That Poll-Asked Look, Con't

A new Siena College/NY Times poll of six battleground states finds if the other 44 states and DC have the same 2016 results, Donald Trump would lose to Joe Biden 318-220 among likely voters, but he would beat Bernie Sanders 280-248 with Wisconsin's 10 electoral votes a tossup, and would crush Liz Warren with the same results from 2016, minus Arizona as a toss-up.

Despite low national approval ratings and the specter of impeachment, President Trump remains highly competitive in the battleground states likeliest to decide his re-election, according to a set of new surveys from The New York Times Upshot and Siena College.

Across the six closest states that went Republican in 2016, he trails Joe Biden by an average of two points among registered voters but stays within the margin of error.

Mr. Trump leads Elizabeth Warren by two points among registered voters, the same margin as his win over Hillary Clinton in these states three years ago.

The poll showed Bernie Sanders deadlocked with the president among registered voters, but trailing among likely voters.

The results suggest that Ms. Warren, who has emerged as a front-runner for the Democratic nomination, might face a number of obstacles in her pursuit of the presidency. The poll supports concerns among some Democrats that her ideology and gender — including the fraught question of “likability” — could hobble her candidacy among a crucial sliver of the electorate. And not only does she underperform her rivals, but the poll also suggests that the race could be close enough for the difference to be decisive.

In national polls, Mr. Trump’s political standing has appeared to be in grave jeopardy. His approval ratings have long been in the low 40s, and he trails Mr. Biden by almost nine points in a national polling average. But as the 2016 race showed, the story in the battleground states can be quite different. Mr. Trump won the election by sweeping Michigan, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Florida, Arizona and North Carolina — even while losing the national vote by two points.

Democrats would probably need to win three of the six states to win the White House, assuming other states voted as they did in 2016 — an outcome that is not at all assured.

Having a likely voter model a year away from an election with impeachment in play is an...interesting choice.  But the fact all of these results are within the margin of error shows that Trump is going to get smashed in blue states, but still can play in battleground states.

Here's the big issue:

The major demographic cleavages of the 2016 election also remain intact. Mr. Trump struggles badly among college-educated white voters and nonwhite voters, though there are signs his standing among the latter group has improved modestly since the last presidential election. He counters with a wide lead among white voters who did not graduate from a four-year college.

In contrast to recent national surveys, the Times/Siena polls find that the president’s lead among white, working-class voters nearly matches his decisive advantage from 2016. This group represents nearly half of registered voters in these states, and a majority in the Northern battlegrounds that decided the last election.

The poll offers little evidence that any Democrat, including Mr. Biden, has made substantial progress toward winning back the white working-class voters who defected to the president in 2016, at least so far. All the leading Democratic candidates trail in the precincts or counties that voted for Barack Obama and then flipped to Mr. Trump.

That's the key.  If Trump is keeping non-college white voters, and is actually doing slightly better among non-white voters, then he wins.

Easily.


BUT.  And there's a huge but here...

The other 44 states and DC?  I don't think they're going to be the same as 2016.  I don't think that at all.  I think Trump is in real trouble in Iowa and Georgia.  If the electoral college map follows Trump's state-by-state approval ratings, he loses 358-180, a crushing defeat.

I don't buy this poll's likely voter model.

Not at all.  Two-thirds of Americans say Trump has not personally made their lives better off since being elected.  2016 is not 2020, and pretending it is is stupid.

This poll does precisely that.  Besides, it has Trump getting like 15% of the black vote.

Not happening.  This poll is garbage.

The Reach To Impeach, Con't

The White House is blocking any more testimony of executive branch officials in House Democratic impeachment depositions, as four scheduled depositions will go ignored today, despite House Democratic subpoena threats.

Four White House officials slated for closed-door depositions Monday are not expected to show up on Capitol Hill despite the threat of subpoena from the committees leading the growing impeachment inquiry into President Donald Trump related to Ukraine, multiple senior-level sources told ABC News.

House Democrats have a packed schedule this week as depositions continue behind closed doors.

On Monday, Democrats had hoped to hear from four current White House officials, including John Eisenberg, deputy counsel to the president for National Security Affairs; Michael Ellis, senior associate counsel to the president; Robert Blair, a top aide to the chief of staff; and Brian McCormack, an official with the office of management and budget.

