Tag: TrumpLies

Week 158 in Trump – Impeachment News

Posted on February 6, 2020 in Impeachment, Trump

None of us should be surprised to hear that former Ambassador to Ukraine Marie Yovanovitch is retiring from the foreign service. I applaud her for sticking it out this long after all she’s been through with an agency head who refused to support her against a months-long smear campaign bolstered by the president. Yovanovitch came into the department 33 years ago during Reagan’s administration and served multiple presidents of both parties in several hardship posts. She’s widely respected among her peers, and is now another casualty of the administration’s conspiracy theories and lies.

Here’s what happened on the impeachment front for the week ending February 2…

Missed From Before:

  1. I think I missed this when it was first reported back in December. Olena Zerkal, a former deputy foreign minister for Ukraine, says that she received a cable in July saying that the U.S. had frozen the military aid. The cable came from Ukrainian officials in Washington.
    • This corroborates Laura Cooper’s testimony from the impeachment inquiry that Ukraine knew before the end of August about the hold on aid.
    • Trump’s legal team and supporters argue that Ukraine officials didn’t know until late August.
    • Zerkal also says Zelensky didn’t want the news to become public; he wanted to avoid getting pulled into a political debate.

General Happenings:

  1. As Trump’s impeachment trial gets underway, there is pretty much no one who really thinks Trump will be removed from office.
  2. According to a draft of John Bolton’s book, Trump told Bolton in August that he’d continue to withhold aid to Ukraine until Ukraine officials agreed to investigations into the Bidens. Trump also asked Bolton to help him with his pressure campaign against Ukraine by calling Zelensky.
    • The book implicates high-level officials who have tried to avoid being pulled into the scandal, including Mike Pompeo, Bill Barr, and Mick Mulvaney (though in fairness, Mulvaney did admit to the quid pro quo in a public press conference).
    • Bolton had concerns about Trump giving favors to autocrats involved in federal investigations.
    • It turns out the White House has had a copy of Bolton’s book since December 30, but failed to let congressional Republicans know about it and about what the book alleges. And here Mitch McConnell thought he was working in “total coordination” with the White House.
    • It’s standard practice for former officials to provide their manuscripts to the White House for review.
    • Former White House Chief of Staff John Kelly says he believes what John Bolton said in his book. Kelly says Bolton always gave Trump the unvarnished truth—probably one of the reasons Trump and Bolton didn’t get along so great.
    • Kelly also says that an impeachment trial without witnesses is only half done.
    • On the day that Bolton’s allegations come out, Lindsey Graham skips a scheduled press conference.
    • GOP senators suggest that senators be allowed to read Bolton’s manuscript in a secret room.
    • The White House issues a formal threat in a letter to Bolton’s lawyer to prevent him from publishing his book. They say the book includes top secret and classified information.
    • Trump’s tweets about Bolton suggest he knows the contents of the manuscript.
  1. Representative Eliot Engel (D-NY) says Bolton told him in a private conversation last year that his committee should look into the recall of former Ambassador to Ukraine Marie Yovanovitch (Engel is chair of the Foreign Affairs Committee).
  2. Trump tweets that Adam Schiff hasn’t paid the price yet [for impeaching him]. Meanwhile, right-wing outlets spread stories that Schiff’s daughter is dating the whistleblower (she’s not) and they spread pictures purporting to be the whistleblower with several prominent Democrats. None of the pictures are of who they think the whistleblower is; instead, they are of George Soros’ son.
  3. GOP Senator Joni Ernst suggests that the impeachment proceedings might hurt Joe Biden in the Iowa caucuses, accidentally letting slip that the smears against him by Giuliani, Trump, and other conservatives were actually intended to harm his chances in the 2020 presidential race.
  4. Some current GOP senators attended a Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing in 2016 about ousting former Ukraine general prosecutor Shokin. These senators knew that Biden was working on removing Shokin, and didn’t bring up any objections to it during the hearing.
    • The GOP senators in attendance who are still in office today include John Barrasso (WY), Cory Gardner (CO), James Risch (ID), and David Perdue (GA).
    • The effort to oust Shokin was also included in testimony at a 2015 hearing of the same committee. What changed between 2015 and now?
  1. The DOJ submits a court filing that shows they’re holding back around two dozen emails about Trump’s involvement in withholding aid from Ukraine. It’s the first acknowledgment that this type of evidence exists.

Trump’s Defense Arguments (cont’d from last week):

  1. Trump’s legal team continues with its opening arguments. Their biggest arguments seem to be about the process instead of how Trump didn’t do it. They didn’t spend time defending what Trump did.
  2. Jay Sekulow shows a video of Nancy Pelosi handing out commemorative pens to signers of the articles of impeachment. This is standard operating procedure for historic legislation.
  3. The legal team says that Trump was cut out of the impeachment process, and that the House process was invalid, secret, and rushed. They say it was illegitimate from the beginning.
  4. The team falsely claims that the House ignored Trump’s right to due process and executive privilege.
  5. They also argue that it was legal for Trump to ignore House subpoenas for the impeachment and to order his staff to do the same.
    • That same day, DOJ lawyer says that the House can use its impeachment powers to enforce its subpoenas, shooting holes in the argument that he can’t be impeached for ignoring subpoenas.
  1. In the middle of their presentations, we hear about Bolton’s claims that Trump really was conducting a pressure campaign against Ukraine. Trump’s legal team dismisses the new revelations, and Sekulow argues that Bolton’s information is inadmissible.
  2. The legal team continues to assert that there isn’t any evidence that ties the security aid hold to the investigations. Dershowitz says that nothing Bolton alleges would rise to abuse of power.
  3. Kenneth Starr basically argues against impeachment in general. This is the guy who spent five years Investigating Bill Clinton in order to see him impeached over lying about an extra-marital affair.
  4. Michael Purpura argues that Zelensky did get his meeting with Trump. But Zelensky wanted a White House meeting and all he got was a side meeting at a UN gathering.
  5. The legal team falsely asserts that the House never subpoenaed Bolton during the impeachment proceedings.
  6. Jane Raskin tries to delegitimatize Rudy Giuliani by calling him a colorful distraction.
  7. Pam Bondi talks about what she thinks are Hunter and Joe Biden’s corrupt conflicts of interest around Burisma.
  8. And then the coup de gras. Eric Herschmann says Obama should’ve been impeached for the same abuse of power charges as Trump. Because what argument would be complete without bringing Obama into it?
  9. In the end, the legal team didn’t provide any support for the investigations Trump was looking for, nor did they mention CrowdStrike or the supposed server that’s allegedly being hidden in Ukraine.
  10. The legal team even says that Trump did what the House managers said he did, but it wasn’t wrong and it definitely isn’t impeachable.
  11. In closing, the legal team doesn’t address the charges against Trump, but does attack a litany of Trump’s perceived enemies, whether they were involved in the impeachment or not (most aren’t). They attack Joe and Hunter Biden, Obama, James Comey, Robert Mueller, Lisa Page, and Peter Strzok, among others.

Senator’s Questions:

  1. Following Trump’s legal team’s presentations, senators have two days to ask questions. They write the questions on pieces of paper that a page must go retrieve and bring down to Chief Justice Roberts to read. It makes for a lengthy process with long silences.
  2. Mostly senators feed prompts to their own side to give them more space to make their arguments.
  3. Rand Paul sends down a question that includes the alleged whistleblower’s name. Roberts refuses to read it on the Senate floor. But that’s OK because then Rand Paul goes out and does a press conference where he names the person that right-wing sources are alleging to be the whistleblower.
    • The alleged whistleblower has, of course, been receiving death threats and threats of violence. Members of Adam Schiff’s staff have received threats as well.
  1. In the Q&A period, Trump’s legal team pushes the idea of “mixed motives.” They say that it doesn’t matter if Trump had an ulterior, personal motive behind withholding the aid as long as he also had national security interests in mind. They say there’s a little of that in every political decision.
  2. Alan Dershowitz argues that anything the president does to get re-elected is A-OK because every president thinks that getting re-elected is in the public good so therefore it must be constitutional.
  3. Patrick Philbin says that the burden of proof for impeachment is “beyond a reasonable doubt.” Even the law professor cited by Trump’s legal team says that’s completely made up.
  4. Philbin also says that a president can’t defy his foreign policy because he makes foreign policy.

Witness Debate:

  1. The Senate and legal teams debate the need for additional witnesses in the trial.
  2. After leaks of Bolton’s book manuscript, some Republicans appear to be leaning toward subpoenaing Bolton.
  3. Just when it looks like there are enough votes to force McConnell to allow witnesses, Lamar Alexander pulls the rug out and says he’ll vote against witnesses.
  4. Lindsey Graham says Bolton should hold a press conference so senators can hear what he has to say. Except that would always be under question since Bolton wouldn’t be sworn in. You know who could vote to get his testimony under oath? The senate.
  5. In the end, the senate votes 51-49 not to bring in new witnesses or evidence. Only two Republicans vote for witnesses.
  6. Senators start offering rationalizations for not voting for witnesses, and also for acquitting. I’m saving them all up for next week.
  7. After voting against witnesses, the senate passes a resolution defining the rules for ending the trial. Closing arguments will be on Monday, Trump will give the State of the Union on Tuesday, and the Senate will likely vote to acquit on Wednesday.
  8. 75% of voters think witnesses should be allowed, yet Republicans voted against it. Republicans also argue that what Trump did was wrong, but the voters should decide whether to remove him from office. But they don’t listen to voters on this one basic thing?
  9. This is the first Senate impeachment trial in history to not have witnesses.

More Trouble for Parnas, Fruman, and Giuliani:

  1. Chuck Schumer gives tickets to Lev Parnas to attend the Senate impeachment trial, but he can’t go because he has an ankle monitor.
  2. Lev Parnas sends a letter to Mitch McConnell discussing the evidence he wants to testify to and naming people like Mike Pence, Bill Barr, Lindsey Graham, Rick Perry, Devin Nunes, Derek Harvey, John Solomon, Rudy Giuliani, Joe diGenova, and Victoria Toensing as being complicit.

Fact-Checking Impeachment Claims:

There’s just too much misinformation out there about impeachment for me to tackle here, so here are a few fact checks. If you’re wondering why they seem so skewed against the defense instead of the House managers, even Republicans agree that Trump did what the House said he did—they just don’t think it rises to an impeachable level. It could also be because House managers presented the evidence they found, while it was up to the defense to cast doubt on that evidence.

Week 157 in Trump

Posted on January 31, 2020 in Politics, Trump

I don’t know which category this goes in, but it’s so symbolic of this administration, I’m opening with it. NPR’s Mary Louise Kelly interviews Mike Pompeo. When questions turn to Ukraine, Kelly asks Pompeo if he owes Marie Yovanovitch an apology. Pompeo says he didn’t come on the show to talk about Ukraine. Kelly says she confirmed with his staff that Ukraine was on the table. Pompeo gets super testy on air.

  • After the interview, a staff member brings Kelly to Pompeo’s sitting room so he can yell profanities at her. He says Americans don’t care about Ukraine and couldn’t find it on a map (he dropped a few f-bombs in there). He then has a staff member bring in a blank map and tells Kelly to point to Ukraine, which she does (it’s a big county—not that hard to find).
  • After the incident goes public, Pompeo puts out an official State Department statement blasting Kelly’s journalistic integrity and accusing her of lying. His statement also implies that she pointed to Bangladesh instead of Ukraine, which is laughable. I invite you to look at a map to see how far apart these countries are. Kelly’s been to Ukraine, graduated magna cum laude from Harvard, and has a master’s in European studies; so it’s doubtful she pointed to a country in Asia.
  • Kelly also the emails to back up her assertion that Pompeo’s staff was clear that Kelly was going to ask about Ukraine.
  • Pompeo refuses to say whether he owes Yovanovitch an apology even after text messages arise indicating she may have been under surveillance by associates of Lev Parnas, and it’s doubtful he’ll ever own up and apologize to Kelly either. Of course, Trump congratulates Pompeo, saying he “did a good job on her.”

Here’s what happened in politics for the week ending July 26…

Shootings This Week:

  1. There were SIX mass shootings in the U.S. this week (defined as killing and/or injuring 4 or more people). Shooters kill 12 people and injure 22 more.
    • A shooting in Seattle leaves 1 person dead and 7 people injured. There were multiple shooters involved when a fight broke out near Pike Place Market.
    • A man in Vanceboro, NC, shoots and kills his wife and 3 children before killing himself.
    • A shooter in Hartsville, SC, kills 3 people and injures 3 more at a nightclub.
    • A shooter in Salisbury, NC, injures 6 people at an after-hours party at a restaurant. One of the injured is currently paralyzed.
    • A shooter at an event hall in Cape Girardeau, MO, injures 5 people.
    • A shooter at a residence in Newburgh, NY, kills 3 people and injures a three-year-old.
  1. About 22,000 protestors show up for a gun-rights rally in Richmond, VA. Despite concerns of violence from hate groups and militia groups, the gun-toting crowd is peaceful.
    • While gun-rights activists were outside protesting, student activists from March For Our Lives were inside meeting with state legislators.
    • The Virginia Senate passes a red-flag gun law despite the protest. The law allows law enforcement officials to obtain court approval to remove weapons from someone deemed to be a danger to themselves or to others.

Russia:

  1. Despite findings from previous investigations into the Russia investigations that the FISA warrants for Carter Page were valid, the DOJ reports that two of those warrants were not. The two in question were renewals, both approved in 2017. Andrew McCabe and Rod Rosenstein approved one, and James Comey approved the other.
    • A previous IG investigation did find missteps, some egregious, by the people requesting the warrants, causing the FBI to conduct a review of their procedures.
    • The FBI has until the last week in January to respond.

Legal Fallout:

  1. The D.C. Attorney General sues Trump’s inaugural committee and business over the committee spending over $1 million for a Trump Hotel ballroom.
  2. In the ongoing saga of Michael Flynn, he requests that he be sentenced with probation instead of prison time if he can’t withdraw his guilty plea.

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. Major cities in China cancel their New Year festivals to try to contain the Wuhan virus outbreak. The government restricts travel, especially around Wuhan. Travelers to the U.S. from China are being routed to five airports for screening upon entry into the U.S. WHO says it’s too early to declare a state of emergency.
  2. Teachers at the elementary school on which a Delta flight dumped fuel file a lawsuit against Delta.
  3. The Trump administration threatens to cut healthcare funding to California over the state’s requirement that insurance policies cover abortion. They timed the announcement with Trump’s appearance at the March For Life.
    • California’s law requires insurance providers to cover both medically necessary and elective abortions.
    • The administration indicates that they’ll target other states with similar coverage requirements.
  1. Trump is the first president to speak in person at the March For Life. He singled out pro-life enemy number one, Ralph Northam, for his support of a late-term abortion bill. Northam’s words have been widely misinterpreted to back claims that doctors and parents are killing infants after they’re born. Northam was actually talking about what happens when what should be start-of-life decisions tragically turn to end-of-life decisions because the infant is born with a terminal disease.
    • The march organizers expected around 100,000 attendees, but some people say they were more people in attendance.
  1. According to the U.S. Department of labor, women incur healthcare costs 80% higher than men, even though doctors treat women’s medical issues less aggressively and less quickly. Women wait longer in waiting rooms, and they’re still told that their pain is due to emotional stress.
  2. Executives at pharmaceutical company Insys are finally heading to jail for their role in the opioid epidemic and their irresponsible marketing activities.
  3. The Supreme Court refuses to expedite a lawsuit that could end the ACA, so now it won’t be decided until after the presidential election.

