Impeachment Inquiry 2: Now It's Official!

[GreyhoundFan]

4 hours ago, SassyPants said:

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.

My mother, who is in her 70s, is a diehard Dem. Her husband, however, raised some BTs. The worst of them actually belongs to the mango moron's local golf club. Whenever he comes to see his father, she has to leave the house because she said it just makes her sick. At my suggestion, she has been leaving Elizabeth Warren campaign stuff around the house when he shows up. Unfortunately, her HOA prohibits yard signs, or she'd put one out front.

[fraurosena]

Oh lordy, he has tapes!

Giuliani associate Lev Parnas submits recordings to House investigators

Quote

Lev Parnas, a former Trump donor and associate of Rudy Giuliani’s who was involved in the Ukraine pressure campaign, has reportedly provided photos, video, audio recordings and documents to the House Intelligence Committee.

ABC News reported Sunday that Parnas had submitted the materials to the committee in response to a congressional subpoena that was issued for the businessman’s testimony. Though the exact content of the materials remains unknown, ABC News said some of the audio, video and photos “include Giuliani and Trump.”

Parnas had said initially that he would defy the congressional subpoena ― but later changed his tune.

On Friday, Parnas’ attorney Joseph Bondy reiterated to CNN that his client was willing to comply with the subpoena and was prepared to tell Congress about how Rep. Devin Nunes (R-Calif.) ― the ranking GOP member of the House Intelligence Committee ― had allegedly met with former Ukrainian prosecutor Viktor Shokin in a bid to dig up dirt on Joe Biden.  

Though congressional records appear to corroborate Parnas’ claim, Nunes lambasted the accusation as “demonstrably false” ― and threatened to sue CNN and the Daily Beast for reporting on it.

On Sunday, CNBC ― quoting Bondy ― reported that Parnas had also helped Nunes set up meetings via Skype and over the phone with two other Ukrainian prosecutors who claimed “to have evidence that could help [Trump’s] reelection campaign.”

Nunes had initially planned to travel to Ukraine to speak with the prosecutors in person, Bondy said, but later scrapped the trip after realizing that he would need to alert Intelligence Committee Chair Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) of his plans.

Parnas ― who, along with another Giuliani associate Igor Fruman, was arrested and charged with federal campaign finance violations last month ― spent more than a year working with Giuliani to find negative information about Biden and his son, Hunter Biden, Bondy told CNBC.

Parnas and Fruman are also believed to have helped orchestrate the ouster of Marie Yovanovitch, the former U.S. ambassador to Ukraine.

In Yovanovitch’s testimony before Congress earlier this month, she said the two men had worked with Giuliani to “remove me from [my] post.”

“I didn’t understand that at all, because I had never met Mr. Parnas and Mr. Furman, and so it was unclear to me why ― why they were interested in ― in doing this,” she said.

 

[fraurosena]

And then this also happened:

Judge orders Pentagon and White House budget office to release Ukraine aid records

Quote

A federal judge on Monday issued a preliminary injunction ordering the Department of Defense and the White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB) to comply with a Freedom of Information Act request for records relating to the Trump administration's freeze on security aid to Ukraine.

Why it matters: 
Allegations that Trump froze nearly $400 million congressionally-approved military aid in order to pressure Ukraine to carry out investigations into his political rivals are at the heart of the impeachment inquiry.

Details: 
The 211 pages of records include communications between the Pentagon, the Pentagon's comptroller and OMB.

The judge ordered the release of half of the documents by Dec. 12 and the rest by Dec. 20.

The decision comes after the Center for Public Integrity, a nonprofit journalism organization, sued the department for the records.

What they're saying:

"Currently, the United States House of Representatives is in the process of conducting impeachment proceedings concerning the same subject matter as the documents requested by Plaintiff.. As such, the requested documents are sought in order to inform the public on a matter of extreme national concern. Only an informed electorate can develop its opinions and persuasively petition its elected officials to act in ways which further the aims of those opinions."

— Colleen Kollar-Kotelly, U.S. district judge for Washington, D.C.

 

[fraurosena]

#MoscowMitch is a wimpy coward who doesn't have the balls to answer a legitimate question.

 

[SassyPants]

4 hours ago, Dandruff said:

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.

Yep. I listened to this exact same jargon for the past 5 days. I finally screeched at my dad that our POTUS physically assaulted multiple women. There is NOTHING that mitigates that act or his boasting about it. He did close his mouth at that point.

[Xan]

Judge has ruled that Don McGahn has to honor the subpoena and testify. 

Spoiler

https://www.rawstory.com/2019/11/judge-rules-former-white-house-counsel-mcgahn-must-obey-house-subpoena-to-testify/

Does this mean that they'll continue the hearings or will he just testify in front of the House Judicial Committee?

[fraurosena]

8 minutes ago, Xan said:

Judge has ruled that Don McGahn has to honor the subpoena and testify. 

  Hide contents

https://www.rawstory.com/2019/11/judge-rules-former-white-house-counsel-mcgahn-must-obey-house-subpoena-to-testify/

Does this mean that they'll continue the hearings or will he just testify in front of the House Judicial Committee?

Yay, that’s good news! Not entirely unexpected, but in these strange times you never know.

I don’t think he’ll be testifying before the intelligence committee as they were looking into the Ukraine scandal, and specifically into intelligence matters.

Instead, McGahn needs to testify about his obstruction of the Mueller investigation, which I believe will be before the judiciary committee and/or the oversight committee.

If he doesn’t plead the fifth, nor claims some sort of executive privilege, and chooses to tell the truth, his testimony could be explosive.

[fraurosena]

Jerry Nadler says McGahn should come and testify before his committee.

 

Of course, the administration is appealing, so McGahn isn’t testifying any time soon.

 

[fraurosena]

Despite the hearings, Russian propaganda is still merrily being pushed down America's throat.

In fact, it looks to me as if the trumplicans have been amping up the defense of Russia since the investigation started and it has only intensified as each devastating testimony became public. 

