Month: November 2019

Week 148 in Trump

Posted on November 29, 2019 in Politics, Trump

Even these hosts couldn't figure out what Trump was talking about for 53 minutes...

Trump calls in to Fox & Friends and talks to them for 53 minutes straight, with no commercial breaks. Trump expresses so many lies on the show that even Fox & Friends hosts push back on some of what he says. He accuses witness David Holmes of lying (though Sondland corroborated Holmes’ story), he repeats his theory that Ukraine interfered in the 2016 elections (debunked by our intelligence community and State Department), and he says the whistleblower complaint was wrong (though Trump himself and the transcript he released corroborated most of the complaint). He accuses the Obama administration of spying on his campaign in 2016, though the IG report that’s about to come out reportedly disputes that. When Trump says he knows who the whistleblower is—and implies that the F&F hosts do, too—they try to steer him away from the topic.

Here’s what happened in politics for the week ending November 24…

Shootings This Week:

  1. There were NINE mass shootings in the U.S. this week (defined as killing and/or injuring 4 or more people). Short version: shooters kill 5 people and injure 39 more.

Russia:

  1. Paul Erickson, the former boyfriend of Russian agent Maria Butina, pleads guilty to money laundering and wire fraud.
  2. The day after White House advisor Fiona Hill testifies that the conspiracy theory that Ukraine meddled in our 2016 elections is a “fictional narrative” that helps Russia, Trump promotes said theory on Fox & Friends. Trump says Ukraine did it to frame the Russians. All our intelligence agencies, as well as Trump’s own advisors, agree that Russia meddled in our elections and Ukraine did not. Even Republican Representatives in the impeachment hearings this week say that they know Russia interfered with our elections, and their own investigation bore that out.
  3. Also, their CrowdStrike theory is way off the mark. Here’s what Trump said:
    • “They gave the server to CrowdStrike, which is a company owned by a very wealthy Ukrainian… I still want to see that server. The FBI has never gotten that server. That’s a big part of this whole thing.”
  1. Here’s the truth (it’s easy to look it up): 

    • CrowdStrike was founded by two Americans and a Russian-born U.S. citizen. One American and the Russian-born U.S. citizen now own it.
    • The Kremlin-backed conspiracy theories about Ukraine have worked out to Russia’s advantage—they deflect the blame away from Russia.
    • By making this a partisan issue in the U.S., Russia has put U.S. support for Ukraine into question.
  1. U.S. intelligence just briefed Senators and their aides on Russia’s efforts to reframe the narrative by blaming Ukraine for meddling in the elections. This is a smoke screen to shift the attention away from Russia. This has been going on for years.
  2. Despite this, Republicans in the impeachment hearings continue to push this conspiracy theory. They do, however, change their tune about it after Fiona Hill testifies to the intelligence committee.
  3. Russia’s strategy is to throw so much confusion into the mix that people don’t know what to believe. They want people to think it’s impossible to figure out who’s behind the misconduct.
  4. According to intelligence officials, Russia used Oleg Deripaska to help spread the misinformation. You might remember him as the guy Mitch McConnell just did a big deal with to bring jobs to Kentucky.
  5. A draft version of the DOJ inspector general’s report on the FISA warrant to surveil Trump campaign adviser Carter Page shows the IG didn’t find the anti-Trump bias he was looking for at the FBI. Here are some highlights:
    • There were errors and omissions in some of the documents.
    • A low-level employee altered an email to get a renewal of the warrant by adding factual information to the bottom of a thread. The IG didn’t feel that the changes impacted the validity of the application.
    • The FBI had enough evidence to open the Russia investigation.
    • Joseph Mifsud (who told George Papadopoulos he had dirt on Hillary) was not an FBI informant.
    • None of the evidence used to get the FISA warrant came from the CIA or, more importantly, from the Steele dossier.

Legal Fallout:

  1. The Supreme Court puts a lower court ruling on hold that would’ve allowed the House to obtain Trump’s financial records. Until they rule on the case, Trump’s accounting firm doesn’t have to release the records.
  2. Trump says he’ll release his “financial statement” (whatever that means) before the 2020 elections.
  3. We all know there’s been a longstanding practice of appointing big political donors to ambassador posts, but I’m not sure it’s usually this straightforward. As billionaire Doug Manchester was waiting Senate confirmation for his post in the Bahamas, the RNC asked him to donate half a million dollars. Manchester forwarded the message to two Senate staffers indicating he’d be willing to donate more once confirmed.
    • Manchester later withdrew his nomination.
  1. The two jail guards who were supposed to check on Jeffrey Epstein the night he committed suicide are charged with falsifying records and conspiring to defraud the U.S.
    • That night they were both browsing the web and spent about two hours sleeping. They were both working overtime shifts.
    • Security cameras show they never checked on Epstein.
  1. American Oversight obtains emails under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) that show that Nikki Haley used an unsecured system to send classified information because she forgot her password. I only mention this because of the hypocrisy. I doubt anyone got their hands on the info who shouldn’t have.

Impeachment:

Including all this info just makes this too long, so I moved it out into its own post. You can skip right over to it if that’s your focus.

Healthcare:

  1. Two Republican legislators in Ohio introduce a bill that would completely ban all abortions in the state. This is the same state where someone introduced a bill that suggested doctors can re-implant ectopic pregnancies into the uterus (they can’t).
  2. Trump delays the ban on flavored e-cigarettes after meeting with advisors and lobbyists. They’re concerned about the political fallout among voters (instead of the health of voters).
  3. Meanwhile, nine states are stepping up to ban vaping.

International:

  1. Israel’s attorney general indicts Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in all three cases against him. The charges are for bribery, fraud, and breach of trust. The AG initiates the process of stripping Netanyahu’s parliamentary immunity.
    • Following the recent divided elections, neither Netanyahu nor his opponent Benny Gantz were able to form a government coalition.
    • Netanyahu refuses to step down as Prime Minister. He calls it a coup. Where’ve I heard that before?
  1. Flooding and mudslides in Kenya kill 34 people. The region was experiencing a severe drought and is now experiencing heavy rains with flooding.
  2. Mike Pence makes a surprise visit to American troops in Iraq ahead of the Thanksgiving holiday.
  3. Mike Pompeo announces that the U.S. believes that the Israeli settlements in the West Bank are legal according to international law. For decades, the international consensus has been that the settlements are illegal. The Fourth Geneva Convention states it clearly:
    • “The occupying power shall not deport or transfer parts of its own civilian population into the territory it occupies.”
  1. French President Emmanuel Macron questions whether the EU should abandon the U.S. and create their own military alliance.
  2. Trump has asked both Japan and South Korea to pay more for the U.S. troops we maintain there. Meanwhile, South Korea and China agree to a security alliance, and the U.S. breaks off talks with South Korea over the demands for more money.
  3. Britain’s Conservative Party accepted a £200,000 donation from the wife of one of Putin’s former finance ministers.
  4. Boris Johnson blocks a report from the Parliament’s Intelligence and Security Committee about potential Russian interference in Britain’s elections. Remember England has elections coming up again.
  5. The Pentagon’s inspector general releases their quarterly report, which concludes that Trump’s order to withdraw U.S. troops from northern Syria, which allowed Turkey to attack the Kurds there, also allowed ISIS to strengthen its position there.
  6. Trump says he stands with the Hong Kong protestors for democracy but he also stands with Chinese President Xi Jinping. Meanwhile, both the House and Senate overwhelmingly (that means in a bipartisan way) pass a bill that would strip Hong Kong of its preferential trade status if China removes the freedoms guaranteed to Hong Kong residents.
  7. Hong Kong voters turn out in record numbers to deal a defeat to pro-Beijing politicians in the district council elections. Pro-democracy candidates tripled their previous seats, taking nearly 90%.

Legislation/Congress:

  1. Trump signs a bill that will continue funding autism programs to the tune of $1.8 billion over the next five years. The Autism Collaboration, Accountability, Research, Education and Support Act (CARES) will focus on helping people on the spectrum who age out of support programs and will prioritize rural and underserved areas.
  2. The House Judiciary Committee moves forward a bill that would legalize marijuana at the federal level.

Travel Ban/Immigration/Discrimination:

  1. Have you ever seen the AIDS quilt? It’s quite something to experience in person. It’s full of grief and sadness and lives cut short. And now the quilt’s paper archive is headed to the Library of Congress and the quilt itself will go back to San Francisco, where it started.
  2. A judge blocks the Trump administration’s efforts to start up federal executions again, saying that the lethal injection procedure they want to use isn’t authorized by federal law. The DOJ plans to appeal the ruling.
  3. A Manhattan judge denies Trump’s effort to dismiss the defamation case brought by Summer Zervos, opening the possibility that Trump might have to be deposed.
  4. The American Medical Association formally opposes conversion therapy for members of the LGBTQ community. The group also urges the federal government to ban the procedure.
  5. Representative Carolyn Maloney (D-NY) becomes the first female chair of the House Oversight Committee when she’s elected to the role previously held by Elijah Cummings.
  6. We learn that after Lindsey Graham rebuked Turkish President Erdogan at the White House, White House staff asked him to go to the Senate and block the bill recognizing the Armenian genocide, which Graham then did. Graham says he went along just because it was poor timing to pass the bill while Erdogan was in the states.

Climate:

  1. California Governor Gavin Newsom will ban all purchases by state agencies of new vehicles from the companies that backed Trump in the emissions dispute. General Motors, Toyota, Fiat Chrysler, and more will be affected by the ban, which will go into effect in January 2020.
  2. Newsom also imposed new regulations on fracking, increasing audits for compliance with state law and prohibiting drilling activity near homes, schools, hospitals, and parks.
  3. Two of the country’s largest coal plants began the process of shutting down this month. Regulations aren’t what forced the closures; economic pressures did.
  4. Australia’s record-breaking drought and fires have killed over 1,000 koalas, putting them at risk of extinction.

Budget/Economy:

  1. Hong Kong’s unemployment rate ticked up a bit, from 2.9% to 3.1%, partly attributable to a loss in tourism dollars because of the protests. Hong Kong is also in a recession.
  2. The Trump administration is looking at ways to cut taxes again. This time, it’s a proposed 15% tax rate for the middle class, which would give Trump a strong message for the 2020 elections.
  3. Amazon didn’t pay any taxes on $11,200,000,000 in profit from 2018.
  4. A new study finds that more than two million Americans live without running water or indoor plumbing. They don’t even have wastewater treatment.
  5. Trump signs a spending bill to keep the government funded through December 20.

Elections:

  1. A federal judge strikes down a Florida law that says candidates from the party that most recently won the governor’s race were listed first on ballots. The judge says this listing gave that party a 5% advantage.

Miscellaneous:

  1. Rumors abound that Mike Pompeo is planning to resign to pursue a Senate seat back in Kansas.
  2. White House Press Secretary Stephanie Grisham says that outgoing Obama officials left nasty notes for their successors in the Trump administrations. Obama officials deny this and describe the notes of encouragement they left. Various White House staff have also mentioned the kind notes that Obama officials left for them. I tend to believe the latter since no one has mentioned this in three years.
  3. A senior Trump official resigns after it was discovered that she lied multiple times on her resume, including creating a fake Time magazine cover with her face on it, lying about what she was doing on foreign trips, falsely claiming a degree, claiming she addressed the Republican and Democratic National Conventions, and more.
  4. Navy Secretary Richard Spencer threatens to resign if Trump actually does pardon and reinstate a Navy Seal convicted of war crimes. Also, it turns out that Trump announced that he would do that on Twitter, not in an official notification. So Spencer says that nothing changes until he gets an official notification.
    • Pentagon Chief Mike Esper asks for the Navy Secretary’s resignation. Apparently Trump gave Esper a direct order to drop disciplinary action against a Navy Seal convicted of war crimes. Navy Secretary Richard Spence tried to negotiate a deal whereby the White House wouldn’t interfere in Naval justice if the Navy allowed Gallagher to keep his trident pin. Trump appeared to back down for a minute, but then we learn that Spencer was basically fired.
    • Spencer at one point said he was proceeding with disciplinary action because he didn’t believe that Trump’s tweets constituted a formal order.
    • Trump’s interference in this matter has raised concerns with the Defense Secretary, the Joint Chiefs of Staff Chair, and members of the military.

Polls:

  1. 52.4% of Americans approve of starting the impeachment process. 42.3% disapprove. That gap is narrower when the question asked is whether to impeach and remove.

Week 148 in Trump – Impeachment News

Posted on November 28, 2019 in Impeachment, Trump

It’s a huge week for testimony in the impeachment hearings, but Fiona Hill was the coup de gras. Here’s an excerpt from her incredibly forthright testimony:


“Based on questions and statements I have heard, some of you on this committee appear to believe that Russia and its security services did not conduct a campaign against our country and that perhaps, somehow, for some reason, Ukraine did. This is a fictional narrative that has been perpetrated and propagated by the Russian security services themselves.”

Also, this is the week where I’ve become officially pissed off because I have to create a huge factcheck on stupid conspiracy theories that our elected officials have decided is their hill to die on.

Here’s what happened on the impeachment front for the week ending November 24…

General Happenings:

  1. American Oversight publishes State Department documents obtained through a FOIA request showing that Rudy Giuliani was corresponding with Mike Pompeo one month prior to Marie Yovanovitch being recalled from her post in Ukraine.
    • This backs up David Hale’s testimony and Gordon Sondland’s.
    • The documents tie Pompeo to efforts by Giuliani and Trump to get Ukraine officials to open investigations into the Bidens and 2016 elections and to smear Pompeo’s own employee, Marie Yovanovitch.
    • American Oversight says that this is just the first in a series of releases of documentation covered by the FOIA request.
    • The documents also include letters from former U.S. ambassadors to Ukraine and members of Congress expressing concern over the smear against Yovanovitch.
    • Meanwhile, Pompeo continues to refuse to hand over the material requested by the House.
  1. The White House Counsel’s Office turns up hundreds of documents and emails showing how extensive the effort was to come up with a justification after the fact for the delay in aid to Ukraine. The emails show that Trump made the decision without an assessment of the legality or the reasons for withholding aid.
  2. Devin Nunes really tries to turn John Bolton’s words back on the Democrats, calling the impeachment hearings a “drug deal” they’re trying to “cook up.” If you’ll remember, Bolton said he didn’t want to be part of any drug deal Mulvaney and Giuliani were cooking up in Ukraine.
  3. Indicted Giuliani associate Lev Parnas says that he helped arrange meetings between Nunes and former Ukraine officials in 2018 and that Nunes met with former general prosecutor Shokin.
    • Nunes’ travel timeline matches up with what Parnas says.
    • Nunes aide Derek Harvey was also involved in the meetings.
    • Nunes denies the allegations and threatens to sue the media outlets that reported on it.
    • Nunes has threatened to sue news outlets previously but always drops the suits.
  1. Parnas also turns over audio and video documentation to the House Intelligence COmmittee regarding Trump and Giuliani, but the contents hasn’t been made public yet.
  2. Lt. Col. Vindman requests a security assessment from the Army, which is now prepared to move him to a secure location if needed.
  3. Vindman’s lawyer sends Fox News a letter asking that they retract a story where they alleged that Vindman committed espionage. Fox has consistently questioned Vindman’s loyalty.
  4. U.S. officials at the embassy in Kyiv were made aware of the pressure Ukrainian officials felt they were under from the Trump administration in May, specifically the pressure to investigation Biden. This contradicts Zelensky, who said there was no pressure. Of course, he said that in front of Trump, so there’s that.
  5. Trump blames Mike Pompeo for hiring officials who would testify against him.
  6. The FBI asked to interview the whistleblower last month. They’re negotiating the request.
  7. House Republicans make fun of Adam Schiff using the word “bribery” now instead of “quid pro quo.” Just a little grammar lesson: bribery and extortion are both forms of quid pro quo. Also, constitutional bribery has a broader definition than the federal bribery statute.
  8. In an interview on Fox News, former special prosecutor Ken Starr says there was a quid pro quo between Trump’s administration and Zelensky’s government. He says this is bribery. He also indicates that it might not be impeachable.
  9. Nunes, the top Republican on the intelligence committee, says the testimony of the witnesses was “typically based on second-hand, third-hand, and even fourth-hand rumors and innuendo.” Except for the ones who were actually on the call, I guess. Or who were part of the diplomatic efforts with Ukraine, whether the regular or irregular channel.
  10. Nunes says the witnesses (State Department and White House officials) are “remarkably uninformed” about the conspiracy theory that it was Ukraine and not Russia who meddled in our 2016 elections. He thinks that’s why Giuliani had good reason to go investigate it. Here’s more info.
  11. The Trump administration discusses removing some of the witnesses in the impeachment hearings from their White House positions before their term is up. Advisers warn this could be construed as retaliation.
  12. One of Trump’s complaints about Ambassador Yovanovitch is that she refused to hang his picture at the embassy when he was elected. In reality, the embassy hung the pictures of Trump, Pence, and Secretary of State Tillerson as soon as the pictures arrived in Ukraine.
  13. Ukrainian officials are doing their best to stay out of the impeachment issue at this point.
  14. There’s bipartisan support in the Senate for a full trial should the House vote to impeach Trump.
  15. Giuliani says he has files on the Bidens that will be released if anything happens to him. So gangster. He’s previously said the same about Trump. Giuliani accuses the Biden family of monetizing Biden’s office for four decades.
  16. The House impeachment committee is looking into whether Kurt Volker, at the direction of Trump, pressured Zelensky to drop an investigation into former Urkaine President Poroshenko.