International:

  1. Trump invites Benny Gantz, a political opponent of Netanyahu’s, to Washington (at the same time, Trump invites Netanyahu to the White House). Gantz considers declining, but in the end, agrees to come. Gantz is worried it’s a political trap set by Netanyahu. They’ll meet about the U.S. Israeli-Palestinian peace plan. Pence says both are invited to the White House.
  2. The UN International Court of Justice rules that Myanmar must take emergency steps to protect Rohingya Muslims from violence. The country must also preserve any evidence of potential genocide. Myanmar has committed atrocities against its Rohingya Muslim citizens for decades. There are around 700,000 Rohingya Muslim refugees in camps in Bangladesh.
  3. Greece appoints its first female president.
  4. The Director of National Intelligence fails to send a report on Jamal Khashoggi’s killing to Congress, as required by the National Defense Authorization Act signed into law in December. The report identifies those responsible for Khashoggi’s murder.
  5. The protests in Iraq, which started in October, escalate this week. Demonstrators block highways and force government offices to close. They want a new prime minister. Iraqi forces launch a major crackdown at Tahrir Square. At least one protestor is killed and dozens more are wounded.
  6. Protests start up again in Bogota, Colombia, against the right-wing government.
  7. Protests continue in Lebanon, India, and Hong Kong.
  8. Chilean students protest their version of the SAT.
  9. Recent protests in the U.S. include the Women’s March, the March For Life, and the pro-gun rally in Virginia.

Iran:

  1. After Iran retaliated with airstrikes for the U.S. killing of General Soleimani, Trump initially said there were no injuries. Then we learned there were about a dozen troops with concussive injuries. Now the total of troops diagnosed with traumatic brain injuries is at 34.
    • Some have already been cleared for active duty.
    • Trump said they just had some headaches, but the effects of brain injuries are wide-ranging.
  1. Trump says Obama designated General Soleimani as a terrorist but didn’t do anything about it. This is mostly true, though the designation restricted Soleimani’s ability to travel and complete financial transactions. The designation wasn’t intended to be used as an excuse to kill a general of a foreign government.
  2. A bipartisan effort in the Senate to follow the House’s lead and limit Trump’s war powers with Iran stalls during the impeachment trial.
  3. Seemingly as a result of tensions with Iran, CBP is illegally deporting Iranian students who have legal permission to be here.
  4. Following Trump’s attack on Soleimani, our European allies start talking about cutting some ties. Britain considers cutting back its defense ties with us. Germany says the U.S. alliance with the EU isn’t that important anymore.
  5. Three rockets hit the U.S. Embassy compound in Baghdad, injuring one person.

Travel Ban/Immigration/Discrimination:

  1. U.S. Customs and Border Patrol is ruffling some feathers in a small town on a Canadian island on the border with Maine. The community has enjoyed an easy back-and-forth relationship with the U.S., but now CBP is intercepting and opening their mail and refusing to give a reason.
  2. In case you were thinking the Muslim Ban and Trump’s actions against Iran don’t affect real, everyday people, at least 16 students with permission and all the necessary approved paperwork to attend college in the U.S. have been deported with no reason given.
    • One was removed despite a court order commanding he be allowed to stay, and he was removed to France before his lawyers could stop it. The judge says he can’t do much about it since the student is now outside of the U.S.
    • This leaves colleges and universities holding the bag trying to figure out how to continue their students’ education while also getting them back to the U.S.
    • The process students go through to get their paperwork in order can take a year or longer.
    • The ACLU is seeing an uptick of Iranian students getting stopped at Logan Airport in Boston.
  1. And now Trump wants to expand the Muslim ban to include these countries: Belarus, Myanmar, Eritrea, Kyrgyzstan, Nigeria, Sudan, and Tanzania. Remember when they said it would be a temporary 90-day ban while they worked out a better vetting process? It’s been a year and a half since the Supreme Court upheld the travel ban.
  2. Texas still officially recognizes Confederate Heroes Day the Friday before Martin Luther King Day. Wow.
  3. Utah bans LGBTQ conversion therapy, the 19th state to do so. The practice is widely discredited.
  4. New Jersey becomes just the ninth state to ban gay and transgender “panic” defenses, which the Governor says are rooted in homophobia.
  5. Britain’s House of Commons votes against legislation that would ensure refugee children can reunite with their families in Britain. The House of Lords previously passed protections for refugee children in their Brexit legislation.
    • The House of Commons also stripped rules protecting the rights of EU citizens in Britain.
    • The House of Commons can override the House of Lords, so it looks like hyper-nationalism and racism will win out in this battle.
  1. Trump names Rodney Scott to Border Patrol Chief. The previous chief admitted to being a member of a private Facebook group for CBP agents that turned out to be racist, anti-immigrant, and misogynistic (and the previous chief was a woman!). Scott is reported to be a member of the same group.
  2. The Trump administration gives visa officers more leeway to stop pregnant women from visiting the U.S. because they might be having anchor babies. Add pregnant women to the growing list of unwelcome immigrants. We already limit Muslims, the poor, refugees, asylum seekers, Middle Easterners, Central Americans, and Africans.

Climate:

  1. Trump has been complaining at his rallies about low-flow showerheads and toilets, as well as energy-efficient dishwashers. And voila. The Energy Department announces changes that will limit the government’s ability to place new efficiency standards on appliances.
    • Increasingly efficient standards are currently saving U.S. households around $500 per year. The new rules make it harder to keep increasing those savings.
  1. The UN rules that countries cannot send climate refugees back to life-threatening conditions created by climate change.
  2. The Trump administration finalizes a rule that removes environmental protections from streams, wetlands, and groundwater. Landowners can now dump pesticides into wetlands and build over them, among other things.
    1. The protections being removed were implemented based on 1,200 scientific studies.
    2. The new rule is already being challenged.
    3. This is just the latest in Trump’s efforts to repeal nearly 100 environmental protections.
  3. The Interior Department approves a right-of way for Keystone XL development in Montana.
  4. At Davos, Steve Mnuchin says youth climate activist Greta Thunberg should go take some economics classes so she can explain calls for investors to pull their money out of fossil fuels. He also sarcastically pretends not to know who she is.
    • How does the head of our Treasury not know that money managers are already doing just that? From BlackRock’s CEO: “The evidence on climate risk is compelling investors to reassess core assumptions about modern finance.”
    • There are two reasons to divest:
      1. The theory of Economics of Welfare looks at the difference between private costs and societal costs. For example, we know that unchecked emissions of greenhouse gases that are going to cost us in the form of having the rebuild and replace infrastructure.
      2. With alternate and better sources of electricity becoming more available, fossil fuels will naturally fall out of favor.
    • Mnuchin’s wife tweets her support for Greta Thunberg.
  1. China plans to ban plastic bags in major cities by the end of this year.

Budget/Economy:

  1. Yet again, Trump threatens European countries with tariffs, this time at the World Economic Forum in Davos. This time it’s over European countries’ plans to tax major tech companies like Google and Facebook.
  2. In a shift from his 2016 promise to protect Medicare and Social Security, Trump says he’s willing to consider cuts to the programs. His last budget proposed nearly $2 trillion in cuts for programs like Medicare and Medicaid.
  3. Fair Isaac is changing the way it calculates your FICO score due, in part, to the record level of consumer debt. Those with high credit scores are likely to see it go higher. Those who are struggling with debt already are likely to receive lower scores.
  4. The European Union reportedly does not plan to offer Britain a trade deal on par with their other trading partners, like Canada and Japan. The EU fears that Britain will try to get the best of both worlds by maintaining access to the EU single market while not following the same rules around trade that EU countries must follow.
  5. Wells Fargo’s ex-CIO is banned from banking for life and must pay a $17.5 million fine over the bank opening fake accounts and unnecessary lines of credit for vulnerable clients.
  6. The Fed’s injections into the repo market, which have been bolstering the stock market for four months, have caused the largest decline yet in the Fed’s balance sheet. And even with that influx of cash, Trump blames the Fed for the U.S. not having 4% GDP growth.
  7. One side effect of Trump’s tariffs is a large increase in the price of aluminum to U.S. consumers and businesses. The sanctions against Russia-owned Rusal also increased prices. Nonetheless, Trump expands the tariffs by adding aluminum products like nails, staples, wires, vehicle parts, and so on.

Elections:

  1. A 2019 voter roll purge in Ohio in 2019 removed thousands of active voters in error. Ohio’s Secretary of State calls for a reform of the process for cleaning out the voter rolls.
  2. Presidential candidate Tulsi Gabbard sues Hillary Clinton for defamation for Hillary’s comments about a candidate being a Russian asset. Clinton did not mention Tulsi by name in her comments.
  3. The impeachment trial pulls four presidential candidates —Elizabeth Warren, Bernie Sanders, Amy Klobuchar, and Michael Bennet—off the campaign trail at a crucial time for the Iowa caucuses.
  4. At this point in the Democratic presidential race, 16 candidates have dropped out and these 12 remain in the race: Senator Michael Bennet, former Vice President Joe Biden, former New York City Mayor and billionaire Michael Bloomberg, South Bend Mayor Pete Buttigieg, former Representative John Delaney, Representative Tulsi Gabbard, Senator Amy Klobuchar, former Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick, Senator Bernie Sanders, billionaire Tom Steyer, Senator Elizabeth Warren, and entrepreneur Andrew Yang.
  5. There are three candidates on the Republican side: Donald Trump, former Representative Joe Walsh, and former Massachusetts Governor William Weld.

Miscellaneous:

  1. An explosion at a Houston manufacturing plant kills two people and pushes nearby homes off their foundations. The explosion damages 214 homes and destroys 50. By the end of the week, the number of structures damaged increases to 450.

Polls:

  1. A Pew Research poll finds that Democrats trust more news sources than Republicans. All U.S. adults overall trust more than Republicans as well. Looking at news sources that are trusted by 33% or more, all U.S. adults trust nine news source, Democrats trust thirteen, and Republicans trust two. Even though media consensus isn’t really a measure of news accuracy, I think the more sources you get your news from, the more accurate your view of the news is.

 

Week 157 in Trump – Impeachment News

Posted on January 31, 2020 in Impeachment, Trump

So much has happened since we first learned about Trump pressuring Ukraine for political gain, I’ve forgotten all the ways Trump and his administration have twisted the truth along the way trying to justify what went down. Here’s a pretty good, though incomplete, list of the ways we’ve been lied to. And if you’re one of those folks who thinks CNN isn’t a reliable source, they have the receipts. You can follow the links to their source material.

Here’s what happened on the impeachment front for the week ending January 26…

General Happenings:

  1. As Trump’s impeachment trial gets underway, there is pretty much no one who really thinks Trump will be removed from office.
  2. The Senate rules ban C-SPAN cameras from the Senate chambers. No audio recordings or still photography will be allowed except from the cameras controlled by the Senate Recording Studio.
    • They will only show the presenters and not any of the Senators.
    • Numerous media outlets send letters requesting C-SPAN cameras be allowed.
  1. The following House Republicans join Trump’s legal team: Doug Collins, Mike Johnson, Jim Jordan, Debbie Lesko, Mark Meadows, John Ratcliffe, Elise Stefanik, and Lee Zeldin. They are only there to give guidance, not to present to the Senate.
  2. Alan Dershowitz makes a point of saying that he didn’t sign on to the White House’s seven-page rebuttal to the House’s impeachment brief last week.
  3. Adam Schiff says that the CIA and NSA are both withholding evidence relevant to the impeachment trial.
  4. McConnell and the White House aren’t 100% certain they have all the votes they need to block witnesses, so they have a Plan B. Plan B is to move Bolton’s testimony to a classified setting. It’s an easy argument that since he was the national security adviser, he would have lots of classified info.
  5. Republicans keep saying they’re trying to use the same format as the Clinton impeachment trial; but in that trial, the Democratic and Republican leaders in the Senate worked closely together to design the trial.
  6. Talking to reporters at Davos about impeachment, Trump says, “But honestly, we have all the material. They don’t have the material. House manager Val Demings says this means he just admitted to the obstruction of Congress he’s being accused of by withholding witnesses and material.
  7. Trump also says he’d like to see Mulvaney and Bolton testify, though, so maybe they should. But then he backpedals on that, so maybe not.
  8. A Trump confidant tells CBS News that GOP Senators were warned that if they vote against Trump in the impeachment trial, “Their heads will be on a pike.” That doesn’t play well when Adam Schiff repeats it on the Senate floor, and Senator Susan Collins breaks with decorum by saying loudly “That’s not true.” Schiff listens and responds, “I hope it’s not true.” But he was clear the entire time he was quoting a news story.
  9. Trump defender and Republican Representative Matt Gaetz praises the House managers’ presentation and says Trump’s legal team’s presentation looked like an “eighth-grade book report.”
  10. Senator John Kennedy (R-LA) says that the evidence presented by the House managers was news to most Senators. How is that even possible? Everybody in the Senate should’ve read the testimony by now.
  11. House manager Jason Crow (D-CO) says that how the Senate votes on witnesses will reflect how seriously they’re taking this trial. He adds that all of the information will eventually come out, whether in books, FOIA requests, or a future administration.
  12. Trump tweets and retweets 142 times on the first day of House managers’ arguments. And woke up the next day and did it all over again.
  13. Trump says that Obama withheld aid to countries like Ukraine, Philippines, Egypt, and others. Representative Ruben Gallego (D-AZ) counters by saying that Obama did it “openly, not using a shifty lawyer and two Ukrainians with a business called ‘Fraud Guaranteed.” Gallego also says Obama didn’t do it for self-interest, but the interest of the country.
  14. Each side accuses the other of trying to undermine the 2020 election. Republicans say Democrats are just trying to remove Trump from the ballot. Democrats say that Trump’s interference in the elections means we won’t have free and fair elections with him in office.
  15. Senators from both parties view a classified document in a secure facility. The document is provided by Jennifer Williams. Some Democratic Senators say they don’t understand why it was classified. We don’t know what the document is, but we can surmise it’s about the phone conversation Mike Pence had with Zelensky that Pence ordered classified.
  16. Republican attorneys general from 21 states call on the Senate to reject both articles of impeachment.
  17. A Republican Senator breaks the “no bringing phones into the Senate chambers” rule and their phone goes off in the middle of a presentation.
  18. The rest of the world thinks our Senators are playing games and taking naps during the impeachment. They’re acting like bored schoolchildren.
  19. Documents indicate that Adam Schiff mischaracterized a text message between Parnas and Giuliani when he implied that “Mr. Z” referred to Zelensky. It actually referred to a Mykola Zlochevsky, the founder of Burisma.
  20. Mike Pompeo defends his treatment of diplomats, including Marie Yovanovitch. He says he’s proud of the administration’s work in Ukraine.

