Impeachment Inquiry 2: Now It's Official!

[fraurosena]

21 minutes ago, SassyPants said:

He is a lying liar who lies.

Yep.

Fact check: A list of 45 ways Trump has been dishonest about Ukraine and impeachment

Quote

President Donald Trump is dishonest about a whole lot of things. But he is rarely as comprehensively dishonest as he has been about his dealings with Ukraine and the impeachment inquiry they have triggered.

Relentless deceit has seemed to be his primary defense strategy in the court of public opinion. Trump has made false claims about almost every separate component of the story, from his July phone call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to the whistleblower who complained about the call to Democrats' impeachment inquiry hearings.

The President is dissembling about so many different topics at once that it can be difficult to keep track of what is true and what isn't. To help you fight Trump-induced dizziness, here are brief fact checks of 45 separate false claims Trump has made on the subject of Ukraine or impeachment.

The phone call with Zelensky

1. Trump released an "exact transcript" of his call with Zelensky. (The document says on its first page that it is "not a verbatim transcript.")

2. Trump did not ask Zelensky for anything on the call. (Trump asked Zelensky to look into former Vice President Joe Biden, look into a debunked conspiracy theory about Democratic computer servers, and speak with his personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani and Attorney General William Barr.)

3. Zelensky criticized former US ambassador to Ukraine Marie Yovanovitch "out of the blue" on the call. (Trump brought up Yovanovitch first.)

4. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi was "angry" when she saw the rough transcript of the call, and she said, "This is not what the whistleblower said." (Pelosi has said no such thing in public, and there is no evidence she has said anything like that in private. Her public statement on the call was scathing.)

5. "Everybody" that looked at the text of the call agreed that it was "perfect." (Some of Trump's staunch defenders agreed with this characterization, but clearly not "everybody" did.)

6. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell spoke to Trump about the call and said, "That was the most innocent phone call that I've read." (McConnell said he doesn't recall speaking to Trump about the call. His public statement on the call was far less effusive than Trump's description.)

7. People are not talking about the call anymore. (People continue to talk about the call, a central focus of the impeachment inquiry.)

8. The Washington Post made up fictional sources for its article on how Trump had allegedly tried to get Barr to hold a news conference saying Trump had broken no laws in the call. (There is no evidence that the Post invented sources. Other major news outlets, including CNN, quickly reported the same thing the Post did.)

The whistleblower

9. The whistleblower was "sooo wrong." (The rough transcript and witness testimony have proven the whistleblower to have been highly accurate.)

10. The whistleblower, a second whistleblower and the first whistleblower's source have all "disappeared." (There is no evidence for this. Whistleblowers do not have an obligation to speak publicly after filing their complaints.)

11. The whistleblower had "all second hand" information. (While the whistleblower did get information about the call from other people, the whistleblower also had "direct knowledge of certain alleged conduct," noted Michael Atkinson, the Trump-appointed inspector general for the intelligence community.)

12. The whistleblower "said 'quid pro quo' eight times." (The whistleblower did not even use the words "quid pro quo" in the complaint, much less specify a number of times Trump allegedly said those words. Trump may have been referring to a Wall Street Journal article that had asserted that Trump urged Zelensky "about eight times to work with Rudy Giuliani" on a probe that could hurt Biden; the article did not say this claim came from the whistleblower.)

13. The whistleblower "works now for Biden." (There is no evidence for this. The whistleblower's lawyers said their client has never worked for or advised a candidate, campaign or party; the lawyers said the whistleblower has come into contact with presidential candidates for both parties while working as a civil servant in the executive branch.)

14. Someone "changed the long standing whistleblower rules" just before this whistleblower submitted their complaint. (Contrary to a report on a right-wing website, the whistleblower rules were not changed.)

House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff

15. Schiff committed "a criminal act" by delivering an exaggerated interpretation of Trump's July 25 call at a committee hearing. (The Constitution gives members of Congress immunity for comments they make at committee.)

16. Schiff did have immunity for his comments at the committee, but not when he tweeted a video of those comments. (Experts say members of Congress also have immunity for videos of their comments at committee.)

17. Schiff might have committed "treason." (Treason has a specific constitutional definition that Schiff's actions do not come close to meeting.)

18. Schiff made his comments before Trump released the rough transcript of the call, not expecting Trump to release it. (Schiff spoke the day after Trump released the document.)

19. Schiff "didn't use one word that I said" in his rendition of the call. (Schiff did add words Trump had never said, but he didn't make up the whole thing; some of his remarks hewed closely to what Trump said.)

20. Schiff might have been the whistleblower's source. (This is nonsense. The whistleblower said in the complaint that information about the call came from "multiple White House officials with direct knowledge of the call.")

21. Schiff might have picked the whistleblower. (The whistleblower sought guidance from Schiff's committee before filing their complaint, but Schiff didn't "pick" the whistleblower.)

22. Schiff "will only release doctored transcripts." (Schiff has already released multiple transcripts of testimony from closed-door impeachment inquiry hearings, and there was no sign that any of them had been "doctored." Witnesses and their lawyers were given the opportunity to verify the accuracy of the transcripts prior to release, and Republicans who attended the testimony did not allege that any transcripts had been improperly altered.)

