Impeachment Inquiry 2: Now It's Official!

[GreyhoundFan]

I know the closing remarks are on right now, but this is a good analysis of the stupid opening by Nunes (R-Moo), and by proxy, all Rs.  I've put the notes in italics.

Spoiler

Rep. Devin Nunes (Calif.), the top minority-party member of the House Intelligence Committee, was the first Republican to present a defense of President Trump during the first public hearing of the House’s impeachment inquiry.

For many observers, Nunes’s arguments might have been somewhat confusing, relying at times on shorthand references to rhetoric popular in conservative media. To others, Nunes’s introduction of the Republican case might have seemed tangential to the day’s discussion.

With that in mind, we’ve endeavored to explain and contextualize Nunes’s remarks, as well as to indicate where they might align with or deviate from the points central to the impeachment inquiry. Nunes’s prepared testimony follows in its entirety. Inset text is additional context from The Post.

Nunes’s remarks

In a July open hearing of this committee following publication of the Mueller report, the Democrats engaged in a last-ditch effort to convince the American people that President Trump is a Russian agent.

It’s useful to remember that Nunes has frequently been a strong defender of Trump’s. In 2017, he took the lead in defending Trump after the president accused former president Barack Obama of wiretapping Trump Tower, leaking information about the Obama administration unmasking the identities of people involved in phone calls. In 2018, Nunes’s staff drafted a document alleging abuses of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act and suggesting that the Russia probe broadly was falsely predicated.

That probe overlaps with Nunes’s reference to the “Mueller report” above; specifically, to the final report compiled by then-special counsel Robert S. Mueller III, which was released in April of this year. The open hearing to which Nunes refers is that in which Mueller himself testified on July 24.

Nunes’s presentation of the Democrats’ “effort” to paint Trump as a “Russian agent” is political rhetoric; the Mueller hearing was focused on the special counsel’s inquiry and, largely, on evidence that Trump sought to obstruct the Russia investigation. Nunes later echoes Trump’s own rhetoric referring to the Mueller probe as the “Russia hoax,” a shorthand that glosses over what Mueller’s probe found.

That hearing was the pitiful finale of a three-year-long operation by the Democrats, the corrupt media and partisan bureaucrats to overturn the results of the 2016 presidential election.

This framing is a constant among Trump’s defenders, suggesting that the concern of Democrats is that Trump is president at all. The mention of “corrupt media” is an effort to cast outlets like our own as untrustworthy, so that people will be skeptical if we, say, contextualize erroneous public statements from politicians.

After the spectacular implosion of their Russia hoax on July 24, in which they spent years denouncing any Republican who ever shook hands with a Russian, on July 25 they turned on a dime and now claim the real malfeasance is Republicans’ dealings with Ukraine.

As Nunes notes, Trump spoke with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky on the phone the day after the Mueller hearing. During that call, Trump pushed Zelensky to open politically useful investigations.

What Nunes blurs is that Democrats didn’t immediately seize upon the July 25 call as problematic. Instead, that focus only emerged in mid-September, when a whistleblower in the intelligence community filed a complaint focused on concerns about Trump’s interactions with Zelensky. That complaint triggered the current probe and the emergence of evidence bolstering the whistleblower’s complaint.

What Nunes is doing here, unsubtly, is framing the impeachment process itself as a function of partisanship. The next section makes that even more obvious.

In the blink of an eye, we’re asked to simply:

forget about Democrats on this committee falsely claiming they had “more than circumstantial evidence” of collusion between President Trump and the Russians;

This is a reference in part to committee chairman Rep. Adam B. Schiff (D-Calif.). For Schiff and other Democrats, incidents like the meeting in Trump Tower in June 2016 establish an effort by Trump’s team to collude with Russian actors. Republicans, including Nunes, reject such claims.

forget about them reading fabrications of Trump-Russia collusion from the Steele dossier into the congressional record;

forget about them trying to obtain nude pictures of Trump from Russian pranksters who pretended to be Ukrainian officials;

The “nude pictures” comment is a reference to Schiff’s having been tricked by Russian pranksters offering purported incriminating photos of Trump. This reference, like the reference to the dossier of reports filed by former British intelligence office Christopher Steele, is meant to embarrass and undermine Schiff rather than to specifically defend Trump.

forget about them leaking a false story to CNN, while he was testifying to our committee, claiming Donald Trump Jr. had colluded with WikiLeaks;

Nunes again tries to disparage House Democrats by suggesting that they leaked erroneous information to the press. CNN, making an error on dates, incorrectly reported that Donald Trump Jr. had received early notification about a release of documents from WikiLeaks.

and forget about countless other deceptions, large and small, that make them the last people on Earth with the credibility to hurl more preposterous accusations at their political opponents.

This is the main point: Democrats can’t be trusted to hold an unbiased impeachment inquiry. (Again, though, note that this doesn’t address Trump’s interactions with Ukraine.)

Nunes continues on this line.

And yet now we’re supposed to take these people at face value when they trot out a new batch of allegations. But anyone familiar with the Democrats’ scorched-earth war against President Trump would not be surprised to see all the typical signs that this is just a carefully orchestrated media smear campaign. For example:

After vowing publicly that impeachment requires bipartisan support, Democrats are pushing impeachment forward without the backing of a single House Republican.

True, but only in part because the one Republican who supported impeachment, Rep. Justin Amash (I-Mich.) left the party. It’s also the case that Republicans maintained a solid front in part to be able to make this argument.

The witnesses deemed suitable for television by the Democrats were put through a closed-door audition process in a cultlike atmosphere in the basement of the Capitol, where the Democrats conducted secret depositions, released a flood of misleading and one-sided leaks, and later selectively released transcripts in a highly staged manner.

This is broadly misleading. A review of transcripts reveals that Republicans were given equal time to question witnesses. Republicans participated in the interviews; dozens were members of committees that allowed them to do so. Both Democrats and Republicans leaked information from the depositions.

Violating their own guidelines, the Democrats repeatedly redacted from the transcripts the name of Alexandra Chalupa, a contractor for the Democratic National Committee who worked with Ukrainian officials to collect dirt on the Trump campaign, which she provided to the DNC and the Hillary Clinton campaign.

The Democrats rejected most of the Republicans’ witness requests, resulting in a horrifically one-sided process where crucial witnesses are denied a platform if their testimony doesn’t support the Democrats’ absurd accusations. Notably, they are trying to impeach the president for inquiring about Hunter Biden’s activities, yet they refused our request to hear from Biden himself.

Democrats, who hold the majority in the House, did reject several witnesses proposed by Republicans. One rationale is that witnesses like Hunter Biden, former vice president Joe Biden’s son, would have little to offer on Trump’s interactions with Ukraine — the focus of the inquiry.

The whistleblower was acknowledged to have a bias against President Trump, and his attorney touted a “coup” against the president and called for his impeachment just weeks after his election.

Republicans have seized on the bias of the whistleblower — revealed by the inspector general for the intelligence community — as being disqualifying. The whistleblower’s complaint, however, has been broadly confirmed by subsequent testimony.

The comment about a “coup” is from a tweet at the beginning of Trump’s administration. Republicans displayed an oversize version of the tweet during the hearing. Embracing a tweet from a lawyer for a whistleblower seems somewhat at odds with the long-standing complaint from Republicans that the impeachment inquiry relies on secondhand information.

At a prior hearing, Democrats on this committee read out a purely fictitious rendition of the president’s phone call with [Ukrainian] President [Volodymyr] Zelensky. They clearly found the real conversation to be insufficient for their impeachment narrative, so they just made up a new one.

Trump has also focused on this “fictitious rendition” — a paraphrasing of the call by Schiff — as problematic.

And most egregiously, the staff of Democrats on this committee had direct discussions with the whistleblower before his or her complaint was submitted to the inspector general, and Republicans cannot get a full account of these contacts because the Democrats broke their promise to have the whistleblower testify to this committee. Democrat members hid these contacts from Republicans and lied about them to the American people on national television.

