A Syria's Mistake

Bloomberg's Eli Lake doesn't beat around the bush, calling the phony "ceasefire" deal negotiated by VP Mike Pence and Turkish President Erdogan as "total capitulation" by Trump, and oh yeah, it opens the door to the ethnic cleansing and genocide of millions of Syrian Kurds.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has been open about this. Just this week, he outlined his plans: “We will secure the area extending from Manbij to the Iraqi border and then facilitate 1 million Syrian refugees’ return home in the first phase and, later on, the return of 2 million people.”

But this safe zone is an area that is for the most part historically Kurdish. If the Turkish military and its allied militias are allowed to dominate the area, then it is a near certainty that Kurdish civilians will suffer. 

And while it’s hard to confirm early reports in the fog of war, that appears to be exactly what is happening. New York Times reporter Rukmini Callimachi tweeted the grisly autopsy report of a murdered Kurdish politician. Public violence like this is meant to send a message that all civilians are targets. In essence, America has agreed to let Turkey solve its Syrian refugee problem by creating a new Kurdish refugee problem. 

Then there is the message this sends to Erdogan himself. The Turkish leader has humiliated Trump and the U.S. in recent weeks and months. He went ahead with the purchase of a Russian S-400 air defense system this summer, over several U.S. objections, and has faced no sanctions. He ordered his military to violate an earlier safe-haven agreement that to which Turkey had previously agreed. His forces fired artillery on a U.S. outpost last week. And he has metaphorically — and literally, according to the BBC — thrown Trump’s “Don’t be a tough guy” letter into the trash. 

In exchange for this disrespect and petulance, Erdogan got what he has wanted all along. He started a war to create a buffer zone in northern Syria, then got the U.S. to agree that he be allowed to keep it. Trump is even now repeating Erdogan’s talking points, claiming (without evidence) that the Syrian Kurds have launched attacks into Turkey. “In all fairness they’ve had a legitimate problem with it,” Trump said Thursday, referring to the safe zone. “They had to have it cleaned out. But once you start that, it gets to a point where a tremendous amount of bad things can happen.” 

That point has already been reached. Bad things are indeed happening, and will continue to happen. And there’s little reason to believe Trump’s capitulation in Ankara will do much to stop them.

And let's remember, Trump is doing this because Vladimir Putin has told him to do it.  We're firmly on the side of Putin, Erdogan, Bashar al-Assad, and other dictators and strongman.

America is no longer the good guys, folks.

And the rest of the world will eventually stop tolerating us.

StupidiNews!

• New York City plans to close its infamous Rikers' Island jail cells in favor of newer, more modern, and smaller facilities after a City Council vote and Mayor de Blasio's plans to approve the measure.
• The latest Brexit deal between UK PM Boris Johnson's government and EU negotiators has come apart after Northern Ireland's Democratic Unionist Party rejected the measure.
• Turkey has agreed to a US proposal to halt attacks on Syrian Kurdish positions for five days in order to facilitate humanitarian aid and evacuation measures.
• Energy Secretary Rick Perry is confirming his departure from the Trump regime at the end of the year as the Ukraine scandal continues to grow to involve his trips to Kiev.
• A bipartisan Senate bill would drastically limit non-competition clauses for employees, with the legislation aiming to fix "the worst abuses" in keeping workers from going to competitors.

Last Call For Making A Buck

At this point Donald Trump is just openly, brazenly corrupt and no longer cares what anyone thinks.

President Trump has awarded the 2020 Group of Seven summit of world leaders to his private company, scheduling the summit for June at his Trump Doral golf resort outside Miami, the White House announced Thursday.

That decision is without precedent in modern American history: The president used his public office to direct a massive contract to himself. The G-7 summit draws hundreds of diplomats, journalists and security personnel and provides a worldwide spotlight.

The announcement that the president’s club would host the international summit comes as Trump is in the midst of twin crises that are consuming his presidency — a hasty and confused American retreat in Syria and a growing impeachment inquiry in Congress.

Acting White House chief of staff Mick Mulvaney, who announced the decision, said the administration was not worried about the appearance of a conflict of interest, while he touted what the president’s resort has to offer.

Doral was far and away the best physical facility for this meeting,” Mulvaney said. He said that the administration examined 10 sites before choosing this one. Mulvaney quoted an anonymous site selection official who he said told him, “It’s almost like they built this facility to host this type of event.” Mulvaney did not say what other sites were vetted.

Mulvaney said it was Trump’s idea to pursue the idea of hosting the event at his resort.

“What about Doral?” he said, recounting the president’s comments in the White House dining room.