[fraurosena]

Ooh! Do you think he'll come? Will Giuliani -- he could be his counsel, right?

/sarcasm

I particularly like the last paragraph of the letter, that up till that point is quite cordial in tone:

The Committee looks forward to your participation in the impeachment inquiry as the Committee fulfills its constitutional duties. While we invite you to this hearing, we remind you that if you continue to refuse to make witnesses and documents available to the committees of jurisdiction, under H. Res 660 "the Chair shall have the discretion to impose appropriate remedies."

[fraurosena]

There are damning emails and documents and memo's pertaining to the withholding of Ukraine aid and the ousting of Yovanovitch. No wonder the administration is holding out on them.

Budget official testimony undermines impeachment defense on freezing Ukraine aid

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A career budget official undercut one of the White House's arguments for freezing $400 million in security aid to Ukraine, according to a newly released transcript.

Mark Sandy, a career official in the Office of Management and Budget, said that the White House did not tell his office that the aid was being frozen over concerns about other countries' contributions until months after the hold was put in place. Sandy described deep dissatisfaction within the OMB after the hold was put in place, including questions being raised about the legality of the freeze and the resignations of officials who expressed concerns about the move.

White House officials -- including acting chief of staff Mick Mulvaney -- have said that one of the key reasons US security assistance to Ukraine was held up in July was because other countries in Europe were not providing enough assistance to Kiev. But Sandy testified that he was only given that explanation in September, when the White House first asked OMB for information about what other countries were contributing, according to a transcript of the closed-door deposition released by House Democrats on Tuesday.

"I recall in early September an email that attributed the hold to the President's concern about other countries not contributing money to Ukraine," Sandy said, adding that the email came sometime before September 9, when he was asked to "puIl together the data" on the contributions.

Prior to that, Sandy testified, the White House rationale for the hold "was an open question over the course of late July and pretty much all of August, as I recall."

Sandy's testimony, which was released by House Democrats Tuesday along with State Department official Philip Reeker, adds to the understanding of the timeline surrounding the freezing of US aid to Ukraine. While Sandy, the only OMB official to testify before House impeachment investigators, wasn't involved with the effort for Ukraine to announce investigations into the President's political rivals, his testimony fills in key context about what was going on inside the administration while the aid was frozen.

Sandy said he learned about the hold on Ukraine aid on July 19, and that he raised concerns about the legality of the move. He was in charge of signing off on the official hold on the assistance on July 25, the same day as Trump's phone call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, and said he expressed concerns, but then-OMB political appointee Michael Duffey took over the process on July 30, he testified.

Sandy explained that the President's interest in Ukraine aid dated back to June. Sandy testified he was told by Duffey, OMB's associate director for national security programs, that the President "had seen a media report and he had questions about the assistance" to Ukraine, specifically that there was "an interest in getting more information from the Department of Defense."

Sandy did not know which news report Trump had seen, but said that Trump wanted to learn more about the aid program. The email was forwarded onto the Pentagon, Sandy said, and he received some information one day later.

With the release of the Sandy and Reeker transcripts, House impeachment investigators have now made public all of the 17 closed-door depositions that took place over the past eight weeks in the impeachment inquiry.

The transcripts come as Democrats move on to the next phase of the impeachment proceedings against Trump. The Intelligence Committee is preparing a report summarizing its findings, which will be sent to the Judiciary Committee soon after Congress returns from its Thanksgiving recess next week, shifting the impeachment proceedings into that committee.

Sandy says freeze may have violated law

Sandy said that when he learned the aid was withheld on July 19, after returning from a vacation, he raised legal concerns because the funds had to be obligated by September 30, the end of the fiscal year, under the Impoundment Control Act. The law, passed in the 1970s, prohibits a sitting US president from unilaterally withholding funds that were appropriated by Congress. Some liberal-minded scholars have opined that Trump broke the law when he froze the aid, because the $390 million in military help for Ukraine had been appropriated by lawmakers.

Sandy said he asked why the US aid was frozen in July and August, but did not receive a response from the White House, which directed the hold at the President's request, until September. Sandy said that Duffey told him he was interested in getting to the bottom of things.

"He certainly said that if he got additional information he would share it with us," Sandy said of Duffey. Duffey was subpoenaed by House Democrats to testify in the inquiry, but like most political appointees, he ignored the subpoena.

It wasn't until early September when Duffey got back to Sandy with more information.

Republicans have pointed to Sandy's testimony to argue it showed there was no quid pro quo linked to the push for Ukraine to investigate Trump's political rivals.

"The ONLY reason he was ever given why there was a hold on $ to Ukraine was 'the President's concern about other countries not contributing more to Ukraine.' NOT bribery. NOT quid pro quo or any other WACKY Schiff conspiracy!" tweeted Rep. Lee Zeldin, a New York Republican.

By the time Sandy was given the explanation, however, the Trump White House already knew about the Ukraine whistleblower and public news reports had revealed the freeze in military assistance. Later in September, after the whistleblower complaint was released, Trump and other White House officials publicly said one reason for the holdup was because European nations weren't giving enough money to Ukraine.

Mulvaney offered that explanation in a news conference last month, when he admitted that Trump wanted Ukraine to investigate conspiracy theories about election meddling before he would unlock the nearly $400 in military and security assistance.

"I was involved with the process by which the money was held up temporarily, OK? Three issues for that: the corruption of the country, whether or not other countries were participating in the support of the Ukraine and whether or not they were cooperating in an ongoing investigation with our Department of Justice," Mulvaney said. "That's completely legitimate."

Sandy said he and other OMB staff sent a memo on August 7 to Duffey recommending that the funds for Ukraine be released, because blocking the funds undermined US national security interests.

Two officials who left OMB expressed frustration with Ukraine aid, Sandy said

Sandy testified that he believed two officials left OMB in part because of concerns over the Ukraine security assistance.

One of the officials was working in the legal division, Sandy said.

