Impeachment Inquiry 2: Now It's Official!

[Alisamer]

4 hours ago, formergothardite said:

This is absolutely true. I went and social media stalked the total normal republicans. Some who have criticized Trump. They dont' see this as a big deal. Then there are the people who are more liberal but not into politics and they also don't see what is the big deal. 

I don't know how to change this or what will change it. People are just apathetic about the whole thing. 

It blows my mind that Trump can lie his way through every day, be so obviously incompetent, and literally extort another nation using federal funds, among many many other things, and people don't think it's worth impeachment.

Bill Clinton, however...

It's absolutely amazing the amount of crazy people have become accustomed to so quickly. People who wanted to impeach Obama (for... I have no idea. Being black, most likely) are like "Eh, so what." But the ones that scare me are the ones who seem to think the patently unconstitutional things Trump does are "smart" or "OK"... like profiting off the presidency: "He found a loophole to make money off it, good for him." or not paying taxes: "That's smart, I'd have done whatever I could to get out of paying taxes, too."

Trump shouldn't even have made it to the primaries, much less to the presidency. I'm amazed - there are better background checks for working at McDonald's than there are for the presidency, apparently. 

[fraurosena]

What is this all about? ?

The comments are gold, by the way.
Every single one of them, in every way, shape or form, is calling him a coward and telling him to testify.

[GreyhoundFan]

 

[fraurosena]

Coward.

 

[thoughtful]

More from Moustache. Really, the last thing I want is to be teased by John Bolton:

 

 

[Dandruff]

57 minutes ago, fraurosena said:

You guys, I am not convinced at all that Trump will be re-elected. Not by a long shot. The fear of another four years of Trump dictatorship is burning in the hearts of Americans right now and I don't believe for a second that the turnout to the 2020 elections is not going to be massive.

I also think the turnout will be massive but worry about pro-Trumpers coming out of the woodwork.  Not all of them are making noise on Twitter and at college campuses.  My sense is that the silent supporters are getting regular propoganda emails, and perhaps hit-ups for campaign $$s, and that this has been the case for years.  The pro-Trumpers I know are quick with the "he may have done some things wrong but don't impeach him" jargon - too quick.

We're in a country where (AFAIC) the advertising industry and lobbyists have been able to mindfuck the public, with very limited constraints, for decades plus.  I remember watching ads during kid shows in the 60's that were directly marketing to us along with phone numbers to call.  There are now restraints on that sort of thing but my point is that the population has been inundated with these manipulations, and conditioned toward tolerating them, and it takes some effort to actively think and resist.  Those who lean Republican-loyal and/or don't quite have have it to think and resist are open prey to help Trump get elected in 2020.  The Republican machine seems to know what it's doing, even while so many people disagree with them.  I believe these susceptibilities, plus the possibility of outright cheating (simply recognizing it isn't enough), could lead to election results that are, again, unexpected.

[Smash!]

1 hour ago, GreyhoundFan said:

 

I've been following Neal Katyal, Glenn Kirschner, Laurence Tribe and others for some time now and I'm surprised they all say something along the lines of the quoted tweet when we all know the GOP and 45 will make noise and have a defense that is compelling to a certain group of people.

[fraurosena]

1 hour ago, Dandruff said:

Those who lean Republican-loyal and/or don't quite have have it to think and resist are open prey to help Trump get elected in 2020.

I agree that the pro-Trumpers are out there, and that they too will come out to vote. But you see, I don't believe that they are the majority. These are (some of the) reasons they seem to be so much bigger than they are:

• gerrymandering and voter suppression have been skewed towards the R's winning for decades
• there was a lot of apathy under Dem leaning voters, so they stayed home
• there were Dem leaning voters who thought Hillary had it in the bag, so they didn't take the trouble to vote
• there were a lot of disenfranchised Dem leaning voters, who saw what happened with Bernie and had a 'fuck it' attitude after that and didn't vote
• there were a lot of Dem leaning voters who simply did not like Hillary for some reason or other, and did not vote, or worse, voted for Trump in protest

The first of these reasons can't be changed much before the 2020 elections. But all the other reasons can be, and will be (or already have been). I find it very encouraging to see what happened in the elections in the last couple of weeks, where the dems won despite the gerrymandering and suppression going on. It just goes to show that it can be done.

You also make a lot of good points about advertising, @Dandruff. It would be good for everyone to realize that the size and strength of the Trump base has been blown out of proportion by the news media and by hackers, trolls and bots on social media. This fear of the Trump base is, if not completely unfounded, certainly not proportionate to the reality. 

Then again, if fearing that base motivates people to get out and vote...

[Dandruff]

30 minutes ago, fraurosena said:

I agree that the pro-Trumpers are out there, and that they too will come out to vote. But you see, I don't believe that they are the majority.

I don't think they're the majority either.  My concern is that the Republicans have been more efficient at getting potential supporters identified and out to vote.  That plus outside interference are a dangerous combination.

I think your other points are good too - apathy, Hillary-hate, and Bernie-related resentments cost votes in 2016.  If the Dems can manage to put a reasonably attractive team on the ticket for 2020 then I believe the chances are decent.  I'm just not sure they'll do it.*

* I'm still disgusted at the number of candidates who were initially allowed to debate and attack each other, for what I view as the benefit of Trump.  I hope the Dems can be and stay smart enough for a solid win.  When there are too many candidates to be able to share ideas in one sitting then, AFAIC, there are too many.  How tf can all these people be considered to have debated each other when only half were in the room at the same time? 

Rant over.

[GreyhoundFan]

"Why it was so satisfying to watch Fiona Hill take charge"

Spoiler

I will say this for President Trump: He certainly makes you appreciate smart, accomplished women.

It is not because he appreciates them; we all know by now that the only thing about a woman he appreciates is whatever he can grab. But his bad behavior really does bring amazing women out into the spotlight from where they were formerly working competently but with little fanfare. Reluctantly, because they are far too busy to bother with vainglorious showboating, more and more of them have been compelled to step forward on behalf of a grateful nation to testify — with authority, expertise and conviction — about the corrupt and ill-advised actions of a self-dealing president.

The latest in a long line of amazing, impressive wholly stannable women to make us swoon with their briskly efficient competence is Fiona Hill, an expert in Vladimir Putin’s ways and former National Security Council official. Hill was the star witness in Thursday’s House Intelligence Committee impeachment hearings, not because of any glittery celebrity or grabby cable sound bites but because of the substance of her testimony. She did not have talking points; she just had her deep knowledge and years of experience (and, of course, the bare minimum common sense to know that, yes, two plus two equals four).

Hill had no time for Republican conspiracy-mongering about anyone other than Russia meddling in the 2016 election, and she scolded the GOP accordingly: “In the course of this investigation, I would ask that you please not promote politically driven falsehoods that so clearly advance Russian interests.” (Translation: Stop being useful idiots.) She also had no time for U.S. Ambassador to the European Union Gordon Sondland's ill-informed office politics, GOP histrionics or workplace sexism. (She did, however, have time for an I-told-you-so: “I said to him this is all going to blow up, and here we are.”)