Alexander Vindman and Jennifer Williams Testimony:

  1. Vindman and Williams testify together. They are the first to testify who were actually listening in on the phone call between Trump and Zelensky. Vindman is a Lt. Col. in the Army and is the director of European Affairs at the NSC. Williams is a special adviser to Mike Pence on European and Russian affairs.
  2. Williams says she thought Trump’s phone call with Zelensky was unusual because of the focus on domestic policy. Other Mike Pence aides (not under oath) step up to defend the call. Trump calls her a Never Trumper after her testimony (he does that to a lot of witnesses).
  3. After Vindman’s testimony, The White House Twitter account posts that Tim Morrison, Vindman’s boss, had concerns about Vindman’s judgment. Fiona Hill clears that up in her testimony quite well (documented in her section below).
  4. Vindman defends himself by reading from his performance review authored by Hill. It gives him high praise.
  5. Republicans question Vindman’s loyalty to the U.S. (he’s a decorated Lt. Col.). Giving into xenophobia, they ask whether a Ukraine official who offered Vindman a job spoke in Ukrainian when he offered it.
  6. Republicans make fun of Vindman for wearing full Army dress uniform. Military members are supposed to do so when fulfilling official roles.
  7. Vindman reported the call to the NSC’s top lawyer because he was so concerned about it. He was shocked to hear Trump say that he thought Ukraine, not Russia, interfered in our elections.
  8. Both Vindman and Williams say not a single national security official supported withholding aid to Ukraine. Both also say that withholding aid was damaging our relationship with Ukraine.
  9. Both say they were not aware of any evidence that Biden committed any misconduct around Ukraine.
  10. Both say that they wouldn’t describe themselves as “Never Trumpers.”
  11. Republicans on the House committee continue to push questions that could out the identity of the whistleblower, but Vindman refuses to answer those questions.
  12. Williams says Zelensky told Mike Pence that holding up the aid would give Russia the impression that U.S. support for Ukraine is wavering.
  13. Williams says that Mike Pence had a phone call with Zelensky on September, 18, which she listened in on but can’t talk about because she was told it was classified.

Kurt Volker and Tim Morrison Testimony:

  1. Volker and Morrison testify together. These two were called by Republicans on the committee. Volker is a former special envoy to Ukraine, and Morrison is the former senior director for Europe and Ukraine at the NSC.
  2. Both say that the conspiracy theories around Ukraine were getting in the way of foreign policy and detracted from our national security. By conspiracy theories, they specifically point to 2016 election meddling and the Bidens.
  3. Morrison continues to maintain that he didn’t think the call was inherently wrong or illegal, but that it would cause a political storm were it to become public. He’s the guy who went to the NSC lawyer to say the call needed to be kept secret.
  4. Volker maintains that in all the time he spent working on this, he didn’t realize until much later that Burisma was related to the Bidens. Again, a simple Google search would’ve fixed that.
  5. Volker’s testimony confirms that there were two different policies at work in Ukraine. The official policy of the State Department was to get the military aid released and to have the two presidents meet. The unofficial policy was holding up the military aid and the meeting until Zelensky announced the investigations.
  6. Volker and Hill differ in their recollection of a July 10 meeting, after which Bolton instructed Hill to go to the NSC lawyers. Both testify that at the close of the meeting, Sondland brought up the investigations and that’s when Bolton shut it down. While the others went outside for a photo op, Bolton held Hill behind to talk about that “drug deal.”
    • This is a change for Volker from his deposition. He had previously said that Sondland didn’t bring it up.
  1. Earlier, Republicans accuse Vindman of skipping the chain of command and instead going straight to the lawyers. Now, Morrison gets the same treatment. It turns out he didn’t go to his boss, deputy National Security Advisor Charles Kupperman. Instead, he went straight to legal counsel to make sure they were aware of the call and that they locked down the transcript. He was concerned about the political fallout.
  2. Volker insists he isn’t part of some shadow foreign policy, despite his coordination with Gordon Sondland and Rick Perry.
  3. Morrison says that Gordon Sondland was working at Trump’s behest and that Sondland actually did talk to a top Ukrainian official about getting military aid in exchange for political investigations.
  4. Morrison says Trump and Sondland spoke at least a half dozen times, but Trump now says he barely knows Sondland.
  5. Volker says that the allegations against Biden and Yovanovitch are self-serving and are not credible.
  6. He says a change in power in Ukraine means a change in prosecutor, and the outgoing government was afraid of possible prosecution of themselves. He also says that Lutsenko, who was the source of many of these rumors, was trying to make the U.S. see him as an important and influential player so he was telling Giuliani what Giuliani wanted to hear.
  7. Volker and Morrison agree that it would be wrong for a president to withhold aid until a foreign government opens an investigation into a potential political opponent.
  8. Both Volker and Morrison say they weren’t aware of the Biden issue or that Burisma was related to Biden. Volker says a lot of things have come to light that he wasn’t aware of.
  9. Opinion alert: I’m feeling that these guys aren’t being fully honest. I think they knew Trump wanted to investigate the Bidens and that they’re just parsing their words when they say that they didn’t know Burisma meant the Bidens. They’re trying to create a way out, which could possibly be a way out for Trump as well. These are just my thoughts, based on the testimony so far.
  10. Fiona Hill told Morrison it would be safest to steer clear of Sondland, but Morrison wanted to keep an eye on him and know what he was up to.
  11. At one point, Trump told Volker that he thought Ukraine was trying to take him down.
  12. Volker defends Biden as being an honorable man.

Gordon Sondland Testimony:

  1. Gordon Sondland is the Ambassador to the EU. Sondland seems to contradict Morrison’s testimony, saying he didn’t work that closely with the president.
  2. Trump distances himself from Sondland during his testimony, saying “I don’t know him very well.”
  3. Sondland testifies that yes, there was a quid pro quo, at least with regard to the requested White House call and White House meeting.
  4. He says he was acting on orders directly from Trump when he asked Ukraine officials to announce an investigations into Burisma and the Bidens. Sondland also says that it didn’t matter whether Ukraine actually carried out the investigations; Trump just wanted the public announcements.
  5. Sondland says that he, Rick Perry, and other senior officials were following the express direction of Trump to work with Giuliani on the pressure campaign for the investigations.
  6. Sondland testifies that everyone was in the loop—Pence, Pompeo, Mulvaney, and Bolton.
  7. He says that he told Pence that he was concerned that the aid holdup had become linked to the requested investigations. He told Pence this before Pence met with Zelensky on September 1.
  8. He also says he kept Mike Pompeo informed about any developments in regard to the aid and investigations.
  9. Sondland says that Trump said he didn’t want anything from Ukraine, but then Trump went on to tell him he wanted investigations into the Bidens and 2016 election meddling.
  10. He agrees that Trump demanded something of personal value and in exchange, Trump would host a White House meeting in his official capacity (and as Sondland later learned, Trump would then release the military aid). The thing of value Trump demanded was investigations into political rivals from 2016 and now.
  11. Sondland doesn’t recall Trump ever talking to him about military aid.
  12. Funny story about Sondland. He was critical of candidate Trump, but then he bundled together a million dollars to donate to Trump’s inaugural fund—one of many wealthy donors eager to get back into Trump’s good graces after he was elected. Sondland kept pushing for the ambassador post for a year until they finally gave in.

Laura Cooper and David Hale Testimony:

  1. Cooper and Hale testify together in front of the House Intelligence Committee. They provide largely technical and procedural information.
  2. Cooper is a Russia and Ukraine expert at DoD. She says she thought military aid to Ukraine was crucial. She didn’t understand why it was held up, because Congress had authorized the money and a DoD review found that Ukraine was eligible.
  3. Cooper says Ukraine officials reached out to her staff on July 25 (the same day as the call with Zelensky) to find out what was going on with the military aid. She says Ukraine likely knew aid was being held up a few days prior.
  4. This contradicts previous witnesses, who said Ukraine officials found out about the aid being withheld from a Politico article in August.
  5. Hale is the undersecretary of state for political affairs. He thinks Yovanovitch was doing excellent work and should’ve been allowed to fulfill her term.
  6. Hale thinks that it’s unusual and wrong to place a hold on approved aid to use it as leverage against a foreign country to get them to investigate a political rival.
  7. Hale confirms that the Office of Management and Budget said Trump ordered the hold on the aid.

Fiona Hill and David Holmes Testimony:

  1. Hill and Holmes’ testify before the House Intelligence Committee together. Hill is the former NSC senior director for Europe and Russia, and Holmes is an official at the U.S. Embassy in Ukraine.
  2. This was, to me at least, riveting testimony. Not only does Fiona Hill go out of her way to dismiss the conspiracy theories about Ukraine meddling in our elections as a “fictional narrative,” but she later defends Trump against the harsh criticism he received before his presidency even began.
  3. Hill chides members of congress for spreading conspiracy theories and giving Putin fodder to use against us in 2020. Several Republican Members of Congress, in turn, acknowledge that all GOP members in the room believe that the Russian interference happened. But then they continue to bring up the debunked Ukraine theories.
  4. Hill testifies that a former staffer to Devin Nunes, Kash Patel, became White House staff and gave Trump information about Ukraine. He gave Trump so much information that Trump didn’t even know that his actual NSC Ukraine expert was Alexander Vindman and not Patel. This lends credence to Vindman’s testimony that he was told not to attend a Ukraine meeting because it would confuse Trump.
  5. Hill says that Russia’s goal is to delegitimize the president, and they would’ve tried to cast a cloud over the presidency no matter who was elected.
  6. During Hill’s and Holmes’ testimony, Devin Nunes tries to push the narrative that the Steele dossier was funded by the DNC and Clinton campaign. Neither are experts, but neither knows of the Clinton campaign funding it. Remember that the initial funding that led to the Steele dossier came from Republican primary opponents to Trump.
  7. One interesting piece of Hill’s testimony came when she was questioned about Gordon Sondland saying that they had a disagreement where she became emotional and shaky. She said that yes, she was angry; and sometime when women get angry it’s taken differently than when men get angry. And then she says that in hindsight, now that she sees what was actually going on, she was working on official national security policy, Sondland was working on a domestic political errand from Trump, and those policies had just diverged. She was angry because she thought Sondland wasn’t cooperating with what she understood to be official policy.
  8. When Hill was annoyed with Sondland because they didn’t seem to be coordinating, she said to him “Ambassador Sondland — Gordon — I think this is all going to blow up.” She adds to her testimony, “And here we are.”
  9. Holmes repeated his testimony from his deposition about overhearing the telephone conversation between Sondland and Trump at a public lunch (I covered this last week). During Holmes’ testimony, Trump tweets that his own hearing is great and that there’s no way you can hear or understand a conversation if it isn’t on speakerphone.
  10. Holmes also says that he concluded in August that the reason the military aid was being held up was for some kind of agreement on investigations. He also says that Ukraine officials likely would’ve drawn the same conclusion.
  11. Devin Nunes is surprised when he questions Holmes on whether the “black ledger” is credible and Holmes replies that yes, it is. The black ledger is the book that showed potentially illicit payments to Paul Manafort from Ukraine officials, which also led to Manafort resigning from Trump’s campaign. Holmes says he thinks that the purpose of publishing the ledger was to expose corruption in Ukraine, not to expose Manafort.
    • I have another opinion here. Nunes’ shocked expression tells me that either he’s a fabulous actor or he really does believe the conspiracies he’s peddling. I’m not sure which is worse.
  1. One reason Trump has given for not supplying Ukraine with the needed aid is that the EU wasn’t sharing the burden. But the review that gave that impression came out AFTER the aid to Ukraine was suspended. On top of that, since 2014 the U.S. has provided just over $3 billion to Ukraine, in loan guarantees that get paid back. In that same time period, the EU has provided $12 billion.
  2. Hill defends Vindman, saying she’s not sure where Morrison got the idea that Vindman wasn’t reliable. Hill has the utmost respect for Vindman and his work but thought his military bent might make him unprepared for political positions up the ladder.
  3. Hill says that Ukraine’s actions around the 2016 elections are simply not comparable to what Russia did and that the actions of Ukraine officials were similar to officials in other countries who assumed Clinton would win.
  4. Holmes says that the Ukraine issue isn’t over just because Trump released the aid. Ukrainian officials still feel the need to take steps to ingratiate themselves with Trump. They still haven’t gotten their White House meeting, and Trump hasn’t gotten his investigations.
  5. It’s key that Russia understands U.S. support for Ukraine is not wavering.
  6. Holmes and Hill agreed that Burisma is basically code-word for Biden.

Mark Sandy Deposition:

  1. Mark Sandy is the first official from the Office of Management and Budget to be deposed.
  2. Devin Nunes says that we’ll never see Mark Sandy’s deposition, which was given behind closed doors. Schiff says that the transcript is being reviewed and that we’ll get the transcript later.
  3. Nunes also implies that Sandy is the top official at OMB. He is not. He’s the associate director for national security programs. The top OMB officials have refused to testify.
  4. Sandy was told to sign the first in a series of apportionment letters freezing Ukraine aid. Other witnesses have testified that this letter was dated July 25, the same day as the call to Zelensky.
  5. Later, Sandy’s boss, Michael Duffey, told him he wanted to learn more about the process and then Duffey himself signed the subsequent letters.
  6. Sandy testified that he’d never seen a senior political OMB official take control of a portfolio like that.
  7. His transcript isn’t released by the end of the week but is expected to be released by Thanksgiving.

Week 148 in Trump – Ukraine Conspiracies

Posted on November 28, 2019 in Impeachment, Trump

Here’s a brief fact check on all those conspiracy theories being floated to take the focus off of:

  1. Russia’s interference in our elections.
  2. Trump’s extortion of Ukraine.
  3. Damning witness testimony.

What About All Those Conspiracy Theories?

  1. Throughout the proceedings, Republican questioners have repeatedly tried to shift the focus of the investigations to their theories that Ukraine meddled in the elections (calling the idea that Russia meddled in the election the “Russia hoax”). Specifically, Representative Jim Jordan (R-OH) and Representative Devin Nunes (R-CA) have been the biggest proponents of these theories.
    • During Vindman’s and William’s testimony, Nunes tries to make the Bidens the focus instead of Trump. He asserts without evidence that Biden interfered in Ukraine’s domestic affairs to benefit his son, Hunter.
    • During Volker and Morrison’s testimony, Jim Jordan pushes the narrative that Ukraine was engaged in election meddling in 2016. He cites tweets against Trump and Ukraine officials speaking against Trump.
      • He also says that because of Volker and Morrison, Zelensky was able to get reform passed through the parliament that allows politicians to be charged with a crime. This is important because oligarchs liked to become politicians so they couldn’t be indicted. (But I don’t know how much Volker or Morrison had to do with passing the law.)
    • Republican questioners also keep bringing up Alexandra Chalupa.
    • And finally, there’s the conspiracy theory about the DNC server being held somewhere in Ukraine so the FBI can’t get to it.
  1. Trump’s own staff, including his first head of Homeland Security Thomas Bossert, repeatedly warned him that the Ukraine conspiracy was completely debunked.

