Last Call For Old News From Newsom

As California's Democratic Governor, Gavin Newsom, has said on several occasions, he's absolutely not running for Joe Biden's job, and if he has to choose a successor for Dianne Feinstein between now and November of next year, it will be an interim choice from people not currently running for her seat in 2024.

 

As three high-profile California Democrats vie to replace retiring Sen. Dianne Feinstein, Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom said in an interview with NBC's "Meet the Press" that he would not appoint any of them to the seat, should it become vacant sooner than expected.

That decision could be a blow to Rep. Barbara Lee, since her allies had reason to believe she was Newsom’s first choice to fill a potential vacancy. But that was before she entered the Senate race, where she is currently trailing in polls behind better-known and better-funded fellow Democratic Reps. Adam Schiff and Katie Porter.

In his most direct comments on the matter yet, Newsom said in the interview with Chuck Todd for NBC News' "Meet the Press" that airs Sunday that he would instead make an “interim appointment” to replace Feinstein if necessary.

“Yes. Interim appointment. I don’t want to get involved in the primary,” Newsom said. “It would be completely unfair to the Democrats that have worked their tail off. That primary is just a matter of months away. I don’t want to tip the balance of that.”

Lee, Schiff and Porter are locked in a high-profile battle ahead of the March 5 all-party primary, when the top two vote-getters of any party will advance to the November general election. Both may end up being Democrats, given California’s partisan tilt.

A poll released Thursday from the Institute of Government Studies at the University of California, Berkeley, found Schiff and Porter running neck and neck at 20% and 17%, respectively, while Lee trailed at 7%. A third are still undecided.

Feinstein, 90, has resisted calls to resign and said she intends to serve out the remainder of her term, which ends in January 2025.

But her declining health and an ugly family dispute over her late husband’s multi-million-dollar estate has renewed questions about her ability to do her job.

Newsom is openly dreading the prospect of having to fill another Senate vacancy, having already hand-picked his state’s other senator, Alex Padilla, to fill the seat vacated by now-Vice President Kamala Harris.

“I don’t want to make another appointment, and I don’t think the people of California want me to make another appointment,” Newsom told Todd.

 

Newsom also reiterated that he has no 2024 plans for the presidency. It's so weird that literally the only people who think Newsom has designs on the Oval Office next year are Republicans who are 100% Newsom is lying and will stab Joe Biden in the front and the back, which I guess tells you everything you need to know about right-wing pundits.

 

Meanwhile, left-wing pundits like myself are telling everyone in blogshot, postshot, and earshot that Trump's going to win the 2024 GOP primary but nobody on the right wants to believe that for a second.

 

Now, do I expect Newsom has 2028 plans to run against Kamala Harris, absolutely. I think that's going to be wide open and messy as hell, not because VP Harris isn't qualified, but that history assures us that approximately every non-Black, non-female Democrat will figure they can do that job too.

 

That's a tale for another time, and five years in presidential politics is an eternity. But as for Newsom in 2024, that's not happening, and Republcians are in as much denial there as they are over the GOP being Trump's party of white Christian Dominionist supremacy.

Last Call For Losing The Clown Show

House GOP Speaker Kevin McCarthy has now fully lost control of his own caucus, with Rep. Lauren Boebert now trying to force an impeachment vote on President Biden as well as a second censure vote for Democratic Rep. Adam Schiff.

Speaker Kevin McCarthy urged House Republicans to vote against the resolution brought forward by GOP Rep. Lauren Boebert of Colorado forcing a vote to impeach President Joe Biden this week, arguing now is not the right time, multiple sources in the closed door meeting told CNN.

House Republicans are divided over Boebert’s resolution, with a number of members emerging from the meeting expressing frustration with the conservative congresswoman’s push to force a vote on the politically contentious issue.

McCarthy argued that Republicans should let committee investigations play out and warning that jumping to impeachment now could threaten their slim majority, the sources said. The speaker noted that House Republicans have taken back the House five times in the last 100 years, and two of those times lost the majority the next cycle.

“What majority do we want to be,” McCarthy asked his conference, according to a source in the room “Give it right back in two years or hold it for a decade and make real change?”

McCarthy said he asked Boebert to speak during the closed door conference meeting and she declined, a source familiar told CNN. Boebert did not attend the Wednesday meeting, the source said. CNN has reached out to Boebert’s office for comment.

McCarthy told reporters on Wednesday he does not support the resolution.

“I think to prematurely bring something up like that, to have no background in it, it undercuts what we’re doing” at the committee level, he said.

A number of House Republicans have filed articles of impeachment against Biden since the party took the House majority, but Boebert made a specific procedural move on Tuesday that would force the chamber to vote on the impeachment of Biden this week.

It’s not clear when the vote will happen, if at all. Boebert told CNN she would not force the full House to vote Wednesday night, and it’s still possible a vote to kill the impeachment resolution could happen later this week.

Now, it's 100% clear that Boebert doesn't have the votes, but McCarthy is now juggling bottles of nitroglycerin during an earthquake. If he kills the vote, he's going to have a revolt on his hands. If he allows the vote, he's also going to have a revolt on his hands.  He's survived so far, but less than six months into his term as House Speaker, he's already looking at a moment that could break his circus tent poles in half and bring the whole mess down on his head.

There's not much left for McCarthy to give away to keep Boebert sweet, and it'll only take one furious Republican to call for a vote of no confidence in McCarthy's ringmaster performance.

Get the popcorn, folks.

 

The Circus Of The Damned, Con't

House Speaker Kevin McCarthy has made good on his purely political promise to his fellow GOP clowns, removing Democrats Adam Schiff and Eric Swalwell from the House Select Intelligence Committee, in retaliation for Republicans being voted off committees two years ago for fomenting violence.

 

Speaker Kevin McCarthy on Tuesday unilaterally exiled Representatives Adam B. Schiff and Eric Swalwell from the House Intelligence Committee, making good on a longstanding threat to expel the California Democrats in his first major act of partisan retribution since taking the majority.

The move was a much-anticipated tit-for-tat after Democrats, then in the majority, voted in 2021 to eject two Republicans, Representatives Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia and Paul Gosar of Arizona, from congressional committees for internet posts that advocated violence against their political enemies. It was also payback for the decision by Nancy Pelosi, then the House speaker, to bar Republicans who had helped former President Donald J. Trump spread the election lies that fueled the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol from sitting on the special committee investigating the riot.

Now that he is in control, Mr. McCarthy sought to punish Mr. Schiff and Mr. Swalwell, two favorite foils of Republicans who had played key roles in the two impeachments of Mr. Trump, though he denied that his decision was retaliatory. Instead, he argued that both men had displayed behavior unbecoming of the committee tasked with overseeing the nation’s intelligence services.

In a letter outlining his decision to Hakeem Jeffries, the House minority leader, Mr. McCarthy decried what he described as “the misuse” of the intelligence panel during the last four years, arguing that it had “severely undermined its primary national security and oversight missions — ultimately leaving our nation less safe.” He called the dismissals of Mr. Schiff and Mr. Swalwell necessary “to maintain a standard worthy of this committee’s responsibilities.”

