Impeachment Inquiry 2: Now It's Official!

[fraurosena]

Right on cue Trump pulls out his playbook on what to do when your friends start telling the uncomfortable truth.

Trump pretends to ‘hardly know’ the ambassador he recently praised

Quote

Exactly one month ago this morning, Donald Trump had a very high opinion of Gordon Sondland, a Republican megadonor the president chose to serve as U.S. Ambassador to the European Union. Trump described him as “a really good man” and a “great American.”

And yet, despite the president’s self-proclaimed great memory, he had a different recollection of Sondland during a brief Q&A with reporters this morning:

QUESTION: Gordon Sondland said at the beginning of September he presumed there was a quid pro quo. Then there was a telephone call to you on the September 9th. Had he ever talked to you prior to that telephone call?

TRUMP: Let me just tell you, I hardly know the gentleman. But this is the man who said there was no quid pro quo, and he still says that…. Everybody that’s testified, even the ones that are Trump haters, they’ve all been fine. They don’t have anything.

For now, let’s put aside how spectacularly wrong the president is about the depositions in the impeachment inquiry, which even some Republicans have conceded paint a rather brutal picture for the White House. Let’s instead focus on Trump’s perspective as it relates to Sondland.

We know the president spoke to the ambassador over the phone. We know the president praised Sondland on Twitter. We even know that the Republican donor, who reportedly gave $1 million to the president’s inaugural committee, is one of “a small cadre of ambassadors who enjoy direct and frequent access to Trump.”

We also know, of course, that Sondland is a key figure in the impeachment inquiry who revised his congressional testimony this week to alert lawmakers to the fact that there was, in fact, a quid pro quo.

I can understand why Trump suddenly wants to pretend he “hardly knows the gentleman,” but it’s far too late for that.

This is, however, part of an amazing pattern for the president, who routinely pretends to forget his associates at the first sign of trouble.

Just recently, for example, Trump said he didn’t know Igor Fruman and Lev Parnas after their arrests, despite his previous interactions with them. Of course, they shouldn’t feel too bad about this, since this is the line the president always takes.

As regular readers may recall, after his former personal attorney, Michael Cohen, directly implicated Trump in a felony, the president argued, in reference to the former vice president of the Trump Organization, “Michael Cohen was a PR person who did small legal work, very small legal work.”

Around the same time, in the wake of Jamal Khashoggi’s murder, Trump reportedly told associates he “barely knows“ Mohammed bin Salman.

But that’s just the start of the list. When Paul Manafort was indicted, for example, Trump’s former campaign chairman became some random staffer “who played a very limited role for a very limited amount of time.”

When White House National Security Adviser Michael Flynn was forced to resign in disgrace, Team Trump decided he was “a former Obama administration official” who did some “volunteer” work for the president.

Carter Page was described as someone Trump “does not know.” George Papadopoulos was dismissed as a “coffee boy.” Trump World even tried to downplay its association with Cambridge Analytica, the Trump campaign’s data firm.

No one outside the White House ever takes this rhetoric seriously, but it’s obviously on the first page of Trump’s playbook, unveiled even when everyone knows it’s laughable.

 

[fraurosena]

I lack he mental gymnastics needed to follow this logic.

He does it all the time, so it's not impeachable... 

 

[fraurosena]

Oh Rufus! This made me laugh so hard.

He really can't ever admit he did something wrong, so he's undermining the already tenuous defense the trumpians have. 

 

[fraurosena]

It's not a trial, sweetie. You can stamp your little feet all you want, but until it gets to the Senate, it's only an investigation.

 

[Dandruff]

3 hours ago, fraurosena said:

Oh Rufus! This made me laugh so hard.

He really can't ever admit he did something wrong, so he's undermining the already tenuous defense the trumpians have. 

 

How about perfectly impeachable...win-win?

[GreyhoundFan]

"Media beware: Impeachment hearings will be the trickiest test of covering Trump"

Spoiler

The national media’s shortcomings have been all too obvious in recent years as Donald Trump has gleefully thrown the norms of traditional journalism into a tizzy.

They’ve trafficked in false equivalence. Allowed President Trump to play assignment editor. Gotten mired in pointless punditry.

Granted, it’s been a mixed record. Journalists have done a lot right — they have pointed out lies, dug out what’s really happening, skillfully explained and analyzed.

But on Wednesday — as televised impeachment hearings begin in the House of Representatives — journalists need to be on their game. The stakes don’t get much higher when it comes to fulfilling their core mission: informing citizens of what they really need to know.

Here’s a refresher course in what needs to go right.

Stress substance, not speculation. Journalists and pundits love to ponder about how the public is reacting to news, though they aren’t much good at it.

Avoiding that would be a public service.

“Decline to speculate on how this is playing to voters in the swing states,” is the advice of New York University professor and press critic Jay Rosen.

A related issue: The extreme likelihood that the media will be focusing on the partisan fight, rather than the substance of what is being proved or not proved in the hearings themselves.

“Journalists can focus less on combat and more on clarity,” is how Rosen puts it.

Don’t let stunts hijack the coverage. If we know anything about Trump’s reaction when things get tough, it’s that he and his allies will haul out some attention-grabbing performance art and its distractions.

Trump will act out — because that’s what he does.

Recent example: Republican members of Congress barging into a secure facility on Capitol Hill where a Pentagon official was to testify before the House Intelligence Committee. It got plenty of TV and other media coverage and allowed Republican criticism of “the process” — however empty — to take center stage.

Not so recent example: Trump’s “news conference” at an October 2016 debate featuring three women who had accused Bill Clinton of sexual assault or sexual harassment in the past. It was an obvious effort to distract from the sexual-misconduct allegations against the then-candidate himself and to embarrass his general-election opponent, Hillary Clinton.

“The hearings are going to be a three-ring circus when they should be a one-ring circus,” said Tim O’Brien, executive editor of Bloomberg Opinion and a Trump biographer.

The media, he predicted, will find it hard “not to be distracted by the dancing clowns in one ring and the flaming-sword swallower in another, but to keep our eye on the tightrope walker in the center.”

They are going to have to make some choices about what’s really important and what is pure distraction.

Avoid Barr-Letter Syndrome. It was a little over six months ago that Attorney General William P. Barr took it upon himself to summarize the Mueller report in a misleading letter that the news media — pretty much en masse — represented as an accurate summation of the 448-page report about Russian interference in the 2016 election and its aftermath.