And so Trump has awarded a massive, multi-million dollar government contract to his own resort, openly, in public, says there's no conflict of interest despite the Constitution making it clear that it's a violation of the Emoluments Clause and that's that.

In fact, if Trump gets away with this, he knows he'll never be removed from office.  He's daring the GOP to defend him now.  And I'll bet not one Republican senator complains about it.

Ukraine In The Membrane, Con't

Trump's EU Ambassador Gordon Sondland had plenty to say about not wanting to go to prison for his role in Donald Trump's little military aid for fabricated Joe Biden dirt scheme, and his defense basically consisted of "I was too stupid to know what Rudy Giuliani was up to."

In his opening statement, which was obtained by The Daily Beast, Sondland wrote that any plot to encourage a foreign government to influence an American election would have been “wrong.” 

“I did not understand, until much later, that Mr. Giuliani’s agenda might have also included an effort to prompt the Ukrainians to investigate Vice President Biden or his son or to involve Ukrainians, directly or indirectly, in the President’s 2020 reelection campaign,” he will say, according to the written version of his opening statement. 

Sondland's role in the pressure campaign on the Ukrainian president was first revealed by The Daily Beast. He and Giuliani encouraged President Volodymyr Zelensky to publicly announce an investigation into the Bidens. It has been alleged that there was a quid pro quo whereby Zelensky would be rewarded by the White House with a meeting between the presidents in return for launching an investigation into one of Trump's potential 2020 rivals. 

“Please know that I would not have recommended that Mr. Giuliani or any private citizen be involved in these foreign policy matters. However, given the President’s explicit direction, as well as the importance we attached to arranging a White House meeting between Presidents Trump and Zelensky, we agreed to do as President Trump directed,” Sondland wrote. 

“Based on the President’s direction, we were faced with a choice: We could abandon the goal of a White House meeting for President Zelensky, which we all believed was crucial to strengthening U.S.-Ukrainian ties and furthering long-held U.S. foreign policy goals in the region; or we could do as President Trump directed and talk to Mr. Giuliani to address the President’s concerns.”

Keeping in mind a quid pro quo still isn't necessary for Trump's impeachment in this case and that Trump asking Zelensky for a "favor" as he did is enough for removal from office, the White House response from acting Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney is that the quid pro quo happened anyway and so what.

Mick Mulvaney, the acting White House chief of staff, told reporters that the release of military aid to Ukraine this summer was linked in part to White House demands that Ukraine’s government investigate what he called corruption by Democrats in the 2016 American presidential campaign. 

It was the first time a White House official has publicly acknowledged what a parade of current and former administration officials have told impeachment investigators on Capitol Hill. 

“The look-back to what happened in 2016 certainly was part of the thing that he was worried about in corruption with that nation,” Mr. Mulvaney told reporters, referring to Mr. Trump. “And that is absolutely appropriate.” 

He said that the aid was initially withheld because, “Everybody knows this is a corrupt place,” and the president was demanding Ukraine clean up its own government. But Mr. Trump also told Mr. Mulvaney that he was concerned about what he thought was Ukraine’s role in the 2016 campaign. 

“Did he also mention to me in passing the corruption related to the D.N.C. server? Absolutely. No question about that,” he said. “But that’s it, and that’s why we held up the money.” 

Mr. Mulvaney was referring to Mr. Trump’s discredited idea that a server with Hillary Clinton’s missing emails was being held by a company based in Ukraine. 

Mr. Mulvaney’s comments undercut the president’s repeated denials that there was a quid pro quo linking his demand for an investigation that could politically benefit him to the release of $391 million in military aid to Ukraine, which is battling Russian-backed separatists on its eastern border.

We've reached the "Yeah we did it, so what" phase of the Ukraine scandal.

The "so what" is impeachment.

Right?

BREAKING: House Democratic Stalwart Elijah Cummings Dead At 68

House Democratic Oversight chair and 22-year veteran Baltimore Congressman Elijah Cummings died early this morning at Johns Hopkins after a long bout with health issues.

Cummings was born in 1951 and raised in Baltimore, where he continued to live.

He was one of seven children of Robert Cummings Sr. and Ruth Elma Cummings, née Cochran, who were sharecroppers on land where their ancestors were enslaved. The couple moved to Baltimore in the late 1940s.

As a child, Cummings struggled in elementary school and was assigned to special education courses. However, after showing promise in high school at City College, he won Phi Beta Kappa honors at Howard University in Washington. He earned a bachelor’s degree in political science. He graduated from the University of Maryland School of Law and passed the state bar in 1976.

After graduating from law school, Cummings joined a small Baltimore law firm and later set up his own practice, pooling expenses with two other lawyers. He soon transitioned to his second aspiration as a public servant. His longtime mentor is Larry Gibson, the Baltimore attorney and author who was active in the 1960s civil rights movement.