The impeachment process

23. Republicans were not allowed into the closed-door impeachment inquiry hearings. (Republican members of the three committees holding the hearings were allowed into the room and to ask questions of witnesses. Only Republicans who were not on the committees were barred from the room.)

24. Republicans were not allowed to ask questions in the closed-door hearings. (Republicans were allowed to ask questions. Democrats and Republicans alternated questioning.)

25. Nobody else has ever faced closed-door impeachment hearings. (Both the Richard Nixon and Bill Clinton impeachment processes involved some closed-door hearings.)

26. Trump's opponents have committed "illegal acts" related to impeachment. (Trump wasn't clear about who he was talking about, but there is no evidence of illegality by either the whistleblower or Democrats.)

27. The people who have testified in the impeachment inquiry have had "no firsthand knowledge." (Various witnesses have had firsthand knowledge of various components of the story.)

28. Gordon Sondland, ambassador to the European Union, still says there was "no quid pro quo." (Sondland revised his original testimony to effectively acknowledge his belief that there had been a quid pro quo.)

29. Unlike Democrats, former House Speaker Paul Ryan "would never issue a subpoena." (Numerous Republican subpoenas were issued to the Obama administration during Ryan's tenure as speaker.)

30. "Many" of the people who had testified as of October 21 "were put there during Obama, during Clinton, during the Never Trump or Bush era." (FactCheck.org noted that just two of the nine people who had testified at that point had been appointed under Obama. The other seven were appointed by Trump or his appointees.)

The Bidens

31. Joe Biden, along with his son Hunter Biden, has "ripped off at least two countries for millions of dollars." (There is no evidence Joe Biden has profited from his son's business dealings abroad.)

32. A video of Joe Biden speaking in 2018 about his past dealings with Ukraine is evidence of "corruption." (The tape does not show corruption. It shows Biden talking about his effort, in accordance with the policy of the US and its allies, to pressure Ukraine into firing a prosecutor widely considered unwilling to fight corruption.)

33. There is a photo of Joe Biden playing golf with "the company boss" of Burisma, the Ukrainian company for which Hunter Biden sat on the board. (Neither Burisma's owner nor chief executive is in the photo. The person Trump had identified as a "Ukraine gas exec" was Devon Archer, another American board member at Burisma and a longtime business associate of Hunter Biden.)

34. That golf photo contradicts Joe Biden's claim to have "never met the gentleman." (Joe Biden had not claimed to have never met Devon Archer.)

35. Hunter Biden was under investigation by the Ukrainian prosecutor who Joe Biden pressured Ukraine to fire. (There is no public evidence that Hunter Biden was ever himself under investigation. The prosecutor's former deputy has said that the actual investigation, into the owner of Burisma, was dormant at the time of Joe Biden's pressure.)

36. Biden pressured Ukraine to take the prosecutor "off the case." (There is no evidence that Biden ever called on Ukraine to remove the prosecutor from the Burisma case. Rather, Biden, like the US government more broadly, tried to get the prosecutor, Viktor Shokin, fired.)

37. Before Joe Biden denied that he had spoken to Hunter Biden about Hunter's overseas business activities, Joe Biden had said he did speak to Hunter about those business activities. (Joe Biden had not said he did speak to Hunter Biden about those business activities. Hunter Biden said they had one brief conversation in which Joe Biden asked him if he knew what he was doing.)

38. Hunter Biden's acts were "illegal." (Hunter Biden has acknowledged using "poor judgment" in accepting the seat on the Burisma board, but there is no evidence of illegality.)

Dealings with Ukraine

39. Trump "didn't delay" the military aid to Ukraine. (His administration did delay the aid.)

40. Democratic senators sent a letter to Ukraine that threatened to deny US aid if the Ukrainians did not comply with their demands. (The letter did not make any threat to Ukraine. The senators expressed concern about a New York Times report that Ukraine had, to avoid Trump's wrath, stopped cooperating with the Mueller investigation and frozen investigations into former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort. The letter urged Ukraine to reverse course if the report was true.)

41. President Barack Obama sent mere "pillows and sheets" in aid to Ukraine. (Trump was correct that Obama refused to provide lethal military assistance, but Obama sent other military assistance: drones, armored Humvees, counter-mortar radars, night vision devices and medical supplies.)

42. The US is the "only" country providing assistance to Ukraine, and "nobody else is there." (European countries have provided billions in grants and loans to Ukraine since Russia's 2014 invasion.)

43. Cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike is primarily owned by someone from Ukraine. (CrowdStrike is a publicly traded, US-based company co-founded by Dmitri Alperovitch, an American citizen who was born in Russia.)

Polls

44. Impeachment has caused Trump's poll numbers to go "way up" to "higher than they've ever been, ever." (There has been no sign of a significant increase in Trump's poll numbers. His approval rating has fallen slightly since the Ukraine scandal began, according to FiveThirtyEight's poll aggregate.)

45. It was "announced" that a Fox News poll showing majority support for impeaching and removing Trump from office was "incorrect." (Fox News says it stands by the poll.)