You might remember some headlines and news reports that said, essentially, “no collusion, no obstruction.”

Of course, that’s not what the report said, as Mueller himself later tried to set straight.

You’d think journalists would have learned that lesson. But then more recently came the release of a partial, rough summary of Trump’s phone call with Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky that asked for “a favor.” (The phone call, of course, is at the heart of the impeachment hearings, which explore Trump’s holding up military aid to Ukraine in trade for help in damaging his political opponents.)

In the initial round of coverage, almost all in the news media characterized this as “the transcript,” which strongly suggested that it was verbatim. It wasn’t — though it was damning enough, anyway.

Partly as a result, we see legions of Trump fans in T-shirts with the words “Read the Transcript.”(Actually, anybody who reads the transcript would discern abuse of power.)

“Effective propaganda,” as O’Brien characterized it. “It’s meant to delude.”

Propaganda brought to you in part by the insistent gullibility of the media.

Beware mealy-mouthed and misleading language. Punditry will be running even more amok than usual once the hearings begin. And we’ll be hearing a lot about what a divided nation we have and how ugly politics has become. We’ll be hearing the term “quid pro quo” endlessly.

Jon Allsop, writing in Columbia Journalism Review, suggested “quid pro quo” is inaccurate: “A president threatening to withhold military aid to a country unless it offers dirt on a domestic political rival, as Trump did, is not merely trading favors.” Questions about extortion or bribery — far riskier terms for would-be “balanced” journalists — are closer to the mark.

As for “polarization,” it’s a kind of false equivalence expressed in a single term, suggested Rosen: “We hear, ‘Oh things are so polarized now,’ when this is really about what’s happened to the Republican Party.”

In a potent Twitter thread last week, Ezra Klein of Vox pointed out that Trump’s abuses are so blatant that he “is the easiest possible test case for ‘Can our system hold a president accountable?’ And we are failing, because Republicans are failing.”

When journalists opt for safe language, when they pointlessly speculate, or succumb to Trump’s sideshow, they flunk the test.

Time to study up and ace it.

 

[fraurosena]

National Security Advisor Robert O'Brien has told Face the Nation that Vindman will be out at NSC. 

From the interview:

Quote

MARGARET BRENNAN: Lieutenant Colonel Vindman, who has testified under oath, is serving on the National Security Council currently. Will he continue to work for you despite testifying against the president?

O'BRIEN: Well- well look, one of the things that I've talked about is that we're streamlining the National Security Council. It got bloated to like two hundred and thirty six people from- up from 100 in the Bush administration under President Obama. We're streamlining the National Security Council. There are people that are detailed from different departments and agencies. My understanding is he's- is that Colonel Vindman is- is detailed from the Department of Defense. So everyone who's detailed at the NSC, people are going to start going back to their own departments and we'll bring in new folks. But we're going to get that number down to around 100 people. That's what it was under Condoleezza Rice. She came and met with me. I met with a number of my successors.

MARGARET BRENNAN: Right. 

O'BRIEN:  We don't need to recreate the Department of Defense, the Department of State, the Department of Homeland Security over at the White House. We've got great diplomats and soldiers and- and folks that can- that do that work for us in the departments.

MARGARET BRENNAN: Just to button that up, though. You're saying Colonel-  Lieutenant Colonel Vindman is scheduled to rotate out. You are not suggesting in any way that there will be retaliation against him? 

O'BRIEN: I- I never retaliated against anyone. So the- the- it's—

MARGARET BRENNAN: But his time is coming to an end?

O'BRIEN: There- there will be a point for everybody who's detailed there—

MARGARET BRENNAN: Okay.

O'BRIEN: --that their time, that their detail will come to an end. They'll go back to their agency. And what we want them to do is take the experience and skills they learned at the White House, take it back to their departments and agencies and- and do an even better job there. And- and so we're grateful that we can have these detailees come in, and they'll come spend the year- a year or, you know, maybe a little bit more at the White House and then they'll go back to their agency. And they'll do a better job at their agency--

MARGARET BRENNAN: All right.

O'BRIEN: -- having been at the White House.  

Funny how he starts to stutter when Brennan asks him if this is retaliation for testifying against Trump.

[apple1]

Quote

O'BRIEN: "I met with a number of my successors."

(Nitpicky, but-) No, you didn't. You may have met with PREDECESSORS.

SUCCESSORS haven't happened yet.

These kinds of usages make you sound stupid.

Edited November 11, 2019 by apple1

[GreyhoundFan]

"A typical GOP senator’s shell game"

Spoiler

Sen. John Neely Kennedy (R-La.) adores the colorful turn of phrase. In just one interview on CBS’s “Face the Nation” on Sunday morning, he threw in sayings like “any fair-minded person in the Milky Way,” “any lawyer, in my judgment, who knows a law book from a J. Crew catalog” and “lap it up like a puppy.” He even referenced The Post’s motto, saying “I read somewhere that democracy dies in darkness.” Yet when it comes to impeachment proceedings, the threat to democracy isn’t darkness, but Kennedy and his fellow GOP senators’ ironclad determination to find President Trump innocent — by making it impossible for him to be guilty.

The first step in this shell game is to eliminate the importance of the “quid pro quo.” Asked by host Margaret Brennan whether a quid pro quo for the president’s political benefit would be appropriate, Kennedy sidestepped: “Here are the two possible scenarios. Number one, the president asked for an investigation of a political rival. Number two, the president asked for an investigation of possible corruption by someone who happens to be a political rival. The latter would be in the national interest. The former would be in the president’s parochial interests and would be over the line.”

You may have noticed that Kennedy’s two distinct scenarios are, in fact, one scenario. It is literally impossible for the second scenario not to also be the first scenario and vice versa. But by pretending there is a distinction, the investigation of a political rival can be cast by Kennedy or another Trump defender as the investigation of someone “who happens to be a political rival” — a far less sinister action.

The second step is to muddy the discussion of the president’s motive. Kennedy summarized how he’d assess motive this way: “Did he have a culpable state of mind? For me, Margaret, there are only two relevant questions that need to be answered. Why did the president ask for an investigation? And, number two — and this is inextricably linked to the first question — what did Mr. Hunter Biden do for the money?”

