐣 RT @mikefarb1 To all of you that stand with him. That enable him. That lie for him. You are putting our country and it’s citizens in grave danger. We will get through this. We will remember who you are and what you did.
⋙ 🐣 RT @ChrisMurphyCT The moment we all feared is likely upon us. ¤ An unstable President in way over his head, panicking, with all his experienced advisers having quit, and only the sycophantic amateurs remaining. ¤ Assassinating foreign leaders, announcing plans to bomb civilians. ¤ A nightmare.
🐣 RT @McFaul ISIS targets cultural sites. The Taliban destroys cultural sites. The United States of America should not join this list. Please @DeptofDefense, @StateDept, roll back this horrific statement by @realDonaldTrump & make clear that we will not target Iranian cultural sites.
🐣 RT @tyrian1 Also, to those who are saying that just killing one person is not going to start a big war: ¤ “World War I began in 1914 after the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand and lasted until 1918.” ¤ Total number of casualties in WW1: ~ 40 Million.
🐣 Trump’s idea of ‘making us more safe’ is to put a target on the back of every American, especially every service member and diplomat.
Peace is War. War is Peace. 2+2=5.
🐣 RT @gtconway3d “The question is why now? … Hard to decouple [the] killing from the impeachment saga.” ¤ Indeed, given @realDonaldTrump’s personality disorders, his complete and pathological narcissism, it’s hard to imagine that his impeachment *wasn’t* a factor motivating the strike. [re: rcallimachi https://twitter.com/rcallimachi/status/1213436210238111744?s=20%5D
⋙ 🐣 Never give a psychopath the “worst option”
🐣 RT @ScottMStedman The private jet of the CEO of the largest Russian bank is currently in Florida for unknown reasons. This is a sanctioned bank. https://twitter.com/ScottMStedman/status/1213618963977949184?s=20
⋙ 🐣 RT @realdivipro Jet is still at Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport (FLL), at least according to https://planefinder.net/data/aircraft/RA-10204…, which seems to have pretty current data.
⋙ 🐣 RT @BebeOhio Probably making a drop for Putin. During the campaign and in 2017 the private jet of oligarch Dmitry Rybolovlev was parked at airports near Trump’s location. Lots of denials. All of this is so suspicious.
🐣 RT @ 🐣 RT @wingsformarie2 Just as a whistleblower reports his loans are backed by that Russian bank. Stinks like rotten fish.
🐣🚫 RT @lazzkicker Thurs nite, Saudi Arabia Finance Minister landed at JFK for 1 1/1 hours, just long enough to drop something (Saudi’s pay cash) off. Was Soleimam’s assassination a paid hit job for MBS? Remember waiting for instructions as “how to proceed” after Saudi oil supply bombing.
🐣 RT @DanielBShapiro Excellent. The president “deescalates” by tweeting wild threats toward Iran. No diplomacy, no concern for the position it puts partners like Iraq in, no even just letting the impact of the Soleimani hit sink in. He’s incapable of sound, strategic decision making and behavior.
⋙ 🐣 George Will observed that ‘Trump can’t think sequentially,’ which I think is a penetrating insight.
🐣 RT @DanielBShapiro Excellent. The president “deescalates” by tweeting wild threats toward Iran. No diplomacy, no concern for the position it puts partners like Iraq in, no even just letting the impact of the Soleimani hit sink in. He’s incapable of sound, strategic decision making and behavior.
⋙ 🐣 George Will observed that ‘Trump can’t think sequentially,’ which I think is a penetrating insight.
🐣 RT @Susan_Hennessey The @nytimes story now includes Callimachi’s reporting. This dramatically undercuts the administration’s claims regarding the legal basis and certainly looks like Secretary Pompeo’s statements regarding the nature of the threat were deeply misleading.
🐣 RT @gtconway3d “Pentagon officials were stunned.” ¤ But a legion of psychiatrists, psychologists, and other mental health experts aren’t. It’s the kind of thing they’ve been predicting all along.
⋙ 🐣 RT @nytimes President Trump opted to kill Iran’s top general despite aides’ disputes about intelligence warning of new threats. Pentagon officials were stunned.
⋙⋙ NYT: As Tensions With Iran Escalated, Trump Opted for Most Extreme Measure http://nyti.ms/39P3wXg
// While senior officials argue the drone strike was warranted to prevent future attacks, some in the administration remain skeptical about the rationale for the attack.
🐣 RT @awprokop Trump is familiar with the milieu of the mob. Sounds like he just decided to whack the guy. One part payback, one part sending a message.
🐣 RT @digby56 And of course he is threatening to commit massive war crimes. He loves war crimes. He said that explicitly during the 2016 campaign. I’m sure he’s been on the horn with all his pardoned, war criminal buddies looking for tips.
🐣 RT @BradMossEsq If you work in DOD or the IC, and have been tasked with identifying Iranian cultural or civilian targets to intentionally strike in violation of DoD rules and federal law, please blow the whistle through your leadership and to HPSCI/SSCI.
🐣 RT @MollyMcKew Just another Saturday night in Twitter where POTUS is either revealing highly classified intelligence and targeting info on Twitter — or else completely batsh*t. ¤ Either way, one might say a massive national security risk.
🐣 RT @AngrierWHstaff I told you guys this already — the Soleimani option was the far-fringe choice, and one that everyone expected Trump would reject. ¤ They didn’t count on Trump’s desperate need for a distraction.
⋙ 🐣 RT @ShimonPro An official familiar with President Trump’s national security briefings says some officials were surprised and taken aback that Trump chose to target Qasem Soleimani, which was one of several options that senior national security aides presented to him. @kevinliptakcnn
RawStory: Trump threatens to target 52 Iranian sites if any ‘American assets’ are hit in retaliation assassination of Suleimani http://bit.ly/2QmApCT
↥ ↧
🐣 RT @davmicrot Attacking civilian locations, like cultural sites, is a War Crime.
🐣 RT @mikecarpenter New Cambridge Analytica leaks said to contain “emails between major Trump donors discussing ways of obscuring the source of their donations through a series of different financial vehicles….[exposing] the entire dark money machinery behind US politics.”
⋙ TheGuardian, Carole Cadwalladr: Fresh Cambridge Analytica leak ‘shows global manipulation is out of control’ http://bit.ly/35l9fjX
// Company’s work in 68 countries laid bare with release of more than 100,000 documents
🐣 RT @chrislhayes Really feels like we are hurtling towards Worst Case Scenario for a Trump Presidency right now.
🐣 RT @gtconway3d Good question. Let’s hope it’s not true, because if it is, it would mean the president of the United States is in hock to the Russians.
⋙ 🐣 RT @ScottMStedman Hi everyone. Co-author here. After publication, our site @forensicnewsnet was immediately hit with a sophisticated DDoS attack. Please follow and spread the word if possible!
🐣 RT @BaddCompani trumpf is an Actor in a play, a delusional tragic play but play none the less.
⋙ 🐣 and we’re all the groundlings
🐣 RT @ddale8 New record: Trump made FORTY false claims in Battle Creek, Michigan in December, which was also his longest rally speech ever.
⋙ ✅ CNN: Trump makes 90 false claims during final two weeks of 2019 http://cnn.it/2MUTJVK
🐣 .@Lawrence said that[*] back in August and retracted it because @NBC couldn’t confirm. Now @forensicnewsnet ForensicNews has new reporting. @ScottMStedman, one of the authors, will be on @MuellerSheWrote Sunday night.
[*] That Trump’s loans were backed by Russian bank (VTB)
🐣 Trump has slowly been figuring out his powers – tariffs, pardons – and created new ones (ignoring subpoenas). Now, as I’ve been dreading, he’s discovered that under contrived circumstances and the 20yo AUMF, he can start a war.
🐣 RT @McFaul plus, world’s attention is now on us, not Putin’s belligerent actions.
⋙ 🐣 RT @McFaul Putin can so only see upside from escalating US-Iran tensions, from small short-term gains like increased oil prices, possible mid-term gains like our withdrawal from Iraq, to possible long-term gains such as our weakened worldwide position from full-scale war.