Nunes is again attacking Schiff, suggesting impropriety in his interactions with the whistleblower (also a Trump focus). Outreach to congressional committees is, however, an acceptable part of the whistleblower process. There’s no indication Schiff knew who the whistleblower was or what the complaint was centered on before its being filed.

I’ve noted before that the Democrats have a long habit of accusing Republicans of offenses they themselves are committing. Recall that:

For years they accused the Trump campaign of colluding with Russia when they themselves were colluding with Russia by funding and spreading the Steele dossier, which relied on Russian sources.

Again a conservative-media talking point. The Steele dossier is used as a rebuttal to questions about Trump’s interactions with Russia, despite that rebuttal centering on the idea that doing research involving Russians is equivalent to allegations about Russia trying to integrate with Trump’s 2016 campaign.

And now they accuse President Trump of malfeasance in Ukraine when they themselves are culpable. The Democrats cooperated in Ukrainian election meddling, and they defend Hunter Biden’s securing of a lavishly paid position with a corrupt Ukrainian company, all while his father served as vice president.

The “Democrats cooperated in Ukrainian election meddling” line links back to the Democratic National Committee contractor mentioned earlier, Alexandra Chalupa. A 2017 Politico article reported on Chalupa’s efforts to get information on Paul Manafort in 2016. Manafort was then Trump’s campaign chairman and had worked in Ukrainian politics for years. There’s no indication that the Democratic Party broadly or the Ukrainian government was part of the effort.

Despite this hypocrisy, the Democrats are advancing their impeachment sham. But we should not hold any hearings at all until we get answers to three crucial questions the Democrats are determined to avoid asking:

First, what is the full extent of the Democrats’ prior coordination with the whistleblower and who else did the whistleblower coordinate this effort with?

Second, what is the full extent of Ukraine’s election meddling against the Trump campaign?

And third, why did Burisma hire Hunter Biden, what did he do for them, and did his position affect any U.S. government actions under the Obama administration?

Observers might consider those questions in a different light: What might their answers reveal about Trump’s apparent efforts to pressure Ukraine into launching politically useful investigations?

The question at the center of the impeachment inquiry is what Trump did and whether he leveraged his power appropriately. If there were evidence that Ukraine interfered in 2016 (which there isn’t) or that Hunter Biden violated the law (which there isn’t), perhaps Trump’s position would be stronger. It would not necessarily be exculpatory.

These questions will remain outstanding because Republicans were denied the right to call witnesses who know the answers.

What we will witness today is a televised theatrical performance staged by the Democrats. Ambassador Taylor and Mr. Kent — I’d like to welcome you here, and congratulate you for passing the Democrats’ Star Chamber auditions held for the last six weeks in the basement of the Capitol. It seems you agreed, wittingly or unwittingly, to participate in a drama. But the main performance — the Russia hoax — has ended, and you’ve been cast in the low-rent Ukrainian sequel.

I’ll conclude by noting the immense damage the politicized bureaucracy has done to Americans’ faith in government. Though executive branch employees are charged with implementing the policy set by our president, who is elected by and responsible to the American people, elements of the civil service have decided that they, not the president, are really in charge.

It is certainly true that faith in government has eroded over time.

Thus, as we’ll learn in these hearings:

After expressing skepticism of foreign aid and concern about foreign corruption on the campaign trail, President Trump outraged the bureaucracy by acting skeptically about foreign aid and expressing concerns about foreign corruption.

Trump didn’t mention corruption at all in his conversation with Zelensky, instead focusing only on the hacking of the DNC in 2016 and on Biden and his son.

Officials’ alarm at the president’s actions was typically based on secondhand, third-hand, and even fourth-hand rumors and innuendo.

But not always. Several witnesses testified to firsthand interactions with others or with the president.

They believed it was an outrage for President Trump to fire an ambassador, even though the president has full authority to retain or remove diplomats for any reason at any time.

Officials showed a surprising lack of interest in the indications of Ukrainian election meddling that deeply concerned the president at whose pleasure they serve.

Again, these indications are flimsy.

Despite all their dissatisfaction with President Trump’s Ukraine policy, the president approved the supply of weapons to Ukraine, unlike the previous administration, which provided blankets as defense against invading Russians.

By undermining the president who they are supposed to be serving, elements of the FBI, the Department of Justice, and now the State Department have lost the confidence of millions of Americans who believe that their vote should count for something. It will take years, if not decades, to restore faith in these institutions.

Nunes himself has been at the forefront of raising questions about U.S. intelligence institutions as part of his ongoing defenses of Trump, on whose presidential transition team he served.

This spectacle is doing great damage to our country. It’s nothing more than an impeachment process in search of a crime.

It’s a minor nit, but an important one: Presidential impeachments don’t depend on the commission of a crime.

 

 

 

Oh, FFS, Mark Meadows is in the hallway, speaking to reporters. He said that everyone was yawning during today's testimony and since the Dems were going to lead with their best witnesses, it's proof that there's no reason for impeachment.  Then he praised Gym Jordan, saying how articulate he is. Excuse me while I get an airsick bag.

[Howl]

 

[fraurosena]

Important to remember in the coming days of trumplican deflections and distractions during the hearings:

 

5 of the wildest moments in the House’s first public impeachment hearing

Quote

The impeachment inquiry against President Donald Trump entered a new phase on Wednesday morning, when the first public testimony was presented. The two witnesses presented were Ambassador William B. Taylor (who had been in charge of Ukraine-related matters under the Trump Administration) and U.S. State Department diplomat George P. Kent (deputy assistant secretary for European and Eurasian affairs). And while House Republicans aggressively defended Trump during Taylor and Kent’s testimony, House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff (D-CA) and other Democrats used Taylor and Kent’s testimony to show why Trump deserves impeachment.

Here are some of the wildest moments from the first public hearing in the Trump impeachment inquiry.

1. Rep. Devin Nunes (R-CA) doubled down on bogus Crowdstrike conspiracy theory

Rep. Devin Nunes has not been shy about promoting the conspiracy theory known as Crowdstrike, which claims that interference in the 2016 presidential election came not from the Russian government and President Vladimir Putin, but from the Ukrainian government. And Nunes continued to promote that discredited theory when questioning Taylor. Nunes, more than once, mentioned “Ukrainian election meddling.” But when Democratic counsel Daniel Goldman asked Kent if there was any credible evidence that Ukraine’s government interfered in the 2016 election, Kent responded, “To my knowledge, there’s no factual basis.”

2. Taylor’s testimony demonstrated that a quid pro quo did, in fact, occur

One of House Democrats’ arguments in favor of impeachment is that when Trump spoke to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky on July 25, there was a “quid pro quo”: an investigation of former Vice President Joe Biden and his son Hunter Biden in exchange for military aid. Trump supporters have denied that there was any type of “quid pro quo” on July 25, but Taylor testified that military aid to Ukraine had been frozen and that aid was “conditioned on the investigations.”

3. Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH) demanded that Schiff tell him the whistleblower’s identity

During his pro-Trump grandstanding on Wednesday morning, Rep. Jim Jordan of Ohio complained that it was unfair that House Republicans do not known the identity of the Ukraine whistleblower who made a complaint about Trump’s July 25 conversation with Zelensky. Schiff, Jordan asserted, has an unfair advantage because he knows who the whistleblower is and House Republicans don’t. But Schiff set Jordan straight, telling the far-right Republican congressman, “that is a false statement. I do not know the identity of the whistleblower.”

4. Nunes insisted that Democrats manufactured Ukraine scandal following ‘Russian hoax’

During the hearing, Nunes not only railed against the impeachment hearing but also, the Russia investigation led by former special C\counsel Robert Mueller. Nunes claimed that after Democrats failed with the “Russia hoax,” they needed a new “hoax” — and Ukraine became that “hoax.” As part of the “impeachment sham,” Nunes asserted, Democrats falsely claimed that Trump “committed a terrible crime” on July 25. Nunes insisted that Trump never asked Zelensky to investigate the Bidens, but Taylor’s testimony did show that Trump and his allies were seeking “investigations” and that Trump mentioned “Crowdstrike” when speaking to Zelensky.