Here Kennedy offers one question that actually matters and one that is essentially useless except as a shield for the president. “What did Mr. Hunter Biden do for the money” has no actual relevance to the president’s motive. If the president asked a foreign government to investigate someone for his personal political gain, it does not matter whether that person was doing wrong. The only reason to bring Hunter Biden’s record into the discussion is to confuse observers.

The third step in Kennedy’s shell game is to distort the impeachment process. Asked to assess Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman’s testimony that “There was no doubt that the president was seeking political investigations of political rivals,” Kennedy instead criticized House Democrats. “I think that Speaker Pelosi’s decision and Adam Schiff’s decision to prevent the Republicans from calling their own witnesses in the live testimony is just doubling down on stupid,” Kennedy said. “The American people, I think, are going look at this and go, ‘I get it.’ They’re going to give the president a fair and impartial firing squad.”

Here Kennedy, despite studying law at the University of Virginia and Oxford University, seems incapable of distinguishing between the House investigation — equivalent to a grand jury, where only the prosecution presents evidence — and the Senate trial — equivalent to a criminal trial, where both sides can present evidence. If the House investigation is an “impartial firing squad,” then so is your typical grand jury. That’s surely not something Kennedy actually believes, but pretending, so let him yet again muddy the waters.

In three steps then, Kennedy avoids the damning testimony against the president from witness after witness. You’ll see other variations of these tricks from other Republicans. Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) for example argued Sunday that the president’s actions don’t matter because “every politician in Washington, other than me, virtually, is trying to manipulate Ukraine to their purposes.” Expect more of these games from Republicans, because the evidence in the president’s favor is nonexistent.

 

[fraurosena]

Maybe this should have gone in the executive departments thread, but as this is undoubtedly linked to the impeachment inquiry, I'm putting it here for context. Remember, Perry is one of the 'three amigo's', and was in the Pence delegation to the inauguration of president Zelenskyy.

After push from Perry, backers got huge gas deal in Ukraine

Quote

Two political supporters of U.S. Energy Secretary Rick Perry secured a potentially lucrative oil and gas exploration deal from the Ukrainian government soon after Perry proposed one of the men as an adviser to the country’s new president.

Perry’s efforts to influence Ukraine’s energy policy came earlier this year, just as President Volodymyr Zelenskiy’s new government was seeking military aid from the United States to defend against Russian aggression and allies of President Donald Trump were ramping up efforts to get the Ukrainians to investigate his Democratic rival Joe Biden.

Ukraine awarded the contract to Perry’s supporters little more than a month after the U.S. energy secretary attended Zelenskiy’s May inauguration. In a meeting during that trip, Perry handed the new president a list of people he recommended as energy advisers. One of the four names was his longtime political backer Michael Bleyzer.

A week later, Bleyzer and his partner Alex Cranberg submitted a bid to drill for oil and gas at a sprawling government-controlled site called Varvynska. They offered millions of dollars less to the Ukrainian government than their only competitor for the drilling rights, according to internal Ukrainian government documents obtained by The Associated Press. But their newly created joint venture, Ukrainian Energy, was awarded the 50-year contract because a government-appointed commission determined they had greater technical expertise and stronger financial backing, the documents show.

Perry likely had outsized influence in Ukraine. Testimony in the impeachment inquiry into Trump shows the energy secretary was one of three key U.S. officials who were negotiating a meeting between Trump and the Ukrainian leader.

The sequence of events suggests the Trump administration’s political maneuvering in Ukraine was entwined with the big business of the energy trade.

Perry made clear during trips to Kyiv that he was close to Bleyzer, a Ukrainian-American investor and longtime Perry supporter who lives in Houston, and Cranberg, a Republican mega-donor who provided Perry the use of a luxury corporate jet during the energy secretary’s failed 2012 presidential bid.

Perry’s spokeswoman said Wednesday that the energy secretary has championed the American energy industry all over the world, including in Ukraine.

“What he did not do is advocate for the business interests of any one individual or company,” said Shaylyn Hynes, the press secretary for the Energy Department.

Jessica Tillipman, who teaches anti-corruption law at George Washington University, said even if Perry did seek to influence foreign officials to award contracts to his friends, it is likely not illegal.

“My gut says it’s no crime,” she said. “It’s just icky.”

Zelenskiy’s office did not respond to requests for comment.

In a statement to AP, Bleyzer denied that Perry helped his firm get the gas deal.

“I believe that Secretary Perry’s conversations with Ukrainian government officials, if they in fact took place, did not play any role in Ukrainian Energy winning its bid,” Bleyzer said Tuesday. He said the process was competitive and transparent and “will hopefully serve as an example of how the Ukrainian energy market can be opened for new investments.”

Amy Flakne, a lawyer for Cranberg’s company Aspect Holdings, said Wednesday that Perry and other U.S. officials supported “a fair, competitive process to bring foreign capital and technology to Ukraine’s lagging energy sector.”

“Aspect neither sought, nor to our knowledge received, special intervention on its behalf,” Flakne said.

‘FREEDOM GAS’

As Trump’s energy secretary, Perry has flown around the globe to push for U.S. exports of liquefied natural gas, which he calls “Freedom Gas.” He’s made multiple trips to Ukraine and other former Soviet-bloc nations, where shipments of American gas and drilling technology take on strategic importance as a potential alternative to continued dependence on imports from Russia.

Ukraine has long suffered from a reputation for political corruption, particularly in its oil and gas sector. In the chaotic days following the breakup of the Soviet Union, the newly independent Ukrainian government sold off many state-owned businesses worth billions to a cadre of well-connected oligarchs who amassed immense fortunes.

As Ukraine sought economic and security support from the U.S. and other Western democracies, those countries pressed it to put in place a more open and transparent process for awarding oil and gas exploration rights on state land.

At the urging of Western partners, Ukraine’s government created a process requiring that exploration contracts be put out to bid and awarded following review from a selection board appointed by the president’s cabinet of ministers. The board recommends the winners, pending final approval from the ministers.

Those Western partners also advised Ukraine to appoint an independent supervisory board at Naftogaz, the state-owned energy company, as a guard against corruption and self-dealing.

In February, the Ukrainian government opened up bidding for nine oil and gas blocks encompassing 4,428 square miles (11,469 square kilometers) of land. Ukrainian Energy, the joint venture between Bleyzer’s investment firm SigmaBleyzer and Cranberg’s Aspect Energy, submitted a single bid for the largest block, which covers 1,340 square miles (3,471 square kilometers).