Did Ukraine Meddle in Our Elections?

No more so than any other foreign country who feared a Trump presidency. Compare what Ukraine is accused of doing with what our intelligence agencies say we know Russia did: 

    • Putin ordered Russia’s interference, and it involved both Russia’s intelligence agencies and their military.
    • Russia focused on spreading a pro-Trump message and spreading unflattering stories about Clinton.
    • Russia also executed repeated cyberattacks on our election system.
    • There is no clear evidence connecting the Clinton campaign to a foreign government, nor of them seeking illegally obtained information from one. These very things were outlined, however, in Mueller’s report between the Trump campaign and Russia.
    • I shouldn’t have to remind anybody that eight people under investigation by Mueller either pleaded guilty or were convicted.
  1. So here’s what is being used as proof of Ukraine meddling: The black ledger; an op-ed and flurry of social media posts criticizing Trump’s comments during an August 1, 2016, interview with George Stephanopoulos; Alexandra Chalupa’s research; and CrowdStrike.
  2. The Politico story that seems to have started or at least fueled this theory says that Putin personally directed Russia’s effort, and it was a focused effort involving military and foreign intelligence services. The Ukraine effort, if there was one, was scattershot. Former President Poroshenko maintains there was no effort to meddle in our elections. Ukraine did fear a Trump presidency, though, because he was more friendly to Russia than to Ukraine.
  3. The op-ed and social media posts from Ukraine officials that Republicans are citing as evidence of a concerted effort against Trump were in response to an interview candidate Trump did with George Stephanopoulos. During the interview, Trump said that Putin is “not going into Ukraine, just so you understand. He’s not going to go to Ukraine.” In reality, Putin seized Crimea from Ukraine two years prior in 2014, and they’ve been fighting ever since.
    • Trump went on to say the whole area is a mess under Obama, and that the people of Crimea might be happier under Russian rule. Trump only made it worse when he tried to clarify his statements. The reaction from Ukraine officials is understandable. And no wonder they were scared of a Trump presidency.
  1. Several of the social media posts reportedly came from US-born Ukrainians. The only social media posts I can find evidence of have been deleted, and were from a retired Ukrainian diplomat and from Ukraine‘s Minister of Internal Affairs.
    • They called Trump a clown and a danger, and one harshly criticized Trump for saying Putin hadn’t attacked Ukraine. They also criticized Paul Manafort.
  1. At the Republican National Convention in July, they changed their platform to remove references to arming Ukraine against Russia, so Ukraine again had reason to be concerned about a Trump presidency.
  2. The Politico article and its author say that nothing done by the Ukrainians comes even close to what Russia did.
  3. The Hill and Politico both reported that a spokesperson for Russia’s Foreign Ministry started the narrative that Ukraine meddled in our elections. Marie Zakharova said that Ukraine “seriously complicated” Trump’s election campaign when they “planted” information about Paul Manafort (the black ledger conspiracy theory). If you remember, Manafort is in prison, convicted of multiple charges and having pleaded guilty to multiple others.
  4. An anti-corruption politician and investigative reporter, Sergei Leshchenko, found the black ledger. He also lost his job when Giuliani complained about him.

Who is Alexandra Chalupa?

  1. Alexandra Chalupa worked for the Clinton administration and then was a consultant for the DNC. She was still consulting for the DNC, along with other clients, in 2016.
  2. Chalupa is the daughter of Ukrainian immigrants, and is an American citizen.
  3. In 2014, she was doing pro bono work for another client regarding the Ukrainian crisis when Manafort’s work for a former pro-Russian Ukrainian president caught her attention.
  4. Chalupa was suspicious of a Russia connection with Trump campaign, so she began researching it. She occasionally shared her findings with the Clinton campaign and the DNC, but was not working for either. She was doing this as a private citizen.
  5. While Chalupa shared her information with the DNC, the DNC didn’t include any of the information she shared in their dossiers. They also didn’t publicize any of it. She stopped consulting for the DNC after the party convention in July.
  6. She spoke with Ukraine’s ambassador to the U.S., who shared her concerns but didn’t think Trump would win anyway. But then Trump hired Manafort, and all of the sudden Chalupa was in high demand for the information she had found.
  7. Within a few weeks of her meeting with the ambassador, the administrators of her private email account started warning her about attempts by “state-sponsored actors” to break into her email account.
    • WikiLeaks eventually hacked into and released some of her emails.
  1. Her family cars were broken into and ransacked, and someone tried to break into her home. She felt these were intimidation tactics, and she later started receiving death threats.

So What About the Bidens?

  1. Hunter Biden took a position on the board of Ukrainian company Burisma during a time when his father, Joe Biden, was working on getting the Ukraine government to get rid of their corrupt prosecutor general.
  2. Ukraine officials say there’s no evidence either Joe or his son Hunter did anything wrong, and that they wouldn’t even know what they should be investigating should they open an investigation.
  3. Joe Biden did his work with Ukraine out in the open, in accordance with U.S. foreign policy, and with both presidential and bipartisan congressional approval.
  4. At worst, having Hunter on Burisma’s board was ethically questionable. Legal experts say that it wasn’t illegal, though.
  5. Many of our foreign allies backed Joe Biden’s push to have Ukraine’s prosecutor removed. It also made it more likely that Burisma would be investigated, not less likely.
  6. Hunter joined the board after the corrupt owner was forced out of his government office in 2014, along with the pro-Russian president.
  7. On the board of Burisma, Hunter “provided advice on legal issues, corporate finance, and strategy during a five-year term on the board.”
  8. Board meetings were held two times a year, and there were multiple calls, constant dialog, and sharing of advice throughout the year.
  9. Three people say Hunter never visited Ukraine.
  10. People interviewed say Hunter’s presence on the board didn’t protect the company from multiple investigations. During his time there, several investigations were opened into the owner (over tax violations, money-laundering, and licenses given to Burisma during the period when Zlochevsky, the owner, was a government minister).
  11. Burisma started bringing in high-profile directors to its board, and that included both Biden and his associate Devon Archer. The company’s reason for the additions to the board was to strengthen corporate governance. Burisma was also looking to expand, and Hunter helped with that.
  12. Here are Biden’s bona fides: he’s a trained lawyer, he had served on a previous board in the U.S., and he created an investment company with two people who graduated from Yale with him.

Does Ukraine Have The DNC Server?

No, no they don’t. This brings us to CrowdStrike.

  1. Apparently, Trump believes that CrowdStrike was the vehicle used by Ukraine to infiltrate the U.S. elections. Trump’s theory goes that CrowdStrike’s owner is Ukrainian so they’re hiding the DNC server in Ukraine. In reality, one is American and one was born in RUSSIA (and is now a U.S. citizen).
  2. Also, according to the conspiracy, Ukraine has “the server” that the “FBI can’t find” and that the DNC is trying to hide from the FBI.
    • In reality, there is no physical server. I’m beating this one like the dead horse it is. EVERYTHING is stored in the cloud. If anyone has a physical server, it’s the company providing cloud services, whoever that might be.
    • The FBI examined the image of the server. CrowdStrike examined the image of the server. That’s how it works in these modern times.

Week 147 in Trump

Posted on November 21, 2019 in Politics, Trump

EIGHT LITTLE WITCHES...

It’s week one of the impeachment hearings, but still (believe it or not) life goes on around us. People are protesting all across the globe; North Korea stalls on denuclearization; Roger Stone is guilty on all counts; Barr gives a wildly inaccurate historical account of the founding of the U.S. (what are these guys smoking?); Stephen Miller’s racist emails leak; and Trump takes an unexpected trip to Walter Reed.

Here’s what happened in politics for the week ending November 17…

Shootings This Week:

  1. There were FIVE mass shootings in the U.S. this week (defined as killing and/or injuring 4 or more people). Shooters kill 12 people and injure 18 more.
    • A shooter injures 4 people in Belle Glade, FL.
    • A shooter kills 2 students, as well as himself, and injures 3 more at Saugus High School in Santa Clarita, CA.
    • In an apparent murder/suicide, a father in San Diego, CA, kills 4 of his kids and his wife, and injures 1 of their kids.
    • A shooter in a vehicle injures 4 people in a home in Cleveland, OH.
    • Two shooters open fire at a football-watching party at a private home. They kill 4 people and injures 6 more in Fresno, CA.
  1. The Supreme Court lets a court case move forward against Remington Arms, which manufactured the guns used in the Sandy Hook shooting. The lawsuit asserts that a weapon as dangerous as the Bushmaster shouldn’t be sold to the public.

Russia:

  1. During the impeachment hearings, Christopher Anderson testifies that the White House once canceled a Navy operation in the Black Sea because Trump complained that it was hostile to Russia. Trump based his complaint on a CNN story (fake news!) and called John Bolton at home to complain about it.
  2. A jury finds Roger Stone guilty on all seven counts, including obstruction, making false statements, and witness tampering.
    • He could face up to 50 years in prison, and he’ll be sentenced in February. He is, however, still under his media gag. How do all these white guys get so much time out of jail after they’re found guilty?
    • The lies were about WikiLeaks, the existence of emails and texts, and conversations with Trump campaign officials.
    • During the trial, we learned that Stone was in direct and frequent contact with campaign staff and with Trump himself. Rick Gates testified that Stone was talking about the stolen emails at least by April of 2016, before the DNC even announced they’d been hacked.
    • Stone and Trump discussed future WikiLeaks email dumps in July of 2016.
    • The campaign eagerly anticipated the release of the hacked emails during the 2016 elections.
  1. This is the last indictment brought by Robert Mueller. Here’s who else was convicted or pleaded guilty as a result of Mueller’s investigation:
    • Paul Manafort, former Trump campaign chair
    • Rick Gates, former deputy Trump campaign chair
    • Michael Flynn, former Trump national security adviser (and how is he not in jail yet?)
    • Michael Cohen, former Trump lawyer
    • George Papadopoulos, former Trump campaign adviser
    • Alex van der Zwaan, associate of Manafort and Gates
    • Richard Pinedo, AFAIK not associated with Trump (he sold fraudulent bank accounts to Russians)
    • Sam Patten, Republican lobbyist
  1. Testimony and evidence from Stone’s trial bring into question Trump’s written answers to Mueller’s questions. The House is looking into whether Trump lied to Mueller in those responses, specifically about whether Trump knew about his campaign’s efforts to learn about DNC email dumps from WikiLeaks.
  2. Trump, Attorney General William Barr, and White House counsel Pat Cipollone meet in the Oval Office, and discuss DOJ inspector general Michael Horowitz’s investigation into the origins of the Russia investigation.
    • Horowitz is focused on the FISA warrant applications to surveil Trump campaign advisor Carter Page.
    • Interviewees are making final adjustments to the report, which should be released soon.
    • One person interviewed says it’s likely the report will find missteps, but no major misconduct.

Legal Fallout:

  1. At least eight former officials from the White House, the Trump transition team, and the Trump campaign worked as outside contractors for the DHHS.
    • They were tasked with cleaning up Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services Administrator Seema Verma’s image, and billed nearly $800,000 over four months.
    • Typically this work is done by federal employees in the communications department.
  1. The DC Circuit Court of Appeals says Congress can obtain eight years of Trump’s tax records, letting an earlier ruling stand. However, they also put the ruling on hold for seven days to allow Trump’s attorneys to petition the Supreme Court, which they do.
  2. In a separate case, a [Trump-appointed] judge rules that Trump can’t sue New York state officials in a DC court to stop the state from releasing Trump’s financial records to Congress. His lawyers argue they CAN sue in DC because New York officials are “co-conspirators” with Democrats in DC.
  3. The prison guards who failed to make scheduled checks on Jeffrey Epstein on the night of his death and falsified records to cover it up refuse a plea deal.
    • The presence of a plea deal indicates that the DOJ might bring criminal charges in connection with Epstein’s death, which was ruled a suicide.
  1. New York federal prosecutors are investigating Rudy Giuliani for campaign finance violations and for failing to register as a foreign agent.
  2. Even though the Trump Organization says they’re no longer soliciting foreign business and that having Trump in office is costing them $9 million, the Trump International Hotel is projected to have revenues of $67.7 million next year (a 65% increase from 2018). The hotel’s sales pitch to investors is that they can “capitalize on government related business.”

Impeachment:

Including all this info just makes this too long, so I moved it out into its own post. You can skip right over to it if that’s your focus.

Courts/Justice:

  1. In a speech in front of the Federalist Society, attorney general William Barr argues that the rebellion that formed the United States was not against King George III but was instead against the British Parliament.
    • This goes against nearly every historian on record, but it led to his argument that the power of the executive branch has dwindled and congressional power has increased instead. I urge you all to take a look at executive actions and laws passed over the past 20 years and see if that‘s actually true. Also, when Obama was president, the Republican party line was “executive overreach!”
    • Barr also blames “The Resistance” for endeavoring to cripple a “duly elected government” and trying to sabotage Trump.
    • George W. Bush’s ethics lawyer calls it a “lunatic authoritarian speech.”
  1. The Senate shifts the balance of the 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals by confirming controversial nominee Steven Menashi. I outlined his recent past in last week’s post. (Note: I’m not advocating for a liberal bent to the court; I think the judges should form a balance.)

Healthcare:

  1. Trump overrides protests from scientists and physicians, and pushes forward a rule to significantly limit the scientific and medical research the government can use in crafting their public health policies.
    • The rule would force researchers to release their raw data, including confidential medical information (which I’m guessing violates HIPPA rules, but that’s just my guess).
    • This will also affect environmental policies, which often relies on studies that use personal health information to determine where pollutants are an issue.

International:

  1. Hong Kong police try to take back control of a university campus being occupied by protestors. Protestors fight back with Molotov cocktails and bows and arrows, and they start the entrance on fire to keep police out. Police used rubber bullets, water cannons, tear gas, and armored vehicles.
    • Two men in Hong Kong are in critical condition after police shoot one of them point-blank and protestors set the other man on fire. The shooting triggered further violence from protestors.
    • Chinese soldiers came out to help clear Hong Kong’s streets of the debris and blockades left by protestors. This is the first time they’ve made an appearance around the protests.
  1. Hundreds of thousands of Czechs protest in Prague against their billionaire prime minister, Andrej Babi. Despite this being the largest anti-government protest since 1989, there isn’t much hope Babi will step down.
  2. Bolivia’s former president Evo Morales takes asylum in Mexico. He says he was forced out in a coup after weeks of protest.
    • There’s currently no one to take his place because the line of succession mostly resigned as well.
    • But then a Senator, Añez Chavez, takes the bull by the horns and declares herself the leader. The highest court backs her.
  1. Lawmakers in Chili will replace their constitution as a result of month-long protests.
  2. Iran shuts down the internet in retaliation against protests of the increase in fuel prices. Iranians in other countries are having a hard time reaching their family and friends in the country.
  3. There are anti-government protests across the globe. Here are a few places: Algeria, Bolivia, Britain, Catalonia, Chile, Ecuador, France, Guinea, Haiti, Honduras, Hong Kong, Iraq, Iran, Kazakhstan, Lebanon, and Pakistan.
  4. After Joe Biden refers to Kim Jong Un as a “murderous dictator,” Kim calls Biden a “rabid dog” who deserves to be beaten to death.
  5. Trump praises Turkish President Erdogan during Erdogan’s visit to the White House. Erdogan, just last month, tricked Trump into abandoning our Kurdish allies near Turkey’s southern border.
    • Hours after meeting with Erdogan, Lindsey Graham blocks a Senate resolution to formally recognize the Armenian genocide by the Ottoman Empire (Turkey). Graham says the bill was an attempt to rewrite or sugarcoat history.
    • Erdogan criticizes the resolutions, which were previously passed in the House.
    • Ahead of the White House meeting, Erdogan threatened to purchase Russian military equipment (Turkey is a NATO country).
  1. Trump asks Japan to quadruple payments for U.S. troops stationed there.
  2. The U.S. is trying to get North Korea to come back to the table for denuclearization talks, which have been stalled since February. North Korea has given the U.S. until the end of the year to change its “hostile” stance.
  3. Britain’s Prince Andrew steps down from his royal duties over blowback from his friendship with Jeffrey Epstein and accusations of statutory rape.