Mr. McCarthy has said that Mr. Schiff “openly lied to the American people” when he chaired the intelligence panel during Mr. Trump’s presidency. In September 2019, Mr. Schiff was excoriated by Republicans for dramatically paraphrasing the contents of a telephone call in which Mr. Trump had pressured President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine to investigate Joseph R. Biden Jr. and his son, and for implying, falsely, that his committee had had no contact with a whistle-blower raising concerns about their conversation.

Earlier, in March 2019‌, ‌Republicans on the committee had demanded that Mr. Schiff step aside for having said that he had seen “more than circumstantial evidence” of collusion between Mr. Trump and the Russians in 2017. That claim had been called into question by the findings of Robert S. Mueller III, the special counsel who had looked into the matter, which Attorney General ‌William P. Barr‌ had summarized in a letter to certain members of Congress. Republicans accused Mr. Schiff of having compromised the integrity of the panel by knowingly promoting false information.

Speaking to reporters at the Capitol on Tuesday night, Mr. Schiff countered that Mr. McCarthy was “trying to remove me from the intel committee for holding his boss at Mar-a-Lago accountable.”

“It’s just another body blow to the institution of Congress that he’s behaving this way, but it just shows how weak he is as a speaker,” he added.

Republicans have railed against Mr. Swalwell, who served as a manager in Mr. Trump’s second impeachment trial, citing an Axios report that reported that Mr. Swalwell was targeted by a suspected Chinese spy as part of an influence campaign in 2014, before he served on the intelligence panel. The report said that around 2015, federal investigators alerted Mr. Swalwell to their concerns and he “cut off all ties.”

“This is all about political vengeance,” Mr. Swalwell said of Mr. McCarthy’s action.

Because the intelligence panel is a “select” committee, the speaker has the authority to dictate who can serve, just as Ms. Pelosi was able to block Republicans appointed by Mr. McCarthy from the select committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack. However, Mr. Schiff and Mr. Swalwell are not expected to lose their other committee assignments.

 

It's about revenge, pure and simple. McCarthy, being the weak, vacillating buffoon that he is, may not have the votes to strip Democratic Rep. Ilhan Omar of her committee assignments however. 

Mr. McCarthy has also threatened to remove Representative Ilhan Omar, Democrat of Minnesota, from congressional committees for criticism of Israel that Republicans and some Democrats have condemned as anti-Semitic. Ms. Omar apologized in 2019 for saying that support for Israel in Washington was “all about the Benjamins baby,” a comment that members of both parties denounced as a reference to an anti-Semitic trope. She was criticized again in 2021 when she made statements that appeared to compare human rights abuses by Israel with acts committed by Hamas and the Taliban, and later said she had not meant to equate them.

It was not clear whether Mr. McCarthy, who holds a razor-thin majority, had the votes to oust Ms. Omar. At least two Republicans have publicly expressed qualms about doing so.

And the Minnesota Democrat on Tuesday night told reporters at the Capitol that some Republicans had told her privately they believed such a move would be “uncalled for.”

“They are trying to do whatever it is that they can within their conference to make sure there is no vote to remove me from the Foreign Affairs Committee,” she added.

 

We'll see what Kevin promises to give away to keep what little power he has left.

Insurrection Investigation, Con't

House January 6th Commission members are getting closer to pursuing criminal charges against the former Trump regime members who are refusing congressional subpoenas.

The House select committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol is planning to ramp up its efforts to force Trump administration officials to comply with its subpoenas as the former president attempts to stymie the inquiry.

Lawmakers who sit on the panel said they are prepared to pursue criminal charges against witnesses like Stephen K. Bannon who have balked at cooperating. And the committee may issue a subpoena as early as Wednesday to Jeffrey Clark, a Trump Justice Department official who sought to deploy department resources to support former president Donald Trump’s false claims of massive voting fraud in the 2020 election.

“We are completely of one mind that if people refuse to respond to questions without justification that we will hold them in criminal contempt and refer them to the Justice Department,” Rep. Adam B. Schiff (D-Calif.), a member of the panel, said in an interview Tuesday.

Tensions over compliance with subpoenas are increasing as the committee’s plan to hold depositions this week with Bannon and three other Trump administration officials — former chief of staff Mark Meadows, former deputy chief of staff Dan Scavino and Kash Patel, who was serving as chief of staff to the acting defense secretary on Jan. 6 — is already facing head winds.

Although lawmakers maintain that the deposition dates still stand for this week, it remains unclear whether they will happen. But talks between the committee and the former officials’ lawyers continue.

Negotiations between Clark’s legal team and the committee did not proceed as rapidly as the committee hoped, according to a person familiar with the conversations who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the sensitive talks. As a result, the committee is contemplating issuing a subpoena, this person said.

A committee spokesman declined to comment on any possible future subpoenas.

Clark is considered a key witness for the panel, which is looking into Trump administration efforts to overturn election results and interfere with the peaceful transfer of power.

Clark, the former acting head of the DOJ’s civil division, emerged as a key player in Trump’s push to amplify his voter-fraud claims after it was reported that the two men were in close touch in the days leading up to the Jan. 6 attack, which was the most serious attack on the Capitol since the War of 1812.

Clark authored and circulated a draft letter dated Dec. 28, addressed to Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp (R) that urged officials in the state to investigate unfounded claims of fraud. The Washington Post has previously reported that in early January, Trump entertained a plan to oust acting attorney general Jeffrey Rosen and replace him with Clark, who was open to pursuing Trump’s attempts to overturn the election results.

Trump has urged his former aides not to cooperate with the committee and is asserting a claim of executive privilege to prevent the release of records from the National Archives after the Biden administration last week said it will not stand in the way of the information’s release.

 

So, negotiations continue. Because that's what you do with traitors, insurrectionists, and criminals who swore to destroy the country before and who have all but issued standing threats that the moment they get back into power, they will act upon those threats against this very Commission.

 

You "negotiate" with them.

Retribution Execution, Con't

The Trump Justice Department under Jeff Sessions didn't just illegally investigate journalists from CNN, the NY Times, and the Washington Post in 2017, they illegally seized phone records and metadata from House Intelligence Committee Democrats, including ranking member and now chairman Rep. Adam Schiff and his family., and Bill Barr continued the investigation when he took over.

As the Justice Department investigated who was behind leaks of classified information early in the Trump administration, it took a highly unusual step: Prosecutors subpoenaed Apple for data from the accounts of at least two Democrats on the House Intelligence Committee, aides and family members. One was a minor.

All told, the records of at least a dozen people tied to the committee were seized in 2017 and early 2018, including those of Representative Adam B. Schiff of California, then the panel’s top Democrat and now its chairman, according to committee officials and two other people briefed on the inquiry. Representative Eric Swalwell of California said in an interview Thursday night that he had also been notified that his data had been subpoenaed.

Prosecutors, under the beleaguered attorney general, Jeff Sessions, were hunting for the sources behind news media reports about contacts between Trump associates and Russia. Ultimately, the data and other evidence did not tie the committee to the leaks, and investigators debated whether they had hit a dead end and some even discussed closing the inquiry.

But William P. Barr revived languishing leak investigations after he became attorney general a year later. He moved a trusted prosecutor from New Jersey with little relevant experience to the main Justice Department to work on the Schiff-related case and about a half-dozen others, according to three people with knowledge of his work who did not want to be identified discussing federal investigations.