Under the contracts, the winning bidder is awarded exclusive rights to extract petroleum for up to 50 years. After the initial costs are recovered, the company and the government split the profits.

An internal review of the proposals by the Ukrainian Ministry of Energy and Coal Mining obtained by the AP show they were not the highest bidder.

The only competing bidder, UkrGasVydobuvannya, known by the acronym UGV, offered more than $60 million for the first phase of the project, compared with $53 million from Bleyzer and Cranberg, the document shows. UGV is Ukraine’s largest domestic gas producer and is a subsidiary of Naftogaz, the state-owned company where Perry sought to replace board members.

Despite the lower upfront investment, the selection board gave the Americans higher scores for technical expertise and overall financial resources, according to the document reviewed by AP.

Of the nine gas deals awarded on July 1, Bleyzer and Cranberg’s bid was the only one of the winners that didn’t include the participation of a Ukrainian company. UGV won four of the remaining bids.

Two members of the board that helped select the bid winners told the AP that the process is designed to be difficult to improperly influence because it is a mix of government representatives and industry experts.

Roman Opimakh, a commission member who is the head of the State Service of Geology and Subsoil of Ukraine, said the government was looking for foreign investment, particularly U.S., and the board considered that as a factor. He said it’s an advantage if a company is well-connected in Washington but added that he saw no indication that U.S. officials influenced the process.

Perry, who served 14 years as the governor of Texas, has publicly championed the potential of U.S. hydraulic fracturing technology to boost oil and gas production in Ukraine and pressed for the bidding process to be opened up to U.S. companies.

At an energy industry roundtable in Kyiv in November 2018, Perry said the potential for oil and gas development in Ukraine is “staggering.” Ukraine, he declared, had a chance to become “the Texas of Europe.”

At the same event, which was co-sponsored by the nonprofit U.S.-Ukraine Business Council, Perry plugged Cranberg’s expertise. Both Cranberg and Bleyzer were in the room, along with several American and Ukrainian energy industry officials.

“You know, Alex Cranberg, who has been in this business a long time, can attest to this probably as well as anyone sitting around the table, that we have the potential to change the world,” Perry said, according to a transcript released by the U.S. Embassy in Kyiv.

During the same 2018 trip, Perry had a private meeting with then-Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko, where they discussed deepening the ties between the two country’s energy industries, according to a U.S. Embassy summary of the meeting

Records suggest Perry has also met regularly with Bleyzer. Visitor logs released by the Energy Department through a public records request show Bleyzer entering through the VIP check-in desk at the building where Perry’s office is at least three times, most recently on May 8.

Less than two weeks later, Perry was on a plane to Kyiv to attend the inauguration ceremony for Zelenskiy, who had defeated Poroshenko in an April election. It was during that trip that Perry presented his list of recommended advisers that included Bleyzer and remarked on their long friendship, according to a person in the room who spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of retaliation. Attendees left the meeting with the impression that Perry wanted to replace an American representative on the Naftogaz board with someone “reputable in Republican circles,” according to the person who was there.

Bleyzer said Tuesday that he had been included in what he described as a brainstorming session with Energy Department officials about creating an informal group knowledgeable about Ukraine’s energy industry to help develop U.S. strategy, but he had no idea his name would be forwarded to the country’s new president.

“I was not aware at any time that my name was recommended by Secretary Perry to the Ukrainian government to act in any capacity,” Bleyzer said.

Perry’s work in Ukraine places him at the center of the House impeachment inquiry into efforts by Trump and his personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani to press Zelenskiy to open an investigation into Biden and his son Hunter’s business dealings with Burisma, another Ukrainian gas company.

Perry, who announced last month that he is resigning by the end of the year, has refused to cooperate with the congressional probe. In an Oct. 4 interview with the Christian Broadcasting Network, Perry said that “as God as my witness” he never discussed Biden or his son in meetings with Ukrainian or U.S. officials.

But Perry was at the White House for a key July 10 meeting where senior Ukrainian officials were told continued U.S. support was conditional on Zelenskiy’s government opening investigations into Democrats and Burisma, Army Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman, an aide on Trump’s National Security Council, testified last month.

___

TEXAS TIES

Bleyzer and Perry’s ties go back at least a decade. As governor, Perry appointed Bleyzer in 2009 to serve as a member of a Texas state advisory board overseeing state funding to emerging technology ventures. The following year, Bleyzer contributed $30,000 to Perry’s 2010 campaign for Texas governor.

The Ukrainian-born Texan cuts a flamboyant figure in the energy world. A 2012 profile in the Houston Chronicle is set in his modernist 15,000-square-foot mansion. In an accompanying photo, he stands next to his wife, a mane of gray hair to his shoulders, on a balcony overlooking a swimming pool.

A former engineer at Exxon, Bleyzer was born in Ukraine’s Kharkiv region and trained in digital electronics and quantum physics. In 1994, he founded SigmaBleyzer Investment group, a private equity firm that specializes in developing corporate stakes in Eastern Europe. The company says it manages about $1 billion in assets.

Bleyzer also has ties to Giuliani. In 2008, Bleyzer’s company hired Giuliani’s former Houston-based law firm, Bracewell & Giuliani, to help it acquire and consolidate cable holdings in 16 Ukrainian cities, including Kyiv, according to an announcement at the time. The same year, Bleyzer donated $2,300 to Giuliani’s presidential campaign.

Bleyzer’s company is the primary funder of the U.S.-Ukraine Business Council, which promotes the interests of American businesses operating in Ukraine. According to tax records, the business council is run out of the Washington, D.C, offices of its president and CEO, Morgan Williams, who is also listed as the government affairs director for SigmaBleyzer.

The council, which sponsors events that feature senior U.S. and Ukrainian government officials, pushes for policy priorities that dovetail with Bleyzer’s business interests — including lobbying to create the very process that opened Ukraine’s state-controlled oil and gas fields to foreign investment, according to the webpage of the state geology service.

Days after the government in Ukraine posted the gas blocks for bidding in February, visitor logs show Williams accompanied Bleyzer through the VIP entrance at the Energy Department.