It was a humdinger of a day — the word to describe its defining quality might be “pizazz” — and all because of yet another learned, righteous woman with an impressive command of those pesky things called “facts.” Which means Hill joined the ranks of former U.S. ambassador to Ukraine Marie Yovanovitch, former U.S. attorney (and, briefly, acting attorney general) Sally Yates, and, yes, former secretary of state Hillary Clinton, who could fairly be called the OG of smart, accomplished women getting under Trump’s skin. There’s also Sen. Kamala Harris (D-Calif.), Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Calif.), Christine Blasey Ford (you know why), respected writer E. Jean Carroll (Trump knows why), Rep. Frederica Wilson (D-Fla.), NBC’s Katy Tur and Mika Brzezinski, former Fox and NBC anchor Megyn Kelly, San Juan Mayor Carmen Yulín Cruz, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederickson, “The Squad,” a.k.a. Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.), Ayanna Pressley (D-Mass.), Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.) and Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.), Meghan, Duchess of Sussex, journalist April Ryan, and Taylor Swift. This is not an exhaustive list.

Comparing Trump to these women is like juxtaposing a dense, properly footnoted scholarly paper to his big-print Sharpie, and just to be clear, it is the Sharpie that is mentally exhausting. Yet it is instructive to realize these women are notable precisely for what he diminishes and dismisses: experience, hard work, credibility. Hill’s cool, crisp testimony was the opposite of Trump’s unhinged Twitter ranting; her calm authority gave us comfort that, yes, there are still people who actually know what they are doing in the executive branch (or at least, there were until she resigned). After an unsettling almost three years of knee-jerk, whiplash governance by a White House led by an impetuous, impulsive wannabe autocrat, it was almost … soothing. It was not just the cavalcade of people on Twitter declaring themselves fans (George Conway) and stans (or in progressive podcast host Zerlina Maxwell’s case: “stannnnnnnnnnnnnnn”), it was Hill’s book suddenly zooming into the Amazon top 100. That is a dense 520-page book on Putin, shipping weight 2 pounds, and yes, of course, I bought it. (Amazon founder and chief executive Jeff Bezos owns The Washington Post.)

Even more, the sense of relief and comfort was obvious everywhere. Listen to author Morra Aarons-Mele: “The grown-ups are back: smart and calm, informed and unbiased.” Or journalist Lizzie O’Leary: “Today’s episode of Impeachment really hitting the sweet spot of my personal Netflix algorithm: procedural drama and British female leads.” Or comedian Heather Gold: “Listening to Fiona Hill testify is the most relaxed I’ve felt since election night 2016.”

The point is, it is not just that Hill is impressive. (And don’t call her overprepared!) She is, but it is also the realization of how rare it is to see a person — let alone a woman — like her in this bumbling, ruinous, norm-shattering administration. Trump is all grifty bravado; he plays the strongman even as he withholds his tax returns, pays $2 million in settlement for shorting a charity, callously separates young children from their families, and oh yeah, uses the power and privilege of the Oval Office to push his reelection advantage (a.k.a. for a “domestic political errand,” as Hill put it, much to the chagrin of Stephen R. Castor, the Republican lawyer who unwittingly led her right into that line). Hill is due process and righteous anger, brains and brilliance and fire and loyalty ready to be deployed for her country, now and forever.

It is not just that we are hungry for norms and qualifications. We are desperate for someone competent and principled to be in charge. We want someone smart to tell us it will be okay and that they care.

It was nice, however briefly, to find her.

 

[Audrey2]

8 hours ago, Xan said:

 If it were not for the problem of insecure voting equipment, I wouldn't be worried about the next election. 

Sadly, this seems to be the Republican way- Suppress all of the votes you can, and rig the machines so the rest don't count/are significantly diminished.

4 hours ago, fraurosena said:

• there were a lot of Dem leaning voters who simply did not like Hillary for some reason or other, and did not vote, or worse, voted for Trump in protest

@Dandruff

 

I will vote for a boil on decomposing Teddy Kennedy's bum before I vote for Trump.

(Sorry, Teddy Kennedy. You were a good senator. Just needed somebody who was deceased and divisive for my thought.)

[GreyhoundFan]

"Trump’s GOP defenders cannot be shamed. It’s time to try this instead."

Spoiler

If there is one widely shared conclusion about the impeachment hearings that have just concluded, it’s that President Trump’s GOP defenders were never “gettable.”

This idea has been repeated countless times in recent days, as one monumentally damning revelation after another has been exposed, only to be met by Republicans on the House Intelligence Committee with up-is-down denial.

Some defenders have flatly inverted what was actually testified to into its diametrical opposite. Others have reflexively reverted to conspiracy theories creating a universe as divorced from the actual corrupt conduct now being examined as one former half of a divided cell is from the other.

It’s now clear that the coming Senate trial will also be conducted in this manner. Reports tell us Republicans are divided over whether to have a drawn out trial that offers a genuine “defense of his conduct,” as if a protracted one will see Trump’s extensive misconduct evaluated and defended on its merits.

Meanwhile, Sen. Lindsey O. Graham of South Carolina, a top Trump loyalist, has just demanded that the State Department turn over extensive documents to help “prove” the theory that the Ukraine activities of Joe Biden and his son Hunter were corrupt.

That invented narrative has already been thoroughly debunked. But what really matters here is that this is the very same theory Trump set out to “prove” with his corrupt pressure on Ukraine in the first place.

Trump and his defenders simply will not leave that goal behind — precisely because Trump continues to view it as central to his reelection chances.

We know what happened here. Trump corruptly tried to extort a foreign ally at a moment of extreme vulnerability into announcing investigations that would boost his reelection chances.

These announcements would then influence domestic press coverage, validating Trump’s efforts to absolve Russia of its role in sabotaging the 2016 election — and his campaign’s coordination with it — and helping smear a potential 2020 campaign opponent.

We know Trump made these demands of the Ukrainian president. We know top Cabinet officials and top White House advisers were involved to one degree or another, and that this put large swaths of the government at the disposal both of Trump’s reelection effort and of the effort to cover it all up.

We know Trump conditioned one official act (a White House meeting) on getting his dirty deeds done. We know a top ringleader told Ukraine that hundreds of millions of dollars in military aid were conditioned on the same, in the full understanding that Trump wanted him to. Trump solicited a bribe.

So this Senate trial will be heavily preoccupied not with examining that conduct, but instead with … continuing to accomplish some of the very same goals (smearing Joe Biden) that drove the whole corrupt scheme all along. The Senate trial will continue using the levers of government to realize those goals, simply continuing where that scheme left off.

Much excellent work has developed the idea that all this goes much further than conventional political misrepresentation and pushes into a realm of disinformation hermetically sealed off from facts altogether.

This lockstep backing has many motives. Some defenders are all in with the project of “disinforming” millions of Trump voters (see David Frum). Others are fine with Trump soliciting foreign interference because the whole party benefits (see Brian Beutler). Others don’t acknowledge an ethical framework that allows for Trump to be wrong, because their highest loyalty is to him (see Adam Serwer).

But a full acknowledgment of all this requires a fundamental change in the way we’ve been communicating about it.

Time for a reset

It’s time to drop the posture that Trump’s defenders can be shamed into accepting what has been unearthed, or that they can be shamed into arguing from a baseline of shared democratic values, or into arguing over how to interpret a comprehensive set of shared facts.

Instead, let’s rhetorically treat Trump’s defenders as his criminal accomplices. Not just as “enablers” of Trump’s corruption but as active participants in it.

Once this is accepted, it becomes obvious why they can’t be “won over,” because they are actively engaged in keeping the corruption in question from getting fully uncovered, in the belief that they, too, benefit from it, and that they, too, lose out if it’s exposed.

The notion that Trump’s defenders can be shamed into facing up to what has happened here is all-pervasive. It includes the have-you-no-shame lectures delivered to Republicans who smeared Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman for supposed dual loyalties.

