Operation Plug The Leak

I absolutely hate to say this, but for once, Double G was actually correct. Why yes, the Trump regime did want the CIA to kidnap WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange from London's Ecuadorian Embassy where he had been hiding for years, and some of then CIA Director Mike Pompeo's ghouls wanted to outright assassinate him.

In 2017, as Julian Assange began his fifth year holed up in Ecuador’s embassy in London, the CIA plotted to kidnap the WikiLeaks founder, spurring heated debate among Trump administration officials over the legality and practicality of such an operation.

Some senior officials inside the CIA and the Trump administration even discussed killing Assange, going so far as to request “sketches” or “options” for how to assassinate him. Discussions over kidnapping or killing Assange occurred “at the highest levels” of the Trump administration, said a former senior counterintelligence official. “There seemed to be no boundaries.”

The conversations were part of an unprecedented CIA campaign directed against WikiLeaks and its founder. The agency’s multipronged plans also included extensive spying on WikiLeaks associates, sowing discord among the group’s members, and stealing their electronic devices.

While Assange had been on the radar of U.S. intelligence agencies for years, these plans for an all-out war against him were sparked by WikiLeaks’ ongoing publication of extraordinarily sensitive CIA hacking tools, known collectively as “Vault 7,” which the agency ultimately concluded represented “the largest data loss in CIA history.”

President Trump’s newly installed CIA director, Mike Pompeo, was seeking revenge on WikiLeaks and Assange, who had sought refuge in the Ecuadorian Embassy since 2012 to avoid extradition to Sweden on rape allegations he denied. Pompeo and other top agency leaders “were completely detached from reality because they were so embarrassed about Vault 7,” said a former Trump national security official. “They were seeing blood.”

The CIA’s fury at WikiLeaks led Pompeo to publicly describe the group in 2017 as a “non-state hostile intelligence service.” More than just a provocative talking point, the designation opened the door for agency operatives to take far more aggressive actions, treating the organization as it does adversary spy services, former intelligence officials told Yahoo News. Within months, U.S. spies were monitoring the communications and movements of numerous WikiLeaks personnel, including audio and visual surveillance of Assange himself, according to former officials.

This Yahoo News investigation, based on conversations with more than 30 former U.S. officials — eight of whom described details of the CIA’s proposals to abduct Assange — reveals for the first time one of the most contentious intelligence debates of the Trump presidency and exposes new details about the U.S. government’s war on WikiLeaks. It was a campaign spearheaded by Pompeo that bent important legal strictures, potentially jeopardized the Justice Department’s work toward prosecuting Assange, and risked a damaging episode in the United Kingdom, the United States’ closest ally.

The CIA declined to comment. Pompeo did not respond to requests for comment.

 

I think Mike Pompeo needs to testify to Congress about this, and then enjoy a nice vacation in his own small room for eight or nine years. 

I have my problems with Assange, he's definitely a Russian disinformation asset, willing or otherwise, and he should be rounded up and allowed to alk his heart out about his Fancy Bear friends in the GRU, but sending the CIA to assassinate him is something entirely else.

I'm way more interested in seeing Pompeo answer for that. As Marcy Wheeler notes, there's historical context here, and it's long and complex.

As to the discussions of kidnapping Assange, both the UK and NSC nixed those ideas, though White House Counsel lawyer John Eisenberg (who is presented as the hero of the Yahoo story, and who was a national security lawyer at DOJ during the Bush Administration when such things did get approved) worried that CIA would do it without alerting him and others, and so pressed DOJ to indict Assange if they were going to.

There's a lot here to absorb, and a lot here to probe. Add it to the list, I guess.

Pompeo Pays The Piper, Potentially

Trump regime Foreign Minister Mike Pompeo is under investigation again, this time for his Hatch Act violations in delivering a speech at Dear Leader's National Convention two months ago.

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo is under investigation for potentially violating a federal law that forbids federal employees from engaging in political activity while on duty or while inside federal buildings over his address to the Republican convention in August. 

The Office of the Special Counsel, an independent federal investigative agency, launched a probe into Pompeo's speech to the Republican National Convention while on a taxpayer funded trip to Jerusalem on August 25, according to two House Democrats. 

It is the second investigation into potential Hatch Act violations that the OSC has opened into Pompeo, whose use of resources and decision-making at the State Department, along with his wife's, have triggered a series of investigations by the agency's inspector general. 

"Our offices have confirmed that the Office of Special Counsel has launched a probe into potential Hatch Act violations tied to Secretary Pompeo's speech to the Republican National Convention," Rep. Ellot Engel, chairman of the House Committee on Foreign Affairs, and Rep. Nita Lowey, chairwoman of the House Committee on Appropriations, wrote in a joint statement. 

"This information comes on the heels of reporting that OSC is also looking into Secretary Pompeo's stated commitment to rush out more of Hillary Clinton's emails by Election Day and as the Secretary has misused State Department resources on his speech tour of swing states," the Democrats said. 

"As we get closer to both this year's election and his own inevitable return to electoral politics, Mike Pompeo has grown even more brazen in misusing the State Department and the taxpayer dollars that fund it as vehicles for the Administration's, and his own, political ambitions," the lawmakers said. 

The State Department did not return requests for comment.

 

Pompeo may be one of the most corrupt members of Trump cabinet (and that's really saying something in this rogue's gallery) and keep in mind Pompeo hasn't even been on the job the full four years, taking over for the disastrously incompetent former ExxonMobil CEO Rex Tillerson in early 2018.

 

Of course, getting rid of various inspectors general and replacing them with cronies is only one reason Trump ripped up protections for civil service employees last week.  Expect a lot more corruption -- and for the office investigating Pompeo to be curiously understaffed to zero -- should Trump win a second term.

Retribution Execution, Con't

When the Trump regime canceled a State Department award ceremony for Finnish journalist Jessikka Aro last year because of her criticism of Trump, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo chalked it all up to a clerical oversight and that he had never seen the list of awardees. Turns out that was a huge lie on multiple levels.

 

The Trump administration rescinded an award recognizing the work of a journalist from Finland last year after discovering she had criticized President Trump in social media posts, then gave a false explanation for withdrawing the honor, according to a report by the State Department’s internal watchdog.

The report tracks how the discovery of the journalist’s remarks worried senior U.S. officials and prompted a decision to withdraw the honor to avoid a possible public relations debacle.

The report’s release is likely to worsen tensions between the department’s leadership and the inspector general’s office, which has undergone several shake-ups following the firing of Inspector General Steve Linick in the spring at the request of Secretary of State Mike Pompeo.

“The Inspector General’s report is another somber example of how fear and partisanship have permeated our nation’s foreign policy and diplomacy under the Trump administration,” said Sen. Robert Menendez, the top Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee who along with seven other senators requested the investigation.

According to the report, the journalist, Jessikka Aro, was selected for the State Department’s International Women of Courage Awards for her reporting on Russian propaganda activities dating back to 2014. Aro endured death threats and cyber attacks for her work, which helped expose Russian troll factories.

After she was informed of her selection and offered flight options, State Department interns discovered her Facebook and Twitter posts, including one from September 2018 in which she noted that “Trump constantly labels journalists as ‘enemy’ and ‘fake news,’” said the report. In another tweet she noted that Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin would meet in Helsinki where “Finnish people can protest them both. Sweet.”

According to meeting notes obtained by the IG, senior U.S. officials argued that Aro’s invitation should be withdrawn, including the acting director of the Office of Global Women’s Issues. The director’s concerns included the possibility that the “media could highlight the tweets and Facebook posts during the ceremony,” which could cause “potential embarrassment to the Department, particularly given the involvement of the Secretary and the First Lady [Melania Trump].”