On May 28, the day the bids were due in Kyiv, Williams again accompanied Bleyzer, who photos show was sporting a Western-style shirt with a Stars and Stripes pattern, to the offices of Ukraine’s energy ministry to submit their company’s bid.

On June 5 — while Bleyzer and Cranberg’s proposal was under review — Williams met with a key Zelenskiy adviser, Oleg Ustenko, and told him that significant expansion of oil and gas production in Ukraine could only be achieved with investments from private companies, including ones from the United States, according to a summary of the meeting posted on the business council’s website.

In an apparent dig at the company competing against Bleyzer and Cranberg for the gas deal, Williams also told Ustenko that the “participation of the state monopoly player” undermined the chances of private companies to win, according to the summary.

What the council’s media release failed to mention is that, like Williams, Ustenko serves dual roles. In addition to advising the Ukrainian president, the economist is the longtime executive director of The Bleyzer Foundation, a Kyiv-based nonprofit organization founded by Bleyzer in 2001. The group’s website describes its mission as promoting private-sector investment in Ukraine.

Less than four weeks later, Ukraine Energy was named the winner of the Varvynska block over the Naftogaz subsidiary.

Bleyzer would not say whether he considered it a conflict for his employee to simultaneously be leading the international trade group while also advocating for his private business interests.

He said the U.S.-Ukraine Business Council is just one of many organizations that strongly support the participation of foreign companies in the bidding process “as one of the key factors in helping Ukraine achieve its energy independence from Russia.”

As with Bleyzer, Cranberg also has longtime ties to Perry.

A graduate of the University of Texas in Austin, Cranberg was appointed by Perry in 2011 to serve a six-year term on the state university system’s board of regents. He is a generous political donor, giving more than $3 million since the mid-1980s primarily to Republican candidates and fundraising committees, according to federal and state campaign finance records.

In the last 13 months, Cranberg has contributed just over $650,000 to two committees focused on electing Republicans to House seats, $637,000 to the National Republican Senatorial Committee and $258,000 to the National Republican Congressional Committee. He and his wife each gave $50,000 last April to Trump Victory, the joint entity that funds the president’s reelection campaign and the Republican National Committee.

When Perry campaigned for president in 2011, federal disclosures show his campaign paid more than $16,000 to a holding company for a private jet used by Cranberg.

Cranberg is also among those who entered through the VIP desk at the Energy Department, logging in with his wife for a visit in April 2018.

Last year, his company hired Perry’s former campaign manager, Jeff Miller, as a lobbyist. Miller has been to the Energy Department’s headquarters at least a dozen times since Perry became secretary, according to the visitor logs. He mostly signed in through the VIP entrance.

 

[fraurosena]

It's great that Trump's blatant lies are finally being called out.

After Baseless Trump Claim About Transcripts, Sondland Lawyer Says His Client's is Fine

Quote

President Donald Trump accused Democrats Monday of scheming to alter witnesses’ transcripts from the impeachment inquiry, but a lawyer for a key witness said his client’s transcript looks fine. 

Robert Luskin, who represents Amb. Gordon Sondland, a key witness and a Trump administration political appointee, said his client’s testimony hadn’t been altered. “No reason to believe that the transcript was altered, and the clarification was released in the form that it was submitted,” Luskin emailed The Daily Beast on Monday morning. 

Thousands of pages of testimony have already been released and neither lawmakers nor witnesses have complained about the contents of the depositions. 

In addition to accusing Democrats of misdeeds without evidence, Trump said Republicans should release their own versions of the documents as a check. 

Sondland testified to the inquiry on Oct. 17, but updated his testimony just last week to say he had suspected the Trump administration withheld military aid from Ukraine to pressure the country into investigating a company linked to former Vice President Joe Biden. 

Democrats pointed to Sondland’s admission as evidence of their worst suspicions: that the administration put the president’s political goals over support for a key American partner at war with Russian-backed fighters. Sondland, however, also said in his update that nobody in the Trump administration told him about a quid pro quo scheme, and that he still does not know why Trump temporarily withheld the military aid. 

Sondland’s reversal has been pilloried on the right, with some Republicans even accusing him of working with Democrats.

Trump, who a month ago described the ambassador as  “a really good man and great American,” has not lashed out publicly at Sondland, but planted what seemed to a kiss of death in comments to reporters last week. 

“I hardly know the gentleman,” Trump said, when asked about Sondland’s edited testimony. 

And Sen. Lindsey Graham, one of Trump’s most staunch Congressional allies, suggested in a Fox News interview that Sondland may have conspired with Democrats to add the damaging material to his testimony. 

“Why did Sunderland change his testimony?” Graham said, inaccurately referring to Sondland. “Was there a connection between Sunderland and Democratic operatives on the committee? Did he talk to Schiff? Did he talk to Schiff’s staffers?”

 

Edited November 11, 2019 by fraurosena
clarity

[GreyhoundFan]

 

[JMarie]

5 hours ago, GreyhoundFan said:

 

Jesus also hung out with prostitutes and immigrants

[GreyhoundFan]

"White House infighting flares amid impeachment inquiry"

Spoiler

The White House’s bifurcated and disjointed response to Democrats’ impeachment inquiry has been fueled by a fierce West Wing battle between two of President Trump’s top advisers, and the outcome of the messy skirmish could be on full display this week, according to White House and congressional officials.

Acting Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney has urged aides not to comply with the inquiry and blocked any cooperation with congressional Democrats. Top political aides at the Office of Management and Budget, which Mulvaney once led, have fallen in line with his defiant stance, the officials said, speaking on condition of anonymity to talk freely about the behind the scenes developments.

Mulvaney’s office blames White House counsel Pat Cipollone for not doing more to block other government officials from participating in the impeachment inquiry, as a number of State Department officials, diplomats, and an aide to Vice President Pence, have given sworn testimony to Congress.

Cipollone, meanwhile, has fumed that Mulvaney has only made matters worse with his Oct. 17 news conference, when he publicly acknowledged a quid pro quo, essentially confirming Democrats’ accusations in front of television cameras and reporters. Cipollone did not want Mulvaney to hold the news conference, a message that was passed along to the acting chief of staff’s office, according to two senior Trump advisers, who spoke on the condition of anonymity. A Mulvaney aide said a team of White House lawyers prepared him for the news conference and never said he should not do it.