 

[GreyhoundFan]

Because why be concerned about security? "Sondland discussed sensitive matters with Trump on phone from Kyiv restaurant as waiters circled"

Spoiler

Waiters were coming and going as U.S. Ambassador to the European Union Gordon Sondland spoke on the phone with President Trump on July 26 from the outdoor section of a central Kyiv restaurant and discussed the Ukrainian president’s willingness to conduct politically charged investigations, an episode that also highlighted the lack of security around a presidential call, according to testimony to Congress and a person familiar with the episode.

Sondland arrived in Kyiv and scrapped a schedule the embassy had arranged for him, which included a meeting with the man who would subsequently become Ukraine’s prime minister, instead saying he wanted to meet only with Volodymr Zelensky, the Ukrainian president, and the two aides closest to him: head of the presidential administration Andriy Bohdan and adviser Andriy Yermak, according to the person, who spoke on the condition of anonymity given the sensitive nature of the subject.

Sondland’s interactions in Kyiv — the day after Trump called Zelensky and exhorted him to investigate former vice president Joe Biden — will be scrutinized in public testimony Sondland is scheduled to give this week at the impeachment inquiry.

Robert Luskin, an attorney for Sondland, didn’t respond to a request for comment.

Congressional focus has intensified on the episode at the Kyiv restaurant called SHO, in which Sondland pulled out his mobile phone and dialed up Trump. In a closed-door hearing on Friday, David Holmes, an embassy staffer who was sitting at the table, testified that he overheard the conversation, which began with Trump asking if Sondland was calling from Ukraine.

“Ambassador Sondland replied, yes, he was in Ukraine, and went on to state that President Zelensky ‘loves your a--,’” Holmes testified in his opening statement. “I then heard President Trump ask, ‘So, he’s gonna do the investigation?’ Ambassador Sondland replied that ‘he’s gonna do it,’ adding that President Zelensky will do ‘anything you ask him to.’ ”

Two other people were sitting at the table at the time and would potentially be able to corroborate Holmes’s account: Suriya Jayanti, an embassy staffer who served as Sondland’s control officer for the trip, meaning she arranged his schedule and accompanied him wherever he went, and Tara Maher, Sondland’s personal assistant, according to people with knowledge of the lunch.

Sondland didn’t receive the kind of direct assurances he relayed to Trump during the meetings he held earlier that day with Zelensky and Bohdan, according to testimony from Holmes and people familiar with those meetings.

But Sondland did slip away for a one-on-one meeting with Yermak after meeting Zelensky, and shortly after that meeting concluded, went to the Kyiv restaurant and placed the phone call to Trump. Holmes testified that he was blocked from attending the meeting with Yermak as a note taker.

Sondland was also texting back and forth on WhatsApp with Yermak throughout the trip, and had been communicating with other Ukrainian officials over the messaging app in the preceding and subsequent months, according to people familiar with his interactions.

Most of those messages haven’t been made public or handed over to the House impeachment inquiry. The messages by Sondland that have been released are those in which he was communicating in a three-way conversation with Yermak and former Ukraine special envoy Kurt Volker. Volker, who stepped down from the post after a whistleblower complaint from a CIA analyst triggered the impeachment probe, turned those communications over to the committees leading the inquiry.

The chairmen of the House Foreign Affairs, Intelligence and Oversight committees subpoenaed communications and documents from Sondland as the inquiry got underway, and Sondland turned over communications from his personal devices to the State Department. But according to a statement by the committee chairmen in October, the State Department withheld them from the impeachment inquiry, defying a subpoena the committees issued to Secretary of State Mike Pompeo.

Sondland, a wealthy Republican hotelier from the Pacific Northwest who became Trump’s ambassador to the European Union after donating $1 million to the president’s inauguration committee, handled a number of situations for Trump that would normally be considered outside the remit of his position in Brussels. He swooped in to take over the Ukraine portfolio after Trump’s personal attorney, Rudolph W. Giuliani, helped engineer the ouster of U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine Marie Yovanovitch.

During the course of the phone call from the restaurant, Sondland also consulted with Trump on another matter of importance to the president at the time: efforts to free the American rapper A$AP Rocky from jail in Sweden at the request of reality television star Kim Kardashian.

The same day as his July 25 phone call with Zelensky, Trump lashed out at Sweden on Twitter and demanded the nation free the American rapper despite his assault charge from his role in a street brawl.

“Give A$AP Rocky his FREEDOM,” Trump tweeted. “We do so much for Sweden but it doesn’t seem to work the other way around. Sweden should focus on its real crime problem!”

Sondland, according to Holmes’s opening statement, advised Trump to “let him get sentenced, play the racism card, give him a ticker-tape when he comes home.” Sondland added that Sweden should have released the rapper on Trump’s word, but the president could at least tell the Kardashians he tried, according to Holmes’s recollection.

According to a senior White House aide, who, like others, spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss a diplomatic issue, Sondland was involved in the A$AP Rocky effort because of his relationship with Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump, and because Trump saw him as “the Europe guy.”

Apart from sending national security adviser Robert O’Brien, who was then his top hostage negotiator, to intervene in the matter, Trump pressured Sweden’s leader on a phone call to release the rapper, saying that the United States does a lot for Sweden and Sweden should do this for him, according to a U.S. official.