WaPo: Trump plunges toward the kind of Middle Eastern conflict he pledged to avoid http://wapo.st/2STH3ly
🐣 RT @SethAbramson Dec 29: Trump orders airstrikes.
Dec 31: Eric Trump says “whoop-ass” coming.
Dec 31: Mar-a-Lago members told strike imminent.
Jan 1: Eric deletes tweet.
Jan 2: Airstrike kills Soleimani.
Jan 3: Citizen journos raise Eric’s foreknowledge.
Jan 3: Media calls it “conspiracy theory.”
⋙ 🐣 Also 12/29 Trump talks to Putin
🐣 RT @SRuhle Reminder. ¤ Prior to becoming Secretary of Defense, Mark Esper was a lobbyist for Raytheon, a major US defense contractor.
🐣 RT @RepMaxineWalters Only a reckless, cowardly, impeached international laughing stock would order a deadly drone strike from a golf resort before running off to a rally to be worshipped by the few evangelicals who still support him. A real President would’ve immediately shared info w/ Congress.
NYT, Susan Rice: The Dire Consequences of Trump’s Suleimani Decision http://nyti.ms/2rYFrw0
// One thing is clear after the killing of Iran’s second most important official: Americans are not safer.
🐣 RT @shadihamid 1. Initially I was on the fence, but the more I consider different scenarios, the more the original alarmist takes seem even more wrong than I first suspected. The WW3 stuff is obviously silly, but even the risk of “mere” war seems increasingly unlikely 📌 https://twitter.com/shadihamid/status/1213510539432878080?s=20
🐣 RT @benjaminwittes Judge Griffith of the DC at yesterday’s McGahn oral argument to DOJ counsel: “Has there ever been an instance of such broad-scale defiance of a congressional request for information in the history of the Republic? Has there been anything like this?”
⋙ 🐣 RT @benjaminwittes “An instruction has been given from the President of the United States not to cooperate in any form or fashion with an inquiry. Has that ever happened before? Not directed to one individual … but everyone from the administration. Has that ever happened before?”
NYT, Jonathan Stevenson: American Foreign Policy Is Broken. Suleimani’s Killing Proves It. http://nyti.ms/2SNUm7g Mr. Stevenson is a senior fellow at the International Institute for Strategic Studies.
// A properly functioning National Security Council would never have let it happen, for good reason.
DailyBeast, Adam Rawnsley: All the Ways Iran Could Hit Back at the U.S. for Killing Soleimani http://bit.ly/37BE4m1
// Iran has spent decades developing plans and forces to prepare for contingencies like Qassem Soleimani’s assassination. But just how crafty might Tehran’s retaliation be?
🐣 RT @RadioFreeTom 1. Once again, not happy that Trump could be bumbling into a war, and not sure killing QS now was the right move. 2. But when you’re the officer of a nation-state and you work off the books and deniably as a terror leader you lose the presumption of such protections.
⋙ 🐣 RT @ChrisMurphyCT Iran is full of malevolent evildoers, and Soleimani was the worst of them. But Iran is also a nation state. And the reason the U.S. doesn’t kill leaders of other countries is because once you normalize assassinations, it’s hard to put the genie back in the bottle.
WaPo, Siobhán O’Grady: Why Soleimani’s killing is different from other targeted attacks by U.S. http://wapo.st/2ZQQdkl
// “The strike was much more consequential than those that killed Osama bin Laden or Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, analysts said.”
🐣 RT @Cirincioni Just read transcript of the State Department briefing on the Suleimani killing. Could not believe the arrogance of the State officials. Insulting reporters, refusing to answer direct questions. They did not provide one iota of evidence to back up their claims of imminent attack.
🐣 RT @ajmount This entire transcript is a nightmare. Deluded soundbites substitute for reason and rationality, antagonism for transparency. There is no indication here these officials have thought seriously about the potential consequences of the action.
🐣 RT @emptywheel This State Department briefing seems to argue that any time a single American is killed, the US reserves the right to assassinate a high official in response. Interesting precedent
⋙ ≣ StateDept (1/3): Senior State Department Officials On the Situation in Iraq [Discussion] http://bit.ly/37CnjHr
🐣 RT @NoahBookbinder The current conflict makes impeachment more, not less, important. With the country facing grave issues, we need a president not tainted by abuse of power and criminal conduct, a president who will act in our interest, not his own. We don’t have one now.
DailyBeast, Will Sommer: QAnon Believer Teamed Up With Conspiracy Theorists to Plot Kidnapping, Police Say http://bit.ly/2FqovBr
// Conspiracy theorist Cynthia Abcug allegedly predicted that “Satan worshipers” would be killed in a raid by QAnon believers.
🐣 RT @carlbildt Now Russia has cut its oil supply to Belarus hoping that this will force the country to be more accommodating on both economic and political issues. There is reportedly also a Russian request for better military access.
⋙ 🐣 RT @Belsat_Eng Forced integration: Russia cuts its oil supply to Belarus http://bit.ly/2MUnnKI
🐣 RT @HeidiNBC Pompeo said on CNN the US acted to disrupt an “imminent attack” abroad, providing no evidence. ¤ h/t @AymanM ¤ Amnesty International human rights lawyer: unless U.S. can demonstrate the killing neutralized an imminent threat, it is still not allowed to kill a terrorist.
🐣 RT @jimsciutto The obvious consequence of Trump disparaging US intelligence that (1) Russia interfered in 2016, (2) NK is expanding its nuclear program and (3) Iran was complying with the nuclear deal, is the question why should he – and we – believe US intel re Soleimani as described now?
🐣 RT @jrubinblogger Sec State Pompeo has been the one to emphasize an “imminent” threat. Available evidence suggests that is bunk. Given that he lied about MBS and about progress on NoKo I think it is very likely he is not telling the truth now.
🐣 RT @StevenBeschloss We are living in a time of dread when none of Trump’s actions can be judged for legitimate purpose or based on credible information because he’s spent three years constantly lying and making choices that feed his damaged ego, enrich himself and/or serve his foreign benefactors.
⋙ 🐣 RT @anneapplebaum I find I am unable to take seriously any administration justification, explanation or prediction about the Middle East right now. Why should I believe their policies have any goal except distraction – from impeachment /scandal – or Trump’s re-election?
.@missy_ryan @jdawsey1 @DanLamothe @John_Hudson You don’t think Trump was responding to @khamenei_ir taunting him on Twitter on Jan 1? https://twitter.com/khamenei_ir/status/1212301034871279616?s=20
Salon, Igor Derysh: Yale psychiatrist urges Pelosi: Request 72-hour mental health hold on Trump after Iran attack http://bit.ly/36oDpUT
// Yale psychiatrist [Bandy X Lee]: Pelosi can request “72-hour hold” of Trump after he responded to impeachment with Iran attack
🧵 RT @rcallimachi 1. I’ve had a chance to check in with sources, including two US officials who had intelligence briefings after the strike on Suleimani. Here is what I’ve learned. According to them, the evidence suggesting there was to be an imminent attack on American targets is “razor thin”. 📌 https://twitter.com/rcallimachi/status/1213421769777909761?s=20
⋙ 🐣 RT @ 6. One official described the planning for the strike as chaotic. The official says that following the attack on an Iraqi base which killed an American contractor circa Dec. 27, Trump was presented a menu of options for how to retaliate. Killing Suleimani was the “far out option”
⋙ 🐣 RT @ 8. It was after the embassy protests that the president, according to one US official, chose the Suleimani option, but the problem at that point in time is that American intelligence did not know his precise whereabouts. They scrambled to locate him, says the official.
⋙ 🐣 RT @ 17. Before I go back to the pool let me just say the obvious: No one’s trying to downplay Suleimani’s crimes. The question is why now? His whereabouts have been known before. His resume of killing-by-proxy is not a secret. Hard to decouple his killing from the impeachment saga.
⋙⋙ 🐣 Did Trump start a war over a Twitter insult?
⋙⋙⋙ 🐣 [To @rcallimachi] Maybe this: RT @khamenei_I [1/1] That guy has tweeted that we see Iran responsible for the events in Baghdad & we will respond to Iran.