Neither Mulvaney nor Cipollone has broad experience navigating a White House through such a tumultuous period. But their actions have contributed to the White House’s increasingly tenuous response to the impeachment inquiry, where public hearings are set to begin Wednesday in the House. Despite the high stakes, the White House moved slowly to hire a staff specifically dedicated to working on the impeachment issue, a concern that was expressed to the White House by multiple GOP senators, Hill aides said.

“This will be the toughest political fight this White House has faced. They need to be sure they are totally-focused, and that all their fire is pointed outward - not at each other,” said Michael Steel, a GOP strategist who was a top aide to former House Speaker John A. Boehner (R-Ohio).

Complicating matters, on Friday, the same day he defied a congressional subpoena to testify, Mulvaney sought to join a separation-of-powers lawsuit filed against Trump and the House leadership by a one-time deputy to former national security adviser John Bolton. The move infuriated Bolton allies, The Post has reported, partly because Bolton and other national security aides viewed Mulvaney as a key architect in pressuring Ukraine to launch political investigations on behalf of Trump.

Mulvaney’s move to join the lawsuit baffled several administration officials, people familiar with the matter said. The lawsuit could have provided a legal basis for Mulvaney’s refusal to testify in the impeachment inquiry, but late Monday he withdrew saying he will file his own lawsuit to ask the courts to decide if senior Trump administration officials must testify in the impeachment inquiry.

OMB has served as Mulvaney’s biggest bulwark because that agency played a key role in blocking $400 million in security aide to Ukraine over the summer. OMB is led by a close Mulvaney ally, acting director Russell T. Vought, who has refused to cooperate with the impeachment inquiry, as have other political appointees at the agency. But the increasingly political nature of OMB has rattled a number of high-level career staffers, and several have resigned in the past year, including one who announced his departure in the midst of the turmoil this summer.

Employees at the normally under-the-radar budget agency watched in dismay as political appointees at OMB took the highly unusual step of overruling the concerns of career staff to hold up the Ukraine military aid, according to multiple former agency officials who remain in touch with current employees and spoke on the condition of anonymity to protect career staffers.

“Everyone was freaked out because it so violated the norms of OMB,” said one former longtime career employee, speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss private conversations. The impeachment inquiry now threatens to ensnare career staffers at OMB, one of whom, Mark Sandy, was called to testify Friday but failed to appear. A series of State Department and National Security witnesses have told impeachment investigators that the aid was held up as part of a quid pro quo to get Ukraine to announce investigations, including Trump’s Democratic rival Joe Biden, but OMB staffers could fill in key details on what took place.

The White House denied the existence of any internal tensions.

“We are one team and we work well together. The palace intrigue stories are false and they need to stop,” White House press secretary Stephanie Grisham said in an email.

But Trump has complained about his legal team to White House officials and advisers in recent weeks, saying they need to be more aggressive and defend him more. Cipollone released a letter from Trump saying the White House would not be cooperating with the impeachment inquiry. But a senior administration official said Cipollone since then has failed to do more to keep members of the administration in line.

“Those who have aligned with the president and followed the president’s instincts on not to cooperate have been successful and been that firewall,” said this official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal deliberations. Cipollone, this person said, “has been pretty weak in ensuring people are on lockdown.”

At the same time, Trump has been complaining about Mulvaney, blaming him for his political troubles, and toyed with the idea of replacing him, two officials said.

Another dispute between the Mulvaney and Cipollone camps emerged over the potential hiring of former Rep. Trey Gowdy (R-S.C.) to be part Trump’s team defending against impeachment. Trump was looking for outspoken supporters and Mulvaney advocated for hiring his former House colleague and longtime friend Gowdy, a former federal prosecutor-turned-Fox News personality.

But Cipollone was opposed. And ultimately the Gowdy boomlet collapsed within a period of days last month as White House officials said federal lobbying rules could prevent him from starting until January.

Some Hill Republicans were not pleased and have accused Cipollone of being territorial behind the scenes. They wanted Gowdy, who led the GOP investigation of the Benghazi terrorist attack on the U.S. Consulate in Libya, to lead the cross-examination for Trump in the Senate — a role Cipollone is said to want for himself.

“Each wants to be in charge of impeachment,” one Senate GOP aide said of the Mulvaney-Cipollone fight. “Cipollone seems more like he’s protecting his turf than anything else …. He doesn’t want any competition.” The aide spoke on the condition of anonymity to freely describe private concerns.

Some administration officials complain that Cipollone has not kept Mulvaney and other White House offices in the loop on key decisions. Cipollone’s office released the transcript of the president’s July 25 call with his Ukrainian counterpart — a move that Mulvaney opposed, administration officials said. Neither the acting chief of staff nor some members of the White House press office knew ahead of time that was going to happen, the officials said.

Tensions between the two camps were inflamed when Mulvaney gave an Oct. 17 briefing to White House reporters and appeared to acknowledge the president sought to withhold the U.S. aid to Ukraine as part of a quid pro quo. Mulvaney said the administration did not release the security assistance to the country because the president wanted Ukraine to first agree to an investigation into corruption, and a discredited theory that evidence of Russia’s interference in the 2016 election had been fabricated. Mulvaney later issued a statement insisting that he had not confirmed a quid pro quo and that reporters had misinterpreted his words, which were televised.

The divisions within the administration, at a time when it should be presenting a united front against House Democrats, are serious enough that they have caught the attention of Senate Republicans, who are concerned that the administration is not properly prepared for a Senate impeachment trial that could start in January. The House is expected to pass articles of impeachment against Trump as soon as December, triggering a trial in the Senate.

“This impeachment trial is going to be here before the White House knows it and they’re not even remotely prepared for it,” said the Senate GOP aide. “What they need desperately is leadership to get ready, but until Mulvaney and Cipollone put aside their petty squabbles and start working together all they’ll have is tweets.”

This aide said that GOP senators have been concerned that the White House was moving too slowly to hire staff specifically dedicated to working on the impeachment issue as the inquiry moves into its public phase, Multiple senators made this concern known to the White House, the aide said. These concerns were finally alleviated last week with news that Pam Bondi, the former attorney general of Florida, and Tony Sayegh, a former Treasury Department spokesman, would join the administration to work on impeachment-related messaging and other issues.

“I think Pam Bondi will be very helpful,” said Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), adding that the Senate is unlikely to impeach the president. “Things are better now, I think. Pam will do a good job. They still need to build their legal team out some.”