Two of those officials, Eisenberg and McCormack, have already been subpoenaed for their respective depositions. Ellis and Blair have only been requested to appear at this time.

The White House has pushed back on permitting current and former officials to comply with requests and subpoenas from Congress in part because White House lawyers have not been permitted inside the closed-door interviews.

Current National Security Council adviser Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman and former National Security Council aide Tim Morrison did comply with congressional requests last week, however, they are career officials and not political appointees like the four individuals slated for Monday.

Two of the individuals subpoenaed are filing suits with federal judges to determine who has priority, the White House, citing executive privilege over any testimony, or the House Democratic committee subpoenas.  Those cases aren't expected to be heard until December at the earliest, meaning that the Trump regime efforts to stonewall impeachment proceedings to a complete halt may end up working after all.

It looks like Trump wants any and all testimony from "his employees" to end, permanently.

The anticipated defiance toward impeachment investigators comes as Trump has grown enraged that so many of his “employees,” as he refers to them, are going to Capitol Hill and testifying, said a person who regularly talks with him and who spoke on the condition of anonymity. The president has asked for copies of witness statements so he can decide how to criticize them, complained that his lawyers are not doing enough to stop people from talking, and even encouraged members of Congress to question the credibility of people working in his own administration, current and former officials said.

“He is the war room,” press secretary Stephanie Grisham said on Fox News.

We'll see how Democrats react.  Tying up House subpoenas in court for months or years was always going to be part of the plan.  Whether or not Democrats will move ahead anyway, I don't know.

The decision to ignore a congressional subpoena comes with risk. House Democrats could hold Vought and his aides in contempt of Congress or take them to court to try to compel their testimony, as the party has done for former White House counsel Donald McGahn. Democrats have said they will not wait on the courts before they proceed with their impeachment inquiry. But by suing Trump officials, they could force testimony next year, shortly before the presidential election. 

Trump clearly thinks the country will turn on the Democrats the longer he's able to stall.

He's probably right.

StupidiNews!

• McDonald's CEO and president Steve Easterbrook is resigning after admitting to having a consensual relationship with an employee in violation of company policy.
• Protesters in Hong Kong marched for another weekend of demonstrations in defiance of China's latest warning that it would not tolerate any challenge to Hong Kong's current system of governance.
• Saudi Arabia's state oil company, Saudi Aramco, is moving ahead with IPO plans that could see the company valued as much as $1.5 trillion, making it the largest publicly traded company on Earth.
• UK PM Boris Johnson is apologizing to voters for missing his own hard Brexit deadline of Oct. 31 as Britain now enters its third general election in four years, scheduled for December 12.
• The Trump regime may be backing off efforts to reverse Obama-era fuel efficiency standards with efforts to require modest yearly increases in efficiency rather than freezing them at 2020 levels.

Last Call For Wild Fired Up

As California burns, Dear Leader is now threatening to end federal aid for wildfires unless Democrats in the state play ball, starting with getting rid of Gov. Gavin Newsom.

President Donald Trump is threatening to cut U.S. funding to California for aid during wildfires that have burned across the state during dry winds this fall. 

Trump tweeted Sunday that California Gov. Gavin Newsom has done a “terrible job of forest management.” He tweeted that when fires rage, the governor comes to the federal government for help. “No more,” he said. 

Newsom replied with a tweet: “You don’t believe in climate change. You are excused from this conversation.” 

The state controls a small percentage of forest land. The federal government manages most of it. 

Last year Trump made a similar threat amid California fires — accusing the state of “gross mismanagement” of forests. 

At the time Newsom defended wildfire prevention efforts while criticizing the federal government for not doing enough.

This is why Republicans keep cutting National Park Service and National Forest Service funds. Trump proposed cutting half a billion from national parks in May.  So far Republicans haven't agreed to that, especially Western Republicans in mountain states.  But hey, now a government shutdown is coming up.  Maybe National Park cuts, especially for California, will be Trump's price.

Who knows with this unstable lunatic?

Shutdown Countdown, Impeachment Edition

The government goes into shutdown mode on November 21 without a spending bill, but Nancy Pelosi believes that Trump will sign one in the next few weeks.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi on Friday said she doubts President Donald Trump would respond to the Democrats’ impeachment inquiry by forcing a confrontation over funding that might trigger a government shutdown later this month.

“They don’t care about shutdowns because they don’t believe in government, however I do think that they learned a lesson from the last shutdown since it didn’t do them very well,” she said of the White House during a roundtable with Bloomberg reporters and editors.