Travel Ban/Immigration/Discrimination:

  1. The Australian men’s and women’s soccer leagues reach a deal to close their pay gap. Come on, America!
  2. A UN report that showed the U.S. detains the largest number of children of all countries is retracted after one of the data points is shown to be outdated. The author stands by the findings though, and the DHHS does say the U.S. did hold more than 69,000 migrant children in custody in 2019. This is an ongoing issue; it’s not new with Trump.
  3. Internal documents show that the multiple types of barriers Trump put up against immigrants at our southern border were a major cause of the crisis at the border and the crush of detainees.
    • Government officials knew the policies would strain immigrant shelters—especially child shelters—but wanted to send a message to Central American migrants.
    • The policies stranded thousands of unaccompanied children at the border.
  1. ICE is trying to circumvent California’s new law banning private prisons, and is actively soliciting developers for new facilities.
  2. A former Breitbart writer, who has since left the white supremacist movement, leaks emails send by Trump advisor Stephen Miller.
    • Miller promoted white nationalist sites, backed immigration policies Hitler praised, raised conspiracy theories about immigration, and pushed other theories popular with white nationalists.
    • This is the guy who’s in charge of our immigration policies, and he’s used these alt-right ideas to design those policies.
  1. Trump once suggested that we should classify migrants who come here illegally as enemy combatants and that we should send them to Guantanamo.

Elections:

  1. After talking about contesting the results of the Kentucky governor’s election, incumbent Matt Bevins (R) concedes to Andy Beshear (D). Bevins was highly unpopular, having reversed many of the useful policies implemented by his predecessor (most notably in the area of healthcare). Every other Republican on the statewide ticket won.
  2. Democratic Governor John Bel Edwards wins re-election, despite having approved some policies deeply unpopular with Democrats.
  3. Representative Peter King (R-NY) joins the long list of Republicans who will not seek re-election in 2020. He’s been in Congress since 1993.

Miscellaneous:

  1. Trump makes an unscheduled visit to Walter Reed Military Medical Center, which he later says is for the first phase of his annual exam. He was there for more than two hours.
  2. Trump issues full pardons to two soldiers and reverses disciplinary action for a third, all against Pentagon advice. The soldiers are accused of war crimes. They are:
    • Army Major Mathew Golsteyn, who was facing a murder trial next year.
    • Former Chief Petty Officer Edward Gallagher (Navy SEAL), recently acquitted of murder but convicted of posing with a corpse. Trump reinstated him as a SEAL, reversing a Navy decision.
    • Former Army 1st Lt. Clint Lorance, convicted of second-degree murder.

Polls:

  1. 70% of Americans think that Trump asking Zelensky to investigate Biden was wrong.
  2. But still, only 51% think he should also be impeached and removed from office.

Week 147 in Trump – Impeachment News

Posted on November 20, 2019 in Impeachment, Trump

November 13th marks the first day of public impeachment hearings. Too many of us aren’t taking this seriously for the somber and momentous time this is. It’s never a good day when a president is being impeached, and it’s never a good day when the president has given so many reasons to put impeachment on the table (wittingly or unwittingly). If, like press secretary Stephanie Grisham, you find the hearings boring, you’ve got to just dig in and learn what you can about what led to this. You can make up your own mind, but not if you don’t have the facts.

Here’s what happened on the impeachment front for the week ending November 17…

General Happenings:

  1. On the opening day, Representative Adam Schiff, who is leading the proceedings, says they’re looking primarily into presidential abuse of power. He says he sees several impeachable offenses, including bribery.
  2. Here’s Schiff’s opening statement, so you can get an idea of the tone he’s trying to set.
  3. And here’s Representative Devin Nunes’ opening statement. Nunes is the Republican ranking member.
  4. Following Rick Perry’s efforts in Ukraine to influence their energy policy, two of his political supporters got a potentially lucrative gas and oil exploration deal with Ukraine’s government.
    • Perry gave Ukrainian officials a list of potential energy advisers, which I’m guessing is not unusual since Perry obviously knows several fossil fuel executives as part of his work.
    • However, Perry was also one of the “three amigos” who were working to make a meeting between Trump and President Zelensky happen, so his influence there was strong.
  1. With friends like these who needs enemies? Rudy Giuliani writes an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal arguing that nothing on the July 25th call is an impeachable offense. Giuliani says that the call was mostly about corruption in general, and Trump only spent about “six lines on Joe Biden.”
  2. Republicans are trying to distance Trump from Giuliani, who, as we all know by now, is a hand grenade. According to their 18-page memo, they plan to focus on four reasons the call was OK:
    • The call shows no conditionality. (Except for maybe the “Do us a favor though…” part.)
    • Both Trump and Zelensky say there was no pressure.
    • The Ukrainian government was unaware that aid was being held up at the time of the call. (One deposition puts this assertion into question).
    • Trump met with Zelensky and the aid was released, all without Zelensky opening the investigations. (A White House meeting was conditioned on the investigations, and that never happened. Zelensky was scheduled to announce the investigations two days after the aid was released, so by then it was moot).
  1. Trump considered firing Michael Atkinson, the intelligence community’s inspector general who reported the whistleblower complaint to Congress. Trump thinks Atkinson is disloyal.
  2. Representative Mark Meadows (R-NC), when questioned about the hearings, says, “when we start to look at the facts, everybody has their impression of what the truth is.” So facts aren’t facts.
  3. The White House releases a transcript of a previous phone call between Trump and Zelensky. This call is congratulatory in nature—Zelensky had just won the election.
    • They don’t talk about the Bidens or the 2016 elections.
    • The White House readout of the call in April doesn’t match with the released transcript. The readout stated that during the call, Trump said we’re committed to work with Ukraine “to implement reforms that strengthen democracy, increase prosperity, and root out corruption.” There’s no mention of that in the actual transcript they released.
    • The first call was marked “Unclassified” but the second one is marked “Secret.”
  1. By at least September 7, the State Department determined that the White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB) didn’t have a legal standing to withhold military aid to Ukraine. On September 9, they told Congress there was no hold on the aid. On September 13, Trump said he was releasing the aid, but Bolton had already approved some of it.
  2. Mick Mulvaney wants to join the lawsuit with other White House officials who are waiting to find out from a judge whether they can testify even though Trump invoked executive privilege.
    • So then John Bolton files a motion to prevent Mulvaney from joining. He argues that Mulvaney is a key player in the events leading up to impeachment (he was cooking up some kind of drug deal, according to Bolton).
    • And then Mulvaney withdraws his request.
  1. Most witnesses so far agree that the actions taken by Trump, Giuliani, Parnas, Fruman, and others were interfering with U.S. policy in Ukraine and setting back our progress in rooting out corruption in Ukraine. They also agree it was to Russia’s advantage.
  2. Lev Parnas, Igor Fruman, and Giuliani met privately with Trump at last year’s White House Hanukkah party. Afterward, Parnas told two people that Trump gave him a secret mission to pressure Ukraine officials to open investigations into Joe and Hunter Biden. At that time, Poroshenko was the president of Ukraine and Yuriy Lutsenko was the prosecutor. Lutsenko was the origin of the smears against Yovanovitch.
    • Parnas and Fruman met with Poroshenko in February to make an offer: if Poroshenko publicly opened the investigations, he’d get an invite to the White House. So this whole not-a-quid-pro-quo thing goes back to the previous administration.
    • When Poroshenko was not re-elected that spring, they had to scrap that plan and scramble to come up with a new one.
  1. Speaker Nancy Pelosi invites Trump to testify in the impeachment inquiry.
  2. Trump accuses Adam Schiff of doctoring the deposition transcripts before releasing them. There’s no evidence of this.

Bill Taylor and George Kent Testimony:

  1. William Taylor and George Kent provide testimony together to the House impeachment panel. Their testimony was pretty well covered in previous weeks, so I’ll try not to rehash that here.
  2. Schiff gives both witnesses time to make long statements summarizing their previous testimony. This will be standard going forward, I think. After the opening statements, it’ll go like this:
    • The lawyers for both sides have 45 minutes to question the witness, which is so much better than the typical grandstanding from Representatives. If you listen to nothing else, listen to the lawyers’ questioning.
    • Then members from each party get 5 minutes to question witnesses.
  1. The Republican’s lawyer, Steve Castor, advances the argument that the alternative channel led by Giuliani could’ve been more outlandish. It’s often hard to follow Castor’s line of questioning.
  2. Taylor reveals that one of his aides overheard a conversation between Trump and Ambassador Sondland. Sondland called Trump on his cell phone from a restaurant, and the aide could hear Trump’s voice clearly coming out of the phone’s speaker. Trump asked about the status of the investigations. The aide asked Sondland how Trump felt about Ukraine; Sondland said Trump cares more about the investigations into Biden.
  3. Kent testifies that Giuliani ran a smear campaign against Marie Yovanovitch by leading efforts to “gin up politically motivated investigations.” Lev Parnas and Igor Fruman were helping him out with these efforts. The three of them were “peddling false information.”
  4. Both witnesses acknowledge that there are national security reasons that Zelensky would say he didn’t feel pressured by Trump. Trump could impose serious consequences on Zelensky.
  5. Kent defends Biden and says there’s no way Joe Biden interfered with government policies to help out Burisma.
  6. The State Department is still withholding Taylor’s and Kent’s notes and records, so they are missing some of their documentary evidence.
  7. Representative Jim Jordan (R-OH) questions Taylor’s understanding of quid pro quo and mocks him for being the Democrats “star witness.”
  8. Republicans critique the process, call witness testimony hearsay since they weren’t on the calls and didn’t talk to Trump, and liken Democrats to a cult. They bring up the debunked conspiracy theories about Joe Biden and Ukraine’s involvement in the 2016 elections. They also level a bizarre accusation that Democrats sought nude photos of Trump from the Russians. I don’t know anyone who wants to see that.
    • Note: I’m working on a post addressing all the various Ukraine conspiracy theories being thrown around. So far, they’re super sketchy at best, but I’ll post the information once I have a more complete picture.

Marie Yovanovitch Testimony:

  1. Marie Yovanovitch testifies in an open hearing to the House impeachment panel.
  2. Against the rules laid out for the proceedings, ranking member Devin Nunes cedes his time to Representative Elise Stefanik (R-NY) with the apparent intention of creating the optics of Schiff shutting down a female questioner. Though Stefanik later takes nine minutes to read statements made by Schiff about the whistleblower testifying, she later complains to the press that Schiff shut her down.
    • After her testimony, her democratic opponent for the 2020 elections raises over $1 million in two days.
  1. Republicans obviously don’t think their base can understand the rules of procedure as laid out in the House resolution on impeachment.
  2. Yovanovitch’s testimony is very similar to what we’ve already heard from the deposition.
  3. She expresses confusion about why, if she serves at the pleasure of the president, didn’t he simply remove her from her post. Why did he feel the need to smear her before bringing her home?
  4. Yovanovitch accuses Trump of “kneecapping” her ability to further U.S. interests in Ukraine.
  5. When she got the call to come back, she was finishing up hosting a dinner party honoring a Ukrainian anti-corruption activist who had been attacked with acid and killed.
    • The director general of the Foreign Service, Carol Perez, was the one who called her. She stressed that there was concern for her safety and she needed to return immediately.
  1. Republicans try to make it sound like it’s OK she was recalled because she still has a job, right? And she likes what she’s doing, right? That’s unbelievably patronizing and excuses bad behavior by employers.
  2. Devin Nunes dismisses Yovanovitch’s employment concerns as an “HR” issue.
  3. She’s never heard of an ambassador being recalled based on false information (the prosecutor who made up some of the lies used against Yovanovitch has since retracted them).
  4. Yovanovitch says she felt threatened by Trump’s words—she’s going to “go through some things”—during his call to Zelensky. And then, in the middle of her testimony, Trump tweets this:
    • “Everywhere Marie Yovanovitch went turned bad. She started off in Somalia, how did that go? Then fast forward to Ukraine, where the new Ukrainian President spoke unfavorably about her in my second phone call with him. It is a U.S. President’s absolute right to appoint ambassadors.”
    • Yovanovitch is a steely ambassador who accepted five hardship posts. It’s comical to think that any of the situations in these countries are her fault. Also, Zelensky merely agreed with Trump after he criticized Yovanovitch.
    • Yovanovitch says this tweet is intimidating.
  1. She was incredulous that the Trump administration bought into the misinformation that Giuliani was peddling.
  2. Yovanovitch testifies that the publication of the black ledger that led to Manafort leaving Trump’s campaign in 2016 was not an action targeted at Manafort or Trump. It was targeted at removing corrupt politicians from Ukraine’s government.
    • This disputes (but does not disprove) the theory that Ukrainians were trying to force Manafort out of Trump’s campaign.

Transcripts Released:

The House releases additional transcripts from closed-door depositions. Same caveat as last week: I haven’t read every word of every page because there is just too much. I do verify what I’m reading about the transcripts, and have at least skimmed most of them.

Jennifer Williams:

  1. The House releases the transcript of Jennifer Williams’ deposition. She’s a top national security aide to Mike Pence, advising him on Russia and Europe.
  2. Williams took notes while listening in on the call with Trump and Zelensky.
  3. She said she found the references in the call between Trump and Zelensky to be more specific to Trump and his personal political agenda, and not so much to U.S. policy objectives in Ukraine.
  4. She also said that the call “shed some light on possible other motivations” for the freeze in military aid.
  5. A month after asking Pence to attend Zelensky’s inauguration, Trump told him not to go. Williams got no explanation for that.
  6. In Williams’ notes, she said Zelensky specifically mentioned Burisma during the call, but that information is missing from the official transcript (corroborating Vindman’s statements about missing words).
  7. Williams vouched for Yovanovitch’s stellar reputation in the Foreign Service.
  8. She had never heard of Crowdstrike before that call.
  9. After Williams’ testimony, Trump calls her a “never Trumper.” Even though she works for Vice President Pence.

Tim Morrison:

  1. The House releases National Security Advisor Tim Morrison’s deposition transcript.
  2. Morrison said he went to National Security Council lawyers with concerns about the transcript of the call. He advised those lawyers to restrict access to the transcript because of the potential political fallout if it were leaked. He was right about that!
  3. He didn’t think anything illegal transpired on the call. He did think that Trump’s behavior exhibited bad foreign policy, which could squander a “once-in-a-generation opportunity” to crack down on corruption in Ukraine with the new president Zelensky.

  4. A top diplomat who works closely with Trump (referencing Gordon Sondland) told him that the military aid was conditioned on the investigations that Trump wanted.
  5. In the same conversation where Trump told Sondland that there was no quid pro quo—that he didn’t want anything from Ukraine—Trump also insisted that Zelensky publicly announce investigations into Joe and Hunter Biden.
  6. Fiona Hill had warned him about the “Burisma bucket of issues” when he was transitioning into his job. The bucket includes Burisma, Hunter Biden, the DNC server, and CrowdStrike.
  7. Morrison said he googled “Burisma” and found out in seconds that Hunter Biden was on the board. This makes Volker, Sondland, and others who’ve testified they had no idea that Burisma was related to the Bidens look like fools. Or liars.
  8. Morrison said he didn’t know about the military aid being conditioned on the investigations until a September 1 conversation with Sondland. Morrison said, “Even then I hoped that Ambassador Sondland’s strategy was exclusively his own and would not be considered by the leaders of the administration and Congress, who understood the strategic importance of Ukraine to our national security.” So obviously he thought it improper.
  9. According to Morrison, Sondland had around a half dozen conversations with Trump over the summer, Sondland was acting at Trump’s behest, and Sondland spoke to Ukraine officials about exchanging military aid for political investigations.