After the State Department withdrew Aro’s invitation and the story became public in a report by Foreign Policy, the department’s press office told reporters that Aro had been “incorrectly notified” that “she’d been selected as a finalist. This was an error. This was a mistake.”

The department also told Congress that Aro “ultimately was not selected to receive the award, due to the highly competitive selection of candidates.”

But the IG ultimately found that the decision to give her the award was not a mistake and was included in a memo approved by Pompeo.

It also noted that the decision to withdraw the award was due to the discovery of the social media posts despite public claims otherwise. “Every person OIG interviewed in connection with this matter acknowledged” that had her social media posts not been flagged, “Ms. Aro would have received the IWOC Award,” the report said.

 

The bigger issue is that Aro helped to reveal Putin's internet troll farms and paid a heavy price for it as they targeted her with a global disinformation campaign.  She was able to get justice for the right-wing Finnish online attackers.

When the State Department realized they were about to piss off Putin in a bad way, they yanked the award. Then they lied about it.

Now they've been caught in the lie. Pompeo should resign, of course, but he won't.

Retribution Execution, Con't

The comically blatant corruption at the Trump regime continues as the "new" Inspector General brought in to bury the previous IG's investigation into Secretary of State Mike Pompeo's criminality is now resigning after just three months.

After less than three months on the job, the internal watchdog of the State Department has resigned, U.S. officials said, marking another significant shake-up for an office sworn to investigate malfeasance and wrongdoing.

Stephen Akard’s departure was announced to staff by his deputy, Diana R. Shaw, who told colleagues that she will become the temporary acting inspector general effective on Friday.

Akard became inspector general after President Trump abruptly fired Steve Linick in May at the recommendation of Secretary of State Mike Pompeo. That decision immediately prompted criticism from lawmakers because Linick had been investigating allegations that Pompeo and his wife, Susan, had improperly used State Department resources. Linick was also examining several other issues, including Pompeo’s decision to expedite arms sales to Saudi Arabia over the objections of Congress.
Trump and his administration have come under increasing criticism for trying to evade oversight because the president has fired five officials in recent months who lead inspector general offices across the federal government.

In a note to her inspector general’s office colleagues that was obtained by The Washington Post, Shaw said Akard was taking a position with a law firm in Indiana, his home state. It’s unclear whether there were other factors in his decision.

Pompeo dismissed a question about Akard’s departure during a news conference on Wednesday. “He left to go back home,” Pompeo said. “This happens. I don’t have anything more to add to that.”

Akard’s resignation again throws into turmoil an office responsible for ongoing investigations into wrongdoing at the department, including those started by Linick. Shaw told colleagues: “I will do my best not to let this latest change negatively affect our operations.”

So who knows.  We'll be on the State Department's third IG in three months, and Pompeo will continue to flout federal law while he should be in prison along with Trump and most of the rest of his Cabinet of Corruption.

Just another day in the broken executive branch.

Last Call For Retribution Execution, Con't

The Trump regime purge of various executive agency inspectors general continued over the weekend with the announcement that Trump was giving State Department IG Steve Linick his 30-day notice, but as Greg Sargent reports, Linick's ouster appears to be especially corrupt.

House Democrats have discovered that the fired IG had mostly completed an investigation into Secretary of State Mike Pompeo’s widely criticized decision to skirt Congress with an emergency declaration to approve billions of dollars in arms sales to Saudi Arabia last year, aides on the Foreign Affairs Committee tell me.

“I have learned that there may be another reason for Mr. Linick’s firing,” Rep. Eliot L. Engel (D-N.Y.), the chair of the Foreign Affairs Committee, said in a statement sent to me. “His office was investigating — at my request — Trump’s phony declaration of an emergency so he could send weapons to Saudi Arabia.”
Committee Democrats have also learned that the State Department was recently briefed on the IG’s conclusions in that investigation, aides say. They do not know what role this investigation — and its conclusions — played in Linick’s removal, if any.

But the committee is now trying to establish what those conclusions were and what links they might have to the firing, the aides confirm.

“We don’t have the full picture yet, but it’s troubling that Secretary Pompeo wanted Mr. Linick pushed out before this work could be completed,” Engel said in the statement to me.

The White House has confirmed Linick’s firing came at Pompeo’s request. Trump claimed he no longer has “confidence” in Linick, a thin justification that highlights Trump’s purging of officials exercising oversight on his administration.

Many news organizations have reported that the fired IG had been examining charges that Pompeo had been directing a staffer to run errands for him. Some reported that Pompeo has undertaken abuses of taxpayer funds, including frequent visits to his home state of Kansas. It’s unclear whether these are linked to Linick’s firing.

But the fact that Linick has also mostly completed an investigation into the decision to fast-track arms to the Saudis adds another layer to this whole story.

Pompeo is corrupt as hell, so he had Trump fire the person investigating him. It really doesn't get much more blatant than "firing the cop looking into your illegal stuff" but again, this doesn't even make the Top Ten Trump Regime Scandals List™ overall.

Old enough to remember the Iran-Contra hearings over less than this.

Still, Pompeo should definitely be made to resign.  Of course, this entire regime should, starting with Trump.

That won't happen.

Retribution Execution, Con't

Yet another executive agency inspector general was fired late last night as Trump continues to try to make sure no one ever dares to question him in any way ever again, by purging all those in government who are not loyal.

President Donald Trump has removed State Department Inspector General Steve Linick and replaced him with an ally of Vice President Mike Pence — the latest in a series of moves against independent government watchdogs in recent months.

Trump informed Congress of his intent to oust Linick, a Justice Department veteran appointed to the role in 2013 by then President Barack Obama, in a letter to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi on Friday night.

The president said he "no longer" had the "fullest confidence" in Linick and promised to send the Senate a nominee "who has my confidence and who meets the appropriate qualifications." The executive branch is required to notify Congress 30 days ahead of time if it intends to remove an inspector general.

Linick played a minor role in the House of Representatives' impeachment proceedings against Trump, ferrying a trove of documents to lawmakers that had been provided to the State Department by Rudy Giuliani, the president's personal lawyer.

A State Department spokesperson said that Amb. Stephen Akard, a former career Foreign Service officer, "will now lead the Office of the Inspector General at the State Department" in an acting capacity, noting that Akard was previously confirmed by the Senate as head of the department's Office of Foreign Missions. Akard’s nomination for that job angered some State Department veterans, who grumbled that he lacked the long tenure of service traditionally required in the role.

Before joining the Trump administration, Akard was chief of staff for the Indiana Economic Development Corporation under then-governor Pence.

Linick is relatively well-respected at the State Department, and his office stays busy, regularly churning out a range of inspections, audits and other types of reports.

His departure is likely to further deepen morale problems that have festered at State since the start of the Trump administration, when many career diplomats found themselves shunted aside and cast as a “deep state” bent on undermining a Trump.

Two of Linick’s most-read reports over the past year involved alleged retaliation by Trump political appointees against career employees.

House Foreign Affair Committee chairman Eliot Engel made it very clear last night that he believes Litnick was fired because he was investigating Secretary of State Mike Pompeo himself.

This firing is the outrageous act of a President trying to protect one of his most loyal supporters, the Secretary of State, from accountability. I have learned that the Office of the Inspector General had opened an investigation into Secretary Pompeo. Mr. Linick’s firing amid such a probe strongly suggests that this is an unlawful act of retaliation. 