The government is operating on a temporary funding measure that expires Nov. 21. As lawmakers haggle over a spending plan, congressional Democrats and the White House are at odds over the same issue -- Trump’s demand for border wall spending -- that was at the root of a 35-day government earlier this year. That ended with the Trump administration agreeing to a funding bill without the extra money he sought.

Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer this week said he was concerned that Trump would create a standoff over funding because of the House impeachment inquiry. “He always likes to create diversions,” Schumer said.

Pelosi said that she and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell are trying to come to an agreement on the full-year spending bills, including how to resolve the border wall spending.

“Let’s see what we can get accomplished,” she said.

Lawmakers from both parties involved in negotiating a spending plan have suggested passing a stopgap bill into January or February in order to move spending discussions past the House impeachment process, which is set to drag out into December.

On the one hand, Trump has already lost this fight once and the GOP passed legislation without his wall funding. His people may tell him he'll lose the support he needs if he's closing national parks right before Thanksgiving.

On the other hand, Trump needs impeachment off the front pages and a convenient government shutdown he can blame on the "witch hunters" seems tailor-made for his brand of bullshittery. He may just go to the mat on this.

On the gripping hand, enough lawmakers may just say "screw it, I don't need this right now" and a veto-proof continuing resolution spending bill lands on Trump's desk and he's got no choice, taking the weapon out of his hands.

We'll see what happens soon.

Sunday Long Read: Home Is Where You Hang Your Scam

Our Sunday Long Read this week comes from Vice's Allie Conti, who followed up on getting ripped off by an Airbnb rental and ended up uncovering a massive, systemic bait-and-switch fraud scam that the company almost actually encourages because it gets paid either way.

The call came about 10 minutes before we were set to check into the Airbnb. I was sitting at a brewery just around the corner from the rental on North Wood Street in Chicago when the man on the other end of the line said that our planned visit wouldn’t be possible. A previous guest had flushed something down the toilet, which had left the unit flooded with water, he explained. Apologetic, he promised to let us stay in another property he managed until he could call a plumber.

I had flown with two friends to the city in hopes of a relaxing end-of-summer getaway. We had purchased tickets to attend the September music festival Riot Fest, where Blink-182 and Taking Back Sunday were scheduled to perform. The trip had gotten off to a rough start even before the call. Around a month before, a first Airbnb host had already canceled, leaving us with little time to figure out alternative housing. While scrambling to find something else, I stumbled upon a local Airbnb rental listed by a couple, Becky and Andrew. Sure, the house looked a little basic in the photos online, but it was nice enough, especially considering the time crunch—light-filled, spacious, and close to the Blue Line.

Now, we were facing our second potential disaster in 30 days, and I couldn’t help but feel slightly suspicious of the man on the phone, who had called me from a number with a Los Angeles area code. Hoping to talk in person, I asked him if he was in the area. He said that he was at work and didn’t really have time to chat. Then he added that I needed to decide immediately if I was willing to change my reservation.

As if he could hear me calculating in my head how much of a hassle it would be to find a hotel instead, he then added something else to his pitch.

“It’s about three times bigger,” the man said. “That’s the good news.”

The bad news, which went unstated, was that I had unknowingly stumbled into a nationwide web of deception that appeared to span eight cities and nearly 100 property listings—an undetected scam created by some person or organization that had figured out just how easy it is to exploit Airbnb’s poorly written rules in order to collect thousands of dollars through phony listings, fake reviews, and, when necessary, intimidation. Considering Airbnb’s lax enforcement of its own policies, who could blame the scammers for taking advantage of the new world of short-term rental platforms? They had every reason to believe they could do so with impunity.

I've sworn off Airbnb because of their systemic racism problems built into a platform that really has no way of enforcing state anti-discrimination and innkeeper laws, especially when it's people renting out their own homes, but of course bait-and-switch scams are pretty bad for everyone, except for the fact that Airbnb isn't really doing anything about scammers either because they get paid for cancellations too.

So yeah, there's that inherent gig economy libertarian tech bullshit again, it's cheaper because it gets around the increased overhead of all that 'being legal and non-discriminatory" and offers itself as an alternative, and it works great as long as you're a white guy in a system that doesn't penalize you for not being a white guy.

I know picking on it is low-hanging, practically gravid fruit, but that's the whole point.