Catherine Croft:

  1. The House releases Catherine Croft’s deposition transcript. Croft is an adviser to Kurt Volker. Here are some highlights.
  2. Trump’s view of Ukraine was out of step with White House and State Department officials.
  3. So many people knew about the hold on aid that it was impossible to keep it secret, even from Ukraine officials.
  4. Ukraine officials knew about the holdup in aid long before it was reported.
  5. Ukraine wanted to keep it quiet because it could appear that U.S. support for Ukraine was dwindling. As long as they thought they’d get the aid in the end, they had no reason to want this to get out.
  6. OMB put a separate hold on a transfer of lethal aid in the form of javelin missiles over concerns that “Russia would react negatively.” OMB was the only agency objecting, with the State Department, National Security Council, and other policy agencies supporting the transfer.
  7. Before Taylor accepted his post, they talked about whether the policy toward Ukraine would change. Croft said her frank opinion was that the White House wouldn’t change their policy on Ukraine unless Trump “viewed it— the—that Biden was going to be a credible rival for him in the upcoming election, and that he—that furthering the narrative that Russia was for the Republicans and Ukraine was for the Democrats would be in his interest, and that might push him to change the policy on Ukraine.”
  8. Her thinking was that “in an attempt to counter the narrative about Russian support for the Trump administration in the 2016 election or Russian interference in the 2016 election that—that it would be useful to shift that narrative by shifting it to Ukraine as being in support of the Clintons.”

Christopher Anderson:

  1. The House releases Christopher Anderson, Volker’s assistant.
  2. He says that John Bolton wanted increased senior White House engagement with Ukraine but that he was worried about Giuliani’s influence there.
  3. Anderson’s efforts as a Foreign Service officer to show support for Ukraine were quashed by the White House.
  4. It was Anderson who relayed the story about Trump calling Bolton at home to complain about a Naval operation that he thought was hostile to Russia. The White House had the operation canceled.
  5. Anderson though that Lutsenko was feeding false information to Giuliani to make himself appear useful to the U.S. government so he could keep his job. He was replaced as Ukraine general prosecutor in late summer.
  6. Volker had been in touch with Giuliani, and was concerned about his actions in Ukraine. So it’s not clear to me how Volker didn’t know about the investigation into the Bidens.
  7. Bill Taylor was concerned that Giuliani was going to continue making their job difficult, despite assurances from Mike Pompeo that U.S. policy toward Ukraine wouldn’t change.
  8. Taylor wanted to make sure not to discuss any “individual investigations” in their conversations about Ukraine. It was U.S. policy to push anti-corruption activities; it was not U.S. policy to push individual investigations.
  9. This narrative that the Ukraine government was an enemy of Trump jeopardized our efforts to resolve the Russia-Ukraine conflict.

Laura Cooper:

  1. The House releases Laura Cooper’s deposition transcript. Cooper works in the Pentagon as a deputy assistant secretary of Defense for Russia and Ukraine.
  2. Cooper’s testimony was cut short when Republican representatives stormed the SCIF.
  3. The Pentagon got no heads up about the freeze on military aid to Ukraine. When they found out that Mick Mulvaney froze the aid, they scrambled to get the money released.
  4. There were questions over whether the hold was legal, being that it came from the Office of Management and Budget.
  5. Before the press broke the news about the freeze, questions arose from the defense industry, which was waiting for the funds. She even got a call from the Chamber of Commerce.
  6. Conversations with Volker and alarm bells from Taylor led her to believe Ukraine was aware of the freeze far earlier than previously believed.
  7. Volker indicated to her that military aid would not be released without a public statement from Ukraine committing to the investigations Trump wanted. This was in a discussion where it was clear that the path Volker was taking to lift the aid was to get Ukraine to make the public announcement of the investigations. She says, “the only reason they would do that is because there was, you know, something valuable.”
  8. Volker mentioned to her “an effort that he was engaged in to see if there was a statement that the government of Ukraine would make that would somehow disavow any interference in U.S. elections and would commit to the prosecution of any individuals involved in election interference.”
  9. Cooper says that even though she was told by Michael Duffey in OMB that the holdup in aid was over corruption, the anti-corruption review had already been completed, and Pentagon officials had “affirmed that we believed sufficient progress has been made.” Duffey refuses to testify.
  10. Also, the Department of Defense certified that Ukraine met the deadline for anti-corruption benchmarks in May.
    • After the freeze in aid, the Department of Defense did no further work on reviewing anti-corruption measures.
  1. Cooper attended a meeting with senior administration officials where they concluded that there are only two ways for Trump to withhold aid.
    • The president notifies Congress and declares a “rescission” of the funds
    • The Pentagon reprograms the funds (this also needs a congressional notification)
  1. The impending end of the fiscal year was putting the entire funding for aid in jeopardy.
  2. Securing Ukraine will help us push back against Russian aggression in the rest of the world.

David Holmes:

  1. Holmes testified at the end of the week, and his transcript was released by Monday. So I’m including all the info in this week’s recap.
  2. The impeachment panel interviews David Holmes, an aide to Bill Taylor. Holmes is the aide referenced in the above testimony from Taylor about the phone call he overheard between Sondland and Trump.
  3. Holmes says there’s a risk that Russia was monitoring that phone call between an ambassador and the president on a cell phone in a public restaurant in Kyiv. They “generally assume mobile communications in Ukraine are being monitored.”
  4. Trump’s voice was very loud and discernible (so we can assume others in the restaurant heard it as well), and the two discussed the investigations they wanted from Ukraine.
  5. Trump’s voice was so loud, Sondland had to hold his phone away from his ear.
  6. At one point, Trump said, “So he’s going to do the investigation.” Sondland replied, “Oh yeah, he’s going to do it.”
  7. Holmes says that:
    • Sondland told Trump that Zelensky “loves your ass.”
    • Sondland told Trump that Zelensky would do “anything you ask him to.”
    • The day after Trump asked Zelensky to investigate Joe Biden, Sondland told Trump that Ukraine would open the requested investigations.
    • Sondland confirmed that Trump doesn’t give a shit about Ukraine. He cares more about the investigation into Biden.
    • Sondland and Trump also discussed freeing rapper A$AP Rocky.
  1. Holmes reported the call to his supervisor. He also says two other officials (whose names are redacted) were at the lunch.
  2. Holmes reported the conversation to the NSC legal advisor John Eisenberg, the same guy Vindman reported his concerns to and the same guy who decided to place the record of the call on a super secret server. Eisenberg did nothing.
  3. At a foreign policy meeting, Sondland once said, “Damnit, Rudy. Every time Rudy gets involved he goes and f—s everything up.”
  4. Fiona Hill also testified she was concerned about Sondland’s use of his personal cell phone as well as the one issued to him by the government. She felt his communications weren’t secure. He also gave out her own personal cell phone number.

Week 146 in Trump

Posted on November 18, 2019 in Politics, Trump

And here you have it, folks. This explains why we’re in the situation we’re in. CNN hosted an all-female panel of Pennsylvania voters, and several members of the panel said they’d still vote for Trump “if he shot someone on 5th Avenue.” Because “you’d have to know why he shot him.”

Here’s what happened in politics for the week ending November 10… Sorry, I’m a week behind still!

Missing From Previous Weeks:

  1. The U.S. refused to issue visas to members of an Iranian delegation coming to Washington for the annual meeting of the World Bank and International Monetary Fund. Iran’s economic minister canceled his trip in protest.
  2. The USDA’s inspector general opened an investigation into whether the USDA was burying its own scientists’ research on climate change. Farmers and ranchers are feeling the effects of climate change firsthand, and can’t really mitigate it without access to the scientific information.

Shootings This Week:

There were SIX mass shootings in the U.S. this week (defined as killing and/or injuring 4 or more people). Shooters kill 1 person and injure 24 more.

  1. A shooter injures 4 people outside a nightclub in Kansas City, MO.
  2. A shooter kills 1 person and injures 4 more outside a strip club in Memphis, TN.
  3. A shooter injures 4 people filming a rap video in Little Rock, AK. The victims are 12, 12, 13, and 30 years old.
  4. A shooter injures 4 people in Vidalia, GA.
  5. A drive-by shooter injures 4 men in Detroit, MI.
  6. A shooter injures 4 people outside a nightclub in Toledo, OH.

Russia:

  1. Roger Stone’s trial begins. As a reminder, he was indicted on obstruction of justice, five counts of making false statements (including to Congress), and witness tampering.
  2. Stone is in hot water over his relationship with WikiLeaks during the 2016 presidential campaign.
  3. Stone’s indictment says a Trump campaign official was told to contact Stone after Wikileaks released DNC emails. They wanted information from Stone about when the next releases would come out and what other damaging information they had.
  4. Steve Bannon testifies, and says the campaign was willing to try “dirty tricks” in order to win.
  5. Court documents show that Manafort was spreading the Ukraine conspiracy theories months before the elections.

Legal Fallout:

  1. A federal judge upholds a ruling that Trump’s tax returns must be handed over to Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance. This is part of the investigation into the hush-money payments to Stormy Daniels and Karen McDougal.
  2. After being threatened with fines and jail time, Betsy DeVos announces that the Department of Education will cancel the debt of about 1,500 students who attended schools that went belly-up before they completed their educations.
    • The loans should’ve been forgiven under the “closed school discharge” guidelines.
    • But this one is a mess. The schools in question were purchased by a Christian non-profit group in 2017, when they were already in distress. The non-profit, Dream Center Education Holdings, closed a few schools within months. To top off their problems, the schools lost their accreditation with the Higher Learning Commission, and the whole chain shut down within a year of the purchase.
  1. A New York State judge orders Trump to personally pay $2 million to various nonprofit organizations as part of a settlement involving the Trump Foundation. The foundation held a fundraiser in 2016 ostensibly for veterans’ organizations, but none of those organizations saw any of the $3 million raised. The court finds that the Trump family misused charitable contributions to the foundation for personal, business, and political gain.
  2. According to Trump advisors, around September 25, Trump asked Attorney General William Barr to hold a press conference to say that Trump didn’t break any laws in his call with Zelensky. Barr declined. Both men deny this happened.
  3. Two Twitter employees are accused of helping Saudi Arabia spy on its critics. The Saudis recruited the two to obtain data, including email addresses and IP addresses, of people who criticize the country and its leaders.

Impeachment:

Including all this info just makes this blog too long, so I moved it out into its own post. You can skip right over to it if that’s your focus.

Courts/Justice:

  1. Every Republican on the Senate Judiciary Committee votes to advance White House legal aide Steve Menashi’s nomination to the Second Circuit Court of Appeals.
    • Menashi is inexperienced.
    • His writings show him to oppose women and to support racist ideas. He opposes diversity programs and gay rights and has expressed anti-Muslim sentiments.
    • Menashi worked with Betsy DeVos to roll back rights for victims of sexual assaults on campuses.
    • He also worked with DeVos to help create the plan to use Social Security data to deny debt relief to students cheated out of money by for-profit colleges. A judge found this plan to be illegal.
    • He’s being accused of being part of the Ukraine coverup, having been Trump’s legal adviser for over a year (though I haven’t seen any evidence of this).

Healthcare:

  1. A federal judge overrules Trump’s rule allowing healthcare workers to refuse care based on religious beliefs. The judge says DHHS exceeded its authority, acted arbitrarily and capriciously, and lied about their justification for making the changes.
  2. Global warming is causing an exponential increase in Dengue Fever infections (boo), but scientists announce they‘re finalizing a vaccine (yay) to prevent the disease. In tests, the vaccine is 95% effective in preventing serious illness; 80% effective in preventing it altogether.

International:

  1. Iran announces new violations of the JCPOA (Iran Deal) on the 40th anniversary of the student takeover of the U.S. Embassy in Tehran, which started the 444-day-long hostage crisis. Iran is operating 60 IR-6 advanced centrifuges, which produce enriched uranium ten times faster than what the JCPOA allows. Gosh, if only we could’ve had some sort of agreement that would prevent this. Oh, wait…
  2. The BBC reports that one of the U.S.’s demands in their post-Brexit trade negotiations with the UK is that the UK must privatize their National Health System.
  3. Working-class communities in Northern Ireland see an uptick in violence over fears that Brexit will create a hard border between them and Ireland again.
  4. Yemen’s government signs a power-sharing peace agreement with separatists, a move backed by the Saudi crown prince. This civil war is in its fifth year.
  5. The two had banded together previously to fight the Iranian-backed Houthi rebels, but then rebels backed by the United Arab Emirates seized the capital city from the government, which is support by Saudi Arabia.
  6. The Saudi-led coalition in Yemen is still obtaining U.S. weapons, despite bipartisan congressional disapproval.
  7. Violent protests continue in the Bolivian capital of La Paz. People across the country have been protesting since the elections four weeks ago, after the results couldn’t be validated because of “serious irregularities.”
    • Protestors kidnap a small-town mayor, cut her hair, douse her in red paint, and march her barefoot through the streets.
    • Bolivian President Evo Morales resigns. Morales, who has served for 14 years, is Bolivia’s first indigenous president.
    • The successors to the presidency all resign as well, so it’s unclear who will take over.
  1. Trump tweets Turkish President Erdogan’s praises and confirms Erdogan will visit the White House this month. It’s just a month since Erdogan attacked the Syrian Kurds who were our allies.
  2. A student dies in Hong Kong from falling from a parking garage during a clash between protestors and police. This is the first death in the 23 weeks of protest there.
    • A pro-Beijing politician is stabbed while out canvassing for votes. He isn’t seriously injured.
    • China warns that they’ll bring in national security forces to quash the protests.
  1. Protests continue in Chile despite all the concessions made by the Chilean government.
  2. Iraq uses security forces to stop anti-government demonstrators. At least 300 people have died so far in the protests. This unrest is, in part, due to resentment of Iran’s influence in Iraq.
  3. A drug cartel ambushes a group of Mormons living in Mexico, killing nine U.S. citizens.

Border Wall/Shutdown/National Emergency:

  1. (Missed from last week) At a White House Halloween party, children were encouraged to help “Build the wall!” Teaching intolerance at a young age.
  2. And speaking of walls, Germany commemorates the 30th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall, which divided East and West Germany. They say history repeats itself…

Travel Ban/Immigration/Discrimination:

  1. The Trump administration quietly launches a pilot program in El Paso aimed at reducing the amount of time immigrants have to organize their cases to be allowed into the country. This allows the U.S. to deport asylum seekers more quickly and without a thorough vetting.
  2. U.S.-backed loans are being used to fund the smugglers who bring Guatemalans here illegally. The loans were intended to boost rural communities’ economies.

Climate:

  1. Ryan Jackson, EPA chief of staff, refuses to tell the EPA’s inspector general how he obtained advance information about a witness’s testimony. The IG is investigating whether Jackson tried to influence an agency scientist ahead of her testimony before Congress.
  2. Trump takes formal steps to remove the U.S. from the Paris Climate Agreement.
  3. Top economists say we’re beginning to feel the economic effects of climate change, and that those effects are likely to snowball soon.
    • The Federal Reserve held its first climate change conference to discuss it.
    • Per capita global GDP could fall by 7% by 2100, but if all countries stick to the Paris accord, that could be minimized to 1%.
    • Extreme weather, but specifically extreme heat, affects productivity.
  1. Over 11,000 scientists sign on to a declaration saying we’re facing a climate emergency. The authors express frustration over our lack of action over the past four decades, during which the science has been showing that we can do something.
  2. Italy makes classes in climate change compulsory in schools.
  3. Global sea-level rise is unstoppable, at least to 2050. It threatens 40 million people. That number rises to 200 million by 2100 if we do nothing.

Budget/Economy:

  1. Goldman Sachs reports that they think tariffs on Chinese goods have likely peaked. They’re basing this on the possible first-phase trade/tariff agreement.
    • Economists still don’t think China will implement any real structural change, but they think we can avoid further escalation
    • Economists posit that Trump won’t push for China to address systemic trade issues that will affect U.S. businesses in the long term because he wants this settled before the 2020 elections.
  1. Manufacturing in China has expanded for three straight months, while U.S. manufacturing has contracted each of those months. October had the largest U.S. manufacturing deficit with China in at least eight years (which is how long they’ve been using this particular survey).
  2. China announces that the U.S. and China have both agreed to cancel certain tariffs on one another’s goods. The news triggered a stock market rally with new record highs in the U.S.
  3. Trump won’t impose new tariffs on European cars this week as he had previously promised (he’s said that imports of European cars somehow pose a national security threat).
  4. Farm income is expected to hit its highest level since 2014, but 40% of that income comes from the taxpayer bailout, disaster assistance, insurance, and the farm bill.