Trump’s Defense Files A Brief:

  1. Trump’s legal team submits their 171-page brief, which claims that the two articles of impeachment aren’t impeachable offenses.
  2. The brief includes opinions from the DOJ Office of Legal Counsel to support their position that the White House didn’t illegals defy Congress in holding back witnesses and evidence form the impeachment committees.
  3. The brief argues the following:
    • The impeachment hearings weren’t about finding the truth.
    • Even if Trump did abuse his power by holding up the aid to Ukraine, it’s not impeachable because there’s no crime. The brief calls the House Democrats theory of abuse of power “novel” and “made up.”
    • There’s no dispute that Trump did what he’s accused of—withhold aid, withhold a White House meeting, and request investigations into the Bidens. But just because Trump did that, it doesn’t mean he withheld one for another. The brief uses the same evolving reasons the White House gave in the weeks after the story first broke.
    • The aid was released and the meeting happened, all without an announcement of the investigations.
    • Trump did this all to root out corruption and to get other countries to help out more.
    • This is a political process, not a criminal one.
    • The impeachment process was rigged, and Democrats shut Trump out of secret hearings in their basement bunker.
    • The transcript of Trump’s call with Zelensky shows that Trump brought up corruption.
  1. The brief includes a DOJ Office of Legal Counsel opinion supporting Trump’s right to block evidence and witnesses requested by the House committees investigating the administration’s activities around Ukraine.

A few rebuttals here:

  1. The Pentagon had certified that Ukraine was in compliance with our anti-corruption conditions, and there’s no record of Trump approaching other national leaders to get them to beef up their contributions. So those don’t seem to have been at the top of his mind in regard to Ukraine.
  2. The Constitution was written before our criminal code, so when they defined impeachment, there wasn’t anything in the criminal code to tie it too. It has always been a political process, as it was designed to be. As such, even if a president were to be removed from office, there would be no criminal charges coming from Congress.
  3. The “basement bunker” is actually a SCIF, a commonly used room where classified information might come out. People were deposed there. Depositions are typically not public. And after the depositions, the House held public hearings, where they invited Trump and his legal team to take part. They refused.
  4. Also, even if the impeachment process were rigged, the Constitution gives the House complete control in how to run impeachment hearings. At the same time, McConnell isn’t breaking any rules by working with Trump’s legal team to design a trial that benefits Trump.
  5. The White House meeting never happened—Zelensky was looking for a state visit, not a chance encounter at an international summit.
  6. The aid was released only after the issue was publicized.
  7. Zelensky was reportedly two days away from announcing the investigations on Fareed Zakaria’s CNN show when the military aid was released.
  8. There’s no mention of corruption in the transcript; only the investigations into the Bidens and Crowdstrike.

Debating the Rules:

  1. The Senate debates for more than 12 hours over the procedural rules of the trial, delaying opening arguments.
  2. Mitch McConnell proposes a condensed impeachment trial schedule, with two days of opening arguments per side, not to exceed 24 hours, followed by four hours of debate.
  3. Maybe after that, they’ll call witnesses.
  4. This could mean 12 hours of opening arguments per day, starting after a full morning of regular Senate work (so 16-hour days for the Senators and for Chief Justice Roberts).
  5. Both Democratic and Republican Senators pressure McConnell to extend it to three days each, giving them the option of three eight-hour days.
  6. Both Democrat and Republican Senators also pressure McConnell to allow the House managers to present the evidence they gathered at the beginning of the trial.
  7. McConnell is working on a rule that would let Trump’s legal team move to dismiss as soon as the arguments are complete. Kind of like a kill switch in case the trial goes on too long.
  8. Republicans vote over and over again to defeat Democratic amendments to subpoena new witnesses and evidence,
  9. The Senate rules include the option of refusing to hear new evidence or testimony. They also have provisions to prevent certain people, like Bolton, from testifying in public.
  10. According to McConnell’s rules, if any witnesses are called, they would have to first be deposed by both sides.
  11. Despite the rules that Senators must remain seated and quiet during the proceedings, they’re already walking around when they’re supposed to be seated, and they’re talking when they’re supposed to be quiet. This despite the punishment being imprisonment.
  12. During the rules debate, Pat Cipollone was given an hour to make a case in his opening statement—he spoke for three minutes, saying Trump has done nothing wrong.
  13. Adam Schiff took 50 minutes of his hour to lay out their entire case, accusing Trump of trying to manipulate the 2020 elections by pressuring Ukraine to announce investigations into Biden.
  14. Members of Trump’s legal team repeated some of the misinformation included in their brief, including that Republicans weren’t allowed in the House SCIF during depositions and that Schiff didn’t tell us he was making a parody of Trump’s phone call with Zelensky during his now-infamous paraphrasing of the call.
  15. Jay Sekulow claims that Trump was cleared of obstruction of justice in the Mueller report. In actuality, Mueller outlined around a dozen cases of possible obstruction of justice, and he said it’s up to Congress to decide whether to pursue impeachment on them. Legal analysts agree that most of these meet the criteria for obstruction.
  16. Sekulow also says that Trump was denied the right to cross-examine witnesses. In fact, Trump and his team declined to participate. How many times must this be debunked?
  17. For some reason, Trump’s legal team keeps exaggerating the number of days the House waited to send the articles of impeachment to the Senate. It was 28 days, but the team says it was 33. That’s just a useless and weird lie.
  18. Trump’s team says the aid to Ukraine got out on time anyway. In reality, because of the delay, $35 million didn’t get out in time and Congress had to extend the deadline.
  19. Sekulow gets worked up over a House manager talking about “lawyer lawsuits” and delivers an indignant rebuke to Val Demings. No one knows what he was talking about. Demings had talked about FOIA lawsuits, and she actually introduced the term as “Freedom of Information Act, a.k.a. FOIA lawsuits.” The White House backs up Sekulow and says the transcript has Demings saying lawyer lawsuits. The Federal Document Clearing House transcript includes no mention of “lawyer lawsuits” except Sekulow’s. Why is this a big deal? It shows a continued pattern of lying and not correcting the record even when provided with hard evidence. Also, we can all watch the video of Demings’ presentation.
  20. The rules debate goes on past midnight, and Jerrold Nadler at one point raises his voice and accuses Republicans of “treacherous” behavior if they don’t allow witnesses. One of Trump’s lawyers responds angrily. The whole thing leads Chief Justice Roberts to remind both sides to be polite and remember where they are.
  21. There’s debate about a trade for witnesses. Republicans could call people like the Bidens if Democrats could call John Bolton. The deal is dropped. Joe Biden says he refuses to part of an impeachment deal.
  22. It’s pretty notable that 3/4 of Americans want new witnesses and evidence.
  23. Senator John Cornyn (R-TX) quotes a Wall Street Journal editorial claiming that what Trump did was legal. This despite the GAO finding the opposite and despite the fact that Cornyn just took an oath to be impartial.

House Managers Arguments:

  1. Adam Schiff opens up the House managers presentation by outlining their arguments. He says Democrats aren’t overstepping by impeaching; it’s part of Congress’s Constitutional mandate. Here’s the gist of their argument:
    • Trump solicited foreign interference to cheat in an election.
    • He did so by abusing the powers of his office to pressure a foreign country to get involved in our elections.
    • When Trump was caught, he continued to use the powers of his office to obstruct the investigation.
  1. Schiff urges Republicans to “protect our democracy” by joining Democrats in voting to remove Trump from office.
  2. Schiff presents the facts of the case:
    • Trump mentioned the Bidens and Burisma but not corruption when he talked to Zelensky (you can check it out for yourself).
    • According to Gordon Sondland’s testimony, Trump followed up on whether the investigations he wanted were going to happen.
    • Kurt Volker texted Andriy Yermak, less than 30 minutes before that call to say that if the investigations were announced, they could set up a White House meeting.
    • Trump told reporters that he wanted both Ukraine and China to investigate Biden, which appears like he’s just looking for foreign countries to smear Biden.
    • Sondland and Giuliani rewrote a Ukraine statement announcing investigations into corruption investigations. They specifically added investigations into Burisma and the 2016 elections.
    • When U.S. officials asked Ukraine not to investigate their political opponents, Yermak threw back, “You mean like asking us to investigate Clinton and Biden?”
    • Ukraine faced the possibility of being cut off from vital aid in the middle of a war.
    • The aid was only released after Trump was caught.
  1. And then Schiff addresses whether abuse of power is impeachable:
    • Bill Barr and Jonathan Turley have both argued that abuse of power is impeachable.
    • The framers of the Constitution made it clear that they were trying to prevent political crimes.
    • If abuse of power isn’t impeachable, then we don’t have a president, we have a king.
  1. Trump’s re-election campaign and the White House both tweet running commentaries during the presentation refuting House managers’ arguments.
    • They say that Trump didn’t withhold a White House meeting with Zelensky; he invited the Ukraine president three times. The UN was their first opportunity to meet.
    • Zelensky himself has said that the UN meeting didn’t fulfill Trump’s promise of a White House meeting, and Trump never offered Zelensky a date.
  1. House managers spend the first day of arguments describing Trump’s scheme to pressure Ukraine to open, or at least announce, investigations into the Bidens while withholding aid and a White House meeting to increase pressure.
  2. Schiff walks the Senate through a timeline of the early events in the pressure campaign, and says Mike Pence canceling his trip to Ukraine in May was a pivotal moment.
  3. Schiff includes new allegations from Lev Parnas in his presentation.
  4. Senator Tom Cotton (R-AR) criticizes the House managers for being repetitive. I agree that they’re quite repetitive, but I think it’s to get the information to stick. Senator Mazie Hirono (D-HI) responds by saying, “It is hard to listen to things you don’t want to hear.”
  5. An anti-abortion, pro-Trump protestor disrupts proceedings on the first day, shouting “Schumer is the devil!” and “They support abortion!” You could hear him screaming all the way down the hall as police removed him.
  6. On the second day, they focus on the allegations of abuse of power, and Schiff explains it will be a little repetitive again today while they show how the facts they presented the previous day fit together.
  7. Nadler speculates that Trump’s legal team won’t refute the facts of the testimony or evidence. (Spoiler for next week: they don’t.)
  8. Nadler also says a crime isn’t necessary to impeach a president. Constitutional scholars largely agree. Nadler plays a video of Alan Dershowitz saying the same thing about the Clinton investigation. Dershowitz has done an about-face and will argue the opposite.
  9. House manager Sylvia Garcia (D-TX) argues that the allegations against Joe and Hunter Biden are groundless. She goes into detail about how Biden’s efforts in Ukraine were done in the open to forward U.S. policy and were supported by our European allies.
  10. Garcia also says there’s no factual basis for the conspiracy theory that Ukraine interfered in our 2016 elections. She says that theory only benefits Putin and Trump. Schiff goes on to show that the origin of the conspiracy theory was the Kremlin.
  11. Here’s an incredible moment. Garcia brings up a letter signed by Senators Ron Johnson (R-WI), Rob Portman (R-OH), Dick Durbin (D-IL), Jeanne Shaheen (D-NH), and other members of the Senate Ukraine Committee in 2016. The letter urged Ukraine to fight corruption, including in the General Prosecutor’s office (the prosecutor at the time was Shokin, whom Biden helped oust).
    • Johnson, who has said he doesn’t remember the letter, gets upset, speaks to Portman, and leaves the Senate floor. He’s still agitated when he returned.
    • He later releases a statement saying that Garcia misrepresented the letter and it was about corruption in general. He must’ve missed the bit about the General Prosecutor.
  1. Reporters spot Senator Marcia Blackburn (R-TN) reading a book during the presentation. The book is “Resistance (At All Costs): How Trump Haters Are Breaking America.”
    • The same day, Blackburn repeats an unfounded smear against decorated war veteran Alexander Vindman, and then doubles down with a second tweet calling him vindictive. Let’s remember he has a purple heart.
    • And then, Blackburn breaks the trial rules by giving a live TV interview to Laura Ingraham while proceedings were ongoing and her colleagues were seated in the Senate chamber.
    • Blackburn does not appear to take her job seriously. Maybe all ya’ll could vote her out?
  1. Schiff reminds the Senate that Trump has said he can do what he wants under Article II. He argues that since Trump didn’t pay a price for Russian interference in 2016, he’s unrepentant and undeterred, and he’ll keep doing it.
  2. Demings says that Senators know better than to think this is about one election. She says it’s bigger than any one election and bigger than any one president.
  3. Hakeem Jeffries reminds Senators that, as Sondland testified, everyone was in the loop on the Ukraine operation and Trump directed the whole thing.
  4. Sekulow says that the House managers opened the door for Trump’s legal team to go after Biden because House managers defended Biden as sort of a prebuttal to what the defense might say.
  5. Jeffries reminds us that the administration did try to bury the transcript on the super-secure server, and that they ran a failed effort to cover the whole thing up.
  6. Demings tells us that the State and Defense Departments, the Vice President, and the Office of Management and Budget have still not produced a single document in response to their 71 requests, five of which are subpoenas. So the argument of waiting for the courts to straighten this out is ridiculous on its face.
  7. Schiff closes by saying that what Trump did is what our founders feared most—inviting foreign interference in our elections. He accuses Trump of putting his personal benefit over national security.
  8. Schiff warns that if Trump isn’t removed, “the balance of power that our founders set out will never be the same.”
  9. If you haven’t heard them, Schiff’s closing caused even Republicans to commend him. They’re worth a listen.
    • One of his most quoted lines is, “Why would anyone in their right mind believe Rudy Giuliani over [FBI Director] Christopher Wray?”

Trump’s Defense Arguments:

  1. Trump’s legal team starts their arguments with only two hours on Saturday, so there’s more to come in next week’s recap.
  2. They begin by working to cast doubt on the House managers’ case that Trump pressured Ukraine to investigate the Bidens and Ukraine interference in the 2016 elections in return for things of value—withholding aid and a White House meeting.
  3. They refer frequently to the transcript (which is actually a summary, not a direct rendering of the call).
  4. Here’s the gist of their argument:
    • There was nothing wrong with the call, and no meetings or withholding money were discussed. (The articles of impeachment don’t actually center on the call, though, they center on activities before and after.)
    • Democrats are trying to rig the election against Trump. They’ve always been trying to get rid of him.
    • Trump had valid reasons for withholding the aid. They don’t address that the DOD did certify Ukraine as compliant on fighting corruption.
    • House managers overlooked facts and didn’t speak to people with direct contact with Trump on the matter.
    • House managers haven’t met the burden of proof.
    • Zelensky himself said he didn’t feel any pressure.
    • Democrats want to overturn the election. They don’t mention that Pence, who was elected alongside Trump, would be president if Trump is removed.
    • It was Ukraine, not Russia, that interfered in our elections.
    • Biden tried to get the prosecutor who was investigating Burisma fired. (Except that prosecutor wasn’t investigating Burisma.)
  1. The defense brings up Schiff’s paraphrasing of the call in a hearing. They leave out the part where Schiff says he’s paraphrasing.
  2. The defense kind of made a case for allowing new witnesses and evidence.