 5. Schiff stresses that the identity of the whistleblower must be protected

Schiff was not swayed at all by Jordan’s assertions that House Republicans deserve to know who the whistleblower is. The House Intelligence chairman remained firm, asserting, “We will not permit the outing of the whistleblower.”

 

[GreyhoundFan]

As usual, Aunt Crabby is correct:

 

[GreyhoundFan]

 

[GreyhoundFan]

 

[GreyhoundFan]

Jordan and Meadows were both really looking for the cameras today.

[fraurosena]

This It ain't a bank robbery if... thread trolling the trumplican defence is hilarious.

 

Quote

 

 

Edited November 13, 2019 by fraurosena
put the thread under a quote

[fraurosena]

 

[fraurosena]

 

[GreyhoundFan]

"Republicans discuss a longer Senate impeachment trial to scramble Democratic primaries"

Spoiler

Some Republican senators and their advisers are privately discussing whether to pressure GOP leaders to stage a lengthy impeachment trial beginning in January to scramble the Democratic presidential race — potentially keeping six contenders in Washington until the eve of the Iowa caucuses or longer.

Those conversations about the timing and framework for a trial remain fluid and closely held, according to more than a dozen participants in the discussions. But the deliberations come as Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) faces pressure from conservative activists to swat back at Democrats as public impeachment hearings began this week in the House.

The discussions raise a potential hazard for the six Democratic senators running for president, who had previously planned on a final sprint out of Washington before the Feb. 3 Iowa caucuses and the Feb. 11 New Hampshire primary.

“That might be a strategy,” Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) said with a coy smile when asked about the possibility of a trial that disrupts the Democratic campaign. “But I’ll leave that up to others. I’m just a lowly worker.”

Sen. John Cornyn (R-Tex.), a McConnell ally, said the Senate would try to distinguish itself during impeachment “by doing this right,” with a trial that likely lasts five or six weeks. But he acknowledged the timing could have an effect on the campaign by giving a potential boost to presidential candidates who have no official role in the process.

“Pete Buttigieg and Joe Biden might like that,” Cornyn said of the mayor of South Bend, Ind., and the former vice president, who now poll in the top four in Iowa with Sens. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) and Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.).

There is an emerging divide among Republicans, however, over timing. While some favor a lengthy trial as a means of defending President Trump and creating problems for Democrats, others are calling for swift dismissal or final vote.

The Democratic senators who remain in the presidential race have all said publicly that the impeachment proceedings are more important than political concerns. But advisers to multiple candidates have been inquiring about the potential timing behind the scenes, and Sanders has spoken about the potential challenges of an extended trial if the Democratic-controlled House votes to impeach Trump and sends the case to the Senate.

“We will do our best to get back to Iowa, to get to New Hampshire, to get to all the states that we have to,” Sanders said Sunday at an event in Charles City, Iowa, when asked about a potential trial in January. “But there’s no question it will make our life a little bit more difficult.”

Warren said Wednesday that she has “constitutional responsibilities” and “if the House goes forward and sends impeachment over to the Senate, then I will be there for the trial.”

One top adviser to a senator running for president, who requested anonymity to discuss strategy, said the campaign was already rearranging fundraising and campaign schedules to prepare for a trial.

“We’ve been all but told that January is when we should expect not to have them,” the person said. “And that in December is when we should expect to have them.”

The issue of trial length came up during a closed-door lunch of all GOP senators Wednesday, when Republicans speculated about whether the House would hand over the process to them either before or after Christmas, according to multiple people in attendance.

Inside the lunch, McConnell had little guidance for his ranks, outside of saying the trial will go on as long as the Senate wants it to run, said the people, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to share details from the private meeting.

But McConnell’s deputies, as well as most of his ranks, believe a longer trial is the likelier outcome — which they say would give Trump and his defense team sufficient time to make his case.

Cornyn said Wednesday that it would be difficult to find a majority in the Senate to dismiss the trial early on, even if the president’s attorneys request it, “before the evidence is presented.”

“I think the consensus in our conference is at least that we need to proceed and take seriously the responsibility we have,” said Sen. John Thune (R-S.D.), the second-ranking Senate Republican. “How long that takes is an open question … but I suspect that, you know, it’d go on for a while.”

Sen. Richard Burr (R-N.C.), who has speculated publicly that a Senate trial could run as long as eight weeks, argued during the lunch that former president Bill Clinton’s impeachment proceedings in the Senate took five weeks but that Trump’s case was likely to take more time because he has not admitted to any wrongdoing.

Clinton “admitted that he had lied to the FBI,” Burr said before the lunch. “I figured it’s going to take longer for them to make a case, because they don’t have that.”

One White House official said the president is not yet concentrating on a trial but has spoken with McConnell, Vice President Pence and Sen. Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.), the chairman of the Judiciary Committee, about the outlook in the chamber. Newly hired White House aides who are working on impeachment issues have also been meeting with Senate GOP staffers this month.

McConnell has not publicly committed to a timeline for a trial. “I think it’s impossible to predict how long we’ll be on it or predict which motions would pass,” the GOP leader said Wednesday.

But McConnell will not be able to set the schedule in isolation. The rules for an impeachment trial, including a process for calling witnesses, must be passed by 51 or more senators, since Pence is not able to cast a deciding vote on the question. That gives McConnell, who oversees a 53-seat Republican majority, relatively little room to maneuver.

Sen. Mitt Romney (R-Utah) has been a sharp critic of Trump’s behavior on Ukraine, and more independent-minded senators, like Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska), could side with Democrats to force a process that Democrats accept as fair, according to a person familiar with Republican discussions.

A separate group of centrist Senate Republicans facing tough reelection fights next year have been telling McConnell and colleagues that they do not want the process to be rushed, worrying that any move to quickly dispense with a trial risks giving their Democratic opponents an opening to say they did not take their duties seriously.

That view has been bolstered by Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah), who has privately told conservative colleagues they must give breathing room to Republicans running in 2020 and let the trial play out for at least a few weeks, according to two Republican aides briefed on the talks, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the internal deliberations.

“This is going to require a great deal of work, and I don’t think it should be rushed through,” said Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine), who is up for reelection in 2020. Collins said any attempt to dismiss impeachment at the outset of a trial would be met with vocal opposition by a “lot of senators, who’d have misgivings and reservations about treating articles of impeachment that way.”

On the other hand, several Trump allies are planning to prepare a motion to dismiss that they could propose early on during a trial.

“The sooner we’re done with this, the better,” said Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.). “Why just have people sitting around for this partisan sham? As soon as we possibly can dismiss this or vote along party lines, especially if the Democrats in the House limit the witnesses, I’ll move to do that.”

Sen. David Perdue (R-Ga.) also dismissed the prospect of a lengthy trial, saying a “week is more than enough.”

Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) has been talking with Democratic senators, including those running for president, to decide the best way to approach any negotiation with McConnell about whether Democrats join in a resolution setting up the Senate process.

“Given articles of impeachment haven’t even been drafted, it’s impossible to know what either side would want a trial to look like,” said a person familiar with Schumer’s thinking, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss strategy. Schumer declined Wednesday to discuss his next steps but warned that a trial should not be “truncated.”

McConnell’s general template remains the Senate impeachment trial of Clinton in early 1999, which lasted five weeks and had a bipartisan consensus at its start about how it would proceed, according to McConnell’s aides and allies.

Discussions on Senate rules in 1999 broke down repeatedly before the chamber finally agreed on a compromise by a margin of 100-to-0.

An initial proposal by Sens. Joseph Lieberman (D-Conn.) and Slade Gorton (R-Wash.) to make a full trial contingent on a two-thirds supermajority finding Clinton’s alleged offenses impeachable faced fierce objection from Republicans.

“When I presented it to the Republican conference, they did everything but stone me and throw me out in the hall,” said former senator Trent Lott (R-Miss.), who was then the Republican leader.