Swedish officials tried to explain they needed to let the courts deal with the matter, but Trump was angered, saying it should have been easy for the Swedish government to do as he asked, the official said. Swedish officials were baffled by Trump’s aggressive involvement in the case, the official added.

In early August, Sweden released A$AP Rocky from jail after he was detained for a month on assault charges. According to the official familiar with the episode, Trump was frustrated that he didn’t get enough credit for securing the rapper’s release.

 

[fraurosena]

Could these transcripts be why Trump suddenly had to go to his doctor today? 

Thread with Manu’s highlights:

 

[fraurosena]

Whoah. I did not know this.  

 

[fraurosena]

 

 

[fraurosena]

I'm so glad Pence's role is coming under scrutiny too.

Pence aide testified that Trump’s efforts to pressure Ukraine were 'inappropriate'

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A top national security aide to Vice President Mike Pence told House impeachment investigators that President Donald Trump’s efforts to pressure Ukraine to investigate his political opponents were “unusual and inappropriate,” and “shed some light on possible other motivations” for the president’s order to freeze military aid to the U.S. ally.

Jennifer Williams, who serves as Pence’s special adviser for Europe and Russia, told investigators in early November that she took notes while she listened in on Trump’s July 25 phone call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky from the White House Situation Room, adding that she viewed Trump’s requests for investigations as politically motivated.

“I found the specific references to be — to be more specific to the president in nature, to his personal political agenda, as opposed to a broader … foreign policy objective of the United States,” Williams said, according to a transcript of her closed-door deposition released Saturday.

Williams also told investigators that she put a hard copy of the call transcript in Pence’s briefing book, but did not know whether he had read it.

The July 25 phone call is at the center of House Democrats’ impeachment inquiry, as lawmakers also examine whether Trump sought to condition nearly $400 million in military aid on a public commitment by Ukraine to pursue investigations targeting former Vice President Joe Biden, among others.

The impeachment inquiry also focuses on whether Trump sought to use a White House meeting with Zelensky and other events as leverage to pressure the Ukrainian president to publicly commit to Trump’s desired investigations.

Williams testified she was told that Trump asked Pence not to attend Zelensky’s inauguration in May — a month after initially asking the vice president to travel to Kyiv for the event. She added that she was never given an explanation for the reversal.

Williams first-hand account details a White House and a U.S. national security apparatus deeply troubled about what appeared to be an inexplicable reversal of the Trump administration’s posture toward Ukraine, a U.S. strategic ally subject to Moscow’s malign influence in the region. And her testimony will likely add more weight to Democrats’ case that Trump’s Ukraine pressure campaign was motivated by his personal political interests — rather than a desire to root out corruption, as the president and his allies have argued.

In her hand-written notes, Williams jotted down that Zelensky specifically mentioned Burisma, the Ukrainian energy company where Biden’s son, Hunter, was a board member. But a summary of the call put out by the White House makes no mention of Burisma.

Williams initially testified that Trump mentioned Burisma on the call, but she amended her testimony last week to reflect that it was Zelensky, not Trump, who mentioned the company.

Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman, an Army officer and Ukraine specialist on the National Security Council staff, also told investigators he recalled Zelensky specifically mention the energy company. He flagged the discrepancies in the White House’s memo and suggested several edits, some of which he described as “significant.” He said those changes were never included in the final version that was made public.

 

[Smash!]

[fraurosena]

LOL.  Do you think he'll ever learn that the 'I-don't-know-them-never-met-them-and-they're-never-trumpers' tactic doesn't work?

 

[GreyhoundFan]

 

[GreyhoundFan]

Oh FFS: "Sen. Johnson says whistleblower’s sources ‘exposed things that didn’t need to be exposed’"

Spoiler

Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) said Sunday that the Trump administration officials who provided information to the anonymous whistleblower about the president’s efforts to pressure Ukraine “exposed things that didn’t need to be exposed.”

“This would have been far better off if we would’ve just taken care of this behind the scenes,” Johnson said in an interview on NBC News’s “Meet the Press.” “We have two branches of government. Most people, most people wanted to support Ukraine. We were trying to convince President Trump.”

Johnson’s comments come days after the first public hearings in the impeachment inquiry. Democrats are seeking to prove that Trump leveraged military assistance and an Oval Office meeting in exchange for investigations into former vice president Joe Biden and a debunked theory concerning purported Ukrainian interference in the 2016 presidential election.

Trump on Sunday continued to take aim at his own administration officials, accusing Jennifer Williams, Vice President Pence’s special adviser on Europe and Russia, of being a “Never Trumper.”

“Tell Jennifer Williams, whoever that is, to read BOTH transcripts of the presidential calls, & see the just released ststement from Ukraine,” Trump said in a tweet. “Then she should meet with the other Never Trumpers, who I don’t know & mostly never even heard of, & work out a better presidential attack!”

A Pence spokeswoman did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Williams is expected to testify publicly on Tuesday.

Her closed-door testimony, which was released Saturday, suggests that the Office of Management and Budget had clamped down on Ukraine aid more than two weeks earlier than has been previously reported.