This President believes he is above the law. As he systematically removes the official independent watchdogs from the Executive Branch, the work of the Committee on Foreign Affairs becomes that much more critical. In the days ahead, I will be looking into this matter in greater detail, and I will press the State Department for answers.

If Pompeo was under investigation and Trump fired him, that's a gigantic red line crossed in a sea of crossed red lines. I'm not even sure it matters anymore at this point, that's how far gone we are down the road to autocratic rule. What will Engel and House Democrats do, impeach him again?

Again, Trump wouldn't be doing this if he didn't have the full support of 51 GOP senators, and all those senators care about is appointing as many federal judges as possible, so Trump can do whatever he wants as long as he keeps Mitch McConnell happy with conservative jurists who are puppets and who will hand down GOP-centric decisions for the next 40 years.

That means Trump can fire whoever he wants, including inspectors general who are openly investigating criminal wrongdoing by his own cabinet.

He will continue to purge the executive agencies until everyone is either loyal to him or too scared to act (or both!)

Last Call For Our Little Domestic Terrorism Problem, Con't

For the first time, the Trump State Department is designating a white supremacist group as terrorists, and of course the group is Russian in origin.

The Trump administration is expected to announce on Monday that it is designating an ultranationalist group based in Russia as a terrorist organization, according to officials. It is the first time the government will apply the label to a white supremacist group.
While the label of specially designated global terrorist has been frequently used for Islamist extremists, there have been growing concerns among U.S. officials about violent white supremacists with transnational links over the past five years. In 2018, the White House added that threat to the government’s National Strategy for Counterterrorism.

“These designations are unprecedented,” said Ambassador Nathan A. Sales, the State Department’s counterterrorism coordinator. “This is the first time the United States has ever designated white supremacists as terrorists, and this illustrates how seriously this administration takes the white supremacist terrorist threat. We are doing things no previous administration has done to counter this threat.”

The State Department’s designation for the organization, the Russian Imperial Movement, sets up the Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control to block any American property or assets belonging to the group. It will also bar Americans from financial dealings with the organization and make it easier to ban its members from traveling to the United States.

The United States is also designating three of the group’s leaders — Stanislav Anatolyevich Vorobyev, Denis Valliullovich Gariev and Nikolay Nikolayevich Trushchalov — as individual terrorists who will face similar sanctions, the officials said.

The authority for either the Treasury Department or the State Department to deem a group or an individual a specially designated global terrorist traces back to an executive order issued by President George W. Bush after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. President Trump in September signed an executive order expanding that authority to cover groups that provide training for terrorists even if the groups are not directly linked to any attack.

The system parallels in some ways but is different from when the government designates a group as a foreign terrorist organization, which has separate criteria and applies only to groups rather than individuals.

The move could cut against criticism that the Trump administration has played down the threat of white nationalist violence for political reasons, based on the so-called alt-right’s support for Mr. Trump and his statement in 2017 that there were “very fine people on both sides” of a deadly white nationalist rally in Charlottesville, Va.

The Russian Imperial Movement is not considered to be sponsored by the Russian government, officials said, although President Vladimir V. Putin has tolerated its activities and it has helped advance the Russian government’s external goals by recruiting Russian fighters to aid pro-Russia separatists in eastern Ukraine.

On one side, yeah, this is Trump saying "See, we're not racists, and we are tough on Russia!"  On the other hand, it's even easier to imagine that Putin has told Trump that RIM's political usefulness has come to an end, and that Putin wants help in pressuring them.  Besides, it's win-win for both of them.

Concerns have been escalating for several years that there is a growing transnational white supremacist or alt-right movement, as illustrated by the 2019 mass shootings at two mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand, by an Australian man who streamed the killings of 51 people on Facebook Live.

Against that backdrop, national security officials are said to have been searching for a neo-Nazi-style group that the U.S. government could designate as a foreign terrorist organization.

One challenge to finding an appropriate candidate was that designating a group with significant American ties would also raise major First Amendment issues, officials said. Although a Russian Imperial Movement member has visited the United States, the organization does not appear to have domestic members. It is not clear if the group has provided training to U.S.-based neo-Nazis.

So domestic white supremacist terrorists can carry on as normal, and Trump can say he's doing something about foreign white supremacist terrorists.

Surprise!

Out Of The Sandbox

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and the US are about to sign a peace deal with the Taliban, in a move that could finally lead to the end of the nearly 20-year war in Afghanistan.

After a week-long deal to reduce violence across Afghanistan, the U.S. and the Taliban are set to sign a historic agreement Saturday that would see U.S. troops start to withdraw, according to a statement issued Friday afternoon by President Donald Trump. 

"Soon, at my direction, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo will witness the signing of an agreement with representatives of the Taliban, while Secretary of Defense Mark Esper will issue a joint declaration with the government of Afghanistan. If the Taliban and the government of Afghanistan live up to these commitments, we will have a powerful path forward to end the war in Afghanistan and bring our troops home," Trump said. 

Pompeo is headed now to Doha, Qatar, where the U.S. and the militant group have engaged in talks for over a year and a half and the signing ceremony is expected to take place. At the same time, Esper is expected in that joint statement to reaffirm U.S. support for the Afghan government, long rejected by the Taliban and sidelined from their talks with U.S. negotiators. 

The agreement with the militant group that harbored the al Qaeda operatives responsible for the Sept. 11 attacks comes after over 18 years of war. The Trump administration hopes it is poised to reshape Afghanistan, leading to national peace negotiations and ending any Taliban safe haven for terrorists that threaten the U.S. homeland. But critics warn the Taliban has neither the ability nor perhaps the appetite to carry out their commitments. 

According to Pompeo, the agreement triggers a "conditions-based and phased" U.S. withdrawal and the "commencement" of Afghan negotiations where "all sides of the conflict will sit down together and begin the hard work of reconciliation." U.S. officials say the deal also includes Taliban commitments on counterterrorism, although those details are still unclear. 

"These commitments represent an important step to a lasting peace in a new Afghanistan, free from Al Qaeda, ISIS, and any other terrorist group that would seek to bring us harm," Trump said in his statement. "Ultimately it will be up to the people of Afghanistan to work out their future. We, therefore, urge the Afghan people to seize this opportunity for peace and a new future for their country."

Initially, the U.S. will draw down its troops from 13,000 to 8,600 -- a level that Gen. Scott Miller, the commander of U.S. and NATO forces, has said is still sufficient to carry out their mission. While that draw down is expected to take months, conditions and timelines for further reductions after that are unclear.

If this works out, maybe we'll finally get out of the war that has lasted for three-quarters of my adult life.  The thing is though given the history of both Donald Trump and the Taliban that it's not going to work out at all.   Even a best case scenario at this point is troops in Afghanistan for years.

On top of that, the deal forces the Afghan government to release some 5,000 Taliban prisoners.  Sure is going to go well for Kabul, huh?

That's not worth celebrating just yet, but Trump of course is doing it anyway.

Trump begins coronavirus press conference talking about his surrender to the Taliban in Afghanistan. pic.twitter.com/O1ZYzsFG2d

— Sarah Reese Jones (@PoliticusSarah) February 29, 2020

Once again this is Donald Trump telling us what he plans to do, but acting like it's already been accomplished and that he, Donald Trump, is the smartest man on Earth. 

He's been wrong every other time before.

Russian To Judgment, Con't

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo met with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov in Munich on Friday, and if the Russians hadn't said anything, we never would have known it happened.

U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo met Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov on the sidelines of the Munich Security Conference on Friday in an encounter the American side apparently wanted to keep under wraps.