It includes the oft-expressed idea that Republicans downplaying the evidence are doing so because they fear Trump’s base, as if they would embrace evidence if only they could, as if the problem is missing “courage” and not a more corrupt form of calculated self-interest.

And it includes anguished objections that Attorney General William P. Barr has “politicized” the Justice Department in a way that brings opprobrium upon it.

Meanwhile, on Fox News, Trump just boasted that Barr’s “review” of the origins of the Russia investigation will show a huge “scandal,” that is, show that he was right all along. We’ll soon see about that, but it’s plainly obvious that Barr and those allied with him in this project cannot be shamed into playing this one by facts.

Instead, Barr is using the Justice Department to accomplish precisely the same rewriting of 2016 that drove Trump’s corrupt scheme in the first place — putting Trump’s reelection needs over the findings of our own intelligence services.

The point here isn’t that describing Trump’s defenders in these ways has no truth or utility at all. Surely some might actually feel cowed by Trump voters or feel secret shame in smearing Vindman. Surely shaming smears has worth.

Rather, the point is we need a much more fundamental change in our underlying treatment of the moment. We need to approach it from the premise that Trump’s defenders are not “gettable” because they are accomplices in the whole scheme -- and forthrightly describe what’s happening in kind.

 

[fraurosena]

5 hours ago, GreyhoundFan said:

"Trump’s GOP defenders cannot be shamed. It’s time to try this instead."

  Hide contents

If there is one widely shared conclusion about the impeachment hearings that have just concluded, it’s that President Trump’s GOP defenders were never “gettable.”

This idea has been repeated countless times in recent days, as one monumentally damning revelation after another has been exposed, only to be met by Republicans on the House Intelligence Committee with up-is-down denial.

Some defenders have flatly inverted what was actually testified to into its diametrical opposite. Others have reflexively reverted to conspiracy theories creating a universe as divorced from the actual corrupt conduct now being examined as one former half of a divided cell is from the other.

It’s now clear that the coming Senate trial will also be conducted in this manner. Reports tell us Republicans are divided over whether to have a drawn out trial that offers a genuine “defense of his conduct,” as if a protracted one will see Trump’s extensive misconduct evaluated and defended on its merits.

Meanwhile, Sen. Lindsey O. Graham of South Carolina, a top Trump loyalist, has just demanded that the State Department turn over extensive documents to help “prove” the theory that the Ukraine activities of Joe Biden and his son Hunter were corrupt.

That invented narrative has already been thoroughly debunked. But what really matters here is that this is the very same theory Trump set out to “prove” with his corrupt pressure on Ukraine in the first place.

Trump and his defenders simply will not leave that goal behind — precisely because Trump continues to view it as central to his reelection chances.

We know what happened here. Trump corruptly tried to extort a foreign ally at a moment of extreme vulnerability into announcing investigations that would boost his reelection chances.

These announcements would then influence domestic press coverage, validating Trump’s efforts to absolve Russia of its role in sabotaging the 2016 election — and his campaign’s coordination with it — and helping smear a potential 2020 campaign opponent.

We know Trump made these demands of the Ukrainian president. We know top Cabinet officials and top White House advisers were involved to one degree or another, and that this put large swaths of the government at the disposal both of Trump’s reelection effort and of the effort to cover it all up.

We know Trump conditioned one official act (a White House meeting) on getting his dirty deeds done. We know a top ringleader told Ukraine that hundreds of millions of dollars in military aid were conditioned on the same, in the full understanding that Trump wanted him to. Trump solicited a bribe.

So this Senate trial will be heavily preoccupied not with examining that conduct, but instead with … continuing to accomplish some of the very same goals (smearing Joe Biden) that drove the whole corrupt scheme all along. The Senate trial will continue using the levers of government to realize those goals, simply continuing where that scheme left off.

Much excellent work has developed the idea that all this goes much further than conventional political misrepresentation and pushes into a realm of disinformation hermetically sealed off from facts altogether.

This lockstep backing has many motives. Some defenders are all in with the project of “disinforming” millions of Trump voters (see David Frum). Others are fine with Trump soliciting foreign interference because the whole party benefits (see Brian Beutler). Others don’t acknowledge an ethical framework that allows for Trump to be wrong, because their highest loyalty is to him (see Adam Serwer).

But a full acknowledgment of all this requires a fundamental change in the way we’ve been communicating about it.

Time for a reset

It’s time to drop the posture that Trump’s defenders can be shamed into accepting what has been unearthed, or that they can be shamed into arguing from a baseline of shared democratic values, or into arguing over how to interpret a comprehensive set of shared facts.

Instead, let’s rhetorically treat Trump’s defenders as his criminal accomplices. Not just as “enablers” of Trump’s corruption but as active participants in it.

Once this is accepted, it becomes obvious why they can’t be “won over,” because they are actively engaged in keeping the corruption in question from getting fully uncovered, in the belief that they, too, benefit from it, and that they, too, lose out if it’s exposed.

The notion that Trump’s defenders can be shamed into facing up to what has happened here is all-pervasive. It includes the have-you-no-shame lectures delivered to Republicans who smeared Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman for supposed dual loyalties.

It includes the oft-expressed idea that Republicans downplaying the evidence are doing so because they fear Trump’s base, as if they would embrace evidence if only they could, as if the problem is missing “courage” and not a more corrupt form of calculated self-interest.

And it includes anguished objections that Attorney General William P. Barr has “politicized” the Justice Department in a way that brings opprobrium upon it.

Meanwhile, on Fox News, Trump just boasted that Barr’s “review” of the origins of the Russia investigation will show a huge “scandal,” that is, show that he was right all along. We’ll soon see about that, but it’s plainly obvious that Barr and those allied with him in this project cannot be shamed into playing this one by facts.

Instead, Barr is using the Justice Department to accomplish precisely the same rewriting of 2016 that drove Trump’s corrupt scheme in the first place — putting Trump’s reelection needs over the findings of our own intelligence services.

The point here isn’t that describing Trump’s defenders in these ways has no truth or utility at all. Surely some might actually feel cowed by Trump voters or feel secret shame in smearing Vindman. Surely shaming smears has worth.

Rather, the point is we need a much more fundamental change in our underlying treatment of the moment. We need to approach it from the premise that Trump’s defenders are not “gettable” because they are accomplices in the whole scheme -- and forthrightly describe what’s happening in kind.

 

This. I cannot agree more. Show them for what they are: accomplices.

The Dems should be loudly and vociferously proclaiming all the nefarious actions and connections of anyone defending Trump.

Swalwell already picked up on this, when he pointed out that Nunes could be a fact witness. Nunes had absolutely no comeback to what Swalwell said about his actions last year in defense of Russia, or his recently proven connections to Parnas and Fruman. 

 

.

 

[fraurosena]

This is a good start too.

Now to also expose the trumplicans Senators, as they are in the jury of the impeachment trial.

I’m especially looking at you, MoscowMitch.

Sweet loving Rufus be praised!

For starters, the release of these documents definitively proves obstruction of justice by showing there was no reason to give them to Congress when they asked for them.

Then, the documents are pretty damning for Pompeo and Giuliani.

Best of all, they underscore Trump’s complicity. 

 

[fraurosena]

Oh, and while they’re at it, let them please point out each and every way Trump’s kids are profiting off their dad’s position.

Like the repugliklans buying thousands of Fredo-dumb’s dumb book.

Or treason barbie getting all those Chinese trademarks.

Or Javanka even being in the administration in the first place.

Or Trump org profiting off having Pence and his entourage stay at one of the Trump properties. Or re-routing airforce planes to refuel in out of the way Scotland and having the personnel stay overnight in their property.