Both Williams and National Security Council Ukraine expert Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman testified that they noticed as early as July 3 that the military aid for Ukraine that is traditionally controlled by the State Department had been held up, though they were not aware of the reason.

The earlier timeline raises new questions about when the White House may have decided to attempt leveraging Ukraine aid to pressure that country’s leaders to commit to investigations that could politically benefit Trump.

The comments by Trump and Johnson also come amid intensifying scrutiny of the actions of U.S. Ambassador to the European Union Gordon Sondland, who is among those expected to testify publicly this week.

According to testimony released Saturday, a former White House national security official told House investigators that Sondland was acting at Trump’s behest and spoke to a top Ukrainian official about exchanging military aid for political investigations — two elements at the heart of the impeachment inquiry.

Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) said he believes Sondland will face pressure this week when he’s asked about inconsistencies between his testimony and that of other recent witnesses in the impeachment inquiry.

“His story continues to change,” Murphy said on “Meet the Press.” “He’s got to decide this weekend whether he’s an American first or a Trump loyalist.”

As the public phase of the impeachment probe enters its second week, Republicans have struggled to defend Trump’s actions.

On “Fox News Sunday,” House Minority Whip Steve Scalise (R-La.) dismissed the witnesses who have testified that they were concerned about Trump’s efforts to pressure Ukraine, arguing that “they were not all Trump administration folks.”

“They’re Schiff’s witnesses,” Scalise said, referring to House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam B. Schiff (D-Calif.).

When pressed by host Chris Wallace on the fact that most of the witnesses are part of the Trump administration, Scalise responded that “there are a lot of people who worked in the Trump administration who have very countering views to that and they’ve not been allowed to come forward.”

In an interview with CBS News’s “Face the Nation” that was aired in full on Sunday, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) suggested that Democrats are pleased with how the process has unfolded.

“I don’t think the president has had a good week,” Pelosi told host Margaret Brennan.

Pelosi declined to weigh in on the timeline for a potential impeachment vote, saying only that there may be further depositions over the Thanksgiving holiday and that there may be “a decision or maybe they have more hearings” once Congress returns.

Democrats have also argued that Trump himself should testify and allow those his orbit to do so if he believes they may have exculpatory evidence.

“If Donald Trump doesn’t agree with what he’s hearing — doesn’t like what he’s hearing — he shouldn’t tweet,” Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) told reporters in New York on Sunday. “He should come to the committee and testify under oath. And he should allow those around him to come to the committee and testify under oath.”

Johnson, meanwhile, lamented the “damage that’s being done to our entire country through this entire impeachment process.”

“It’s going to be very difficult for future presidents to have a candid conversation with a world leader, because now we’ve set the precedent of leaking transcripts,” he said, referring to the release of rough transcripts of Trump’s calls with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. “The weakening of executive privilege is not good.”

Johnson also argued that the whistleblower’s actions ultimately have not helped the U.S.-Ukraine relationship.

“And, by the way, those individuals that leaked this, if their interest was a stronger relationship with the Ukraine, they didn’t accomplish this,” he said. “Having this all come out into public has weakened that relationship, has exposed things that didn’t need to be exposed.”

In recent weeks, Johnson has emerged as the member of Congress most closely involved in the Ukraine saga. The Wisconsin Republican met in July with a former Ukrainian diplomat who has circulated unproven claims that Ukrainian officials assisted Hillary Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign.

Johnson and Murphy also met with Zelensky in September, at a time when U.S. aid to the country was still being held up.

In her testimony, which was released Saturday, Williams was asked about her understanding of the timing of the freeze on the Ukraine aid.

“I had seen the update that OMB had decided or conveyed to the State Department that they were not clearing these particular congressional notifications,” Williams said of her awareness regarding Ukraine aid as of July 3, referring to a key procedural step in the administration releasing aid.

Days later, as Williams was meeting with Ukrainian national security adviser Oleksandr Danylyuk on July 9, Williams still didn’t know why the funding had been frozen, she said.

“I don’t believe it was clear, even as of July 9, what exactly was behind that in terms of was this a, you know, long-term hold or what was the motivation behind it,” Williams testified, according to the transcript. “But I was aware that there was a problem with clearing the assistance, yes.”

Um, Senator Johnson, don't we have THREE branches of government? I learned that as a young child.

[fraurosena]

On 11/16/2019 at 9:30 PM, fraurosena said:

It looks like Stefanik's stunt yesterday is having repercussions she may not have taken into consideration.

 

  

Update:

It really says something when you raise $1 million in a weekend, doesn't it?

[fraurosena]

Repug Mike Turner is on the intelligence committee... 

Although he's not suddenly unequivocally saying he's for impeachment, this characterisation of evidence and criticism of Trump is a major step for a repug. It's a start, at least.

Republican congressman calls new details about Trump revealed in impeachment testimony 'alarming'

Quote

A Republican member of one of the House committees involved in the impeachment inquiry into President Donald Trump said Sunday that information provided about Trump during a closed-door deposition of a former National Security Council official "is alarming" and "not OK."

"Well, of course, all of that is alarming. As I've said from the beginning, I think this is not OK. The President of the United States shouldn't even in the original phone call be on the phone with the president of another country and raise his political opponent," Rep. Mike Turner, an Ohio Republican, told CNN's Jake Tapper on "State of the Union."