The zeal in the Trump administration’s efforts to hunt leakers led to the extraordinary step of subpoenaing communications metadata from members of Congress — a nearly unheard-of move outside of corruption investigations. While Justice Department leak investigations are routine, current and former congressional officials familiar with the inquiry said they could not recall an instance in which the records of lawmakers had been seized as part of one.

Moreover, just as it did in investigating news organizations, the Justice Department secured a gag order on Apple that expired this year, according to a person familiar with the inquiry, so lawmakers did not know they were being investigated until Apple informed them last month.

Prosecutors also eventually secured subpoenas for reporters’ records to try to identify their confidential sources, a move that department policy allows only after all other avenues of inquiry are exhausted.

The subpoenas remained secret until the Justice Department disclosed them in recent weeks to the news organizations — The Washington Post, The New York Times and CNN — revelations that set off criticism that the government was intruding on press freedoms.

The gag orders and records seizures show how aggressively the Trump administration pursued the inquiries while Mr. Trump declared war on the news media and perceived enemies whom he routinely accused of disclosing damaging information about him, including Mr. Schiff and James B. Comey, the former F.B.I. director whom prosecutors focused on in the leak inquiry involving Times records.

 

Straight up Watergate abuses, covered up by Sessions and Barr for years, and it's barely in the top ten of reasons why Trump should be in prison right now. He wanted to lock up reporters and Democrats and directed the Justice Department to make it happen. Trump didn't just have an enemies' list, he used it.

Hearings, of course, but we'll see what else happens.

Russian To Judgment, Con't

The Trump/Russia interference in the 2016 and 2020 elections isn't going away anytime soon, and a new Homeland Security whistleblower complaint alleges that a senior intelligence official was told by the regime specifically to stop Russian all counterintelligence analysis on it.

A senior Department of Homeland Security official alleges that he was told to stop providing intelligence analysis on the threat of Russian interference in the 2020 election, in part because it “made the President look bad,” an instruction he believed would jeopardize national security.

The official, Brian Murphy, who until recently was in charge of intelligence and analysis at DHS, said in a whistleblower complaint that on two occasions he was told to stand down on reporting about the Russian threat.
On July 8, Murphy said, acting Homeland Security secretary Chad Wolf told him that an “intelligence notification” regarding Russian disinformation efforts should be “held” because it was unflattering to Trump, who has long derided the Kremlin’s interference as a “hoax” that was concocted by his opponents to delegitimize his victory in 2016.
It’s not clear who would have seen the notification, but DHS’s intelligence reports are routinely shared with the FBI, other federal law enforcement agencies, and state and local governments.

Murphy objected to Wolf’s instruction, “stating that it was improper to hold a vetted intelligence product for reasons [of] political embarrassment,” according to a copy of his whistleblower complaint that was obtained by The Washington Post.

Murphy also alleges that two months earlier, Wolf told him to stop producing intelligence assessments on Russia and shift the focus on election interference to China and Iran. He said Wolf told him “that these instructions specifically originated from White House National Security Advisor Robert O’Brien.”

Murphy said he would not comply with the instructions, which he believed would “put the country in substantial and specific danger,” according to the complaint, which was filed Tuesday with the DHS inspector general.

The White House and DHS did not respond to requests for comment.

“Mr. Murphy followed proper lawful whistleblower rules in reporting serious allegations of misconduct against DHS leadership, particularly involving political distortion of intelligence analysis and retaliation,” his attorney, Mark Zaid, said in a statement. “We have alerted both the Executive and Legislative Branches of these allegations and we will appropriately cooperate with oversight investigations, especially in a classified setting.”

Rep. Adam B. Schiff (D-Calif.), the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, said in a statement that Murphy’s complaint “outlines grave and disturbing allegations that senior White House and Department of Homeland Security officials improperly sought to politicize, manipulate, and censor intelligence in order to benefit President Trump politically. This puts our nation and its security at grave risk.”

When I said seven months ago after the Senate GOP refused to convict and remove Trump that Trump now had free reign to do whatever he wanted to do, this is exactly what I meant. Of course the politicization of intelligence was going to be total heading into the 2020 election. Of course Russia was going to get a free pass to do whatever it takes to keep Trump in power, as Trump would make sure our counter-intelligence folks were blinded on purpose.

Murphy will be testifying later this month, or maybe not, I'm sure the White House will block it. But at this point there are too many cracks in the dam to cover up every single thing.

The caveat on all this is that Murphy was fired last month after gathering intelligence on journalists.

The Department of Homeland Security official who oversaw the intelligence division at the department is being reassigned after it was revealed his office had gathered intelligence reports on two US journalists, according to a source familiar with the matter. 

Brian Murphy, who served as the acting under secretary for the DHS Office of Intelligence and Analysis, was summoned to acting Homeland Secretary Chad Wolf's office Friday night, as speculation grew that he would be moved out of his role, according to another source familiar. 

Murphy is a career official who filled the position after the Senate-confirmed Under Secretary David Glawe left DHS earlier this year. It's unclear what Murphy's next role will be. The Washington Post was first to report on Saturday that Murphy had been removed from his job. 

On Thursday, The Washington Post reported that DHS had sent Open Source Intelligence Reports to federal law enforcement agencies summarizing tweets sent by two journalists -- New York Times reporter Mike Baker and Benjamin Wittes, the editor-in-chief of the blog Lawfare -- who had published leaked unclassified government documents while covering the unrest in Portland, Oregon. 

The collection and dissemination of information on journalists was carried out by lower level officials acting on broad guidance, the source told CNN, adding that Murphy was not fully aware until after the fact. 

Wolf, who has led the department in an acting capacity since last November, sought to distance himself from the incident.

So is this retribution from a corrupt DHS official taking down as many people as he can, or was Murphy preemptively reassigned because he threatened to go public about the Russian intelligence?

Adam Schiff and the House Intelligence Committee needs to have a little chat with him ASAP. We'll see if it happens.

Russian To Judgment, Con't

Russian interference in the 2020 primary and election campaigns continue, and the Trump regime continues to deny that it's even happening.

The Russian government has stepped up efforts to inflame racial tensions in the United States as part of its bid to influence November’s presidential election, including trying to incite violence by white supremacist groups and to stoke anger among African-Americans, according to seven American officials briefed on recent intelligence.

Russia’s lead intelligence agency, the S.V.R., has apparently gone beyond 2016 methods of interference, when operatives tried to stoke racial animosity by creating fake Black Lives Matter groups and spreading disinformation to depress black voter turnout. Now, Russia is also trying to influence white supremacist groups, the officials said; they gave few details, but one official said federal investigators are examining how at least one neo-Nazi organization with ties to Russia is funded.

Other Russian efforts, which American intelligence agencies have tracked, involve simply prodding white nationalists to more aggressively spread hate messages and amplifying their invective. Russian operatives are also trying to push black extremist groups toward violence, according to multiple officials, though they did not detail how.
Russia’s more public influence operations, like state-backed news organizations, have continued to push divisive racial narratives, including stories emphasizing allegations of police abuse in the United States and highlighting racism against African-Americans within the military.