In 1982, with the support of several established city officials, Cummings ran for state delegate and won. He served in the Maryland General Assembly for 14 years and became the first African American in Maryland history to be named speaker pro tem.

In late 1995, Cummings decided to run for Maryland’s 7th congressional district in the U.S. House after Rep. Kweisi Mfume announced he would resign to become the head of the NAACP. Cummings served as a congressman since 1996.

Cummings was an active member of New Psalmist Baptist Church — he was there habitually for an early service — and was married to Maya Rockeymoore Cummings, who was elected chair of the Maryland Democratic Party in December 2018.

“It’s been an honor to walk by his side on this incredible journey,” his wife said in a statement. “I loved him deeply and will miss him dearly.”

One of Trump's most strident critics in the House, Cummings was one of the early leaders of the House's impeachment efforts.  I am only saddened to see that he will not see his wrk finished.

But finished it will be.  And soon.

The Reach To Impeach, Con't

Rudy Giuliani is, at this point, in violation of a House subpoena, but House Dems don't seem to be in a rush to actually do anything about it.

In a letter, Giuliani’s attorney—who was dropped by his client shortly after said letter went out—said the subpoena was “overbroad, unduly burdensome, and seeks documents beyond the scope of legitimate inquiry.”

In addition to Giuliani, the Department of Defense and the Office of Management and Budget faced a Tuesday deadline to produce documents that were requested in Democrats’ subpoenas. OMB said it would not be complying, but Pentagon chief Mark Esper has said he would turn over at least some documents that would help lawmakers better understand the role that the hold-up in security security aid played in Trumpworld’s campaign to pressure the Ukranians. “We will do everything we can to comply,” Esper told CBS’ Face the Nation on Sunday.

Vice President Mike Pence, meanwhile, faced a Tuesday request—not a subpoena—for documents illuminating his role in the Ukraine saga. But his office announced on Tuesday that it would not comply with any of the Democrats’ requests, casting their impeachment inquiry as illegitimate.

The moves echo past attempts from Trumpworld to stiff-arm subpoenas during the Mueller investigation, which prompted intense hand-wringing among House Democrats over how to respond. Ultimately, they did vote in June to hold Attorney General William Barr and Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross in contempt of Congress for ignoring subpoenas. These were largely symbolic votes, however, and their ramifications were murky at best, leaving Democrats struggling to explain their import to the public.

That frustration is clearly animating some lawmakers’ desire to reconsider ways to assert their punitive authority—including the avenue of inherent contempt, which empowers the legislative branch to take would-be witnesses into custody until they comply with duly issued congressional orders.

“This is another example of why the House needs to revisit inherent contempt,” said Rep. Gerry Connolly (D-VA) of Giuliani. “We need to enforce our own subpoenas. We can and we should.”

But others on Capitol Hill look back on those struggles and see a reason to simply move past it to focus on what they believe really matters. “If the administration, and the president’s private sector accomplices, are going to follow through on their promise not to comply with the investigation, including ignoring lawful subpoenas, and if the only recourse (court action) allows them to run out the clock on an active criminal scheme involving U.S. national security and elections, then the House has no choice but impeachment,” said a House Democratic aide.

Another House Democratic aide put it more bluntly: “They already have the Watergate tapes,” the aide said of the impeachment investigators, underscoring why the party was unlikely to pursue a punishment outside the normal legal system for those defying subpoenas.

To be fair, Rudy's already in a ridiculous amount of legal peril.

For months, investigators looking into Rudy Giuliani's business dealings in Ukraine have dug into everything from possible financial entanglements with alleged corrupt Ukrainian figures to counterintelligence concerns raised by some of those business ties, according to people briefed on the matter. 

The counterintelligence part of the investigation indicates that FBI and criminal prosecutors in Manhattan are looking at a broader set of issues related to Giuliani, President Donald Trump's personal attorney, than has been previously reported. 

Kenneth McCallion, a New York attorney, says that investigators first approached him earlier this year to ask about Giuliani's ties to Lev Parnas and Igor Fruman, two Giuliani associates indicted last week on campaign-finance related charges. 

McCallion says FBI counterintelligence agents in February or March asked questions about some of Giuliani's Ukrainian business dealings. 

The counterintelligence probe hinges in part on whether a foreign influence operation was trying to take advantage of Giuliani's business ties in Ukraine and with wealthy foreigners to make inroads with the White House, according to one person briefed on the matter. 

"I was just asked whether I or any of my clients knew of any dealings that these two guys had with Giuliani," McCallion said. "They were on the radar with regard to possible counterintelligence issues."