 

[fraurosena]

In other words, his defense is going to be: “I’m not lying, you’re lying!”

 

[fraurosena]

Whoah.

Mulvaney suing to see if he can testify? If the inference is that he actually wants to testify (and tell the truth) then this could be huge. But I’m not so sure. He could have simply complied with his subpoena last week. Unless something has happened in the meantime that has him scrambling to cover his ass on both sides.

”America, I’m such a good guy, and I did the right thing and gave damning testimony and now Trump is out!”

“Boss, they made me testify, but you weren’t removed from office, so we’re still good, right?”

 

Edited November 12, 2019 by fraurosena

[fraurosena]

It doesn't matter if he releases it today, like he first said he would, or later in the week. That transcript will only serve to underline the complete turnaround in tone from the first call to the July 25th call. 

 

[GreyhoundFan]

From Eugene Robinson: "Rank partisan solidarity is all Trump’s defenders have left"

Spoiler

If President Trump is impeached by the House without the vote of a single Republican, you know what? He’ll still be impeached, and for good reason.

The same will be true if every Republican senator votes to acquit him. Partisan GOP solidarity might keep Trump in office — for another year — but it neither changes the facts as we know them nor absolves Congress of its constitutional responsibility. A decision by Republicans to put party loyalty ahead of the national interest cannot be allowed to derail this necessary process.

Would a “partisan” impeachment divide the country? If you haven’t noticed, the nation is pretty divided already. It’s understandable to worry about the reaction of the nearly 45 percent of Americans who, according to the FiveThirtyEight average of polls, oppose impeachment and removal. But what about the 48 percent who support it?

I put the word partisan in quotes because the House, in constitutional terms, is acting not as “House Democrats” but as the House itself. The fact that the Democratic Party holds the majority does not absolve Speaker Nancy Pelosi or any other House member of the duty to hold Trump accountable for “Treason, Bribery, or other high Crimes and Misdemeanors.” If Trump grossly abused his power and committed bribery in his dealings with Ukraine, as evidence strongly indicates, the House has no choice.

Tribalistic party identity is basically all the president’s defenders have left.

They complained that the House had not taken a formal vote to proceed with impeachment . . . but then the House held such a vote. They complained that the House impeachment investigators were taking depositions of witnesses in secret . . . but Republican committee members already had access to those hearings. They complained that transcripts of those interviews had not been released . . . but now they are being released, and one of the loudest complainers, Sen. Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.) says he will refuse to read them. They complained that there had been no public testimony that would allow the American people to judge for themselves . . . but a public phase of the House investigation is beginning this week, with the first witnesses scheduled to appear Wednesday.

The latest diversionary Republican complaint is that the whole process is somehow illegitimate unless the anonymous whistleblower who brought the Ukraine scandal to light is made to testify publicly.

The problem with this contention is that the whistleblower’s secondhand suspicions have long since been superseded by firsthand sources and documents, including the rough transcript of the phone call between Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky that was released by the White House. Republicans are basically arguing that an alleged arsonist, caught with a gas can in one hand and matches in the other, cannot be fairly tried without testimony from the passerby who saw a building on fire and called 911.

You will note that all of the above arguments have to do with process, not substance. Evidence clearly indicates that Trump conditioned official acts — release of nearly $400 million in military aid and an invitation to the White House — on a commitment by Zelensky to meddle in the 2020 U.S. election. Republican members of Congress used to deny there was any quid pro quo, which in this case is Latin for bribery. Now they say there was, but it doesn’t rise to an impeachable offense.

Assuming no exculpatory evidence surfaces, articles of impeachment will surely be drafted and brought to the House floor. I hope that some Republicans — perhaps a number of the 20 who have announced they are retiring — vote conscience over party. But if the entire GOP caucus puts party before duty, so be it. Democrats and the lone independent congressman (former Republican Rep. Justin Amash of Michigan) will have honored their oath to defend the Constitution.

Then would come a trial in the Senate. With the exception of Graham and a few others, most Republican senators are taking the position that since they are potential jurors who may be called to sit in judgment of Trump, it would be improper for them to comment. I know for a fact that many of them are fully aware of how dangerously unfit Trump is to serve as president. I also know they greatly fear his wrath. Unless public airing of the evidence causes Trump to lose support among the GOP rank-and-file — which is possible but far from guaranteed — the Senate has to be considered highly unlikely to vote for removal.

But that is not an outcome to fear. If Republicans in Congress fail to do their jobs, voters will have to do it for them. This is not a moment to calculate the political odds. It’s a moment to do the right thing.

 

[fraurosena]

Democrats sharpen their message on impeachment

Quote

In a last-minute move, Democrats are shifting their impeachment rhetoric and talking points just days before the first public hearings into President Trump’s handling of foreign policy in Ukraine.

The televised hearings mark a crucial phase in an investigation conducted thus far behind closed doors, as Democrats seek to swing public opinion — and by extension, that of Republicans — behind the central inference of their impeachment inquiry: that Trump broke the law and should be removed from office.

As part of that outreach effort, many well-placed Democrats are dropping the opaque Latin phrase that has dominated the seven-week impeachment investigation — “quid pro quo” — and embracing distinct legal terms like “extortion” and “bribery” that are explicit in their reference to criminality and easier for the public to digest. 

Rep. Jim Himes (D-Conn.), a senior member of the Intelligence Committee, which will be leading the impeachment hearings, said over the weekend that Democrats need to “forget quid pro quo.” 

“When you are trying to persuade the American people of something really pretty simple, which is that the president acted criminally and extorted in the way a mob boss would extort somebody, a vulnerable foreign country,” Himes said on NBC’s “Meet the Press,” “it’s probably best not to use Latin words to explain it.”

Another Intelligence member, Rep. Eric Swalwell (D-Calif.) said on CBS’s “Face the Nation” that Democrats have “evidence of an extortion scheme using taxpayer dollars to ask a foreign government to investigate the president’s opponent.”

Rep. Jackie Speier (D-Calif.), a third Intelligence member, argued that Trump withholding aid while demanding Ukraine carry out the investigations amounts to “a very strong case of bribery.”

“And the Constitution is very clear: treason, bribery or acts of omission. In this case, it’s clearly one of those,” Speier said on ABC’s “This Week.”