1st: You can’t do anything.
2nd: If you were logical —which you’re not— you’d see that your crimes in Iraq, Afghanistan… have made nations hate you. https://twitter.com/khamenei_ir/status/1212301034871279616?s=20
DailyBeast: Trump Told Mar-a-Lago Pals to Expect ‘Big’ Iran Action ‘Soon’ http://bit.ly/2MWjnJL
// Attendees of a closed-door Senate briefing didn’t get much more clarity than the club guests did. Instead, officials spun Soleimani’s slaying as a way to “de-escalate” tensions.
🧵 RT @ScottMStedman If Russian reports are correct and this is the personal jet of Herman Gref, the CEO of Russia’s biggest bank just flew into Ft. Lauderdale in the dead of night.
📌 https://twitter.com/ScottMStedman/status/1213378826291466240?s=20
⋙⋙ 🧵 RT @ScottMStedman @forensicnewsnet can confirm this is a Sberbank plane. 📌 https://twitter.com/ScottMStedman/status/1213377151606484992?s=20
⋙⋙ 🐣 RT @ScottMStedman Flight data (h/t @civmilair). RA-10204 is owned by Sberbank and used by CEO Herman Gref whom Trump met in 2013.
🐣 RT @ScottMStedman “Personally, the head of the state bank, according to the Interlocutor, is assigned a Gulfstream G650 business liner with a tail number RA-10204″ http://rusletter.com/articles/german_gref_again_handed_himself_a_bank
⋙ 🐣 RT @CheeseWhiz That would be 39 miles by car from Mar-a-lago.
⭕ 3 Jan 2020
🧵 RT @kelly2277 🔥HUGE🔥Val Broeksmit, the son of the Deutsche banker that killed himself and left a ton of documents stacked beside him has been working with the FBI. His dad knew about Russian money laundering, Trump’s loans and Robert Mercer’s RenTec mirror trades🏦 📌 https://twitter.com/kelly2277/status/1213137607737131012?s=20
⋙ Re: ForensicNews: Russian Government Bank Deposited $500 Million into Deutsche Bank Subsidiary as it Lent to Trump http://bit.ly/2NMJinF
// By Scott Stedman, Bobby DeNault, Adrienne Cobb and Jess Coleman;
// @ScottMStedman @ForensicNews Deutschebank money laundering
🐣 RT @Hardball “We wouldn’t be where we are today with threats in Iraq … if it were not for the decision that the Trump Admin took: the reckless, shortsighted, and unnecessary decisions to throw away the nuclear deal.”
— Iran Deal Negotiator Rob Malley
⋙ 💽 MSNBC, Hardball: Iran deal negotiator: Trump’s ‘reckless’ decision to scrap Iran deal led to tensions http://on.msnbc.com/2QKeaXL
// The Trump administration has hit Iranian proxies before, but yesterday’s airstrike against the country’s top general is the first direct confrontation with Iran itself. Iran deal negotiator Robert Malley says, “We wouldn’t be where we are today with threats in Iraq, threats to Americans, if it were not for the decisions that the Trump administration took, the reckless, shortsighted, and unnecessary decisions to throw away the nuclear deal.”
WaPo, George Will: Senators now risk indecent exposure of their minds http://wapo.st/2QunX3Y “Soon Americans will learn much, not about the president — he is an open comic book who has read himself to the country for years — but about senators”
WaPo: Iran knows how to bide its time. Don’t expect immediate retaliation for Soleimani. http://wapo.st/2Qr6VUg
// The regime wants to stay in power. Escalating the conflict with the U.S. even more would threaten that.
🐣 RT @DeadlineWH “It’s always been Soleimani’s strategic game… to get us out of the Middle East. He wants to see us leave Syria, he wants to see us leave Iraq… I think if we leave Iraq after this, that would just be a real disastrous outcome…” – @brett_mcgurk w/ @NicolleDWallace 💽 https://twitter.com/DeadlineWH/status/1213225171638722561?s=20/photo/1
WaPo/AP: Iranian cyberattacks feared after killing of top general http://wapo.st/2tyOrYV
🐣 RT @baseballcrank [1/4] The 9/11 Commission Report on Iranian facilitation of the hijackers from Saudi Arabia into Afghanistan – this isn’t something Pence just pulled out of thin air today. https://twitter.com/baseballcrank/status/1213320211966943233?s=20/photo/1-2
↥ ↧
WaPo, Aaron Blake: Pence’s dubious tweet tying Qasem Soleimani to 9/11 http://wapo.st/36oSoyd
WaPo, Alexander Petri: Whatever happens with Iran, I’m confident Donald Trump can get us through it [Satire] http://wapo.st/39Ize8C
NYT Editorial: ‘The Game Has Changed’ http://nyti.ms/2QNJiUW
// The assassination of Qassim Suleimani, one of Iran’s top military commanders, rocks the Middle East. Is President Trump ready?
🐣 RT @justinamash The president has the power, when seconds matter, to prevent an imminent attack on the United States, but the Pentagon and administration officials have presented contradictory statements about whether this was the justification.
🐣 RT @justinamash No authorization for war with Iran:
• 2001 AUMF: 9/11 attackers
• 2002 AUMF: Saddam Hussein’s Iraq regime
• War Powers Resolution: President can act without Congress only in *national emergency* following attack
• 10 USC §127e: Funding authorization, not war authorization
DailyBeast: Why Obama, Bush, and Bibi All Passed on Killing Soleimani http://bit.ly/39GcEx6 By Christopher Dickey, Noga Tarnopolsky, Erin Banco, Betsy Swan
// The Iranian general was in American crosshairs before. But nobody could begin to be sure what would come next if Soleimani were killed, and no scenario looked good.
🐣 RT @bluegal Is it a Constitutional crisis yet?
⋙ 🐣 RT @SenSchumer The White House is now openly defying a federal court order to release emails between key players in the Trump-Ukraine scandal. ¤ President Trump: If you’re listening, release the emails! ¤ What are you so afraid the American people will see?
🐣 RT @clairecmc It’s shocking that the President is not at the White House at this critical moment. He should not be at his opulent golf resort while he is deploying thousands of troops to the Middle East, and while the country and Congress are worried, begging for more information.
🐣 RT @ChrisMurphyCT The Administration is lying to us. They spent today saying they want to deescalate with Iran and their proxies while they were planning another strike. Just unbelievable.
⋙ 🐣 RT @RichardEngel Iraqi security official tells @nbcnews there has been anther US airstrike, this one north of Baghdad targeting Shiite militia leaders. Reports of 6 killed. This right BEFORE a big Shiite protest tomorrow in Baghdad. It seems certain to provoke an escalation.
🐣 RT @swavedave1 Today is the day we all knew would come. Something so serious that the truth would need to come from this administration. Sadly no one believes a word they say and they’ve laid the ground work for that truth.
💽 MSNBC, Hardball: Richard Engel on US airstrike that killed Soleimani: This is not over http://on.msnbc.com/2FlwcJe
// Qasem Soleimani’s death is the latest in a series of escalating incidents that followed President Trump’s decision to unilaterally withdraw America from the Iran nuclear deal.
WaPo: How Trump decided to kill a top Iranian general http://wapo.st/39Eddrc
// By Missy Ryan, Josh Dawsey, Dan Lamothe and John Hudson
🐣 RT @maggieNYT This is the thing that hasn’t fully penetrated for people – Soleimani was part of the state.
⋙ 🐣 RT @adamgoldmanNYT General David H. Petraeus, US Army (Ret.) has some thoughts*: https://twitter.com/adamgoldmanNYT/status/1213213685147217921?s=20/photo/1
⋙⋙ NewYorker, Robin Wright: The Killing of Qassem Suleimani Is Tantamount to an Act of War http://bit.ly/2MUkTf8
⋙⋙*LinkedIn: General David H. Petraeus, US Army (Ret.) ¤ Partner, KKR & Chairman, KKR Global Institute
This [NYT, Wright ⇈ ] is an excellent summary of the significance of the killing of Qods Force Commander Qassem Suleimani and of the possible implications of this action. (I provided an interview for it.)