The theory of "We have enough to impeach Trump" is nice, but it depends on Democrats actually drawing up articles and putting them to a vote.  Doing that will almost certainly trigger a House GOP counterattack. 

Meanwhile, an official impeachment inquiry vote would open the door to House Republicans to start issuing subpoenas and that would mean weeks, if not months of endless hearings on Hunter Biden, Andrew McCabe, Peter Strzok, Linda Page, James Comey, Jim Clapper, maybe even Robert Mueller.

Meanwhile, Mitch McConnell is signaling that political reality means he'll actually have a Senate trial after all.  A very short one, anyway.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell told Senate Republicans on Wednesday that he expects Speaker Nancy Pelosi to approve articles of impeachment as early as Thanksgiving, according to five people familiar with Wednesday’s party lunch. McConnell then surmised that the Senate could deal with the trial by Christmas, concluding the impeachment proceedings before the Democratic presidential primaries begin.

While they said there’s no deal between Pelosi and McConnell, Republican senators believe it’s in both parties’ interest to move quickly.

“He thinks Democrats are of the same mind: let’s not drag this out for five weeks,” said one attendee of the lunch.

McConnell’s comments and PowerPoint presentation on Wednesday were in part an acknowledgment that impeachment is exceedingly likely to come to the Senate, and much of the discussion centered on the ins and outs of Senate procedure.

McConnell told senators they would be unable to speak during the trial and that only the chief justice of the Supreme Court, the president’s defenders and the House managers could talk, said one person familiar with the meeting.

A spokesman for McConnell did not respond to an immediate request for comment.

That McConnell clearly doesn't share the White House opinion that the impeachment proceedings are "illegitimate" is a major tell, but I still expect a 100% party line vote on each article and Trump's eventual acquittal, followed by eleven months of THEY TRIED TO IMPEACH YOU ads.

But then again...

StupidiNews!

• Professional boxer Patrick Day is dead at age 27 after succumbing to a brain injury suffered Saturday night in a Super Welterweight title fight against Charles Conwell.
• The US House passed legislation supporting Hong Kong's independence from China by voice vote, China is warning the measure could end up sinking any trade deals with the US.
• The head of Mexico's oil workers' union has resigned amid a graft and bribery scandal, Carlos Romeros Deschamps says he will fight the charges in court.
• Former US President Barack Obama has endorsed Canadian PM Justin Trudeau and his Liberal Party government ahead of an expected tight national election contest on Monday.
• In a 3-2 party line vote the FCC has approved the mobile carrier merger of T-Mobile and Sprint, but the deal faces state antitrust lawsuits from multiple attorneys general.

Last Call For A Taxing Explanation, Con't

Reporters at ProPublica got their hands on some of the Trump Organization's real estate tax info, and if the pattern is consistent across the board with the examples they have (and let's face it, Trump has a 40-year history of this) Orange Racist Grandpa is a fraudster who's destined for the pokey.

Documents obtained by ProPublica show stark differences in how Donald Trump’s businesses reported some expenses, profits and occupancy figures for two Manhattan buildings, giving a lender different figures than they provided to New York City tax authorities. The discrepancies made the buildings appear more profitable to the lender — and less profitable to the officials who set the buildings’ property tax. 

For instance, Trump told the lender that he took in twice as much rent from one building as he reported to tax authorities during the same year, 2017. He also gave conflicting occupancy figures for one of his signature skyscrapers, located at 40 Wall Street. 

Lenders like to see a rising occupancy level as a sign of what they call “leasing momentum.” Sure enough, the company told a lender that 40 Wall Street had been 58.9% leased on Dec. 31, 2012, and then rose to 95% a few years later. The company told tax officials the building was 81% rented as of Jan. 5, 2013. 

A dozen real estate professionals told ProPublica they saw no clear explanation for multiple inconsistencies in the documents. The discrepancies are “versions of fraud,” said Nancy Wallace, a professor of finance and real estate at the Haas School of Business at the University of California-Berkeley. “This kind of stuff is not OK.” 

New York City’s property tax forms state that the person signing them “affirms the truth of the statements made” and that “false filings are subject to all applicable civil and criminal penalties.” 

The punishments for lying to tax officials, or to lenders, can be significant, ranging from fines to criminal fraud charges. Two former Trump associates, Michael Cohen and Paul Manafort, are serving prison time for offenses that include falsifying tax and bank records, some of them related to real estate. 

“Certainly, if I were sitting in a prosecutor’s office, I would want to ask a lot more questions,” said Anne Milgram, a former attorney general for New Jersey who is now a professor at New York University School of Law. 