Edited November 23, 2019 by fraurosena

[GreyhoundFan]

 

[GreyhoundFan]

"Trump opens up Camp David as an ‘adult playground’ to woo GOP lawmakers during impeachment"

Spoiler

President Trump, partial to gold and marble elegance, never took a shine to rustic Camp David. So acting chief of staff Mick Mulvaney pitched to him an unusual idea at the start of the House impeachment inquiry: Use the secluded mountainous presidential retreat to woo House Republicans.

Since then, Mulvaney and top White House officials have hosted weekend getaways for Republicans at the historic lodge, seeking to butter up Republicans before the big impeachment vote. The casual itinerary includes making s’mores over the campfire, going hiking, shooting clay pigeons and schmoozing with Trump officials, some of whom stay overnight with lawmakers.

During dinners, Trump has called in to compliment members personally.

“I’ve worked with a number of Republican presidents over various administrations . . . and I’ve never, ever been invited to Camp David,” said Rep. Ann Wagner (R-Mo.). “It was amazing to go for the short weekend. So historic.”

The excursions are funded by the U.S. government, administration officials say.

The Camp David excursions are one prong of a broad White House charm offensive, meant to hold House and Senate Republicans in line through a House impeachment vote and a trial in the Senate that appears all but inevitable.

Never shy to feud with his own party, Trump has for weeks refrained from full-throated attacks against Republicans who have been even remotely critical of the conduct now under scrutiny by the House: The president’s attempts to pressure Ukraine to investigate former vice president Joe Biden and the Democratic National Committee.

The White House has made sure that a small clutch of Republican lawmakers have accompanied Trump to a trio of recent sporting events, whether at the Ultimate Fighting Championship in New York, the World Series in Washington or at the football game in Tuscaloosa, Ala., between the University of Alabama and Louisiana State University

In recent weeks, the White House has also invited a group of GOP senators every Thursday to have lunch with the president, where the mealtime conversation rarely centers on impeachment but inevitably veers toward it, according to participants. Trump’s message to the senators echoes what he has said publicly against charges that he abused the powers of his office, and Republicans who’ve attended say they feel no overt pressure from the president to stay on his side.

“The president rightfully believes he has been targeted since the election, before he was even sworn in,” said Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.), who attended a White House-hosted lunch Nov. 14. “As a human being, he also talks about the toll it takes, it would take on any family.”

The systematic courting may prove to be one pivotal factor if Republican lawmakers continue to rally behind Trump, who is almost certain to become the third U.S. president in history to become impeached by the House in the coming weeks. The idea, at least for the Camp David getaways, is to make Republicans feel as if they are part of Trump’s family — and make it more difficult for them to vote in favor of impeaching him.

The administration-wide effort to court Republicans was described by 20 lawmakers, administration officials, congressional aides and others familiar with the endeavor.

In all, Trump has met with or reached out personally to 100 GOP members of the House since the impeachment inquiry was launched, and 50 of the 53 Senate Republicans have attended a White House lunch — where chicken is often served — with the president. More than 40 House Republicans, from moderates to conservatives, have made the visit to Camp David at the invitation of Mulvaney and the legislative affairs team — who have invited groups of about 10 for overnight stays.

The wooing appears to be working, particularly the Camp David effort.

Multiple lawmakers who have visited the retreat — nearly 90 miles from Washington — have described the trips as “surreal” and “incredible,” according to a half-dozen lawmakers and aides familiar with the outings. An invitation is now considered “the envy of the conference,” according to one member who attended.

“It’s an impressive effort to engage at the member level,” said the GOP lawmaker, who like several others spoke on the condition of anonymity to speak candidly about the coveted invites. “My colleagues have been blown away by it. And by the way, notice Republicans are united on impeachment.”

When Mulvaney first pitched the idea of turning Camp David into a weekend retreat for lawmakers, Trump was surprised, officials said. The acting chief of staff has told GOP attendees that the president didn’t see the allure, asking: “Who would want to go there?”

It’s clear plenty of House Republicans do. Lawmakers and their spouses are given a tour of the historic grounds once they arrive, attendees said. Many are in awe over the hot tub, golf course and, in particular, who had previously stayed there, as they flip through books containing names of foreign ministers, famous White House staffers and other dignitaries who have slept in the same beds, participants said.

The grounds also include an arcade, a bowling alley and a shooting range. Lawmakers are encouraged to go have fun. And since no phones are allowed on the premises, members have been letting loose — with one attendee likening it to an “adult playground.”

Mulvaney and Eric Ueland, the White House’s chief legislative liaison, have at times broached the subject of impeachment — but more as a discussion of process rather than a hard loyalty sell. The legislative affairs team also gives presentations about policy priorities like prescription drugs and trade.

Though not as elaborate, the Thursday lunches with Trump and GOP senators have a similarly open agenda that the president allows the lawmakers to largely dictate, according to attendees.

Topics vary widely, often on policy matters ranging from foreign affairs to trade to vaping to prescription drugs. The president and senators have also discussed his previous life as a businessman, his books and his first board game; Conan, the military canine who played a key role in the raid that killed Islamic State leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi; and parochial issues that Trump promises to fix, according to people who have attended the lunches.

Trump has regularly bragged to the senators about the power of his Twitter feed and his poll numbers.

The president also finds time for a personal touch. In one recent lunch, he personally thanked Sen. Jerry Moran (R-Kan.) for his support, vaguely mentioning that he was one of seven, according to a person briefed on the encounter. It was unclear to those in attendance what Trump was referring to, although Moran was recently listed as one of seven GOP senators in a Daily Caller story who had explicitly ruled out impeaching the president or removing him from office.

Not much impeachment trial strategy is actually discussed, with most of the impeachment chatter from Trump focusing on the rough transcript of his July 25 call with Ukrainian leader Volodymyr Zelensky and his proclamations that he did nothing improper.

“He just said over and over, ‘I didn’t do anything wrong,’ ” said Sen. Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.), describing one lunch.

In one lunch, Sen. Kevin Cramer (R-N.D.) asked Trump whether he would like to see a swift dismissal of a Senate trial, particularly if Republicans believe the Democrats’ case is fundamentally flawed, or whether he would like to see a lengthier proceeding that allows for more time to present his defense. Trump declined to take a position, deferring to the senators instead to determine that.

The light and friendly touch from Trump is not an accident.

After Trump called Sen. Mitt Romney (R-Utah) a “pompous ‘ass’ ” when the senator criticized his conduct on Ukraine, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), at an Oct. 21 meeting at the White House, urged the president to lay off attacks against Republicans.

A Trump adviser says the president so far is not seeking to attack or directly pressure wary senators. At a recent donor event at Trump International Hotel in Washington, Trump made sure to call out and compliment senators such as Tillis, Steve Daines (R-Mont.) and Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska), whom Trump noted he “kind of” likes “but she really doesn’t like me.”

Trump expressed confidence in a meeting last week with advisers that Romney would not vote to convict him in a Senate impeachment trial, according to a person with knowledge of the meeting. Romney, who has taken up anti-vaping as a key cause in the Senate, was seated next to Trump Friday at a White House event on the issue.

“I don’t think he’s needing any reinforcement by these lunches,” Sen. Mike Braun (R-Ind.) said.

Indeed, few if any Republicans have strayed from the party view that Trump’s pressure on Ukraine does not amount to impeachable conduct — before and after the days of damaging testimony from a cavalcade of witnesses in front of the House intelligence panel this month.