It is impossible to overstate the significance of this action. Suleimani was, in US terms, a combination of CIA Director, JSOC Commander, and Special Presidential Envoy for the Mideast. He was the second most important person in Iran and the architect and commander of Iranian initiatives to solidify control over the Shia Crescent.
He had the blood of hundreds of American and coalition soldiers on his hands and that of countless of our Iraqi and partner elements in the region.
There will inevitably be responses by Iranian and proxy forces; the question is whether they force the US to respond with direct attacks on Iranian forces and infrastructure, at a time when the Iranian economy is already seriously damaged by sanctions and when the Iranian people have already been demonstrating against the regime in very considerable numbers. #QassemSuleimani
The New Yorker
Is the Killing of Qassem Suleimani an Act of War?
By Robin Wright January 3, 2019
https://lnkd.in/dHX9dfg
🐣 RT @Ali_H_Soufan Mr. Vice President,
First, there were 19 terrorists who carried out the 9/11 attacks: 15 Saudis, 2 Emiratis, 1 Egyptian, and 1 Lebanese.
Second, there are lots of bad things Soleimani did, this is not one of them.
⋙ 🐣 RT @Mike_Pence Assisted in the clandestine travel to Afghanistan of 10 of the 12 terrorists who carried out the September 11 terrorist attacks in the United States.
⋙⋙ 🐣 RT @vermontgmg I really can’t get over the idea of the @VP throwing out such a incendiary charge that is wrong on so many levels. Does not bode well for level of strategic thinking going on right now.
⋙⋙ 🐣 RT @DougWalsh72 Al Qaeda was not supported by Iran. They were supported buy Saudi Arabia and the hijackers were mostly Saudi. One is Sunni the other is Shia. This is why we get into never ending wars.
🐣 RT @Amy_Siskind Speaker Pelosi not mincing words: ¤ “Today, Leader McConnell made clear that he will feebly comply with President Trump’s cover-up of his abuses of power and be an accomplice to that cover-up.”
⋙ ≣ Speaker.gov: Pelosi Statement on Urgency for Fair Senate Trial http://bit.ly/2QozSAd
🐣 RT @mmpadellan We interrupt your regularly scheduled trump distraction to bring you the distraction he was trying to distract you from: ¤ A Deutsche Bank Whistleblower confirms trump’s loans are backed by Russia. ¤ He is OWNED by Russia, which is not really news, sadly.
⋙ 🐣 RT @robertjdenault BREAKING: A Whistleblower told the FBI that Trump’s Deutsche Bank loans were backed by Russian state-owned bank, VTB Bank. VTB was proposed lender for Trump Tower Moscow and allegedly funded the Rosneft Deal. New docs show deep ties between Deutsche + VTB.
⋙⋙ 💙 ForensicNews: Trump Deutsche Bank Loans Underwritten By Russian State-Owned VTB Bank, Whistleblower Told FBI http://bit.ly/37B3WP4 by Scott Stedman, Eric Levai and Bobby DeNault
// 1/3/2019
Deutsche Bank’s loans to Donald Trump were underwritten by Russian state-owned VTB Bank, according to the whistleblower whose collection of thousands of bank documents and internal communications have captured the recent attention of federal investigators.
Val Broeksmit acquired the emails and files of his late father, Deutsche Bank executive William S. Broeksmit, after Broeksmit tragically took his own life in 2014.
Val informed the FBI in late 2019 about his knowledge of VTB’s underwriting of Trump’s loans, information he attributed to a network of sources connected to the bank he cultivated over the past five-plus years
🐣 RT @SpeakerPelosi The Trump Admin has conducted strikes in Iraq targeting high-level Iranian military officials and killing Iranian Quds Force Commander Qasem Soleimani without an AUMF against Iran. Further, this action was taken without the consultation of the Congress.
NBCNews, Charles W. Dunne: The death of Iran’s top general, Qassem Soleimani, means America has declared war http://nbcnews.to/35pzA0a
// All the regular risks of undertaking war are exponentially more dangerous here because of the impulsive approach Trump has taken.
Reuters: Inside the plot by Iran’s Soleimani to attack U.S. forces in Iraq http://reut.rs/2SQQDpn
DailyBeast, Julia Davis: Russian State Media Blames Impeachment for Trump’s Iran Strike http://bit.ly/2SSGtoq
// “For Donald Trump, the annihilation of an Iranian General presents a decent opportunity for a domestic PR campaign,” one Kremlin columnist said.
🐣 RT @chrislhayes I guess the de-escalation of last night’s air strike wasn’t enough to fully de-escalate and stop war, so today the US has ordered another airstrike at a top Iraqi militia commander to further de-escalate and stop even more war.
🐣 RT @RepAdamSchiff As additional documents are revealed, and new information about Trump’s abuse of power comes to light, we learn more and more about the extent of his cover-up. ¤ Senators must ensure they see these and other documents related to the President’s scheme. ¤ A fair trial requires it.
⋙ 🐣 RT @kylegriffin1 Breaking via NYT: The Trump admin has disclosed there were 20 emails between a top Mulanvey aide and a colleague at the Office of Management and Budget discussing the Ukraine aid freeze, but OMB says it won’t turn over the emails —not even with redactions.
⋙⋙ NYT: White House Withholds 20 Emails Between Two Trump Aides on Ukraine Aid http://nyti.ms/2QlB7Am
// It contends the release of the documents sought by The Times, would “inhibit the frank and candid exchange of views” in government decision-making.
WaPo: Giuliani associate can give impeachment investigators phone data, documents seized by prosecutors, judge says http://wapo.st/37rODIm Lev Parnas
WaPo Editorial: Yes, Soleimani was an enemy. That doesn’t mean Trump made the right call. http://wapo.st/37wn14T
🐣 RT @TimKaine I just filed a resolution to prevent Trump from starting a war with Iran. The President wants to pretend that Congress doesn’t exist, but it’s our clear Constitutional duty to debate and vote before allowing him to rush into an unnecessary war.
🐣 RT @BazziNYU “When Trump took office, there was no US crisis with Iran. He created one – driven by hawkish advisers, many of whom had supported the invasion of Iraq in 2003, and his desire to undo one of Obama’s major foreign policy accomplishments” — my take
⋙ TheGuardian, Mohamad Bazzi: Donald Trump has blundered into a crisis of his own making with Iran http://bit.ly/2MU8EPN
// The president inherited relative peace. Now conflict with Iranian proxies across the Middle East seems likely
🧵 RT @RepSlotkin As a former Shia militia analyst who served multiple tours in Iraq and worked at the White House under both Presidents Bush and Obama, and later at the Pentagon, I participated in countless conversations on how to respond to Qassem Soleimani’s violent campaigns across the region. 📌 https://twitter.com/RepSlotkin/status/1213127820395851776?s=20
⋙ 🐣 RT @RepSlotkin What always kept both Democratic and Republican presidents from targeting Soleimani himself was the simple question: ¤ Was the strike worth the likely retaliation, and the potential to pull us into protracted conflict?
⋙ 🐣 RT @RepSlotkin The two administrations I worked for both determined that the ultimate ends didn’t justify the means. The Trump Administration has made a different calculation. ¤ The Iranian government has vowed to retaliate and avenge Soleimani’s death, and could do so in any number of ways:
⋙ 🐣 RT @RepSlotkin Against our diplomats and service members or high-ranking military officers, against our allies and partners in the region, or through targeted attacks in the Western world. [ … ]
🧵 RT @RepSlotkin As a former Shia militia analyst who served multiple tours in Iraq and worked at the White House under both Presidents Bush and Obama, and later at the Pentagon, I participated in countless conversations on how to respond to Qassem Soleimani’s violent campaigns across the region. 📌 https://twitter.com/RepSlotkin/status/1213127820395851776?s=20
NYT, Narges Bajoghli: Suleimani’s Death Changes Nothing for Iran http://nyti.ms/2ZQ5WAo Professor Bajoghli is the author of “Iran Reframed: Anxieties of Power in the Islamic Republic”
NYT: Live Updates: Iran Vows ‘Forceful Revenge’ After U.S. Kills General http://nyti.ms/2ZPK87R
// Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, promised retaliation against those who killed Maj. Gen. Qassim Suleimani in Baghdad. The U.S. moved to send more troops to the Middle East.