A compromise was reached later in a closed-door meeting for all senators in the Old Senate Chamber, when Sens. Phil Gramm (R-Tex.) and Edward Kennedy (D-Mass.) agreed they should start the trial before deciding whether witnesses would be called before the full body.

Lott said McConnell and Schumer might have a more challenging time striking a deal.

“This is a different situation,” he said. “You do have a divided Congress. You do have a president who has agitated a lot of people.”

 

[GreyhoundFan]

"For dignity’s sake, Jim Jordan, put on a jacket"

Spoiler

Of course Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) took his seat Wednesday morning, at the opening of the public impeachment hearings on Capitol Hill, wearing nothing but his shirtsleeves. No suit jacket. That’s how Jordan dresses. It’s his power move. His sartorial chest thump.

All the other members of the House Intelligence Committee turned up in suits and ties or other business attire. But not Jordan. Everyone else was willing to offer at least a symbolic nod to decorous formality, to that old-fashioned notion of civility. Jordan announced himself as the man who was itching to rumble. He was the guy who came not to do as the Constitution demands with measured deliberation but to brawl.

Jordan has a reputation for rarely wearing a suit jacket. A Twitter account is dedicated to his jacketlessness. He’s the man on the dais who refuses to show witnesses the same respect that they inevitably show to him and to the circumstances. Typically, men who are called to testify before Congress wear a suit. They recognize the seriousness of the situation, and they dignify it. Even Mark Zuckerberg, who almost single-handedly made hoodies and T-shirts the uniform of the modern mogul, wears a suit. When comedian Jon Stewart spoke to Congress in support of 9/11 first responders, he wore a suit jacket and tie. When comedian Hasan Minhaj went to Capitol Hill to discuss student loan debt, he also wore a suit.

The extras in the audience as the impeachment drama unfolded were wearing suit jackets. The witnesses were in suit jackets. George Kent, the deputy assistant secretary of state, wore a three-piece suit, no less. He paired it with a genial bow tie and an expression of bemused patience when questioning veered off road. His right eyebrow, with its rise and fall, was a soliloquy on professorial forbearance. Acting ambassador William B. Taylor Jr. was also duly attired in a suit, with a green four-in-hand — his brow furrowing with his efforts to sort the questions from the chaff.

But Jordan, in his role as a representative of the American people, couldn’t be bothered to suit up.

When Jordan was interviewed recently by a Wall Street Journal reporter about why he doesn’t wear a jacket, the congressman responded with a chuckle and then a statement that was the equivalent of a shrug, “I’m not even sure," he said. “I don’t know why.”

But, of course, that was disingenuous. After a pause, he admitted that he does wear a jacket when the rules require him to do so, as when he’s on the House floor. And he wears a jacket when he aims to be respectful, such as when he is in the company of the president or on a visit to the White House. Presumably, he doesn’t consider sitting alongside his colleagues during a matter of national importance to be a situation that deserves his high regard.

Jordan says he doesn’t wear a jacket when in committee, because “I get fed up at these witnesses who, I think, aren’t being square with me or my colleagues and, more important, the American people. I can’t really get fired up and get into it if you’ve got some jacket slowing you down.”

Perhaps Jordan worries all that mental jousting will cause him to overheat. If so, his wardrobe selection is a preemptive move. Jordan doesn’t wait to slip out of his jacket if he should find himself in a fierce back-and-forth with a recalcitrant witness. No, he arrives without the jacket, fully expecting a fight — champing at the bit for one. The former wrestling coach has defined himself as the guy who readily goes toe-to-toe. And his Republican colleagues assigned him to the House Intelligence Committee last week to go to the mat for President Trump.

Jordan, in his pale blue shirt and yellow tie, began his questioning Wednesday afternoon by rereading Taylor’s previous testimony, racing through his own statements that stood in for questions and interrupting the witness when he attempted to respond. Jordan stared at Taylor over his reading glasses. Jordan yelled at him and then nodded impatiently when Taylor managed to utter a few words. The congressman made references to “church prayer chains,” which served as a reminder that he is the sort of man for whom religiosity and righteousness are always front of mind. Jordan began at least one sentence with “No disrespect …” which always means that disrespect is forthcoming. It came in the form of a smirk. By then, Jordan’s first five minutes were up.

When he got into the ring for his second round, Jordan was speaking so fast that he was swallowing his words. It was an “invesgashun," not an investigation. “It didn’t happen! You had to be wrong,” he yelled at Taylor. It was a double accusation, not a statement of fact. It was a jab and then an uppercut. One could practically see the foamy sweat of pugilism dripping from Jordan’s brow. Taylor was resolutely nonplussed.

When his fellow Republicans put Jordan in for a third round, he skipped the questions altogether and just delivered a monologue on the injustice of the entire proceeding.

The congressman had come to pummel the witnesses, not to interrogate them. It doesn’t matter whether any of his punches landed or whether his opponent fought back. The man in the shirtsleeves was prepared to shadowbox to the death.

 

[GreyhoundFan]

 

[GreyhoundFan]

 

 

[GreyhoundFan]

[GreyhoundFan]

"Fact-checking the opening day of the Trump impeachment hearings"

Spoiler

Here’s a roundup of misleading claims made during the opening day of House impeachment hearings.

“President [Volodymyr] Zelensky didn’t announce he was going to investigate [Ukrainian gas company] Burisma or the Bidens. He didn’t do a press conference and say: ‘I’m going to investigate the Bidens. We’re going to investigate Burisma.’ He didn’t tweet about it … and yet you said you have a clear understanding that those two things were going to happen — the money was going to get released but not until there was an investigation. And that in fact didn’t happen.”

— Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio)

“You have to ask yourself: What did President Zelensky actually do to get the aid? The answer is nothing. He did nothing. He didn’t open any investigations. He didn’t call Attorney General Bill Barr. He didn’t do any of the things that House Democrats say that he was being forced and coerced and threatened to do. He didn’t do anything because he didn’t have to.”

— Rep. John Ratcliffe (R-Tex.)

“For the millions of Americans viewing today, the two most important facts are the following. Number one, Ukraine received the aid. Number two, there was in fact no investigation into Biden.”

— Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-N.Y.)

The “nothing to see here” defense was a recurring theme in the hearing. Republicans argued that Ukrainian officials never opened the investigations President Trump requested into the Bidens or supposed Ukrainian interference in the 2016 U.S. election, yet Trump released the nearly $400 million aid package for Ukraine anyway.

But this is a selective retelling of events. Missing is any mention of key developments between July 18, when the White House told agencies to freeze Ukraine’s aid package, and Sept. 11, when the White House released the funds.

“Most impt [important] is for Zelensky to say that he will help investigation,” the U.S. special envoy to Ukraine, Kurt Volker, wrote in a text message to U.S. Ambassador to the European Union Gordon Sondland on July 19, the day after the White House suspended the aid package. Volker’s text was sent amid preparations for Trump’s July 25 phone call with Zelensky.

The day after that, July 20, Sondland told the acting U.S. ambassador to Ukraine, William B. Taylor Jr., that he encouraged Zelensky to tell Trump that the Ukrainians would “leave no stone unturned” in the “investigations,” according to Taylor. The same day, Oleksandr Danyliuk, Ukraine’s national security adviser, told Taylor that Zelensky did not wish to be a pawn in a U.S. election campaign, Taylor said.

At least four national security officials were so alarmed by the Trump administration’s attempts to pressure Ukraine for political purposes that they raised concerns with a White House lawyer both before and immediately after Trump’s July 25 call with Zelensky, The Washington Post reported.

“Word of the aid freeze had gotten to high-level Ukrainian officials by the first week in August,” the New York Times reported. According to the Times, Trump’s personal attorney met in Madrid on Aug. 2 with a top aide to Zelensky, Andriy Yermak, and encouraged the Ukrainians to investigate the two issues Trump had raised: Biden and election interference.

On Aug. 9, Sondland and Volker traded text messages about a possible statement Ukraine would issue about the investigations, with Sondland writing that Trump “really wants the deliverable.” They both consulted Trump’s personal attorney Rudolph W. Giuliani about the statement.