More Documents Released:

  1. The Office of Management and Budget releases another bunch of documents about the Ukraine aid, as required by a FOIA request.
    • The documents include email threads from late June, after an article about military aid to Ukraine appeared in the Washington Times.
    • Some are between the OMB’s Michael Duffey and Mark Sandy (Sandy testified in the House hearings).
    • They were figuring out the details of the Ukraine Security Assistance Initiative, a defense program for allocating money to Ukraine.
    • Remember Sandy testified that he learned in a July 12 email that Trump was directing the hold on aid, but he didn’t get a reason until September.
  1. Emails with Pentagon officials who were questioning the legality of the freeze are heavily redacted.

More Trouble for Parnas, Fruman, and Giuliani:

  1. Oh lordy, there are tapes. Among Lev Parnas’s evidence released to the House is an hour-plus audio recording of Trump dining with a group of political donors, Parnas, Fruman, and others. The dinner took place on April 30, 2018.
    • We can hear Parnas say that Marie Yovanovitch was saying that Trump would be impeached so we needed to get her out of there. Trump responds with, “Get rid of her! Get her out tomorrow. I don’t care. Get her out tomorrow. Take her out. OK? Do it.”
    • Parnas says Yovanovitch was left over from the Clinton administration, but she’s actually served since Reagan.
    • The recording highlights how inane dinner conversation can be.
    • One of the donors is a Canadian steel magnate who funneled money through his U.S. subsidies to donate to Trump. Which is perfectly legal.
    • This shows that the effort by Parnas and Giuliani to oust Yovanovitch went on for at least a year.
  1. Trump continues to tell us he doesn’t know Parnas.
  2. Giuliani promises he’ll release evidence to take down the Bidens this week. He goes on Fox & Friends to promote it.
    • It turns out it’s just a ploy to get ears on his new podcast.
    • He gives no evidence on his podcast, but on F&F he accuses Biden of taking multiple bribes totaling $8 million, and he accuses Democrats of collusion and profiteering. He says the crimes are shocking, including a poisoning.
    • Giuliani says that starting at noon on Friday, he would be rolling out his case. By the end of the week, it doesn’t sound like he’s got anything.
  1. Parnas requests that Bill Barr recuse himself from the investigation of Parnas’s possible violations of election finance laws. He says Barr knew everything Parnas was working on with regard to Ukraine and they were basically on the same team.

Polls:

  1. 75% of Americans want new evidence and testimony to be allowed in the impeachment trial.
  2. A Pew Research poll finds that 63% of Americans think Trump has acted illegally. 51% think he should be removed from office.

Week 156 in Trump

Posted on January 27, 2020 in Politics, Trump

Here’s one more catch-up blog, and this week I’ll finally be up to date. There’s so much going on and so much misinformation, it’s easy to throw up your hands and say we’ll never know the truth. We’ll never be able to understand it all. But we’re at a pivotal time in history, and what’s going on in Washington right now is incredibly important. The fallout from this administration is going to last decades. So it’s critical that the voting public pay attention.

Here’s what happened in politics for the week ending January 19…

Shootings This Week:

  1. There were SIX mass shootings in the U.S. this week (defined as killing and/or injuring 4 or more people). Shooters kill 11 people and injure 32 more.
    • A gunman opens fire in a barbershop in Chicago, IL, injuring 5 people (including one 11-year-old and one 12-year-old).
    • A shooter at a home in Grantsville, UT, kills 4 people (a mother and her children) and injures 1 more (the father). The shooter is believed to be a relative.
    • A shooter in South Houston, TX, kills 2 people and injures 2 more.
    • A gunman opens fire at a queue for a nightclub in Kansas City, MO, killing 1 person and injuring 15 more. A security guard shot and killed the gunman. Previous weapons charges against the gunman were dropped due to a loosening of gun laws in Missouri.
    • A shooter in Memphis, TN, kills 1 person and injures 4 more outside a nightclub.
    • A 19-year-old man opens fire in a bar on San Antonio’s River Walk, killing 2 people and injuring 5 more.
  1. Ahead of a planned gun-rights rally on Martin Luther King Day in Richmond, VA, Governor Ralph Northam bans weapons on the state capital grounds for the day. He also declares a state of emergency due to threats from armed militias that they’ll storm the capital.
    • Officials are a bit edgy, given the comparisons to the Charlottesville rally. This week’s rally is to protest gun reform legislation going through Virginia’s legislature turns out to be peaceful.
    • Days before the rally, the FBI arrested three white supremacists—members of The Base—who were planning to usurp the rally to start a race war. One of the men is from Canada and is here illegally. The other two men harbored and armed him.
    • Three other members of The Base are arrested for a plot to kill Antifa members.
    • Trump adds fuel to the fire by tweeting, “They will take your guns away.” (None of the laws in progress will take anyone’s gun away unless they’re illegally owned under current laws.)
  1. Several of the gun reform protestors come from out of state, fearing that changes to gun rules in VA will spread to other states. Here are the changes:
    • Universal background checks
    • Red flag laws (which allow law enforcement to protect people from themselves if they are deemed a threat)
    • Limiting handgun purchases to just one a month
    • A ban on assault-style rifles (but they won’t confiscate weapons that are currently legally owned)
  1. Cities across the state vote to become sanctuary cities that don’t have to follow the state’s gun laws. In reality, localities can only do that for federal laws, not state ones. That’s why sanctuary cities for undocumented immigrants are constitutional, but sanctuary cities to fight state gun laws are not.

Russia:

  1. Not to be left out of impeachment issues, Russian military intelligence hackers target Ukrainian gas company Burisma, likely to find information on Hunter Biden. If they were successful, they can dump documents at any time to try to upend Joe Biden’s campaign.
  2. Two weeks before sentencing, Michael Flynn wants to change his plea from guilty to not guilty. He pleaded guilty more than two years ago. How has he not done any jail time? Anyway, a judge needs to approve the change in plea.
  3. The entire Russian government resigns after Putin proposes constitutional amendments designed to extend his time in power. One of the changes takes power away from the president and gives it to the prime minister, giving him the option of being prime minister with more powers once his presidential term ends in four years. You might remember he did the reverse when he became president.
  4. Rod Rosenstein says he was the one who decided to release the text message between Lisa Page and Peter Strzok with the press. He says he did it to protect them from unfair criticism. Well, that kinda backfired.
    • Both Strzok and Page filed separate lawsuits against the Justice Department for the leak, saying it violated the Privacy Act.

Legal Fallout:

  1. George Nader, a political donor and lobbyist, pleads guilty to sex crimes involving children. Nader was mixed up in Robert Mueller’s Russia investigation, and he’s currently indicted for a campaign finance fraud scheme with several other large donors who hid foreign donations to Democrats and Republicans.
  2. Federal prosecutors in Washington are investigating James Comey again, this time over whether he leaked classified information to the press in 2017. Law enforcement officials express concern that their investigations are becoming politicized and worry that their own old cases could be opened up for political reasons.
  3. Former GOP Representative Chris Collins receives a 26-month sentence after pleading guilty to insider trading.

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. The Trump administration asks the Supreme Court for the 23rd time in three years to let a new policy go into effect while cases against it work their way through the court. That’s nearly three times as many such requests as the previous TWO administrations made over 16 years.

Healthcare:

  1. A Delta jet dumps fuel over a populated area in Los Angeles before making an emergency landing at LAX. They say they had to lighten their load for the landing. But they dumped the fuel over a playground full of children. Air Quality management inspects the air quality and issues a notice of violation to Delta due to complaints of health issues, like burning eyes and difficulty breathing.
  2. Despite warnings that abortion can cause depression and regret, a new study finds that most women do not regret their decision to have the procedure and tend to feel relief instead of depression, even longterm.
  3. Tennessee Governor Bill Lee says he’ll sign a bill that funds faith-based foster care and adoption agencies even if they discriminate against same-sex parents (or anyone else who violates their closely held beliefs).
    • The following states allow similar discrimination: Kansas, Oklahoma, Texas, Alabama, South Dakota, North Dakota, Virginia, and Mississippi. Michigan had a similar law, but a lawsuit forced them to reverse it.
  1. Consumer safety groups sue the USDA over Trump’s new rules for federal pork inspection practices, which reduce federal oversight and let the industry police itself.
  2. The Supreme Court agrees to hear a case over whether employers with religious or moral objections can limit access to free contraception under the ACA.
  3. Trump tells Alex Azar, Secretary of Health and Housing, that he regrets taking action on that “fucking vaping thing.”

International:

  1. Larry Kudlow, economic advisor to Trump, says that the administration plans to change global anti-bribery rules. Currently, American companies can’t pay bribes to secure overseas contracts. The rules are part of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA), which Trump has complained about and threatened to repeal. Experts say the act helps reduce corruption around the world.
  2. A former member of the national security council says that if Britain doesn’t pull out of the JCPOA (Iran deal), a free-trade deal with the U.S. will be at risk.
  3. British Prime Minister Boris Johnson supports Trump coming up with a new agreement to replace the JCPOA.
  4. Johnson refuses Scotland’s demand for another referendum on Scottish independence. These guys honestly don’t believe in second chances. Voters wanted a second referendum on Brexit and didn’t get that either.
  5. The British parliament has so far refused to give EU citizens physical proof of their right to remain in Britain after Brexit happens, leaving them up in the air once Brexit does occur.
  6. Police arrest nearly 60 protestors in Paris during continued “yellow vest” demonstrations.
  7. In Hong Kong, a rally is cut short when protestors and police clash. The Hong Kong protests have been losing a little momentum, and protestors worry they’re losing global attention.
  8. Protests continue in India over their new anti-Muslim citizenship rules.
  9. Clashes between police and protestors in Lebanon result in at least 70 people being injured. This week has been the most violent since the protests started there several months ago.
  10. The State Department says that Russian trolls played a part in the political unrest in South America, including in Chile, Bolivia, Ecuador, Peru, Bolivia, and Colombia. That could be part of why there’s so much global unrest right now.
  11. U.S. intelligence agencies are trying to get Congress to stop holding the public portion of their annual Worldwide Threats briefing, where they discuss the biggest threats to our security. Trump blew up after last year’s open session, and officials don’t want to be seen as disagreeing with Trump in public. Because God forbid U.S. citizens should get the truth.
  12. 350,000 Syrians flee a Russian-led assault in Syria’s Idlib province.

Iran:

  1. France, Germany, and Britain trigger the resolution dispute clause of the JCPOA, which means that Iran has 60 days to come back into full compliance with the defined limits on nuclear development. If Iran doesn’t comply, the UN must reimpose sanctions.
    • Since Trump withdrew the U.S. from the JCPOA, European countries let Iran push the limits of the deal, hoping to save it.
    • The major objective of the three countries is to save the JCPOA because it was successful in preventing Iran from becoming a nuclear power.
    • Russia calls this an “ill-considered decision” that could lead to escalation.
    • Trump had threatened tariffs up to 25% on European automobiles if they didn’t trigger the dispute.
    • Some European officials call this extortion. I say it goes to show that Trump will not stop abusing the power of his office.
    • Iranian President Rouhani had threatened danger for European troops in the Middle East if they did trigger the dispute.
  1. Remember what a big deal it was that General Soleimani posed an imminent threat and that’s why the U.S. killed him? Now Trump says it doesn’t really matter whether there was an imminent threat or not.
  2. Trump said Soleimani was going to blow up the Iraq embassy. Then Trump said that he was going to blow up other U.S. embassies as well. Now Trump says four embassies were targeted but doesn’t say which ones.
  3. Mike Pompeo also changes his tune on the reasons for the strike, saying that the attack was part of a larger strategy to combat global threats. He previously said an attack from Soleimani was imminent.
  4. Pompeo declines an invitation to attend a House Foreign Affairs Committee hearing about Soleimani.
  5. Both Trump and the Pentagon said last week that Iran’s strikes in retaliation for Soleimani’s killings resulted in no injuries. But 11 troops were injured, displaying symptoms of concussion and possible brain injuries. Trump later says that some service members had headaches. At least eight of the troops were medevaced to other countries better equipped to treat brain injuries.
  6. Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau blames both Iran and the U.S. for the downing of a passenger jet carrying 57 Canadians.
  7. Protests continue against the Iranian government for shooting down a passenger jet and then seeming to lie about it. Their chants went from “Death to America!” last week to “Death to the dictator!” this week.
    • People report that riot police are using tear gas and live ammunition.
    • Iran says they arrested dozens of people over the downing of the passenger plane, but some have been released.
    • Iran says that the root cause of the tragedy is the U.S. attack on Soleimani.
    • Last week, they said one person was responsible; but this week, President Rouhani says there were likely more people involved in the decision.
    • Russia says that Iran was spooked by rumors of the U.S. sending stealth fighters to Iran, and that’s why they shot down the plane.
  1. Democratic Senator Tim Kaine says he has the necessary 51 votes to pass a resolution requiring Trump to get Congressional approval before making any more military moves against Iran. The House already passed such a measure.
  2. Iran’s foreign minister cancels his appearance at the World Economic Forum in Davos.
  3. Pompeo says that Iraqi leaders have told him they support keeping U.S. troops in the country, despite their public declarations of the opposite.
  4. Trump gave the authorization to kill Soleimani seven months ago, but also had to approve this specific operation.
  5. Drone and missile strikes by Iran-backed Houthis rebels in Yemen kill at least 80 Yemeni soldiers while they were in prayer at a mosque.

Travel Ban/Immigration/Discrimination:

  1. A federal judge blocks Trump’s executive order allowing states and localities to refuse to settle any refugees. This means Texas and that county in northern Minnesota will have to let any refugee settlements go forward.
  2. Virginia finally passes the Equal Rights Amendment, 44 years after Congress passed it. 97 years after it was first proposed. This makes Virginia the 38th state to pass it, the milestone needed to start the ratification process. There are still hurdles:
    • The deadline has passed to ratify the amendment, but it’s debatable whether that deadline is binding.
    • Other states have rescinded their ratifications, but there’s no provision for that in the constitution.
    • My great-grandma marched for women’s rights nearly 100 years ago. I wonder what she’d think if she knew we’re still marching for this shit?
  1. Even though the annual march is getting smaller, hundreds of thousands of demonstrators show up to march in the fourth annual Women’s March in more than 200 cities around the world.
  2. GOP legislators in Georgia, Kentucky, and Texas propose laws to ban minors from receiving gender transition care and to criminalize treatments that help with gender dysphoria.
    • People who support these bills argue that minors are too young to know and that this treatment is life-altering.
    • People who oppose these bills say that the children know and that starting early makes the transition easier.
    • Transgender health experts recommend just using puberty blockers and waiting until they’re older to explore hormones and surgery.
  1. A GOP state representative in Missouri introduces a bill to establish parental review boards to decide on whether to allow drag queen story hour at libraries in the state. Librarians who don’t comply would face criminal charges.
  2. Despite the low unemployment rate for Black Americans, 90% disapprove of Trump’s overall job performance and over 80% think he’s a racist and has made racism a bigger problem.