I Want My Trump State TV

The line between FOX News and Trump White House propaganda continues to disintegrate as the cable "news" network is now the exclusive home of White House "press briefings" with press secretary Stephanie Grisham.

Since becoming White House press secretary on July 1, Stephanie Grisham has held zero press briefings. Instead, Grisham has found the time to grant interviews to some of President Donald Trump’s favorite current and former Fox News hosts.

It is not new that Grisham appears on Fox News, or that Grisham tells pro-Trump lies. Sarah Sanders certainly did both quite a bit while she held the office.

But it is new that Grisham appears virtually only on Fox News.

Grisham's particular innovation is to move the entire office of White House press secretary into the world of Fox News and Fox-adjacent media. After giving her first TV interview to Sinclair’s Eric Bolling (who was fired by Fox for sending unsolicited explicit photos to coworkers), Grisham did three interviews on Fox & Friends, and one each on Mornings with Maria Bartiromo, Lou Dobbs Tonight, Watters’ World, and Outnumbered Overtime with Harris Faulkner. She has also done a subsequent interview with Bolling. Instead of actually briefing the press at the White House, Grisham treats her duties as press secretary as complaining to pro-Trump pundits about how unfair everyone else is to the president.

During her first Fox & Friends appearance as White House press secretary, Grisham defended Trump’s decision to suspend press briefings because they “had become a lot of theater,” and many reporters were “getting famous off of this presidency” and “weren’t being good to his people.”

The same day, Grisham also appeared on Fox Business’ Mornings with Maria Bartiromo, where she complained that the media is unfair to Donald and Melania Trump and asserted that she doesn’t need to do press briefings because Trump is “the most accessible president in history.” Grisham claimed her “job is to talk about what he’s doing and communicate his policies, and I can do that in an array of ways, which -- that’s what we’re doing and it’s just working out fine.” 

In the Trump era, reporters don't ask questions, they shout things at Trump when he feels like talking, getting on or off Marine One to make trips to Andrews Air Force base so he can golf or fundraise or hold a Klan rally, and maybe he answers.  Meanwhile, his press flack is merely a stenographer who goes on state TV to give the regime's view, unchallenged.

That's how autocracies work, gang.

Last Call For Border Line Insanity, Con't

Mexican coyotes and drug cartels are sawing through Trump's stupid "impenetrable" billion-dollar border wall with power tools from Home Depot and I cannot stop laughing.

Smuggling gangs in Mexico have repeatedly sawed through new sections of President Trump’s border wall in recent months by using commercially available power tools, opening gaps large enough for people and drug loads to pass through, according to U.S. agents and officials with knowledge of the damage.

The breaches have been made using a popular cordless household tool known as a reciprocating saw that retails at hardware stores for as little as $100. When fitted with specialized blades, the saws can slice through one of the barrier’s steel-and-concrete bollards in a matter of minutes, according to the agents, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly about the barrier-defeating techniques.

After cutting through the base of a single bollard, smugglers can push the steel out of the way, allowing an adult to fit through the gap. Because the bollards are so tall — and are attached only to a panel at the very top — their length makes them easier to push aside once they have been cut and are left dangling, according to engineers consulted by The Washington Post.

The taxpayer-funded barrier — so far coming with a $10 billion price tag — was a central theme of Trump’s 2016 campaign, and he has made the project a physical symbol of his presidency, touting its construction progress in speeches, ads and tweets. Trump has increasingly boasted to crowds in recent weeks about the superlative properties of the barrier, calling it “virtually impenetrable” and likening the structure to a “Rolls-Royce” that border-crossers cannot get over, under or through.

The smuggling crews have been using other techniques, such as building makeshift ladders to scale and overtop the barriers, especially in the popular smuggling areas in and around San Diego, according to nearly a dozen U.S. agents and current and former administration officials.

Mexican criminal organizations, which generate billions of dollars in smuggling profits, have enormous incentive to adapt their operations at the border to new obstacles and enforcement methods, officials say.

The U.S. government has not disclosed the cutting incidents and breaches, and it is unclear how many times they have occurred. U.S. Customs and Border Protection declined to provide information about the number of breaches, the location of the incidents and the process for repairing them. Matt Leas, a spokesman for the agency, declined to comment, and CBP has not yet fulfilled a Freedom of Information Act request seeking data about the breaches and repairs. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, which oversees the private contractors building the barrier, referred inquires to CBP.