RFE/RL, Frud Bezhan: Analysis: U.S. Killing Of Iran’s Top General Risks ‘Dangerous’ Consequences http://bit.ly/2QobZc9
ForeignAffairs, Daniel Benjamin and Steven Simon (10/15): America’s Great Satan http://fam.ag/35iKODF
// 10/15/2019; The 40-Year Obsession With Iran
🐣 RT @real Iran never won a war, but never lost a negotiation!
⋙ 🐣 Mission Accomplished?
🧵 RT @DanielBShapiron 1. Qassim Soleimani had the blood of many thousands on his hands: Americans, Iraqis, Lebanese, Syrians, Israelis & many, many others. Truly one of the most evil men on the planet. Seeing his smiling mug in selfies with terrorists across the region was hard to take. Good riddance. 📌 https://twitter.com/DanielBShapiro/status/1212983781197529088?s=20/photo/1
// Shapiro=Former U.S. Amb. to Israel (2011-2017), Obama NSC, @INSSIsrael, @WEAdvisors, husband, dad, Cubs fan, Middle East politics, peace & security, US-Israel relations
🐣 RT @samwinograd @SecPompeo tells @JohnBerman that “the risk of doing nothing was enormous” — the intelligence community made that assessment.
🐣 RT @ Flashback to 1998
Flashback to 1998 pic.twitter.com/r1BjRDkbvZ
— Eric Columbus (@EricColumbus) January 3, 2020
// Bill Clinton wag the dog NYT cover
🐣 RT @owenawhaley The President’s week:
12/24: Golfed for 6 hrs.
12/26: Golfed for 4 hrs.
12/27: Golfed for 4 hrs.
12/28: Golfed for 5 hrs.
12/29: Golfed for 8 hrs.
12/30: Golfed for 6 hrs.
12/31: Golfing while our embassy is under attack.
YOUR tax dollars are paying for this.
Angry yet?
// 12/31/2019
🐣 RT @BrianKarem Question: Mr. president why? WTF? No explanations. No briefing. You didn’t address the nation. You escalated tensions for vague reasons…has anyone in the GOP had enough of this yet?
🐣 RT @stengel
1. Soleimani was a very bad guy & an implacable enemy of America.
2. His role in Iran’s military aggressiveness was central & Iran will regard this as an act of war.
3. For that reason, other American presidents decided the cost to such a killing would greatly outweigh benefit.
🐣 RT @stengel
4. The benefit is the temporary relief from a powerful foe. The cost is a potential Middle Eastern war.
5. Pompeo statement that he hopes we can “de-escalate” situation is laughable.
6. Iran’s response will be very aggressive. They will turbocharge their nuclear development.
🐣 RT @stengel
7. They will use cyber-terrorism as well as the more traditional kind.
8. What is our strategy here? What is the exit plan? This could make the Iraq War look like a skirmish.
9. Extraordinary reckless. Buckle up.
🐣 RT @RFERL Russia: “reckless”
China: decried “the use of force in international relations”
UK: urged “all parties to de-escalate.”
France: “We have woken up to a more dangerous world.”
⋙ RFE/RL: U.S. Killing Of Iranian Commander Sparks Global Concern http://bit.ly/39AMETX
🐣 RT @IsraeliPM President @realDonaldTrump deserves all the credit for acting swiftly, forcefully and decisively. ¤ Israel stands with the United States in its just struggle for peace, security and self-defense.
🐣 RT @RussianMFA [UK] MFA: Alarmed by killing of Gen Soleimani by US strike in Baghdad. Risk of grave consequences for regional peace and stability. #Iran #Iraq #IRGC #Quds
🐣 RT @Lobelog It bears remembering that Trump predicted 6 times between late 2011 and early 2013 that Obama was going to start a war with Iran to distract from his political problems. http://bit.ly/39A6A9w Today’s attack may tell us something about Trump’s own sense of vulnerability.
TheSpectator, David Patrikarakos [UK]: How Iran will strike back after the killing of Qasem Soleimani http://bit.ly/2u7u99h
🐣 RT @MiddleEastEye Brigadier General Esmail Ghaani, the Quds force’s deputy leader, has been named as Soleimani’s replacement http://ow.ly/EwER30q6w3i
🐣 RT @FazelHawramy Mojtaba Zonnour the head of Iran parliament national security committee says the Iraqis should close the airports and not allow the Americans to get out of the country. There are 36 bases of the American in the region, it is very easy to hit them, he told IRINN news
🐣 RT @FazelHawramy People in Kerman where #QasemSoleimani was born are preparing for mourning their most famous #IRGC commander. Haj Qasem is not like any other blood that was spilt, he was the father of all martyrs, our revenge will be different this time, a woman told IRINN
🐣 RT @JoyceWhiteVance Trump is counting on our inability to focus on 2 things after last night: emails confirming he directed Ukrainegate & newly released Mueller investigation info. No surprise that the man who withheld security aid from Ukraine to get re-elected would do this. Let’s prove him wrong.
🐣 Useful. Sober and informed.
⋙ 🧵 RT @RymMontaz 1/ Why did Iran militarily escalate in the Gulf lately? Shooting down a US drone, seizing tankers, bombing Saudi oil infrastructure? It wanted to internationalise the conflict. The Strait of Hormuz is where most of the world’s shipping transits. The US chose not to go there. 📌 https://twitter.com/RymMomtaz/status/1213045597223165952?s=20
🐣 RT @PeterBeinart This tough guy bravado bullshit from people who have no idea what consequences America has just unleashed and won’t suffer those consequences themselves. For those too young to remember, this is what it was like in 2003
🐣 RT @ragipsolyu UPDATES: ¤ • Iraqi caretaker PM Abdul-Mahdi: The attack is a breach of the deal that permits US presence in Iraq. Called parliament for an extraordinary meeting ¤ • Iran’s Khamenei is participating for the first time in a National Security Council meeting to discuss the response
🐣 RT @MalcolnNance WARNING: This is not good. The Mehdi Army is a militia for 10,000s of Shia who are not yet in a militia. We fought them in fierce battles in 2004-2005. It’s a Religious call to get out pitchforks & torches. Sadr & his family are revered in Iraq by all Shia Muslims.
⋙ 🐣 RT @NRT_english Sadr says will reestablish Mehdi Army, condemns US strike that killed Iran’s Soleimani http://bit.ly/37swKcc #NRTnews #Iraq #Iran #US #Baghdad
🧵 RT @KimGhatta 1 THREAD: Middle East waking up to incredible news of Qassem Suleimani’s killing in US strike in Iraq, at Baghdad airport. He had reportedly just flown back from Beirut. He was like a Middle East viceroy, trotting around region, giving orders, masterminding small and large ops 📌 https://twitter.com/KimGhattas/status/1212976875074662400?s=20
🐣 RT @ezraklein I keep coming back to this. The focus on Suleimani obscures what’s really happened here: ¤ We’ve gone to war with Iran. ¤ There’s been no congressional debate. No effort to secure allies, public support, or UN or NATO-backing. No discussion of trade-offs.
🐣 RT @TheRickWilson Two days ago
⋙ 🐣 RT @TheRickWilson 2019 In my darkest imagination, I just envisioned a Trump call to Bolton. “Keep quiet and I’ll give you a war with Iran…” ¤ Lurid? Crazy? Remember, Trump’s great gift as a con man is that he seeing into the deepest needs of his marks…
🐣 RT @ThePlumLineGS The only thing we want to hear from you about is your conversations with Trump about your opposition to his corrupt freezing of military aid to extort Ukraine. Your duty to the nation is to tell us what you know about that before parading around cheerleading for more war.
🐣 RT @JoshRogin Official U.S. policy is that we are NOT seeking regime change in Iran. Bolton’s comments will undermine that claim.