The State Department made no announcement of the meeting, which took place in Lavrov's own dedicated meeting room at the Hotel Bayerischer Hof, where the major annual conference of politicians, policymakers and security experts is held. Pompeo's aides also did not provide any readout after the meeting ended.

Russian journalists traveling with Lavrov were aware of the meeting in advance, and wrote about it afterward.
Lavrov's spokeswoman, Maria Zakharova, confirmed the meeting in a Facebook post, which included a photo of Pompeo in a hallway of the hotel, and Lavrov standing in a doorway a few steps behind him.

In the post, Zakharova wrote that Pompeo had said "good luck" to those gathered in the hallway, and cheekily added that those who heard it "gasped."

"There are few to whom Americans now wish something good," she wrote.
Asked about the meeting by POLITICO, a State Department official confirmed that there had been a “pull aside” with Lavrov but gave no further details. The official denied that the State Department asked Russia not to publicize the meeting and said it did not normally issue readouts of "pull asides."

There was no mention of the meeting in a briefing by a senior administration official about U.S. efforts at the security conference. The official said Pompeo met with Masrour Barzani, prime minister of the Kurdistan region of Iraq, and that U.S. officials met with Israeli counterparts as well as with a senior EU foreign affairs official, Helga Schmid.
It was not immediately clear why the State Department did not disclose the meeting between Pompeo and his Russian counterpart in advance.

It's been immediately clear why the Trump regime doesn't want to disclose any Russian contacts for four years now, and that immediately clear reason is that the Trump regime is hopelessly compromised by Vladimir Putin.  Literally any other country, the Trump regime trumpets their interactions as "presidential" and "running the ship of state" and "the leader of the free world meets with X"

But Putin?  Lavrov?  Any Russian dignitary?  No readout, no press, the meeting never happened, and always we learn about it later from the Russians.  Every damn time.

When we learn the full truth of how much leverage Putin has over Trump, it'll be a day of national reckoning, one of many we'll face in the coming months.

Ukraine In The Membrane, Con't

As Republicans continue their defense of Trump, excerpts from former National Security Adviser John Bolton's mustache haven't just upset the apple cart on Trump's team, he's put the apple cart in a rocket and fired it into the sun.

Congressional Democrats called for former national security adviser John Bolton to testify in President Trump’s impeachment trial following a new report that the president told Bolton last August that he wanted to withhold military aid to Ukraine unless it aided investigations into the Bidens.

The New York Times reported Sunday evening that in last summer’s conversation, Trump directly tied the holdup of nearly $400 million in military assistance to the investigations of former vice president Joe Biden and his son Hunter Biden. That is according to an unpublished manuscript of Bolton’s forthcoming book, the Times said.

The book, “The Room Where It Happened,” is scheduled for publication March 17 but the White House review could attempt to delay its publication or block some of its contents.

Two people familiar with the book, who requested anonymity because of the sensitivity of the project, confirmed that it details Trump tying aid to the desire for Biden probes and details a number of conversations about Ukraine that he had with Trump and key advisers, such as Secretary of State Mike Pompeo. They said Bolton is ready to testify in the Senate impeachment trial. 

In a joint statement, the seven House impeachment managers called the report “explosive” and urged the Senate, controlled by Republicans, to agree to call Bolton as a witness in Trump’s trial, which kicks off its second full week on Monday. Bolton has said that he would testify before the Senate if subpoenaed.

“The Senate trial must seek the full truth and Mr. Bolton has vital information to provide,” the managers said in a statement Sunday. “There is no defensible reason to wait until his book is published, when the information he has to offer is critical to the most important decision senators must now make — whether to convict the president of impeachable offenses.”

Trump is on trial, facing two charges — abuse of power and obstruction of Congress.

The assertion from Bolton could undermine one core defense that has repeatedly been laid out by Trump, his defenders and his legal team: that there was no explicit quid pro quo involved when the administration withheld the military assistance, as well as a White House visit coveted by Ukraine.

If Bolton's mustache just trying to sell his book, he's burning a lot of bridges in order to do it.  The NY Times story is pretty specific, which means it was leaked this on purpose.  The mustache's team is blaming...the White House.

The book presents an outline of what Mr. Bolton might testify to if he is called as a witness in the Senate impeachment trial, the people said. The White House could use the pre-publication review process, which has no set time frame, to delay or even kill the book’s publication or omit key passages.

Over dozens of pages, Mr. Bolton described how the Ukraine affair unfolded over several months until he departed the White House in September. He described not only the president’s private disparagement of Ukraine but also new details about senior cabinet officials who have publicly tried to sidestep involvement.

For example, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo acknowledged privately that there was no basis to claims by the president’s lawyer Rudolph W. Giuliani that the ambassador to Ukraine was corrupt and believed Mr. Giuliani may have been acting on behalf of other clients, Mr. Bolton wrote.

Mr. Bolton also said that after the president’s July phone call with the president of Ukraine, he raised with Attorney General William P. Barr his concerns about Mr. Giuliani, who was pursuing a shadow Ukraine policy encouraged by the president, and told Mr. Barr that the president had mentioned him on the call. A spokeswoman for Mr. Barr denied that he learned of the call from Mr. Bolton; the Justice Department has said he learned about it only in mid-August.

And the acting White House chief of staff, Mick Mulvaney, was present for at least one phone call where the president and Mr. Giuliani discussed the ambassador, Mr. Bolton wrote. Mr. Mulvaney has told associates he would always step away when the president spoke with his lawyer to protect their attorney-client privilege.

During a previously reported May 23 meeting where top advisers and Senator Ron Johnson, Republican of Wisconsin, briefed him about their trip to Kyiv for the inauguration of President Volodymyr Zelensky, Mr. Trump railed about Ukraine trying to damage him and mentioned a conspiracy theory about a hacked Democratic server, according to Mr. Bolton.

The White House did not provide responses to questions about Mr. Bolton’s assertions, and representatives for Mr. Johnson, Mr. Pompeo and Mr. Mulvaney did not respond to emails and calls seeking comment on Sunday afternoon.

Mr. Bolton’s lawyer blamed the White House for the disclosure of the book’s contents. “It is clear, regrettably, from the New York Times article published today that the pre-publication review process has been corrupted and that information has been disclosed by persons other than those properly involved in reviewing the manuscript,” the lawyer, Charles J. Cooper, said Sunday night.

The White House did not have a good night last night.  Today's going to be much worse. If the Senate GOP allows witnesses to be buried, this trial is over by Friday.  That was the plan until today.

The question is whether or not the Senate GOP is willing to sacrifice themselves for Trump over Bolton.  The rest of his book is definitely going to come out.  It proves the case against Trump.

Bolton is getting out ahead of whatever worse is coming, because it's definitely coming.

Which is why the Senate GOP will hold hands and jump off the cliff together.  Don't ask if they are going to or not, ask why they have no choice.  Much, much worse things will come out about Trump but once he's acquitted, the fight moves to November and there are a number of things Trump can do to wreck the election if it actually looks like he's going to lose.

Ask Hillary Clinton.

Getting Sick Of It All

The Wuhan coronavirus continues to spread across mainland China with cases popping up all over the world, and the State Department is pulling all diplomatic personnel from the city of 11 million as the consulate there is closed and staff are being evacuated.

The US government is arranging a charter flight to evacuate diplomats from the Chinese city that has become ground zero for a new deadly strain of coronavirus, a US official with knowledge of the matter told CNN Saturday. 

The United States has a contract with a transporter to evacuate diplomats from the US consulate in Wuhan, China. The consulate is closed and all US diplomats are "under ordered departure," the official said. 

Details of the flight plan are still being finalized and the source said "a lot depends on what the Chinese authorities will allow us to do," adding that Beijing has been "very cooperative." 