"So, no, this is not OK," he added on Sunday.

On Saturday, Morrison testified that US ambassador to the European Union Gordon Sondland was acting at Trump's instruction in his dealings with Ukraine. According to Morrison's deposition, Sondland said the President told him that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky "must announce the opening of the investigations" into former Vice President Joe Biden and his son, Hunter Biden. Morrison also testified that US aid to Ukraine was conditioned on the country announcing an investigation into the Bidens. There is no evidence of wrongdoing by either Biden in Ukraine.

Morrison's testimony, which was released by House impeachment investigators on Saturday, adds additional corroboration to the testimony of others, like US diplomat Bill Taylor, that Sondland said he was acting at Trump's direction when he was urging Ukraine to announce political investigations.

In his CNN interview on Sunday, Turner also addressed tweets Trump posted last week during former Ukrainian Ambassador Marie Yovanovitch's public testimony before the panel. Responding in real-time to the President's tweets, which claimed that "everywhere Marie Yovanovitch went turned bad," the former official said they were "very intimidating."

"It's certainly not impeachable, and it's certainly not criminal and it's certainly not witness intimidation. It certainly wasn't trying to prevent her or wouldn't have prevented her from testifying, she was actually in the process of testifying. But nonetheless, I find the President's tweets unfortunate," the congressman said.

"I think along with most people, I find the President's tweets, generally, unfortunate," Turner said.

 

[fraurosena]

If Sondland does not plead the 5th during his testimony this week and decides to tell the whole truth and nothing but the truth, then so help us Rufus, Trump is going down.

 

[fraurosena]

Good!

Because if Pompeo* should decide to talk...

Trump's impeachment ire turns on Pompeo amid diplomats' starring roles

Quote

The impeachment inquiry has created the first rift between President Donald Trump and the Cabinet member who has been his closest ally, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, according to four current and former senior administration officials.

Trump has fumed for weeks that Pompeo is responsible for hiring State Department officials whose congressional testimony threatens to bring down his presidency, the officials said. The president confronted Pompeo about the officials — and what he believed was a lackluster effort by the secretary of state to block their testimony — during lunch at the White House on Oct. 29, those familiar with the matter said.

Inside the White House, the view was that Trump “just felt like, ‘rein your people in,’” a senior administration official said.

Trump particularly blames Pompeo for tapping Ambassador Bill Taylor in June to be the top U.S. diplomat in Ukraine, the current and former senior administration officials said.

Taylor has provided the House Intelligence Committee with some of the most damaging details on the White House’s effort to pressure Ukraine into investigating one of the president’s potential rivals in the 2020 election, former Vice President Joe Biden, and his son, Hunter Biden.

A crack in the seemingly unbreakable bond between Trump and Pompeo is striking because Pompeo, a former Kansas congressman, is viewed as the “Trump whisperer” who has survived — and thrived — working for a president who has routinely tired of and discarded senior members of his team.

But the impeachment inquiry has put Pompeo in what one senior administration official described as an untenable position: trying to manage a bureaucracy of 75,000 people that has soured on his leadership and also please a boss with outsized expectations of loyalty.

“He feels like he's getting a bunch of blame from the president and the White House for having hired all these people who are turning against Trump,” an official familiar with the dynamic said of Pompeo, “and that it's the State Department that is going to bring him down, so it's all Pompeo's fault.”

Neither the White House nor the State Department responded to requests for comment.

Four current State Department officials have testified before the House Intelligence Committee.

Three of them — Taylor, former U.S. ambassador to Ukraine Marie Yovanovitch and George Kent, the deputy assistant secretary at the State Department in charge of Europe — appeared before the committee last week to deliver the first public testimony in Democrats’ impeachment inquiry. All three of them currently remain employed by the State Department, though Yovanovitch has been sidelined to a teaching post at Georgetown University.

Taylor was dining in the State Department cafeteria the day after he testified, over the administration’s objections, and was surrounded by employees expressing support for him, according to two people who saw him there.

Kurt Volker, who was the State Department’s envoy on Ukraine until last month, was the first official to testify. He resigned about a week before his Oct. 3 deposition, during which he turned over reams of text messages detailing the White House’s Ukraine pressure campaign.

Trump has hinted publicly at tensions with Pompeo, and while the comments might go unnoticed by the untrained ear they’ve been heard loudly by people close to the president.

The first was on Oct. 23, officials said, when Trump wrote on Twitter: “It would be really great if the people within the Trump Administration, all well-meaning and good (I hope!), could stop hiring Never Trumpers, who are worse than the Do Nothing Democrats. Nothing good will ever come from them!”

Trump followed up with another tweet specifically calling Taylor, and his lawyer, "Never Trumpers."

Two days later, Trump said Pompeo “made a mistake” in hiring Taylor.

“Here’s the problem: He's a never Trumper, and his lawyer is,” the president told reporters about Taylor. “The other problem is — hey, everyone makes mistakes — Mike Pompeo. Everybody makes mistakes.”