Elections:

  1. Trump campaigns in Kentucky for unpopular Governor Matt Bevin (why does Kentucky keep electing officials they hate?). In a very close race, Democrat Andy Beshear later beats Bevin by fewer than 6,000 votes.
    • Trump makes the rally about him: “If you lose, they’re going to say, ‘Trump suffered the greatest defeat in the history of the world.’ You can’t let that happen to ME!”
    • Bevin calls for a re-canvassing of the ballots.
    • Some Republican State Representatives seem to indicate it might fall to them to decide the winner based on an old rule regarding election irregularities. Bevin has already made accusations of irregularities, so that could be where this is headed. Bevin hasn’t cited any evidence, though.
  1. In other state elections this week, Democrats took over both the Senate and the House of Delegates in Virginia, giving them a trifecta in the state.
  2. In Mississippi, Republican Lt. Governor Tate Reeves defeated Democratic Attorney General Jim Hood to take the governor’s seat.
  3. Facebook and Google are under pressure to limit political ads, or at least to not publish lies. Twitter has already banned political ads.

Miscellaneous:

  1. In Nikki Haley’s new book, she claims that former Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and former White House Chief of Staff John Kelly tried to get her to subvert Trump with them. According to Haley, both men said they weren’t being insubordinate; they were trying to save the country.
  2. The DOJ is trying to intimidate and expose the author who anonymously penned the upcoming book “The Warning.” Anonymous wrote an infamous op-ed in the New York Times claiming to be a White House official and describing the chaotic atmosphere of Trump’s White House.
    • Excerpts of the book are leaking out, and I’m trying to decide whether to repeat them here. It seems to me that if you’re unwilling to put your name on something, then I have no way of determining how credible your book is.
  1. Trump far outpaces his three most recent predecessors in staff turnover at this point in his presidency.
  2. AT&T agrees to a $60 million settlement with its unlimited data customers for misleading them about slowing down their speeds. This is called throttling. And this would be illegal if we still had net neutrality rules.
  3. An ABC news anchor is caught on a hot mic saying that NBC executives quashed a bombshell sex-trafficking story about Jeffrey Epstein.

Polls:

  1. 64% of Americans say their finances are no better under Trump. 35% say they’re doing better.
  2. A Fox News poll shows that more voters want Trump impeached (53%) than oppose impeachment (41%).

Week 146 in Trump – Impeachment News

Posted on November 18, 2019 in Impeachment, Trump

Sorry I’m so far behind in getting these recaps out! Suddenly, there’s twice as much political news write about and twice as much drama. I’m almost caught up though.

In the interest of keeping track of events, here’s another helpful timeline of events surrounding Ukraine, this one starting with January of this year.

And here’s what happened on the impeachment front for the week ending November 10…

General Happenings:

  1. High-level Ukraine officials warned Zelensky to avoid the appearance of taking sides in U.S. politics, but still debated whether it was in Ukraine’s best interest to comply with Trump’s demands. This is documented in a series of WhatsApp threads.
    • Zelensky knew how important that military aid was. So in the end, he scheduled an interview on CNN with Fareed Zakaria for September 13 to make Trump’s requested announcement about the investigations.
    • However, word about the whistleblower report began leaking and Trump released the military aid under public pressure on September 11.
    • Since the point was now moot, Zelensky canceled the interview.
    • If not for the whistleblower, the extortion of investigations for military aid would’ve worked and we would never have heard a thing about it. We would’ve been left with the impression that Ukraine thought Joe Biden did something corrupt, though.
    • This is the textbook definition of getting caught in the middle of committing a crime, which is still a crime, in case you were wondering.
  1. House Democrats list these areas of focus for impeachment:
    • Whether Trump asked a foreign leader to open investigations to benefit himself, personally or politically
    • Whether he used the power of the Office of the President to pressure Ukraine
    • Whether the Trump administration tried to hide information from Congress about Trump’s actions.
  1. Two U.S. Senators told Zelensky that only Trump could release the aid.
  2. Four White House officials defy their subpoenas to testify before the impeachment panel: White House Counsel John Eisenberg, Robert Blair (a senior adviser Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney), Office of Management and Budget official Brian McCormack, and White House lawyer Michael Ellis.
    • Eisenberg says he didn’t have enough time to prepare (over the weekend) and Trump told him not to cooperate.
    • Eisenberg is also the guy who decided to move the call summary to the classified N.I.C.E. server. After the call, he also told Alexander Vindman not to discuss the call with anyone outside the White House.
    • Others who fail to appear include Energy Secretary Rick Perry, acting director of the Office of Management and Budget Russell Vought, and State Department counselor T. Ulrich Brechbuhl.
  1. Representative Adam Schiff (D-CA) says open hearings will begin next week.
  2. GOP leaders claim that Democrats are releasing the transcripts selectively. All the major transcripts are released in full this week.
  3. Charles Kupperman’s lawsuit asking a judge to decide whether executive privilege takes priority over a congressional subpoena isn’t set to be heard until the second week of December. This will delay some testimonies, including John Bolton’s.
    • But then, House Democrats withdraw their subpoena for Kupperman’s testimony and ask the judge to dismiss Kupperman’s lawsuit over it. They say it’s to avoid delays in the impeachment hearings. Don McGahn’s case is similar and should wrap up sooner, setting an earlier precedent.
  1. Without even having heard or read all the evidence (if he’s read any at all), Mitch McConnell says the Senate would acquit Trump if the impeachment hearing were held today. He also points out that a delayed trial will keep the Senators who are running for president off the campaign trail.
    • If it comes to it, the Senate will likely model the trial after Clinton’s.
    • Senator Lindsey Graham refuses to read any of the transcripts, saying he’s ”written the whole [impeachment] process off” as “a bunch of B.S.” I say that’s just lazy.
  1. Earl Matthews, a senior NSC advisor who attended key Ukraine meetings and traveled to Ukraine with John Bolton, resigns. He hasn’t been tapped for testimony in the impeachment probe that we know of.
  2. Trump says he doesn’t know much about Yovanovitch, but he says Zelensky isn’t a fan of hers either.
  3. A note here on what Zelensky might or might not think. It’s very apparent from the transcript of the phone call that Zelensky knows what he needs to say. And that included supporting what Trump thinks is true and not ever negating what Trump says. So it’s hard to know just what Zelensky thought of Yovanovitch.
  4. The GOP has provided evolving excuses for people refusing to testify:
    • First, they argued that since there wasn’t a House vote, the proceedings weren’t official, so people didn’t have to testify.
    • After the House voted on impeachment hearings, the GOP argued that senior officials have absolute immunity.
    • But when lower-level staffers were subpoenaed, the GOP argued that they must have their own agency’s lawyers present (which is a violation of House rules, which are the same rules the Benghazi hearings were held under).
  1. Trump concurs with Republican leaders that written answers from the whistleblower aren’t sufficient and that they must testify in person. If you remember, Trump refused to answer questions in person to Robert Mueller and instead submitted his answers in writing.
  2. The impeachment panel requests an interview with Mick Mulvaney, but we know he won’t show.
  3. The whistleblower’s lawyer sends a cease and desist letter to the White House to get Trump to stop trying to out the identity of the whistleblower. He says Trump’s rhetoric is putting the whistleblower and their family in physical danger.
  4. House Republicans intend to subpoena the whistleblower, but it’s not likely Democrats will allow it over concerns for the whistleblower’s safety.
  5. Trump asks Attorney General William Barr to publicly say that Trump didn’t do anything wrong and absolve him of any guilt. Barr declines.
  6. One of the whistleblower’s lawyers does seem to be a never Trumper. Mark Zaid’s tweets from 2016 and early 2017 resurface where he says that a coup against Trump has started and that impeachment will follow. He also tweeted, “we will get rid of Trump.”
    • Zaid also wrote an article in 2018, though, defending Trump from charges that his actions were treasonous.
    • This isn’t relevant. As far as we know, neither the whistleblower nor any of the witnesses who have since come forward have previous relationships with Zaid that we know of.
  1. CIA Director Gina Haspel has so far refused to guarantee that she’ll protect the whistleblower (who, from most accounts, works in her agency).
  2. The transcripts released this week show that during the time Republican House Members were complaining that they couldn’t get into the impeachment depositions, very few of them were attending the depositions they were allowed to attend. They went so far as to storm the SCIF to protest that they couldn’t be there, but they weren’t taking advantage of their ability to attend.
  3. Bolton’s lawyer says that Bolton is aware of many relevant meetings and conversations related to withholding aid from Ukraine and that House investigators don’t know about those conversations yet.
  4. The Government Accountability Office (GAO) opens an investigation into whether withholding military aid to Ukraine violates appropriation laws. It’s possible that the administration’s failure to notify Congress was a violation of the legal notification requirements.
  5. Republicans temporarily switch in Ohio Representative Jim Jordan to the House Intelligence Committee so he can participate in the impeachment hearings.

Republican’s Witness List:

Here’s the list of people House Republicans want to testify at the impeachment hearings. Democrats are reviewing the list, but have said they’ll likely not allow Hunter Biden or the whistleblower to testify (for the whistleblower’s protection). One of the rules for witnesses is that they must be able to speak to the three areas of impeachment outlined in the previous section.

  • Hunter Biden, former board member of Burisma Holdings
  • Devon Archer, former board member of Burisma Holdings
  • Alexandra Chalupa, former Democratic National Committee staffer
  • David Hale, Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs
  • Tim Morrison, former senior director for European and Russian affairs on the National Security Council
  • Nellie Ohr, former contractor for opposition research firm Fusion GPS
  • Kurt Volker, former U.S. envoy to Ukraine
  • The anonymous whistleblower
  • “All individuals” the whistleblower relied on to draft the complaint

More Trouble for Parnas, Fruman, and Giuliani:

  1. Lev Parnas is playing ball and wants to cooperate with the impeachment inquiry.
  2. Parnas says he delivered a message to the newly elected Zelensky back in May that Zelensky had to announce investigations into the Bidens or Mike Pence wouldn’t come to his inauguration and the U.S. would freeze aid. This contradicts the accounts from both Trump and Ukrainian officials, though no one disputes Parnas met with Zelensky’s officials.
  3. Parnas and Fruman pushed former Ukraine President Poroshenko to make the same announcement back in February about investigations into Burisma, the Bidens, and the 2016 election. This would be in exchange for a state visit.

David Hale Deposition:

  1. David Hale, undersecretary of state for political affairs, is the only witness to appear by Wednesday out of the several subpoenaed. We have yet to see any of his testimony, but he’s expected to say that Pompeo hesitated to support Marie Yovanovitch because he was worried it would delay military aid to Ukraine further.
  2. Hale tried to distance himself from this whole thing by removing himself from email threads concerning Yovanovitch.

Jennifer Williams Deposition:

  1. Jennifer Williams is a national security aide to Mike Pence; she’s an advisor to the vice president on Europe and Russia.
  2. Williams is the third person who listened in on the call between Trump and Zelensky to testify.
  3. Williams testifies despite the White House trying to prevent it.
  4. There isn’t much information on her testimony, but we can assume it’ll be released as part of the open House hearings.

Transcripts Released:

  1. The House releases redacted transcripts of the testimony from eight witnesses who testified in closed-door hearings.
    • Caveat: I haven’t read every page — there are thousands to go through. I also tried not to include any information I’ve reported previously, which came from their opening statements; but this was a lot of information to sift through.
    • One thing that’s hard to ascertain is what the Republican strategy is in their lines of questioning, which often seem meandering or irrelevant. They do complain a lot about the process.

Marie Yovanovitch:

  1. Yovanovitch thought Lev Parnas and Igor Fruman wanted her removed from her post because they were seeking to do business in Ukraine.
  2. Representative Mark Meadows (R-NC) opened a line of questioning that seemed to be aimed at highlighting her Ukrainian background, including questioning her about where her nickname, Masha. Except Yovanovitch is Russia, not Ukrainian, and Masha is a Russian nickname.
  3. Yovanovitch felt threatened after reading Trump’s transcript, where he told Zelensky that she is “going to go through some things.”
  4. The smear campaign against her included Donald Trump Jr., who tweeted about her in March.
  5. She documented her concerns to the Undersecretary for Political Affairs. When she asked why there was no followup, she was told, “there was caution about any kind of a statement because it could be undermined… by the president.”
  6. She was told that Mike Pompeo or someone in State would reach out to Sean Hannity to find out where the smears against her were coming from.
  7. Sondland told her she needed to tweet support for the president in order to save her job.
  8. Her testimony indicates that the State Department isn’t serving at the pleasure of the president; they’re serving in fear of the president.
  9. Deputy Secretary of State John Sullivan told her she hadn’t done anything wrong after she was recalled from Ukraine.

Kurt Volker:

  1. Volker vouched for Joe Biden’s integrity and said he didn’t find it credible that Biden would be influenced in his duties as Vice President by anything like money or benefits for his son, Hunter.
  2. He said that Giuliani and Trump were pushing debunked theories that were just not credible.
  3. He said he didn’t think Giuliani was interested in possible money laundering or criminal activity by Burisma; Giuliani was interested in the Bidens.
  4. Volker pushed Giuliani to stop believing former Prosecutor General Yuri Lutsenko.
  5. Volker says the quid pro quo was never communicated to him.

Gordon Sondland:

  1. Sondland verified there was a quid pro quo and that there’s no other credible explanation. But he doesn’t connect it to Trump.
  2. He said that he told a top Ukrainian official that “resumption of U.S. aid would likely not occur until Ukraine provided the public anti-corruption statement that we had been discussing for many weeks.”
  3. He suggested that the kind of quid pro quo being discussed here is definitely bad and probably illegal.
  4. He claimed he didn’t know Burisma was related to the Bidens at all. Giuliani had been linking the two together since mid-May, so either he wasn’t speaking with Giuliani (which we know he was) or he’s misstating the facts here.
  5. But this week, Sondland revises his previous testimony to the House impeachment panel. He says now that he’s been reminded, he does remember that he knew U.S. military aid to Ukraine was contingent upon a public pledge to open the investigations Trump wanted and that, yes, there was a quid pro quo linking the aid and the investigations.
    • Sondland says he told Ukraine official Andriy Yermak that Ukraine would not likely receive the needed aid until the investigations were publicly announced.
    • Sondland also talks about a September 1 meeting with Zelensky and Mike Pence, where Zelensky expressed his concern over the suspension of military aid.

William Taylor:

  1. Bill Taylor says it was his “clear understanding” that Trump’s withholding of Ukraine aid was conditioned on the Ukrainian president announcing investigations into Trump’s rivals, including Joe Biden.
  2. Gordon Sondland told him that Trump was “adamant” that Zelensky publicly announce the investigations into the Bidens and the 2016 U.S. election meddling.
  3. BTW, Taylor is a Vietnam War vet, and he has served in every administration since 1985.
  4. Taylor was skeptical of accepting the job offered by Pompeo because he was worried that Giuliani would undermine relations between our countries.
  5. He first heard about the conditions on military aid to Ukraine from National Security Council official Tim Morrison.
  6. His understanding is that Giuliani started the whole idea of getting Zelensky to say out loud that he was investigating Burisma and the 2016 elections.
  7. Defense, State, CIA, and NSC officials wanted to meet with Trump, but they were too busy looking into the possibility of buying Greenland at Trump’s behest.
  8. Taylor said that it was the “unanimous opinion of every level of inter-agency discussion” that the military aid be released to Ukraine, and high-level officials worked to convince Trump of that.

Mike McKinley:

  1. McKinley says he asked Mike Pompeo three times to put out a statement in defense of Marie Yovanovitch. Pompeo claims he never heard McKinley say anything about it.
  2. McKinley says Yovanovitch did excellent work in Ukraine.
  3. He confirms that he left, in part, because of the State Department’s failure to support its ambassadors and because of the apparent use of overseas ambassadors to advance domestic political objectives.
  4. McKinley spoke with Mike Pompeo about this after Trump’s call with Zelensky, but Pompeo never gave any indication that he was listening in that call.

Alexander Vindman:

  1. Again, Vindman said that Acting Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney orchestrated the plan to restrict aid to Ukraine on the condition that Zelensky publicly announce investigations into the Bidens.
  2. He learned this from Gordon Sondland, who explicitly used the word “Bidens.”
  3. This expert on Ukraine said he didn’t know of any factual basis for the assertions about Yovanovitch. He also didn’t know of any factual basis for the theories about Ukraine interfering in the 2016 elections.
  4. One of the assertions against Yovanovitch is that she’s an associate of George Soros. The horror.
  5. There are some key words missing from the transcript released by the White House.
  6. He said there is no doubt that Trump was pushing a foreign government to investigate his political rivals.