Only costing us billions and there's still thousands of miles of border without any barriers, but Trump's building the wall to protect America.  A ten billion dollar wall versus a $100 reciprocating saw, and the saw wins.

If that isn't the perfect metaphor for the Trump era, I don't know what is.

It's Mueller Time Once Again

BuzzFeed News reporter Jason Leopold and his team sued the Justice Department over Mueller probe documents, specifically the FBI note, search warrants, and subpoenas that the Mueller squad used, and a federal judge agreed, with the first set of 500 documents out today.

Beginning last April, BuzzFeed News has pursued five separate Freedom of Information Act lawsuits to pry loose all the subpoenas and search warrants that Mueller’s team executed, as well as all the emails, memos, letters, talking points, legal opinions, and interview transcripts it generated. In short, we asked for all the communications of any kind that passed through the special counsel’s office. We also requested all of the documents that would reveal the discussions among Attorney General Bill Barr, former deputy attorney general Rod Rosenstein, and other high-ranking officials about whether to charge President Donald Trump with obstruction.

Justice Department lawyers said the volume of records at issue could total 18 billion pages and could take centuries to produce.

At a hearing earlier this month, US District Court Judge Reggie Walton was not sympathetic. “It shouldn’t fall on the backs of the citizens to wait years to find out what the government is up to,” he said. If the Justice Department couldn’t handle the request in a more timely fashion, he added, it should ask Congress for money to hire more help.

Today, in response to a court order, the Justice Department has released the first installment of documents: 500 pages of summaries of FBI interviews with witnesses, available here for the first time. Another installment will be released every month for at least the next eight years.

Known as “302 reports,” these summaries of interviews — which have been conducted with people such as former White House counsel Don McGahn, former attorney general Jeff Sessions, and Trump’s former fixer and lawyer Michael Cohen — are some of the most important and highly sought-after documents from Mueller’s investigation. They reveal what key players in the campaign told FBI agents about Russia, Trump, his business dealings, and his attempts to impede the special counsel’s investigation.

Matt Topic, the lawyer who argued these cases for BuzzFeed News, said the controversies surrounding Mueller’s report made the fight for these documents particularly urgent. “The reason we have a Freedom of Information Act is to make sure that the government is accountable to the people,” he said. Without it, people are powerless “to determine whether the government is telling us the truth or lying to us, whether it is playing favorites or playing fair, whether, as the president claims, the Justice Department engaged in an illegal, treasonous witch hunt or, as others have claimed, the president engaged in obstruction of justice and was given a free pass by the attorney general.”

After years of speculation and accusation, these documents offer a chance for everyone to view a key function of American democracy. That opportunity — hard-won, but enshrined anew with each additional FOIA release — commences today. It will last long after all the players have departed.

The first batch of documents are posted here online, and while there's no bombshell level stuff yet, there are some very interesting new wrinkles, such as Bannon though Manafort should be "avoided like the plague" and that he though Michael Cohen was "the kind of guy who thought it was a good idea to send $130,000 to Stormy Daniels".

It's the gift that keeps on giving...

The Reach To Impeach, Con't

Before hearing a single word of information presented at a Senate trial, Republican senators are of course already signaling that Donald Trump will be acquitted.

A growing number of Senate Republicans are ready to acknowledge that President Trump used U.S. military aid as leverage to force Ukraine to investigate former vice president Joe Biden and his family as the president repeatedly denies a quid pro quo.

In this shift in strategy to defend Trump, these Republicans are insisting that the president’s action was not illegal and does not rise to the level of an impeachable offense as the Democratic-led House moves forward with the open phase of its probe.

But the shift among Senate Republicans could complicate the message coming from Trump as he furiously fights the claim that he had withheld U.S. aid from Ukraine to pressure it to dig up dirt on a political rival, even as an increasing number of Republicans wonder how long they can continue to argue that no quid pro quo was at play in the matter.

The pivot was the main topic during a private Senate GOP lunch on Wednesday, according to multiple people familiar with the session who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe the meeting. Sen. John Neely Kennedy (R-La.) argued that there may have been a quid pro quo but said that the U.S. government often attaches conditions to foreign aid and that nothing was amiss in Trump’s doing so in the case of aid to Ukraine, these individuals said.