Trump has previously been accused of manipulating numbers on his tax and loan documents, including by his former lawyer, Cohen. But Trump’s business is notoriously opaque, with records rarely surfacing, and up till now there’s been little documentary evidence supporting those claims. 

That’s one reason that multiple governmental entities, including two congressional committees and the office of the Manhattan district attorney, have subpoenaed Donald Trump’s tax returns. Trump has resisted, taking his battles to federal courts in Washington and New York. And so the question of whether different parts of the government can see the president’s financial information is now playing out in two appeals courts and seems destined to make it to the U.S. Supreme Court. Add to that a Washington Post account of an IRS whistleblower claiming political interference in the handling of the president’s audit, and the result is what amounts to frenetic interest in one person’s tax returns. 

ProPublica obtained the property tax documents using New York’s Freedom of Information Law. The documents were public because Trump appealed his property tax bill for the buildings every year for nine years in a row, the extent of the available records. We compared the tax records with loan records that became public when Trump’s lender, Ladder Capital, sold the debt on his properties as part of mortgage-backed securities. 

ProPublica reviewed records for four properties: 40 Wall Street, the Trump International Hotel and Tower, 1290 Avenue of the Americas and Trump Tower. Discrepancies involving two of them — 40 Wall Street and the Trump International Hotel and Tower — stood out.

Tax fraud, Al Capone, yadda yadda.

Hey, it worked.

Meanwhile In Bevinstan...

The Kentucky governor's race, as widely expected, has tightened up.  If you believe the polls, that is.  Four years ago, the polls were wrong.  Badly wrong.

Kentucky Gov. Matt Bevin (R) is tied with his Democratic rival just three weeks before Election Day in a race President Trump's political team is watching closely. 

A new survey conducted by Mason-Dixon Polling & Strategy finds Bevin and state Attorney General Andy Beshear (D) tied at 46 percent each. 

That's an improvement for Bevin, whose job approval rating has been underwater for years. The last time Mason-Dixon surveyed the race, in December, Beshear led by 8 points. 

Bevin is still unpopular; just 45 percent of voters approve of the job he's doing as governor, while 48 percent disapprove. But the incumbent is moving in the right direction — his approval rating has climbed 7 points since December, despite a brutal primary campaign in which Bevin only narrowly won the Republican nomination. 

The rifts from that primary campaign seem to have healed. Bevin is now winning more than three quarters of the Republican vote, according to the poll, as well as 22 percent of Democrats, likely those who live in ancestrally Democratic areas where coal jobs and union membership were once dominant. 

Independent voters break for Beshear by a 46 percent to 38 percent margin, the poll finds. Beshear leads by double digits in Louisville and Lexington, while Bevin holds big advantages in the rural eastern and western sections of the state. 

Few other public surveys have tested Kentucky's electorate, but Democrats have been optimistic about Beshear's chances in recent months, especially in the wake of the vicious Republican primary.

So, like four years ago, it's all about turnout.  The turnout models four years ago were all wrong, missing the nascent Trump wave and the white rural rage it represented, turning what should have been Jack Conway 11 point win into a seven point loss.

But Bevin isn't Trump, and he's still hurt a lot of people in the last four years.  He's still unpopular, just not the most unpopular in the nation anymore.

We'll see in three weeks.

A Syria's Case Of Withdrawal, Con't

The GOP "principled opposition" to Donald Trump's withdrawal of US troops from Syria and betrayal of Syrian Kurds never existed, because there is no GOP that exists that doesn't support Donald Trump in everything he does.

The Republican rebellion against President Donald Trump was short-lived. 

Republicans unleashed perhaps their most aggressive outcry of the Trump era after he abandoned the U.S.’ Kurdish allies and ceded northeastern Syria to Turkey. But now GOP lawmakers are dialing back their direct criticism of the president — instead working with Trump, dinging Democrats and trying to move forward.

Senior Republicans are coordinating with Trump’s top officials to try to rein in Turkey with sanctions and protect the Kurds, and while they’re still dissatisfied with the situation, they’ve shifted gears away from confrontation with the president.

“I do appreciate what the administration has done against Turkey through executive action, but more to follow,” Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) told reporters Tuesday afternoon, after joining Trump for a phone call with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Monday. “I appreciate the phone calls yesterday with Erdogan, I think [Trump] reached out in a good way to let Turkey know they needed a cease-fire right now.” 

“I blame Turkey, but I look to President Trump to fix this,” Graham added later on Fox News. 

It was just a few days ago that Graham let loose on Trump as potentially “tired of fighting radical Islam” and compared him to one of the GOP’s key rivals, Barack Obama. The president has since embraced sanctions, engaged with Erdogan and dispatched Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and Vice President Mike Pence to Turkey to start cease-fire talks. Trump’s administration will spend the week shoring up Republican support. 