⋙ 🐣 RT @JohnBolton in the making, this was a decisive blow against Iran’s malign Quds Force activities worldwide. Hope this is the first step to regime change in Tehran.
⋙⋙ 🐣 You still have to testify
🐣 RT @brianklaas Experienced, well-informed, intellectually curious presidents staffed by the world’s top experts & advisers would have a hard time managing the fallout from Soleimani. ¤ We’ve got Trump, who attacks his own experts on Twitter, and listens to Jared, Ivanka, and Fox & Friends.
WaPo: In major escalation, American strike kills top Iranian commander in Baghdad http://wapo.st/2tu33c0
NYT: Qassim Suleimani, Iranian General, Cast Long Shadow Over Middle East http://nyti.ms/2QLJNPg
// The hard-line military leader was seen by some as a potential future leader of Iran.
NYT: Top Iranian General Qassim Suleimani Is Killed on Trump’s Orders, Officials Say http://nyti.ms/2QjsIx4
// Suleimani was planning attacks on Americans across the region, leading to an airstrike in Baghdad, the Pentagon statement said. Iran’s supreme leader called for vengeance.
🐣 This all goes back to Trump’s narcissism in ripping up the Iran nuclear deal because any deal forged by Obama must be the ‘worst deal ever.’ And to respond to world leaders laughing at him at NATO and getting criticized for his other international blunders, like Kurds and NoKo.
🐣 RT @carlbildt With Iraq turned into a battlefield between US and Iran the already fragile state of Iraq will be weakened and the room for Daesh and other terrorist organizations will in all probability increase.
🐣 RT @khameini_Ir In the Name of God, the Beneficent, the Merciful
Dear Iranian Nation!
Years of sincere, brave efforts fighting against the devils& villainous in the world & yrs of wishing for martyrdom on the path of God finally took the dear Commander of Islam, Soleimani, to this lofty status. His blood was shed by the most barbaric of men./1We congratulate Imam Mahdi (‘a.j.) & Soleimani’s pure soul& condole the Iranian nation on this great martyrdom. He was an eminent example of a person trained in Islam. He spent all his life in struggling for God. Martyrdom was the reward for his tireless efforts over the years./2
His efforts & path won’t be stopped by his martyrdom, by God’s Power, rather a #SevereRevenge awaits the criminals who have stained their hands with his & the other martyrs’ blood last night. Martyr Soleimani is an Intl figure of Resistance & all such people will seek revenge. /3
All friends—& enemies—know that Jihad of Resistance will continue with more motivation & definite victory awaits the fighters on this blessed path. The loss of our dear General is bitter. The continuing fight & ultimate victory will be more bitter for the murderers & criminals./4
The Iranian nation will honor the memory of the noble Major-General Soleimani & the martyrs with him—particularly the great Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis— & I declare 3 days of mourning across the nation. I condole & congratulate his family. /5
Sayyed Ali Khamenei
Jan 3, 2020
🐣 RT @RichardEngel Iran has options to respond to killing of Soleimani directly or through its allies: militias in iraq and syria, hezbollah in lebanon, friends in Yemen. A big question is: does it want a confrontation with US now, as govt has been facing its biggest domestic uprising in decades?
🐣 RT @McFaul Not good
⋙ 🐣 RT @RashaAlAqeedi Muqtada al Sadr gives orders via statement on twitter to revive Al Mahdi Army and Al-Yom Al-Maw’oud militias.
⭕ 2 Jan 2020
🐣 RT @rgoodlaw “The framers of the Constitution gave the authority to declare war to Congress…in part to prevent the United States from being drawn into conflict…without debate and consideration by the representatives of the people.”
🐣 RT @adgrandpadre “This strike went forward with no notification or consultation with Congress.” https://twitter.com/adegrandpre/status/1212955025875578880?s=20/photo/1
// Statement by Eliot Engel, Chair of House Foreign Affairs
🐣 RT @jimsciutto An escalating conflict with Iran will be unlike any war the US has fought before. Iran & its proxies have regional & global capabilities to attack civilian & diplomatic targets, US soldiers, ships & aircraft, economic targets incl shipping, oil pipelines & facilities, plus cyber.
DailyBeast, Maxwell Tani: Manafort Said Hannity Served as His Trump-Backchannel: Docs http://bit.ly/35hYv64
// The former campaign chairman “understood his conversations with Hannity to be a message from Trump” after he came under scrutiny by the feds, according to newly released memos.
🐣 RT @ mwhanna1 The United States is deployed legally in Iraq to advise and assist in the anti-ISIS campaign, which continues. Killing Soleimani and Muhandis likely makes its continuation impossible and will cripple US-Iraq relations. Making Iraq the forum for US-Iran conflict is frankly stupid
🧵 RT @SajadJiyad From an Iraqi perspective the news tonight fills me with dread of what’s next. There’s so many questions about how this will impact Iraq and what will happen to protests and the movement for reform & justice. What we have seen before is that when US-Iran butt heads Iraq gets hurt 📌 https://twitter.com/SajadJiyad/status/1212958441263828992?s=20 📌 https://twitter.com/SajadJiyad/status/1212955715167494144?s=20
💽 MSNBC, RachelMaddow: Brett McGurk: We need to presume that we are now in a state of war with Iran’ http://on.msnbc.com/2trLhGm
// Brett McGurk, who served as special envoy on the global coalition to defeat ISIS under Pres. Obama and Pres. Trump, talks to Rachel Maddow about the serious implications of the strike on Qassem Suleimani, the head of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps-Quds Force.
🐣 RT @RedTRacoon Rachel Maddow is talking about how Qasem Soleimani was the architect of a particular deadly type of IED in Iraq called a EFP (shape charge) ¤ I was hit with an EFP. ¤ I almost died because of this man and I hate him. ¤ His assassination was the worst decision Trump could have made.
🐣 RT @TheLastWord .@wendyrsherman tells @Lawrence that the Trump administration’s “one-off action” to launch a strike that killed the top Iranian revolutionary guard commander could have “unbelievably horrific consequences” for the United States. https://on.msnbc.com/2Qjd5FZ
🐣 RT @RepAdamSchiff Soleimani was responsible for unthinkable violence and world is better off without him. ¤ But Congress didn’t authorize and American people don’t want a war with Iran. ¤ All steps must now be taken to protect our forces against the almost inevitable escalation and increased risk.
🐣 RT @MiddleEastEye Adam Smith, chair of the House Armed Services Committee: ¤ I do not want war with Iran, and neither do the American people… The American people deserve to know why President Trump has brought us to the brink of another war and under what authorization”
WaPo: Pentagon launched airstrike that killed Iranian commander Qasem Soleimani, Defense Secretary Mark Esper says http://wapo.st/
🐣 RT @ChrisMurphtCT The justification for the assasination is to “deter future Iranian attacks”. ¤ One reason we don’t generally assasinate foreign political officials is the belief that such action will get more, not less, Americans killed. ¤ That should be our real, pressing and grave worry tonight.
🐣 RT @krystalball No one voted for this. No one authorized it. And yet here we are on the precipice of war with Iran. If we assassinated Soleimani, it’s hard to overstate just what a massive escalation and dangerous situation this President has just put us in.
🐣 RT @20committee Killing Soleimani is bigger than killing Bin Laden. ¤ He was smarter, craftier, and more ruthless than UBL. He killed more people too. Including thousands of Americans. ¤ He was a worthy adversary. He will never be forgotten. ¤ I’m still celebrating his death.
🐣 RT @lrozen Pentagon says US military killed Soleimani with aim of deterring future Iranian attack plans. [Statement:] https://twitter.com/lrozen/status/1212929197481611264?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @ScottMStedman Pentagon: “At the direction of the President, the U.S. military has taken decisive defensive action to protect U.S. personnel abroad by killing Qasem Soleimani, the head of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps-Quds Force, a U.S.-designated Foreign Terrorist Organization.”
🐣 RT @brhodes Trump may have just started a war with no congressional debate. I really hope the worst case scenario doesn’t happen but everything about this situation suggests serious escalation to come.
🐣 RT @MiekeEoyang I honestly haven’t been this scared about what comes next since 9/11. And this time, the US very clearly instigated it.