Climate:

  1. Ocean temperatures hit a new high in 2019 and had the largest temperature increase in a single year over the past decade. Higher ocean temperatures mean more severe storms, harm to sea life, and disruptions to the water cycle that lead to flooding, drought, and wildfires.
  2. Scientists at the EPA say that political appointees cut them out of the decision-making process when the EPA decided to reverse parts of the Clean Waters Act.
  3. Even some of Trump’s appointed advisors disagree with the changes, say they go against scientific knowledge.
  4. Despite the Trump administration’s opposition to managing climate change, investment in renewable energies increased by 28% in 2019.

Budget/Economy:

  1. The U.S. and China sign their phase one trade deal. But we won’t cut any tariffs until after the election. What’s that about, I wonder?
    • As part of the agreement, the U.S. delists China as a currency manipulator.
    • New data continues to show that American consumers bore the brunt of the costs of the tariffs, not China.
  1. The New York Fed announces it’ll decrease the amount of money it’s injecting into the repo market.
  2. The Dow Jones closes above 29,000 for the first time, buoyed by the signing of the USMCA and phase one of the China trade deal, as well as by better than expected earnings and good reports in the retail sector.
  3. The House votes to overturn a Trump rule that makes student loan forgiveness harder to obtain.

Elections:

  1. Trump holds an election rally in Milwaukee, WI, on the same night as the Democratic presidential debate. He repeats his slew of lies—Obama gave Iran $1.8 billion (it was less, it wasn’t all held by the U.S., and it was their money), wages are growing for the first time in a long time (it started in 2014), the ISIS caliphate is 100% defeated (closer to 85%), late-term abortion means ripping babies out of the mother’s womb (that’s infanticide), Democrats started “catch and release” policies for undocumented immigrants (it started in 2001). And that’s just to name a few.
  2. A Wisconsin judge orders state election commissioners to move ahead with purging more than 200,000 people from the voter rolls.
    • Republicans say these are voters who have moved or are deceased, while Democrats accuse them of trying to purge registered voters.
    • I say there’s a little truth to both. There’s no harm in keeping old voter records on the rolls, and these purges do largely hit people who have moved. But there are also mistakes, and people get removed who shouldn’t be. And then it’s up to volunteers to call those voters to make sure they know. And there’s no way to reach everyone.
  1. But then a state appeals court puts the order on hold again, at least until the case goes through the courts.
  2. The Florida Supreme Court upholds a ruling that convicted felons must pay off their fines and fees associated with their sentence before they can have their voting rights restored. Opponents say this amounts to an unconstitutional poll tax.
  1. South Carolina election officials agree to change a rule that requires people to provide their full SSN to register to vote. Most states require just the last four digits.

Miscellaneous:

  1. The National Archives receives harsh criticism after blurring images critical of Trump or referencing women’s anatomy. Whitewashing, as it were.
  2. A new study finds that mayors face higher levels of physical and psychological abuse than people in the general workforce. This applies to both men and women, but women are much more likely to experience abuse, including abuse of a sexualized nature. Social media is the most common expression of that abuse.
  3. Air Force General John Raymond is sworn in as chief of Space Operations, the top position in our new United States Space Force.
  4. American history textbooks are customized by state, even though they come from the same publishers. Differences include gun rights discussions, racial histories, and immigration. Publishers feel caught in the middle of politics. I guess I’m not clear why they don’t present the truth at best, and at worst present pros and cons so students can learn how to talk about our differences.
  5. A 17-year-old intern with NASA discovers a planet nearly seven times larger than the earth, and on just his third day there.

Week 156 in Trump – Impeachment News

Posted on January 27, 2020 in Impeachment, Trump

The impeachment trial is finally underway in the Senate, with everyone taking oaths and opening briefs filed. And oh lordy, there are tapes. New evidence keeps coming out—the GAO finds that the Trump administration broke the law by withholding aid to Ukraine, the DOJ starts handing over a boatload of documentary evidence from Lev Parnas (which, oh my!)—and the Senate won’t commit to allowing new witnesses or evidence.

Here’s what happened on the impeachment front for the week ending January 19…

General Happenings:

  1. The Government Accountability Office (GAO) finds that Trump and the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) violated the law by withholding military aid to Ukraine. They violated the Impoundment Control Act because it was a policy delay, not a programmatic delay.
    • The GAO also says the OMB and State Department have refused to cooperate and provide their office with the information needed to complete their investigation.
    • The OMB disagrees with the findings, despite the fact that OMB officials struggled for weeks to find a legal justification for the hold.
  1. House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) says that it was right to withhold the aid even though it broke the law.
  2. U.S. diplomats express disappointment with Mike Pompeo for remaining silent on the issue of potential surveillance of one of their own and for not defending former Ambassador Marie Yovanovitch.
  3. Possibly as a result of all the information revealed in Lev Parnas’s documents, Ukrainian officials announce an investigation into potentially illegal surveillance of former Ambassador to Ukraine Marie Yovanovitch. Pompeo says the U.S. will also investigate whether she was under threat.
  4. Trump adds Alan Dershowitz and Kenneth Starr to his legal team, which already includes Pat Cipollone, Michael Purpura, and Jay Sekulow.
  5. Ukraine asks the FBI for help in their investigation of a cyberattack by the Russian military against Burisma, the company on whose board Hunter Biden served. 

  6. The House votes to send the articles of impeachment to the Senate.
  7. Speaker Pelosi names these Representatives to be impeachment managers: Adam Schiff, Jerrold Nadler, Zoe Lofgren, Hakeem Jeffries, Val Demings, Jason Crow, and Sylvia Garcia.
  8. Pelosi and the House managers all sign the articles of impeachment in an “engrossment ceremony,” after which Pelosi gives the House managers commemorative pens. She gets flack for it, but they did it for Clinton’s impeachment, too. The far-right says the pens cost over $2,000 apiece, and also that they’re gold plated. The pens actually cost $15.
  9. The House managers deliver the articles of impeachment to the Senate, and Adam Schiff reads aloud the articles of impeachment in the Senate well.
  10. Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts is sworn in to preside over the trial. He administers the oath to each member of the Senate:
    “Do you solemnly swear that in all things appertaining to the trial of the impeachment of Donald John Trump, president of the United States, now pending, you will do impartial justice according to the Constitution and laws, so help you god?”
  11. Democrats continue to argue for hearing from witnesses and including any new evidence, while Republicans are mostly fighting it (there are a few exceptions).
  12. After much debate on several amendments, the Senate votes on the rules of the trial. Here are a few (rules in italics have already been broken):
    • Senators can’t check their phones during trial proceedings.
    • Senators can’t talk with each other during trial proceedings.
    • Senators should remain in their seats at all times.
    • Senate staff access is restricted.
    • Access to journalists is restricted.
    • The Senate will vote on whether or not to allow witnesses and new evidence after both sides have presented their cases.
  1. In the middle of the impeachment trial for pressuring a foreign government, Trump pressures European countries to officially accuse Iran of breaking the JCPOA and threatens them with 25% tariffs on their automobiles if they don’t.

More Trouble for Parnas, Fruman, and Giuliani:

  1. The House releases documents and voice mail messages they received from Lev Parnas that link Trump to the pressure campaign to get Ukraine to announce investigations into the Bidens.
    • This comes in the form of text messages, emails, letters, handwritten notes, voicemails, and audio recordings.
    • The documents outline work Giuliani and Parnas did on behalf of Trump.
    • They include exchanges between Parnas and former Ukrainian prosecutor Yuriy Lutsenko.
      • Texts show that Lutsenko helped Giuliani smear former Ambassador Yovanovitch and fed Giuliani dirt on the Bidens.
      • Lutsenko wanted Yovanovitch out, and agreed to help Giuliani in his mission if Giuliani would help Lutsenko get rid of Yovanovitch.
      • We also know that Lutsenko later recanted much of what he told Giuliani, but much of what he told Giuliani had already been reported by The Hill columnist John Solomon (who was also involved with Parnas and Giuliani). This is how most of the Ukraine conspiracy theories gained traction.
      • Parnas says that Trump and Giuliani let Lutsenko manipulate them when it came to Yovanovitch.
    • The documents include a May 10, 2019, letter from Giuliani requesting a meeting with President Zelensky. It also says that Trump had “knowledge and consent” of what Giuliani was doing. Remember that on May 7, Zelensky met with key advisors to try to figure out how to navigate Trump’s and Giuliani’s insistence that Ukraine open an investigation into the Bidens.
    • There’s a text from Fox News lawyer Victoria Toensing asking if there’s an absolute commitment for her Yovanovitch to be gone. What’s her interest in Yovanovitch?
    • On April 23, Giuliani texted Parnas to say Trump fired Yovanovitch again. For a guy who made a living off of saying “you’re fired,” he sure had a hard time actually getting it done.
    • There are handwritten notes on hotel stationery memorializing conversation about getting Zelensky to announce the investigations.
  1. After the document dump, Parnas goes on the Rachel Maddow show to get his story out. He weaves some stories that are hard to believe, but he’s been backing it up with receipts. His documentary and text evidence backs him up in many cases.
  2. Parnas tells the New York Times that he feels bad for trusting Giuliani and Trump. He also tells Maddow that he was wrong about Yovanovitch.
  3. Parnas says Trump knew exactly what was going on in Ukraine with Giuliani and Parnas, and that Trump was directly involved in the pressure campaign to get Ukraine to investigate the Bidens. Trump and others have argued that Trump didn’t know everything Parnas and Giuliani were up to.
  4. Parnas also implicates Mike Pence and Attorney GeneralWilliam Barr. He says Pence was in charge of the Ukraine project (including getting Zelensky to announce investigations).
  5. A second dump of the evidence from Parnas’s devices includes messages between Parnas and Derek Harvey, an aide to Representative Devin Nunes (R-CA). Harvey was arranging interviews with Ukraine officials who claimed the Bidens were guilty of wrongdoing.
    • Harvey also met with Parnas, Giuliani, and journalist John Solomon at the Trump Hotel.
    • Solomon worked with Parnas on articles about these Ukraine conspiracy theories.
    • Their texts also talked about Mykola Zlochevsky, the owner of Burisma.
    • Harvey gave Parnas contact information for Nunes, and phone records indicate that Nunes and Parnas did speak.
    • Harvey asked Parnas to look into “rumors” about any coordination between Clinton’s campaign and the Ukrainian government to find dirt on Paul Manafort.
    • Nunes has denied knowing Parnas, but was forced to acknowledge that the two had spoken.
    • The documents include text messages exchanged between Robert Hyde and Parnas indicating that Hyde had Yovanovitch under surveillance, including details of her activities.
      • The FBI has already been to Robert Hyde’s home and office.
      • Hyde says he was just joking with Parnas.
      • Oh yeah, and Hyde is running for Congress.
    • The documents show that Giuliani and Parnas were trying to secure a visa for Viktor Shokin, the prosecutor Joe Biden (and other allied countries) worked to oust.
  1. Supporters of Trump argue that we can’t trust Parnas because he’s a thug, but Parnas is backing up his story with receipts.
  2. The newly released evidence puts a little pressure on the Senate to include new evidence in the impeachment trial.

Opening Briefs:

  1. The House managers file a 111-page brief laying out their case against Trump for the Senate impeachment trial.
    • The brief explains the allegations against Trump—that he withheld both military aid approved by Congress and a White House meeting with the Ukrainian president in order to pressure Ukraine to announce and open investigations into the Bidens and Ukraine conspiracy theories.
    • It argues that Trump compounded the problems by obstructing the House investigation, and by doing so, disrupted our system of checks and balances.
    • The brief outlines the material facts gathered from the weeks of testimony and available evidence, including the GAO’s recent report and documents newly obtained by a FOIA request.
    • It emphasizes that trying to bring in a foreign country to interfere in a U.S. election is something our Founders would consider an attempt to corrupt our democratic processes.
    • The brief argues that Trump must be removed because he “will continue to endanger our national security, jeopardize the integrity of our elections, and undermine our core constitutional principles.”
  1. Trump’s legal team responds a seven-page rebuttal, and will file their brief next week.
    • The response doesn’t address the charges directly but instead says that Trump didn’t do anything wrong and that the impeachment is unconstitutional.
    • They argue that there was no crime. (Constitutional scholars say that isn’t necessary.)
    • They also argue that the American people should decide, not Congress. (That’s not how the constitution defines impeachment.)
    • Since Zelensky said the call was OK, they argue it must’ve been.
    • They say two witnesses exonerated Trump because Trump told them he wasn’t doing a quid pro quo.

Week 155 in Trump

Posted on January 21, 2020 in Politics, Trump

What a week! Iran retaliated for our drone strike on General Soleimani, but then they accidentally shot down a passenger plane in the process. That turns the tens of thousands of Iranian mourners in the streets of Iran into tens of thousands of people protesting the missile strike on the plane. Iraq votes to expel U.S. troops, and then the U.S. sends them a letter saying we’re leaving, but then we say we’re not really leaving and the Iraqi Prime Minister asks Mike Pompeo to come talk about leaving. And we’re still not sure what the imminent threat was that led us to kill Soleimani now or if there even was an imminent threat.

Here’s what happened in politics for the week ending January 12…

Shootings This Week:

  1. This is some kind of record. There were only TWO mass shootings in the U.S. this week (defined as killing and/or injuring 4 or more people). Shooters kill 2 people and injure 7 more.
    • A shooter ambushes a group outside an apartment complex in Bay Saint Louis, MS, killing 2 people and injuring 2 more.
    • A 16-year-old shooter in Aurora, CO (yes, that Aurora), injures 5 people at an apartment complex.
  1. Texas Governor Greg Abbott awards the Medal of Courage to the security force volunteer who shot a gunman in a church in White Settlement, TX, last month.

Russia:

  1. The Vietnam Veterans of America have been warning the Defense, Veterans Affairs, and other agencies—and even Trump—that Russian operatives are targeting vets with online disinformation campaigns on a massive scale. Those agencies have ignored the warnings, despite a report and congressional testimony supporting them.
  2. Federal prosecutors recommend a 6-month prison term for Michael Flynn. That’s up from the zero time they had previously recommended before Flynn stopped cooperating and started lying to prosecutors and changing his testimony.
  3. Newly released evidence from the Mueller investigation shows that:
    • Paul Manafort said he used Sean Hannity as a backchannel to Trump and that he believed Trump was sending him messages through Hannity.
    • Donald Trump Jr. asked for dirt on Hillary during the infamous Trump Tower meeting with Russian lawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya.
    • Hope Hicks thought George Papadopoulos was a problem child. Fun fact: Papadopoulos is running for the congressional seat vacated by Katie Hill last year.
    • K.T. McFarland, former deputy national security adviser under Mike Flynn, cooperated with the Mueller investigation under a proffer agreement. This is typically used for people under criminal investigation.