"This person expressed to me concerns about actions vis-à-vis the Impoundment Control Act," Sandy said. Asked if that was in the context of Ukraine security assistance and the hold, Sandy responded, "Yes," though he added the caveat that he would "never want to attribute that as the, you know, sole purpose for an individual's actions."

But he said that he was "aware of their frustrations in that area, yes," later adding: "the individual did note a disagreement on this topic."

Sandy also referenced another colleague who had left OMB in September. He said he was "reluctant to speak to someone else's motivations," but confirmed the person "expressed some frustrations about not understanding the reason for the hold" on security assistance to Ukraine.

Neither official is named.

A senior administration official disputed the notion that OMB officials resigned over the hold on Ukraine assistance, insisting that none of the officials who left OMB during that time frame did so because of the security assistance hold.

The legal official who was referenced by Sandy departed OMB for a position at the Government Accountability Office, according to a GAO spokesperson.

Reeker details push to protect Yovanovitch

Reeker testified last month that he was under the impression that US security assistance to Ukraine was "being held by Mr. Mulvaney, the White House acting Chief of Staff." Reeker, however, said he did not have "definitive knowledge that Mulvaney was behind the holdout."

Reeker also said he has never met Mulvaney.

Reeker's testimony provided more details on the efforts inside the State Department to defend former US Ambassador to Ukraine Marie Yovanovitch, who was removed from her post earlier this year amid a smear campaign led by the President's personal attorney Rudy Giuliani.

Reeker testified that on March 21 he issued a "stern demarche" to the deputy chief of mission at the Ukrainian embassy in Washington, saying it "was unacceptable, to have Government of Ukraine figures maligning our Ambassador in this way," referring to unfounded attacks in the press against Yovanovitch. A demarche is a formal diplomatic message conveying concern.

Those government figures included a Ukrainian prosecutor who alleged that Yovanovitch created a "do-not-prosecute list" -- a claim he later recanted. This appears to be a reference to former Ukrainian prosecutor Yuriy Lutsenko, who other witnesses have said met with Giuliani in February 2019 to "throw mud" at Yovanovitch.

Reeker also testified that former US special envoy to Ukraine Kurt Volker told him that he was planning to reach out to speak with Giuliani to try and tamp down the negative narrative Giuliani was relaying to Trump about corruption in Ukraine.

Reeker threw cold water on the suggestion from some witnesses they weren't aware what Giuliani was up to in trying to investigate the Bidens through Burisma, saying, "It was just one of those things it was always out there, because, of course, Giuliani was talking about it and the press was writing about it all the time."

Reeker testified that when he raised the idea of State Department leadership issuing a formal defense of Yovanovitch to Undersecretary of State David Hale, he suggested in a March 23 email the embattled diplomat should "reaffirm her loyalty as an ambassador" to Trump and the Constitution.

During the week of March 25, Reeker testified, State officials tried to get the department to issue a formal statement of support for Yovanovitch but received no response to his queries on the matter, as FOX News hosts like Laura Ingraham and Sean Hannity continued to amplify the unfounded allegations against her.

"And, you know, queries continued to come in following, for instance, the -- specifically on some of the FOX News programs of Laura Ingraham and Sean Hannity, we got a lot of questions about the allegations there," Reeker said.

The complete transcript of Mark Sandy's testimony can be found here.

The complete transcript of Philip Reeker's testimony can be found here.

 

[fraurosena]

It seems he was briefed late August. Funny how it took him until after Congress found out about the complaint that the aid was finally released.

 

[GreyhoundFan]

"Trump faces Dec. 6 deadline to say whether he’ll send lawyer to impeachment hearings"

Spoiler

President Trump has until Dec. 6 to decide whether to have his counsel participate in the House’s impeachment hearings, according to a letter sent Friday by Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerrold Nadler (D-N.Y.).

“In particular, please provide the Committee with notice of whether your counsel intends to participate, specifying which of the privileges your counsel seeks to exercise, no later than 5:00 pm on December 6, 2019,” Nadler wrote in the letter, which was addressed to Trump. “I look forward to your prompt response.”

Trump and his Republican allies have repeatedly complained that the Democratic-led impeachment probe is being conducted unfairly, with several specifically saying that the president was not allowed to have his lawyers participate in the process.

“We had a great two weeks watching these crooked politicians, not giving us due process, not giving us lawyers, not giving us the right to speak,” Trump said during a campaign rally in Florida on Tuesday.

It’s not clear whether Trump will participate in the House’s probe, which is looking into allegations that the president abused his power in an attempt to get Ukraine to launch political investigations into Democrats.

The White House has called the process a “hoax” and argued that Trump did nothing wrong when he asked Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky for a “favor” while holding back almost $400 million in military aid from Ukraine. Top aides to Trump have defied congressional subpoenas to testify, and White House Counsel Pat Cipollone has deemed the House’s probe “illegitimate.”

The House Intelligence Committee, which held weeks of closed-door depositions and public hearings on the matter, is preparing a report on its findings, committee Chairman Adam B. Schiff (D-Calif.) wrote in a letter to colleagues this week.

The House Judiciary Committee has scheduled hearings to begin next week, a potential precursor to drafting and voting on articles of impeachment.

Nadler also wrote a letter to Judiciary Committee ranking Republican Douglas A. Collins (Ga.) on Friday, asking him to certify by Dec. 6 any requests for subpoenas.

 

[fraurosena]

 

[GreyhoundFan]

"Republicans to mount aggressive campaign against impeachment as spotlight turns to Judiciary panel"

Spoiler

As the impeachment inquiry into President Trump moves to the House Judiciary Committee, Republicans signaled Sunday that they will mount an aggressive campaign to delegitimize the process, accusing Democrats of rushing the proceedings as the White House debates whether to participate at all.

Speaking on “Fox News Sunday,” Rep. Douglas A. Collins (Ga.), the top Republican on the Judiciary Committee, indicated that the GOP would continue its all-out effort to attack the Democratic-led impeachment process. But he declined to say whether Republicans would take advantage of the complete range of opportunities they will have to make their case against Trump’s removal.