The State Department and White House have not yet responded to CNN's request for comment on the matter. 

The Wall Street Journal first reported the planned evacuation. 

According to the Journal, the US consulate in Wuhan is reaching out to the Americans it is aware of in the country to offer them a spot on the flight. 

The flight, which seats about 230 people, will include diplomats from the US consulate in Wuhan, as well as Americans and their families, the Journal reported. The person told the newspaper that any available seats might be offered to non-US citizens and diplomats of other nations. 

The flight will have medical personnel aboard to treat anyone with the virus and make sure it is contained, according to the Journal. 

Passengers will be asked to foot the bill for the flight, which is expected to cost much more than a commercial flight from China to the US, the Journal reported. 

The newspaper reported that the United States also plans to temporarily close its consulate in Wuhan. 

It is unknown where the plane plans to fly to in the US, the Journal noted.
Roughly 1,000 American citizens are believed to be in Wuhan, according to the Journal.

Evacuating a consulate is not a sign that this coronavirus is under control.  Evacuating several hundred potentially infected individuals to the US is an even worse response to it.  State is completely pulling out of Hubei province, where Wuhan is located, and is advising Americans to avoid the province entirely.

That more than anything else makes me think this virus is far worse than originally thought.  Modern outbreak theory suggests this is closing the burning barn door after the horses are long gone anyway.

World's been overdue for a pandemic anyway.  SARS was the distant relative of this current virus, 18 years ago it killed hundreds.with a nearly 10% fatality rate.  If this thing is as bad or worse and it escapes containment, it's going to be bad.

Having said that, yearly flu seasons regularly kill tens of thousands worldwide.  Get that flu vaccine.

Last Call For Press The Meat, Con't

The Trump regime continues to treat the (non-FOX News, non Breitbart state-run) media as mortal foes, and Village just scratches its head, shrugs, and declares it an act for the benefit of Trump's base, because gosh they know that Trump's people are really nice once you get to know them.  Surely Trump doesn't mean he'd have the government go after me, they say.  

And then NPR All Things Considered host Mary Louise Kelly gets called into Mike Pompeo's office like he's the Vice-Principal and screams and curses at her.

On Friday, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo got into it with an NPR host over her questions about Ukraine.

On Saturday, he issued a statement responding to the flap that exemplifies gaslighting.

To recap what happened Friday: NPR reported that after an interview on Iran that ended with questions about Ukraine — at which point Pompeo grew testy — the secretary unleashed a lengthy, vulgar tirade against the journalist who interviewed him, “All Things Considered” host Mary Louise Kelly.

Kelly, remarkably, said that Pompeo asked her after the interview, “Do you think Americans care about Ukraine?” and asked her to find the country on a blank map, apparently suggesting she didn’t even know. She said she did, and Pompeo concluded the scene by saying, “People will hear about this.”
In Saturday morning’s statement, Pompeo claimed Kelly had told him they were off the record at the time, which NPR denies.

“It is shameful that this reporter chose to violate the basic rules of journalism and decency,” Pompeo said. “This is another example of how unhinged the media has become in its quest to hurt President Trump and this administration. It is no wonder that the American people distrust many in the media when they so consistently demonstrate their agenda and their absence of integrity.”

The most remarkable portion of Pompeo’s statement, though, came at the end.

“It is worth noting that Bangladesh is NOT Ukraine," Pompeo said in it.

The implication is unmistakable: Kelly couldn’t correctly identify the location of Ukraine on the map, and she instead pointed to Bangladesh.

Here’s why there is absolutely no way that happened.

First, Bangladesh is more than 3,000 miles away from Ukraine. It is east of India. Ukraine is in Eastern Europe; Bangladesh is in South Asia. Ukraine is in a border war with Russia; Bangladesh does not border Russia and isn’t even close to it. Ukraine is a large country; Bangladesh is comparatively small. It’s difficult to believe basically any journalist who was asked to locate Ukraine would point to Bangladesh, no matter how inexperienced.

And second, even if there was one, there is no way it would be Kelly. Kelly isn’t just a host of “All Things Considered,” she is also a former national security reporter who has traveled overseas extensively in her reporting. She also literally has a master’s degree — in European studies — from Cambridge University in England, which is one of the most prestigious universities in the world.

Mary Louise Kelly is as close to an honest-to-God expert on European foreign policy as the Village has.  To think she would confuse Bangladesh with Ukraine is laughable, and yet this is Pompeo gaslighting a woman journalist in front of the world.

And the reason Pompeo did this is extremely simple: he's testing the Village to see how far they are willing to go to protect one of their own when the consequences of doing so will be an even further reduction in access to the White House, while at the same time turning to Trump's base and saying "Geez, look at how stupid these reporters are.  They're all dumb liars, and I'm the Secretary of State. Who are you going to believe?

Indeed, the response from the right-wing noise machine is that Kelly broke an agreement to be off the record with Pompeo's tirade, and that the long-time NPR host should immediately be fired.

NPR is fully defending Kelly as they should, but the damage has already been done.  The only news conservative Republicans trust are literally Rush and Hannity on AM radio, and FOX and Breitbart.

Last Call For Yankee Go Home, Con't

Iraq is apparently serious about kicking us out of the country, and the Trump regime is doubling down, demanding billions more in cash to convince us to stay and protect them from Iran.

In a phone call with U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, Iraqi Prime Minister Adel Abdul Mahdi asked the United States to send a delegation to Iraq to set up a mechanism for U.S. troop withdrawal from the country, a statement from the prime minister's office said Friday.

The request followed a vote by the Iraqi parliament to expel thousands of U.S. troops, a direct consequence of a U.S. drone attack that killed senior Iranian commander Qasem Soleimani and nine companions in Baghdad a week ago.

But in a response Friday, the State Department said that any delegation to Baghdad would not focus on pulling out U.S. troops.

“At this time, any delegation sent to Iraq would be dedicated to discussing how to best recommit to our strategic partnership — not to discuss troop withdrawal, but our right, appropriate force posture in the Middle East,” State Department spokeswoman Morgan Ortagus said in a statement.

Ortagus stressed that “America is a force for good in the Middle East” and that the purpose of the U.S. military presence in Iraq is “to continue the fight” against the Islamic State. She did not reference Iraq’s request.

She noted that a NATO delegation is at the State Department on Friday “to discuss increasing NATO’s role in Iraq” in line with President Trump’s “desire for burden sharing.” Ortagus added: “There does, however, need to be a conversation between the U.S. and Iraqi governments not just regarding security, but about our financial, economic, and diplomatic partnership.”

This is State Department speak for "It would be a shame if Iran just rolled in there and took over your country and executed everyone in charge, huh."  Pompeo certainly believes the Iraqi government is bluffing and that the next Iraqi PM will be much more amenable to the US staying and the Iraqis paying.

Time will tell if he's right.

Exit observation: I'm old enough to remember candidate Trump promising to bring America's troops home.  Donald the Dove, Hillary The Hawk our media betters declared, remember?

How's that working out?  It was stupidity 42 months ago and is grossly stupid now.

But hey, her emails.

The Red Rout Resumes, Con't

The first major Trump regime political casualty of the war with Iran is apparently Secretary of State Mike Pompeo's Senate run in Kansas.

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo on Monday told Mitch McConnell, the Senate majority leader, that he does not plan to run for Senate in 2020, most likely ending Republicans’ hopes of securing a potentially dominant candidate for the open seat in his home state of Kansas, according to four people briefed on the meeting.