🐣 RT @JoeNBC There will be a debate over the recklessness of this act, but a Middle East official told me tonight that this is the single most significant event in the Middle East since the US invaded Iraq.
⋙ 🐣 RT @PeterBeinart Suleimani has lots of blood on his hands. So did Saddam Hussein. And assassinating him is the single most reckless act of American foreign policy since the Iraq War.
🐣 RT @kellymagsamen I worked the Iran account for years at the NSC under two Presidents. I’m honestly terrified right now that we don’t have a functioning national security process to evaluate options and prepare for contingencies. God help us.
🐣 RT @JuliaDavisNews There is a Trump Tweet for everything.
⋙ 🐣 RT @real [2011] In order to get elected, @BarackObama will start a war with Iran
🐣 RT @MalcolmNance WARNING WARNING: If the US killed Solimani & Mohandes in an air strike then expect the US Embassy under full scale siege by the end of tomorrow’s end of prayers. Convoy was struck by precision missiles and multiple Iraqis and 2 Iranian “guests” killed.
🐣 RT @juliaioffe Reports are coming out of Iraq that a U.S. drone strike has killed the Iranian Qassem Suleimani. If you want to know why that’s a BFD, read Dexter Filkin’s incredible 2013 profile of him.
🐣 RT @michealluo Dexter Filkins wrote the definitive profile of Qassem Suleimani.
⋙ NewYorker, Dexter Filkins (2013): The Shadow Commander http://bit.ly/39J0gN4
// 9/13/2013; Qassem Suleimani is the Iranian operative who has been reshaping the Middle East. Now he’s directing Assad’s war in Syria.
‼️U.S. kills Iranian Qassem Suleimani‼️
WaPo, Aaron Blake: New coverup questions in Trump’s Ukraine scandal http://wapo.st/2sItVFd
CNN: White House budget official told Pentagon that order to hold Ukraine aid came from Trump, national security site reports http://cnn.it/36kNySz
🧵 RT @EarlOfEnough BLOCKBUSTER:
📌 This isn’t just the smoking gun. It is literally the gun with somebody’s tiny fat fingers wrapped around it.
📌 TRUMP BROKE THE LAW, PEOPLE.
📌 The Pentagon repeatedly tried to stop him and he wouldn’t. ¤ READ
🐣 RT @Politics_PR New Ukraine docs mean the Senate must not sanction a ‘GOP-approved cover up’: Ex-prosecutor [Joyce Vance] http://j.mp/2sxyP8f
🐣 RT @kylegriffin1 Schiff: “The disclosure of these incriminating documents reinforces the need for all of these materials to be produced, and that a fair trial in the Senate cannot take place without them … the Senate and the American people must ask, what else is the President hiding?”
⋙ 🐣 RT @kylegriffin1 Just Security obtained unredacted Trump admin emails about withholding Ukraine military aid. ¤ “What is clear is that it all came down to the president and what he wanted; no one else appears to have supported his position.”
⋙⋙ JustSecurity, Kate Brannen: Exclusive: Unredacted Ukraine Documents Reveal Extent of Pentagon’s Legal Concerns http://bit.ly/39yzwPi
⭕ 1 Jan 2020
🔆 This❗️⋙ 🐣💙💙 RT @khamenei_Ir [Jan 1] That guy has tweeted that we see Iran responsible for the events in Baghdad & we will respond to Iran.
1st: You can’t do anything.
2nd: If you were logical —which you’re not— you’d see that your crimes in Iraq, Afghanistan… have made nations hate you.
WaPo Editorial: The Senate and the public need to hear from Mulvaney and Bolton http://wapo.st/2FdAeU2
🐣 RT @Amy_Siskind As of 1/1/20:
*Trump – impeached
*Manafort – in prison
*Cohen – in prison
*Flynn – going to prison
*Stone – going to prison
*Gates – going to prison
*Prince, Giuliani, Parnas, Fruman – under investigation
*Lewandowski – not running
*reputations ruined
“All the president’s men.”
DailyBeast, Will Sommer: Trump Throws Fresh Fuel on Dangerous QAnon Conspiracy Theory http://bit.ly/2rLX95H
// The president’s recent retweets have conspiracists in overdrive. “Best case is we’re up getting a medal at the White House,” one QAnon luminary gushed.
🐣 RT @davidfrum Groups becoming more Democratic in Trump era:
Women
Blacks
Hispanics
Asians
College graduates
Millennials
Mormons
Urban voters
All Voters
Groups becoming more Republican
White evangelicals
White Catholics
Rural voters
Groups becoming more Democratic in Trump era:
Women
Blacks
Hispanics
Asians
College graduates
Millennials
Mormons
Urban voters
All VotersGroups becoming more Republican
White evangelicals
White Catholics
Rural voters https://t.co/h5cXZhc3Ge— David Frum (@davidfrum) January 2, 2020
⋙ Pew Poll (3/20/2018): Trends in party affiliation among demographic groups http://pewrsr.ch/2suOYvb
🧵 RT @TomJChicago 1 Trump’s dramatic dementia symptoms get the attention, yet the underlying event is his irreversible brain damage. This damage is from the buildup & improper breakdown of Tau protein (in my opinion) & is progressively reducing the size of his brain, killing neurons & leaving gaps 📌 https://twitter.com/TomJChicago/status/1212571396234260480?s=20
🐣 RT @Stratfor “The Russians have the capability to disrupt our power grid at least for a short time. Weve seen the Russians do that in Ukraine now twice, & I dont think were ready for that.” In this #podcast, @fred_burton talks with @robknake #TheFifthDomain.
⋙ 🔊 Stratfor (9/18): The Fifth Domain With Author Robert Knake http://bit.ly/39qibId
🐣 RT @litzz11 “I don’t think he can win this time. Despite being the most powerful political figure in America for the last three years, Trump hasn’t done anything to expand his base. And the Democrats will never again make the mistakes Hillary Clinton made…”
⋙ LATimes, Jon Weiner: 2020 will be the worst year of Trump’s life http://lat.ms/2Qfan4t
🧵 RT @neal_katyal THREAD ON IMPEACHMENT AND REMOVAL IN THE NEW YEAR. The conventional wisdom is that the Republicans in the Senate will rush to acquit Trump. I outline here why I think that overstates the case, and that the process has any number of variables in which things may change. 📌 https://twitter.com/neal_katyal/status/1212450406917271552?s=20
⋙ 🐣 RT @neal_katyal 6. First, because even McConnell has no appreciation for our system of law, others do. His statements blatantly violate his Oath, which requires him to do impartial justice. And our Constitution puts the Chief Justice in charge of the impeachment trial.
⋙ 🐣 RT @neal_katyal 7. Chief Justice Roberts will strive to do impartial justice, even if McConnell won’t. His New Year’s Eve Statement was characteristic.
⋙⋙ 🐣 RT @neal_katyal A timely message from our Chief Justice for 2020: “We should reflect on our duty to judge without fear or favor, deciding each matter with humility, integrity and dispatch. …
⋙⋙⋙ NYT: Impeachment Trial Looming, Chief Justice Reflects on Judicial Independence http://nyti.ms/2SMbs5d
// 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.
⋙ 🐣 RT @neal_katyal 8. Second, the case for blocking the witnesses is a really hard one. McConnell looks like he’s protecting a guilty man with something to hide. This weekend’s revelations in the @nytimes [sic]make McConnell’s position increasingly untenable.
⋙⋙ WaPo: Explosive new revelations just weakened Trump’s impeachment defenses http://wapo.st/2ZF1cNR
⋙ 🐣 RT @neal_katyal 9. Third, Dems are giving Trump what he wanted. During House proceedings, Trump said he wanted witnesses to testify, just in Senate not the House. Dems have called him on it. Bait&switch now? Trump is acting even more like a guilty man b/c he is afraid.