And as social media companies more vigilantly monitor for foreign activity than they did in 2016, Russia has also adjusted its methods to evade detection. Rather than disseminate messages as widely as possible, as in 2016, Russian operatives are using private Facebook groups, posts on the online message board 4chan and closed chat rooms that are more difficult to monitor, according to intelligence officials.

Russia’s primary goal, according to several officials briefed on the intelligence who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive information, is to foster a sense of chaos in the United States, though its motivations are under debate and difficult to decipher in the absence of high-level intelligence sources inside Moscow.

The direct effect of its interference on presidential politics is less clear, though some American officials said that Russia believed that acts of violence could bolster President Trump’s re-election bid if he could argue that a response to such an episode demanded continuity and that he represented a law-and-order approach.

The F.B.I. and other intelligence agencies declined to comment on specific Russian activities. Trump administration officials were set to brief Congress behind closed doors on Tuesday to discuss election threats from Russia and other adversarial nations.

“We see Russia is willing to conduct more brazen and disruptive influence operations because of how it perceives its conflict with the West,” David Porter, a top agent on the F.B.I.’s Foreign Influence Task Force, said last month at an election security conference in Washington.

He added, “To put it simply, in this space, Russia wants to watch us tear ourselves apart.”

As I noted yesterday, the rise in white supremacist activity is directly tied to a regime that believe it can benefit from these "very fine people".  And Trump himself continues to attack his own intelligence agencies, preferring to believe the Russians over his own people.

President Trump attacked a leading House Democrat on Tuesday over upcoming classified intelligence briefings by members of his own administration on the issue of election interference, suggesting his political opponents were exaggerating the threat from Russia.

Mr. Trump has previously issued derogatory statements about his intelligence chiefs after congressional hearings, but even before Tuesday’s briefings, he posted on Twitter that he “wouldn’t expect too much.”

There is another Russia, Russia, Russia meeting today. It is headed up by corrupt politician Adam “Shifty” Schiff, so I wouldn’t expect too much! @DHS_Wolf— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) March 10, 2020

Mr. Trump incorrectly said the first of two briefings, to House members, would be led by Representative Adam B. Schiff, Democrat of California and chairman of the House Intelligence Committee. The briefing on Tuesday was arranged by Speaker Nancy Pelosi, not Mr. Schiff. The Senate will receive an identical briefing later Tuesday afternoon.
Mr. Schiff fired back, noting that the officials briefing lawmakers were the president’s “own people” including several agency heads.

“We will insist on the truth, whether you like it or not,” Mr. Schiff said on Twitter.

Mr. Trump’s tweet showed his frustration over lawmakers’ continued concern that Russia is mounting efforts to influence the 2020 election. Mr. Trump has nurtured a grudge against Mr. Schiff since he took a leading role investigating ties between Mr. Trump’s campaign and Russia, and his leadership of the impeachment trial reignited the president’s ire.

Since his election, Mr. Trump has tried to play down or even dismiss discussions about Russia’s interference campaigns, chafing at the prospect that he won with the help of a foreign power. Some officials have said that they worry that the president’s dismissive comments make it harder for intelligence agencies and officials with the Department of Homeland Security to counter Moscow’s covert operations to influence the presidential election in November.

Russia has stepped up those efforts, officials have said, exploiting existing divisions among Americans to sow chaos. In particularly, Kremlin intelligence operatives have sought to amplify the messages of white supremacist groups to try to incite violence.
Senator Mitch McConnell, Republican of Kentucky and the majority leader, sounded a far different tone than the president, urging senators of both parties to attend what he called a discussion on a “critical subject.” Though he also addressed Democrats’ intense focus on Russia — the briefings are to address election security threats from a variety of adversaries, including China and Iran — he offered a more neutral encouragement for lawmakers to set aside “reflexive” partisanship.

“I encourage all my colleagues to attend the bipartisan briefing today,” he said. “And then let’s preserve that bipartisan spirit and that unity. Let’s focus on fighting against foreign interference, not fighting each other.”

McConnell at least understands why this is going to be a disaster for the GOP.  Trump can't admit it now because it would prove he's been in on it all along.  It's okay though, McConnell will find a way to block any election protection measures anyway.  It's up to the states to defend themselves.  Some will, others won't.

But Russia is definitely going to be a factor in tilting the election towards Trump.

Again.

Retribution Execution, Con't

The Trump regime continue to purge everyone involved in the House Democratic impeachment investigation.  Some are leaving out of concern for the Justice Department under Bill Barr, most are being forced out. I'm not sure which category he latest departure falls into just yet, but the lawyer who handled the Ukraine whistleblower complaint against Trump is now leaving the DNI's office.

The top lawyer for the intelligence community, whose decision to block a whistleblower's complaint about President Donald Trump and Ukraine from reaching Congress helped jumpstart the impeachment inquiry, is resigning from his post, officials confirmed.

Jason Klitenic, the general counsel for the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, will depart early next month, according to an agency spokeswoman. His exit comes as the acting DNI, Joseph Maguire, nears a March 11 deadline to depart as well. Federal law prevents Maguire from serving in an acting capacity beyond that date, meaning a new director must be nominated and confirmed by then, or Trump must pick a new acting official.
No official reason for Klitenic's departure has been provided. But he became the subject of scrutiny in September when he consulted with the Justice Department and determined that a whistleblower complaint deemed "urgent" by an internal watchdog would not be provided to Congress. House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) demanded access to the complaint after learning it had been blocked — and that it likely pertained to Trump or his senior advisers — and the furor that ensued led to a cascade of support for impeachment in the House.

The Trump administration's initial refusal to provide the complaint, as well as a string of media reports suggesting the complaint described wrongdoing by Trump in his posture toward Ukraine, ultimately led Speaker Nancy Pelosi to open an impeachment inquiry in late September. Within days of her decision, Maguire testified to Congress and the whistleblower complaint was released publicly. Trump also decided to release the readout of a July 25 call with Ukraine's president that became a central piece of evidence in the impeachment inquiry.

Schiff first asked the DNI for the whistleblower complaint after the agency's inspected general characterized it as an "urgent" and credible matter. Typically federal laws trigger a requirement that such complaints are forwarded to Congress. But in a Sept. 13 letter, Klitenic replied that rather than honor the inspector general's assessment, DNI consulted with the Justice Department, which overruled the inspector general and determined the complaint did not meet the threshold required to share it with lawmakers.

"Based on those consultations, we determined that the allegations did not fall within the statutory definition of an 'urgent concern' and that the statute did not require the complaint to be transmitted to the intelligence committees," Klitenic wrote on Sept. 13.

He also argued that the whistleblower had no legal right to approach Congress directly with his concerns. "We believe that it is important to apply the statute as it was written, because reading it to give a complainant a unilateral right to forward a complaint to the congressional intelligence committees would raise serious constitutional questions," Klitenic argued.

Klitenic's letter also hinted at Trump's role in the complaint, noting that it involved "confidential and potentially privileged communications by persons outside the Intelligence Community." Schiff said at the time that such a description could only apply to Trump or his top aides.

So is Klitenic leaving because he failed to kill the whistleblower complaint that led to the impeachment of Trump, or is he leaving because he sees who Trump truly is?