The remarks from Collins and other Republicans on Sunday reflected a conflict inside the GOP over the extent to which Trump and his congressional defenders ought to participate in a process they have spent more than two months attacking as unfair and corrupt.

Rep. Tom McClintock (R-Calif.), a Judiciary Committee member, said on ABC News’s “This Week” that he thought it “would be to the president’s advantage” to have counsel participate in the upcoming hearings.

“But I can also understand how he is upset at the illegitimate process that we saw unfold in the Intelligence Committee,” he added.

Collins attacked the speedy timeline that Democratic leaders are pursuing, one that appears aimed at concluding an impeachment vote in the House before Christmas rather, he argued, than providing appropriate due process for the president.

“They want to get this president right now before everybody completely sees through the process sham of the elections for next year,” Collins said. “So we’re rushing this.”

Democrats on the Judiciary Committee said Sunday that Republicans were trying to distract from Trump’s wrongdoing by raising objections to the impeachment process without challenging the facts that have been gathered.

The Judiciary Committee is set to hear Wednesday from four constitutional scholars who are expected to testify on the standards for impeachment — three chosen by Democrats, one by Republicans. Rep. Jerrold Nadler (D-N.Y.), the panel’s chairman, has not yet named the witnesses, prompting protests from Collins, despite the matter being handled in accordance with House rules.

Some Republicans on Sunday predicted that the impeachment inquiry will take a turn for the combative once it reaches Nadler’s committee.

“It’s a bunch of brawlers sometimes on the Judiciary Committee, so it should get pretty hot and under the collar as we go along,” Rep. Andy Biggs (R-Ariz.), who sits on the panel, said in an interview with Fox News Channel’s Mike Emanuel on “Sunday Morning Futures.” “I don’t think things have been done the way they’ve been done in the past, Mike, and so it causes some rancor and it should be pretty — much more feisty, I would say, than the Intel Committee was.”

Collins said Sunday that he was not sure whether Trump would avail himself of the due-process protections that Nadler has offered, including the right to present evidence, suggest witnesses, and cross-examine those whom Democrats call to testify. In a Friday letter, Nadler set a Dec. 6 deadline for the White House to decide on the scope of its participation.

“We’re certainly hoping that the president, his counsel, will take advantage of that opportunity if he has not done anything wrong,” Rep. Val Demings (D-Fla.) said on “This Week.” “We’re certainly anxious to hear his explanation of that.”

There were few indications of Trump’s thinking Sunday morning. The president had sent two tweets about World AIDS Day as of early afternoon and was spending the second day in a row at his golf course in West Palm Beach, Fla., after returning early Friday from a Thanksgiving visit to U.S. troops in Afghanistan.

On Saturday night, the president had tweeted out links to opinion pieces from Trump-friendly media outlets defending his actions and criticizing the impeachment process as “wasting time.”

Collins said Sunday that he understood why the White House might skip participating in the Wednesday hearing, calling it “just another rerun” covering ground already surveyed in previous Judiciary Committee hearings.

“This is a complete American waste of time right here,” he said.

But he added that Republicans would be more keen to participate in future hearings — particularly one examining the findings of the House Intelligence Committee as prepared by its chairman, Rep. Adam B. Schiff (D-Calif.).

The panel is set to meet Tuesday to approve the release of its report on Trump’s dealings with Ukraine.

Collins on Sunday renewed calls for Schiff personally to testify, indicating that he would face intense questioning from Republicans on the role his committee played in shepherding the whistleblower complaint that exposed Trump’s irregular dealings with Ukraine, among other matters.

The Republican congressman noted that Schiff has compared the panel’s fact-finding process to that of the independent prosecutors who examined matters that led to impeachment proceedings against president Richard Nixon and Bill Clinton. In those cases, Collins noted, those prosecutors subjected themselves to congressional questioning.

“He’s put himself into that position,” Collins said. “It’s easy to hide behind a report. It’s easy to hide behind a gavel and the Intelligence Committee’s behind-closed-door hearings. But it’s going to be another thing to actually get up and have to answer questions.”

Demings said Democrats were “not going to play any games” with Republicans and called on Trump to end his stonewall of Democrats’ witness and document demands.

“They want to … play a political game and tie the process up in the courts as long as they can and run the clock out,” she said. “We’re not willing to play that game.”

Some Democrats on Sunday intensified their criticism of Trump’s alleged efforts to pressure Ukraine.

Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.), who is running for president, described the impeachment inquiry as a constitutional obligation and likened the president’s actions to a “global Watergate.”

“James Madison said that the reason we needed impeachment provisions is that he feared that a president would betray the trust of the people to a foreign power,” Klobuchar said on NBC News’s “Meet the Press.” “That’s why this is proceeding. I see it simply as a global Watergate.”

Just as Nixon delegated people to get dirt on a political opponent, Klobuchar added, “that’s basically what this president has done on a global basis.”

Sen. John Neely Kennedy (R-La.), meanwhile, argued that both Russia and Ukraine interfered in the 2016 presidential election, despite the intelligence community’s assessment that only Russia did so.

The comments mark Kennedy’s latest attempt to shift the focus away from the U.S. intelligence community’s conclusion that Russia worked to help elect Trump, following a Fox News Channel interview last week from which he later backtracked.

“I think both Russia and Ukraine meddled in the 2016 election,” Kennedy told host Chuck Todd on “Meet the Press” on Sunday.

Todd pressed Kennedy on whether he was concerned that he had been “duped” by Russian propaganda, noting reports that U.S. intelligence officials recently briefed senators that “this is a Russian intelligence propaganda campaign in order to get people like you to say these things about Ukraine.”

Kennedy responded that he had received no such warning.

“I wasn’t briefed. Dr. Hill is entitled to her opinion,” Kennedy said, referring to former National Security Council Russia adviser Fiona Hill, who testified in the impeachment inquiry last month.

In her public testimony, Hill had warned that several Trump allies had spread unfounded allegations that Ukraine, rather than Russia, had interfered in the 2016 U.S. presidential election.