Mr. Pompeo, a former congressman from the Wichita area, has quietly explored a campaign for months. But in the aftermath of the military operation last week that killed Maj. Gen. Qassim Suleimani of Iran, Mr. Pompeo has told senior party officials that he is ruling out becoming a candidate, according to several people who have spoken with him directly.

Mr. Pompeo still has time to change his mind. The filing deadline for the primary is not until June. However, administration officials who have spoken with him in recent days said he seemed adamant about not entering the race.

Without Mr. Pompeo in the race, Republicans face an unsettled primary that includes at least one candidate, Kris Kobach, whom party leaders fear could imperil their hold on a crucial open Senate seat. Mr. Kobach, who ran unsuccessfully for governor in 2018, is popular with hard-right primary voters but widely disliked among moderate and independent voters in Kansas.

Several other candidates are competing for the Republican nomination, including Representative Roger Marshall. National Democrats have rallied behind Barbara Bollier, a state senator who left the G.O.P. to become a Democrat a little more than a year ago, as their preferred candidate.

Mr. Pompeo’s decision is a setback for Republicans working to retain their Senate majority in the November elections. Mr. McConnell aggressively courted him for months, and also deployed a number of his lieutenants to make the case that the secretary of state should return to Kansas, which he represented in the House until he joined the Trump administration.

There's no way Pompeo would have been able to leave the State Department with his career intact, and he would have been blasted by questions about why he left in the middle of a war to go run for Senate.

There's a very real possibility now that Kobach wins the primary and loses the general to a Democrat, Barbara Bollier, who has endorsements from both US Attorney Barry Grissom and popular former Gov. Kathleen Sebelius.  Pompeo was, up until Friday, the GOP's best hope to keep the seat.  It's still going to be a tough sell, but Kobach has already lost the 2018 governor's race, and there isn't anything to make me think he improved anything heading into November.

Could be a big pickup for Team Blue.

Holidaze: The Drums Of War

The Trump regime has counterattacked targets in Iraq and Syria with missile strikes in response to an attack over the weekend on and Iraqi military base that killed a US military contractor.

The strikes occurred at about 11 a.m. ET on Sunday, a source familiar with the matter told CNN. They stand as the first significant military response in retaliation for attacks by the Shia militia group, known as Kataib Hezbollah, that have injured numerous American military personnel, according to US officials. 

Pentagon spokesman Jonathan Hoffman described the strikes against the group as "precision defensive strikes" that "will degrade" the group's ability to conduct future attacks against coalition forces. 

Defense Secretary Mark Esper briefed President Donald Trump Saturday before carrying them out with the President's approval, according to a US official familiar with the strikes. 

At least 25 people were killed in the US airstrikes, according to a statement Sunday from the Popular Mobilization Units, a Tehran-backed Shiite militia also known as the Hashd al-Shaabi. 

Kataib Hezbollah is a group under the Popular Mobilization Units. Jewad Kadum, a PMU official, said in a statement earlier Sunday that the rescue operations were still ongoing as well as the evacuation of the wounded, recovery of the dead bodies and the extinguishing of the fire caused by the airstrikes.

Esper, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and Joint Chiefs Chairman Mark Milley, traveled Sunday to Mar-a-Lago to discuss the strikes with Trump. 

Speaking from the President's Florida resort, Pompeo said the US took "decisive action" and said threats against American forces had been ongoing for "weeks and weeks." 

"We will not stand for the Islamic Republican of Iran to take actions that put American men and women in jeopardy," Pompeo said. 

Esper said Sunday's meeting with the President included discussing "other options available" without providing further detail. He added that the US "would take additional actions as necessary to ensure that we act in our own self-defense and we deter further bad behavior from militia groups or from Iran."

Trump very badly wants to get the press off of his impeachment trial, so a nice military escalation in the Middle East seems to be the solution.  Especially given indicted Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu's continued troubles, further significant action against Iranian-backed Syrian targets seems pretty likely at this point.

Stay tuned.

The Reach To Impeach, Con't

More news from late last night, as the Washington Post broke the story that Trump is outright buying off dozens of House Republicans on the subject of impeachment with weekend trips to Camp David.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The corruption at this point is open and the whole Republican Party is coming along for the ride.  Transactional Trump is buying off lawmakers with trips and events because that's how he's always done business, so why should it be any different among House Republicans passing judgment on Trump's lawlessness?

It's the equivalent of a mob boss buying off grand jurors.

Oh, but it gets worse.  It always gets worse for the corrupt Trump regime, doesn't it?  Ethics watchdog group American Oversight released multiple documents from the State Department late Friday night obtained through FOIA requests, and they show contact between Rudy Giuliani and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, and between Giuliani and House Intelligence Committee GOP ranking member Rep. Devin Nunes all the way back in March of 2019.

Statement from American Oversight Executive Director Austin Evers:

“We can see why Mike Pompeo has refused to release this information to Congress. It reveals a clear paper trail from Rudy Giuliani to the Oval Office to Secretary Pompeo to facilitate Giuliani’s smear campaign against a U.S. ambassador.

“This is just the first round of disclosures. The evidence is only going to get worse for the administration as its stonewall strategy collapses in the face of court orders.

“That American Oversight could obtain these documents establishes that there is no legal basis for the administration to withhold them from Congress. That conclusively shows that the administration is engaged in obstruction of justice. The president and his allies should ask themselves if impeachment for obstruction is worth it if the strategy isn’t even going to be effective.

“This lawsuit is just one of several American Oversight is pursuing to bring transparency to the Ukraine investigation. The public should expect more disclosures, over the administration’s strong objection, for the foreseeable future.”

In the Documents:

New: The documents show a March 26, 2019, call between Rudy Giuliani and Mike Pompeo. (Page 39 of document)

A March 28, 2019, email includes a list of scheduled calls for Pompeo. Calls include Rudy Giuliani on March 29, and Rep. Devin Nunes on April 1, 2019.

On March 27, 2019, Rudy Giuliani’s assistant contacted Madeleine Westerhout, who was serving as the president’s Oval Office gatekeeper at the time. She asked Westerhout for a “good number” for Pompeo, adding that she had “been trying and getting nowhere through regular channels.” Westerhout contacted someone at the State Department to ask for a number she could provide. (Page 55)
During his closed-door testimony, career diplomat David Hale mentioned two calls between Pompeo and Giuliani, one on March 28, 2019, and one on March 29. The documents include a March 28 email to Hale indicating that Pompeo had been the one to request a call with Giuliani. (Page 45)

The March 29 call appears on page 46, and the confirmation of its scheduling is on page 44.

Also in the documents: An April 5 letter to the State Department from six former U.S. ambassadors to Ukraine (including Bill Taylor), expressing their concern about the attacks on U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine Marie Yovanovitch. (Page 13)

On April 12, 2019, Reps. Steny Hoyer and Eliot Engel wrote to Pompeo, also expressing their concern (page 28). The State Department responded on June 11, saying “Yovanovitch was due to complete her three-year diplomatic assignment in Kyiv this summer.” (Page 34).

The documents are here.

This criminality continues to be overwhelming at this point.  The corruption is across the board.  After Justin Amash's political career was butchered and hung to bleed out for everyone to see, no Republican will dare to lift a hand against Trump. 

So Trump will continue to buy loyal lawmakers with trips to Camp David and sporting events and more to protect himself, and the Republican party is now so utterly corrupt that they cannot escape Trump's criminal gravity without destroying themselves.

They would rather destroy the country than risk what happened to Amash happening to them.

The Reach To Impeach, Con't

EU Ambassador Gordon Sondland took the stage today in House impeachment hearings against Donald Trump.  Sondland not only implicated Trump, but Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani, Energy Secretary Rick Perry, and the major new one today, Vice President Mike Pence.