Maybe both.  We don't know.

That should scare everyone.

Last Call For Getting Away With It

Now here is something I never thought I would type: "Donald Trump was acquitted of both articles of impeachment on Wednesday despite a bipartisan vote to convict him on the charge of abuse of power."

At a post-acquittal news conference, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) was repeatedly asked about Romney’s political future given his vote to convict Trump on an abuse of power charge.

A number of influential GOP figures, including Donald Trump Jr., have pressed Senate Republicans to remove Romney from their party’s ranks in the chamber.

But McConnell was notably restrained in his criticism of his Utah colleague and declined to say whether he thinks Romney should be expelled.

“I was surprised and disappointed, but we have much work to do for the American people, and I think Senator Romney has been largely supportive of most everything we’ve tried to accomplish,” McConnell said.

He was far more scathing in his assessment of Democrats, casting their move to impeach the president as a grave misstep.

“Right now, this is a political loser for them,” McConnell said. “They initiated it. They thought this was a great idea. And at least for the short term, it has been a colossal political mistake.”

Yeah.  Mitt Romney finally found his spine.  Trump will have to destroy him, of course.

Ohio Democratic Sen. Sherrod Brown comes awfully close to naming and shaming the rest of the GOP. 

For the stay-in-office-at-all-cost representatives and senators, fear is the motivator. They are afraid that Mr. Trump might give them a nickname like “Low Energy Jeb” and “Lyin’ Ted,” or that he might tweet about their disloyalty. Or — worst of all — that he might come to their state to campaign against them in the Republican primary. They worry:

“Will the hosts on Fox attack me?”

“Will the mouthpieces on talk radio go after me?”

“Will the Twitter trolls turn their followers against me?”

My colleagues know they all just might. There’s an old Russian proverb: The tallest blade of grass is the first cut by the scythe. In private, many of my colleagues agree that the president is reckless and unfit. They admit his lies. And they acknowledge what he did was wrong. They know this president has done things Richard Nixon never did. And they know that more damning evidence is likely to come out.

So watching the mental contortions they perform to justify their votes is painful to behold: They claim that calling witnesses would have meant a never-ending trial. They tell us they’ve made up their minds, so why would we need new evidence? They say to convict this president now would lead to the impeachment of every future president — as if every president will try to sell our national security to the highest bidder.

I have asked some of them, “If the Senate votes to acquit, what will you do to keep this president from getting worse?” Their responses have been shrugs and sheepish looks.

They stop short of explicitly saying that they are afraid. We all want to think that we always stand up for right and fight against wrong. But history does not look kindly on politicians who cannot fathom a fate worse than losing an upcoming election. They might claim fealty to their cause — those tax cuts — but often it’s a simple attachment to power that keeps them captured.

As Senator Murray said on the Senate floor in 2002, “we can act out of fear” or “we can stick to our principles.” Unfortunately, in this Senate, fear has had its way. In November, the American people will have theirs.

Meanwhile, the retribution phase begins in earnest.

White House @PressSec Stephanie Grisham says of Rep. Adam Schiff after Trump's acquittal: "Will there be no retribution?" pic.twitter.com/ewW50O7EYn

— kadhim (＾ｰ^)ノ (@kadhim) February 5, 2020

And it will be a long twilight for America.

Breaking: from their press office -

“Good afternoon, Senators Grassley and Johnson today requested Hunter Biden’s official travel records from the U.S. Secret Service as a part of their ongoing probe into potential conflicts of interest.

A full news release is forthcoming”

— Catherine Herridge (@CBS_Herridge) February 5, 2020

From here on out, Trump goes for his enemies, and we'll see how long the Republic survives it.

Last Call For Impeachment Reached, Con't

Here in sixty seconds, Adam Schiff sums up the absolute ridiculousness of the Trump defense team.

SCHIFF: "While we've been debating whether POTUS can be impeached for bogus claims of privilege, the DOJ is resisting subpoenas in court today... the judge says 'if Congress can't enforce its subpoenas, what remedy is there,' & DOJ's response is impeachment! You can't make it up" pic.twitter.com/Tim1HHDgBO

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) January 30, 2020

The almost inevitable outcome is that by this time tomorrow we will live in a country where there is no longer any direct check on the Executive branch, with a lawless despot who will issue whatever executive orders to do an end run around Congress, and who will ignore direct federal court orders, because enough members of the Judicial and Legislative are content to let this unitary monstrosity continue in order to reshape the country for generations.

There will be no witnesses, Trump will not be convicted and removed for his crimes, and the brutal oppression of those who tried to stop him will begin in earnest.

There is no reason to believe that Trump will leave office if he loses the election in November, let alone there being any reason to believe the election itself will be either free or fair.

January 31 is looking like the day we go over the cliff, folks.

Coming back from this will take decades, if if ever happens, and history assures us that in no way will that journey back to where we were even five years ago be peaceful.

The bad guys are about to win.

I don't know what happens next.

That should terrify all of us.

Orange Meltdown, Con't

Donald Trump can taste his twisted "acquittal" this week as he rage-tweeted threats against Democratic Rep. Adam Schiff all morning.

President Donald Trump on Sunday suggested House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff, D-Calif., will pay a "price" for his role in the impeachment saga.

"Shifty Adam Schiff is a CORRUPT POLITICIAN, and probably a very sick man," Trump tweeted. "He has not paid the price, yet, for what he has done to our Country!"

The president posted those comments after writing earlier Sunday that his impeachment "is a massive election interference the likes of which has never been seen before."

Speaking with NBC's "Meet the Press," Schiff, the lead House impeachment manager, said he thought Trump's tweet is "intended to be" a threat to him. Trump responded later Sunday by calling Schiff a "conman."

On CNN's "State of the Union," Rep. Zoe Lofgren, D-Calif., called the tweet "really unfortunate."

"The president has a tendency to say things that seem threatening to people," Lofgren, who is also an impeachment manager, said. She added that Trump "really ought to get a grip and be a little more presidential."

Also on "State of the Union," Sen. James Lankford, R-Okla., said he did not think Trump's tweet was "a death threat."

"I don't think he's encouraging a death threat," Lankford said, adding, "I think what he's saying is [Schiff] will be held to a price" politically. 

I remind you that this is happening during Trump's impeachment trial, and the jurors in that trial are openly defending, normalizing, and downplaying his open public threats during that trial against the lead prosecutor.

Meanwhile, those same jurors are arguing whether or not there will be witnesses in the trial at all.  It's such a mockery of justice that it would give Kafka a headache.

Schiff, for his part, believes Trump's tweet was an open threat.

House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff (D-Calif.), who has taken a leading role in the Senate impeachment trial of President Trump, said Sunday that a tweet from the president is "intended to be" a threat.

"I don't think it was personal to refer to the CBS story. What may be personal, though, and I think I have to be very candid about this, is I made the argument that it's going to require moral courage to stand up to this president," Schiff said on NBC's "Meet the Press."

Schiff, the lead House impeachment manager in the Senate trial, added that Trump is a "vindictive" president.

"I don't think there's any doubt about it, and if you think there is, look at the president's tweets about me today saying that I should 'pay a price,'" Schiff said.