“This is a fictional narrative that has been perpetrated and propagated by the Russian security services,” she said.

 

[fraurosena]

11 hours ago, GreyhoundFan said:

Collins said Sunday that he was not sure whether Trump would avail himself of the due-process protections that Nadler has offered, including the right to present evidence, suggest witnesses, and cross-examine those whom Democrats call to testify. In a Friday letter, Nadler set a Dec. 6 deadline for the White House to decide on the scope of its participation.

Of course he's not participating. No coward would. 

White House will not participate in Judiciary Committee hearing

Quote

Neither President Donald Trump nor his attorneys will participate in Wednesday's House Judiciary Committee impeachment hearing, they said late Sunday.

In a letter to Chairman Jerrold Nadler, White House counsel to the President Pat Cipollone said, "We cannot fairly be expected to participate in a hearing while the witnesses are yet to be named and while it remains unclear whether the Judiciary Committee will afford the President a fair process through additional hearings. More importantly, an invitation to an academic discussion with law professors does not begin to provide the President with an semblance of a fair process. Accordingly, under the current circumstances, we do not intend to participate in your Wednesday hearing."

Cipollone accused the New York Democrat in the letter of "no doubt purposely" scheduling the hearing while Trump will be at a NATO meeting in London.

Cipollone said they would respond separately to the Friday deadline about their participation in future hearings.

The Judiciary Committee's first hearing on "Constitutional Grounds for Presidential Impeachment" is expected to kick off a frantic month of activity in the House.

The judiciary panel is expected to hold multiple public hearings and then consider articles of impeachment, which it would approve to set up a possible House floor vote before Christmas that could make Trump just the third president in US history to be impeached.

Under the House-passed rules, the President's counsel is able to participate in the impeachment hearings in the Judiciary Committee, unlike the public hearings last month in the House Intelligence Committee.

 

11 hours ago, GreyhoundFan said:

Todd pressed Kennedy on whether he was concerned that he had been “duped” by Russian propaganda, noting reports that U.S. intelligence officials recently briefed senators that “this is a Russian intelligence propaganda campaign in order to get people like you to say these things about Ukraine.”

I saw this. Kennedy says he's not been duped. So that means that he's knowingly pushing Russian propaganda– which makes him a literal traitor.

Treason against the United States, shall consist only in levying War against them, or in adhering to their Enemies, giving them Aid and Comfort.

According to the legal definition, Kennedy is actively, knowingly and willingly aiding an enemy of the United States. 

I wish the media would start pointing that out, to him, and anyone else propagating it.

What I wish even more is that somebody would actually charge them with it. 

[GreyhoundFan]

"Assessing the Republicans’ 10 ‘findings’ in their impeachment inquiry report"

Spoiler

The second person to speak during the public hearings that were part of the House Intelligence Committee’s impeachment inquiry into President Trump’s interactions with Ukraine was ranking panel Republican Devin Nunes. His opening statement wove together criticism of Democrats, dismissal of his opponents’ motivations and a reframing of Trump’s demonstrated actions to suggest that nothing untoward happened in Trump’s July 25 conversation with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky or at any other point before or after that conversation.

Over the course of about 30 hours of testimony, Nunes’s skepticism only strengthened. His last comment, offered after the last two witnesses testified, was similarly dismissive of Trump’s guilt.

“What you’re seeing in this room over the past two weeks is a show trial,” said Nunes (R-Calif.), “the planned result of three years of political operations and dirty tricks, campaigns waged against this president. And like any good show trial, the verdict was decided before the trial ever began.”

On Monday, The Washington Post obtained a 123-page document drafted by Nunes and other senior House Republicans that offers a rebuttal to the expected report from the Democratic majority. The thrust of the document is that Trump’s interactions with Ukraine were aboveboard and understandable, an outgrowth of his demonstrated commitments and concerns that suggested no ulterior motives — and, indeed, that no such motives were shown. It is, in essence, a formalized, more tonally neutral version of the argument that Nunes offered repeatedly from the dais — and one that is often at odds with the testimony that Nunes and his colleagues heard.

The document delineates 10 findings to exonerate Trump. They are listed in bold below, followed by our analysis of how robust an argument can be made for them.

Trump has a deep-seated, genuine and reasonable skepticism of Ukraine due to its history of pervasive corruption.

On May 23, a small group of officials met with Trump at the White House after having attended Zelensky’s inauguration several days prior. Ambassador to the European Union Gordon Sondland testified that the group hoped to convey to Trump its confidence that Zelensky would tackle endemic corruption in the country.

“Unfortunately,” Sondland told the committee, “President Trump was skeptical. He expressed concerns that the Ukrainian government was not serious about reform, and he even mentioned that Ukraine tried to take him down in the last election.”

By this point, Trump personal attorney Rudolph W. Giuliani had already publicly and repeatedly criticized alleged Ukrainian corruption, focused on two issues that quickly became central to Trump’s own beliefs. The first was that “tried to take him down” claim, a vague reference to the unfounded idea that Ukraine had tried to interfere in the 2016 election against Trump. The other was Giuliani’s belief that former vice president Joe Biden had demanded the firing of a prosecutor investigating a company, Burisma Holdings, for which his son Hunter worked. The primary source for Giuliani’s belief? The fired prosecutor, Viktor Shokin, who was targeted by Biden and others within the Obama administration and internationally for failing to act on corruption.

The Republican report itself notes that Giuliani was probably a source of Trump’s skepticism.

As we’ve reported, if Trump had a “deep-seated, genuine, and reasonable skepticism” of corruption in Ukraine, he never mentioned it before the emergence of his interactions with Zelensky in September. He talked about corruption all the time — in the context of Democrats and the media. Trump has never indicated a real interest in combating international corruption as president.

We have documentation of three times when Trump and Zelensky spoke directly: The April 21 call after Zelensky won the election, the July 25 call mentioned above and a Sept. 25 public press availability with the two presidents in New York.