Inside the lunch, Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Tex.), who ran against Trump in 2016, said a quid pro quo is not illegal unless there is “corrupt intent” and echoed Kennedy’s argument that such conditions are a tool of foreign policy.

“To me, this entire issue is gonna come down to, why did the president ask for an investigation,” Kennedy, who worked as a lawyer, said in an interview. “To me, it all turns on intent, motive. ... Did the president have a culpable state of mind? … Based on the evidence that I see, that I’ve been allowed to see, the president does not have a culpable state of mind.”

The discussion underscores the dilemma for congressional Republicans as a cadre of current and former Trump administration officials paint a consistent picture of a president wiling to use foreign policy to undercut a potential domestic political adversary. On Thursday, Trump appointee and longtime Republican aide-turned-National Security Council adviser Tim Morrison became the latest official to testify that nearly $400 million of congressionally appropriated military aid for Ukraine was frozen to increase pressure on President Volodymyr Zelensky to investigate Biden, a 2020 presidential contender.

And with the House Democrats voting Thursday to open the closed-door impeachment investigation, undermining the GOP’s complaints about a secretive process, Republicans are frantically seeking a new strategy and talking points to defend the president.

The talking points are now "He did it, he's guilty, but so what?"

That's it, guys.  That's the entire GOP strategy, the talking points, the framing, the unified message.

He did it, but it doesn't matter one bit.

Another Hat Leaves The Ring, Con't

Beto O'Rourke is out, the the surprise of precisely nobody.

Former Rep. Beto O'Rourke dropped out of the 2020 presidential race on Friday after a disappointing campaign that failed to build off the momentum generated from his longshot Texas Senate run.

"Though today we are suspending this campaign, let us each continue our commitment to the country in whatever capacity we can," he wrote in an email to supporters.

Lagging in the polls and with fundraising, O'Rourke had yet to qualify for the Nov. 20 debate sponsored by MSNBC and The Washington Post.

O'Rourke's Iowa state director Norm Strzenbach told NBC News he he did not know the campaign would be ending Friday and in fact the campaign had just announced a big push in the first-in-the-nation voting state.

President Donald Trump quickly mocked O'Rourke on Twitter.

O’Rourke, who represented El Paso in Congress, entered the race as one of the most talked-about candidates following his narrow loss to Sen. Ted Cruz in deeply conservative Texas in 2018. After that defeat, Democratic activists in states that hold early presidential voting contests, including Iowa, Nevada and South Carolina, formed "Draft Beto" groups, which raised money and tried to line up supporters for a potential 2020 bid.

Despite the initial jolt of interest from voters and the media, his campaign failed to find footing following debate performances that were highly critiqued and consistent struggles to crack double digits in polls.

O'Rourke repeatedly rejected pleas — including from The Houston Chronicle's editorial board — for him to drop out of the presidential race and run again for the Senate in Texas against Sen. John Cornyn. His aides have said he does not intend to run for the Senate.

Beto I'm sure will have no problem keeping his House district for another term or two, but it'll be 2024 before he gets a second shot at Ted Cruz's seat.  By then, he might be able to win.   WHat I'm mad about is him wasting everyone's time with a quixotic 2020 run for the WHite House when he could have tried for Sen. John Cornyn's seat instead.

But you know what?  There's an even better Democrat running for Cornyn's seat, and that's MJ Hegar.

Still, Beto will continue to be a much-needed voice in the House.  If that's all he chooses to be, that's still a bonus for Democrats as long as he can do the job.

Last Call For The Reach To Impeach, Con't

The House deposition testimony of National Security Council Ukraine expert Alexander Vindman has been utterly devastating so far, and we're learning new details about depositions this week pointing to a concerted effort by the White House to cover up Vindman's official objections to Trump's Ukraine quid prop quo mess.

The senior White House lawyer who placed a record of President Donald Trump’s July 25 call with Ukraine’s president in a top-secret system also instructed at least one official who heard the call not to tell anyone about it, according to testimony heard by House impeachment investigators this week.

Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman, a decorated Army officer who served as the National Security Council’s director for Ukraine, told lawmakers that he went to the lawyer, John Eisenberg, to register his concerns about the call, in which Trump asked Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to investigate the Bidens, according to a person in the room for Vindman’s deposition on Tuesday.