At the Nov. 9 football game in Alabama, Rep. Robert B. Aderholt (R-Ala.) said he listened as Trump spoke — again — about impeachment, expressing surprise while chatting with lawmakers in a luxury box at Bryant-Denny Stadium that Democrats were even moving forward with proceedings.

Trump, again, implored the Alabama and Louisiana Republicans in attendance to read the memorandum of the call with Zelensky. He also stressed that he is pleased Republicans have been united behind him so far.

“He had more impeachment on his mind,” Aderholt recalled, “than anything else.”

 

[Smash!]

Anyone who's trying to make sense of this show I highly recommend listening to the episode "Mafia State U.S.A" of the "GasLit Nation" podcast by Sara Kendzior. It was eye-opening for me. Here the description of the episode:

For the entire duration of the Trump-Russia crime spree, the people who spoke out hardest – and paid the worst price – have been women. That trend continued this week with the testimony of national security advisor Fiona Hill, who reconfirmed what Gaslit Nation already knew (that Putin had been interested in Trump for ages) and paid the price with death threats.

[JMarie]

https://www.newsweek.com/devin-nunes-spent-57000-flights-europe-allegedly-investigate-bidens-1473765

 

[fraurosena]

We will push this narrative against all evidence to the contrary!

(Putin demands it. He hacked the RNC and has so much dirt on all of us, we have no choice.)

Notice how Kennedy diminishes the evidence from the entire intel community to Fiona Hill is entitled to her opinion. As if Fiona Hill is the entire intel community, and as if what she states is merely opinion, which not only diminishes her expertise, but also the expertise and evidence from the intel community. 

 

[GreyhoundFan]

"White House review turns up emails showing extensive effort to justify Trump’s decision to block Ukraine military aid"

Spoiler

A confidential White House review of President Trump’s decision to place a hold on military aid to Ukraine has turned up hundreds of documents that reveal extensive efforts to generate an after-the-fact justification for the decision and a debate over whether the delay was legal, according to three people familiar with the records.

The research by the White House Counsel’s Office, which was triggered by a congressional impeachment inquiry announced in September, includes early August email exchanges between acting chief of staff Mick Mulvaney and White House budget officials seeking to provide an explanation for withholding the funds after the president had already ordered a hold in mid-July on the nearly $400 million in security assistance, according to the three people familiar with the matter who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal White House deliberations.

One person briefed on the records examination said White House lawyers are expressing concern that the review has turned up some unflattering exchanges and facts that could at a minimum embarrass the president. It’s unclear whether the Mulvaney discussions or other records pose any legal problems for Trump in the impeachment inquiry, but some fear they could pose political problems if revealed publicly.

People familiar with the Office of Management and Budget’s handling of the holdup in aid acknowledged the internal discussions going on during August, but characterized the conversations as calm, routine and focused on the legal question of how to comply with the congressional Budget and Impoundment Act, which requires the executive branch to spend congressionally appropriated funds unless Congress agrees they can be rescinded.

“There was a legal consensus at every step of the way that the money could be withheld to conduct the policy review,” said OMB spokeswoman Rachel K. Semmel. “OMB works closely with agencies on executing the budget. Routine practices and procedures were followed, not scrambling.”

The hold on the military aid is at the heart of House Democrats’ investigation into whether the president should be removed from office for allegedly trying to pressure Ukraine into investigating his political rivals in exchange for the U.S. support that President Volodymyr Zelensky desperately wanted in the face of Russian military aggression.

In the early August email exchanges, Mulvaney asked acting OMB director Russell Vought for an update on the legal rationale for withholding the aid and how much longer it could be delayed. Trump had made the decision the prior month without an assessment of the reasoning or legal justification, according to two White House officials. Emails show Vought and OMB staffers arguing that withholding aid was legal, while officials at the National Security Council and State Department protested. OMB lawyers said that it was legal to withhold the aid, as long as they deemed it a “temporary” hold, according to people familiar with the review.

A senior budget lawyer crafted a memo on July 25 that defended the hold for at least a short period of time, an administration official said.

Mulvaney’s request for information came days after the White House Counsel’s Office was put on notice that an anonymous CIA official had made a complaint to the agency’s general counsel about Trump’s July 25 call to Zelensky during which he requested Ukraine investigate former vice president Joe Biden and his son Hunter Biden, as well as an unfounded theory that Ukraine interfered in the 2016 U.S. presidential election.

This official would later file a whistleblower complaint with the intelligence community’s inspector general, which ignited the impeachment push when its existence became public.

The White House released the funding to Ukraine on Sept. 11. The timing has drawn scrutiny because it came two days after the House was formally alerted to a whistleblower complaint, who raised concerns about the call and whether the president was using his public office for personal political gain.

Trump has acknowledged ordering the hold on military aid and also pressing Ukraine’s president to investigate his potential Democratic presidential opponent, Joe Biden, but said the release of the funds was not conditioned on Ukraine launching any investigations.

The office of White House Counsel Pat Cipollone oversaw the records review. The White House press office and the White House Counsel’s Office did not respond to requests for comment. Mulvaney’s lawyer, Robert Driscoll, declined to comment.

The document research has only exacerbated growing tension between Cipollone and Mulvaney and their offices, with Cipollone tightly controlling access to his findings, and Mulvaney’s aides complaining Cipollone isn’t briefing other White House officials or sharing important material they need to respond to public inquiries, according to people familiar with their relationship.

Mulvaney is a critical player in the Ukraine saga, as he has acknowledged that he asked the OMB to block the release of congressionally approved aid to Ukraine — at the president’s request — in early or mid-July 2019.

The emails revealed by White House lawyers include some in which Mulvaney urges Vought to immediately focus on Ukraine’s aid package, making clear it was a top priority for the administration.

The legal office launched this fact-finding review of internal records in a protective mode, both to determine what the records might reveal about internal administration conversations and also to help the White House produce a timeline for defending Trump’s decision and his public comments. Along with examining documents, the review has also involved interviewing some key White House officials involved in handling Ukraine aid and dealing with complaints and concerns in the aftermath of the call between Trump and Zelensky.

Cipollone’s office has focused closely on correspondence that could be subject to public records requests, those which involve discussions between staff at the White House and at other agencies. Internal White House records are not subject to federal public records law, but messages that include officials at federal agencies are.

Also included in the review are email communications between OMB and State Department officials and others discussing why the White House was holding up nearly $400 million in military aid and whether the hold might violate the law, one person said. In December 2018, months before the Ukraine issue surfaced as a top priority for the president, the Government Accountability Office had warned the OMB it was not following the law in how it chose to disburse and withhold congressionally approved funds.

Cipollone has told House impeachment investigators that the White House will not cooperate with the inquiry in any way, including by greenlighting witnesses or turning over documents.

While some officials from State and Defense have testified publicly about their concerns over whether the administration was seeking to leverage the aid and a White House visit for the political investigations, only one OMB official has appeared before the congressional committees.

Mark Sandy, a career OMB official, has testified that the decision to delay aid to Ukraine was highly unusual, and senior political appointees in his office wanted to be involved in reviewing the aid package. Sandy testified that he had never seen a senior political OMB official assume control of a portfolio in such a fashion, according to the people familiar with his testimony.

Sandy told impeachment investigators he had questions about whether it was legal to withhold aid Congress had expressly authorized to help Ukraine defend itself from Russia, but OMB lawyers told him it was fine as long as they called it a temporary hold, according to a person familiar with Sandy’s account. Sandy, the deputy associate director for national security programs at the OMB, signed formal letters to freeze the funds, but top political appointees were unable to provide him with an explanation for the delay.