On Aug. 10, Yermak told the U.S. officials via text: “I think it’s possible to make this declaration and mention all these things. Which we discussed yesterday. But it will be logic to do after we receive a confirmation of date. We inform about date of visit and about our expectations and our guarantees for future visit.” This was an apparent reference to finalizing a date for Zelensky’s visit to the White House.

Then, on Aug. 12, a whistleblower filed a complaint regarding Trump’s requests of Zelensky and related developments to the U.S. intelligence community inspector general.

Politico was first to report on Aug. 29 that the Trump administration had frozen Ukraine’s congressionally appropriated aid from the Defense Department, a $250 million package designated for counter-artillery radar, sniper rifles, secure communication equipment, tactical vehicles, military training and other programs. The White House separately froze $141 million in Ukraine aid from the State Department, it was later revealed.

On Sept. 1, Sondland told Yermak in a meeting in Warsaw that the military aid would not be released until Zelensky promised to pursue the Burisma investigation relating to the Bidens. In a call with Taylor the same day, Sondland said “everything” — meaning the U.S. aid funds and a meeting Zelensky wanted with Trump in the White House, according to Taylor — hinged on announcing the investigations Trump wanted.

On Sept. 2, Danyliuk told White House National Security Council official Tim Morrison that he was concerned U.S. officials weren’t giving answers about the withheld military aid, according to Taylor, and Ukrainian Defense Minister Andriy Zagordyuk raised similar concerns to Taylor.

On Sept. 5, Sens. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) and Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) met with Zelensky in Ukraine. His first question was about the held-up security funds, according to Taylor, who hosted the meeting.

The wrangling continued for several more days. Then, the U.S. intelligence community inspector general, Michael Atkinson, on Sept. 9 notified Congress of the whistleblower’s complaint, though he didn’t say what was in it. Zelensky eventually decided to announce an investigation in a Sept. 13 interview with CNN, but amid mounting pressure in Washington, the White House released the security funds on Sept. 11, and the CNN interview was nixed.

“Ambassador Taylor testified that President Trump was the first president to see that Ukraine was afforded Javelin antitank weapons. This was a very strong message that Americans are willing to provide more than blankets. This was the Obama administration’s approach.”

— Rep. Devin Nunes (R-Calif.)

Nunes repeated a talking point often made by Trump (and which is listed in our database of Trump’s false and misleading claims) — that Obama only provided “blankets” to Ukrainian security forces. The suggestion is that Obama did not provide security aid to Ukraine, but this is wrong.

After Russia annexed Crimea in 2014, the Obama administration supplied Ukraine with $600 million in security assistance, according to a 2017 Congressional Research Service report. A 2015 Defense Department news release said Obama had pledged 230 Humvees, along with unarmed aerial vehicles, counter-mortar radars, night vision devices and medical supplies.

Obama also signed into law the establishment of the Defense-managed Ukraine Security Assistance Initiative, which has built on that initial aid. From fiscal year 2016 to fiscal year 2019, Congress appropriated $850 million, the CRS said in another report, with another $250 million slated for 2020. (The fiscal 2019 appropriation is what Trump blocked over the summer, witnesses have said, in order to pressure Ukraine to announce an investigation of former vice president Joe Biden.)

Obama was wary of supplying lethal aid to Ukraine, for fear of antagonizing Russia when Ukrainian security forces were weak (and also European allies who were wary of an escalation). It was not an isolated concern. Fiona Hill, who joined the Trump administration as the top Russia adviser on the National Security Council, in 2015 co-wrote an opinion piece in The Washington Post warning against supplying lethal weapons because it could lead to a regional war. In her deposition to impeachment investigators, she said circumstances had changed by 2017.

“When I got into the government, the administration, I became actually more convinced that there was a thorough plan, that our colleagues at the Pentagon had really thought all of this through,” Hill said. “They had a proper plan for the long-term sustainability of the Ukrainian military, and that the intent was that the Ukrainian defense sector would be able to get itself back into shape again over time.”

In other words, the GOP talking point does not take into account the differences between the state of the Ukrainian military under Obama versus Trump. (As Hill wryly noted, “Everybody changes their mind, you know, and kind of learns things.”)

Even so, while the Trump administration supplied the Javelin antitank weapons long sought by Ukraine, the weapons came with the restriction that they cannot be used in the ongoing conflict with the Russian-led separatists — precisely because of the escalation issues that had concerned the Obama administration.

“The special U.S. envoy for Ukraine, Kurt Volker, has said that the Javelins are being stored in a secure facility far from the front line,” Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty reported in June. “Ukrainian and U.S. sources with knowledge of the storage locations have told RFE/RL that the missiles and launchers have been separated into smaller groups and are held in strategic locations around the country, possibly in underground bunkers, where they can be moved quickly to areas that border Russia or the eastern front line.”

Because of the restrictions, “Ukrainian soldiers at the front have improvised: They prop up the dummies of straw and extra uniforms that appear to hold the missiles, as a ruse, an army spokesman said,” the New York Times reported. “The fake missiles are conjured from logs and empty ammunition boxes, roughly mimicking the silhouette of a Javelin.”

“The Democrats cooperated in Ukrainian election meddling … What is the full extent of Ukrainian election meddling against the Trump campaign?”

— Nunes

Nunes revived debunked theories about election-year meddling by Ukraine in 2016, even as former Trump administration officials have conceded it is nothing but a distraction.

Thomas P. Bossert, Trump’s first homeland security adviser, said the president had been told by his staff that Ukraine conspiracy theories had been “completely debunked.”

“It is a fiction that the Ukrainian Government was launching an effort to upend our election, upend our election to mess with our Democratic systems,” Hill told investigators. She added at another point: “I’m extremely concerned that this is a rabbit hole that we’re all going to go down in between now and the 2020 election, and it will be to all of our detriment.”

At the time, she was being questioned about a Politico article that appeared in early 2017, which for some Republicans has turned into some sort of Rosetta Stone for an alternative version of what happened in 2016. Hill, in her interview, was unimpressed by the thrust of the article, dismissing it as “an assertion, the conclusion that the authors of this article are making.”

The article reported that a Ukrainian American Democratic operative, Alexandra Chalupa, began looking into Paul Manafort’s ties to Ukrainian politician Viktor Yanukovych, who served as president from 2010 until his ouster in 2014. At the time, Manafort was chairman of the Trump campaign.

Chalupa was hired as a consultant to the Democratic National Committee during the 2016 campaign to help mobilize ethnic communities. She left the DNC in July 2016, the DNC said.

She continued her research into Manafort on her own, sometimes with the help of Ukrainian Embassy officials, and she said she sometimes shared her findings with officials at the DNC and Clinton’s campaign. But former Clinton campaign officials said they never received information from Chalupa, and the exact role of embassy officials is unclear.

Even if Chalupa may have worked with some embassy officials, there’s no evidence that the DNC used information gathered by Chalupa or that the Ukrainians coordinated opposition research with the DNC. She vigorously denied the article’s framing when it appeared and recently told Politico she would love to testify as part of the investigation, asserting this is a smear campaign that “originated with the Kremlin.”

The Politico article was published nearly two years ago, but Republicans still cite from it, even though no fresh information has been found to substantiate its suggestion that the Ukrainian government sought to help Hillary Clinton. Manafort, of course, was later convicted of financial crimes related to his activities in Ukraine.

“I am very confident based on all of the analysis that has been done and, again, I don’t want to start getting into intelligence matters, that the Ukrainian Government did not interfere in our election in 2016,” Hill insisted in her interview when yet another GOP lawmaker asked her about the Politico article.

“We’re not in a court, gentlemen, and if we were, the Sixth Amendment would apply and so would rules on hearsay and opinion, and most of your two testimonies would not be admissible whatsoever.”

— Rep. Michael R. Turner (R-Ohio)

It’s hard to imagine that Taylor, the top U.S. diplomat in Ukraine, and George Kent, his boss at the State Department in Washington, would be left out of a theoretical court case focused on U.S. policy in Ukraine.