In none of those conversations did Trump address corruption in any context except wanting an investigation into the Bidens specifically.

President Trump has a long-held skepticism of U.S. foreign assistance and believes that Europe should pay its fair share for mutual defense.

It is true that Trump has frequently complained about foreign aid and that he has at times ordered that aid be reduced or halted. It’s similarly true that he has advocated that Europe contribute more to NATO, though that’s generally an apparent misunderstanding of the benchmark requirement of NATO members, which focuses on defense spending as a function of GDP and not actual contributions to the organization.

What’s important to remember in this case, though, is that there was no explanation communicated within the administration for the stoppage of aid to Ukraine. Trump was apparently alerted to the aid after the Defense Department publicly announced military assistance in late June (according to Mark Sandy of the Office of Management and Budget). By July 3, multiple administration officials were aware that a hold had been placed on the aid, a halt communicated more broadly on July 18. Ukraine was aware of the halt as early as July 25 — the day of the Trump-Zelensky call.

More importantly: If the aid was halted by Trump simply because he didn’t like foreign aid, that doesn’t mean that it wasn’t then used to pressure Ukraine.

President Trump’s concerns about Hunter Biden’s role on Burisma’s board are valid. The Obama State Department noted concerns about Hunter Biden’s relationship with Burisma in 2015 and 2016.

There is little dispute that Hunter Biden’s position on Burisma’s board even as his father served as vice president was potentially problematic.

However, this isn’t what Trump expressed. In the July 25 call, he described his desire for an investigation as follows:

“The other thing, there’s a lot of talk about Biden’s son, that Biden stopped the prosecution and a lot of people want to find out about that so whatever you can do with the Attorney General would be great. Biden went around bragging that he stopped the prosecution so if you can look into it … It sounds horrible to me.”

This is not a “concern about Hunter Biden’s role.” This is Trump lifting up the allegation made by Shokin (and rebutted by numerous other officials) that he was fired because Joe Biden acted inappropriately. There is no question raised by Trump about Hunter Biden and no investigation of Hunter Biden requested. The focus is only on Joe Biden, a potential 2020 opponent of Trump’s.

There is indisputable evidence that senior Ukrainian government officials opposed President Trump’s candidacy in the 2016 election and did so publicly. It has been publicly reported that a Democratic National Committee operative worked with Ukrainian officials, including the Ukrainian Embassy, to dig up dirt on then-candidate Trump.

These claims are extraneous to the issue at hand, which focuses on Trump’s own actions. They are, instead, an attempt to rationalize what Trump did, just as the above claims about Hunter Biden are meant to offer an argument for why Trump might have wanted an investigation into the former vice president’s son.

In this case, though, the evidence for the claims themselves is even less defensible. We reported on this at length on Monday, articulating the claims above and assessing the evidence behind them. In short, two or three senior officials disparaged Trump on social media, something that former Trump National Security Council official Fiona Hill testified was common among officials of numerous countries, including close U.S. allies. The “operative” who worked to “dig up dirt” was, in fact, a DNC consultant in charge of outreach who investigated the Trump campaign chairman’s political work in Ukraine on the side. It was reportedly an effort to see if Paul Manafort’s hands were dirty, not Trump’s — and Manafort’s hands turned out to be demonstrably dirty, leading to his resignation from the campaign.

Comparing this to Russia’s 2016 interference is ridiculous. Politico reported on Monday afternoon that Senate Republicans who looked at the question agreed.

The evidence does not establish that President Trump pressured Ukraine to investigate Burisma Holdings, Vice President Joe Biden, Hunter Biden, or Ukrainian influence in the 2016 election for the purpose of benefiting him in the 2020 election.

The evidence — the rough transcript of the July 25 call — clearly demonstrates that Trump pressured Ukraine to launch two investigations, one about Joe Biden’s targeting of Shokin and one focused on a false theory that Ukraine was somehow involved in inaccurately blaming Russia for culpability in hacking the DNC in 2016. Others in the administration went further, pushing for a broader 2016 probe or of Burisma itself.

The question of pressure itself is well-established. Lt. Col. Alex Vindman, a member of the National Security Council, noted the inherent imbalance between the United States and Ukraine that underlines any request from the American president. David Holmes, a staffer at the U.S. Embassy in Kyiv, outlined how Ukraine felt — and still feels — pressure to comply with Trump’s requests.

Were the requests meant to benefit Trump in the 2020 election? That is harder to evaluate, in part because it depends on understanding his motivation.

We can focus on the specific requests being made: to probe Joe Biden in particular and to cast doubt on a central component of Russia’s 2016 interference (the DNC hacking). Were Ukraine to announce investigations that might have those results, the political benefit to Trump would be tangible, but the effects on Trump’s purported actual concerns — corruption and 2016 interference by Ukraine — negligible. Republicans have inserted Trump’s specific requests into a broader, more nebulous context precisely so that they can dismiss criticism of the requests as having been politically motivated. Here, they’re saying that the contexts are apolitical, though, of course, the actual requests weren’t.

The evidence does not establish that President Trump withheld a meeting with President Zelensky for the purpose of pressuring Ukraine to investigate Burisma Holdings, Vice President Joe Biden, Hunter Biden, or Ukrainian influence in the 2016 election.

The evidence shows quite clearly that Sondland demanded investigations from Ukraine before approving a Trump-Zelensky meeting in Washington; he said as much. He also testified that he did so in compliance with Giuliani’s wishes — after being told by Trump that he and his colleagues should work with Giuliani on Ukraine in that May 23 meeting.

More specifically, there’s ample documentary evidence and testimony to suggest that Trump specifically requested that Ukraine agree to investigations before a meeting would move forward, including a chain of communications from Trump to a senior Zelensky aide right before the July 25 call in which the aide was instructed that a meeting depended on new investigations. On the call, Trump didn’t invite Zelensky to the White House until after the investigations were agreed to.

In short, there’s little doubt that this was precisely the quid pro quo at stake.