Trump has continued to describe that impeachment investigation as a “hoax” and maintain that he did nothing wrong.

“This is a continuation of the witch hunt which has gone on from before I got elected,” he told Fox News on Friday.

 

[fraurosena]

Oligarch Dmitry Firtash says Giuliani offered help fighting his extradition to the US from Vienna. He connects Fruman and Parnas, Giuliani, Hannity, Solomon and Toensing and DiGenova, all in an effort to get dirt on Biden.

Why Giuliani Singled Out 2 Ukrainian Oligarchs to Help Dig Up Dirt

Quote

They were two Ukrainian oligarchs with American legal problems. One had been indicted on federal bribery charges. The other was embroiled in a vast banking scandal and was reported to be under investigation by the F.B.I.

And they had one more thing in common: Both had been singled out by Rudolph W. Giuliani and pressed to assist in his wide-ranging hunt for information damaging to one of President Trump’s leading political rivals, former Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr.

That effort culminated in the July 25 phone call between the American and Ukrainian presidents that has taken Mr. Trump to the brink of impeachment and inexorably brought Mr. Giuliani’s Ukrainian shadow campaign into the light.

In public hearings over the last two weeks, American diplomats and national-security officials have laid out in detail how Mr. Trump, at the instigation and with the help of Mr. Giuliani, conditioned nearly $400 million in direly needed military aid on Ukraine’s announcing investigations into Mr. Biden and his son, as well as a debunked conspiracy theory that Ukraine, not Russia, interfered in the 2016 presidential election.

But interviews with the two Ukrainian oligarchs — Dmitry Firtash and Ihor Kolomoisky — as well as with several other people with knowledge of Mr. Giuliani’s dealings, point to a new dimension in his exertions on behalf of his client, Mr. Trump. Taken together, they depict a strategy clearly aimed at leveraging information from politically powerful but legally vulnerable foreign citizens.

In the case of Mr. Firtash, an energy tycoon with deep ties to the Kremlin who is facing extradition to the United States on bribery and racketeering charges, one of Mr. Giuliani’s associates has described offering the oligarch help with his Justice Department problems — if Mr. Firtash hired two lawyers who were close to President Trump and were already working with Mr. Giuliani on his dirt-digging mission. Mr. Firtash said the offer was made in late June when he met with Lev Parnas and Igor Fruman, both Soviet-born businessmen involved in Mr. Giuliani’s Ukraine pursuit.

Mr. Parnas’s lawyer, Joseph A. Bondy, confirmed that account and added that his client had met with Mr. Firtash at Mr. Giuliani’s direction and encouraged the oligarch to help in the hunt for compromising information “as part of any potential resolution to his extradition matter.”

Mr. Firtash’s relationship to the Trump-allied lawyers — Victoria Toensing and Joseph diGenova — has led to intense speculation that he is, at least indirectly, helping to finance Mr. Giuliani’s campaign. But until now he has stayed silent, and many of the details of how and why he came to hire the lawyers have remained murky.

In the interview, Mr. Firtash said he had no information about the Bidens and had not financed the search for it. “Without my will and desire,” he said, “I was sucked into this internal U.S. fight.” But to help his legal case, he said, he had paid his new lawyers $1.2 million to date, with a portion set aside as something of a referral fee for Mr. Parnas.

And in late August, Ms. Toensing and Mr. diGenova did as promised: They went to the Justice Department and pleaded Mr. Firtash’s case with the attorney general, William P. Barr.

In an interview, Mr. Giuliani acknowledged that he had sought information helpful to Mr. Trump from a member of Mr. Firtash’s original legal team. But, Mr. Giuliani said, “the only thing he could give me was what I already had, hearsay.” Asked if he had then directed his associates to meet with Mr. Firtash, Mr. Giuliani initially said, “I don’t think I can comment,” but later said, “I did not tell Parnas to do anything with Firtash.”

He added, though, that there would be nothing improper about seeking information about the Bidens from the oligarchs. “Where do you think you get information about crime?” he said.

But Chuck Rosenberg, a legal expert and a United States attorney under President George W. Bush, said the “solicitation of information, under these circumstances, and to discredit the president’s political opponent, is at best “crass and ethically suspect.”

He added: “And it is even worse if Mr. Giuliani, either directly or through emissaries acting on his behalf, intimated that pending criminal cases can be ‘fixed’ at the Justice Department. The president’s lawyer seems to be trading on the president’s supervisory authority over the Justice Department, and that is deeply disturbing.”

Mr. Bondy, the lawyer for Mr. Parnas — who was arrested with Mr. Fruman last month on campaign finance-related charges and has signaled a willingness to cooperate with impeachment investigators — said in a statement that all of his client’s actions had been directed by Mr. Giuliani.

“Mr. Parnas reasonably believed Giuliani’s directions reflected the interests and wishes of the president, given Parnas having witnessed and in several instances overheard Mr. Giuliani speaking with the president,” the lawyer said. Mr. Parnas, he added, “is remorseful for involving himself and Mr. Firtash in the president’s self-interested political plot.”

A Conduit to Ukraine

By the time Mr. Giuliani turned his attention to Mr. Kolomoisky and Mr. Firtash, he had been working for months to turn up damaging information about Mr. Biden and his son Hunter, who joined the board of the Ukrainian energy company Burisma while his father was vice president.

Mr. Giuliani spoke with Ukrainian officials like Viktor Shokin, the former prosecutor general who suggested, falsely, that Mr. Biden had had him fired for looking into Burisma, as well as with Mr. Shokin’s successor, Yuriy Lutsenko. And he enlisted Ms. Toensing and Mr. diGenova, trusted colleagues since their days together in the Reagan Justice Department, to help interview and potentially represent anyone willing to come forward with dirt. Mr. Parnas acted as translator and fixer, crisscrossing the Atlantic with stops at the Manhattan cigar bar that was Mr. Giuliani’s hangout, a strip club in Kyiv and even a Hanukkah reception at the White House.

The campaign seemed to be paying off, with the Ukrainian president, Petro Poroshenko, poised to announce the investigations Mr. Giuliani sought, when the political situation changed. On April 21, Mr. Poroshenko was unseated by Volodymyr Zelensky, a comedian and political novice, sending Mr. Giuliani scrambling to establish a conduit. Two days later, Mr. Parnas and Mr. Fruman flew to Tel Aviv to meet with Mr. Kolomoisky, who was seen as Mr. Zelensky’s patron.

Mr. Kolomoisky, a banking and media tycoon who is one of Ukraine’s richest men, is also known for financing mercenary troops battling Russian-supported separatists in eastern Ukraine. Earlier in April, The Daily Beast had reported, citing unnamed sources, that the F.B.I. was investigating him for possible money-laundering in connection with problems at a bank he had owned. He is also entangled in a civil lawsuit in Delaware.

Mr. Giuliani’s assessment, according to Mr. Parnas’s lawyer, was that those legal problems made Mr. Kolomoisky vulnerable to pressure.

But the meeting did not go according to plan. In an interview, Mr. Kolomoisky said the two men came “under the made-up pretext of dealing liquefied natural gas,” but as soon as it became clear that what they really wanted was a meeting between Mr. Giuliani and Mr. Zelensky, he abruptly sent them on their way. The exchange, he said, went like this:

“I say, ‘Did you see a sign on the door that says, ‘Meetings with Zelensky arranged here’?

“They said, ‘No.’

“I said, ‘Well then, you’ve ended up in the wrong place.’”