Do you take that as a threat?" NBC's Chuck Todd asked.

"I think it's intended to be," Schiff responded.

Again, Trump turning to open threats at this stage clearly means he thinks he has already won.  As I've been saying for quite some time now, Trump is driven by vengeance, and once Mitch McConnell solves his little impeachment problem, Trump will go full out to hurt the people he sees as having wronged him.

Impeachment Reached, Con't

The opening arguments for the impeachment case against Donald J. Trump by House Democrats was staggering, with GOP senators looking on with obvious discomfort, most likely hearing the evidence against Trump for the first time.

And on the first day, Democrats unleashed the flood.

One by one, the seven House impeachment prosecutors seeking President Donald Trump’s removal from office reconstructed a case against the president so dense — at times, head-scratchingly complex — that it was hard for senators new to the material to keep up.
After a lofty introduction by the House’s lead manager, Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.), Democrats shed any pretense of offering a streamlined, made-for-TV version of events meant to captivate the Senate or the nation. For much of the day, they cast aside any attempt to make a narrowly tailored case to Republicans that they should support calls for additional witnesses.

Instead, they decided to hammer senators with everything they had: an all-day torrent of intricate information, peppered with screenshots of deposition transcripts, emails, text messages and about 50 video clips — nearly three times more than House Republicans used during the entirety of their arguments in the 1999 Clinton trial.

It was a presentation that seemed designed to demonstrate what Democrats have long professed: that the facts of the Ukraine scandal threatening Trump’s presidency are so overwhelming as to be almost infallible. As Republicans harangued Democrats for failing to “do their homework,” the House managers were intent to emphasize just how much “homework” they did.

“We have some very long days yet to come,” Schiff warned the Senate as he kicked off the House’s arguments on Wednesday. He added, “Over the coming days, we will present to you and to the American people the extensive evidence collected in the House's inquiry into the president’s abuse of power, overwhelming evidence ... despite his unprecedented obstruction into that misconduct.”

What followed was a painstaking chronology of Democrats’ case that Trump pressured Ukraine to investigate his political rivals and obstructed Congress' investigation of the alleged scheme.

The Democrats included lengthy reconstructions of the April ouster of the U.S. ambassador to Ukraine, Marie Yovanovitch, who Trump's associates viewed as an obstacle in their quest to launch the investigations. They picked apart Trump’s decision in May to cancel Vice President Mike Pence’s trip to Ukraine, which Ukraine had sought as an important gesture of support.

The House lawmakers also dissected a two-week stretch in July during which administration officials agonized over Trump’s decision to withhold military aid from Ukraine amid his call for investigations. And they recounted at length the turmoil this hold on aid provoked in the diplomatic corps in August and September.

To one Senate Republican, the firehose of evidence was an education in itself, for him and his colleagues.

“Nine out of 10 senators will tell you they haven’t read a full transcript of the proceedings in the House,” Sen. John Kennedy (R-La.) quipped. “And the 10th senator who says he has is lying.”
Some Republicans even sounded envious of the Democrats’ use of multimedia during the trial and wished Trump’s defense team would follow suit. Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.), one of Trump’s top defenders, said Democrats have been presenting their case to the public like it's "cable news" — but lamented that the defense team’s case presented more like “an 8th grade book report.”

“Actually, no, I take that back,” he added, because an 8th grader would actually know how to use PowerPoint and iPads.

I'd like to think that the presentation given today would be the turning point in American history that would snap the hold Trump had over the jurors in his case.  In some alternate dimension, there are Republican staffers on the phone with the White House saying Trump is in dire trouble, and that his acquittal is no longer assured by any means.

Sadly, that reality is not one we inhabit currently.

Well into Schiff’s second hour of opening arguments, he moved on from discussing the first of two charges against Trump.

“Now let me turn to the second article,” Schiff said. That prompted several senators to shift in their seats and smile at each other in apparent bemusement. It also sparked a small exodus for the cloakroom, especially on the Republican side, including Sen. Roy Blunt of Missouri and Sen. Tom Cotton of Arkansas.

Within the first hour, Sen. Mark Warner of Virginia could be seen at his desk in the back row, leaning on his right arm with a hand covering his eyes. He stayed that way for around 20 minutes, then shifted to rest his chin in the same hand, eyes closed, for about five more minutes. Despite the late-night votes, Warner’s day had started as scheduled at a 10 a.m. Senate Intelligence Committee hearing.

Crow, a military veteran speaking on the impact of Trump’s holdup of military aid to Ukraine, had trouble holding the Senate’s attention. Some senators left their seats and headed to cloakrooms, stood in the back or openly yawned as he spoke. At one point during his address, more than 10 senators’ seats were empty.

Crow wondered aloud if the Senate wanted to take a recess.

No dice. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said there would be no break until dinner, more than an hour later.

Several GOP senators got up and left during Schiff's presentation.  They did so because as impressive as the Dems' opening arguments were, the outcome of this trial was preordained months ago.

Last Call For The Drums Of War, Con't

One of the hard and fast rules of this regime is when Trump outright lies to the American people, that reality is whatever Dear Leader says it is, and when you fail in that aspect of covering for him on national TV, it's going to go badly for you, as Defense Secretary Mark Esper is about to find out.

Secretary of Defense Mark Esper said he "didn't see" specific evidence that top Iranian military commander Qassem Soleimani was planning attacks on four U.S. embassies, but said he believed such attacks would have occurred.

"The president didn't cite a specific piece of evidence. What he said was he believed," Esper said Sunday on "Face the Nation." "I didn't see one, with regard to four embassies. What I'm saying is that I shared the president's view that probably — my expectation was they were going to go after our embassies. The embassies are the most prominent display of American presence in a country."

The president and his top officials have said the strike that killed Soleimani, the leader of Iran's elite Quds Force, was justified because there was an "imminent" threat to American service members and diplomats. Members of Congress, however, have raised questions as to the nature of the threat following briefings on the strike that the administration conducted with all members of the House and Senate.

Congressional Democrats have argued the intelligence they were presented did not demonstrate there was an "imminent" threat to U.S. personnel in the region, while some Republicans said the Trump administration was justified in killing Soleimani.

Mr. Trump told Fox News in an interview Friday that "it would've been four embassies" that were attacked, seemingly revealing more information about the nature of the threat.

Esper said he agreed that the embassies probably would've been targeted by Soleimani.

"What the president said was he believed that it probably and could've been attacks against additional embassies," he said. "I shared that view. I know other members of the national security team shared that view. That's why I deployed thousands of American paratroopers to the Middle East to reinforce our embassy in Baghdad and other sites throughout the region." 

Intelligence and analysis doesn't matter.  What Trump publicly says he believes matters, and in America in 2020, only that matters.  Trump killed Suliemani because he believed it would help him politically, period.  At some point, somebody on his national security team mentioned embassies and that became the justification after the fact.

House Democratic Intelligence Committee chair Adam Schiff makes that clear in response to Esper.

House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff, a Democrat from California, accused President Trump and top administration officials of "fudging" intelligence to justify the strike that killed Qassem Soleimani, the leader of Iran's powerful Quds Force.