The evidence does not support that President Trump withheld U.S. security assistance to Ukraine for the purpose of pressuring Ukraine to investigate Burisma Holdings, Vice President Joe Biden, Hunter Biden, or Ukrainian influence in the 2016 election.

Note the phrasing here: a lack of evidence that Trump withheld aid for the purpose of pressuring Ukraine. As established above, that may be the case — but it also doesn’t preclude Trump from having understood that the stoppage in aid put pressure on Ukraine to comply with his wishes. There was no rationale given for stopping the aid, leading Sondland to assume that the halt was linked to the desire for the investigations (since the White House meeting was explicitly predicated on the same thing). In his testimony, Holmes argued that Ukraine would have come to the same conclusion.

The aid was released only after questions had already emerged about whether it was stopped to pressure Ukraine to launch new probes that were politically useful to Trump. It was released only after congressional Democrats announced an investigation into Giuliani’s efforts and why the aid was stopped in the first place.

When Sondland told Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) that the aid was halted to force the investigations, Johnson raised the question with Trump. Trump insisted that there was no link — but that he needed to know what had happened in 2016.

The evidence does not support that President Trump orchestrated a shadow foreign policy apparatus for the purpose of pressuring Ukraine to investigate Burisma Holdings, Vice President Joe Biden, Hunter Biden, or Ukrainian influence in the 2016 election.

During her testimony, Hill described Sondland’s efforts and how they contrasted with the formal diplomatic process.

“I was upset with him that he wasn’t fully telling us about all of the meetings that he was having,” she testified. “And he said to me: ‘But I’m briefing the president, I’m briefing Chief of Staff Mulvaney, I’m briefing Secretary Pompeo, and I’ve talked to Ambassador Bolton. Who else do I have to deal with?’”

“And the point is, we have a robust interagency process that deals with Ukraine,” she continued. “It includes Mr. Holmes. It includes Ambassador Taylor as the chargé in Ukraine. It includes a whole load of other people. But it struck me when yesterday, when you put up on the screen Ambassador Sondland’s emails, and who was on these emails and he said ‘These that these people need to know,’ that he was absolutely right.”

“Because he was being involved in a domestic political errand and we were being involved in national security foreign policy,” she said. “And those two things had just diverged. So he was correct.”

Put simply, Hill and others in the formal diplomatic channel saw Sondland’s efforts as distinct from that effort. Sondland saw his job as being to effect Ukraine policy in accordance with Giuliani’s focus, at Trump’s request — and that included explicitly leveraging a White House meeting for the desired investigations.

That’s not reconcilable with the presentation made in the Republican “finding.”

The evidence does not support that President Trump covered up the substance of his telephone conversation with President Zelensky by restricting access to the call summary.

One of the allegations made in the original whistleblower complaint was that the White House tried to prevent people from learning about Trump’s call with Zelensky by moving the rough transcript to a more secure storage system.

While multiple witnesses indicated that they didn’t see that move as necessarily nefarious (including Vindman), the rationale for moving it was, according to former National Security Council staffer Tim Morrison, to prevent it from leaking.

The Republicans are unequivocally correct on one point: The order to move it didn’t come from Trump but from an NSC attorney.

President Trump’s assertion of longstanding claims of executive privilege is a legitimate response to an unfair, abusive, and partisan process, and does not constitute obstruction of a legitimate impeachment inquiry.

This will almost certainly be something to which the Democratic majority itself responds directly. It’s worth noting, though, that the broad invocation of executive privilege by Trump predated the impeachment inquiry and its process by several months.

 

[GreyhoundFan]

"Pat Cipollone is the dog that caught the car"

Spoiler

Friends have likened White House counsel Pat Cipollone to a pit bull. Now, he’s the proverbial dog that caught the car.

For months, the Trump White House and its congressional chorus have clamored for Democrats to allow President Trump’s counsel to be present at impeachment proceedings.

Trump and his supporters have shared that the impeachment resolution is unfair because it “doesn’t allow POTUS’ counsel to be present to question witnesses.”

White House spokesman Hogan Gidley complained that “we can’t question witnesses; we can’t have a conversation with those who are in front of the committees." A White House official briefing reporters lamented the president’s inability “to have counsel present.”

GOP Reps. Lee Zeldin (N.Y.), Steve Scalise (La.), Michael McCaul (Texas), Tom Cole (Okla.) and many others have howled that Trump should have counsel present.

And so it came to pass that House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerrold Nadler (D-N.Y.) last week sent a letter to Trump inviting him and his counsel to participate in this week’s first impeachment hearing before the panel and to gauge their interest in questioning the witnesses.

Trump’s reply? “We do not intend to participate in your Wednesday hearing,” Cipollone wrote Sunday night.

In sending the White House’s regrets, Cipollone tossed in a maybe-next-time formulation: “We may consider participating in future Judiciary Committee proceedings if you afford the Administration the ability to do so meaningfully.”

How good of them!

This is the White House that can’t take “yes” for an answer.

Trump and his allies complained about secret proceedings. The proceedings were made public.

They complained that there was no formal impeachment resolution. A formal resolution was passed.

They complained that deposition transcripts weren’t released. The transcripts were released.

And still, no cooperation.

They complained that Democrats should hurry up and “move on” from impeachment. But as Democrats work to wrap up impeachment quickly, Rep. Doug Collins (Ga.), the top Republican on the Judiciary Committee, complained Sunday that “we’re rushing this.”

Now, we have the president’s lawyer complaining that Trump “was allowed absolutely no participation” — and yet refusing to participate when invited. It’s a bit like the administration blocking senior officials from testifying and then complaining that those who did testify lacked “first-hand” experience.

But if Cipollone is plagued by inconsistencies, he is blessed with a surfeit of adjectives and adverbs, which he deployed in great number in his reply to Nadler. It wasn’t just the impeachment inquiry but a “purported,” “baseless” and “highly partisan” one, with an “irretrievably broken process” characterized by “profound,” “unprecedented,” “historical,” “basic,” “arbitrary,” “fundamental,” “extremely troubling,” “false,” “rudimentary” and “unfair” elements.