Legal Fallout:

  1. The New York City Bar Association asks Congress to investigate Attorney General Bill Barr for his impartial conduct, which they say threatens our faith in our justice system. They cite his speech to the Federalist Society where he accused so-called progressives of trying to cripple the government and said conservatives have more scruples over their political tactics.
  2. According to current and former officials, John Huber, the U.S. attorney in Utah, is wrapping up his investigation into the sale of Uranium One, the Clinton Foundation, and Clinton’s use of a private email server. They say the investigation has ended without finding anything worth pursuing. His final report is yet to be released.
  3. A panel of judges grants Trump’s request to have the New York Court of Appeals hear Summer Zervos’s defamation suit against him. In case you’re wondering how slowly the justice system works, this case is close to three years old.
  4. Betsy DeVos’s brother, Erik Prince, is referred to the Treasury Department for possible violations of U.S. sanctions against Venezuelan entities.

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. Harvard law students aren’t applying to clerk for Trump’s court nominees. This is usually a plum position, but no one wants to clerk for judges who are deemed unqualified by the ABA, or who are ideologically rigid. These are the judges who most need the help of smart grads.
  2. Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg announces that blood tests show she is free of cancer after undergoing treatment for pancreatic cancer.

Healthcare:

  1. California’s Governor Gavin Newsom proposes that the state establish its own generic drug label to bring down prices. It would be the first state to do so, and due to the size of the state, it could bring down drug prices nationally.
  2. The American Cancer Society says that the cancer death rate fell 2.2% from 2016 to 2017, the largest decline in one year ever reported. The rate dropped by 29% since 1991.

International:

  1. Netanyahu calls Israel a nuclear power, before correcting himself. Israel is believed to have nuclear weapons, but it’s never been confirmed.
  2. Britain’s House of Commons passes Boris Johnson’s Brexit plan. Now it heads to the House of Lords. If it passes, Brexit is a done deal at the end of the month.
  3. A BMG survey of British citizens shows that a majority want to remain in the EU. They also expect Brexit to be bad for their economy, the health system, and Britain’s place in the world.
  4. Trump’s actions in the Middle East open a rift between the U.S. and the U.K. Britain’s Defense Secretary says the U.K is working on stronger alliances with other countries that share its priorities. He also says Trump threatened to pull out of the intelligence-sharing relationship between the U.S. and U.K.
  5. The U.K. is quick to call the strike on Soleimani a dangerous escalation and to criticize Trump’s threat to target Iranian cultural sites.
  6. National security advisor Robert O’Brien says the conflicts with Iran won’t stop him from cutting around a third of the staff of the National Security Council. This was one of his top responsibilities when he took over in September, a time when NSC staff were beginning to testify about the hold on the aid to Ukraine.
  7. Trump tells Laura Ingraham that Saudi Arabia pays our troops to defend their oil fields from Iran.
  8. The U.S. will expel nearly two dozen Saudi military students who were part of the same programs as the Saudi student who carried out a mass shooting at Pensacola airbase. Bill Barr says the students had jihadist materials and child porn.
  9. The Taal volcano erupts in the Philippines, triggering dozens of earthquakes and dropping ash across the country. Towns near the volcano evacuate, and airports and schools are closed.
  10. Protestors in Chile are back in the streets to protest small pensions, a fragile safety net, and police brutality against protestors.
  11. Protests increase in Lebanon against their crippling economic crisis.
  12. Amid catastrophic fires in Australia, protests spring up there to fight their government’s inaction on climate change.
  13. Protests continue in India against their new anti-Muslim citizenship rules.
  14. The transport workers strike in France is in its 7th week, and this week, thousands more join the protest. They’re striking for pension reform.
  15. After Iranians take to the streets to mourn the death of General Soleimani, Iranians take to the streets again to protest the Iranian military shooting down a passenger jet.

Iran:

Justification for Targeting Soleimani:

  1. In the days since Trump authorized the strike against Iranian General Soleimani, we still don’t have a solid picture of why the decision was made. This leads to doubt over whether there was an imminent threat.
  2. First the Trump administration said the threat was imminent, but they couldn’t say how imminent or where the target was.
  3. Then they said to look at what Soleimani had been doing the days before the strike.
  4. Then Trump says Iran was going to blow up our embassy.
  5. Mike Pompeo says that we don’t know when or where, but the threat was real.
  6. But then, nearly a week after the strike, Trump says Soleimani was planning attacks on four of our embassies. But no U.S. embassy security officials at the State Department were notified of the threat. The State Department did send out a warning to embassies before the attack, but it didn’t mention any specific embassies nor did it mention an imminent threat.
  7. Then Trump says we targeted Soleimani because Iran killed one of our contractors (an Iraqi-American). Where was that outrage when Saudi Arabia killed Jamal Khashoggi, a U.S. citizen? Or when North Korea killed Otto Warmbier?
  8. But then Mike Esper says he saw no evidence that Iran was targeting four embassies. Esper does say that embassies would be a likely target since they’re so prominent.
  9. When officials finally briefed the Gang of Eight, they didn’t mention anything about four embassies.
  10. Members of Congress get a private briefing about the Soleimani strike. Coming out, Senators Mike Lee (R-UT) and Rand Paul (R-KY) rip the administration for what Lee calls the worst briefing he’s ever seen. Lee says they were warned not to debate Trump’s war powers because it would embolden Iran.
    • According to Lee, the officials were “unable or unwilling to identify any point” at which they’d come to Congress for authorization of military force.
    • Both Lee and Paul say they weren’t open to a resolution limiting Trump’s war powers before the briefing, but they are now.
    • Defense Secretary Mark Esper, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, CIA Director Gina Haspel, and Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Gen. Mark Milley. handle the briefing. They also brief the House.
  1. The administration used the 2002 war authorization, which authorizes the president to use force against terrorists, to justify the killing. But this was never designed to justify killing foreign officials.
  2. After 10 days, we still don’t have a solid answer to why Trump authorized the killing now.

Trump Threatens War Crimes:

  1. The administration can’t keep their stories straight on bombing Iran’s cultural sites. Trump says he’ll do it (that’s a war crime). Pompeo says the U.S. would only look at lawful targets. And then Trump says, “They’re allowed to kill our people. They’re allowed to torture and maim our people. They’re allowed to use roadside bombs and blow up our people, and we’re not allowed to touch their cultural site? It doesn’t work that way.”
  2. But then the next day, Secretary of Defense Mark Esper says we won’t strike cultural targets because it’s a war crime.
  3. Finally Trump relents, and says that he’ll abide by the law.

Should We Stay Or Should We Go Now?

  1. The administration can’t keep their plans for our troops straight. The U.S. commander of coalition forces in Iraq accidentally sends the Iraqi government a letter announcing the repositioning of U.S. forces and preparation to move out of Iraq. He sends both an English and an Arabic version, which don’t match. The letter says, in part, “we respect your sovereign decision to order our departure.”
  2. Esper and Joint Chiefs Chair General Mark Milley scramble to deny that we’re pulling our troops out of Iraq.
  3. Iraq’s Prime Minister says he considers the letter to be the official U.S. position, and he asks Pompeo to send a delegation over to discuss plans for withdrawing our troops.
  4. This is important, along with the Iraqi parliament’s vote to expel U.S. troops, because one of Iran’s primary objectives is to force U.S. troops out of Iraq.

Aftermath:

  1. Hours after the strike against Soleimani, the Trump administration sent a message to Iran telling them not to escalate. The message was sent via the Swiss Embassy in Iran. While Iran and the U.S. kept up a rational correspondence through the Swiss, politicians from both countries fired up the people with their public hyperbole.
  2. Iran retaliates against the Soleimani strike by launching ballistic missiles at two military bases in Iraq that house U.S. troops. Officials say there were no causalities.
  3. Iraq and the U.S. had advance warning of the strikes, and they were intended to let Iran save face by launching strikes but causing minimal casualties.
  4. A senior commander in Iran’s army promises harsher retaliations. Another commander says this is just the beginning.
  5. A Ukraine International Airlines passenger jet crashes on its way out of Tehran, killing all 176 people on board. Initial reports indicate mechanical issues, but Trump says he expects something else.
    • Despite Iran’s repeated denials, U.S. officials suspect the worst—that the plane was accidentally shot down by Iranian missiles. And this does turn out to be the case.
    • As soon as Ayatollah Khamenei announces that, the goodwill the Iranian government gained over the killing of Soleimani was gone and protestors took to the streets to protest the shooting down of the plane. Protestors call for Iranian leadership, including the Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, to step down.
    • Side note: I’d hate to be the guy who launched the missile that took down the plane for so many awful reasons.
    • We can keep going around in circles about who’s fault it is, but it’s both Iran’s and the U.S.’s. If we hadn’t killed Soleimani, it never would’ve happened. If Iran wasn’t a bad global neighbor, we wouldn’t have killed Soleimani. But seriously, why didn’t they ground their planes during an airstrike?
    • The downing of the plane brings Canada into the picture, as there were a lot of Canadians on board and Iranian students heading to schools in Canada. And it brings Ukraine into the picture as well, obviously.
    • Ukraine says they knew before Iran announced it that the plane was shot down, but they held off providing their evidence, letting Iran figure it out on their own. Ukraine and Iran have already agreed on full legal cooperation and compensation issues.

What Else Happened:

  1. Trump sends another 2,500 U.S. Marines to the Middle East.
  2. The Trump administration denies a visa to Iran’s top diplomat, who was supposed to address the UN Security Council this week. Iran says that it violates our UN host agreement.
  3. Steven Mnuchin announces sanctions on Iran, but seems to be working toward de-escalation in his public remarks. For its part, Iran says they don’t want any escalation or war.
  4. Trump calls on the other signatories to the JCPOA to withdraw. We can’t have that agreement hanging around that actually suspended Iran’s nuclear development.
  5. Trump thinks he can make another nuclear agreement with Iran. But why would they sign onto another deal with us?
  6. Trump says that as long as he’s president, Iran will never be allowed to have nuclear weapons. Then only reason Iran hasn’t developed nuclear weapons by this point is that they’ve been complying with the JCPOA, which Trump broke. Here’s an in-depth history of Iran’s weapons development.
  7. Mike Pence highlights the distrustful relationship between Trump and Congress when he says that the intelligence was too sensitive to share about the Soleimani killing. That’s what the Gang of Eight is for. Pence repeats the dubious claim that Soleimani was planning an imminent attack.
  8. The House passes a resolution asserting that Trump has to get Congressional approval before using further military action against Iran. It’s a symbolic gesture since the resolution is non-binding.
    • In response, Trump tells rally-goers that he has no obligation to give Congress advance warning. He says they’ll just leak it to the media.
  1. Senator Tim Kaine introduces a similar proposal in the Senate, which faces an uphill battle.
  2. The ongoing conflict in the region holds up humanitarian aid to thousands of refugees in Iraq.
  3. On the same day that the military carried out the strike on Soleimani, they carried out another attack against an Iranian military official in Yemen.
    • It was unsuccessful.
    • It raises questions of whether there really was an imminent attack or if the attack on Soleimani was part of a larger effort to cripple Iran’s Revolutionary Guard.
  1. Trump warns Iraq that the U.S. will cut their access to their central bank account if they expel U.S. forces. The account is held at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York.
  2. Instagram and Facebook begin removing all posts expressing support for Soleimani, saying they violate the sanctions against Iran.
  3. In April, the U.S. designated the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) a foreign terrorist organization. If it’s allowable under international law to designate a foreign government’s military as a terrorist organization, Trump has an argument for the strike. But I don’t think we’d want other countries designating the Marines as a terrorist organization just so they can take out the leadership. Just thinking out loud here.
  4. Russia offers Iraq an air defense system to help Iraqis ensure their own sovereignty.

Border Wall/Shutdown/National Emergency:

  1. An Arizona state legislator introduces a bill that would allow property owners at the southern border to build sections of the wall on their own property without needing city or county permits. The bill is actually intended to help a group called We Build the Wall, a privately funded group that wants to build the wall themselves.
  2. A panel of federal judges temporarily lifts a block from a lower court on the $3.6 billion Trump took from the Pentagon to build his border wall.

Travel Ban/Immigration/Discrimination:

  1. A Delaware man spray paints “God wills it” in Latin on a Planned Parenthood building and throws a lit Molotov cocktail at it. The man’s social media posts show him to be pro-Christian, anti-abortion, anti-LGBT, anti-refugee, and pro-white supremacy.
  2. Ahead of the upcoming vote in the Virginia state legislature to pass the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA), the Justice Department issues a statement saying that the process has expired and it’s too late to ratify it anyway.
    • ERA supporters file a lawsuit about that, saying that because the deadline was included in legislation authorizing ratification of the amendment and not in the amendment itself, the deadline is non-binding. I hope they’re right. I don’t want the rug pulled out from under me again.
  1. Trump is renewing his focus on immigration—both legal and not—and wants to expand the Muslim ban. The affected countries are redacted from documents, so we don’t know who they’re targeting.
  2. Under Trump’s new refugee rules, Texas Governor Greg Abbott announces that the state won’t accept new refugees. Texas is the first state to do so; a county in Minnesota became the first county to do so. Religious groups and other non-profits file a lawsuit against Abbott to fight his decision.
  3. The Trump administration is deporting asylum-seeking Mexicans, El Salvadorans, and Hondurans, but not to their home countries. They’re deporting them to Guatemala! A super safe place for a refugee, right?

Climate:

  1. A 2007 report by the UN’s IPCC predicted the catastrophic 2019/2020 fire season in Australia. To quote from the report:
    “An increase in fire danger in Australia is likely to be associated with a reduced interval between fires, increased fire intensity, a decrease in fire extinguishments and faster fire spread. … In south-east Australia, the frequency of very high and extreme fire danger days is likely to rise 4-25% by 2020.”
  2. 2019 registers as the second hottest year on record, finishing off the hottest decade on record. The past five years averaged 2 to 2.2 degrees higher than the benchmark preindustrial levels and above the Paris Accord’s goals.
  3. On the bright side, greenhouse gas emissions from the U.S. declined a bit in 2019. Data research relates the decrease to a drop in the use of coal. An increase in the use of natural gas somewhat offset the savings made by using less coal.
  4. A new study estimates that shifting from coal to gas prevented about 26,610 deaths related to heart and respiratory problems.
  5. The Keystone XL isn’t the only unpopular pipeline. Activists have been fighting the Atlantic Coast Pipeline, which would deliver shale oil from West Virginia to the North Carolina coast. The status of the pipeline has been in question since 2013, and a federal court just overturned one of the developer’s permits.