But the most damning parts of their testimonies relay what they heard from others, and secondhand statements are generally barred as evidence in court proceedings.

Turner’s claim is suspect nonetheless (and not just because he said Sept. 26, after reading the rough transcript of Trump’s phone call with Zelensky: “I want to say to the president: This is not okay. That conversation is not okay.”).

The federal courts’ rules of evidence allow hearsay testimony in more than two-dozen limited circumstances. Rep. Mike Quigley (D-Ill.) noted at the hearing that “countless people have been convicted on hearsay because the courts have routinely allowed and created needed exceptions.”

For example, there's an exception to the hearsay rule for "a statement describing or explaining an event or condition, made while or immediately after the declarant perceived it." Taylor took notes of his conversations in real time and his records show quotation marks where he's relaying others' words verbatim, according to his testimony. There's another exception to the hearsay rule for "a record of an act, event, condition, opinion, or diagnosis if the record was made at or near the time by — or from information transmitted by — someone with knowledge."

The courts in some cases accept incriminating remarks in hearsay testimony. Such a "statement against interest" would have to be “supported by corroborating circumstances that clearly indicate its trustworthiness, if it is offered in a criminal case as one that tends to expose the declarant to criminal liability,” according to another exception in the rules.

In some cases, hearsay testimony “offered as evidence of a material fact” is allowed in court if it's the best evidence reasonably available.

Regardless, Sondland, who spoke to Trump directly, has corrected his testimony to clarify that he asked Ukrainian officials for a public announcement of the investigations Trump wanted before Ukraine’s security aid would be released.

“Our witness on Friday, she testified in her deposition corruption is not just prevalent in Ukraine, it’s the system. So our president said, ‘Time out. Time out. Let’s check out this new guy. Let’s see if Zelensky is the real deal.’ … When it came time to check out this new guy, President Trump said, ‘Let’s just see, let’s just see if he’s legit.’ So for 55 days, we checked him out. … Guess what did happen in those 55 days? U.S. senators, Ambassador Bolton, Vice President Pence all became convinced that Zelensky was in fact worth the risk. He was in fact legit and the real deal and a real change, and guess what? They told the president he’s a reformer, release the money. And that’s exactly what President Trump did.”

— Jordan

This smacks of revisionism. There’s no record of Trump saying that Ukraine’s assistance package was held up because he wanted to gauge Zelensky’s commitment to fighting corruption.

Trump has only ever raised concerns about two specific issues in Ukraine. Both stand to benefit him politically. The president asked Zelensky to look into baseless allegations against Biden and a conspiracy theory about Ukrainian election interference meant to hurt his chances in 2016 and bolster Clinton.

Bolton was so concerned about the freeze on Ukraine aid, he directed aides to notify the National Security Council’s lawyer about their concerns and unsuccessfully tried to schedule a meeting with Trump and officials at the Defense and State departments and the CIA during the summer to persuade the president to release the Ukrainian assistance package, according to the testimony of several U.S. officials.

The Defense Department since 2017 has been required by law to certify annually that Ukraine has made sufficient progress on anti-corruption efforts to merit U.S. security assistance funds. Congress approved the funds for Ukraine in the fall of 2018. The Pentagon’s undersecretary for policy, John C. Rood, sent a letter May 23 to congressional committees certifying that “the Government of Ukraine has taken substantial actions to make defense institutional reforms for the purposes of decreasing corruption, increasing accountability, and sustaining improvements of combat capability enabled by U.S. assistance.”

The White House has not said whether it conducted a separate review of corruption in Ukraine, and if so, how it differed from the Pentagon’s. Experts doubt a formal review was done.

“My sense is that all of the senior leaders of the U.S. national security departments and agencies were all unified in their — in their view that this assistance was essential, that we could work with the government of Ukraine to tackle corruption, and they were trying to find ways to engage the president on this,” Laura Cooper, the deputy assistant secretary of defense for Russia, Ukraine and Eurasia, testified to the House impeachment inquiry committee.

 

[GreyhoundFan]

 

 

[GreyhoundFan]

[GreyhoundFan]

"One of the defenses of Trump is — literally — a TV-cartoon joke"

Spoiler

“Convicted of a crime I didn’t even commit. Hah! Attempted murder? Now honestly, what is that? Do they give a Nobel Prize for attempted chemistry? Do they?”

— Sideshow Bob, “The Simpsons,” Season Six, Episode Five, 1994

This rhetorical absurdity, originally intended as a joke on a TV cartoon, is now being trotted out in all seriousness by the GOP. What New York magazine writer Jonathan Chait has called the “Sideshow Bob defense” has become central to Republican efforts to shield President Trump from accusations of wrongdoing. Because the Ukrainian quid pro quo was ultimately unsuccessful, the argument goes, no crime was committed, even if one was attempted. The editorial page of the Wall Street Journal wrote (apparently not joking): “Many people in the Administration opposed the Giuliani effort, including some in senior positions at the White House. This matters because it may turn out that while Mr. Trump wanted a quid-pro-quo policy ultimatum toward Ukraine, he was too inept to execute it.”

Chait has noted other examples. House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.), for instance, said: “Name me one thing that Ukraine did to release the money. Nothing.” Never mind the explicit request for “a favor” or that the aid may have been released because skeptical National Security Council staff members started raising questions.

And instances of this extraordinarily strained attempt at excuse-making keep coming. In an interview with The Washington Post, Nikki Haley reasoned: “There was no heavy demand insisting that something had to happen. So it’s hard for me to understand where the whole impeachment situation is coming from, because what everybody’s up in arms about didn’t happen.” In the end, “the aid flowed.”

Good point, Sideshow Bob.

The Sideshow Bob line is famous among fans of “The Simpsons,” now in its 31st season, but others may need some background. Sideshow Bob is a recurring character — tall and slim with huge, weird hair and voiced by actor Kelsey Grammer, whose upper-crust baritone gives the character a sophisticated élan. (Bob did go to Yale, after all.)

He was originally the TV sidekick to Krusty the Clown but got locked up when a scheme to frame Krusty for armed robbery was exposed by Bart Simpson (age 10). When released, Bob began a vendetta against Bart, with Bob trying to somehow wreak vengeance on the boy — usually in one episode per season in the 1990s.

In the episode titled “Sideshow Bob Roberts” (I wish we had named it after a more memorable film than the mock-documentary “Bob Roberts”), scripted by Josh Weinstein and myself, Bob starts a grass-roots effort to get released from prison so he can run for mayor of Springfield, with the goal of tormenting the Simpson family. As part of this ultimately successful campaign, Bob calls in to the radio show of Rush Limbaugh-analogue Birch Barlow to decry the unfairness of being convicted of “attempted murder.” That’s when he mocks the crime as being analogous to “attempted chemistry.”

On the surface, the Sideshow Bob defense might sound reasonable to the majority of dolts in Springfield, U.S.A. After all, Robert Onderdonk Terwilliger (his full name) is one of the smartest men in town. No, they sure don’t give a Nobel Prize for “attempted chemistry” — and local oafs such as Barney Gumble and Cletus Spuckler probably fell hook, line and sinker for this faulty logic.

The citizens of Springfield are, as a whole, dummies — because it is a comedy show. Sure, there are a few reasonable folks there (notably Lisa Simpson) to provide a jaundiced perspective on the hoi polloi, but a continuing theme of the series is that the citizenry is “nothing but a pack of fickle mush-heads,” in the words of their own Mayor Quimby, easily swayed by the lamest attempts at manipulation. Often, it’s right-wing manipulation — evidenced by the fact that they riot when presented with a statue of mild-mannered do-gooder Jimmy Carter, whom one resident decries as “History’s Greatest Monster.”

That the GOP has taken a cue from Sideshow Bob is shrewd, on one level. After all, Bob is wily enough to take advantage of widespread civic ignorance and quickly install himself as mayor in a rigged election. He’s savvy enough to know that in Springfield — and, perhaps, elsewhere in the United States? — a middle-aged white male wearing a tie and saying anything with some conviction will be believed by at least 55 percent of people, especially if they already want to believe it. (Sixty-five percent if he has a classy accent.)