Eisenberg recorded Vindman’s complaints in notes on a yellow legal pad, then conferred with his deputy Michael Ellis about how to handle the conversation because it was clearly “sensitive,” Vindman testified. The lawyers then decided to move the record of the call into the NSC’s top-secret codeword system—a server normally used to store highly classified material that only a small group of officials can access.

Vindman did not consider the move itself as evidence of a cover-up, according to a person familiar with his testimony. But he said he became disturbed when, a few days later, Eisenberg instructed him not to tell anyone about the call—especially because it was Vindman’s job to coordinate the interagency process with regard to Ukraine policy.

Eisenberg’s decision to move the call record to the codeword system following his conversation with Vindman was first reported by The Washington Post. But Eisenberg’s subsequent request that Vindman not disclose the content of the call to anyone has not been previously reported.
An NSC spokesperson and Eisenberg did not return requests for comment.

And yes, all this points to former National Security Adviser John Bolton's mustache.

Tim Morrison, the NSC’s top Russia and Europe adviser, reportedly told lawmakers in his opening statement during a deposition on Thursday that he was worried the July 25 call, which he listened in on along with Vindman, would leak. According to CNN, Morrison “was involved with discussions after the call about how to handle the transcript.”

POLITICO previously reported that the White House started placing transcripts of calls with Trump’s counterparts into the codeword system after the president’s calls with foreign leaders leaked in 2017. But Eisenberg’s purported request that Vindman keep the call a secret raises questions about whether the lawyers’ intent was to bury the conversation altogether. It also undermines Trump’s insistence that the call was “perfect."

Several National Security Council officials had complained to Eisenberg in the weeks leading up to the July 25 call about the shadow Ukraine policy being run by Giuliani and U.S. Ambassador to the E.U. Gordon Sondland. Those include Vindman’s then-boss Fiona Hill, who went to Eisenberg at the instruction of then-National Security Adviser John Bolton.
It’s not clear whether Eisenberg, who has a legendary reputation for secrecy, ever took those concerns up the chain to his boss in the White House counsel’s office, Pat Cipollone.

“John was distrustful of information flows to everywhere else in the building,” a former NSC colleague told POLITICO earlier this month. “He inherently was of the view that anything that could leak would leak and so he was also incredibly conscious of trying to restrict conversations to only those that he really, really, really felt needed to know.”

As far as Bolton ever giving a deposition, well, he's supposed to talk on Thursday.  Whether his mustache shows up and brings the body it controls with it, I can't tell you.

Another Day In Gunmerica, Con't

After promising to "do something" about firearm violence in the wake of several deadly mass shootings just a few months ago, the Trump regime is now quietly abandoning any efforts to sign any new legislation as Trump wants to lock down his 2020 base ahead of impeachment and elections.

President Trump has abandoned the idea of releasing proposals to combat gun violence that his White House debated for months following mass shootings in August, according to White House officials and lawmakers, a reversal from the summer when the president insisted he would offer policies to curb firearm deaths.

Trump has been counseled by political advisers, including campaign manager Brad Parscale and acting chief of staff Mick Mulvaney, that gun legislation could splinter his political coalition, which he needs to stick together for his reelection bid, particularly amid an impeachment battle.

The president no longer asks about the issue, and aides from the Domestic Policy Council, once working on a plan with eight to 12 tenets, have moved on to other topics, according to aides who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe the private deliberations.

Four White House officials said there haven’t been substantive discussions in weeks. And a person close to the National Rifle Association said discussions between the White House and the group have gone silent in a sign that the powerful gun lobby is no longer concerned the White House will act. Trump was pressed repeatedly by NRA President Wayne LaPierre this summer and early fall to not propose any gun-control measures.

“President Trump quietly moved gun control to the side and let it be replaced by breaking news,” said Dan Eberhart, a major GOP donor who said Trump is better off not advancing proposals at this time. “I suspect that was the plan all along.”

The White House’s position is a marked, if not wholly unexpected, change from when the president vowed he would make a push to pass more restrictive laws after two gunmen killed scores of people in Dayton, Ohio, and El Paso in early August, creating national outrage.

Trump repeatedly said he was a supporter of more aggressive background checks, would consider “red flag” laws that allow authorities to temporarily take weapons away from someone deemed a danger, and frequently mentioned the need to focus on mental health as it relates to gun violence.

He made a flurry of calls to lawmakers while crossing the country to visit victims and said he would be willing to go against the desires of the NRA.