Mr. Kolomoisky, who has denied wrongdoing in the bank case, said he had not been contacted by the F.B.I.; a bureau spokesman declined to say whether the oligarch was under investigation.

After the Kolomoisky meeting’s unsuccessful end, Mr. Giuliani tweeted about the Daily Beast article and gave an interview to a Ukrainian journalist. Mr. Zelensky, he warned, “must cleanse himself from hangers-on from his past and from criminal oligarchs — Ihor Kolomoisky and others.”

Mr. Kolomoisky offered a warning of his own, predicting in the Ukrainian press that “a big scandal may break out, and not only in Ukraine, but in the United States. That is, it may turn out to be a clear conspiracy against Biden.”

Help to Fight an Extradition

The pair fared better with Mr. Firtash.

For several years, Mr. Firtash’s most visible lawyer had been Lanny Davis, a well-connected Democrat who also represented Mr. Trump’s fixer-turned-antagonist, Michael Cohen. In a television appearance in March, Mr. Giuliani had attacked Mr. Davis for taking money from the oligarch, citing federal prosecutors’ contention that he was tied to a top Russian mobster — a charge Mr. Firtash has denied.

Now, however, Mr. Giuliani wanted Mr. Firtash’s help. After being largely rebuffed by a member of the oligarch’s legal team in early June, he hit upon another approach, according to Mr. Parnas’s lawyer: persuading Mr. Firtash to hire more amenable counsel.

There was a brief discussion about Mr. Giuliani’s taking on that role himself, but Mr. Giuliani said he decided against it. According to Mr. Parnas’s lawyer, that is when Mr. Giuliani charged Mr. Parnas with persuading the oligarch to replace Mr. Davis with Ms. Toensing and Mr. diGenova. The men secured the June meeting with Mr. Firtash in Vienna after a mutual acquaintance, whom Mr. Firtash declined to name, vouched for them.

In the interview, Mr. Firtash said it had been clear to him that the two emissaries were working for Mr. Giuliani. The oligarch, a major player in the Ukrainian gas market, said Mr. Parnas and Mr. Fruman initially pitched him on a deal to sell American liquefied natural gas to Ukraine, via a terminal in Poland. While the deal didn’t make sense financially, he said, he entertained it for a time, even paying for the men’s travel expenses, because they had something else to offer.

“They said, ‘We may help you, we are offering to you good lawyers in D.C. who might represent you and deliver this message to the U.S. D.O.J.,” Mr. Firtash recalled, referring to the Justice Department.

The oligarch had been arrested in Vienna in 2014, at the American authorities’ request, after his indictment on charges of bribing Indian officials for permission to mine titanium for Boeing. Mr. Firtash, who denies the charges, was free on bail but an Austrian court had cleared the way for his extradition to the United States.

In hopes of blocking that order, Mr. Firtash and his Vienna lawyers had filed records showing that a key piece of evidence — a document known as “Exhibit A” that was said to lay out the bribery scheme — had been prepared not by Mr. Firtash’s firm, but by the global consultancy McKinsey & Company. But Mr. Firtash’s legal team had been unable to persuade federal prosecutors to withdraw it. McKinsey has denied recommending “bribery or other illegal acts.”

Ms. Toensing and Mr. diGenova, the Giuliani emissaries told him, “are in a position to insist to correct the record and call back Exhibit A as evidence,” Mr. Firtash recalled.

He hired the lawyers, he said, on a four-month contract for a singular task — to arrange a meeting with the attorney general and persuade him to withdraw Exhibit A. He said their contract was for $300,000 a month, including Mr. Parnas’s referral fee. A person with direct knowledge of the arrangement said Mr. Parnas’s total share was $200,000; Ms. Toensing declined to discuss the payment but has said previously that it was for case-related translation.

There was one more piece to Mr. Parnas’s play. “Per Giuliani’s instructions,” Mr. Parnas’s lawyer said, his client “informed Mr. Firtash that Toensing and diGenova were interested in collecting information on the Bidens.” (It was the former vice president who had pushed the Ukrainian government to eliminate middleman gas brokers like Mr. Firtash and diversify the country’s supply away from Russia.)

While Mr. Firtash declined to say whether anyone linked to the dirt-digging efforts had asked him for information, he was adamant that he had not provided any. Doing so might have helped Mr. Giuliani, he said, but it would not have helped him with his legal problems.

“I can tell you only one thing,” he said. “I do not have any information, I did not collect any information, I didn’t finance anyone who would collect that information, and it would be a big mistake from my side if I decided to be involved in such a fight.”

At any rate, Ms. Toensing and Mr. diGenova soon delivered for Mr. Firtash, arranging the meeting with Attorney General Barr. But by the time they met, in mid-August, the ground had shifted: The whistle-blower’s complaint laying out Mr. Trump’s phone call with Mr. Zelensky, and Mr. Giuliani’s activities in Ukraine, had been forwarded to the Justice Department and described in detail to Mr. Barr. What’s more, concerns about intervening in the Firtash case had been raised by some inside the Justice Department, according to two people with knowledge of the matter.

The department declined to comment, but Mr. Firtash said the attorney general ultimately told the lawyers to “go back to Chicago,” where the case had initially been brought, and deal with prosecutors there.

Mr. Firtash continues, however, to have faith in Ms. Toensing and Mr. diGenova’s ability to work the Justice Department angle. Their contract was just extended at least through year’s end.

Documents Leaked

If Mr. Firtash had nothing to offer, Mr. Giuliani still got some results.

After Ms. Toensing and Mr. diGenova came on board, confidential documents from Mr. Firtash’s case file began to find their way into articles by John Solomon, a conservative reporter whom Mr. Giuliani has acknowledged using to advance his claims about the Bidens. Mr. Solomon is also a client of Ms. Toensing.

One article, citing internal memos circulated among Mr. Firtash’s lawyers, disclosed that the office of the special counsel, Robert S. Mueller III, had offered a deal to Mr. Firtash if he could help with their investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election. Mr. Giuliani, who as a former federal prosecutor was aware that such discussions are hardly unusual, took the story a step further. In an appearance on Fox News, he alleged that the offer to Mr. Firtash amounted to an attempt to suborn perjury, but said the oligarch had refused to “lie to get out of the case” against him.

Then, after the meeting with Mr. Barr, Mr. Solomon posted a sworn affidavit from Mr. Shokin, the former Ukrainian prosecutor, repeating his contention that Mr. Biden had pressed for his firing to short-circuit his investigations.

Mr. Giuliani was soon waving the affidavit around on television, without explaining that it had been taken by a member of Mr. Firtash’s legal team to support his case.

Mr. Firtash said he had not authorized the document’s release and hoped his lawyers had not either. He said the affidavit had been filed confidentially with the Austrian court because it also included the former prosecutor’s statement that Mr. Biden had been instrumental in blocking Mr. Firtash’s return to political life in Ukraine — an assertion that Mr. Firtash believes speaks to the political nature of the case against him.

Ms. Toensing and Mr. diGenova declined to say whether they had played a role in leaking the documents, but Mark Corallo, a spokesman for their law firm, said that the pair “took the Firtash case for only one reason: They believe that Mr. Firtash is innocent of the charges brought against him.”

When Mr. Parnas and Mr. Fruman were arrested, they were at Dulles International Airport awaiting a flight to Vienna, where they had arranged to have the Fox News host Sean Hannity interview Mr. Shokin. Mr. Giuliani was planning to join them the next day, he said in an interview.