Budget/Economy:

  1. The Institute for Supply Management reported an increase in its non-manufacturing index and a continued decrease in the manufacturing index. This indicates that the services sector is strong; the manufacturing sector, not so much.
  2. Tom Donahue, long-time CEO of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce urges bipartisan support for issues like climate change and investing in infrastructure. Interestingly enough, the Chamber under his watch has fought climate change and environmental regulations, along with workplace discrimination regulations and raising the minimum wage.
  3. The New York Fed keeps pumping money into the repo market—so far more than $1 trillion in temporary financing. This means banks don’t have enough liquid assets, and the Fed is helping them out.
    • Normally, this is a quantitative easing move, but right now the back up is caused by the government’s unexpectedly large budget deficits.

Elections:

  1. Mike Pompeo has been toying with running for Senate in Kansas, but this week he says he doesn’t plan to run. That leaves Kris Kobach as the Republican candidate with the highest name recognition. Kobach is extremely popular with the hard right, but extremely unpopular with everybody else.
  2. Representative Duncan Hunter (R-CA) finally resigns from Congress following his December 3 guilty plea. He’s getting off easy because he was charged with 60 felony counts and he only pleaded guilty to one.
    • Several out-of-district Republicans are vying for his seat, including former Representative Darrell Issa.
    • It’s really notable that the district re-elected Hunter despite the fact that he was charged with those 60 felonies BEFORE the 2018 elections.
    • It’s also really notable that he immediately threw his wife under the bus when he was charged, and unsurprisingly she later agreed to cooperate with the prosecution.
    • Despite his plea, he won’t own up to any wrongdoing and continues to excuse his actions.
    • Hunter’s seat will remain empty until 2021.
  1. Steve Mnuchin pushes to delay the disclosure of the money spent on the Secret Service for presidential travel until after the 2020 presidential election.
    • In January 2019, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) reported that it cost federal agencies $13.6 million for four trips to Mar-a-Lago during one month-long period in 2017.

Miscellaneous:

  1. Defense Secretary Mark Esper’s chief of staff, Eric Chewning, resigns. Chewning has worked for three defense secretaries since January 2019.
    • Chewning was a participant in the newly released email threads showing how worried Pentagon officials were over the holdup in aid to Ukraine.
    • He’s the sixth high-level DOD official to resign in the past month; five DOD officials resigned within a one-week period in December 2019.
  1. Trump approves a declaration of emergency for Puerto Rico after the island experiences a series of sizable earthquakes. The island is still struggling to recover from hurricanes Irma and Maria in 2017.
  2. A New York State Supreme Court judge denies Trump’s request to dismiss E. Jean Carroll’s defamation lawsuit against him. Trump’s lawyers say she can’t sue Trump in New York because he made the allegedly defamatory statements in Washington D.C.

Polls:

  1. 56% of Americans disapprove of how Trump is handling Iran. 55% say killing Soleimani has made us less safe. 52% say Trump’s actions were reckless.
  2. 57% of Americans think Trump committed an impeachable offense, and 52% think he should be removed from office.
  3. A Pew Research Center survey shows a median of 64% of adults in 32 countries don’t trust Trump to do the right thing when it comes to world affairs.
    • Confidence in Obama in 2016 was at 74%, compared to Trump’s high of 31%.
    • Trump has pockets of support in the Philippines, Israel, Kenya, Nigeria, India, and Poland.
  1. Mike Pence, Donald Trump Jr., Nikki Halley, and Ivanka are the GOP’s top choices for the presidential nomination in 2020.

Week 155 in Trump – Impeachment News

Posted on January 21, 2020 in Impeachment, Trump

I‘m still catching up from the holidays, so this is my latest impeachment recap from two weeks ago.

Here’s what happened on the impeachment front for the week ending January 12…

General Happenings:

  1. John Bolton says he’ll testify in the impeachment trial if the Senate subpoenas him. He doesn’t respond when asked if he’d testify if the House subpoenas him again. Trump says he’ll invoke executive privilege if the Senate subpoenas Bolton.
  2. The Senate isn’t likely to call any witnesses unless Democrats can get at least four Republicans to agree to it.
  3. Mitch McConnell says he won’t commit to calling new witnesses or admit new evidence. He says he has the votes to approve trial rules without any votes from Democrats.
    • Factcheck: Republicans have been saying that there were no witnesses in the Clinton trial. I don’t know where they got that idea. The Senate voted to table the question of witnesses at the start of the trial (just like now), and then later voted to call witnesses. After deposing three witnesses, the Senate voted to use the depositions instead of having them appear in the Senate.
  1. McConnell signs on to Senator Josh Hawley’s (R-MO) resolution to dismiss the articles of impeachment for failure to prosecute (implying that the House didn’t do its job).
    • Hawley brought up the resolution because Nancy Pelosi still has the articles of impeachment and is waiting to find out the rules of the Senate trial so she can appoint the House managers for the trial.
    • It doesn’t look like the resolution made it to a vote, and it would require a two-thirds vote to pass unless McConnell uses the nuclear option.
  1. A majority of Americans want Trump’s top aides who were involved in the Ukraine issue to testify.
  2. A few Democrats in the Senate call on Pelosi to hand over the articles of impeachment, but Pelosi says she’ll send them to the Senate next week. She asks Jerry Nadler to name the impeachment managers.
  3. The State Department has yet another high-level defection. Michael McKinley, a career diplomat and senior advisor to Mike Pompeo, resigns. McKinley was disappointed in Pompeo’s lack of public support for his diplomats.
  4. Trump and McConnell meet in private to discuss the details of the Senate trial. Their offices have been working together to determine the structure of the trial. So much for a system of checks and balances.

Week 154 in Trump – Impeachment News

Posted on January 16, 2020 in Impeachment, Trump

It was a quiet week for impeachment news this week. But the Washington Post did publish the illustrated Mueller Report, which is pretty impressive. I guess they figured we couldn’t follow the storyline unless they published it as part storybook, part graphic novel. Take a look at it here.

Here’s what happened on the impeachment front for the week ending January 5…

General Happenings:

  1. Newly unredacted emails from a FOIA request show that Office of Management and Budget officials told the Pentagon that the order to keep military aid to Ukraine frozen came directly from Trump. One of those officials, Mike Duffy, even said that the Pentagon would be to blame if the money was not spent (the Pentagon was trying really hard to spend that money).
  2. A judge dismisses a lawsuit brought by a former national security aide over whether he should ignore Trump’s orders not to testify before Congress. The judge says the case is moot since the House withdrew their subpoena.
  3. Despite a judge’s approval of a FOIA request requiring the White House to release documents related to Ukraine’s military aid, the Office of Management and Budget says they won’t turn over 40 emails between high-level officials. Not even with redactions.

More Trouble for Parnas, Fruman, and Giuliani:

  1. Lev Parnas turns over his iPhone data and documentary evidence to the House Intelligence Committee after a court ruling allows it.
  2. It turns out that Ukraine wasn’t Giuliani’s first back-channel rodeo. In September 2018, he called the president of Venezuela, Nicolás Maduro. He also worked with then-Rep. Pete Sessions (R-TX) to give their Maduro an exit from power (and open Venezuela to U.S. business interests).

Week 153 in Trump – Impeachment News

Posted on January 12, 2020 in Impeachment, Trump

Thankfully, the holiday break also gave us a little break from the onslaught of impeachment news. But the New York Times pulled together a lot of the information we’ve learned over the past several months and published it in one big article. So I recapped that this week as well. And before you say ‘but the NYT is biased,’ everything in that article is verifiable with other sources.

Here’s what happened on the impeachment front for the week ending December 29…

General Happenings:

  1. Trump retweets a tweet identifying a person alleged to be the whistleblower. The original tweet is from an account that’s been removed several times for being a Russia-backed account. The tweet briefly disappears after a glitch, so people think Trump deleted it. He didn’t—it came back up.
    • Donald Trump Jr. has also spread the name, as have conservative news outlets. Outing a whistleblower is against the law unless you’re the president.
  1. Mitch McConnell says he hasn’t ruled out hearing witness testimony in a Senate trial, but he won’t agree to it in advance.
  2. Pelosi continues to hold on to the articles of impeachment, saying the House needs to know what kind of trial will be conducted to know how many House managers to assign. Republicans say Democrats are delaying because their case is so thin.
  3. The White House floats the argument that Trump isn’t impeached because the House hasn’t sent the articles of impeachment to the Senate.
  4. White House aides say Trump is confident he can win the messaging war via Twitter. What? How is messaging even a part of impeachment? Either he did something wrong or he didn’t.
  5. The House Judiciary Committee says they can add articles of impeachment if Don McGahn provides additional evidence. The committee is trying to get a federal appeals court to force McGahn to testify in their investigation into possible obstruction of justice as laid out in the Mueller report.
  6. A few Republican Senators have been making noises about being “disturbed” by Mitch McConnell’s coordination with the White House on the impeachment trial. That doesn’t mean they’ll do anything about it though.

The New York Times Sums It Up:

The New York Times publishes a summary of interviews with dozens of current and former government officials, newly released emails and documents, and the impeachment transcripts, putting it all together in one place.

  1. Here’s a rough timeline of events around withholding military aid to Ukraine:
    • On May 23, Trump pushed back on assurances from Gordon Sondland, Mick Mulvaney, and senior advisor Richard Blair that Ukraine President Zelensky was committed to combatting corruption. Trump said, “They are all corrupt, they are all terrible people.”
    • Blair told the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) on June 19 “we need to hold it up,” talking about the military aid.
    • Top officials learned about the hold by accident in a July 18 meeting, where a midlevel OMB official spilled the tea. After that meeting, the House Foreign Affairs Committee received four calls asking them to look into the hold.
    • On July 25, Trump and Zelensky have “the” phone call where Trump asked for a favor, though. He wanted Zelensky to look into Biden and into Ukraine interference in the 2016 election. This was the same day the actual request to freeze the aid happened and the same day that Ukraine seized a Russian tanker, a possible escalation in hostilities. A day Ukraine needed our support to be seen as having strong backing.
    • The weekend before the Pentagon’s deadline to spend the budgeted money (August 12), Mulvaney tried to schedule a call with Trump, who was at his New Jersey country club. But he had to hold up that meeting so Trump could golf with golf pro John Daly (on August 12).
    • On August 16, Bolton appealed to Trump to release the aid, bringing him a memo saying that the Nation Security Council, the Pentagon, and the State Department all wanted the aid released.
    • On August 28, Politico published their story about the aid being withheld, making the issue public.
    • On August 31, Senator Ron Johnson (R-WI) calls Trump to ask about whether the aid was contingent on getting a commitment to pursue investigations. Johnson says Trump told him it wasn’t. Around this time, Trump also learned about the whistleblower complaint.
    • On September 1, Zelensky asked Mike Pence about the aid being blocked, and Pence told him to talk to Trump. On the same day, Sondland told Zelensky’s aides that they shouldn’t expect to see any aid until they publicly announce the requested investigations.
    • On September 9, three House committees announced they were opening investigations into the freeze on military aid.
    • On September 11, Trump agreed to release the aid.
  1. But while all that was going on, these things also happened:
    • Richard Blair told Mulvaney that he could expect Congress to become “unhinged” if the administration withheld the aid designated by Congress for Ukraine. The same adviser warned that it would also make Trump look even more pro-Russia.
    • Trump’s demands for investigations created conflict and confusion in the State Department, White House, and Pentagon.
    • Opposition to the order to withhold aid from Ukraine was stronger than previously reported. Defense Secretary Mark Esper, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, and national security advisor John Bolton met with Trump to try to dissuade him.
    • Trump didn’t announce he was withholding aid publicly, he didn’t tell Congress, and he didn’t tell Ukraine (though Congress and Ukraine figured it out on their own).
    • The OMB spent months trying to come up with a reasonable justification for withholding the aid.
    • The involved officials raised questions about the legality, but those concerns were brushed aside.
    • Some officials claimed ignorance or said they didn’t put it together that there were two different channels working on Ukraine. Bill Taylor took about five minutes to figure it out, so I don’t buy their claims of ignorance.
    • Mick Mulvaney removed himself from meetings so he could legitimately say he didn’t know the whole story. But Sondland’s testimony indicates that Mulvaney was aware of the bigger picture.
    • The OMB and the Pentagon’s top budget official were at odds over this.
    • People who questioned the hold or pushed back on it were told they just had to hold the aid for now until they could revisit the issue with Trump. This indicates to me that most of the people involved knew it was wrong but didn’t know how to say no to Trump.
    • One thing that made it tricky to justify the hold was the Pentagon had already certified that Ukraine met the requirements. The Pentagon had already notified Congress it intended to spend the money as specified.
    • Mark Sandy, who controls the flow of money at the Pentagon, was asked to attach a footnote to his approval noting the hold—something he’d never done in 12 years working there.
    • The White House removed Mark Sandy’s control over the aid freeze and gave it to a political appointee, Mike Duffey, who issued several subsequent temporary holds.
    • Diplomats and foreign officials were working on the issue, as was Giuliani, during the time the aid was being withheld and just prior to it.
    • Throughout this all, officials were talking to a CIA agent who was able to put all the threads together, culminating in the whistleblower report.
    • Disagreements flared through August and September, some OMB officials resigned, John Bolton resigned, the Pentagon continued to fight for the release of aid, and the White House continued to search for legal justification for the hold.
    • Even Republican Senators pushed Trump to release the aid. 

Week 152 in Trump

Posted on January 11, 2020 in Politics, Trump

Trump joins an elite club.

I’m posting some long overdue recaps. Sorry for the delay. This was the month I became overwhelmed by the number of political happenings, and I lost the threads of the stories.

Trump is in a bit of a bind this week, with wanting to call the Democratic members of the House “do-nothing Democrats” and at the same time wanting to brag about all the things he’s accomplishing. He can’t accomplish a lot without working with House Democrats. But his coup de grace this week is this tweet: “IN REALITY THEY’RE NOT AFTER ME. THEY’RE AFTER YOU. I’M JUST IN THE WAY.” This goes beyond partisan politics and is incredibly divisive, even dangerous. I was reading a thread the other day about how Obama was the most divisive president. I welcome any comments pointing out what he ever said that comes close to the things like this that Trump says. The only thing anyone seems to come up with is his comment about clinging to guns and religion. One comment. Trump does this every single day.

Here’s what happened in politics for the week ending December 22…

Missing From Last Week:

  1. Earlier this month, dozens of graves in a Jewish cemetery were vandalized with swastikas and antisemitic graffiti in France. There was a rash of antisemitic activity 2019 in both the U.S. and Europe, to the point where Jewish people go to lengths to conceal themselves.