⋙⋙ 🐣 RT @ Here’s Trump earlier this month insisting that he wants Mulvaney and Pompeo and Perry to testify in the Senate. http://bit.ly/36bvVEB Let’s hold him to it! https://twitter.com/EricColumbus/status/1210974989106761736?s=20/photo/1
⋙ 🐣 RT @neal_katyal 10. It is no surprise @lisamurkowski raised concerns about McConnell & @SenatorCollins announced she is open to witnesses. I expect pressure to build. @MittRomney will be critical. Ultimately, I can see a resolution leaving these questions to CJ Roberts.
⋙⋙ 🐣 RT @Politico Susan Collins said that she is “open to witnesses” in Trump’s impeachment trial and criticized Mitch McConnell for working closely with the White House
⋙⋙⋙ Politico: Susan Collins says she is ‘open to witnesses’ in impeachment trial http://politi.co/37rjAwb
// “It is inappropriate, in my judgment, for senators on either side of the aisle to prejudge the evidence,” she says.
⋙ 🐣 RT @neal_katyal 12. And that is why you see Trump’s support cracking in quarter after quarter. Christianity Today. Influential conservatives like @RameshPonnuru.
⋙⋙ NationalReview, Ramesh Ponnuru (12/19): Four Tests for Impeachment http://bit.ly/2Zd4fwp
⋙ 🐣 RT @neal_katyal 13. Apart from witnesses, longstanding Senate impeachment rules say that the President is summoned to appear in the Senate when impeached. Trump should testify. If he thinks he did nothing wrong, #SayItUnderOath. That’s what innocent people do, day in and day out.
⋙ 🐣 RT @neal_katyal 14. I have never felt the case for impeachment is political, it’s based on the rule of law. Whether it hurts Dems or helps Republicans is beside the point. It’s our duty. People like me just want process – a real trial where both sides make their case.
⋙ 🐣 RT @neal_katyal 15. And the thing that gets me the most, is that Trump is behaving like a guilty man. If this were such an easy case, as he claims, he should do what every other American does – face justice and tell his story. The fact that he is afraid to do that speaks volumes.
⋙ 🐣 RT @neal_katyal 16. Trump is afraid of the truth. ¤ And he is afraid of you and me knowing the truth. ¤ There is hope that our Senate will see that. ¤ END
🐣 RT @neal_katyal THREAD ON IMPEACHMENT AND REMOVAL IN THE NEW YEAR. The conventional wisdom is that the Republicans in the Senate will rush to acquit Trump. I outline here why I think that overstates the case, and that the process has any number of variables in which things may change. 📌 https://twitter.com/neal_katyal/status/1212450406917271552?s=20
WaPo, Stuart Stevens: Wake up, Republicans. Your party stands for all the wrong things now. http://wapo.st/2sGKj9c
🐣 RT @ABC Night-vision footage shows U.S. Marines landing at the Baghdad embassy. https://abcn.ws/2F887Wg 💽 https://twitter.com/ABC/status/1212308631665950720?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @RFERL 🇦🇹 🇧🇾 🇧🇴 🇧🇬 🇨🇲 🇨🇱 🇫🇷 🇩🇪 🇮🇱 🇮🇹 🇨🇮 🇱🇾 🇲🇬 🇲🇩 🇲🇪 🇲🇿 🇳🇱 🇲🇰 🇿🇦 🇸🇩 🇪🇸 🇨🇫 🇨🇩 🇺🇸 ¤ All of these countries have accused Russia of trying to meddle in their elections. What is going on? 💽 https://twitter.com/RFERL/status/1212312511107629056?s=20/photo/1
🐣 RT @leonidragozin Aside from OTT theatrics, this is a very powerful New Year address by President Zelensky which celebrates Ukraine’s diversity and portrays him as a leader for all Ukrainians, no matter what languages they speak and which political gods they worship. https://twitter.com/leonidragozin/status/1212315532956966914?s=20
🐣 RT @neal_katyal Happy new year to all. Am so grateful for this country and its freedoms, and for all of you. May our Constitution and its arc bend toward justice in the year to come.
━━━━━━━▼ 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
✅ WaPo, Aaron Blake: The Bidens, Burisma and impeachment, explained http://wapo.st/3aKxiwG
// 1/27/2020
✅ AP: How a debunked Ukraine theory endures against all evidence http://bit.ly/2R768Hi by Amanda Seitz, Eric Tucker and Richard Lardner
// 1/12/2020; Unfortunately, this article doesn’t link to all the articles it cites, not even giving media outlets or authors. I have a pretty good idea of the articles they’re referencing, but I’m steeped in this stuff. I suggest: BuzzFeedNews, Ryan Broderick (11/4): http://bit.ly/2YfgVCA
✅ 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”
✅ WaPo, Glenn Kessler (Dec): Not enough Pinocchios for Trump’s CrowdStrike obsession http://wapo.st/2sXyzzy 🍄🍄🍄🍄
// 12/2/2019
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 […]”
━━━━━━━▲
![James Spader, The Blacklist [5:8 Ian Garvey]](https://i0.wp.com/blacklistdeclassified.net/wp-content/uploads/2017/11/5366ebbc-d4a7-4794-9666-edbe5b179cc5-e1511262132795.jpeg?w=259&h=145&ssl=1 "5366EBBC-D4A7-4794-9666-EDBE5B179CC5")
![Jennifer Ehle and James Spader, The Blacklist [1:14 Madeline Pratt]](https://i0.wp.com/blacklistdeclassified.net/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/image71-e1468340459963.jpeg?w=249&h=146&ssl=1 "image")
![James Spader [2:10 Luther Braxton Part 2] The Blacklist](https://i0.wp.com/blacklistdeclassified.net/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/image102-e1468603098241.jpeg?w=301&h=194&ssl=1 "image")
![Before: Black silhouettes [3:2 Troll Farmer]](https://i0.wp.com/blacklistdeclassified.net/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/image7-e1444127882742.jpeg?w=350&h=197&ssl=1 "image")
![Red in red light. Liz in golden light. [2:9]](https://i0.wp.com/blacklistdeclassified.net/wp-content/uploads/2016/02/image25-e1454606142923.jpeg?w=294&h=196&ssl=1 "image")
![Jennifer Ehle and James Spader, The Blacklist [1:14 Madeline Pratt] Tegucigalpa by breakfast](https://i0.wp.com/blacklistdeclassified.net/wp-content/uploads/2017/11/11a3740a-972c-43e1-b43f-a9e8864d5609-e1511515179295.jpeg?w=275&h=154&ssl=1 "11A3740A-972C-43E1-B43F-A9E8864D5609")
![James Spader, The Blacklist [2:1 Lord Baltimore]](https://i0.wp.com/blacklistdeclassified.net/wp-content/uploads/2017/11/a0c0cd5e-5c7a-4d00-bbea-464f31d18619.jpeg?w=279&h=156&ssl=1 "A0C0CD5E-5C7A-4D00-BBEA-464F31D18619")
![James Spader and Megan Boone, The Blacklist [4:16 Dembe Zuma] c/o SpoilerTV](https://i0.wp.com/blacklistdeclassified.net/wp-content/uploads/2017/11/07072e28-4cb6-4917-934a-fdc571cb6c98-e1511294234567.jpeg?w=207&h=310&ssl=1 "07072E28-4CB6-4917-934A-FDC571CB6C98")
![James Spader, The Blacklist [5:8 Ian Garvey]](https://i0.wp.com/blacklistdeclassified.net/wp-content/uploads/2017/11/949556f7-748b-4d1a-87ad-abb6d42a9460-e1511262061342.jpeg?w=237&h=131&ssl=1 "949556F7-748B-4D1A-87AD-ABB6D42A9460")
![James Spader and Megan Boone in The Blacklist [3:18 Solomon Pt 2]](https://i0.wp.com/blacklistdeclassified.net/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/image112-e1460977014852.jpeg?w=333&h=189&ssl=1 "image")
![James Spader, The Blacklist [1:14 Madeline Pratt] “All there was was blood”](https://i0.wp.com/blacklistdeclassified.net/wp-content/uploads/2017/11/be7a16e9-2f63-4507-ba2e-ba8e7adfba7c-e1511515202854.jpeg?w=340&h=227&ssl=1 "BE7A16E9-2F63-4507-BA2E-BA8E7ADFBA7C")