"When you hear the president out there on Fox, he is fudging the intelligence," Schiff said Sunday on "Face the Nation," referencing an interview the president conducted with Fox News last week. "When you hear the [defense] secretary say, 'Well, that wasn't what the intelligence said, but that's my personal belief,' he is fudging. When Secretary Pompeo was on your show last week and made the claim that the intelligence analysis was that taking Soleimani out would improve our security and leaving him in would make us less safe, that is also fudging. That is not an intelligence conclusion, that's Pompeo's personal opinion."

After three full years of lying to the American people on a daily basis, people don't believe Trump and it's hurting him.

The poll, conducted by Ipsos in partnership with ABC News, using Ipsos' Knowledge Panel, asked Americans about their attitudes on two unfolding challenges for the Trump presidency -- escalating tensions with Iran and the impending impeachment trial in the Senate.

Overall attitudes about Trump and the consequences of his actions against Iran largely were driven by Independents, a critical target for both parties in electoral politics. The poll showed a majority of Independents, 57%, and all U.S. adults, 56%, disapproving of Trump's handling of the situation with Iran, with 43% of both Independents and U.S. adults approving.

Respondents also were asked about the fallout of the strike against Qassem Soleimani, the second-most-important official in Iran's government behind Ayatollah Khamenei, which marked a major escalation in months of tension between the U.S. and Iran, which launched retaliatory missile strikes on American bases in Iraq.

In the aftermath of the U.S. strike, only 28% of Independents, and 25% of Americans, said they felt more safe, while just over half, 51% of Independents and 52% of U.S. adults, said they felt less safe.
When it comes to attitudes on the conflict with Iran, partisanship drives opinions. An overwhelming 87% of Republicans approved of Trump's handling of Iran, and 54% say they feel safer. Among Democrats, 90% disapproved and 82% felt less safe.

Still, when asked about concerns over the possibility of the United States getting involved in a full-scale war with Iran, Democrats are more united in expressing concern than Republicans.

A net total of 94% of Democrats, and 52% of Republicans, are either very concerned or somewhat concerned about the possibility of entering into another war in the Middle East, compared with 6% of Democrats and 48% of Republicans who said they were not so concerned or not concerned at all.

Iran is not going to save Trump's presidency.

The Reach To Impeach, Con't

With 24 hours until the historic vote, and marches planned across the country later today, the Washington Post takes a look at where the House stands on articles of impeachment.

House Democratic leaders introduced two articles of impeachment against President Trump on Dec. 10: one for abuse of power and one for obstruction of Congress. 

[Everything you need to know about impeachment] 

Trump will be impeached if the House passes one or both articles by a simple majority (That means House Democrats need 216 votes given the current makeup of the House — there are a handful of vacant seats). More than 200 House Democrats have announced their support for both articles of impeachment. 

A two-thirds majority of senators present would then have to vote to convict and remove the president from office. 

The House is expected to vote on the articles before the Christmas recess. Below is a tally of how House members are expected to vote on impeachment. None have yet said they will vote for just one article, but we will track that here if they do.

The count stands at 206 for, with ten more needed out of 27 uncommitted so far.  Now Republican Jeff Van Drew is against the measure, and so far only Minnesota Democrat Colin Peterson has defected.  Independent Justin Amash, driven out of the GOP for even entertaining the idea of impeachment, is a yes vote.

We'll see where the vote lands tomorrow.

The Reach To Impeach, Con't

The impeachment of Donald Trump is moving forward rapidly now, with House Democrats moving to bring two articles of impeachment against him by the end of the week.

House Democrats announced on Tuesday that they would move ahead this week with two articles of impeachment charging President Trump with abuse of power and obstruction of Congress, as they accused him of violating the Constitution by pressure Ukraine for help in the 2020 election.

Speaking from a wood-paneled reception room just off the floor of the House, Speaker Nancy Pelosi and leaders of six key committees said that Mr. Trump’s actions toward Ukraine, and his efforts to block Congress’s attempt to investigate, had left them no choice but to pursue one of the Constitution’s gravest remedies. The move will bring a sitting president to the brink of impeachment for only the fourth time in American history.

“Today, in service to our duty to the Constitution, and to our country, the House Committee on Judiciary is introducing two articles of impeachment charging the president of the United States, Donald J. Trump, with committing high crimes and misdemeanors,” said Representative Jerrold Nadler, Democrat of New York and the panel’s chairman. He stood before four American flags and a portrait of George Washington.

“Our president holds the ultimate public trust,” Mr. Nadler said. “When he betrays that trust and puts himself before country, he endangers the Constitution, he endangers our democracy, and he endangers our national security.” 

The announcement comes a day after Democrats summed up the central allegations in their impeachment case against Mr. Trump: that he pressured Ukraine to announce investigations into his political rivals while withholding as leverage a coveted White House meeting for its president and $391 million in critical security assistance. His actions, they argued in a lengthy hearing at the Judiciary Committee, had placed the president’s personal political interests above those of the country, threatening the integrity of the election and national security in the process.

After more than two months of investigating the Ukraine matter, and a year of confrontation between the Democratic House and Mr. Trump, the impeachment process is now likely to unfold quickly. The Judiciary Committee plans to promptly begin debating the articles as soon as Wednesday, and could vote by Thursday to recommend them to the full House of Representatives for final approval. If the House follows through as expected next week, Mr. Trump could stand trial in the Senate early in the new year.
The Judiciary Committee planned to publicly release text of the articles later on Tuesday. While individual lawmakers will be able to propose amendments to the articles during this week’s debate and potentially force a committee vote on additional charges, they are not expected to substantively change.

By this time next week, Donald Trump could be impeached.

History is being made.  What the results of that history will be, even I'm not sure.

The Reach To Impeach, Con't

Back to the business at hand, and that business is the House Intelligence Committee's report on Ukraine out today and expected to be approved tomorrow as the action now shifts from Schiff and Intel to Jerry Nadler and the House Judiciary.

Members of the House Intelligence Committee will begin reviewing a report Monday on the panel's investigation of President Donald Trump's efforts to press Ukraine to investigate his Democratic adversaries, a crucial step in the House's fast-moving impeachment inquiry.

Lawmakers on the panel will get a 24-hour review period, according to internal guidance sent to committee members and obtained by POLITICO. On Tuesday, the panel is expected to approve the findings — likely on a party-line vote — teeing it up for consideration by the Judiciary Committee, which is in turn expected to draft and consider articles of impeachment in the coming weeks.

Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff had indicated in a letter to colleagues earlier this week that a report would be coming "soon" from his committee but had not provided a specific timeframe.

Schiff had also indicated that his committee was still open to receiving new witnesses or testimony as it began to draft the report, but it’s unclear if any new information has become available since lawmakers departed for a one-week Thanksgiving recess.

The Ukraine report is expected to make up the core of Democrats’ likely articles of impeachment against Trump. Lawmakers leading the inquiry have suggested Trump could face an article alleging abuse of power for withholding military aid and a White House meeting from Ukraine while Trump and his allies pressured the country’s new president to investigate Democrats.

The House has been moving quickly to investigate Trump since Speaker Nancy Pelosi announced the impeachment inquiry on Sept. 24. Democratic leaders, including Pelosi, have refused to assign a public end date to their investigation but many lawmakers have said privately they hope to wrap up by the end of the year.