But already, the GOP fury toward Trump is winding down — just the latest example of how eager Republicans are to avoid a breach with the president and a reminder of how difficult it will be for Democrats to win over Republicans in the fast-moving impeachment inquiry. 

“Look, Obama didn’t have a strategy in Syria and unfortunately that’s what President Trump inherited. This was an untenable situation in a civil war,” said Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas). “I don’t think the actual decision, itself, is surprising when you consider the alternatives.”

The GOP reality is whatever Trump says it is.  The Kurds were always "Obama's failure" and pretty soon they will never have been considered our allies in the first place.  Meanwhile, Turkish President Erdogan is busy splitting the pot with Syrian genocide fan Bashar al-Assad and telling VP Mike Pence to wait in the hallway.

The clown show rolls on.

StupidiNews!

• A third person has died from an outbreak of Legionnaire's disease in North Carolina, health officials say the bacteria was spread by a hot tubs display at a fairground last month.
• Syrian Kurds are holed up in the town of Ras al-Ain near the border as Turkish forces continue to advance into Syria, ignoring US warnings of new sanctions by the Trump regime.
• Hong Kong leader Carrie Lam has ruled out concessions to demonstrators, citing what China is calling "life threatening violence" after what officials say was an IED at a subway station.
• Spanish government officials are condemning violent protests in the country's Catalonia region after Catalan separatist leaders were arrested and sentenced to prison.
• Google's PC and console-less streaming gaming service, Stadia, will launch on November 19, with a $129 price tag and a $10 monthly fee.

Last Call For The Reach To Impeach, Con't

Federal prosecutors are moving forward with the next stage of indictments in the Giuliani corruption investigation after last week's arrest of two ex-Soviet business pals of Rudy Giuliani on campaign finance charges.

We know Giuliani is facing a major federal probe from US attorneys in Manhattan over his corrupt clients, including aforementioned ex-Soviet Putin fixers Abe Parnas and Igor Fruman in Ukraine, and previously indicted Iranian gold trader Reza Zarrab, who worked for convicted ex-bank exec Mehmet Atilla.

Now the Turkish state bank at the heart of Zarrab's plan to evade Iranian sanctions has been charged with money laundering and violating US sanctions on Iran.

Federal prosecutors in New York on Tuesday charged Turkey’s Halkbank (HALKB.IS) with taking part in a multibillion-dollar scheme to evade U.S. sanctions against Iran.

The charges against the majority state-owned bank mirror those against one of its former executives, Mehmet Hakan Atilla, who was found guilty and sentenced to prison after a trial in Manhattan federal court last year.

A U.S. lawyer for Halkbank did not immediately respond to a request for comment. 

Prosecutors said that between 2012 and 2016, Halkbank helped run a scheme that allowed Iran to spend proceeds from sales of its oil and gas on international markets, in violation of U.S. sanctions, using a complex web of front companies. 

The scheme ran with the protection of high-ranking officials in Iran and Turkey, some of whom received tens of millions of dollars in bribes, the prosecutors said.

Trump asked Rex Tillerson to get Justice to drop charges against Zarrab on Rudy's behalf.  Just this stuff alone is enough to impeach and remove Trump and put Giuliani in a cage for the rest of his life, but it gets worse for Rudy tonight.

Former Republican Congressman Pete Sessions of Texas has been subpoenaed by a federal grand jury, The Wall Street Journal reported Tuesday. 

“A grand jury has issued a subpoena related to Manhattan federal prosecutors’ investigation into Rudy Giuliani, seeking documents from former Rep. Pete Sessions about his dealings with President Trump’s personal lawyer and associates, according to people familiar with the matter,” the newspaper reported.

“The subpoena seeks documents related to Mr. Giuliani’s business dealings with Ukraine and his involvement in efforts to oust the U.S. ambassador in Kyiv, as well as any interactions between Mr. Sessions, Mr. Giuliani and four of Mr. Giuliani’s associates who were indicted last week on campaign-finance and conspiracy accounts, the people said,” The Journal explained. “Mr. Giuliani is the primary focus of the subpoena, the people said. Mr. Giuliani has denied wrongdoing and said he has had no indication his actions are being investigated by prosecutors.”

Ukraine, Russia, Turkey, Iran, and Saudi Arabia, Trump has had criminal deals with figures from all those countries, and sold out America every time to further his own goals.  And Rudy Giuliani connects almost all of those dots.