The next day, Oct. 26, Pompeo was notably absent as the president sat with his national security team during the U.S. military raid that killed ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi. Pompeo was not informed about the raid until late Friday after he was home in Kansas for his son’s friend’s wedding, officials said.

Throughout the impeachment inquiry, Pompeo and Trump have maintained their weekly lunches at the White House, according to the president’s public schedule.

But the president was angry when he arrived in his private dining room on Oct. 29, two officials said. Pompeo defended himself, officials said, by telling Trump he doesn’t know who half of these State Department officials are, officials said. He also noted that there are thousands of employees at the agency, explaining that he can’t control them, those familiar with the matter said.

One official said Trump and Pompeo patched things up during the lunch. Another person familiar with the meeting said Pompeo continues to be “iced out” by the president, a shift that often entails still being included in his meetings but listened to less.

“Pompeo feels under siege,” this person said.

He was at the White House last Wednesday for Trump’s meeting with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

The tension with Trump comes as Pompeo weighs whether to leave the administration to run for Kansas’ open Senate seat.

Pompeo has served in the administration since its start. Trump tapped him as CIA director, then moved him to secretary of state after he fired Pompeo’s predecessor, Rex Tillerson. For almost three years, Pompeo seamlessly navigated a finicky president. He’s remained, and became more influential, as Trump churned through two chiefs of staff, three national security advisers, an attorney general, and secretaries of defense, state, labor, homeland security, interior, veterans affairs and health and human services.

But in recent weeks Pompeo has been under steady fire over his role in the Ukraine scandal, as well as his handling of it.

Initially when the Ukraine controversy became public, Trump wanted Pompeo to publicly defend him against the State Department bureaucracy, officials said. But the White House thought Pompeo appeared unprepared in his television interviews, and his performance only fueled the president’s frustrations, they said.

Pompeo has faced criticism for saying, during an interview on ABC’s “This Week,” that he didn’t know anything about the July 25 phone call between Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy that is at the center of the controversy. Pompeo didn’t disclose until more than a week later that he had listened in on that call.

Like the White House, he has attempted to block State Department officials from testifying. And he has refused to turn over State Department documents related to Ukraine.

His decision last week, however, to allow the State Department to help pay for the legal fees that officials ensnared in the impeachment inquiry are accruing could further strain his relationship with the president.

That decision underscores the balance Pompeo is trying to strike between the president and the department he leads.

State Department officials had thought Pompeo’s move to the agency in April 2018 would be a welcome antidote to what they viewed as the bureaucratic fecklessness of Tillerson, given Pompeo’s unfettered access to Trump and their close relationship.

But morale at the State Department has sagged for months, and it plummeted further as the Ukraine scandal unfolded, according to multiple officials.

State Department officials are critical of Pompeo for buckling to pressure from the president and his personal lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, and abruptly recalling Yovanovitch while she was serving as U.S. ambassador in Ukraine. Yovanovitch had been vilified by Giuliani, who convinced the president she was working against his interests.

Criticism of Pompeo inside the State Department escalated when he refused to publicly defend Yovanovitch after a reconstructed transcript of the July 25 call revealed Trump disparaged Yovanovitch to Zelenskiy, administration officials have said. Pompeo’s closest aide, Ambassador Mike McKinley, resigned over the secretary’s refusal to defend Yovanovitch.

Testimony from Taylor and others show Pompeo was keenly aware of the concerns his top officials had about Giuliani’s efforts and his handling of Yovanovitch.

In public testimony on Friday, Yovanovitch appeared to excoriate Pompeo for “the failure of State Department leadership to push back as foreign and corrupt interests apparently hijacked our Ukraine policy.”

“It is the responsibility of the department's leaders to stand up for the institution and the individuals who make that institution the most effective diplomatic force in the world,” she said.

According to administration officials, Pompeo’s refusal to publicly defend Yovanovitch cemented a wider view within the State Department that he has enabled some of Trump’s impulsive foreign policy decisions, such as the withdrawal of U.S. special forces from Syria after a phone call with Turkey’s President Erdgoan.

“Pompeo is hated by his building,” a person close to the secretary said, adding that he “feels the heat a great deal and feels it’s personal at state.”

*As Pompeo is a trumpist from the very first hour, this is very much wishful thinking, but still a nice thought to entertain 

[fraurosena]

... strongly consider it!

 

 

[GreyhoundFan]

 

[Becky]

48 minutes ago, fraurosena said:

... strongly consider it!

 

 

Yeah, just like he will release his tax returns when he is no longer being audited, make Mexico gladly pay for the wall, is a very stable genius but won't let anyone see his grades, etc, etc, etc. If this lying liar who lies testifies under oath, I will eat my hat. 

[fraurosena]

It looks like the scope of the impeachment inquiry is expanding.

Impeachment Investigators Exploring Whether Trump Lied to Mueller

Quote

Impeachment investigators are exploring whether President Trump lied in his written answers to Robert S. Mueller III during the Russia investigation, a lawyer for the House told a federal appeals court on Monday, raising the prospect of bringing an additional basis for a Senate trial over whether to remove Mr. Trump.

The statement — during a hearing in a case over the House’s request for secret grand-jury evidence gathered by Mr. Mueller — came shortly after Mr. Trump said on Twitter that he may provide written answers about the Ukraine affair to impeachment investigators.