US Ambassador Gordon Sondland testified Wednesday there was a quid pro quo for Ukraine to announce investigations into President Donald Trump's political opponents that came from the President's personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani at the "express direction of the President." 

What's more, Sondland provided House impeachment investigators with emails and texts showing it wasn't just him and Giuliani pushing for the investigations outside 

government channels — Trump's inner circle knew what was going on, too. He even said he raised concerns with Vice President Mike Pence that the freezing of $400 million in security aid to Ukraine was linked to the investigations. 

Sondland's testimony is the most damning evidence to date directly implicating Trump in the quid pro quo at the heart of the impeachment inquiry. His public remarks show a link between US security aid and a White House meeting and Ukraine publicly announcing investigations that would help the President politically. From the beginning of Wednesday's hearing, Sondland's comments dragged some of Trump's senior most officials -- including Pence, his chief of staff and his secretary of state -- into the scandal. 

"Everyone was in the loop," Sondland said. "It was no secret." 

In his remarkable opening statement before the fourth day of public impeachment hearings, Sondland told House impeachment investigators that Trump "wanted a public statement from President (Volodymyr) Zelensky committing to investigations of Burisma and the 2016 election." 

"Mr. Giuliani expressed those requests directly to the Ukrainians," said Sondland, the ambassador to the European Union. "Mr. Giuliani also expressed those requests directly to us. We all understood that these pre-requisites for the White House call and White House meeting reflected President Trump's desires and requirements." 

Sondland said that Trump's senior aides, including acting chief of staff Mick Mulvaney, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and Energy Secretary Rick Perry, were all aware that Zelensky was briefed days ahead of the July 25 call to commit to doing investigations. 

"Everyone was informed via email on July 19, days before the Presidential call," Sondland said. "As I communicated to the team, I told President Zelensky in advance that assurances to 'run a fully transparent investigation' and 'turn over every stone' were necessary in his call with President Trump."

 Lawfare's Ben Wittes on Trump's bribery of Ukranian President Zelensky and the legal implications of Sondland's singing like Striesand:

Remember the words of the statute: Whoever, being a public official, directly or indirectly, corruptly demands anything of value personally in return for being influenced in the performance of any official act has engaged in the crime of bribery.

This exchange seems to me unambiguously to describe a corrupt demand for something personally valuable (investigations of political opponents) in return for being influenced in the performance of two official acts (granting a White House meeting and releasing hundreds of millions of dollars in military assistance).

In the questioning that followed, Republican counsel Steve Castor and Republican members sought to emphasize how little Sondland actually knew—suggesting that he, like witnesses last week, was not describing anything Trump had actually done, just his own impressions of a situation. But Sondland is unlike the witnesses last week. He had multiple, direct interactions on this subject with the president himself.

The first was on May 23, when Sondland and other officials went to brief Trump on Zelensky’s election and their excitement about having a reformist Ukrainian president with whom to work. They asked Trump to have a call with Zelensky and a White House meeting. “Unfortunately, President Trump was skeptical,” Sondland testified. “He expressed concerns that the Ukrainian government was not serious about reform. He even mentioned that Ukraine tried to take him down in the last election.” Sondland reported that “In response to our persistent efforts to change his views, President Trump directed us to ‘talk with Rudy’” Giuliani.

What did Giuliani, to whom Trump had personally directed Sondland, say to him? “Mr. Giuliani emphasized that the President wanted a public statement from President Zelensky committing Ukraine to look into corruption issues. Mr. Giuliani specifically mentioned the 2016 election (including the DNC server) and Burisma as two topics of importance to the President.”

In other words, behind the exchange with Schiff is a specific claim that Trump personally directed Sondland to Giuliani, who then made substantive demands on Trump’s behalf for the investigations he wanted.

But it doesn’t end there. Sondland also confirms, while quibbling over details, that he spoke by phone with Trump on July 26 from a restaurant in Kiev and that the president, as another witness recounts, asked him whether Zelensky was going to deliver the investigations. “Actually,” Sondland testified, “I would have been more surprised if President Trump had not mentioned investigations, particularly given what we were hearing from Mr. Giuliani about the President’s concerns.”

And then there’s, of course, the text of the Trump-Zelensky call itself, in which Trump asked for Zelensky to initiate the very investigations described in these other incidents, shortly after Zelensky asked for his continued military assistance.

Was Trump here acting “corruptly”? Duh. Seeking investigations of political foes for personal political gain is a prototypically corrupt. But beyond that, Sondland was clear in his testimony that Trump wasn’t actually asking for the investigations themselves, but merely the announcement of them. In other words, he wanted not an investigation of corruption, but the political optics of Ukraine’s declaring that his political opponents were under investigation. What’s more, Sondland also confirmed that Trump seemed not to care a whit about Ukraine—that he only cared about the investigations that could benefit him.

In short, a witness with first-hand knowledge of both U.S. interactions with the Ukrainians and the president’s own conduct today accused President Trump of soliciting a bribe from a foreign head of state. Whether or not this would qualify as a bribe under the criminal law, I would have no hesitation describing it as one if I were a member of Congress considering the impeachment of a president.

Yes, it went that badly for Trump this morning, an it will only get worse.

Good Day-O, Pompeo

Trump regime Secretary of State Mike Pompeo wants to escape the nightmare of being the administration's fall guy for Trump's Ukraine scandal (the legal fall guy is still very much going to be Giuliani) and resign so he can run for Senate back in Kansas.

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has told three prominent Republicans in recent weeks that he plans to resign from the Trump Administration to run for the U.S. Senate from Kansas in next year’s elections. The problem: how to get out in one piece.

Pompeo’s plan had been to remain at the State Department until early spring next year, the three Republicans tell TIME, but recent developments, including the House impeachment inquiry, are hurting him politically and straining his relationship with Trump.

So Pompeo is rethinking his calendar, say the top Republicans, one who served in the Trump Administration, another who remains in government, and a third who served in several high-ranking posts and is active in GOP politics. The timing of Pompeo’s resignation now will be decided by his ability to navigate the smoothest possible exit from the administration, the three Republicans say.

There is no indication whether Pompeo has discussed his plans with President Trump. Rumors of a Pompeo Senate campaign have circulated for months, and while Pompeo has said repeatedly that he has no intention of running, he has not ruled out a race. Pompeo aides previously have denied he was planning to step down. They declined to comment on the record for this story.

The thinking appears to be that if Pompeo simply resigns, that's punishment enough and he can restart his former congressional career running for the retiring Pat Roberts's seat, plus he figures he'd be doing Kansas Republicans a favor making sure somebody gets rid of Kris Kobach in the primary before he can lose another statewide race to the Democrats.

The actual feasibility of said plan in the wild, well, we're about to see how badly it crashes and burns.

Last Call For Bahama Drama

Is this regime even capable of not being absolute garbage in every aspect?  Like, is everyone involved in the Trump universe an amoral grifting asshole who operates by transactional relationships with everyone else?

A CBS News investigation has uncovered a possible pay-for-play scheme involving the Republican National Committee and President Donald Trump's nominee for ambassador to the Bahamas. Emails obtained by CBS News show the nominee, San Diego billionaire Doug Manchester, was asked by the RNC to donate half a million dollars as his confirmation in the Senate hung in the balance, chief investigative correspondent Jim Axelrod reports.

When Hurricane Dorian ravaged the Bahamas in September, Manchester wanted to help. So the San Diego real estate developer, who prefers the nickname "Papa Doug," loaded up his private jet with supplies and headed for the hard-hit Caribbean country where he owned a home – and hoped to soon be serving as U.S. ambassador.