The House Judiciary Committee is slated to hold its first impeachment hearing on Wednesday, with a panel of constitutional experts explaining exactly what constitutes an impeachable offense, including defining the nebulous “high crime and misdemeanor” term specified in the Constitution.

It's Nadler and the Judiciary who will decide on exactly what the articles of impeachment against Donald Trump will be, and Republicans on the Judiciary will be there every step of the way to derail the process, their first move being to call Adam Schiff himself as a witness.

It's gonna get hairy this week, I guarantee.

Turkey Week: Ukraine In The Membrane, Con't

And speaking of large turkeys getting stuffed, basted, carved, and eaten this week..

The House Intelligence Committee is in possession of audio and video recordings and photographs provided to the committee by Lev Parnas, an associate of President Donald Trump’s personal attorney, Rudy Giuliani, who reportedly played a key role in assisting him in his efforts to investigate former Vice President Joe Biden and Ukraine, multiple sources familiar with the matter tell ABC News.

The material submitted to the committee includes audio, video and photos that include Giuliani and Trump. It was unclear what the content depicts and the committees only began accessing the material last week.

"We have subpoenaed Mr. Parnas and Mr. [Igor] Fruman for their records. We would like them to fully comply with those subpoenas," House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff told CNN Sunday, with a committee spokesperson adding they would not elaborate beyond the chairman's comments.

An attorney for Parnas, Joseph A. Bondy, also declined to comment, directing ABC News to a statement released earlier in the day Sunday reading in part, "Mr. Parnas has vociferously and publicly asserted his wish to comply with his previously issued subpoena and to provide the House Intelligence Committee with truthful and important information that is in furtherance of justice, not to obstruct it."

The statement goes on to say, "His evidence and potential testimony is non-partisan, and not intended to be part of a battle between the left and the right, but rather an aid in the determination by our government of what is in the best interests of our nation."

Sources tell ABC News the tapes were provided as part of that congressional subpoena issued to Parnas, and the former Giuliani ally also provided a number of documents both in English and Ukrainian to the committee in two separate productions, sources told ABC News.

However, some of the material sought by congressional investigators is already in possession of federal investigators within the Southern District of New York and thus held up from being turned over, according to sources familiar with the matter.

Have a great Thanksgiving, Rudy.

This time next year you'll be eating prison mashed potatoes.

The other big revelation today is that we know the White House absolutely covered up Trump's decision to extort Ukraine's government by blocking military aid to Kiev, and we know because they did such a horrendous job of hiding their tracks.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

We knew all this before from the extensive testimony over the last two weeks, as well as the stories that I've covered here in this blog on Ukraine and the Trump regime's extortion.

This however is coming from Mick Mulvaney, or sources close to him.  This is coming from the White House side.  This is Mulvaney, who used to run the Office of Management and Budget before he became acting WH chief of staff, covering for his old agency and his friends there.

And this is Mulvaney leaking that he's not going to go down for this, anticipating the dagger in the back from Trump himself.  Note the phrase "It’s unclear whether the Mulvaney discussions or other records pose any legal problems for Trump in the impeachment inquiry, but some fear they could pose political problems if revealed publicly" right there in the lead paragraph.

This is Mulvaney setting down a marker.  You'd think Mulvaney would be forced to testify over this, but of course he won't be.  It doesn't mean he can't hurt Trump.

Like I said, gonna be a real interesting Thanksgiving for Donny this week.

Ukraine In The Membrane, Con't

As bad as yesterday's impeachment hearings were for Trump between EU Ambassador Gordon Sondland directly implicating him in bribing Ukrainian President Zelensky with military aid and Pentagon aide Laura Cooper and State Department aide David Hale saying Ukraine was aware of Trump holding back military assistance far earlier than previously known, it's about to get magnitudes worse for him as indicted Giuliani associate Lev Parnas is now fully ready to rat Trump out.  Well, ratting out Trump and House Intelligence GOP ranking member Rep. Devin Nunes, too.

Lev Parnas, an indicted associate of Rudy Giuliani, helped arrange meetings and calls in Europe for Rep. Devin Nunes in 2018, Parnas’ lawyer Ed MacMahon told The Daily Beast.

Nunes aide Derek Harvey participated in the meetings, the lawyer said, which were arranged to help Nunes’ investigative work. MacMahon didn’t specify what those investigations entailed.

Nunes is the top Republican on the House committee handling the impeachment hearings—hearings where Parnas’s name has repeatedly come up.

Congressional records show Nunes traveled to Europe from Nov. 30 to Dec. 3, 2018. Three of his aides—Harvey, Scott Glabe, and George Pappas—traveled with him, per the records. U.S. government funds paid for the group’s four-day trip, which cost just over $63,000.

The travel came as Nunes, in his role on the House Intelligence Committee, was working to investigate the origins of Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s probe into Russian election meddling.

Parnas’ assistance to Nunes’ team has not been previously reported. A spokesperson for Nunes did not respond to requests for comment.

I would pay to have Parnas just melt Nunes's face on national television.  And we may very well get the chance.

Nunes has been at the center of the broader story about foreign influence in President Donald Trump’s Washington. When Congressional investigators began probing Russian interference in the 2016 campaign, Nunes made a late-night visit to the White House and announced the next day he’d found evidence of egregious wrongdoing by Intelligence Community officials. The move appeared to be an effort to corroborate a presidential tweet claiming that Obama wiretapped Trump tower. Nunes then stepped back from the committee’s work scrutinizing Russian efforts. Instead, he ran a parallel probe looking at the origins of Mueller’s Russia probe. The undertaking made him a hero to the president and Sean Hannity, and a bête noire of Democrats and Intelligence Community officials. That work was still underway when he traveled to Europe in 2018.
Last month, federal prosecutors in the Southern District of New York charged Parnas and Fruman with illegally moving money from foreign donors to American political campaigns. Both men maintain their innocence.

“Contrary to many aspersions in the press to date, Lev Parnas is a proud United States citizen, who has lived here since he was four years old,” said Joseph Bondy, an attorney on his legal team.

“Raised in Brooklyn, and now living in Florida, Mr. Parnas is happily married with six children—five living at home—and a zeal for America and its democratic values. At all times throughout, he has believed that what he was doing was furtherance of the President’s and thus our national interests. President Trump’s recent and regrettable disavowal of Mr. Parnas has caused him to rethink his involvement and the true reasons for his having been recruited to participate in the President’s activities. Mr. Parnas is prepared to testify completely and accurately about his involvement in the President and Rudy Giuliani’s quid pro quo demands of Ukraine.”
When Nunes traveled to Europe in 2018, Giuliani—who is Trump’s personal attorney—was working to oust Ambassador Marie Yovanovitch from her post in Kyiv. The Justice Department indictment of Parnas and Fruman alleges they illegally moved money into American elections to “advance the political interests of... a Ukrainian government official who sought the dismissal of the U.S. ambassador to the Ukraine.”

Parnas, if he sings like I hope he will, is the person sending Trump to prison (even more than Sondland).  Nunes too.  Hell, a whole lot of Republicans.

If Trump had a bad morning with Sondland, the thought of Parnas dropping a dime on him should have him back at Walter Reed by this weekend.