A bemused Mr. Kolomoisky has watched the events unfold from Ukraine, where he returned after Mr. Zelensky’s victory. Initially he didn’t believe that Mr. Parnas was all that connected, he said, but after Mr. Giuliani started going after him, “I was able to connect A to B.”

He said he had since made peace with Mr. Parnas and had spoken to him several times, including the night before he was detained. In their conversations, he said, Mr. Parnas made no secret that he was helping Mr. Firtash with his legal case. And while Mr. Kolomoisky insisted that neither Mr. Parnas nor Mr. Fruman had mentioned his own legal travails, he added:

“Had they, I would have said: ‘Let’s watch Firtash and train on Firtash. When Firtash comes back here, and everything is O.K., I will be your next client.’”

 

[SassyPants]

On 11/22/2019 at 9:10 AM, mamallama said:

I agree, @Xan but I think where the Dems are shooting themselves in the foot is not finding a candidate that will be easy for those people to vote for.  I would love to see medicare for all and free college but I don't think you can sell it to a big chunk of the country and even if you can you couldn't get it through congress.  The primary process isn't helping but I don't have any great ideas on how to change it.  

I think Russia has the equivalent of peepee tapes on a lot of Rupublicans.  

 

I have spent the last few days with Octogenarian, Trumpsters., who scream Socialism at every turn, all while they sit back and collect their social security and Medicare benefits. They got theirs and screw everyone else. It is so typical. What Trump does is ok because others have also done it. My voice might have elevated this AM in Starbucks about how that approach is not OK. Can’t believe these 2 partisan hacks raised me.

[fraurosena]

Devin Nunes' antics in the hearings have turned the spotlight onto all his egregious and nefarious actions, and even old news that didn't get much traction before is being dug up again to underscore his contemptible behavior.

Nunes used political donations to buy $15k Celtics tickets, lavish dinners

Quote

House Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes, R-Calif., used funds from New PAC, his leadership political action committee, to purchase steak dinners, limo rides, and nearly $15,000 in Boston Celtics basketball games tickets, Federal Election Commission (FEC) filings show.

The expenditures were first reported by the Fresno Bee and do not appear to break any federal laws.

A leadership PAC like Nunes' New PAC is a separate pot of money from a lawmaker's own campaign fund, intended to help politicians strategically finance other candidates' campaigns. In recent years, however, leadership PACs have increasingly been used to pay for lavish trips, meals and hotel stays, rather than to support political allies.

Nunes’ New PAC expenditures have been particularly conspicuous. FEC filings show that New PAC spent a total of $14,638 at TD Garden, the home of the Boston Celtics, on three occasions between February and May 2017.

New PAC dropped an additional $3,593 at the 4-star Omni Parker House hotel on May 8, the same day that the fund purchased tickets for the Celtics' playoffs against the Washington Wizards.

2018 quarterly filings for New PAC show a number of more recent luxury expenditures. On March 9, bills at seven different restaurants in Las Vegas totaled over $7,000.

Among them: $2,365 at The Dorsey, a cocktail bar offering to serve Dom Perignon and other fine liquors directly from a disco ball as part of its "Disco Punch Bowl Pairings" special.

Exactly a month ago, on June 19, the PAC charged $5,075 to Gold Coast Limousine service and $4,408 at the Sea Venture hotel in Pismo Beach, Calif.

Several restaurants and luxury hotels show up repeatedly on the congressman’s filings. New PAC has spent over $10,000 since July of last year in frequent visits to The Prime Rib D.C., an upscale steakhouse. The restaurant boasts tuxedoed waitstaff intended to “evoke the elegant supper clubs of 1940’s Manhattan.”

The PAC is funded by typical GOP donors such as Koch Industries.

The largest donation to the PAC in 2017-2018 fiscal year came from Northrop Grumman, a defense company that was the fifth-largest arms trader in the world as of 2015, followed by tobacco company Altria Group (formerly Philip Morris). Other top donors include defense companies Lockheed Martin and Raytheon Co, and California-based dairy, almond and wine industry lobbyists.

Meanwhile, Nunes has raised over $7 million for the Devin Nunes Campaign Committee, the PAC that will fund his 2018 election in a safely Republican race. This week, he used his campaign PAC to fund an ad released Wednesday that accuses the Fresno Bee, a local daily, of publishing 'fake news.'

"The Fresno Bee has worked closely with radical left-wing groups to promote numerous fake news stories about me," he says in the ad, which is over two minutes long and is airing on radio and TV outlets.

Calling the publication's staff “the Bee’s band of creeping correspondents,” Dunes criticized recent reporting on a winery in which he's an investor, describing the articles as a “textbook example of fake news.”

The Fresno Bee published an editorial in response to the ad, and Joe Kieta, editor of the Fresno Bee, defended the paper's reporting in a statement to ABC News.

"Just because Nunes doesn’t want the story told does not make it 'false,'" Kieta said in the statement. "For all his complaints about 'fake news,' Rep. Nunes has failed to identify a single factual error in our work — while making numerous false statements himself."

On Thursday, the Bee published an article detailing Nunes’ recent spending out of the leadership PAC, drawing on FEC filings and reporting by watchdog groups.

In a statement to ABC News, Anthony Ratekin, Nunes’ Chief of Staff, characterized the reporting as "another baseless attack" on the congressman.

"[The report] insinuates wrongdoing while actually showing that Rep. Nunes has broken no rules and properly reported all expenses for his fundraising events, much of whose income he gives to help elect other Republicans," Ratekin said.

By law, officeholders cannot use campaign funds for "personal use." However, leadership PACs are less closely regulated; the Senate ethics committee does not claim jurisdiction over leadership PACs, and while House ethics rules state that the "personal use" ban applies to leadership PACs, lawmakers are rarely taken to task for lavish spending written off as fundraising expenditures.

A report published Thursday by the Campaign Legal Center and Issue One details the frequent use of Leadership PACs for luxury spending.

Leadership PACs such as New PAC were originally created by the FEC in 1978 in order to allow officeholders to make contributions to the campaigns of congressional colleagues. However, today, less than half of Leadership PAC money is used to fund political allies; instead, the scathing report concludes, "leadership PACs look more like slush funds to subsidize officeholder luxury lifestyles."

The lion’s share of luxury expenditures are filed as "fundraising expenses." The report’s authors noted that lavish trips to Disneyland and beach resorts were written off as ‘fundraising’ and "perpetuate a never-ending fundraising cycle."

Members of Congress with leadership PACs frequent many of the same tony hangouts. Over the past five years, leadership PAC bills at the Capitol Hill Club, a Republican social club in Washington, have totaled at least $437,000, the report found.

Nunes’ July quarterly filing shows that between April and June of this year, he spent just shy of $20,000 at the club, including a $13,773 tab on June 4th.

But we shouldn't stop at the ranking member. Let's also look into the rest of them:

• Mike Conaway
• Will Hurd
• Gym Jordan
• Mark Meadows
• John Ratcliff
• Elise Stefanik
• Chris Stewart
• Mike Turner
• Brad Wenstrup

All of them defended Trump, and most of them pushed Russian propaganda. There will be a lot to find out about them too. 

And once you're done with them, it's time to look into all the trumplicans in the Senate too. 

[Dandruff]

3 hours ago, SassyPants said:

What Trump does is ok because others have also done it.

I've been hearing the same thing from a few octogenarian Trumpsters.  He did nothing wrong, OK so he may have done something wrong but it doesn't matter because he's still learning and everyone else has done things that are wrong.  Why is everyone picking on him?  The liberals who are picking on him are socialists.  It's not fair.