Ultimately, though, Sideshow Bob’s lies are exposed by Bart and Lisa, in a plot we basically cribbed from the Watergate scandal. (The kids meet a Deep Throat-style informant in a parking garage; a scene of them researching voting records is also cribbed from “All the President’s Men.” Yes, the parallels here are getting uncanny.) In court, under intense questioning from the kids, Bob finally erupts in an outraged confession. Why did he deceive the town? “Because you need me, Springfield. Your guilty conscience may force you to vote Democratic, but deep down inside you secretly long for a coldhearted Republican to lower taxes, brutalize criminals and rule you like a king. That’s why I did this: to protect you from yourselves.” (I won’t get into an analysis of whether that line fits the current situation.) What Bob doesn’t say is that he’s also a scheming, egomaniacal narcissist who literally cannot stop himself from committing crimes. (I won’t get into an analysis of that, either.)

It’s hard to believe that the Sideshow Bob defense of Trump will be long-lived, as it fails to stand up to even the slightest scrutiny. It is literally a joke. (Still, Rep. Joaquin Castro (D-Tex.) felt obliged to stamp out any confusion during the impeachment hearing Wednesday. “Is attempted murder a crime?” he asked Ambassador William B. Taylor Jr. Laughing, Taylor responded: “Yes, attempted murder is a crime.”)

Indeed, many in the GOP have pivoted to a new defense of the president: The new argument is that famous corruption fighter Donald Trump just wanted to fight corruption wherever it may be found, with the assistance of his sidekick, famous corruption fighter Rudolph W. Giuliani. “Oh come on now, that’s too much. People won’t seriously fall for that,” Sideshow Bob might reply. And then, with an evil gleam in his eye: “ … Will they?”

 

[GreyhoundFan]

"Career White House budget official expected to break ranks, testify in impeachment inquiry"

Spoiler

A longtime career employee at the White House Office of Management and Budget is expected to break ranks and testify Saturday in the House Democrats’ impeachment inquiry, potentially filling in important details on the hold-up of military aid to Ukraine.

Mark Sandy would be the first OMB employee to testify in the inquiry, after OMB acting director Russell T. Vought and two other political appointees at the agency defied congressional subpoenas to appear. The White House has called the impeachment inquiry unconstitutional and ordered administration officials not to participate.

But unlike these other OMB officials, Sandy is a career employee, not one appointed by the president. He has worked at the agency off and on for over a decade, under presidents of both parties, climbing the ranks into his current role as deputy associate director for national security programs.

“If he is subpoenaed, he will appear,” Sandy’s lawyer, Barbara “Biz” Van Gelder said Thursday evening.

Sandy is expected to testify during a closed-door deposition, which is not open to the public. Typically, witnesses in the impeachment inquiry have been served with subpoenas immediately before their depositions are scheduled to begin, an approach Democrats say is designed to give them cover against an administration that has ordered officials not to comply with the inquiry.

Van Gelder declined further comment.

Until now, OMB has served as a bulwark for President Trump against the impeachment inquiry, since top officials have refused to testify. A senior administration official, speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss the ongoing inquiry, discounted the importance of Sandy’s testimony, and criticized House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) for calling him to testify.

"Democrats are going to be sorely disappointed when their latest false narrative isn’t confirmed, " the official said. "With nothing to show after three years trying to impeach the President, Speaker Pelosi and Rep. Schiff have resorted to threatening dedicated civil servants with subpoenas and depositions without the ability to even have agency counsel present.”

Sandy could provide insight into the process by which some $400 million in military and security aid to Ukraine was held up over the summer. He was among the career staffers who raised questions about the hold-up on the aid, people familiar with the matter said, and his role gave him responsibility for signing the documents required to hold it up. The people spoke on condition of anonymity because they weren’t authorized to discuss the internal deliberations.

Sandy’s signature appears on at least one of these so-called apportionment letters in July that prevented the money from going to Ukraine. But after that, the process for approving or denying such funds was taken over by a political appointee at OMB, Mike Duffey, who defied a congressional subpoena to testify earlier this month. They money had already been approved by Congress.

 

[GreyhoundFan]

[GreyhoundFan]

"Follow Nancy Pelosi’s breadcrumbs on impeachment"

Spoiler

There is little doubt who is leading the United States right now. It’s not the beleaguered president facing near-certain impeachment, who has become noteworthy only for his ability to induce chaos and inevitably arrive at a position on the world stage most useful to Russia.

It sure is not the Republican congressional leadership. In the case of the Senate, it has lost the resolve to advise and consent and the will to legislate, and in the case of the House, it is reduced to lying about House Intelligence Committee Chairman Rep. Adam Schiff. (“House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) accused [Schiff] of lying when he said Wednesday that he does not know the identity of the whistleblower,” The Post reports. “Pressed for evidence to back up his claim, McCarthy did not directly answer the question but instead repeatedly accused Schiff of lying.”) Both House and Senate Republicans have resorted to bad-faith arguments and out-and-out fabrication.

No, the adult in the country keeping her party and the majority of Americans on course is House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.). In her weekly news conference, she laid out the road map for impeachment.

She left no doubt what the central article of impeachment will be:

Pelosi used the word “bribery” Thursday to describe Trump’s actions toward Ukraine, going further than she previously has done in outlining House Democrats’ accusations against the president.

Wednesday’s testimony by acting ambassador to Ukraine William B. Taylor Jr. and Deputy Assistant Secretary of State George Kent corroborated “evidence of bribery” and supported allegations that Trump violated his oath of office, Pelosi said.

Why “bribery”? For one thing, we avoid quibbling about what is a “high crime” in the Constitution. “Bribery” is listed specifically and has a broad meaning. Lawfare blog helps us through the reasoning:

Even if Trump’s actions do not satisfy the modern criminal standard for bribery, the argument from Trump’s defenders is misplaced—because the federal statute isn’t the relevant statement of the law in the context of impeachment. ...

In short, the Founders’ conception of bribery—and thus the scope of that term in the Constitution—cannot be understood with reference to modern federal statutes and the interpretation of those statutes by modern courts. As [Laurence] Tribe and [Joshua] Matz explain, “[T]he Framers were concerned with abuse of power, corruption, and injury to the nation. At no point did any delegate link the ultimate safeguard against presidential betrayal to intricacies of a criminal code.”

So what did the Founders understand “bribery” to refer to when they included that term in the Constitution as one of two specific impeachable offenses? There is every reason to believe that the drafters of the Constitution had in mind a scope that easily encompasses Trump’s conduct.

In essence, “bribery” not only sounds clear and serious; it is precisely the right description of what occurred here, most clearly in the July 25 phone call between Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, when “Trump made clear to Zelensky that he was asking him for a ‘favor’ — not a favor to benefit the United States as a whole or the public interest, but a favor that would accrue to the personal benefit of Trump by harming his political rival.” Using his office to obtain private gain (political dirt on a rival) is the “sort of corrupt use of public office to obtain a private benefit [that] fits squarely within the definition of bribery when the Constitution was written.”

Moreover, use of the “bribery” framework leads naturally to the obstruction of Congress insofar as Trump’s refusal to provide documents and the most critical witnesses prevents Congress from obtaining some, but not all, of the firsthand evidence of Trump’s control of the Ukraine extortion plot. "That is such a fraudulent proposition put forward by the Republicans,” Pelosi said, concerning the claim that Democrats lack evidence of Trump seeking political help from Ukraine. “We are not here to be manipulated by the obstruction of justice of the administration.” (Moreover, we see in the rough transcript the president plainly raising Burisma and the Bidens.)

Pelosi has been masterful in sending the impeachment inquiry to Schiff and in keeping the focus on Trump’s most egregious offenses. We are unlikely to see two-thirds of the Senate vote to remove Trump. However, Pelosi has helped construct an argument for any fair-minded person that Trump has violated his oath and deserves removal.