Unfairest of all, Trump had “so little time to prepare” for the hearing, Cipollone carped, above a large, thick Trumpian signature.

Maybe he could have spent less time on Twitter?

If the president had a better defense, it stands to reason, his lawyer wouldn’t need such an adjectival arsenal. If we had a healthier political climate, Republicans would acknowledge Trump’s wrongdoing and propose, in lieu of impeachment, a bipartisan, bicameral resolution of censure.

Instead, they are in the ridiculous position of arguing that Trump and his representatives did absolutely nothing wrong, and of doing all they can to delegitimize Congress’s impeachment powers.

Thus did we have Collins on "Fox News Sunday," maintaining that “there’s nothing here that the president did wrong” and “nothing improper.” The improprieties were everybody else’s: Adam Schiff’s “motives” and “veracity,” Nadler’s “crazy” letters, something about the witness “ratio” at hearings and host Chris Wallace’s flawed premises.

“You’re pretty wound up, I’ve got to say,” Wallace observed.

Better wound up than unwound, as Sen. John Neely Kennedy (R-La.) showed himself to be. A week after he embraced Russian propaganda over U.S. intelligence on Wallace’s show, Kennedy went one step further in advancing Russia’s attempt to frame Ukraine for its 2016 election interference, telling NBC’s Chuck Todd on Sunday that Ukraine’s then-president “actively worked for Secretary Clinton.”

That’s exactly the sort of Russian disinformation that intelligence officials, in a recent briefing, pleaded with senators not to spread. “I wasn’t briefed,” Kennedy said.

Nor was he briefed, apparently, on the invitation for Trump and his counsel to participate in the impeachment hearing.

“His lawyer can't even be there,” the senator complained. “Have they allowed him to have his lawyer present? No.” Kennedy, brushing aside the unhelpful fact that Trump hasn’t allowed his advisers to testify or to provide documents to the inquiry, further claimed that Trump hasn’t been given a chance to clear himself.

Such claims can’t withstand the light of day. And this is why Trump won’t honor the invitation to participate or even the subpoenas demanding it: He can’t tell his side of the story because there isn’t one.

 

[SassyPants]

If Trump et al are using the corruption defense to mitigate Trump’s attempt at the quid pro quo with the Ukrainian President, why did did the WH ultimately dispense the aid money? 

Corrupt is corrupt, right? 

Trump is horrible.

The Republican lead US Senate is worse.

Vote all the bums out!

[fraurosena]

Adam Schiff said on TRMS that it's a loooooong document. It will be released to the public later today after they've sent it to the Judiciary Commitee.

[fraurosena]

Will Prof. Laurence Tribe be one of the constitutional experts in the hearing tomorrow?

 

[fraurosena]

And here it is! The House Intelligence Committee's report is linked in the tweet below.

 

The first paragraphs:

Quote

The impeachment inquiry into Donald J. Trump, the 45th President of the United States, uncovered a months-long effort by President Trump to use the powers of his office to solicit foreign interference on his behalf in the 2020 election.  As described in this executive summary and the report that follows, President Trump’s scheme subverted U.S. foreign policy toward Ukraine and undermined our national security in favor of two politically motivated investigations that would help his presidential reelection campaign.  The President demanded that the newly-elected Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelensky, publicly announce investigations into a political rival that he apparently feared the most, former Vice President Joe Biden, and into a discredited theory that it was Ukraine, not Russia, that interfered in the 2016 presidential election.  To compel the Ukrainian President to do his political bidding, President Trump conditioned two official acts on the public announcement of the investigations:  a coveted White House visit and critical U.S. military assistance Ukraine needed to fight its Russian adversary.

During a July 25, 2019, call between President Trump and President Zelensky, President Zelensky expressed gratitude for U.S. military assistance.  President Trump immediately responded by asking President Zelensky to “do us a favor though” and openly pressed for Ukraine to investigate former Vice President Biden and the 2016 conspiracy theory.  In turn, President Zelensky assured President Trump that he would pursue the investigation and reiterated his interest in the White House meeting.  Although President Trump’s scheme intentionally bypassed many career personnel, it was undertaken with the knowledge and approval of senior Administration officials, including the President’s Acting Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, and Secretary of Energy Rick Perry.  In fact, at a press conference weeks after public revelations about the scheme, Mr. Mulvaney publicly acknowledged that the President directly tied the hold on military aid to his desire to get Ukraine to conduct a political investigation, telling Americans to “get over it.”

President Trump and his senior officials may see nothing wrong with using the power of the Office of the President to pressure a foreign country to help the President’s reelection campaign.  Indeed, President Trump continues to encourage Ukraine and other foreign countries to engage in the same kind of election interference today.  However, the Founding Fathers prescribed a remedy for a chief executive who places his personal interests above those of the country:  impeachment.  Accordingly, as part of the House of Representatives’ impeachment inquiry, the Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, in coordination with the Committees on Oversight and Reform and Foreign Affairs, were compelled to undertake a serious, sober, and expeditious investigation into whether the President’s misconduct warrants that remedy.

In response, President Trump engaged in an unprecedented campaign of obstruction of this impeachment inquiry.  Nevertheless, due in large measure to patriotic and courageous public servants who provided the Committees with direct evidence of the President’s actions, the Committees uncovered significant misconduct on the part of the President of the United States.  As required under House Resolution 660, the Intelligence Committee, in consultation with the Committees on Oversight and Reform and Foreign Affairs, has prepared this report to detail the evidence uncovered to date, which will now be transmitted to the Judiciary Committee for its consideration.

In short, they accuse Trump of...

1) Abuse of power

2) Obstruction

[fraurosena]

Praise Rufus, they're implicating Pence too!

 

Heap more praise on Rufus, because Nunes' conduct is in the report as well...

 

[fraurosena]

Adam Schiff's news conference was blistering.

 

[SassyPants]

Lots of communications between Nunes and Rudy G. Things that make you go hmmm.