A Trump supporter, Manchester donated $1 million to Trump's inauguration fund. He was offered the Bahamas post the day after Mr. Trump was sworn in. Manchester said Trump told him, "I should probably be the ambassador to the Bahamas and you should be president."

Then, for two and a half years, Manchester's nomination stalled in the Senate.

His Bahamas relief trip caught the attention of the President. Trump tweeted, "I would also like to thank 'Papa' Doug Manchester, hopefully the next Ambassador to the Bahamas, for the incredible amount of time, money and passion he has spent on helping to bring safety to the Bahamas."

Three days after the tweet, RNC Chairwoman Ronna McDaniel hit up Manchester for a donation. It was no small sum. In an email, obtained exclusively by CBS News, she asked Manchester, "Would you consider putting together $500,000 worth of contributions from your family to ensure we hit our ambitious fundraising goal?"

The Aristocrats!

"Did you feel like they were putting the arm on you?" Axelrod asked.

"No, I didn't. That's part of politics. It's unbelievable. You give and you give and you give and you give some more and more and more," Manchester said.

"Does any part of you feel if you had just cut the check for $500,000 that you would be the ambassador to the Bahamas?" Axelrod asked.

"No, because first of all, you have to get out of committee and you have to be voted on the floor," Manchester said. "It's a big process."

The Senate confirmation process is exactly what Manchester quickly addressed. He wrote back to McDaniel's request for $500,000, "As you know I am not supposed to do any, but my wife is sending a contribution for $100,000. Assuming I get voted out of the [Foreign Relations Committee] on Wednesday to the floor we need you to have the majority leader bring it to a majority vote … Once confirmed, I our [sic] family will respond!"

"You know what this looks like," Axelrod said.

"Well -- it looks like it to you. But it's not the facts," Manchester said. "My wife gave out of separate funds and she in fact loves Donald Trump."

As usual, a couple of observations.

One, the US ambassador post to the Bahamas was essentially left open for 30 months because Trump couldn't find anyone to buy it, I guess.  This is what the US State Department is on a post-Rex Tillerson, Mike Pompeo world with most of the career diplomats having been purged.  There's just lackeys and posts to be filled by those who can give Trump's campaign half a mil.  And yes, I understand ambassadorships have gone to big donors in the past for both parties, but now it's a requirement.

Two, this doesn't even make the top 25 Trump regime scandals so far.  Really, it doesn't.  That should bother everyone on the freakin' planet.  This regime is so debased that it has become a parody of itself, the blatant corruption is now utterly normalized and accepted as how America does business in 2019.

America's still a country built on 400 years of slavery, pillage, and white supremacy.  Trump didn't change that at all.  We just reverted to the historical mean.  Growing up in the 80's and 90's and seeing the Soviet Union go down made my generation think that things were going to get better, and for a while they did.

Oh, and speaking of diplomats...

Several GOP lawmakers were more “shaken” by the testimony from State Department aide David Holmes than they publicly let on, according to one top congressional GOP source.

Behind closed doors, many expressed frustration that Ambassador to the European Union Gordon Sondland would place a call to President Trump in a public restaurant, and are concerned that Holmes’ testimony was the most convincing argument for Trump’s direct involvement in the campaign to pressure Ukraine.

Holmes’ testimony is also making some GOP members worry about how far Sondland will go in his public testimony Wednesday.

Two senior Republican sources said that some House Republicans are also worried about how Sondland will handle himself at Wednesday’s hearing. The sources pointed out that Sondland is not an accomplished diplomat and one source added he believes Sondland was unprepared and ill-fitted for the job as US ambassador to the EU.

According to multiple State Department and former State Department officials, he was not well regarded by the US diplomatic community.
House Republicans are also increasingly worried about the political fallout from the hearings overall and the impact of multiple witnesses who are career professionals.

They are especially concerned about the reaction from independent voters and suburban women voters who are watching Trump attack witnesses both on Twitter and on television.

Sondland is being set up for crucifixion.  We'll see if he can help his case by telling the truth about Trump, or whether he goes down in flames.  As for David Holmes, the staffer for Ambassador Bill Taylor who overheard Trump's telephone tirade in a Ukraine restaurant, he will be testifying on Thursday, so if Sondland decides to lie this week, he's going to get burned before the week is out.

On national TV, no less.

Stay tuned.

Ukraine In The Membrane, Con't

Indicted Giuliani associate Lev Parnas is flipping on Trump and wants to cooperate with House Democrats, according to his lawyer.

Lev Parnas, an indicted Ukrainian-American businessman who has ties to President Donald Trump’s personal lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, is now prepared to comply with requests for records and testimony from congressional impeachment investigators, his lawyer told Reuters on Monday.

Parnas, who helped Giuliani look for dirt on Trump’s political rival, former Vice President Joe Biden, is a key figure in the impeachment inquiry that is examining whether Trump abused his office for personal political gain.

His apparent decision to work with the congressional committees represents a change of heart. Parnas rebuffed a request from three House of Representatives committees last month to provide documents and testimony.

“We will honor and not avoid the committee’s requests to the extent they are legally proper, while scrupulously protecting Mr. Parnas’ privileges including that of the Fifth Amendment,” said the lawyer, Joseph Bondy, referring to his client’s constitutional right to avoid self-incrimination.

Giuliani did not immediately respond to requests for comment. On Capitol Hill, the House leadership and a spokesperson for the House Intelligence Committee declined comment.

His previous lawyer, John Dowd, wrote to the committees in early October complaining that their requests for documents were “overly broad and unduly burdensome.”

Parnas pleaded not guilty in Manhattan federal court last month to being part of a scheme that used a shell company to donate money to a pro-Trump election committee and illegally raise money for a former congressman as part of an effort to have the president remove the U.S. ambassador to Ukraine.

The indictment does not address the issues involved in the impeachment inquiry.

Parnas would be a crucial witness if he were to cooperate. He has said he played a key role in connecting Giuliani to Ukrainian officials during Giuliani’s investigation into Biden and his son Hunter.

It gets worse.  House Democrats have released the transcripts of the testimony of former US Ambassador to Ukraine, Marie Yovanovich, and the full details of her testimony are outright shocking.

Yovanovitch said she first learned in late 2018 that Giuliani had been involved in Ukraine policy when Ukrainian officials alerted her to the former New York mayor’s communications with a former Ukrainian prosecutor general.

She described how Gordon Sondland, the U.S. ambassador to the European Union, had urged her to use Twitter to express support for Trump in order to save her job. “He said, you know, you need to go big or go home. You need to, you know, tweet out there that you support the president,” she said.

Several witnesses have said Sondland, a major Trump donor, played a major role in Ukraine policy, despite the country not being part of the European Union. Sondland also testified in the House probe, and his transcript is expected on Tuesday.

Michael McKinley, a former top adviser to Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, told House investigators that he quit his post after the State Department opted not to defend Yovanovitch from criticism by Trump and his political allies.

She was made a target by Trump himself.

Yovanovitch testified on Oct. 11 that she felt threatened by Trump telling Zelenskiy on the call that she was going to “go through some things.”

“I didn’t know what it meant. I was very concerned,” she said. “I still am.”

She said she was astonished to be featured in a presidential phone call and that Trump would speak about her “or any ambassador in that way to a foreign counterpart.”

When she contacted Secretary of State Mike Pompeo to get his support, Pompeo said he would take care of it by contacting FOX News host Sean Hannity.   And that actually worked for a while.

Because our country is corrupt as hell.