 

[Howl]

My favorite thing evah: Nancy P manged to throw a bitch slap - major shade combo at Trump when she paused to define "exculpatory" for him while making a televised comment outside the hearing room. 

Hubs watches GMA (Good Morning America) most every morning.  It's definitely an entertainment variety show with a smattering of news of the day.

I was pleased to see that they offered a very understandable summary of the testimony without giving counterweight to Nunes/Meadows/Jordan conspiracy theories and also NOT making comments about how boring the testimony is.  

It blows me away that CNN had Kellyanne Conway on Wolf Blitzer, and she of course did her signature spew of talking points,  ignoring relevant questions from Blitzer by talking over him.  You have to ask yourself, what's the point of having these WH bots on your show?  

Edited November 15, 2019 by Howl

[fraurosena]

Masha Yovanovitch's testimony will be starting in about 5 minutes. Here's a link for anyone who wants to watch along:

 

[fraurosena]

Some more backdrop for the testimony, as Adam Schiff is holding a pretty strong opening statement. 

Giuliani Ally Pete Sessions Was Eyed for Top Slot in Ukraine

Quote

At the same time that Rudy Giuliani and his now-indicted pals were pushing for President Donald Trump to remove Ambassador Marie Yovanovitch from her post in Ukraine, Trump administration officials were eyeing potential contenders to take over her job.

One of the people in the mix, according to three sources familiar with the discussions, was Pete Sessions, a former congressman who called for Yovanovitch’s firing. He is also a longtime ally of the former New York mayor and is believed to have taken millions of dollars from a PAC funded in part by Giuliani’s indicted cronies.

Yovanovitch is set to testify to the congressional impeachment inquiry on Nov. 15. The circumstances of her removal from Kyiv are of keen interest to investigators, and she has said the whisper campaign against her left her blindsided. Witnesses in the inquiry have said they believed the people who successfully pushed for her ouster wanted to replace her with someone more pliable—and maybe even more friendly to their business interests. 

Conversations about Sessions—and another possible pick for the job, Raul Mas Canosa, a South Florida businessman with deep ties to the Cuban expat community—circulated inside and outside the administration from late 2018 through the early months of 2019, according to the sources. Lev Parnas, a Giuliani associate arrested last month for alleged campaign finance violations, was part of discussions about Mas Canosa with associates in Kyiv, according to multiple people familiar with the conversations. One former State Department official said U.S. diplomats in Kyiv learned Mas Canosa was in contention after a rumor about him circulated in Ukrainian political circles.

A spokesperson for Sessions told The Daily Beast he was not offered the ambassadorship or vetted for it. Mas Canosa confirmed that he was approached about taking the position. 

Trump recalled Yovanovitch on April 29 after Giuliani and his allies launched a vociferous campaign against her. Yovanovitch has said she believed the people calling for her ouster wanted to replace her with a new ambassador who would help advance their business interests. Her recall generated rancor from congressional Democrats, who suspected something strange was going on. But instead of replacing her with a political ally, the Trump administration dispatched veteran diplomat Bill Taylor to the embassy there as chargé d’affaires. 

Taylor told Congress he also sensed something was afoot, and came to believe the Trump administration was withholding military aid to pressure the country to investigate former Vice President Joe Biden’s son. Democrats are investigating the scheme as part of their impeachment inquiry into Trump. Taylor testified publicly before the inquiry on Nov. 13. Yovanovitch is scheduled to testify on Nov. 15. 

Sessions and Giuliani have been allies for more than 15 years, and Sessions has called the former New York mayor a friend. The New York mayor held a $1,000-per-person fundraiser for the Texas Republican in 2002, per New York magazine. And he cut a TV ad for Sessions in the final weeks of his hard-fought 2004 campaign. “When there’s so much at stake for our country, we need people in Congress with the character to lead,” Giuliani said in the ad, according to a story from The Hill’s archives. Sessions, in turn, endorsed Giuliani’s unsuccessful 2008 Republican presidential bid and urged social conservatives to back him despite his support of abortion rights. 

Ten years later, Sessions wrote a letter to Secretary of State Mike Pompeo in May 2018 citing “concrete evidence from close companions” that Yovanovitch had “spoken privately and repeatedly about her disdain for the current Administration in a way that might call for the expulsion” of her from office.

In an October indictment, federal prosecutors charged Parnas and his business partner, Igor Fruman, with campaign finance violations. Prosecutors allege that the two men acted as straw donors for a foreign government official and gave money to a political action committee that has given up to $3 million to “Congressman-1,” widely reported to be Sessions. 

The indictment alleges that Parnas and Fruman “sought Congressman-1’s assistance in causing the US. Government to remove or recall the then-U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine.” The two allegedly sought Yovanovitch’s removal “at the request of one or more Ukrainian government officials.” 

Since-deleted Facebook posts show Sessions met with Parnas and Fruman on Capitol Hill on May 9, 2018. He sent the letter calling for the State Department to fire Yovanovitch on the same day. 

Since the Ukraine scandal broke, a federal grand jury in New York has subpoenaed Sessions for documents related to his interactions with Giuliani, Parnas, and Fruman, including the effort to have Yovanovitch recalled. 

Mas Canosa confirmed to The Daily Beast that he had been approached earlier this year to serve as ambassador to Ukraine but declined to say by whom. He said he has never met Giuliani, Parnas, or Fruman. 

“I really didn’t feel I was a good fit,” he said. “While I certainly was probably not a top choice, if I had been asked to serve I would have done so out of love of country, period, end of story.”

Mas Canosa indicated he had concerns about Yovanovitch. 

“She was not serving the president well, from what I was told,” he said of Yovanovitch.

Mas Canosa, a former Wall Street investment adviser who now runs a firm called Gladius Consulting, would have been an unorthodox pick to replace Yovanovitch. He’s never served as a diplomat, and most of his commentary has focused on Latin American and Cuban politics. His late brother, Jorge Mas Canosa, was a towering figure in Florida’s Cuban exile community and anti-Castro politics who founded the Cuban American National Foundation. There appears to be scant public evidence that Mas Canosa has any Ukraine connections. 

The campaign to install him didn’t get traction, according to one Trump administration official. “It was nixed early,” the official said. 

Despite that, conversations about Mas Canosa spread on Russian-language social media. On May 12, one obscure commentator who goes by the handle @prokhozhij on the Telegram messaging platform wrote that “The new US ambassador to Ukraine may be an American businessman of Cuban origin, Raul Mas Canosa.”

A little over a week later, the news had spread to more mainstream political commentators, including Taras Berezovets, a television host in Kyiv, Ukraine. On his Telegram channel, he posted that Mas Canosa, who “often appears as a commentator on Trump’s favorite Fox news channel,” was in line to be the next ambassador. 

Berezovets told The Daily Beast he “first learned about Raul Mas Canosa from my friends in Washington in May.”

Mas Canosa’s nephew Jorge Mas Santos contributed to Giuliani’s 2008 presidential campaign. And after Trump’s election, Mas Canosa told the Spanish-language publication Diario Las Americas that Giuliani deserved a spot in Trump’s Cabinet. 

During her appearance before the House impeachment inquiry, the Trump National Security Council’s former top Russia staffer, Fiona Hill, testified that she was “told that these gentlemen, Mr. Parnas, Mr. Fruman, and Mr. [Harry] Sargeant had all been in business with Mr. Giuliani, and that the impression that a number of Ukrainian officials and others had had was that they were interested in seeking business deals in Ukraine.” Hill didn’t detail what those interests might be. But she said she believed that the reason Yovanovitch had been the target of smear campaign “seemed to be business dealings of individuals who wanted to improve their investment positions inside of Ukraine itself.” 

Nunes, of course, is attacking the Democrats, because he has absolutely no arguments against the facts. 

Good grief, Nunes is repeating the exact same things he already said on Wednesday. Because... well, he has nothing else, of course. 

Oh, Nunes, thank you for reading the transcript of the first call! The marked difference in tone to the second, extortion call, so obvious!