“Even though I did nothing wrong, and don’t like giving credibility to this No Due Process Hoax, I like the idea & will, in order to get Congress focused again, strongly consider it!” Mr. Trump wrote, after insulting House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.

During the Mueller investigation, Mr. Trump refused to testify orally about what he knew and did during the 2016 campaign in relation to Russia’s election interference operation, or his later efforts to impede the special counsel’s inquiry. But he did provide lawyerly written answers to some questions, which were appended to the Mueller report.

On Monday, Douglas Letter, the general counsel for the House, told a federal appeals court panel that impeachment investigators have an “immense” need to see the grand jury evidence — redacted portions of the Mueller report, as well as the underlying testimony transcripts they came from — because Mr. Trump may have lied.

“Was the president not truthful in his responses to the Mueller investigation?” Mr. Letter said, adding: “I believe the special counsel said the president had been untruthful in some of his answers.”

He was referring to Mr. Mueller’s congressional testimony in July. Near the end of the hearing, a lawmaker brought up Mr. Trump’s written responses and asked whether “his answers showed that he wasn’t always being truthful.” Rather than demurring as he had to similar questions, Mr. Mueller instead appeared to confirm her assessment, responding, “I would say generally.”

Both the lawmaker in July and Mr. Letter on Monday appeared to be referring in particular to the question of whether Mr. Trump lied about his campaign's advance knowledge of and contacts with WikiLeaks about its possession of hacked Democratic emails and plans to publish them.

Mr. Trump wrote that he was “not aware during the campaign of any communications” between “any one I understood to be a representative of WikiLeaks” and people associated with his campaign, including his political adviser Roger J. Stone Jr., who was convicted at trial last week for lying to congressional investigators about his efforts to reach out to WikiLeaks and his discussions with the campaign.

“I do not recall discussing WikiLeaks with him,” Mr. Trump also wrote of Mr. Stone, “nor do I recall being aware of Mr. Stone having discussed WikiLeaks with individuals associated with my campaign.”

But the publicly available portions of the Mueller report suggest that evidence exists to the contrary. Several Trump aides, including Michael D. Cohen and Rick Gates, testified that they heard Mr. Trump discussing coming WikiLeaks releases over the phone. And in October 2016 Stephen K. Bannon, the campaign chairman, wrote in an email that Mr. Stone had told the campaign “about potential future releases of damaging material” by WikiLeaks shortly before it began publishing more hacked emails.

Mr. Letter brought up redactions in the report associated with Mr. Stone and a redacted reference to something that Paul Manafort, Mr. Trump’s former campaign chairman, had said to a grand jury.

“Manafort said that shortly after WikiLeaks’ July 22, 2016, released of hacked documents, he spoke to Trump [redacted]; Manafort recalled that Trump responded that Manafort should [redacted] keep Trump updated,” the Mueller report said, citing grand-jury material as the reason for the redactions.

Mr. Letter told the court, “The Manafort situation shows so clearly that there is evidence, very sadly, that the president might have provided untruthful answers,” he said, adding that this might be part of impeachment.

Attorney General William P. Barr permitted the House Judiciary Committee to see most of the Mueller report, including portions that are redacted from the public version because they pertained to ongoing cases, but has refused to let them see material that is subject to secrecy rules because it was presented to a grand jury.

In July, the House petitioned the chief judge of the Federal District Court for the District of Columbia for an order that would permit it to gain access to that material too. Its court filings in that matter were the first time that it formally pronounced itself engaged in an impeachment inquiry; there is precedent, including in the Nixon Watergate scandal, permitting the House to get grand jury information for impeachment proceedings.

The judge in October ruled that the House Judiciary Committee should be permitted to see the grand-jury material in the report and its underlying basis. The Justice Department appealed that ruling. The hearing on Monday centered on whether the appeals court should temporarily stay the district judge’s ruling while it considers that appeal.

 

[GreyhoundFan]

 

[fraurosena]

Powerful messaging.

 

[fraurosena]

Ugh. That smug look on his lyin' ass face at the end. 

 

[SassyPants]

6 hours ago, fraurosena said:

Good!

Because if Pompeo* should decide to talk...

Trump's impeachment ire turns on Pompeo amid diplomats' starring roles

*As Pompeo is a trumpist from the very first hour, this is very much wishful thinking, but still a nice thought to entertain 

I just don’t get Trump and his followers’ logic. If all these calls and meetings were great calls, the best meetings and all made to uncover ongoing corruption, why would Trump want anyone to refuse to testify to that fact and on his behalf? If you’re innocent, don’t you want people to testify who can support your innocence? 

I hate when people in power think that the rest of us plebs are stupid, or that they are above the law. 

[fraurosena]

The Dems are setting a fast pace with this inquiry.

 

[fraurosena]

Wrong thread. Gonna put this where it belongs.

Edited November 18, 2019 by fraurosena

[Smash!]

Which is your favourite TV-Channel/live stream to watch the hearings? Last time I first was on the House Intelligence Committee but switched to PBS because there they put the party and the state they represent on the banner which is quite helpful.