In the face of skepticism that he would not push hard for gun restrictions his party has long opposed, Trump insisted he was serious about the issue and would release proposals.

“We’re going to take a look at a lot of different things. And we’ll be reporting back in a fairly short period of time,” he told reporters on Sept. 11. “There are a lot of things under discussion. Some things will never happen, and some things can, really, very much — some very meaningful things can happen.”

Anyone who believed Trump was going to get any legislation passed at all involving firearms is not anybody who you should be listening to.  It was always a scam. It was never going to even get a vote in the Senate.  If you want gun laws, get rid of Trump and McConnell and about 6-8 Republican senators, and then we'll talk.

Oh, and four people were shot and killed at a Halloween party in Orinda, California last night.

Just another day in Gunmerica.

One Versus Six

The impeachment of Donald Trump won't be over anytime soon, and a Senate trial, assuming Mitch McConnell doesn't just toss the whole proceeding in the fireplace, could last well into the 2020 campaign season.  That means six Democratic (well, 5 and Bernie) Senators are going to have to balance a trial that could last months with a primary campaign, and that's very much the realm of uncharted waters.

On its current path, the impeachment case against President Donald Trump is on a collision course with perhaps the most pivotal period in the Democratic primary, threatening to unravel the campaign plans of some of the top 2020 contenders. 

The House is unlikely to vote on impeachment until the end of the year, meaning the Senate trial against Trump figures to begin in January — just weeks before the Feb. 3 Iowa caucuses. It’s an event that could require the six Democratic presidential prospects to remain in Washington every workday for at least a month.

Depending on when the trial begins, or if it drags on, the trial could affect the New Hampshire primary on Feb. 11, a day shy of the 21st anniversary of President Clinton’s acquittal after a five-week Senate trial.

There’s no consensus over which Democratic contenders are advantaged by an impeachment trial. Candidates such as Joe Biden or Pete Buttigieg won’t be chained to senatorial desks, leaving them to stump unfettered in the two early states. But the six senators — Michael Bennet, Cory Booker, Kamala Harris, Amy Klobuchar, Bernie Sanders, and Elizabeth Warren — will occupy the national spotlight as jurors, located at the center of the political universe of impeachment. 

“We’re in uncharted waters. There’s no model for this,” said Joel Benenson, an adviser to Buttigieg and alum of Hillary Clinton’s and Barack Obama’s presidential campaigns. “We’ve never seen an impeachment trial in a presidential election year ever, let alone multiple senators running for president.” 

Aside from being away from the campaign trail during the trial, the senators would face an additional potential burden: They wouldn’t be allowed to speak publicly on the matter in chambers during the weeks-long trial because they’re supposed to sit as silent jurors — a rare restriction for politicians accustomed to using congressional hearings as opportunities to grandstand or create a viral moment. They could comment during breaks outside of the Senate chamber, however. 

The complexities of a Senate trial and its effects on the Democratic primary are only now being discussed in earnest in top Democratic circles. The conversation came into sharp focus after Thursday’s House vote ratified the impeachment process that, if all goes the way House leadership hopes, would end by the holiday season, with Hanukkah starting Dec. 22. That would put a Senate trial as the first and only order of constitutional business to start the new year.

We'll see where things go, but if I'm Mitch McConnell, I want to drag my feet on this for months, causing chaos though at least Super Tuesday and possibly beyond by calling witness after witness in a Senate trial and keeping Democrats tied up and unable to do much of anything for January through March, especially if the plan is to set up Biden for a fall.

Or then again, the trial could be over a day.  I don't know how Mitch is going to play it, and anyone who does is lying.

StupidiNews!

• Part of the Keystone XL pipeline in North Dakota was shut down this week after owner TC Energy discovered a massive leak of nearly 400,000 gallons of oil near Edinburg.
• Donald and Melania Trump are changing their residence to Trump's Mar-A-Lago resort in Florida, vacating Trump Tower in Mahnattan as the family's official residence.
• The Pentagon is withholding more than $100 million in security aid for Lebanon after the resignation this week of Lebanese Prime Minister Saad al-Hariri.
• Pacific Gas & Electric says mass blackouts in California will end for now as power is being restored to thousands of customers after wildfire threats have lowered this week.
• Fiat Chrysler's merger with European automaker PSA Group to form the world's fourth-largest car manufacturer means Fiat and Chrysler will now welcome brands like Opel, Citroen and Maserati.