All three lawmakers are allies of Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), though Pelosi has walked a fine line since announcing the impeachment inquiry in late September. She’s argued the importance of investigating allegations that Trump abused his office, while being careful to say Democrats haven’t yet reached any conclusions about whether his actions merit impeachment.  

And not all Democrats on Capitol Hill are adopting the more direct extortion and bribery language. Some are concerned that Trump and his allies will easily parry allegations of those specific crimes by trumpeting simple claims that “no extortion” and “no bribery” took place. 

“No collusion” became a familiar refrain from Trump during former special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into 2016 election interference, and the president has insisted there was “no quid pro quo” with Ukraine.

These Democrats believe their party needs to frame their impeachment inquiry in serious but more sweeping terms: Trump is trying to fix the presidential election and “cheat our democracy.”

“The original sin is that President Trump abused his power to try to rig the 2020 election to his advantage. How did he do it? He used the power of his office to withhold military aid to pressure Ukraine to manufacture dirt on his political rival,” said a Democratic leadership aide working on impeachment.

“Hurting our national security to help win elections is wrong, no matter what you call it. The president calls it ‘perfect’ and has shown us he will do it again,” the aide said.

Pelosi formally launched the impeachment inquiry following allegations by an anonymous government whistleblower that Trump had withheld U.S. military aid to Kyiv as leverage to secure a commitment from Ukrainian leaders to open anti-corruption investigations into the 2016 election and former Vice President Joe Biden, both of which could have helped Trump politically heading into the 2020 election.

Republicans have dismissed the notion that Trump’s request was out of bounds, arguing he was merely fighting to ensure taxpayer dollars were not misspent in a country long known for corruption. Such caution, they contend, is customary for executive agencies distributing aid abroad. 

Rep. Mark Meadows (R-N.C.) said one of last week’s closed-door witnesses, David Hale, the third-ranking official at the State Department, testified to that very point. 

“The suspension of foreign aid, and the evaluation of that, is not a new thing,” Meadows said. “In fact, what we’re hearing … is this is part of a broader analysis of foreign aid in general in terms of what we should do. It wasn’t just Ukraine where the aid was held up.”

Democrats are leaning toward a different verdict, citing a number of other witnesses who testified to the veracity of the whistleblower complaint. For weeks, many Democrats have invoked the “quid pro quo” language — literally “this for that” — in accusing Trump of enlisting a foreign leader to influence a U.S. election.

That, however, is starting to change as Democrats prepare to stage two public hearings on the Ukraine affair this week. A key member of Pelosi’s leadership team, Assistant Speaker Ben Ray Luján (D-N.M.), said he completely agreed with Himes’s characterization of Trump’s activities as extortion.

“The president was engaged in an extortion in the same way that a mob boss would shake somebody down,” Luján said on MSNBC on Sunday night. “The corruption surrounding this is on full display. And we should call this for what it is.”

Laurence Tribe, professor of constitutional law at Harvard University, suggested the Democrats’ references to a quid pro quo were a tactical mistake for a party hoping to sway public sentiment. And he welcomed the shift to more clearly defined terms.

“It’s easier for the public to understand English-language concepts like ‘bribery’ and ‘extortion’ than it is for most people to plumb the meaning of the Latin phrase ‘quid pro quo,’ ” Tribe said Monday in an email, “and public comprehension is essential to the proper use of the impeachment power.” 

Tribe, a frequent Trump critic, rattled off a host of additional reasons he thinks the more explicit terms will prove more effective for Democrats taking their impeachment case public. 

Among them, the quid pro quo language “completely fails to capture what’s wrong about the behavior this president has undoubtedly engaged in,” Tribe said, while making it “much too easy” for Trump’s Republican allies “to claim that our government, speaking through the president, regularly imposes conditions on foreign assistance.”

The shifting rhetoric, Tribe added, also undercuts a key Republican argument — that Trump’s actions don’t rise to the level of impeachment — by borrowing language directly from the Constitution’s description of what merits a president’s removal: “treason, bribery, or other high crimes and misdemeanors.”

For Democrats, the evolving language may also provide some clue as to specific charges they’re eyeing as they weigh whether Trump’s dealings with Ukraine merit the drafting of impeachment articles. 

House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) has made clear that he’s already considering the White House’s refusal to cooperate in the probe to be evidence of obstruction of Congress, which stood as one of the impeachment articles against former President Nixon in 1974. Mueller’s report, which outlined 10 different episodes of potential obstruction of justice, could also guide such an article. 

Democrats have virtually decided that Trump abused his power in pressing Ukraine to investigate political rivals — another of the potential articles. And many in the party have cited Trump’s various business interests as clear violations of the Constitution’s emoluments clause. 

The change in rhetoric has not gone unnoticed by Intelligence Committee Republicans like Rep. Lee Zeldin (N.Y.). He argued that there was no extortion because Ukraine early on did not know the military aid was being withheld. 

“Dems have a new word of the day: ‘extortion’. The shiny object of ‘quid pro quo’ totally fell apart on them,” Zeldin tweeted. “Same problem though w/their new shiny object: Ukraine didn’t know there was a hold on aid until just before it was lifted. They didn’t have to do anything to get it lifted.”

Note that Lee Zeldin's argument that there was no extortion because Ukraine didn't know there was a hold on aid was thoroughly debunked by Catherine Croft's testimony, stating Ukraine was already well aware of it in the spring. Something he should know, being on the Intelligence Committee and all...

Edited November 12, 2019 by fraurosena

[fraurosena]

Somebody is getting rather frantic about tomorrow and furiously attempting to deflect from the real issue at hand: his extortion of a foreign country.

He doesn't realize that, yet again, he is publicly admitting to asking for another country to investigate a US citizen, in order to aid his re-election. 

 

 

[fraurosena]

Good points on the egregiousness of Trump's extortion.

 

[GreyhoundFan]

 

 

[fraurosena]

Mulvaney did a sudden about face. 

Which wasn't a such a smart thing to do.

 

Edited November 12, 2019 by fraurosena
darned merged posts!

[fraurosena]

Adam Schiff is reminding all members of Congress they should '...approach these proceedings with the seriousness of purpose and love of country that they demand.'

 

Sadly, I think his request will fall on deaf trumplican ears. With Jim Jordan now on the Intelligence committee, shenanigans and hullabaloo are a given.

[fraurosena]