Fiona Hill:

  1. The transcripts show that Matt Gaetz once again crashed the secure room where impeachment depositions were being held. When Adam Schiff noticed the face that didn’t belong in the room, he asked Gaetz to leave. At that point, Jim Jordan jumped in to defend Gaetz. After much back and forth, Schiff paused the hearing, The transcript picks up two hours later to show the parliamentarian supporting Schiff’s request that Gaetz leave.
  2. Hill suggests that Sondland isn’t telling the truth about Oval Office conversations.
  3. Hill said the accusations against Yovanovitch were a mishmash of conspiracy theories.
  4. Hill said that John Bolton thought Mick Mulvaney and Gordon Sondland were making an improper arrangement to put together a meeting at the White House because it was predicated upon Ukraine meeting the demands for investigations.
  5. Hill said there was a good chance that Russia actually did have “kompromat” on Trump. She didn’t comment on the type of compromising material but did say that most information gathered by the Kremlin is factual. She said kompromat was likely being gathered on multiple people, including Hillary Clinton.

George Kent:

  1. Kent criticized Giuliani, saying that he was engaged in a smear campaign of lies and slander against Marie Yovanovitch and that Giuliani’s assertions about Yovanovitch were without basis and untrue.
  2. He said that the people spreading these falsehoods about Yovanovitch clearly had questionable motives.
  3. At a meeting, Kurt Volker asked a Ukrainian official, Andriy Yermak, about an investigation Zelensky had opened into former Ukraine president Petro Poroshenko that Volker didn’t think was appropriate. Yermak responded with, “What? You mean the type of investigations you’re pushing for us to do on Biden and Clinton?”
  4. In that same meeting, Volker made a suggestion about starting the investigations in that same meeting with Yermak, to which Bill Taylor responded, “don’t do that.”
  5. Kent said that what Trump wanted was for Zelensky to say out loud and in public “investigations, Bidens, and Clinton.”
  6. Kent said that former Prosecutor General Shokin, who Biden helped remove, was impeding reform and had repeatedly undermined U.S. efforts and assistance there. He also said that he brought up the appearance of the conflict of interest with Hunter Biden joining the Board of Burisma.
  7. Kent decided to memorialize these meetings because he felt that something possibly illegal was going on.
  8. Kent characterized what Trump did as undermining the rule of law.
  9. He said that Mick Mulvaney placed the hold on the military aid.

Week 145 in Trump

Posted on November 15, 2019 in Politics, Trump

Super-redacted Mueller interview notes, released this week.

Trump just can’t go anywhere anymore. On top of getting booed at the World Series last week, this week he gets booed at the Ultimate Fighting Championship at Madison Square Garden. You’d think the UFC crowd would be a little more Trump-friendly. But then Trump, a life-long New Yorker, just changed his residence to Florida because New York officials are mean to him. Or so he says.

Here’s what happened in politics for the week ending November 3…

Shootings This Week:

  1. There were ELEVEN mass shootings in the U.S. this week (defined as killing and/or injuring 4 or more people). Shooters kill 16 people and injure 39 more. Here are the most deadly:
    • A shooter (or shooters) kills 3 people and injures 9 at a Halloween party in a park in Long Beach, CA.
    • A shooter kills 4 family members in a home in West Philadelphia, PA. The shooter is the oldest son of the woman he killed.
    • A shooter kills 5 people and injures 3 more in Orinda, CA, on Halloween. The shooting could be related to another quadruple murder that happened in 2015.

Russia:

  1. A judge rules in favor of a FOIA request for the release of Robert Mueller’s witness interview notes. The DOJ must continue to release the notes, and will do so monthly to CNN and Buzzfeed, the agencies that filed the FOIA request. Here are a few things we learn from the notes:
    • Caveat: I didn’t read the handwritten notes very closely because they’re pretty hard to decipher.
    • Trump and Trump campaign officials repeatedly discussed how they could get access to the hacked DNC emails that they knew were stolen.
    • According to Rick Gates, the campaign was “very happy” that a foreign government helped to release the hacked DNC emails. After the emails were hacked, Trump told Gates that more leaks were coming.
    • Michael Flynn offered to use his intelligence sources to get the emails.
    • Along with Trump, these guys also expressed interest in getting the emails: Michael Flynn, Jared Kushner, Paul Manafort, Corey Lewandowski, Jeff Sessions, Sam Clovis, Donald Trump Jr., and someone whose name is redacted.
    • Sean Hannity was an integral part of the campaign.
    • The RNC worked to amplify the WikiLeaks releases of the stolen documents, and appeared to be aware of the timing of those releases.
    • The conspiracy theory that Ukraine hacked the DNC and not Russia (like all our intelligence agencies found) appears to have originated with Konstantin Kilimnik. Paul Manafort was pushing that conspiracy theory back in 2016. Michael Flynn was also adamant that Russia wasn’t behind the DNC hack. All this mucking around in conspiracy theories is how Trump ended up in this impeachment process—he repeated uncorroborated rumors from a pro-Russian agent instead of trusting our own intelligence.
    • Steve Bannon was pushing the Uranium One conspiracy theory and was convinced that’s what Hillary’s “missing” 33,000 emails were about.
    • Trump wants an Attorney General who will protect him. He finally got that in William Barr, that’s for sure.
    • Erik Prince advised the campaign on the East and Mideast. He also questioned Russia’s involvement in the 2016 elections.
    • The notes are highly redacted. In fact, they’re so redacted that it’s hard to get much that’s new from them. Since much of this document relates to Rick Gates’ testimony, I would assume much of the redacted information relates to Roger Stone’s upcoming court case.
  1. The Trump administration appeals a ruling requiring that the DOJ give the House Judiciary Committee material related to Mueller’s report.
    • A federal appeals court places a temporary hold on that material until it can be determined whether to block the release during the entire appeals process.

Legal Fallout:

  1. Bob Menendez calls for an investigation into whether Mike Pompeo’s trips to Kansas involve campaign activities and are thus a violation of the Hatch Act, which limits such activities for federal employees.
  2. Trump uses his large network of donors to raise funds for GOP Senators facing tough races. Normally not a big deal, unless you’re facing a possible impeachment trial in the Senate. Richard Painter, a former ethics lawyer for the White House, says that this looks like “felony bribery.” All of the Senators in question signed on to a resolution condemning the impeachment inquiry.

Impeachment:

Including all this info just makes this too long, so I moved it out into its own post. You can skip right over to it if that’s your focus.

Courts/Justice:

  1. In Deputy Secretary of State John Sullivan’s confirmation hearing to become Ambassador to Russia, he agrees that it’s not appropriate for the president to use his office to solicit investigations into his domestic political opponents. “I don’t think that would be in accord with our values.”
    • However, he also expresses a lack of curiosity or care about the current policies on Ukraine.
    • He also generally agrees with the threat from Russia in the realms of cybersecurity and their expansion in the Mideast.
  1. The American Bar Association rated Trump’s judicial nominee Lawrence VanDyke not qualified. In a particularly harsh assessment, their report says he’s “arrogant, lazy, an ideologue, and lacking in knowledge of the day-to-day practice.” He breaks down over it during the hearing.

Healthcare:

  1. A judge temporarily blocks Alabama’s latest restrictions on abortion, which would’ve made it a felony for a doctor to perform an abortion in almost all circumstances. The law was designed to push the limits of Roe v. Wade in order to get it pushed to the Supreme Court. It’s notable that Alabama has tried to pass several abortion restrictions this year, but courts have blocked them all.
  2. Missouri’s Health Director was keeping tabs on the menstrual cycles of women who were patients at a Planned Parenthood. He claimed to be tracking failed abortions (he thought there were four of them).
  3. Missouri requires pelvic exams before medication abortions, so Planned Parenthood doesn’t offer medication abortions.
  4. The Senate rejects a resolution that would’ve overturned a Trump administration rule that allows states to ignore parts of the ACA. Trump’s rule makes it easier for states to prioritize “junk” insurance policies that don’t meet ACA requirements.

International:

  1. Russia replaces the U.S. flag at a Syrian military base with the Russian flag.
  2. Acting Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney didn’t know about the raid on Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi until after it was underway. The chief of staff is generally front and center to any major presidential actions.
  3. Protests in Chile continue despite President Sebastián Piñera reversing the subway fare increase that started the whole thing. He also reversed an increase in electricity charges, raised minimum wages and pension benefits, raised taxes on the rich, and made changes to his cabinet. Chile is normally a stable country.
    • Because of the protests, Chile’s President Piñera cancels the upcoming Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) Summit in November and the UN Climate Summit in December. Trump had hoped to sign his phase 1 trade agreement with China at APEC.
  1. Protests also continue in Hong Kong, where protestors are asking for U.S. help. They think the U.S. can save Hong Kong from losing their democratic rights.
  2. Governments in Iraq and Lebanon agree to resign as a result of the protests in those countries. In Lebanon, they’re protesting corruption and a stagnant economy.
  3. Trump withholds $105 million in security aid for Lebanon two days after the country’s prime minister resigns. This could be completely legit, but because we can’t trust Trump with foreign relations anymore, it comes off as suspect. The State Department says that the White House budget office and National Security Council made the decision, but doesn’t give a reason for it. Congress, the Pentagon, and the State Department oppose the move. Gosh, this all sounds so familiar…
  4. Catalonian protestors start up again in Spain, calling for Catalan independence.
  5. Remember the Turkish cleric that Michael Flynn was trying to help Erdogan extradite to Turkey? Well, this week we learned that Trump looked into cutting funding for the schools he runs.
  6. British Parliament gives Boris Johnson the December election he asked for.

Border Wall/Shutdown/National Emergency:

  1. Using commercially available reciprocating saws, smugglers in Mexico have sawed through new sections of Trump’s border wall, leaving openings big enough for people to pass through (and obviously big enough for drugs to pass through). Reciprocating saws can be bought for as little as $100. According to engineers, it’s the new design of the fences that make it so easy to breach.

Travel Ban/Immigration/Discrimination:

  1. A federal judge changes his previous ruling and reopens part of Nicholas Sandmann’s lawsuit against The Washington Post for misrepresenting the situation over his confrontation with a Native American protestor. Sandmann was wearing a “Make American Great Again” cap at the time of the confrontation. I have a feeling that this case might initiate some changes to video journalism.
  2. The Trump administration announces they’ll no longer enforce an Obama-era rule that required child welfare providers who accept federal funds to not discriminate against people based on religion.
    • Obama’s rule prevented faith-based organizations in the foster system from discriminating against prospective adopters because of closely held religious beliefs.
    • Trump’s ruling reduces the pool of accepting parents who will be allowed to foster through certain organizations.
  1. Trump appoints the current undersecretary of strategy and policy at DHS to be the new acting head of DHS… to replace his previous acting head of DHS.
  2. Attorney General William Barr limits the options immigrants have to fight deportation by getting rid of existing paths to legal immigration for people with minor or old criminal convictions.
  3. October will end with no refugees admitted to the U.S. for the month. Trump placed a moratorium on refugees and delayed it twice, canceling around 500 flights at taxpayer expense.

Climate:

  1. The government of the U.K. halts fracking in England.
  2. The Keystone Pipeline spills over 380,000 gallons of sludgy tar sands oil in a wetland area in North Dakota. The pipeline transports a mixture of clay, water, bitumen (a think oil), and a combination of chemicals that help it flow. The chemicals disperse fairly quickly, but unlike regular oil, the tar sands oil sinks. The wetlands will likely be unable to be completely restored.
  3. Jane Fonda is arrested for the fourth consecutive week for protesting inaction on climate change.
  4. Taking a page from their U.S. counterparts, 15 young Canadians file a lawsuit against their government for not taking acting against climate change.
  5. The Ocean Cleanup project starts cleaning plastic out of rivers to stop it from draining into the ocean in the first place.
  6. The International Energy Agency publishes the results of a study that they say shows that offshore wind turbines could power every home and every business on the planet.
  7. Murray Energy files for bankruptcy, becoming the eighth coal mining company to file for it in the past year.
  8. General Motors, Fiat Chrysler, and Toyota side with the Trump administration in the battle for California to retain its waiver over federal fuel emission standards. Other automakers, including Ford, Honda, Volkswagen, and BMW, have already reached a deal with California.
  9. The EPA announces they’ll weaken limits on coal-power plant releases of heavy metals like arsenic, lead, and mercury.

Budget/Economy:

  1. Jamie Dimon, CEO of JPMorgan, is considering moving his company’s Manhattan headquarters to U.S. cities with cheaper costs and better tax benefits. Just another victim of the 2017 tax reform.
    • Dimon does say the reason is partly to protect the company from a looming economic downturn, and JPMorgan is just one of several companies rolling back spending over fears of a global recession (though economists don’t see this in our near future).
    • More companies are also stocking up on their cash reserves instead of making risky bets.
  1. While expressing optimism in general about the economy, high net worth individuals and business owners also have more of their assets in cash than is typically recommended. Globally, investors have 27% of their holdings in cash.
    • This could help cushion the effects of a recession for them, should it happen.
  1. The Federal Reserve cuts interest rates by a quarter point for the third straight quarter, so they’re still protecting the economy from risks created by the trade wars, a slowing housing market, and sluggish manufacturing numbers. Feds suggest that this is likely the last reduction for a while.
  2. Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping had planned to sign their Phase 1 agreement at the APEC Summit in Chile this month. With Chile canceling APEC, they have to look at a different venue.
  3. The stock market pops on the 3-month extension for Brexit, a possible first-phase agreement in the U.S.-China trade war, and the Fed’s interest rate cut.
  4. The U.S. economy added 128,000 jobs in October and unemployment ticked up just a bit to 3.6%. The jobs numbers beat expectations, but they were set pretty low.
  5. Senator Chuck Grassley says he’s worried Trump will shut down the government again, this time over the impeachment process.
  6. Trump threatens to end federal aid to California in no less than twelve tweets in one day. Maybe California should stop sending funds to the federal government?
  7. The UAW comes to an agreement with GM and Ford, ending the six-week-long workers’ strike. Both sides agree to a 4-year labor plan.
  8. The Senate passes four spending bills to keep up operations at the departments of Agriculture, Transportation, and Interior. The majority of funding, which runs out on November 21, is being held up in a fight over the border wall.
  9. The White House considers another set of tax cuts to be announced during the 2020 presidential campaign. It’s designed to help Republicans run on a message of a strong economy.

Elections:

  1. Freshman Congresswoman Katie Hill (D-CA) resigns over rumors of an affair with a congressional staffer (which is against the rules of Congress and which she denies), an affair with a campaign staffer (which she confirms but which isn’t against the rules), and the publication of intimate and nude photos.
    • Her reason for not fighting this is that she was warned there are 700 pictures that would be released bit by bit to keep it in the news.
    • Also, her political competitors made posters out of some of the pictures and posted them around Hill’s parent’s town.
    • One of the leakers worked for the campaign of the Republican incumbent that Hill beat in 2018. That incumbent, Steve Knight, is running for her seat now.
    • George Papadopoulos, the guy who started the whole Russia investigation, also files to run. Somehow I don’t think he’ll get the RNC’s backing.
  1. A court hands North Carolina Republicans another gerrymandering defeat, ruling that the current congressional districts cannot be used for the 2020 elections. Likely, they’ll need to redraw the districts to be less discriminatory. I have literally lost count of the number of times these districts have been ruled unconstitutional. A previous ruling on gerrymandering in the state said the lines targeted African Americans with surgical precision.
  2. Twitter announces they’ll stop accepting any political ads across their platform.
  3. The top Republican on the House Energy and Commerce Committee says he won’t run for reelection next year. Greg Walden is the 22nd House Republican to retire, resign, or run for another office.
  4. Upon the impeachment vote, the National Republican Congressional Committee sends boxes to the offices of vulnerable Democrats in purple/red districts. Apparently, they didn’t think through government security procedures and got called in for questioning.
    • Democrats tell them that when they get done with being questioned, let us put those boxes to good use by using them for our canned food drive for Thanksgiving.
  1. Georgia plans to purge around 315,000 voters from the voter rolls before the 2020 elections if they don’t return their cancellation notices. This is about 4% of registered voters.