Giuliani is now daring House Democrats to do anything to him as he's refusing to cooperate with any subpoenas.  VP Mike Pence is now saying he won't comply either.  Trump has already said he won't cooperate, and Dems are apparently holding off an impeachment inquiry vote while they make their next move.  Meanwhile, more testimony from State Department sources continues this week in House closed-door sessions.

Rudy Giuliani going to jail one way or another, but I'd surely like to see inherent contempt used...

It's About Suppression, Con't

Ohio Republicans, firmly in charge of the state after the 2016 elections, tried to remove nearly a quarter of a million people this year from voting rolls for the crime of not voting often enough.  The Roberts Court agreed in June 2018 that the state could disenfranchise whomever it wanted to, and more importantly it created the precedent that the burden of proof of voter eligibility was on the voter, not the state.

In a last-ditch effort, a few Republicans led by previous Gov. John Kasich and current Secretary of State Frank LaRose sided with the state's Democrats to release the full list of those to be purged to voting activist groups to try to crowdsource the list.  The activists, including the League of Women Voters, found that some 40,000 voters were set to be purged incorrectly, and mysteriously the vast majority of those to be disenfranchised were registered Democrats...including the director of the League of Women Voters herself.

Ohio, where the Democratic presidential candidates are set to debate Tuesday, is both a battleground state and the site of some of the country’s strictest voting laws, from voter ID requirements to a “use-it-or-lose-it” provision that lets officials drop voters seen as inactive.

The combination has led voting rights advocates to contend that parts of the state are regularly disenfranchised, largely in purges aimed at those who have died or moved away, but which also hit real voters who don’t learn they can’t vote until Election Day. Election officials in other battlegrounds such as Florida, North Carolina, Georgia and Texas regularly purge their voter lists as well.

This year, a group of elected officials in the state, mostly all moderate Republicans, tried to answer the concerns with an experiment of their own: Rather than purge the voter rolls behind closed doors as had been done in the past, the government released the full list of those to be removed this summer, and gave the list to advocacy groups. The groups said they found the list was riddled with errors.

The result: Around 40,000 people, nearly one in five names on the list, shouldn’t have been on it, the state determined. And it only found out before anyone was actually turned away at a polling place largely because of volunteer sleuthing. 

Few people had expected a problem at that scale.

But the process gave hope to people working on voting rights, who for years had pushed the state to be more transparent in how it was maintaining its voter rolls. Moderate Republicans, caught between advocacy groups pushing for fewer purges and more conservative leaders in other states urging for more, think they may have found a way to thread the needle. 

“We’re talking about crowdsourcing, in simply putting the list out there,” said Frank LaRose, Ohio’s secretary of state, whose office oversaw the purge and who manages the election here. 

Ohio’s needle-threading experiment this year — the only time advocates say a state government has released a list ahead of time — also offers one of the first looks at how so many names could be incorrectly removed from the rolls.

In one case, a data mistake from an outside firm meant a large number of people’s names were set to be knocked off. Ohio’s 88 counties each used a different process of removing people from the rolls, an immediate source of headaches for officials trying to compile a statewide list. 

And voting rights groups found an unexplained tranche — around 20,000 people — who had been marked to be purged because of inactivity in future election cycles, but were actually active voters in previous Ohio elections. These voters were in Franklin County, a Democratic stronghold in the state.

For those of you playing at home, Franklin County, Ohio is the capital of Columbus and its surrounding suburbs.  There's about 850,000 registered voters as of 2018 according to the county's board of election website, and the county voted nearly 2-to-1 for Clinton in 2016.  20,000 or more would have lost their right to vote if this hadn't been caught heading into 2020.

Yeah, that's right, half the "errors" in the previous secretary of state's planned purge came from the bluest county in the state.  That guy? Jon Husted? He is now Lieutenant Governor, by the way, under Gov. DeWine.

Weird how that works, huh.

Ukraine In The Membrane, Con't

Congress is back in session today, and the House impeachment inquiry rolls on as the Intelligence, Judiciary, and Oversight committees worked through the two-week recess.  Yesterday, former Trump National Security Council Russia expert Fiona Hill went before the Oversight and Intel committees for ten hours, but not Judiciary.

The "not Judiciary committee" part was relevant, because GOP Rep. Matt Gaetz showed up to be an asshole and was booted because while he is on the Judiciary, he's not on either of the other two committees, and he pitched a fit because Republican voters are as stupid as Matt Gaetz thinks they are.  Chuck Pierce let Gaetz have it.

On Monday morning, Fiona Hill, the administration*'s former Russia expert, came to Capitol Hill to testify in closed session to the House Oversight and Intelligence Committees regarding the president*'s attempt at running a protection racket on Ukraine. Gaetz is a member of neither committee, but he showed up anyway, obviously as a mole on behalf of Camp Runamuck. Acting perfectly within the rules of the House, the committees threw his truckling ass out. Gaetz immediately found a bank of microphones in front of which to drive the nails into his own palms.