Shootings This Week:

  1. There were EIGHT mass shootings in the U.S. this week (defined as killing and/or injuring 4 or more people). Shooters kill 7 people and injure 44 more.
    • In Great Falls, MT, a shooter kills 3 people and injures 1 other. Police kill the shooter.
    • In San Antonio, TX, a shooter in a mall injures 4 people.
    • In Tuskegee, AL, a shooter kills 2 people and injures 2 more.
    • In Waynesboro, MS, a drive-by shooter kills 1 teenage boy and injures 6 other people.
    • In Edgard, LA, a shooter injures 4 people at an after-hours party at an elementary school. Weird.
    • In Chicago, IL, a shooter injures 13 people at a memorial celebration in a private home.
    • In Minneapolis, MN, a shooter kills 1 person and injures 7 others in an altercation that broke out in a parking lot.
    • In Baltimore, MD, multiple shooters injure 7 people in what appears to be a drive-by shooting.
  1. Congressional leaders reach a bipartisan deal to fund research into gun violence for the first time in more than two decades. It has yet to pass both chambers.

Russia:

  1. The State Department sends a letter to a Senate leader stating the administration’s opposition to Lindsey Graham’s bill that would impose new sanctions against Russia. The sanctions would punish Russia for targeting Ukraine, interfering in our 2016 elections, their attacks on its own dissidents, and their activities in Syria.
  2. Former White House and government officials say they’re perplexed by Trump’s focus on Ukraine instead of Russia as the party that interfered in our 2016 elections. At one point, Trump told White House officials that he believes Ukraine is the guilty party because “Putin told me.” So if you were wondering whether Putin influences Trump’s thoughts, wonder no more.
    • After Trump met with Putin in July 2017 in Hamburg (at the G20 summit), he became more insistent that it was Ukraine and not Russia. Now we know why.
  1. Here’s the genesis of the Ukraine theories:
    • In the summer of 2016, Paul Manafort suggested to Trump campaign aides that Ukraine was behind the DNC hack. (Multiple investigations by multiple agencies found the culprit was Russia.)
    • In early 2017, Putin claimed that Ukrainians helped Clinton in 2016, specifically Ukraine oligarchs. (One oligarch did donate millions to the Clinton Foundation, but he also donated to the Trump Foundation. There’s no evidence they helped her campaign.)
    • State-run media, Russia Today, pushed the theory that a DNC operative was in Ukraine working for the Clinton campaign to dig up dirt. (She was a DNC consultant working on her own to follow up on a lead she came across while working for another client.)
    • In April 2017, Trump alleged that CrowdStrike is based in Ukraine and is hiding a DNC server from the FBI. (CrowdStrike is the computer security company that investigated the hacking of the DNC computer, the owner isn’t from Ukraine, and there is no physical server.)
    • And that’s how you get a conspiracy theory, folks.
  1. U.S. Attorney John Durham, who is investigating the Russia investigation for Attorney General Bill Barr, requests emails, call logs, and other evidence regarding John Brennan’s role in the investigation.
  2. Rick Gates receives a sentence of 45 days in jail, to be served on weekends. He must also pay a $20,000 fine for conspiracy against the U.S. and for lying to the FBI and Robert Mueller. He’s on three years of probation and must serve 300 hours of community service. Gates cooperated extensively with the investigations, and could have received nearly five years in prison otherwise.
  3. Paul Manafort is sent to the hospital after experiencing a “cardiac event.” He’s released soon after and is back in federal custody. He’s suffered poor health since his arrest.

Legal Fallout:

  1. Cell phone records support Summer Zervos’ account of her allegations of sexual assault against Trump, at least as far as time and location go.
  2. A New York judge dismisses mortgage fraud charges brought by the state against Paul Manafort, saying the case violates double-jeopardy rules. The Manhattan District Attorney’s Office is working to make sure Manafort does his time even if Trump pardons him for federal crimes.
  3. A newly released report finds that a Washington State Representative, Republican Matt Shea, took part in an “act of domestic terrorism” when he helped plan the 2016 takeover of Oregon’s Malheur National Wildlife Refuge.
    • He participated in at least two other armed standoffs against the U.S. government.
    • He has also condoned violence against his political opponents.
    • He is suspended from the House Republican caucus. Shouldn’t he be in jail?
    • He refuses to step down.

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. The Senate confirms 12 more Trump-appointed judges. This brings the total for 2019 to 20 circuit judges and 67 district judges. He’s had over 170 federal judges confirmed so far in his term.

Healthcare:

  1. A U.S. Court of Appeals strikes down the individual mandate of the ACA as unconstitutional and orders a lower court to review the ACA to see how much of the law must go down with the mandate.
    • The lower court previously ruled that the entire ACA should be struck down.
    • This puts people with pre-existing conditions in jeopardy of not being able to obtain health insurance (yet again).
  1. Food inspectors warn that under Trump’s new rules, pork won’t be inspected as closely as normal, if at all. The new rules reduce the number of federal inspectors and allow plant employees to inspect the carcasses themselves. There are no requirements that the employees be federally trained.
    • Multiple inspectors have filed whistleblower reports.
    • This affects about 90% of the pork in the U.S.
  1. Kentucky’s new Democratic governor rescinds the state’s work requirements for Medicaid.

International:

  1. The annual survey by the Council on Foreign Relations shows that foreign policy experts and U.S. government officials consider more scenarios to be in the top tier of security risk than at any time in the past 11 years. The issues mostly center on Trump’s inconsistency in the Middle East, but also include North Korea; migration from El Salvador, Honduras, and Guatemala; tensions between Russia and Ukraine; and conflicts with China in the South China Sea.
  2. UN climate negotiations fall apart over the uncertainty of American involvement and a rift between developing nations and fast-growing economies (like China and India). Foreign leaders are hesitant to make any moves before finding out whether Trump gets re-elected in 2020.
  3. Britain’s elections all but ensure that Brexit will happen, giving global economies a little more certainty (even if it’s not the certainty they wanted). That, along with an easing of the U.S. trade war with China, bolsters business confidence for now.
  4. Britain’s Prime Minister, Boris Johnson, says his priority is to leave the EU by January 31, 2020. Britain will then need to renegotiate all their trade deals.
  5. After both the House and Senate vote to recognize the Armenian Genocide, the Trump administration says their view on it hasn’t changed from Trump’s previous statements where he didn’t recognize it as genocide. Trump says he’s a big fan of Turkish president Erdogan, and the White House convinced different senators to block the resolution three times.

Legislation/Congress:

  1. Less than two days after the House impeaches Trump, Speaker Pelosi invites Trump to give his State of the Union address on February 4.
  2. The House passes a bill to lower prescription drug prices and allow Medicare to negotiate prices. Medicare can then use those savings to expand other healthcare coverage for seniors.

Border Wall/Shutdown/National Emergency:

  1. File this under “what goes around comes around.” A judge in Texas has been quoting from a legislative provision created by House Republicans in 2014 to stymie Obama’s budgetary authority. The provision requires the president to clear any reduction in funding with Congress.
  2. The top Democratic senator on the Armed Services Committee, Jack Reed, requests an investigation into the contracts to build the border wall in light of the information coming out about North Dakota company Fisher Industries.
    • Aside from Fisher’s own controversial business dealings, ND Senator Kevin Cramer held up the confirmation of a Trump nominee for an Office of Management and Budget position over the Army Corps of Engineers panning the proposal from Fisher.
    • Fisher has a history of tax evasion, pollution citations, and environmental fines, and their previous CEO was charged with child pornography.
    • Fisher ultimately received a contract to build a portion of the wall.
  1. According to a Fox poll, the wall is not a popular issue:
    • 68% of Americans approve of Elizabeth Warren’s wealth tax compared to 44% who approve of the wall.
    • Over 50% of Americans want to see Trump impeached compared to 44% who approve of the wall.
    • Approval for the wall beats approval of a Medicare for All system by only 3 percentage points. This is the only thing on the poll that is less popular than the wall.

Travel Ban/Immigration/Discrimination:

  1. Stephen Miller has been trying to implement a plan to embed iCE agents in the refugee agency that’s responsible for caring for unaccompanied migrant minors. Thankfully, DHHS rejected this, but the department agrees to allow ICE to collect biometric information, like fingerprints, from adults who claim the children. So they’re stepping up their efforts to use migrant children to deport adults.
    • My two cents: If it costs over $700 per day to detain a migrant minor, why wouldn’t we want to release them to their family members, who will then take over the responsibility of supporting them? There are more effective methods of deportation.
    • Also, U.S. law restricts the use of our refugee program to deport undocumented immigrants.
  1. ICE has been reopening deportation cases against Dreamers that have been long since closed. Some cases have been closed for nearly a decade, and don’t involve criminal activity. ICE confirms that they are reopening these cases.
  2. After video at the Army-Navy football game catches West Point cadets and Naval Academy midshipmen flashing hand gestures that appear to be a racist signal, the internal investigations find there was no racist intent. The Army and Navy say the students were playing a silly game. The gesture is similar to an OK signal, and is considered to represent “white power.”
  3. The Senate removes the phrase “white supremacist” from a House amendment to the National Defense Authorization Act. The phrase had been added to address the threat of white nationalists in the military, and was part of the screening process for enlistees.
  4. Outgoing Kentucky governor, Matt Bevin, defends his pardon of a man convicted of raping a 9-year-old girl by saying that the child’s hymen was intact so there couldn’t have been any sexual assault.
    • Medical professionals say Bevin doesn’t know what he’s talking about.
    • The rapist served less than two years of his 23-year sentence. Bevin commuted sentences for other convicted rapists as well.

Climate:

  1. Newly released emails show that a mining company collaborated with Alaska’s governor to lobby the Trump administration to approve a mining project deemed by the EPA to be a danger to the most valuable wild salmon habitat. And by “collaborated,” I mean the mining company told Governor Dunleavy exactly what to say and write to get the project approved.
  2. A crane falls onto a barge near the Galápagos Islands, potentially spilling over 600 gallons of diesel into the water. The islands are a UNESCO World Heritage site.
  3. The Trump administration blocks a rule to require Americans to use energy-efficient light bulbs.
  4. Environmental groups sue the Trump administration over the loosening of rules that regulate chemical plant safety. This comes after an explosion at a Texas plant that injured several people.
  5. Several states file a lawsuit challenging Trump’s release of the Clean Water Rule, an Obama-era regulation that clarified the protections around federal waterways.
  6. Goldman Sachs say they won’t finance new oil exploration and drilling in the Arctic and that they won’t invest in new thermal coal mines anywhere.
  7. A group of Eastern states releases a draft plan for curbing tailpipe emissions with a cap-and-trade program.
  8. NOAA officials announce a $100 million program to restore seven coral reef sites in the Florida Keys National Marine Sanctuary. They’ll have to raise both public and private funds to do it.
  9. Communities across the country, including some by military bases, are finding extremely high levels of PFAS in their drinking water. The Department of Defense is responsible for cleaning these sites up, but they’ve been slow to do it.
    • PFAS is a family of chemicals defined by carbon-fluoride bonds, which are the strongest bonds in nature. This means the chemicals do not degrade, but they do cause a host of health problems.

Budget/Economy:

  1. Despite a strong national economy, poverty grew in 30% of counties from 2016 to 2018. At least one county in every state saw an increase in poverty. Still, the overall poverty rate dropped by one percentage point, from 13% to 12%. The biggest increases in poverty were in rural and Southern areas.
  2. The House passes the revised version of NAFTA, with the changes they negotiated. The bill now goes to the Senate. The agreement isn’t much changed, but includes some of the provisions outlined in the TPP (which Trump pulled us out of).
    • The revised agreement updates country of origin rules for tariffs, labor provisions, access to Canada‘s dairy market for U.S. farmers, intellectual property rules, and digital trade rules. It also adds a sunset clause, so it expires after 16 years.
  1. The stock market has a strong showing after Trump is impeached. I’m not sure what to take away from that other than that investors seem to be ignoring politics.
  2. Two years into the Trump administration’s tax cuts, they haven’t started to pay for themselves and the deficit hit nearly $1 trillion for FY2019. Corporate tax receipts are down by more than 20% since 2017. Individual income tax receipts are up around 8%.
  3. The tax cuts also didn’t boost economic growth as predicted.
  4. The Supreme Court refuses to hear a homelessness case, which keeps in place a lower court ruling that protects the rights of the homeless to sleep on sidewalks and in public parks if no shelter is available. This thwarts some Western cities in their efforts to clean up their streets.
  5. Trump signs the spending bill passed by the House and Senate after they remove wording requiring the prompt disbursement of future military aid to Ukraine. Trump signs the bill just in time to avoid yet another government shutdown.

Elections:

  1. A federal judge allows Georgia to go ahead with its purge of around 4% of its voters from the rolls, but he also schedules an information hearing. Just a note, in my experience (which isn’t vast), most of the voters removed from the rolls have moved or are deceased, but a handful is surprised to learn they’re no longer registered to vote.
  2. Facebook removes more than 600 accounts related to The Epoch Times for using fake identities created by artificial intelligence to push conspiracy theories in support of Trump.
    • The network was run by Vietnamese people posing as Americans, and had over 55 million followers.
    • Practitioners of Falun Gong run The Epoch Times, and they believe Judgement Day is coming soon and all Communists will be sent to hell.
  1. North Carolina Republican Mark Meadows announces he won’t run for Congress again in 2020. He also implies he’ll be working with the Trump administration.
  2. As the House votes to impeach Trump, he holds a campaign rally in Michigan. He says he’s having a good time, but he speaks for two chaotic hours, criticizing people he views as opponents and denigrating their appearance.
    • He complains about how modern toilets can’t flush and about modern lighting.
    • What Trump speech would be complete without bringing up Lisa Page, Peter Strzok, and James Comey?
    • He still complains about Hillary Clinton, which inspires chants of “Lock her up!” all over again. But then he praises Bill Clinton. Weird.
    • The crowd at least seems uneasy when Trump goes after the widow of former Michigan Rep. John Dingell.
    • He claims credit for us all being able to say Merry Christmas again… to which I can only say https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6d7mTRaUmaE.
  1. A Trump re-election advisor tells a group of Wisconsin Republicans that the GOP has traditionally relied on voter suppression to remain competitive in swing states. He adds that now that election laws have been relaxed, they won’t have to try so hard. He later says he meant that they’ve been falsely accused of voter suppression in the past.
  2. A small group of conservative political operatives launches a super PAC to fight Trump’s re-election. They’ve already raised more than $1 million. It’ll be interesting to see if they stand behind the Democratic nominee, whoever that might be.

Miscellaneous:

  1. Nancy Pelosi invites Trump to deliver his State of the Union speech on the House floor.
  2. Actor Gary Sinise and his foundation take 1,750 family members of fallen troops to Disney World.
  3. Boeing’s CEO steps down over ongoing problems around their Max 737 aircraft.
  4. Trump gets pushback from his own party when he tweets that the media and Democrats are trying to make things difficult for the “United Republican Party.”

Polls:

  1. Trump gets a little boost in approval on the impeachment vote, momentarily hitting its highest level since March of his first year.