Miscellaneous:

  1. Trump changes his legal residence from New York to Florida. People say it’s because of his tax reform and reduction of SALT deductions, but property taxes will still be the same no matter where he lives.
  2. After Joe Biden criticizes Trump for appointing Ivanka and Jared Kushner to White House positions, Kushner says that most of his job has been cleaning up Biden’s messes.
  3. Trump adds his personal pastor to the administration in an official capacity. Paula White is a televangelist who will oversee outreach and advise the Faith and Opportunity Initiative. The initiative is designed to give religious groups a bigger voice in government. I wonder if it includes Muslim voices? Buddhist? Bahai?
  4. Mark Zuckerberg says Facebook won’t police political speech, even if it’s blatantly false.
  5. Thousands of protestors gather at Trump Tower in Chicago during a fundraiser for Trump and Pence.

Polls:

  1. 55% of Americans think what Trump did regarding Ukraine is out of line, but only 49% say he should be impeached and removed from office.
  2. 78% of Fox News watchers agree that the impeachment inquiry is like a lynching. 66% of voters overall think the White House should comply with House subpoenas.
  3. 54% of Americans think Trump has made us less respected globally; 28% say he’s made us more respected.

Week 145 in Trump – Impeachment News

Posted on November 15, 2019 in Impeachment, Trump

From The Economist, “Testimony from Alexander Vindman, a decorated veteran, is hard to trash as partisan sniping.” And yet Republicans find a way to do just that. The smears against Vindman are shameful, accusing a decorated war veteran (and actual Ukraine expert, not the fake one) of being unable to be loyal to the U.S. because he’s Ukrainian. BTW, he came here when he was 3. When your only defense is to question the loyalty of the witness, you don’t have a good defense.

After the testimony we’ve heard so far, it seems that while hardly anybody actually approved of withholding aid from Ukraine, much less withholding it until they “did us a favor though,” nobody wanted to say anything about it. Nobody wanted to rock the boat and tell Trump it was wrong, and they all thought they could manipulate a way to get the aid released without the quid pro quo (or with it, if they had to). They all had the same goal, which was different from Trump’s, but were afraid to say it to his face.

Here’s what happened on the impeachment front for the week ending November 3…

General Happenings:

  1. Can’t keep all the moving pieces in the Ukraine investigation straight? Here’s a helpful and thorough timeline of Ukraine events, starting with the Russia invasion in 2014.
    • And here’s a little more history. Ukraine’s former President Petro Poroshenko tried in January 2017 to meet with Trump, hiring a lobbying firm, BGR Group, to make that happen. On June 7, 2017, Giuliani visited Kyiv and met with Poroshenko and Prosecutor General Yuriy Lutsenko (Viktor Shokin’s successor). Just after that meeting, the investigation into the “black ledger” was shelved. That ledger listed allegedly illicit payments to Manafort. In May of 2018, Ukraine halted cooperation with Mueller’s investigation to “avoid irritating the top American officials.”
  1. Not only are U.S. intelligence officials alarmed by Trump’s actions involving Ukraine and counter-investigations, but U.K. intelligence officials are also expressing alarm by Trump’s requests for assistance with Barr’s investigations into the origins of the Russia investigation. They say “it is like nothing we have come across before, they are basically asking, in quite robust terms, for help in doing a hatchet job on their own intelligence services.”
  2. National Security Council officials knew as early as May that Rudy Giuliani and Gordon Sondland had Ukraine officials rattled by their pressure campaign to open specific investigations in order to obtain military aid from the U.S.
    • Giuliani was pushing the incoming Ukrainian administration to change the leadership of Naftogaz, a state-owned energy company.
    • Giuliani’s associates Lev Parnas and Igor Fruman also helped with the pressure campaign, both on Naftogaz and finding dirt on Hunter Biden. Parnas and Fruman were trying to sell natural gas to Naftogaz.
    • At this point, Joe Biden had only been in the presidential primary race for about three weeks.
    • Sondland advised then-new President Zelensky on who to place in influential posts in his administration.
    • Meanwhile, other ambassadors advised Zelensky on how not to get dragged into our domestic politics.
    • <rant>So our National SECURITY Council knew about this for almost five months and did nothing? The only reason this is coming out is because of one lone whistleblower? This is not only a disgrace; it’s alarming that we can’t count on these folks to watch out for our safety.</rant>
  1. House committees want to depose John Bolton, but it isn’t likely he’ll appear without a judge’s approval to override Trump’s claim of executive privilege.
  2. Matt Gaetz files an ethics complaint against Adam Schiff for what he says are two violations of House rules:
    • Schiff’s recap of Trump’s conversation with Zelensky wasn’t read word for word.
    • Schiff won’t allow Members of Congress who aren’t on the Intelligence, Foreign Affairs, or Oversight Committees to attend the private depositions.
  1. Attorneys for the whistleblower have been receiving death threats.
  2. The State Department agrees to release documents relevant to Trump’s dealings with Ukraine. The release is the result of a lawsuit brought shortly after Trump dismissed U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine Marie Yovanovitch.
  3. In a case about whether former White House Counsel Don McGahn can be compelled to testify in the impeachment hearings, the judge is incredulous at the argument made by DOJ lawyers. They say former presidential aids can never be compelled to testify by Congress. For that matter, former presidents themselves can’t be compelled to testify. The judge calls it a peculiar argument that threatens the Constitution’s system of checks and balances.
    • At the same time, another federal judge is hearing a case brought by Charles Kupperman, a former top deputy to John Bolton. Kupperman defies his congressional subpoena to appear. Instead, he awaits guidance from the judge about whether he should listen to the executive branch, which invoked constitutional immunity in his case, or if he should heed Congress’s subpoena. Constitutional immunity is essentially a higher level of executive privilege.
  1. Now that impeachment proceedings are official, Trump says he’d rather go into the details of the situation than the process of impeachment. In other words, he doesn’t want Republicans out there attacking House Democrats’ process anymore. They aren’t listening to him.
  2. In fact, Trump tells a half dozen Senate Republicans to start saying that the summary of the phone call released by the White House exonerates Trump.
  3. The whistleblower whose complaint started this whole thing agrees to answer written questions from House Republicans under oath. This comes after Trump urges news organizations to out the identity of the whistleblower. The agreement is conditioned on the questions not being designed to determine the whistleblower’s identity.
    • House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy suggests that written answers aren’t enough.
    • And this is rich. Trump, who refused to be interviewed by Robert Mueller and instead turned in written “answers,” also says written answers aren’t enough.
  1. The White House is debating whether to release a transcript of a call between Vice President Mike Pence and Zelensky.
  2. Derek Harvey, a top aide to Representative Devin Nunes (R-CA), has been releasing information about the whistleblower to conservative journalists and politicians.

Impeachment Vote:

  1. At the beginning of the week, Speaker Nancy Pelosi announces the House will hold a vote on the impeachment process. Just what Republicans wanted, right? Public hearings? Wrong. They all vote against it, but it still passes.
  2. To reiterate, after weeks of complaining about how the hearings were being held in private and against the rules, Republicans in the House all vote against holding public hearings.
  3. Also, after weeks of saying the inquiry was invalid because the House hadn’t voted on it, Republicans refuse to validate it. (Democrats argue that the House vote isn’t necessary to validate the impeachment inquiries, and a court recently agreed.)
  4. The resolution:
    • Establishes procedures for hearings.
    • Opens up hearings to the public (but depositions are still private).
    • Defines how transcripts of the existing depositions will be handled (they’ll be released publicly).
    • Gives Representative Adam Schiff broad authority to call witnesses for testimony, which will be public. Republicans can call their own witnesses, too; but Democrats can vote them down (I’m not sure what the precedent for that is).
    • Allows Trump’s attorneys to participate in Judiciary Committee hearings.
    • Directs House committees to continue their ongoing investigations into Trump.
    • Provides a record of whether each Representative supports this inquiry. This puts Republicans in a bind. They’ve been complaining about the secrecy of the hearings, but if they approve this resolution, it’ll look like they approve of impeachment. On the other hand, if they reject it, they’ll look hypocritical for complaining about private hearings. After it passes, though, I don’t see anyone making a big deal about this.
  1. The committees on the impeachment panel will release a report and the transcripts of all the depositions held so far.
  2. The hope is that an “official” impeachment process will break through the obstruction from the White House.
  3. Pelosi says they’re taking the step to eliminate any doubt as to whether federal employees need to comply with subpoenas and requests to appear.
  4. Adam Schiff says they won’t ask federal courts to compel testimony from witnesses who refuse to cooperate or who are ordered not to cooperate by the White House.
  5. Both sides whipped up votes earlier this week, with Republicans saying that a solid party vote would show that this is a partisan crusade. I’m not sure how the same couldn’t be said of what they’re doing.
  6. Democrats say the rules are similar to those used to impeach Clinton and Nixon. Republicans say the rules are skewed against Trump.
    • The rules allow for very similar protections for the office of president as with Nixon. The presidential protections are much greater than they were for President Clinton.

More Trouble for Parnas, Fruman, and Giuliani:

  1. In response to a question about why Giuliani and Trump were so eager to get rid of Ambassador to Ukraine Marie Yovanovitch, she says: “Individuals who have been named in the press as contacts of Mr. Giuliani may well have believed that their personal financial ambitions were stymied by our anti-corruption policy in Ukraine.”
    • Could be she was referring to Giuliani’s pals Igor Fruman and Lev Parnas, who were working on a gas deal with Ukraine gas company Naftogaz. Yovanovitch, on the other hand, was working to help Ukraine’s anti-corruption office,
  1. Igor Fruman is trying to get his house arrest and electronic GPS monitoring removed, saying the restrictions are onerous. Just a reminder, Fruman was arrested at the airport, about to board a one-way flight to Europe. His lawyer is prepared to argue he’s not a flight risk.

Alexander Vindman Deposition:

  1. Lieutenant Colonel Alexander Vindman, the senior expert on Ukraine at the National Security Council, appears before the impeachment panel in defiance of a White House order not to cooperate. He says:
    • He listened in on the phone call between Trump and Ukrainian President Zelensky, so his is firsthand information.
    • Crucial words and phrases were omitted from the transcript of the call, including:
      • Trump claiming that there were tapes of Joe Biden discussing Ukraine corruption.
      • Zelensky explicitly mentioning Business Holdings, where Hunter Biden served on the board.
    • He was so appalled by Trump’s demands that Zelensky investigate the Bidens that he reported it to a National Security Council lawyer. Not just once, but twice.
    • Vindman was worried that if Zelensky complied, he’d risk losing bipartisan support for Ukraine.
    • At a July 10 meeting with Ukrainian officials, Gordon Sondland “started to speak about Ukraine delivering specific investigations in order to secure the meeting with the president.” Bolton cut the meeting short (this is corroborated by previous testimony).
    • When Sondland later “emphasized the importance that Ukraine deliver the investigations into the 2016 election, the Bidens, and Burisma,” Vindman told him that it was inappropriate, had nothing to do with national security, and that the NSC wasn’t going to get involved in something like that.
  1. Vindman was born in what is now Ukraine. He’s a decorated veteran with a purple heart. Still, commentators on Fox News suggest he’s a Ukrainian spy. Trump calls him a “Never Trumper.” Liz Cheney finally steps up and blasts those who question his patriotism and dedication to country. Mitt Romney and Roy Blunt defend Vindman as well.
    • Cheney says we need to show that we’re better than that. I couldn’t agree more.
  1. Of note, people who are accustomed to reading call transcripts have questioned the use of ellipses in the readout and have also questioned the lack of [inaudible] notations. These all led people to believe words were omitted.
  2. White House lawyer John Eisenberg is the guy who placed the summary of the call in the top-secret server after Vindman went to Eisenberg with his concerns. To be clear, the White House lawyer’s first reaction upon hearing that Trump did something wrong was to try to hide it so deep no one would find it.
    • Fun fact: That top-secret server is called N.I.C.E. (N.S.C. Intelligence Collaboration Environment).
  1. National security officials say this is a new thing, to store presidential conversations on the N.I.C.E. system; and this isn’t the first time they’ve done it for Trump.
  2. Vindman and Fiona Hill had already gone to Eisenberg after a meeting where Sondland pushed Ukrainian officials to investigate Joe and Hunter Biden.
  3. Vindman’s identical twin is also on the National Security Council as an ethics lawyer. He might be called in as a witness.
  4. Vindman’s testimony contradicts Gordon Sondland’s testimony. Sondland said no one raised any concerns about Trump’s actions. It also contradicts Rick Perry’s denials that he heard anything about the Bidens in relation to Ukraine.
  5. Remember that Trump didn’t know who the NSC’s Ukraine expert was (it was Vindman), and was instead getting his info on Ukraine from one of Devine Nunes’s former staffers (Kashyap Patel) who misrepresented himself to Trump as the Ukraine expert. Vindman was told not to attend a meeting because that would just confuse Trump. Patel has no Ukraine experience or expertise.

Tim Morrison Deposition:

  1. The Top Russia official on the National Security Council, Tim Morrison, resigns the day before his testimony is to begin. He’ll be replaced by Andrew Peek, currently a Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for the Mideast.
    • Kurt Volker and Mike McKinley also resigned before giving their testimonies.
  1. Morrison was appointed to the NSC in 2018, but just took over Fiona Hill’s position this past July.
  2. Morrison is another official who alerted NSC lawyers about pressure from the Trump administration on Ukraine officials to open an investigation into Burisma Holdings.
  3. Like Bolton, Morrison is (by all accounts) a Republican hawk who sticks to the rules.
  4. Here are a few highlights of his testimony:
    • Morrison confirms parts of Bill Taylor’s testimony from the previous week, and says that the substance of conversations recalled by Taylor was accurate.
    • He says he was told explicitly that hundreds of millions of dollars in aid to Ukraine were conditioned upon whether the Ukraine government agreed to investigate the 2016 election and the Bidens, corroborating previous testimony.
    • He believes Trump’s actions were legal but problematic.
    • According to his recollection, the summary of the call released by the White House is correct.
    • He asked the NSC legal advisor to review the summary of the call.
    • He was concerned about the call becoming public because it could affect Ukraine’s perception of our relationship with them.
    • He warned Taylor about Trump’s attempts to block aid to Ukraine and to stop Zelensky from visiting the White House.
    • His recollection of a meeting differed from Taylor’s in that he thought Sondland told a Ukrainian official that aid was contingent upon the new Ukrainian prosecutor general committing to opening the investigations instead of Zelensky doing it.
    • However, he does verify that Gordon Sondland told a Ukrainian official that the military aid to Ukraine would be released if Ukraine opened an investigation into Burisma Holdings, where Biden Hunter served on the board. This again negates Sondland’s testimony.

Christopher Anderson Deposition:

  1. Long-time Foreign Service Officer Christopher Anderson gives his deposition to the impeachment panel. Anderson has worked in Ukraine for five years, but has spent nearly 15 years working near there. He says:
    • Trump had agreed to a meeting with Zelensky in May and wrote Zelensky a letter to that effect. But the letter didn’t mention a date.
    • John Bolton warned him that Giuliani would be an obstacle to the State Department’s mission in Ukraine, and that could be an obstacle to White House engagement with Ukraine.
    • The State Department had an optimistic view of Ukraine and the new government headed by Zelensky. That wasn’t mirrored by Trump, who was getting his information from Giuliani.
    • The State Department’s efforts to demonstrate support for Ukraine were batted down by the White House.

Catherine Croft Deposition:

  1. Catherine Croft worked on Ukraine issues at both the White House and State Department, eventually taking Christopher Anderson’s position when he left this summer. She testifies before the impeachment panel in defiance of the White House and the State Department, and she says:
    • Just like Christopher Anderson said, Trump and the State Department have differing views on Ukraine.
    • Trump constantly calls Ukraine corrupt.
    • Washington lobbyist (and former Republican Member of Congress) Robert Livingston called Croft several times to tell her Ambassador Marie Yovanovitch should be fired. Livingston told her that Yovanovitch was an “Obama holdover” and was associated with George Soros. Oh. The. Horror. Also, what do you suppose his interest in this is?
    • Bolton was concerned about our stance on Ukraine.