"It's not like I'm on the Agriculture Committee," Gaetz moped. Good thing, too, since he apparently could be outsmarted by produce.

You may recall that it was Gaetz who Tweeted out what could only be interpreted as a threat toward Michael Cohen before the latter testified to the Judiciary Committee. That episode was referred to the Florida Bar Association in a complaint that charged Gaetz with with witness tampering. The Florida Bar cleared Gaetz because, well, Florida, but it did hurl a handful of uncomplimentary adjectives at him. It's important to remember that any articles of impeachment that are forthcoming will have to go through the House Judiciary Committee of which Gaetz is a member and, as such, he has to be allowed into the room. Where it happens. And people say vaudeville is dead.

That didn't stop FOX News State TV and the like from declaring Monday's testimony illegal or something because Gaetz wasn't allowed in.  But the big loser was once again Rudy Giuliani, who got a double dose of bad news in the last 12 hours.

Fiona Hill, the White House’s former top Russia adviser, told impeachment investigators on Monday that Rudolph W. Giuliani, the president’s personal lawyer, ran a shadow foreign policy in Ukraine that circumvented U.S. officials and career diplomats in order to personally benefit President Trump, according to a person familiar with her testimony.

Hill, who served as the senior official for Russia and Europe on the National Security Council, was the latest witness in a fast-moving impeachment inquiry focused on whether the president abused his office by using the promise of military aid and diplomatic support to pressure Ukraine into investigating his political rivals.

In a closed-door session that lasted roughly 10 hours, Hill told lawmakers that she confronted Gordon Sondland, the U.S. ambassador to the European Union, about Giuliani’s activities which, she testified, were not coordinated with the officials responsible for carrying out U.S. foreign policy, this person said on the condition of anonymity to disclose details of her deposition.

Sondland played a leading role in the Trump administration’s efforts to pressure Ukraine to open investigations of the president’s political rivals, text messages obtained and later released by House Democrats show. Three congressional committees are now probing how Trump pressured Ukraine to investigate former vice president Joe Biden and his son, Hunter, who was on the board of a Ukrainian energy company, as well as a debunked theory that Ukraine interfered in the 2016 U.S. election in an attempt to damage Trump’s candidacy.

Sondland is set to appear before lawmakers later this week.

And in a sign the impeachment inquiry is widening, investigators were discussing whether to question John Bolton, Trump’s former national security adviser, according to people familiar with the matter. Bolton was Hill’s direct superior at the NSC.

John Bolton's mustache doesn't want to be clipped.  Neither does Sondland, I'm thinking.  And all indications are Rudy is going to prison.

Federal prosecutors in Manhattan are examining Rudy Giuliani's Ukraine business dealings, including his bank records, The Wall Street Journal reported Monday, citing people familiar with the matter. 

The people familiar told the paper that witnesses have been questioned by investigators since at least August about Giuliani, President Donald Trump's personal lawyer. 

Part of the questioning involves any potential role Giuliani played in an alleged conspiracy involving two of his business associates, Lev Parnas and Igor Fruman, who were indicted on campaign finance-related charges last week. 

CNN previously reported that Giuliani's financial dealings with Parnas and Fruman were under scrutiny by investigators, according to law enforcement officials briefed on the matter. But news of federal prosecutors examining Giuliani's bank records and business dealings in Ukraine brings into focus the level of scrutiny facing Giuliani over his involvement with Ukraine. 

The Journal's report builds on reporting from The New York Times last week that Giuliani is facing an investigation by federal prosecutors into whether his involvement with Ukraine violated federal lobbying laws.

It's already a bad, bad week for Team Orange.  It's going to get a lot worse.  Should Bolton actually flip on Trump, it's going to be lethal.

 

StupidiNews!

• California police say a man walked into the Mt. Shasta police department on Monday and told officers he had killed four people in Roseville, California, with one body in the man's trunk.
• Two MIT researchers and a Harvard colleague will share this year's Nobel Prize in economics for work on global poverty, the team's Esther Duflo is only the second woman to win for economics.
• The European Union is considering a new emergency summit later this month for a Brexit deal, embattled UK PM Boris Johnson last week received the Queen's permission to proceed.
• Hong Kong is now under an "effective curfew" as the city's subway stations are now shutting down at 10 PM local time in response to protester attacks on stations.
• A federal judge has halted lawsuits against Purdue Pharma and the billionaire Sackler family that owns the company, but the reprieve is only for three weeks in order to get all sides talking.